Your Private Inflation

Yesterday I started to declutter the hundreds of items in the small office room from which I am currently writing these lines. (I do not want to read any comments about how desperate somebody must be to start such a process without his girlfriend pushing him or a visit of Mom on the timetable.)

One of the things I managed to get rid of (breaking up is never easy) are old bank account statements. Actually, those were the last statements I had on paper - print-outs of the the first online banking statement I received as a PDF file. Since then, I have always stored them electronically, transferred them from PC to PC, from hard-drive to hard-drive. 

What these statements allow me now is to look back on December 2001.Things changed ...

Roughly ten years ago you could find most numbers on the statements in EUR and DEM (Deutsch Mark). The conversion factor (1.95583) was clearly stated - today all references to DEM have gone.

The more money you had on your call money account (Tagesgeldkonto), the higher the interest rate was in the past - ranging from 1,4 % to 1.75 % for sums exceeding 25,000 EUR. For six month fixed deposits you got 2.75 % - for 5 years 3.5 %.

Today you have teaser rates on call money - 1.75 % for up to 10,000 EUR and then dropping to 0.5 % for sums above 50,000 EUR. (Note the difference in value of the last limit where conditions change). The teaser rates are designed to attract new customers, as it's hard to get any interest on money today. The more money you put into the account the more the rate drops, as the banks cannot match the teaser rates when lending out the money. Fixed deposits yield 0.5 % ranging form 1 to 3 months. Longer periods are not available. Above 50,000 EUR and for a 3 months period you get astonishing 0.9 %. 

Interest to be paid on your giro / checking account within your credit line is 9.9 % - if you exceed it, interest rises to 14.4 %.  This has not changed much as it was 10.0 % and 13.0 % in the past. But the spreads ... tremendous. 

Now for the 'private inflation':

Filling up at the gas station cost around 25 EUR back then. Ten years later we are at 76 EUR. Well, my car got bigger, too - so when this was close to 40 or 45 liters in the past (do you remember how big your tank was 10 years ago?), it's close to 55 liters now - Diesel in both cases. When I do the math, I come close to a 9 % increase of diesel prices every year.

My monthly telephone fee  (fixed line with ISDN internet) was around 70 EUR - today its more like 100 EUR, but of course with much more bandwidth and monthly software features. No inflation here I would say. 

My spending habits also changed: while I did withdraw  a couple of 100 DEM back then every fortnight, the line items have increased. From the crate of beer to the box office ticket - everything is paid via debit card today. The old statements provide much less information.

Monthly down-payment on electricity/water was 22 EUR (living single) - it's 76 for electricity only now (with a flat double the size, and 3 people). Rent you cannot really compare at all - I moved 100 km closer to Munich. 

Participation fee for the half marathon in Altötting was 15 EUR back then - it would be 31 today. And 6 months of fee for the weekly paper "Wirtschaftswoche" increased from 125 DEM to roughly 100 EUR.

My after-tax salary increased by 150 % within this time frame. But it's not the same job any more; I head a small team now; responsibilities have increased; my experience; and this is after some optimization regarding healthcare fees. What the increase was before tax I was not able to figure out so quickly - but I assume it was a little lower, as tax rates declined somewhat. (But gut feeling could really trick you there ....)

So, roughly speaking, expenses have doubled in 10 years?  Roughly a 7 % private inflation rate? But I was lucky - as I could advance my income faster. Will I be able to keep this up? What happens once I retire? Will inflation increase over the next years - given the EURO-crisis? I don't want to discuss this here and now. Just a final statement: I will not throw away my paper files, as I could really gain some insight (and even entertainment) going through them. Let's do it again in 2022.

2012 Prognosis

Having written about some macro trends, let us take a closer look on 2012. I will try to make some prognosis. In this high volatile times this is no easy play. Well, at the end of the year we can look back and assess how wrong I have been:

1) The US economy is the best looking house in a bad neighborhood, showing some growth in 2012.
2) China engineers a 'soft landing' and remains on a growth path, though less fast then in previous years.
3) The Europeans struggle a lot in the first months of 2012. Only after serious problems to refinance, they get their act together and the EZB floods the markets with EUR. Germans resistance to a weaker EUR will be overcome by the doves in the EZB.
4) As such, the EUR gets weaker vs. the USD at least for the first 6 months ...
5) ... and interest rates remain artificially low, as central banks world wide keep pressure on them.
6) Oil prices remain high, as supply is tight. This would only change if the economy crashes.
7) Gold will raise again in USD, for the 12th year in a row - and even more so in EUR.
8) US will not trigger a crisis with Iran as Obama tries to cut spending on military (but others might ...)

And some of the wilder ideas - not really that likely but thought-provoking:

9) Europe sees a bank holiday as the EURO-crisis forces governments to recapitalize quite a number of banks.
10) Several European governments will fall apart (candidates: Hungary, Czech, Germany, Greece, Spain, ...)
11) The Swiss Central Bank exits the tie to the EUR in order to keep a hard currency.

Thinking about low-risk short-term trades there come hardly any to my mind.
- One idea could be to go long US indices and short European ones (S&P500 vs. Eurostoxx50 or DAX30).
- An unhedged long position in USD is something I can hardly enter, though it seems to make sense short term. I does go against my gut feeling as the USD is doomed too, in the long run.

Bill Gross, the head of PIMCO, sees 2012 outlook 'as a bell-shaped curve' with not many investment opportunities in the middle, so that one could prefer to keep his money in a mattress. The fat, left and right tails are a collapse as everybody de-leverages or hyperinflation.