A chart similar to the one below was included in a blog post under the heading “Bank C&I Loan Charge-Offs Soaring Again”. This chart caught my attention because it seems to indicate that bank C&I (Commercial and Industrial) loan charge-offs are happening at one of the fastest rates of the past 30 years — the sort of rate that would be consistent with the US economy being in recession.

The problem is that the above chart shows the percentage change of a percentage, which opens up the possibility that what is in reality a small increase is being made to look like a large increase. For example, an increase from 1% to 2% over the course of a year in the proportion of loans charged-off would be a 100% increase if expressed as a year-over-year percentage change in the percentage of charge-offs, whereas all you’ve actually got is a 1% increase in the total proportion of loans that have been charged-off.

The next chart is based on exactly the same data, but instead of displaying the year-over-year percent change in the percentage of C&I loans that have been charged off it simply displays the percentage of C&I loans that have been charged off. This is not just a more correct way of looking at the data, it is a way that has not given any false recession signals over the past 30 years.

The first chart’s message is: an economic recession is either in progress or imminent. The second chart’s message is: the US economy is not in recession and is presently not close to entering recession.

The same data, opposite messages.

Rarely does a month go by when I don’t read at least one article in which interest rates are said to be the price of money. This is wrong. The price of money is what money can buy. The rate of interest is something completely different.

If an apple sells for 1 dollar then the price of a unit of money in this example is 1 apple. If a car sells for 30,000 dollars then the price of a unit of money in this example is 1/30,000th of a car. In more general terms, just as the price of any good, service or asset can be quoted in terms of money, the price of money can be quoted in terms of the goods, services and assets that it buys. In a large economy, at any given time a unit of money will have millions of different prices.

As an aside, this is why price indices that purport to represent the purchasing power of money will always be bogus. Regardless of how rigorous and well-intentioned the effort, it is not possible to come up with a single number that properly indicates the “general price level”. There is simply no such thing as the general price level.

What, then, is the interest rate?

The interest rate is the cost incurred or the payment received for exchanging a present good for a future good. If there is no risk of loss involved in the transaction then the interest rate will reflect nothing other than the time preferences of the person who parts with the present good (usually called the lender) and the person who receives the present good (usually called the borrower). In other words, if there is no risk of loss then the interest rate can correctly be thought of as the price of time.

In most cases there will, of course, be a risk of loss due to the possibility that the borrower will default or the possibility — if it was money that was exchanged — that the loan will be repaid in terms of money that doesn’t buy as much as it did when the initial exchange took place. In most cases the interest rate will therefore be the price of time plus a premium to account for default risk and “inflation” risk.

Time preference sets a lower limit on market interest rates and time preference will always be positive. The negative interest rates set in place by some central banks therefore have nothing to do with market forces and everything to do with heavy-handed manipulation by people who have far more power than sense.

In a recent letter John Mauldin worries that central banks are ‘out of bullets’, but this is not something that any rational person should be worried about. Instead, they should be worried about the opposite.

The conventional view is that with interest rates at all-time lows and with vast amounts of debt having already been monetised, if a recession were to occur in the not-too-distant future there would be nothing that the central banks could do to ameliorate it. However, this view is based on the false premise that central banks can smooth-out the business cycle by easing monetary policy at the appropriate time. The truth is that by distorting interest rates, central banks get in the way of economic progress and cause recessions to be more severe than would otherwise be the case.

Think of it this way: If it is really possible for a committee of bureacrats and bankers to create a better outcome for the economy by setting interest rates (the price of credit), then it logically follows that a healthier economy would result from having all prices set by committees comprised of relevant ‘experts’. There should be an egg committee to set the price of eggs, a car committee to set the price of cars, a massage committee to set the price of massages, etc. After all, if it really is possible for a committee to do a better job than a free market at determining the most complicated of prices then it is certainly possible for a committee to do a better job than a free market at setting any other price.

However, hardly anyone believes that all prices should be set by committee or some other governing body. This is undoubtedly because that type of price control proved to be an unmitigated disaster wherever/whenever it was tried throughout history. Most people therefore now realise that it would make no sense to have committees in place to control prices in general, but are strangely incapable of making the small logical step to the realisation that it makes no sense to give a committee the power to control the most important price in the economy — the price of something that influences the price of almost everything else.

Getting back to the worry that central banks are out of bullets, it would actually be good news if they were. This is because a central bank does damage to the economy every time it fires one of its so-called monetary bullets. The damage usually won’t be apparent to the practitioners of the superficial, ad-hoc economics known as Keynesianism, but it will inevitably occur due to the falsification of price signals.

Unfortunately, central banks have an unlimited supply of bullets. This has been demonstrated over recent years by zero not proving to be a lower boundary for the official interest rate and by asset monetisation proving to be not restricted to government bonds. We should therefore expect central banks to keep firing until they are reined-in by market or political forces.

The real worry, then, isn’t that central banks are out (or almost out) of bullets. The real worry is that they are not remotely close to being out of bullets.

When the Baltic Dry Index (BDI), an index of international ocean-going freight rates, plunged to a multi-decade low early this year it provoked excited commentary from the “economic armageddon is nigh!” crowd. An example can be found HERE. However, bearish commentary is unhelpful after the prices of useful things have fallen to the point where the suppliers of these things are financially in dire straits.

There’s always a risk that the stock price of an individual company will go to zero, but there’s never a risk that freight rates or the prices of useful commodities will go to zero. Therefore, the further they move into an area where they are low by historical standards, the lower the downside risk will generally be.

I’m lumping ocean-going shipping rates and commodity prices together in this post because they are linked. They usually trend in the same direction and reach important peaks/troughs at around the same time. A consequence is that it doesn’t make sense to be bullish on commodities and at the same time anticipating a large decline in shipping rates, or bearish on commodities and at the same time anticipating strength in shipping rates. For example, after commodity prices reversed upward during January-February of this year it made no sense to expect a continuing downward trend in shipping rates.

The link between shipping rates (as represented by the BDI) and commodity prices (as represented by the Goldman Sachs Spot Commodity Index – GNX) is illustrated below. The two indexes have been positively correlated for a long time. Divergences are not uncommon, but the divergences are always short-term.

So, here’s an idea: Rather than piling onto the bearish bandwagon, when the real price of an indispensable service or commodity drops to a multi-decade low it might make more sense to be bullish.