Another Word Of Caution Regarding Inflation

Admin — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:00:05 GMT

This morning I am off to Chicago to attend the ABA Techshow. I am speaking on benchmarking and the results of the 2007 Law Firm Economic Survey Friday at 2:30pm central. If you are attending the conference I encourage you to drop by. I plan to do some blogging at the event as well, including recording some interviews.

In the meantime, I did a little more research on inflation yesterday and learned some interesting things. I'm no conspiracy buff, but I have to admit that connecting dots is a fun exercise.

First, the Federal Reserve just two years ago decided to stop tracking what is called M3 transactions.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/discm3.htm

According to the fed, it isn’t necessary. According to others, it means the fed is hiding something.

http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Articles/M3_Money_supply.asp (Interesting analysis related to the Chinese buying back our debt that is being devalued daily just so we can continue to buy their exports.)
http://www.investmentu.com/IUEL/2005/20051208.html
http://www.discursivemonologue.com/2008/02/10/the-federal-reserve-m3-and-inflation/
http://www.moneyweek.com/file/5138/m3-0212.html

A House Bill was introduced shortly thereafter requiring the Fed to reinstate the policy (introduced by ex-Presidential candidate Ron Paul) - http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.4892: - no legs sprouted from it.

Some are therefore calculating M3 themselves:

http://www.nowandfutures.com/key_stats.html
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data

Another troubling sign is what the Fed has been doing lately to help weakened financial institutions increase their liquidity – ie, pumping money into the markets by buying up the possibly worthless mortgage notes so that banks continue to lend.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080311/fed_credit_crisis.html?.v=6

The final worrying sign is the runaway bull market in oil. Oil is near $110 per barrel.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/53123f5c-ef59-11dc-8a17-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

How will this affect law firms? Well, as noted yesterday, you need to keep an eye on inflation and your margin. With high margins and low inflation, you are pretty well insulated to inflation's effects. If inflation spikes, though, all bets are off. Based on the above linked articles, however, are we (as Larry Bodine has stated several times) already in a recession? And is inflation already well above 4%?

Make More Rain : economic outlook, aba techshow

Another Word Of Caution Regarding Inflation