By Jim Willie CB, Golden Jackass

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Many observers to the wild gyrations, deep contortions, extreme measures, and other bizarre activity in the government and banking arenas are suffering from severe confusion. The public is alarmed, even frightened, by the sequence of events, without much benefit of comprehension of what is happening or which clans are in control. The degree of deception hit a peak during the TARP Fund creation and disbursement, done behind private closed doors for the replenishment of sacred preferred stock, that bridge between corporate bonds and stock equity. The deception hit a very high pitch with the financial titan failures, the entire string of them. It has never stopped since. The economic data and promising forecasts (mere marketing group propaganda) featured Green Shoots, Jobless Recovery, and the totally vacant Second Half Recovery that is useful every initial six months to sway the ignorant masses. Just what is happening is difficult to describe succinctly. But the main description reads like an obituary. The most recent and visible distortion is not of price inflation, which has zoomed at 7% annually for a couple years, but rather the Institute of Supply Mgmt. The ISM index has somehow registered a slight increase from July to August, despite almost every single regional index faltering badly. See the careening Philly Fed, from plus 5.1 to minus 7.7 in the latest month. They ignore the weak components and present a distorted aggregate, much like retail sales.

The US banking sector died in September 2008. It has not acted like a credit distribution apparatus in two years. The US Federal Reserve has served almost the complete function, filling the gap like with the decaying commercial paper market. Its several dozen liquidity facilities testify to its urgent need to act as banking system substitute, since the real portion lies in the morgue. The major 100 banks in the USare almost without exception insolvent, and thus do not lend. Sure, they boast a positive book value, but only after given permission to use phony FASB accounting rules. They can declare their assets at any value they wish. In fact, on many debt securities, they actually declare unrealized losses as gains. See the Credit Value Adjustment scheme, an utter travesty and shameful practice mocked by accounting professors. The FDIC came out this week to announce the Q2 list of problem banks went from 775 in number to 829, from Q1. Hardly evidence of a recovery. The USEconomy suffers from a credit strangulation since the banking system at the upper levels is dead, simply stated. The main thrust of the limp activity is monetary creation, banker welfare, absurd programs, and war spending. The more money the clownish hapless awkward leaders throw at the problem, the more the Gold price will rise. Each quantum policy step lifts the potential Gold price another $1000 per ounce.

This article is an attempt to briefly describe what is happening to the United States, from an aerial perspective, regarding the foremost poorly told events, better description of critical event factors, the lost generation of industry, the official investment by the USGovt in profound failure, the confusion from broadening collectivism, the absence of a solution toward restructure and remedy, and what actual solution might include. The popular debate once centered on the banks too big to permit a failure, but that debate became distracted by the flow of events. Only liquidation of the biggest banks can enable a recovery, period!! Of course, the process is complicated, especially politically. Actually, it is more than political, sincethe big banks control the USGovt. The response reaction from gold & silver will give loud messages to systemic failure, as money is wasted, invested in failure, and directed to the elite troughs. One can argue that no remedy or restructure is even attempted!!

REAL STORY BEHIND FOUR FAILURES

The Bear Stearns episode was the prelude to the failure story, the opening act, the clue for the death of the US banking sector. Its story was a mere partial truth, one that avoided all the inner circle rivalries and hate relationships. The firm did not participate in the general rescue program for LongTerm Capital Mgmt in 1998. It was singled out for execution, a kill at a later date. The Bear Stearns failure was a murder execution for its long gold position and short USDollar position, if truth be told. Wall Street never enjoys or benefits from telling the truth. Deception is its calling card. The Gold price was prevented from finding a much higher legitimate value, from continued control after Bear Stearns was removed from the clique.

The American Intl Group episode was disguised from its true nature as a Goldman Sachs bailout. In fact, the record has been somewhat clearly told that the AIG nationalization enabled GSax to be first in line for credit default contract redemptions, at full price. They saved $11 billion in the nationalization and butting in line. There are advantages to acting as the USDept Treasury administrator. Many other big banks had favorable redemptions on similar insurance contracts. The wreckage of the entire USbanking sector was thus covered up from the insurance perspective, preventing a credit derivative blowup. The Gold price did not react from a failure motive, as much as a perceived systemic risk motive. The over $100 billion in covered losses to AIG so far is just the beginning of investment in failure. The USGovt is managing the credit derivatives from under its rickety broken rotten wing. But Gold does react to the waste of money, the debasement of money, and not so much from inflation entering the system. That comes later.

The Fannie Mae episode was one best described as averting either a mortgage bond default or a severe jump in mortgage rates emanating from the sewage treatment plant. In pulling off the nationalization of the wretch, the Wall Street controllers thus placated a crucial angry mortgage creditor. China had been selling all summer long in 2008 its Fannie Mae and other GSE bonds. China forced the USGovt hand as they made it explicit from nationalization. Rumors had been flying in late 2007 and early 2008 that China was accumulating USAgency Mortgage Bonds as part of some contract toward colonization. No more! The USGovt guarantee was implicit but soon made more explicit. The $170 odd billion in covered losses so far is just the beginning of investment in failure. But Gold does react to the waste of money, the debasement of money, and not so much from inflation entering the system. That comes later.

Lehman Brothers was an unwilling sacrificial lamb for its prominence in the mortgage arena. They were an important player that got in the way. The Lehman killjob created a dustup distraction in which JPMorgan was funded $138 billion in a grand reload with USGovt money, to maintain its commodity stranglehold. They were running low on funds to defend the system and to keep America strong, the envy of the world, the beacon of hope. Also, Lehman owned a significant silver position that had gone out of control, in danger of being the object of a critical short covering event that would have rendered huge damage to JPMorgan. Therefore, JPMorgan took it over and assumed its responsibility. They drove the silver price down from $19 to $10 in the ensuing months, with no objection, criticism, or suspicion of impropriety from regulators, legal authorities, or anybody residing in South Manhattan. However, the Silver price returned to face the same $20 level, which it will easily overcome and penetrate in the next few months. Smart investors bought the silver offered at discounted price for several consecutive months.

INVESTMENT IN FAILURE

For vivid indications of failure, notice the slide into recession even after 20 months of near 0% official interest rate. The USFed has no more weapons except the Printing Pre$$, which it will reluctantly use, perhaps somewhat aware of the dire immediate consequences. Central bankers are soiling their skivvies, in utter fear. For vivid indications of failure, notice that the housing sector and commercial property sector do not respond to record low mortgage rates. The average 30-year mortgage rate across the land stands at 4.40%, silly low but uselessly low. Refinance is not an option, given the valuation declines in loan collateral. The ultimate problem is insolvency laced like cancer throughout the entire system, from housing, to households, to banks, to government fiscal situation, even to industry (long gone). The USFed cannot treat insolvency. Only liquidation can. The human toll has been great, from chronic joblessness, to mortgage delinquencies, to home foreclosures, to lost pensions, to vanished financial security. For vivid indications of failure, notice the 2.5% to 2.6% long bond yield in USTreasurys, the last bubble. The US bankers who have run the land for two decades have run out of asset bubbles to blow. Each growth period of 5 to 7 years has been driven by the next asset bubble in sequence, not industrial development or output. Money is being ruined at a rapid rate, and precious metals indicate the pace and severity. As the great bond bubble dissipates from whatever pinprick, the gold rally will move from quiet bullish to monster bullish, complete with a skyrocket event. In the next phase, do not be surprised to see the Gold price rise over $100 on a single day. The financial networks will be bug-eyed and speechless.

Plain language works best at this point. The USGovt, as demonstrated by its nationalizations, big bank rescues, grand aid packages (car industry), and support of extreme measures, has invested heavily in failure, fraud, and banker elite welfareotherwise called pillage. They also has invested in sacred wars at great cost. The USGovt has not invested much at all in business, jobs, family, and life. The flimsy shallow vacant home loan programs exemplify the lack of support and aid for the public. In fact, an argument can be made that the government and banking leadership (tightly twisted together) have contempt for the People. The current administration features a return of failed policy makers, as seen in Robert Rubin, the modern day Rasputin in control of puppet strings. His past failures qualified him for near total banking policy control. As a result, the public harbors growing resentment from the inequality of bailouts and benign neglect to households. The failure to individuals is stark with pink slips and job loss. As long as weekly jobless claims exceed 450 to 470 thousand, nobody will give much credence to any USGovt verbage about a recovery. Failure is in the wind.

GOLDEN RESPONSE TO FAILURE

The failure pertains to the US financial sector in its entirety, from banking system to credit market. The failure is exacerbated by wasted expenditures toward what are called rescues and stimulus, but is actually banker welfare payouts, their toxic bond redemption, and nationalization of failed entities. Worse, the key nationalized firms are laced with $trillion fraud. Fannie Mae remains the central clearing house for several $trillion fraud schemes. In the wake of failure has come round after round of badly spent funds. It is hard to call it money when it pours off the Printing Pre$$ without recourse, without disclosure, and without accountability. Naked bond shorting, failures to deliver bond sales, and extreme interest rate swap enforcement made for a witch’s brew of grand market interference, ruin, and fraud. A prevailing sentiment persists. The consensus lunatic misguided notion is that when the volume of stimulus and rescues is sufficiently higher than a certain threshold level, that recovery follows, especially after a certain period of time. Almost no thinking takes place. The leaders are simply throwing money at the problem and crisis, responding to the next critical focal points. Never has policy been so absent, misguided, and bereft of the thought process. We are witnessing a syndicate in survival mode, in a desperate quest to save the system they exploit so thoroughly.

In response, the Gold price potential rises as USGovt funds are wasted without any path to remedy or recovery. The extreme usage of the Printing Pre$$ in the next round of Quantitative Easing, dubbed QE2, will set up crippling explosions. Each round of stimulus or bank rescue or Dollar Swap Facility setup actually puts the potential Gold price another $1000 higher. The future years will see at least $3000 Gold price, all in time. The 1980 peak Gold price, adjusted by an accurate price inflation accounting, like the Shadow Govt Statistics series, is more like $7000 per ounce. My $3000 forecast figure is a conservative number. Anyone who disputes and challenges this forecast, must provide evidence that remedy, restructure, and reform are anywhere present in the current landscape. They are not. Money is being created and wasted at a colossal pace, and while it is wasted, the Gold price in increasingly debased US$ terms rises.

Favorable upcoming months for the Gold price are finally upon us, especially September. We are at its doorstep of a strong season. A major upward thrust is likely as a holiday present before January. The pattern is even stronger with silver. The month of September is especially strong, almost twice as much gusto packed into it as any other month, the next being December and January. In a five-month stretch, three of the 12 best months are lined up, directly ahead. Last year, the 2009 gold price jumped from $950 to $1200 between late August and end December. Expect something similar this year. Also, institutions like the JPMorgan monster queen might face a date with the guillotine in their silver trading desks. If the ultra-strong seasonality for silver does not catapult its price over $20 by January, it will be a big surprise.

SUPERIORITY OF GOLD AMONG COMMODITIES

Prepare for a breakout in the Gold price, fully forecasted, fully forewarned. A tremendous upleg move comes. The consolidation between the $1065 and $1250 prices has taken nine months. The range between $1175 and $1250 has been tighter in the last two months. A big move is indicated, as the seasons offer a firm wind from behind. Notice the MACD crossover, as moving averages are aligned nicely, but calmly, certainly forcefully. A global recognition of monetary system breakdown is in progress. The QE2 launch, complete with further ruinous debasement of money, is imminent. The unexpected effect that will take inept myopic central bankers off guard is the powerful rise in the Gold price. It foretells of the next powerful phase of the financial crisis that has been covered in detail in the Hat Trick Letter, gory detail. Dan Norcini, the gold, currency, and commodity analyst, put it so well. He said, “What we are witnessing is the death throes of a debt based monetary system, of which those presiding over it apparently have come to believe their own delusions. The USpublic is learning what our grandfathers learned as a result of the Great Depression. Debt is something to be avoided, not heaped up and accumulated… Yet, all of this is lost upon the monetary lords who have their noses so close to the ground sniffing out the scent that they cannot see that the path ahead leads off the edge of an abyss, from which there is no escape.”

The Gold & Silver charts are both bullish, but in different ways. Gold is lifting off a base, while silver has surged upward out of a pause pattern, as described last week. Distrust for the monetary system has gone global. Gold & Silver are accepted as reserve assets, the best safe haven not tied to counter-party debt risk. Watch the Gold/Oil Ratio, which is poised to rise noticeably. Gold is the commodity king, namely it is money. The worldwide recession will keep the crude oil price subdued until the USTreasury bubble pops. Then, at that time, several major commodity hedges will jump in price, rendering a cost shock to the USEconomy. It is broken to the core, broken at the foundation, broken from grotesque imbalances, broken from vast pervasive insolvency. An inflationary depression lies dead ahead! Notice the recognition of Gold, its distinction as the king of commodities. The usual accepted hedge against the USDollar in Wall Street and London accounts has traditionally been crude oil.

After the severe damage done to sovereign debt in Europe, a wave comes steeped in crisis. Governments erroneously believe that they can inflate their way out of the crisis that has roots firmly connected to debt inflation. This is folly, as they will learn.Notice the King Gold, which is out-performing crude oil. The Gold/Oil Ratio has turned up strongly since the spring months. Deflation Knuckleheads will find they made serious analytic errors, when they grouped King Gold with the commodities. What folly. Gold is money, and money is becoming scarce. The current monetary system is debt in denominated form. The ratio will rise toward 20:1 in the coming months. The USEconomy in struggle, clear deterioration, even possible collapse, will keep the energy prices down generally. The global monetary virus outbreak will lift the Gold price to the heavens.

FROZEN REACTION FROM POLICY

Much of the business sector is frozen. Executives and managers are frozen in inaction from inability to anticipate what comes next. The landscape of regulations and official programs is too rapid, unpredictable, and illogical. We see stupid stuff like Clunker Car Programs. We see disruptive stuff like the Health Care Program. We see unpredictable stuff like the Home Purchase Credit Program. We see uncertainty, like with the home tax credit return. The biggest obstacle to business seems to be the Health Program monstrosity. It forces higher costs upon businesses while officials claim the exact opposite. Nowhere is the confusion greater than the housing and mortgage finance markets. Investors are front running the bond trade, with anticipation of USGovt monetization of more USTreasury Bonds and more USAgency Mortgage Bonds. The prospect of QE2 has brought about a perception that lower mortgage rates could come, and continue to come. The business sector cannot readily hire in this uncertain illogical environment in flux, where leadership is constantly being questioned. The home buyer demand was drawn forward, leaving a late summer and autumn vacuum. See the 27% decline in existing July home sales. The investment community is buying the USGovt guaranteed bonds, ahead of the QE2 launch. Investment in business equipment and capital formation is nearly non-existent. The USEconomy is frozen by erratic policy. In fact, the Gross Domestic Product is negative, once 3% is subtracted from the official downward revised 1.6% growth in 2Q2010. The subtraction is required for entrance into the world of reality, where hedonic and other productivity fudges must be removed.

A GENERATION OF LOST INDUSTRY

This is not a lost decade upcoming. The United States has suffered an entire generation of lost industry from its systematic dismantling, forfeit, and abandonment. The migration of industry began with Japan and the Pacific Rim in the 1980 decade. It continued in the 1990 decade, along with the NAFTA experiment with Mexico. Those border factories were removed with the advent of China. It culminated in the 2000 decade, with the death blow from the Chinese industrial expansion, often dubbed the Low Cost Solution. The entire generation, especially since the Chinese climax, replacedUS factory income with service sector income, which included the finance sector from mortgage processing, credit derivatives, leveraged structured finance, and other financial engineering vehicles & structures. The emphasis on clean industry and sophisticated economical development was nothing more than a deceptive billboard to conceal the near total devotion to and dependence upon inflation for economic growth, which backfired and killed the system. The financial engineering offered no legitimate advancement to the society, and certainly not to the USEconomy, except the automatic teller machine, an observation made by former USFed Chairman Paul Volcker. His tenure was ended by the way, as a result of vicious rumors of a cancer debilitation, completely false stories spread by proponents of Alan Greenspan, a syndicate priest of high order. The Greenspan Era justified the virtues of risk offloaded in credit securities, hailed the sophistication of the system, and heaped praise upon each other’s priests, right before the system collapsed from a flimsy and fraudulent foundation, leveraged inflation engines, and absent industry.

THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLE

The secret to a legitimate solution is easy. The big banks must write down their credit portfolios, and accept deep losses. If that results in liquidation, so be it!! Accounting fraud is not a substitute for restructure. Nor is dispatching badly impaired assets to the USFed, whose by all accounts is a Bad Bank Repository. Debate continues on the need to create a bad bank for dead assets, when the USFed is precisely that bank. Toxic assets held by the big banks must be liquidated. The phony propped credit markets must be permitted to fail, and to find proper value via equilibrium processes. Nowhere is equilibrium sought, as everywhere it is avoided. The USGovt should exit and quit the game of stimulus, intervention, and market distortion. The USGovt is delaying the inevitable. The financial markets should seek their bottoms for clearing supply. The bank leaders must be liquidated, removed from power, and face some prosecution. The Too Big To Fail premise must be rejected. The Zombie Big Banks threaten the entire system. If truth be told, they control the leadership of the USGovt itself. Dead entities control the USGovt, lodged in a stranglehold!!

CONSTIPATION WHEN NO LIQUIDATION

This is remarkably simple economics analysis. Without substantial liquidation of the badly impaired assets held in tremendous volume within the big banks, further credit constipation will be the mainstay fixture. That asset clog includes the vast bank owned properties from home foreclosures. The REO count rises about 50 thousand homes per month, a figure roughly double from the January level. Without major liquidation initiatives, expect continued Zombie Big Banks cluttering space. Without major liquidation initiatives, expect continued demands from the Zombies for large tracts of money. Without major liquidation initiatives, expect continued $trillion fraud schemes with Fannie Mae as nexus. Without major liquidation initiatives, expect escalated growth of the USTreasury Bond bubble. In plain terms, the economic landscape and credit system cannot recover without the plowing under of the Big Banks. However, they control the USGovt, its finance ministry in the USDept Treasury, and the USDollar Printing Pre$$ itself. The big banks will NOT order their own death warrant, and face the financial gallows. To think otherwise, even for the national good, is folly. It is like asking a heavily armed bank thief in the middle of a crowded lobby, holding a few dozen hostages, to shoot himself in the head instead, for the good of the people. The credit engines of the USEconomy will not fire much at all unless the big banks are liquidated, or at least much of their balance sheets is liquidated. That would expose their deep insolvency and potentially lead to their failure. A run on those banks by depositors, and a ruinous sale of their corporate bonds by investors, would ensure the big banks death. They belong in the morgue, for the national good. Capitalism demands their plowing under to unleash hidden potential.

The ball & chain dragging down and keeping down the big banks is the housing market. The downward force of gravity is visible in the falling home prices. The deteriorating USEconomy still pulls down the monetary platform, as the credit portfolios are directly attached to the ball & chain. The USEconomy was given the appearance of growth from the housing bubble between years 2002 and 2006. Its asset bubble formed a foundation for the majority of the USEconomy, and whose accompanying mortgage finance bubble provided the liquidity to the system. In fact, the entire boom & bust served as vivid indisputable evidence that the home is not a tangible asset, but rather a financial asset, an abused asset. The mortgage foreclosure process is the final proof. The true tangible assets are crude oil and precious metals. Other commodities will be sacrificed in wholesale form in order to purchase energy and precious metals. Energy is needed for commercial survival, while gold is needed as bonafide safe haven for money.

GOVT DILEMMA

The USGovt finds itself managing a mangled menagerie of frozen fixtures, most of which are totally broken. It is the great investor in failure and fraud. Its actions cover up the fraud, from policy taken in full collusion. Should the leaders give orders that result in formal suicide ceremony of the big banks, a US version of harikari? Should the props be removed and force a USTreasury default? A default will occur anyway in my view, since it is only delayed. The USTreasury default will come as a result of trade war isolation, USDollar vicious cycles in USGovt deficit monetization, a massive sudden USDollar devaluation, or the USFed resignation from its Congressional contract amidst $1 trillion losses. Expect all the above in combination, each linked. The USFed already has compiled close to half a $1 trillion loss on its balance sheet.

A grand game of chicken by the USGovt and Wall Street control panel is taking place. All official plans are predicated upon an economic recovery in the United States. A great fan blows fake acidic money into the bankers trough, but the monetary system erodes as its pillars suffer continued gradual deep damage. The new debt, delivered as fresh paper, acts like acid on the capital base of the entire USEconomy. As described in previous articles, the United States possesses the worst economists in the world. They have no concept of capital formation, no concept of what constitutes money, no concept of legitimate income, and no willingness to liquidate the toxic assets that prevent a restructure and recovery. The big hairball in the system is the big banks. The American public cannot survive on a limited credit diet due to big bank hairballs clogging the system.

HEIGHTENED RISK OF USTREASURY BUBBLE

A growing risk is palpable of migration away from USTBonds. It could come very soon. After the housing & mortgage twin bubbles and consequent bust, the last asset bubble has a little more ways to go. The last asset bubble is the USTreasury Bond, the entire complex. In fact, the bubble extends to the Fannie Mae bonds as well, since under USGovt guarantee. Perhaps a 2.0% long bond yield will be the sentinel signal to abandon and sell, setting up a bond bust. An extreme risk is present for the next important event to frighten the horses that prop USTBonds. What will be the rattlesnake in the sand? Foreign creditor sales in volume? A ramped up trade war? Harsh criticism for improper USDollar printing in monetization schemes, finally in the open? Recognition of a $1 trillion tab in war spending? A river of hyper-inflation is lodged in the USTBond dam, whose walls are nothing more than paper reeds held together by bad verbal glue, uttered by bank leaders who increasingly lack credibility.

Witness the failed central bank franchise system, and USFed Chairman Bernanke without any tools left. Witness the systemic failure of the USEconomy (and Mexico too). All USFed recovery scenarios depend upon a USEconomic recovery, which itself is completely dependent upon a US housing market recovery and a US banking system recovery. No recovery will come, since no Big Bank liquidation will be permitted. Therefore the USFed will walk the pirate plank to a great death of insolvency and ruin, which will spawn a USTreasury default, my forecast made two years ago. It is more certain than ever before. The safe haven is gold & silver. The USTreasury Bond grand dissipation, the long bust process, will catapult the Gold price toward $3000, and suddenly. The gold community will find great amusement in watching the reaction to the naysayers and critics, except the world will change into something hardly recognizable. It will turn into an ugly version of Mad Max, the movie. Shortages and crises will abound. Chaos will reign. A form of darkness will befall the earth.

THE HAT TRICK LETTER PROFITS IN THE CURRENT CRISIS.

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Jim Willie CB, editor of the “HAT TRICK LETTER”

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At least 30 recently on correct forecasts regarding the bailout parade, numerous nationalization deals such as for Fannie Mae and the grand Mortgage Rescue.

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Jim Willie CB is a statistical analyst in marketing research and retail forecasting.   He holds a PhD in Statistics. His career has stretched over 25 years. He aspires to thrive in the financial editor world, unencumbered by the limitations of economic credentials. Visit his free website to find articles from topflight authors at www.GoldenJackass.com. For personal questions about subscriptions, contact him at JimWillieCB@aol.com

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich

What passes for business reporting in the United States is too often a series of breathless reports about the stock market. When the Dow rises precipitously, as it did today (Wednesday), the business press predicts an end to the Great Recession. When the stock market plummets, as it did last week, the Great Recession is said to be worsening.

Pay no attention. The stock market has as much to do with the real economy as the weather has to do with geology. Day by day there’s no relationship at all. Over time, weather and geology interact but the results aren’t evident for many years. The biggest impact of the weather is on peoples’ moods, as are the daily ups and downs of the market.

The real economy is jobs and paychecks, what people buy and what they sell. And the real economy — even viewed from a worldwide perspective — is as precarious as ever, perhaps more so.

Today’s rally was triggered by news that one of China’s official measures of its growth – its Purchasing Managers Index – rose. The index had been in decline for three straight months.

Why should an obscure measurement on the other side of the world cause stock markets in New York, London, and Frankfurt to rally? Because China is so large and its needs seemingly limitless that its growth has been about the only reliable source of global demand.

Many big American companies have been showing profits because they’re doing ever more business in China while cutting payrolls at home. American consumers aren’t buying much of anything because they’ve lost their jobs or are worried about losing them, and are still trying to get out from under a huge debt load (the latest figures show more consumer debt delinquent now than last year and a surge in personal bankruptcies). The U.S. housing market is growing worse, auto and retail sales are dropping, and the ranks of the jobless continue to swell.

Europe is in almost as much a mess. The problem there isn’t just or even mainly that Greece and other nations on the “periphery” have too much public debt. A bigger problem is European consumers aren’t buying nearly enough to generate more jobs. Unemployment remains high, and the trend is bad. Manufacturing growth there has slowed to its weakest pace in six months. Yet bizarrely, Europe’s large economies – Britain, Germany, and France – are paring back their public budgets. It’s exactly the wrong time, and a recipe for disaster.

Germany’s so-called “job miracle” (as Chancellor Angela Merkel calls it) is more mirage than miracle. Most of the gains in employment there have come from part-time jobs, often at low pay. Average annual net income per German employee continues to drop. This explains why domestic demand there is so sluggish and why Germany is desperately dependent on its exports of machinery and manufacturing components to Asia, especially China.

Meanwhile, Japan, now the world’s third-largest economy, is a basket case. Japanese consumers aren’t buying much of anything, and why would they? The country is still in the grip of a deflationary cycle that shows no end. Japanese consumers reason if they can buy it cheaper next week there’s no reason to buy now. Basically the only thing keeping Japan’s economy going are its exports of cars and electronic components to China.

Australia is booming, but look closely and you see the same buyer. Australia is making a boatload of money selling its minerals and raw materials to China (Australia is fast becoming one big Chinese mine shaft). The Brazilian economy is soaring. Why? Exports of wheat and cattle to China. Middle East oil producers are getting richer. Why? China’s insatiable thirst for oil.

Elsewhere around the globe the picture is as uncertain. Much of Pakistan is under water. Much of the rest of the Middle East is under tyrannical or corrupt regimes. Russia has suffered such a dry spell it’s hoarding wheat. Despite its wealthy few, India’s masses are still terribly poor.

The stock market could plunge tomorrow or the next day because the world’s economic fundamentals are so precarious.

The global economy cannot be sustained by one big, voracious nation – especially one that’s suffering bouts of civil unrest, actively repressing dissent, suffocating under a blanket of pollution and coping with other environmental hazards, and whose biggest companies are run by the state.

More articles from Robert Reich….

By Charles Hugh Smith, OFTWOMINDS
China’s “nuclear option”–selling its vast stash of U.S. Treasuries to wreak havoc on the U.S. economy and interest rates–has been downgraded by the flood of U.S. investors who have exited stocks in favor of Treasury bonds.

Go to my main site at www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
for the full posts and archives.

More articles from Charles Hugh Smith….

The Daily Reckoning

Labor Greens Unite!

Change climate with carbon price

Parasitic kids

Well that’s a good sign. Not twelve hours after we went to press with our latest newsletter – highlighting how September is historically the market’s worst month – and describing a Long Depression, stocks in New York rally by almost three percent. How is that good sign?

The Bear had everyone feeling pretty bearish about him. You can measure this in the number of put option buyers or in surveys. But this morning, we went to Google Trends to see how many people were searching for what you might describe as bearish topics like, say, economic collapse.

Click here to enlarge

You can see that thanks to the publication of two fairly high profile stories that went live late in August by Forbes and CNN, the conversation on collapse got a whole lot louder in the echo chamber that is the internet.

This more or less proves that if you wait on the mainstream press to validate your own thinking, you’ll always be late. It’s only safe for the papers to report on something once everyone’s thinking about it, and by then it’s too late to trade it.

But just to be safe, we asked our own in-house trading guru Murray Dawes what he thought. He wrote back that, “There is the possibility that the market has been ‘caught short’. By that I mean that traders could be overly bearish and short the market as a whole. The good GDP data could be squeezing them out of those positions and causing a short, sharp rally.”

“If this is the case,” he continued, “then you will see the market fall over again soon. If we see the ASX 200 close under the Point of Control of 4,400 in the next week or so then I would be confident that this current buying was a short squeeze and I would expect to see much lower prices in the near future. But until that occurs, this surprise rally should be respected.”

Murray’s article, by the way, was called, “Beware the false break out.” That term, “the false break out,” along with “the point of control” is key to his method of trading the markets. You can find out more by reading about Slipstream Trader.

Now we have to do something that’s required from time to time if you’re not familiar with our business model. We don’t like talking about our business model because you’d probably rather be reading about the stock market or the economy. So we’ll be quick about it!

The Daily Reckoning is free. So is the other e-letter which we publish, Money Morning. In them, you read independent and provocative ideas about the share market and the world that we hope are useful and maybe even profitable. A whole back office team supports getting these e-mails out to about 100,000 people combined each day.

The Daily Reckoning and Money Morning also contain the views of our independent analysts, Kris Sayce, Alex Cowie, Murray Dawes, and Greg Canavan. All of these analysts have chosen to work with us because, like you I suspect, they value a perspective that’s not compromised by any other agendas. They’re free to research and write about whatever they think will make you money, or keep you from losing it.

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That is, Alex writes about resource stocks exclusively and does he research in his own way. It starts with a lot of spreadsheets and lately has included a lot mine site visits and phone conversations with geologists. Alex is well-versed in the resource sector and its nuances.

Kris is a small-cap specialist. There are a lot of small-cap stocks in Australia. There are also a lot of resource stocks in Australia. Many of the small-cap stocks are also resource stocks. Thus, Kris will, from time to time, recommend a small-cap stock that is also a resource stock.

We’ve found that some readers prefer Kris. Some prefer Alex. And some value what both are doing and realise that both are doing their own thing in their own way. If that troubles you…well…it shouldn’t. And if it realllly troubles you, we invite you to take up our offer and request a refund.

Finally, we see that the Greens and Labor have made a deal and that U.S. police have shot an armed man at the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in Maryland after he took people inside the building hostage. And we see that in some strange way, the events are not unrelated. Not causally, mind you, but philosophically.

Part of the big agreement yesterday announced by Labor and Green honchos was the set-up of a multi-party parliamentary committee to put a price on carbon. You can read about it here. But when you read about it, it’s clear that it’s a pretty undemocratic way of pretending to have a debate without having a debate. Typical, but pretty cynical. And as ever with the political class, it defers to the exalted power of “experts.”

Green’s Senator Christine Milne says that this very European process will, “Set up a parliamentary committee representing all the interests in the parliament committed to a certain idea and then enabling the appointment of experts to that committee. So the experts are not just to give evidence to the committee. The experts are part of the deliberations of that committee and that way you create the space in a parliament for people to talk through their own perspectives, nuance those perspectives and try to come up with a parliamentary consensus which has the support of everyone around the idea. “

Emphasis added is our own. But really, how much nuance can you have when everyone on the committee can only be on the committee if they are already committed to a certain idea? How hard is it to build consensus when you exclude everyone who might disagree from participating?

Milne continued: “You will note in the agreement the proviso for membership of the committee is that the people going onto it are committed to a carbon price. They may not all agree with the mechanism of achieving a carbon price but they all want to a carbon price and the idea is to invite everyone to it and the Coalition clearly if they were in opposition would be invited to join it on that proviso. So, it really is about grown up politics in Australia. It’s about ending the all or nothing, it’s about ending the accusations of back flips and sell outs and back downs and so on.”

In order to end the all or nothing false choice, it was necessary to create an all or nothing committee. Everyone who’s on it has to be all for a carbon price. No one who’s against a carbon price can be on it. That really is an effective way to end the argument. By not having it all and excluding other points of view.

Of course the justification for this is that the people against a carbon price are really whack jobs who don’t believe in global warming OR climate change. What’s more, they aren’t even experts. They’re just people, people who believe that common sense is more valuable than credentials. They’re just people. Very little people.

Milne says, “It’s a process we adopted in Tasmania to a very small degree when we achieved gay law reform by bringing in experts from the university, the justice department and so on to work with the parliamentarians. This I think can resolve this issue of a carbon price. It’s very important to us. We want one as soon as possible and we think this mechanism is the best way of delivering it.”

In other words, the best mechanism of delivering an outcome that the public hasn’t clearly endorsed is to use a non-democratic process that only includes people committed to the desired outcome. And that’s democratic how?

Honestly, we have to give credit where credit was due on this one. Julia Gillard had it right. Get a phone book from each city of 10,000 people or more in Australia. Pick ten people at random from each phone book. Put them on a Climate Change Committee. Put them in a three-star hotel outside the airport in Adelaide and give them six days to debate the issue and, if they decide, come up with a law.

What could be more democratic than that? If a random jury of your peers is good enough to deliver equal justice under law in the criminal justice system – where judges and juries must deal with complex evidence and experts – why is it not good enough to for public policy too?

In fact, the more we think about it, legislative conscription may be the best way to run the country after all. Each term, a new randomly selected group of conscripts is drafted to serve in Canberra. They are paid the minimum wage. You can be sure Parliament wouldn’t sit for long and that the government would generally stay out of most people’s lives and wallets, affording Australians the time and money to be good parents and neighbours.

Let’s have a vote! All in favour? All opposed?

But wait, what does this have to do with eco-terrorist James Lee’s bizarre actions and manifesto earlier today? Well, in point one of Lee’s manifesto, he seems to endorse Senator Milne’s committee of experts idea. We’ve reproduced the whole point here so we’re not selectively quoting, although the emphasis added is ours and not Lee’s:

The Discovery Channel and its affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn’s “My Ishmael” pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilisation building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!

If poor Mr. Lee had just decided to run for office in Australia, he could be earning a public wage now instead of cooling in a morgue somewhere. He certainly has the right instincts to be in politics. He believes in coercion. He believes in State control of the media. He thinks “top down” solutions imposed from above should trump individual choices. He believes in expert scientists of a certain point of view. He’s against human civilisation and believes that children are filthy pollution.

Point four of his manifesto gets to the heart of his pro-planet, anti-human life message. He writes that, “Civilisation must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the population of the planet is reversed and the human population goes down! This is your obligation. If you think it isn’t, then get the hell off the planet! Breathe Oil! It is the moral obligation of everyone living otherwise what good are they??”

Gee. That’s pretty much straight out of the tyrant’s modern political play book, isn’t it? Civilisation is filth? Check! Religion and culture and tradition are disgusting? Check! Human population should go down because it’s a pestilence? Check! Your obliged to agree? Check! If you disagree, go to hell? Check! If you disagree, you’re immoral? Check!

You get the feeling that some people just don’t like humanity. You get the feeling that some people view human life as a problem to be solved. That solution is vague, but usually involves somebody else dying without being killed. You get the feeling that deep down, some people view human beings as parasites on the planet. You get the feeling some people don’t feel very good about themselves but would like to take it out on the rest of us.

We also get the feeling that some people don’t view human life as the Ultimate Resource, as economist Julian Simon put it. Our view is that these people are themselves very selfish. They can’t imagine the world they live in coping with all the problems they perceive. So they want to destroy the world as it is and remake it into the world they want to live in, even if that world doesn’t include you and me.

It’s all very self-centred, moralistic, and unimaginative. And of course, Lee was plain crazy. He wrote, as this paragraph proves:

The world needs TV shows that DEVELOP solutions to the problems that humans are causing, not stupefy the people into destroying the world. Not encouraging them to breed more environmentally harmful humans. Saving the environment and the remaining species diversity of the planet is now your mindset. Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels.

Of course the Squirrels!

TV will save us!

Save the froggies.

It would all be absurd and sad if there weren’t real live crazy people trying to run the government who didn’t’ share more or less the same anti-human, anti-civilisation worldview.

Dan Denning
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

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The Daily Reckoning

Since I am known as something of a gold bug, a lot of people write to me about gold, but since I am a paranoid lunatic, I don’t read their letters, mostly because I now call myself Marvelous Macho Grande (MMG), figuring that an established alias could potentially come in handy when the prices of gold, silver and oil shoot higher and higher as inflation in consumer prices starts going parabolic as a result of the despicable Federal Reserve creating so, so, so much money, especially so that the despicable federal government can borrow and spend that selfsame so, so, so much money.

So, you can see how a dramatic, romantic new name like Marvelous Macho Grande (MMG) would perfectly suit a guy like me, which is a guy with a theoretical massive coming increase in wealth from investing according to The Mogambo Perfect Portfolio (TMPP), which uses the Austrian school of economics (see Mises.org) and the last few thousands of years of history as Absolutely Compelling Reasons (ACR) to invest in gold, silver and oil when the government is acting so insanely bizarre, as does ours now, blithely deficit-spending a monstrous 11% of GDP, now with a national debt nearing a heart-stopping 100% of GDP, and allowing the Federal Reserve to continue to create So Freaking Much (SFM) money that, like creating too much money always does, it creates booms and bubbles that predictably, inevitably, unstoppably, disastrously go bust, leaving you, sadly, worse off than before.

So, you can see how I am not in the mood to answer emails from people who, deep down in their hearts, are pleading, “Oh, please help me, Masterful Mogambo Guru, or Marvelous Macho Grande (MMG), or whatever in the hell your name is this week: Sadly, I have not been following your terrific advice to buy gold, silver and oil as the One True Way (OTW) to end up with a lot of money without working for it, and now I need one of your famous Secret Investment Plans (SIP) to make up for lost time, else I am reduced to being the widow of a rich Nigerian banker who needs to sneak $100 million out of Nigeria and into your country. In that case, I will give you $50 million after you give me your bank account number and $5,000 in cash to pay various fees, expenses and bribes.”

Alas, I don’t have $5,000 to invest in this terrific opportunity to make a quick $50 million, as likewise there are no Secret Investment Plans (SIP), although I have spent a lifetime looking for one.

Fortunately, constantly buying gold, silver and oil is always the smart thing to do when your stupid, desperate, half-witted, corrupt, clutching-at-straws government is acting like all the other stupid, desperate, half-witted, corrupt, clutching-at-straws governments that created too much money and destroyed themselves over the last 4,500 years.

And if you don’t believe me, then maybe you will listen to the famous Richard Russell of the Dow Theory Letters, who writes, “Investors sometimes get caught up in the day to day and week to week movements in gold and silver. Don’t waste your time or energy on that, just accumulate. Standing in front of us is the greatest transfer of wealth in history. When the dust settles, those holding the gold will make the rules.”

And “just accumulate” sounds so easy because it is so easy, which is why I say, as I always say until you are tired of hearing me say it, “Whee! This investing stuff is easy!”

The Mogambo Guru
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

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The Daily Reckoning

Well, August washed up. It was the worst month for US stocks in almost a decade. And yesterday didn’t help. The Dow couldn’t manage a rally. It rose just 4 points.

The British newspaper, The Telegraph, has the story:

Those fears took centre stage again during the final day of trading.

In New York, markets enjoyed some brief respite from the blizzard of weak data as reports on the US housing market and consumer confidence proved better than feared. The Conference Board’s index of consumer confidence climbed to 53.5 last month from 51 in July, while the latest reading from the respected S&P/Case-Shiller index showed that home prices were up 4.2pc in June compared with a year ago.

The day’s rally proved short-lived, however, after the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting returned investors to the summer’s familiar themes. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has spent the past few weeks facing increasing pressure from markets to publicly declare he will do more to fight the prospect of a second recession if the recovery stumbles further. According to the minutes, some members of the Fed’s Open Market Committee saw “increased downside risks to the outlook for both growth and inflation”.

That admission left the Dow up just 4.99 points at 10,014.72 for the day, while the S&P ended the day up 0.41 at 1,049.33.

As predicted on this page, both Martin Wolf and Paul Krugman are taking the low road. Not that we wouldn’t take it too, were we in their position. They urged the Obama team to undertake massive programs of “stimulus.” Now that the stimulus hasn’t worked, they say it wasn’t massive enough.

And thank God the administration at least took some of our advice, they add. Otherwise, things would be a lot worse!

In today’s Financial Times, Wolf refers to a recent paper by Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi. The two use a “standard macro-economic model” to determine that without the feds’ intervention the decline in GDP would have been three times worse and unemployment would have risen to over 16%. And, can you believe it, we would have had a federal deficit of $2.6 trillion.

Oh man, oh man…we’re so grateful to Wolf, Krugman, Summers, Obama, Bernanke and all the other savants who protected us from such a dreadful fate.

But wait a minute, this “standard macro-economic model” sounds great and all…but we can’t help but wonder. It can predict precise outcomes based on federal policy inputs, right? That is, if the feds were to do such and such…it tells us what will happen, right? And Wolf says it’s “standard,” so we imagine that you can get it at any Wal-Mart or filling station. So, the Obama team must have had it two years ago, right? We can’t help wonder if this was the same model they used when they forecast that unemployment wouldn’t go over 8% – if Congress agreed to the stimulus bill the administration proposed. Must have been a different one… Because Congress did pass the stimulus bill and unemployment rose over 9% anyway.

And it’s still over 9% – almost 2 years after the stimulus effort got underway.

So, maybe this “standard macro-economic model” is full of… But let’s imagine that it isn’t. Let’s allow our imaginations to take flight…to soar…to loose themselves from the gravity of worldly cares or practical reality. Let’s imagine that these economists have a clue!

Imagine that the feds had done nothing – which was more or less standard policy for the nation from its founding in 1776 up until the middle of Herbert Hoover’s term in 1930…and for all the years that preceded them…all the way back to the founding of Rome. Now, let’s imagine that Blinder and Zandi are right. Without fed intervention, GDP would have sunk 12% – three times more than the actual loss…and half the loss of the Great Depression. Well, that would have been a disaster, right?

Well. Maybe not. It might have been a blessing. The point of a correction is to correct. The Blinder/Zandi study tells us that the economy had mistakes equal to 12% of GDP. Okay…well, maybe the correction overshoots. Who knows? But think of the crazy years of the Bubble Epoque…when lenders were giving unemployed people a mortgage for 110% of the inflated value of a house. Think about the Private Equity deals based on growth assumptions that were hallucinatory. Think about the hundreds of trillions’ worth of derivatives based on complex formulae that were phony and silly? Think of all the decisions made on the assumption that consumer credit would continue to expand as it had from 1949 to 2007. Was one of every 8 of them too optimistic? Too ambitious? Too unrealistic? We’d be surprised if there weren’t more errors…far more than 12% of GDP.

Now ask yourself…what good was done by failing to correct those mistakes? By failing to wash out the excess debt? Failing to allow insolvent banks to go broke? Failing to permit worn-out, uncompetitive businesses to die in peace?

We don’t know how many mistakes there were. We don’t know how far GDP SHOULD go down. And we don’t know what would have happened if willing buyers and sellers had been allowed to sort themselves out in the age- old ways – by panic, default, bankruptcy, restructuring, and reconstruction.

We don’t know. We’ll never know. But there is no reason to think we’d be any worse off if we’d found out a year ago. A 12% drop in GDP might have been just what we needed. We could be on the road to prosperity now, rather than looking at another 5 to 15 years of stagnation, decline, and desperation.

And more thoughts…

But we have good news. Yes, dear reader, genuine, no-doubt-about-it good news.

Two bits of good news, actually.

First, the café across the street from our office serves a proper café au lait. A real one.

In Paris these days, if you ask for a “café au lait” they mark you as a foreigner. Parisians ask for a “café crème.” Trouble is, the café crème doesn’t have much milk in it. It tends to be a bit watery and bitter.

A proper café au lait, on the other hand, is served with a little pitcher of hot milk. Not many cafes in Paris still serve it that way – unless you ask them specifically. Fortunately, the one across the street still does it the right way.

Second, and perhaps more important, we discovered yesterday that tea- totallers die sooner than heavy drinkers. This comes as a great relief to your editor. He sat down last night with a bottle of Lussac St. Emilion to celebrate.

Here’s the story from John Cloud (originally appearing in Time Magazine):

Why Do Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers?

One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about alcohol consumption has been the consistent finding that those who don’t drink actually tend to die sooner than those who do. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking.

But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that – for reasons that aren’t entirely clear – abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one’s risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers’ mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.

Moderate drinking, which is defined as one to three drinks per day, is associated with the lowest mortality rates in alcohol studies. Moderate alcohol use (especially when the beverage of choice is red wine) is thought to improve heart health, circulation and sociability, which can be important because people who are isolated don’t have as many family members and friends who can notice and help treat health problems.

But why would abstaining from alcohol lead to a shorter life? It’s true that those who abstain from alcohol tend to be from lower socioeconomic classes, since drinking can be expensive. And people of lower socioeconomic status have more life stressors – job and child-care worries that might not only keep them from the bottle but also cause stress-related illnesses over long periods. (They also don’t get the stress-reducing benefits of a drink or two after work.)

But even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables – socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on – the researchers (a six- member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found that over a 20-year period, mortality rates were highest for those who had never been drinkers, second-highest for heavy drinkers and lowest for moderate drinkers.

The sample of those who were studied included individuals between ages 55 and 65 who had had any kind of outpatient care in the previous three years. The 1,824 participants were followed for 20 years. One drawback of the sample: a disproportionate number, 63%, were men. Just over 69% of the never-drinkers died during the 20 years, 60% of the heavy drinkers died and only 41% of moderate drinkers died.

These are remarkable statistics. Even though heavy drinking is associated with higher risk for cirrhosis and several types of cancer (particularly cancers in the mouth and esophagus), heavy drinkers are less likely to die than people who have never drunk. One important reason is that alcohol lubricates so many social interactions, and social interactions are vital for maintaining mental and physical health. As I pointed out last year, nondrinkers show greater signs of depression than those who allow themselves to join the party.

The authors of the new paper are careful to note that even if drinking is associated with longer life, it can be dangerous: it can impair your memory severely and it can lead to nonlethal falls and other mishaps (like, say, cheating on your spouse in a drunken haze) that can screw up your life. There’s also the dependency issue: if you become addicted to alcohol, you may spend a long time trying to get off the bottle.

That said, the new study provides the strongest evidence yet that moderate drinking is not only fun but good for you. So make mine a double.

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

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Zero Hedge

Seeing Past The Hologram, by Mike Krieger of KAM LP

There is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress.

- All quotes by Mark Twain

We Need Real Confidence to Return, Not Confidence in a Ponzi Scheme

Last week I pointed out that what I got from Banana Ben’s speech in Jackson Hole was that he realized any major public statement of interference in markets was too risky at this point following his announcement at the last meeting to keep the balance sheet steady by reinvesting MBS proceeds into treasury securities.  The operative word in this sentence being “public.”  Anyone that believes this means the Fed and government will just take a back seat and do nothing behind the scenes is deluding themselves.  Washington D.C. and the Fed still fail to comprehend how to increase standards of living in the real world, rather they remain completely addicted to the short-term buzz of printed money heroin as it flows through the house of cards they have created.  They also think that the only thing that really matters in an economy is “confidence.”  As Madoff can attest to, that is indeed the case when you are running a ponzi scheme and since the U.S. government is basically that I can understand where they are coming from.

 I agree that confidence is a huge part of any healthy economy; however, I do not define confidence in the way these arrogant bureaucrats do.  They think confidence comes from rising asset prices, including stocks and homes.  They think this is enough to spark growth in the real economy.  This is nonsense.  The confidence that is needed more than anything else today is two-fold.  First, confidence that there is the rule of law and there will be the rule of law in the future.  The second is that the money issued by the government will maintain its purchasing power over time.  As I have made clear on various occasions, I do not have confidence in either of these things based on how the government has responded to the crisis.  I do not like buying physical gold.  I do not like feeling the need to write these emails every week to warn people.  I wish I could employ capital into businesses and the real economy.  I hope that one day I will be able to do so, but at the moment I do not trust my government and I certainly don’t trust the fascist Federal Reserve.  So I will hoard what I have as the government prints and let the storm pass me by.  I am not the only one.  People are collectively starting to understand this.  So what happens when the big, smart money takes itself out of the investment and capital allocation game because they don’t trust anything?  What happens when the government’s response to this is to print money to keep up the spending habits of people with no jobs or people with government jobs that produce no goods for the economy?  You get the worst case scenario and that is exactly what is staring us straight in the face.

Is a Trade War with China Coming?

The quicker the dollar is devalued the better.  This is not to say that I think dollar devaluation is a good thing.  It is to say we are past the point of avoiding it.  We could have taken the pain in 2008, but instead it was extend and pretend all over again.  Now the debt and promises are too big.  The behind the scenes manipulations are too entrenched.  There is no avoiding a devaluation relative to things people need (food and energy) and capital goods that are imported.  The best thing would be to get it over with and then change policies and restore the rule of law.  The problem with this is that the main currencies the dollar needs its major adjustment against are those in emerging Asia and China.  What has prevented the realignment from happening in a quick and healthy way is China’s refusal to allow the yuan to appreciate.  This creates a situation where Central Banks throughout emerging Asia take steps to prevent their “free-floating” currencies from adjusting either.  If China does not change its policy I fear that what we are looking at a trade war with China after the November elections.  I think Congress and the Administration will start to introduce aggressive policies to discourage Chinese goods and encourage goods made at home.  Think it can’t happen?  We are a lot closer than you think.  This all goes back to my “think local” theme.  While I am inherently a fan of free trade we do not have free trade in any sense whatsoever.  We have policies that are geared to advantage the multi-national corporations at the expense of the U.S. citizen.  The U.S. consumer has merely been spending borrowed money.  This gave an illusion that the U.S. was benefiting from the global multinational corporate rigged market whose model mainly thrives on companies moving abroad to exploit the labor arbitrage caused by a combination of what was a labor surplus (no longer it seems) and a rigged currency.  As more people realize this, more pressure will be placed on politicians and ultimately this will overpower the corporate lobbyists and a trade war of sorts will begin.  Then the chaos could really ensue as we engage in a trade war with our biggest creditor!

Seeing Past the Hologram

The past couple of weeks have been extraordinarily interesting and some of the moves appear to be extremely important.  Although a lot of people like to point to the treasury market and then extrapolate out as to what this means to equities and the ability of the government to increase spending, I think this is the most USELESS market in the world to watch.  If anything is a hologram and a PR tool it is the U.S. treasury market.  How can people with a straight face come out and extrapolate anything from a market where the Federal Reserve is buying the debt of its own government!  The Fed is merely the fiat drug dealer to a government addicted to spending and false promises.  The equity market is the second most useless market in my opinion.  There is no doubt in my mind that a huge part of the government’s “strategy” to build confidence is to keep this thing from doing what it should be doing.  Thus, I am not surprised at all that since I last wrote the S&P500 was +1.6%, -1.5%, flat, and then +3.0%.  So what you have seen is high volatility with no real direction.  How can anyone have confidence this that thing is for real?

So what markets do I watch?  I get the most from the FX markets and the commodity markets.  While these markets are no doubt manipulated heavily as well, I think this is where the players that really understand the macro are playing.  The first currency I check in the morning is the dollar/yen.  The reason for this is that the yen is back to the highs of 1995 and if it does not stop appreciating around this level I think the Bank of Japan is going to absolutely panic.  While the yen has not broken higher yet as market participants are afraid of such intervention, unless the BOJ does something extreme soon the market may test their resolve and push this thing further.  I guess the main point I am trying to make is that with the Chinese yuan NOT strengthening and the yen threatening to break out we could be in for some major fireworks.  Meanwhile Japanese 10 year government bond yields have really started to spike lately (chart GJG10 Index on Bloomberg).  Something big is happening in the land of the rising sun.  In the back of my head I think that any panic move from the BOJ could be the spark that breaks government bond bubbles globally and ushers in a period of massive global commodity driven inflation as every country tries to devalue their way to prosperity.  Essentially, a fiat money version of the 1930’s beggar thy neighbor policies.  When this begins the rush into gold and silver that we have seen thus far will look like a trickle.  I don’t think people will be able to find supply anywhere near the quoted price on comex (or as some like to call it “crimex”).

This brings me to silver which potentially experienced a game changer last week.  I can’t remember the last time silver bounced back almost immediately after every attempted raid.  I am starting to wonder how much physical silver is available.  What we do know is that Central Banks do not store silver to manipulate markets.  Even if it doesn’t break out right now, there is no asset in the world that has more upside than silver.  Don’t buy SLV either.  Buy physical silver not something with JPM as a custodian. 

I also continue to watch food prices very closely.  Wheat, which has come off of its high now seems to have found a base at a price that is 50% higher than the end of June.  Corn prices are threatening to break above resistance at levels 30% where they were at the end of June.  Rice looks like it could have a long way to go on the upside as it is only 20% off of its June low.  If I were a foreign government I would be using this opportunity to buy every single grain of rice I could in order to feed my people when things get dicey in the months ahead.  After strong performance in recent months lean hogs and live cattle also look set to make another push to the upside.  How people in the investment world still focus on the government inflation statistics is beyond me.  It was the rampant commodity inflation, trucker strikes and food riots that played a key role in ending the game in 2008.  This is because it forced the emerging markets to raise rates and cool growth as the Western world imploded under a pile of debt.  It seems the whole play is starting again and people remain focused on deflation.  Deflation in some things yes I agree (discretionary things like homes, technology, stock prices, etc), but not in the things you NEED to buy!!!

Onto oil which is also exhibiting some strange moves.  The Asian benchmark Tapis has not experienced the recent volatility and weakness that WTI has and is currently trading at $80/b.  The Asian price is the one I really pay attention to since that is where the demand growth resides.  The spread between the two now is back above $6/b, which is toward the high end of the range for the past two years.  This tells me that one price is wrong and the spread should narrow.  Given what I think about currency debasement and lack of appropriate investment in the space I think WTI should rally.  We shall see…

A Primer on the Federal Reserve

For those that read my commentary on the Federal Reserve as an immoral an fascist institution and think to themselves “what is this guy talking about,” I have attached a video from G Edward Griffith (the author of The Creature from Jekyll Island).  It’s a great description of how the Fed was formed and who it answers to when push comes to shove.  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6507136891691870450#

Also in case you weren’t aware of the power grab that the “Financial Reform” legislation allowed the Fed, read this Bloomberg article. 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2010-09-02/bernanke-meets-buffett-in-new-role-conceived-to-protect-markets.html

All the best,
Mike

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We continue with our series of artist renderings of various infamous desktops (previously Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and Lloyd Blankfein). Today, we focus on that of administration straight shooter Rahm Emanuel.

h/t Mike

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You will pardon us for posting two excerpts from David Rosenberg today, but this one is a must read, and explains more clearly than anything written on the matter why America is currently, and without doubt, in a depression, due primarily to ongoing secular changes in consumer and investor behaviour, something not experienced during mere recessions. As such any intraday or short-term bounces in the stock market that merely confirm that there was a liquidity injection by one player or another, or a successful short squeeze engineered by the wily folks at the custodian firms or due to simple headfakes, are completely irrelevant (especially with record implied correlations), as the long-term trend has only one way to go in the long-run. Down. Of course, those who believe they can time the moment when the last lingering support pillar collapses and everything tumbles down, are more than welcome to keep trying their top-ticking. We are confident that when the mass exodus begins, the HFT liquidity “support” of the market will be alive and well, and provide everyone with a perfectly acceptable exit price level…

WHAT IS A DEPRESSION ANYWAY?

A depression, put simply, is a very long period of economic malaise. A series of rolling recessions and modest recoveries over a multi-year period of general economic stagnation as the excesses from the prior asset and credit bubble are completely wrung out of the system. In baseball parlance, we are in the third inning of this current debt deleveraging ball game.                                     

You know you’re in a depression when interest rates go to zero and there is no revival in credit-sensitive spending. 

The economy is in a depression when the banks are sitting on $1.3 trillion of cash and yet there is no lending going on to the private sector. It’s otherwise known as a liquidity trap.    

Depressions usually are caused by a bursting of an asset bubble and a contraction in credit, whereas plain-vanilla recessions are typically caused by inflation and excessive manufacturing inventories. You tell me which fits the bill today.

When almost half of the ranks of the unemployed have been looking for a job fruitlessly for at least six months, you know you are in something much deeper than a garden-variety recession. True, we can’t see the soup lines; the soup lines are in the mail — 99 weeks of unemployment cheques for over 10 million jobless Americans. Don’t be lulled into the view that we are into anything remotely close to a normal economic cycle.

Basically, in a depression, secular changes take place. Attitudes towards debt, discretionary spending and homeownership are altered for many years, or at least until the scars from the traumatic experience with defaults and delinquencies fade away. That is why, as per last week’s data releases, we saw existing home sales slide to 15-year lows and new home sales to record lows despite the fact that mortgage rates have tumbled to their lowest levels in modern history. There is no economic model that would tell you that declining  mortgage rates should lead to lower home sales.

In a depression, radical changes occur in terms of social norms and spending behaviour. In recessions, people don’t cancel their life insurance policies – as one example. But in a depression, tragically, that is what happens – almost 35 million Americans now have no such coverage, up from 24 million five years ago. This reflects the focus by households to pay down their debts at all costs and how companies have bolstered profits – by eliminating benefits.

More fundamentally, in a recession, the economy is revived by government stimulus. In depressions, the economy is sustained by government stimulus. There is a very big difference between those two states.    

After all, we are now in a situation where every 1-in-6 Americans is now receiving some form of government assistance — more than 50 million Americans, from food stamps, to Medicaid, to extended jobless benefits, are on one or more taxpayer-supported programs. That transcends the definition of a recession.

In a recession, everything would be back to a new high 33 months after the initial decline. This time around, everything from organic personal income to employment to real GDP to home prices to corporate earnings to outstanding bank credit are still all below, to varying degrees, the levels prevailing in December 2007.

Let’s be clear: After all the monetary, fiscal and bailout stimulus, the economy should be roaring ahead, as would be the case if the economy were coming out of a normal garden-variety recession. The fact that there has been no sustained response to all these efforts by the government to turn things around is a testament to the view that this is not actually a traditional recession at all, but something closely resembling a depression. That, my friends, is exactly what the bond market is signaling, with Treasury yields rapidly approaching Japanese levels.  

For all the chatter about whether the recession that started in December 2007 ended sometime last year, here is what you should know about the historical record. The 1930s depression was not marked by declining quarterly GDP data every single quarter. In fact, the technical recessionary aspect to the initial period following the asset and credit shock goes from the third quarter of 1929 to the first quarter of 1933.

What is important to know is this; in that initial four-year economic downturn, from 1929 to 1933, there were no fewer than six — six! – quarterly bounces in GDP data. The average gain in these up-quarters was 8% at an annual rate! But because they proved not to be sustainable, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) refused to declare that the recession officially ended, even though the stock market rallied 50% in the opening months of 1930 on the belief that the downturn was about to end. False premise. And guess what? We may well be reliving history here. If you’re keeping score, we have recorded four quarterly advances in real GDP, and the average is only 3%.

I can understand how emotional the debate can get over whether or not we have actually just stumbled along some post-recession recovery path or whether or not this is actually a depression in the sense of a downward trend in economic activity merely punctuated with noise that is influenced by recurring rounds of government intervention. The reality is that the Fed cut the funds rate to zero, as was the case in Japan, to little avail. Then the Fed tripled the size of its balance sheet – again with little sustained impetus to a broken financial system. Government deficits of nearly 10% relative to GDP, or double what FDR ever ran during the 1930s, have obviously fallen flat in terms of providing and lasting impact to the economy.  

This is going to sound like a broken record but it took a decade of parabolic credit growth to get the U.S. economy into this deleveraging mess and there is clearly no painless “quick fix” towards bringing household debt into historical realignment with the level of assets and income to support the prevailing level of liabilities. We are talking about $6 trillion of excess debt that has to be extinguished either by paying it down or by walking away from it (or having it socialized). Look, we can  understand the need to be optimistic, but it is essential that we recognize the type of market and economic backdrop we are in.

The markets are telling us something valuable when (after a period of unprecedented government bailouts, incursions and stimulus programs) we had a 2-year note auction that saw the yield dragged to new record low of 0.46%. Instead of lamenting over how attractively priced equities must be in this environment, market strategists and commentators would bring a lot more to the table if they tried to decipher what the macro message is from this price action in the Treasury market. Conducting stock market valuation analysis based on unrealistic consensus earnings assumptions does nobody any good, especially when these estimates are in the process of being  cut.

If the Treasury market is correct in its implicit assumption of a renewed contraction in the economy, then we could well be talking about corporate earnings being closer to $60 or $65 in the coming year as opposed to the current consensus view of almost $90. In other words, we may wake up to find out a year from now that whoever was buying the market today under an illusion of a forward multiple of 12x was actually buying the market with a 17x multiple.

How’s that for a reality check?

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