Deflation: First Step, Understand It

There is still time to prepare if deflation is indeed in our future.

By Elliott Wave International

“Fed’s Bullard Raises Specter of Japanese-Style Deflation,” read a July 29 Washington Post headline.

When the St. Louis Fed Chief speaks, people listen. Now that deflation — something that EWI’s president Robert Prechter has been warning about for several years — is making mainstream news headlines, is it too late to prepare?

It’s not too late.

There are still steps you can take if deflation is indeed in our future. The first step is to understand what it is. So we’ve put together a special, free, 60-page Club EWI resource, “The Guide to Understanding Deflation: Robert Prechter’s most important warnings about deflation.” Enjoy this quick excerpt. (For details on how to read this important report free, look below.)

When Does Deflation Occur?
By Robert Prechter

To understand inflation and deflation, we have to understand the terms money and credit.

Money is a socially accepted medium of exchange, value storage and final payment; credit may be summarized as a right to access money. In today’s economy, most credit is lent, so people often use the terms “credit” and “debt” interchangeably, as money lent by one entity is simultaneously money borrowed by another.

Deflation requires a precondition: a major societal buildup in the extension of credit (and its flip side, the assumption of debt). Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek warned of the consequences of credit expansion, as have a handful of other economists, who today are mostly ignored. Bank credit and Elliott wave expert Hamilton Bolton, in a 1957 letter, summarized his observations this way:

In reading a history of major depressions in the U.S. from 1830 on, I was impressed with the following:
(a) All were set off by a deflation of excess credit. This was the one factor in common.
(b) Sometimes the excess-of-credit situation seemed to last years before the bubble broke.
(c) Some outside event, such as a major failure, brought the thing to a head, but the signs were visible many months, and in some cases years, in advance.
(d) None was ever quite like the last, so that the public was always fooled thereby.
(e) Some panics occurred under great government surpluses of revenue (1837, for instance) and some under great government deficits.

Near the end of a major expansion, few creditors expect default, which is why they lend freely to weak borrowers. Few borrowers expect their fortunes to change, which is why they borrow freely. The psychological aspect of deflation and depression cannot be overstated. …