Abenomics: Japan’s McDonald’s to Raise Prices by 25%

Lo and behold! This is one example of the supposed magic of Abenomics, Japan’s McDonald’s will raise prices of their products by 25% in order to offset losses!

From Bloomberg

McDonald’s Corp. (MCD)’s Japan business will raise some prices by much as 25 percent next month, the fast food chain’s first increase on burgers in the country since 2008.

Hamburger prices will go up to 120 yen from 100 yen and cheeseburgers will rise to to 150 yen from 120 yen in Japan in May, McDonald’s Holdings Co. Japan Ltd. said in a statement today. The hikes are part of the company’s plan to boost profitability, it said.

McDonald’s is raising the prices after the Japanese unit reported a 12 percent drop in operating profit last year. Fewer discounts drove March same-store sales 3.6 percent lower at the local business, the 12th consecutive monthly decline.

Of course basic economics tells us that higher prices leads to lesser demand. Thus a fall in purchasing power should extrapolate to lesser sales in terms of quantity (and also quality) which eventually should put pressure on profits. 

Chart from Yardeni.com

Yet given Bank of Japan’s recourse to inflationism which hasn’t been anything new, as the Japanese government has been doing this since the start of the new millennium, but has only become more aggressive since 2008, McDonald’s has been suffering from poor sales which isn’t supposed to be the case, especially at the onset of expansionary boom. 

The employment of such poilcies embodies precisely the definition of insanity specifically "doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results."

Inflationism will hardly bring a boost to the economy, why? Because it inhibits economic calculation and the division of labor by distorting market prices.

As the great Murray N. Rothbard explained (bold mine)

Inflation has other disastrous effects. It distorts that keystone of our economy: business calculation. Since prices do not all change uniformly and at the same speed, it becomes very difficult for business to separate the lasting from the transitional, and gauge truly the demands of consumers or the cost of their operations. For example, accounting practice enters the "cost" of an asset at the amount the business has paid for it. But if inflation intervenes, the cost of replacing the asset when it wears out will be far greater than that recorded on the books. As a result, business accounting will seriously overstate their profits during inflation--and may even consume capital while presumably increasing their investments.  Similarly, stock holders and real estate holders will acquire capital gains during an inflation that are not really "gains" at all. But they may spend part of these gains without realizing that they are thereby consuming their original capital.

By creating illusory profits and distorting economic calculation, inflation will suspend the free market's penalizing of inefficient, and rewarding of efficient, firms. Almost all firms will seemingly prosper. The general atmosphere of a "sellers' market" will lead to a decline in the quality of goods and of service to consumers, since consumers often resist price increases less when they occur in the form of downgrading of quality. The quality of work will decline in an inflation for a more subtle reason: people become enamored of "get-rich-quick" schemes, seemingly within their grasp in an era of ever-rising prices, and often scorn sober effort. Inflation also penalizes thrift and encourages debt, for any sum of money loaned will be repaid in dollars of lower purchasing power than when originally received. The incentive, then, is to borrow and repay later rather than save and lend. Inflation, therefore, lowers the general standard of living in the very course of creating a tinsel atmosphere of "prosperity."

This only means that in a highly inflationary environment McDonald’s and other Japanese firms will be compelled to either reduce quality or to continually raise prices in order to survive or even speculate, which is contradictory to bring about ‘competitiveness’.

Yet any elevated accounting figures boosted by higher prices will be exposed when the BoJ desists from pursuing inflationist policies—the boom bust cycle.

Moreover, given that Japanese households are said to be ‘risk averse’ where 56% of their liquid assets are in the form of cash and where liquid ‘cash’ financial wealth accounts for 319% of Japan’s GDP, while only 5.8% have been invested in equities and .08% in foreign assets, one should expect that the massive fall in the purchasing power of the yen, will lead not to more investments, but to yield chasing masked as capital flight.

Former Morgan Stanley analyst now managing director and cofounder of SLJ Macro Partners Stephen Jen quoted by SNBCHF.com 

The first stage is foreign leveraged funds shorting the yen, acting on the rhetoric from the Abe Administration. This stage is coming to an end, to be followed by the second stage: Japanese investors selling yen

We have already seen signs where Japanese firms would rather raise financing from foreigners than to deploy domestic cash to investments.

So it would signify as a grotesquely obtuse idea to blindly believe (yes inflationism isn’t economics but religion based on heuristics) that inflation will save the day for Japan. Doing the same thing over a decade hasn't help, why should it be different this time? Because of the shock and awe?

One can only look at Argentina and Venezuela’s transition from stagflation to hyperinflation to see how disastrous a policy inflation makes.

Abenomics will only hasten Japan's path to a crisis.