As we wrote before in Notice the change of narratives in the financial markets?, the theme for the coming months is likely to be deflation (contraction in the supply of money and credit). The symptoms of deflation will include falling asset and commodity prices and appreciation of the US dollar.

The reason why deflation is gaining the upper hand is that governments are not renewing their appetite for maintaining the crutch (economic ?stimulus?) to keep the economy from sinking. In Europe, the government themselves are deleveraging (see Keep up spending- Who?s right? Europe or America?).

But as contrarian investors, we have to keep one step ahead. As deflationary forces gather steam, eventually the government will be spooked. Eventually, they will be pressured politically to do ?something? about the situation. That ?something? will ultimately boils down to turning on the monetary printing press.

For example, as this news article reported, there is an expectation that the Chinese government will do ?something? if stock prices continue its downward trajectory. In the US, RBS recently warned its clients to be prepared for a ?monster? money-printing operation from the Federal Reserve (long before RBS released this, readers of this blog already know beforehand that this will happen- see Bernankeism and hyper-inflation).

When governments do ?something? about the deflationary pain, it will be a signal to shuffle your money back into speculation.