The Norris Group Blog

Robert J. Samuelson Author and Columnist (Full Bio)

This week Bruce is joined again this week by Robert J. Samuelson. Robert is an award winning columnist and author. He has been writing a column for The Washington Post since 1977, and for Newsweek since 1984. He has recently published a book named The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Influence.

One of the main claims in Samuelson’s recent book is that the rise and fall of inflation was the most significant event in the past 50 years. When most people think of the fall of inflation, they think of a very short time. One of Samuelson’s key points is that there was nothing usual about the last 25 years. Samuelson thinks the fall of inflation was even more important than the rise of inflation.

In the early 80s, inflation was reaching 15 percent, mortgage rates were around 15 percent, and the prime rate for good bank customers was over 20 percent. When inflation came down, interest rates came down slowly, because no one believed that inflation would come down. Asset prices, beginning with the stock market, began to increase during this time. The Dow Jones industrial average was between 800 and 900. There was an explosion in the stock market over the next 20 years. By 2000, the Dow was over 10,000. Stock market wealth within households went from about $1 trillion in the 80s to over $11 trillion at the end of the 90s.

Later, this increase in stock values lead to an increase in real estate values. For many years, consumers spent more of their income and borrowed more. There were only 2 modest recessions during this time in 1991 and 2001. This increase in wealth made people very careless. It conditioned them to take risks which they should not have taken, because they believed the economy had entered into a state of prolonged prosperity.

If you have a feeling of preordained success about an investment, you are probably ignoring a lot of the risk factors you would normally pay attention too. People thought that risk had gone down because of lower inflation. They also felt that they understood risk better. People then began to take more risks because of these two false assumptions. Lenders began to lend money to people with high levels of debt, and they did it with silly and destructive interest rates. People assumed that stock prices would increase forever. For many years, Samuelson warned people that things would not continue to increase forever. Some of those people looked at Samuelson with pity, because he wasn’t taking part in the stock market increase.

Great gains inspire perverse behavior. There were people who owned 50 and 60 homes, who did not have a normal job, with a $30,000 negative cash flow per month. They would show you their list of properties with pride, because they were worth $4 million. They assumed they would be able to sell all their properties to people who were even dumber than they were. These kinds of people were sure that their investments couldn’t go wrong.

Before the bubble burst, people had high expectations for success, which allowed them to grumble about things not being good enough. The paradox at that time was that they could only have grumbled if they expected themselves to be heading towards paradise. The fact that things had been so good for them allowed them to criticize the actual conditions. When historians look back at this time, they will likely conclude that the times were not that good, even thought they really were; the times just weren’t as good as people thought they should be.

Roughly 2/3 of today’s population are too young in 1980. They were either not alive, or they were in their pre-adult years. They were not aware of the 70s and the high inflation, but even the people who lived during that time forgot about it.

Samuelson knows a columnist who wrote about Reagan’s leadership qualities. Samuelson does think that Reagan was a good leader, but the columnist did not address inflation at all. This history is the lost history. Professional historians and economists have engaged in an act of amnesia. This is scary because people will be more likely to make the same mistakes in the future. Samuelson thinks it is good to have the truth for the sake of truth, but also because if we don’t know the truth we will likely repeat our mistakes. There are prominent economists who are claiming that a little more inflation would be okay. Samuelson believes that if we encourage a little inflation, we will end up with a lot of it.

When society is used to good times, it can be difficult to ask for sacrifices, depending on what sacrifice you are asking for and why. Today, we have made more promises to people than we can afford to keep. Most of these promises are to retirees through social security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The cost of paying for those programs, when the baby boomers retire, will be staggering. Our children will be saddled with very high taxes, high budget deficits, or great cuts in other services. If we explain this to people, perhaps they would be willing to make some sacrifices. They may have to cut back on benefits for retirees, and raise the eligibility age for those programs. There may also be some sort of tax increase. None of our political leaders have made the case for sacrificing for our own interest. They seem to be waiting for a crisis to happen, which will force them to do things they should have done on their own.

There seems to be a popular conception that hyperinflation will likely occur in the next 20 years. However, based on our current scenario, Bruce does not see this occurring any time soon. Bruce and Samuelson are more considered with short term deflation. Samuelson doesn’t understand how you get higher inflation when you have empty shopping malls, 10 percent unemployment, and surplus factory capacity. As long as the people running economic policy in this country don’t come to the conclusion that higher inflation is better, we shouldn’t have it in the near future. When Samuelson says near future, he means 3 to 5 years.

In the long term, some people say that we will have to inflate because we have so much debt. The problem is that it is not easy to inflate your way out of debt. Forty percent of inflation turns over in a year or two. If you raise the inflation rate, you don’t really erode the debt, because you just have to refinance it at higher interest rates. In theory it seems like a practical choice, but in reality, it is not realistic.

Economists make the mistake of assuming that the economy responds in a mechanical way to credit, interest rates, government spending, and taxes. These things are significant, but Samuelson doesn’t think they are everything.

What happened in Japan was that they had an economic model, from the 50s to the middle 80s, which worked well for them. They had an export led economy, and they had an undervalued exchange rate. Their domestic economy was not very dynamic, but their exports kept growth and investment high. That model didn’t work in 80s because the exchange rate appreciated dramatically, and their exports became less competitive. This caused the Japanese to settle into a low growth mode, and they haven’t found a different economic model that works better. Contrary to what people learn in college economics, monetary and fiscal policy cannot change that kind of problem. The Japanese efforts to expand their economy through large budget deficits and loose monetary policy didn’t work. Their policy was dynamic internationally, but not domestically, and Samuelson thinks that is the problem in Japan.

If deflation became anticipated, it would be very destructive. Samuelson doesn’t think that modest price decreases would be that bad for a little while. However, if people think that prices will decrease forever, then they won’t borrow money, because their debt burdens will rise. They will postpone buying because the car they could buy today will be expected to fall even more in the future. This mentality will reduce demand, and then unemployment will increase.

Bruce asks Samuelson about what has changed in the baby boom generation’s expectation for retirement. Samuelson claims that this question is a little above his competence, because he is at the very edge of the baby boom generation. Samuelson feels that his retirement has become much less certain. He has saved a fair amount of money, but one thing he has learned is that markets don’t always increase. For example, if you have $100,000 on Thursday, six months from Thursday you may only have $100,000 minus 30 percent of its value. If you thought that money amount would be adequate to supply you through retirement, you may discover later on that it isn’t. That whole generation is probably feeling that same way about their retirement savings. Bruce thinks this mentality will cause a scenario that will not be inflationary. The economists that Samuelson talks to claim that people have short memories, so if we get into a fast growing economy for a few years, then their mentality of fear will disappear. However, Samuelson tends to agree with Bruce in his belief that these setbacks will leave people with a scarred mentality.

Samuelson wrote that the baby boom generation was the benefactor of large chunks of profit. They had the stock market increase, and then they had the real estate increase. This caused the baby boom generation to accumulate a lot of equity. Most of the GDP growth after 2002 came from equity growth and the extraction of it. Bruce wonders what is going to fuel the GDP growth going forward. This makes Bruce think, “How will we get inflation if we will have difficulty obtaining a moderate GDP growth?” Samuelson says that in an ideal world, the source of growth for the next 10 years would come from higher exports, fewer imports, and investment related to those thins. Also, more investment into our energy infrastructure might help as well. Specifically, natural gas could help us a lot now that we know we have more than we previously thought. Also, oil production can make a big difference for our potential economic growth.

After the Great Depression, a pact was made between the government and big business. Bruce asks if Samuelson sees another pact being made today. Samuelson does not see another pact being made today. The pact that occurred in the past was informal and unstable. After World War II, businesses did not want to be reviled in the same way they had been during the Great Depression. Because of this, businesses submitted to social and economic regulation in return for continued market freedom. What we should have today is a generational pact in which the baby boomers agree to reduce their benefits, so that we can take those burdens off of the young. This will allow them to start businesses, have children, and live in such a way so that a significant chunk of their income isn’t being drained to support their grandparents. Bruce completely agrees with this. There are plenty of people who can afford to pay for their own retirement, instead of having their grandchildren be taxed for it.

Robert Samuelson has created one heck of a book: The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Influence.