First, an apology that we have been on a break from our website. Over the last month we’ve had lots going on that has distracted us from doing our regular writing, but we’re back now for the rest of the summer!

Since 2008 there has been two great themes in investing. One, is the search for yield, or income, from safer investments. The second has been the imminent arrival of a rising interest rate environment which threatens to gobble up everyone’s money. If you aren’t too familiar with monetary policy or even how low interest rates work on the economy, don’t worry. What you need to know is this:

In really bad economic times Keynsian theory states that the government should help the economy by creating inflation through stimulus spending and keeping borrowing rates low. This is often done by printing large amounts of money. The availability of cheap money has an inflationary effect on the market, and the economy is believed to rebound more quickly than it would have if it had simply let businesses fail and people be laid off work.

The flip side is that many believe printing money can lead to serious and even extreme hyper-inflation (not entirely unfounded) that in the long term can be extremely detrimental to the financial health of people. This is the fundamental tension in modern economics that is nicely summed up in the below parody video of John Maynard Keynes vs F.A. Hayek. Should markets be steered or set free? Or put more bleakly, should economies be allowed to collapse or should they be saved in the midst of an enormous financial meltdown?

In the past few years there has been an enormous amount of money printing going on (Keynsian) but at the same time governments have been trying to reduce their debts and deficits (Hayek). But the money printing has many people worried. The printing of billions of dollars globally has many inflation hawks declaring that the end of America is nigh, that the currency will soon be worth nothing and that the older traditional economies are doomed to fail. This concern has seeped into the general consciousness to a great degree and it’s not uncommon for me to get questions about whether the United States is on the verge of some new financial collapse.

I tend towards the contrarian angle however, and encourage you to do the same. So much energy and time has been focused on the threat of inflation, few seem to be watching the encroaching danger from deflation.

What’s deflation? It’s like inflation only much worse, since no one knows how to fix it. Deflation is a self fulfilling prophecy where a decreasing supply of circulating money leads to a drop in general prices for everything (this includes labour and products). On the surface that doesn’t sound too bad, but since people tend to earn less in a deflationary environment your existing debt tends to become ever more burdensome. In the same way that the collapse of the American housing market made many homes less valuable than the mortgages on them, deflation just does it to the whole economy. Japan has been in a deflationary situation for nearly 20 years, with little sign of relief. Even last year’s introduction of the unprecedented Abenomics has yet to produce the kind of inflationary turnaround that Japan is in such desperate need of.

When I look to Canada (and more specifically Toronto) I tend to see many of the signs that deflation looms in the shadows. Borrowing rates are incredibly low, largely to encourage spending. Many small retail spaces sit empty, squeezed out by  rising lease costs. Manufacturing sectors in Ontario continue to suffer, while wages remain stagnant. Canadians are currently sitting with record amount of debt and most growth in Canadian net worth have come through housing appreciation, not through greater wealth preservation. In other words, the things that contribute to a healthy economy like rising incomes and a growing industry base are largely absent from our economy. The lesson here is that when it comes to markets, we should worry more about the issues we ignore than the ones we constantly fret over. It’s the hand you don’t watch that deals the surprising blow!