DO BOND MARKETS FUND OUR SPENDING?
by ilene - August 27th, 2010 1:41 pm
DO BOND MARKETS FUND OUR SPENDING?
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
This idea that the United States is the next Greece persists. We saw it several times this week from various analysts and the regular pundits who continue to trot out this argument despite having been terribly wrong about their hyperinflation and/or default thesis over the last few years. I think it’s very important that investors understand that the United States cannot default on its obligations in the same way that Greece, a US state or a household can. Why is it important to understand this? Because markets are psychologically driven. Regular readers know I am not the most optimistic prognosticator. Anyone who has read this site over the last few years knows that I have and continue to believe we are mired in a balance sheet recession. My outlook is not rosey, but it is not dire either. I do not believe doom is on the horizon and I most certainly do not believe the United States, as the sovereign supplier of a non-convertible floating exchange rate currency, will default on its obligations.
At the center of this argument is the actual workings of our monetary system. So, how does the United States actually fund itself? Unlike a household, the United States does not require revenue or debt to fund itself. The United States government simply credits bank accounts. They walk into a room and input numbers into computers – literally. This might sound counter-intuitive to the rest of us who fund our spending through debt issuance or revenue streams, but the same is not true for the Federal Government. This was best explained last week in an interview on BNN by Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist with RAB Capital:
“Governments spend by crediting bank accounts. The causation is that you spend money first. What happens afterwards is bonds are issued as a reserve drain. They don’t actually fund anything. This is one of the great myths that is perpetuated by most of the economics profession. So the idea that we have “unfunded liabilities” is ludicrous. If we declare a war, for example, in Iraq or Afghanistan, we don’t go to our bond holders. We don’t go to China to give them a line-item veto for what we can and can’t spend. We just spend the money. The implicit assumption here is that somehow we have some external constraint. The
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DiggThe Ecstasy of Empire
by ilene - August 17th, 2010 4:42 pm
The Ecstasy of Empire
Courtesy of PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS writing at CounterPunch
The United States is running out of time to get its budget and trade deficits under control. Despite the urgency of the situation, 2010 has been wasted in hype about a non-existent recovery. As recently as August 2 Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner penned a New York Times column, “Welcome to the Recovery.”
As John Williams (shadowstats.com) has made clear on many occasions, an appearance of recovery was created by over-counting employment and undercounting inflation. Warnings by Williams, Gerald Celente, and myself have gone unheeded, but our warnings recently had echoes from Boston University professor Laurence Kotlikoff and from David Stockman, who excoriated the Republican Party for becoming big-spending Democrats.
It is encouraging to see some realization that, this time, Washington cannot spend the economy out of recession. The deficits are already too large for the dollar to survive as reserve currency, and deficit spending cannot put Americans back to work in jobs that have been moved offshore.
However, the solutions offered by those who are beginning to recognize that there is a problem are discouraging. Kotlikoff thinks the solution is savage Social Security and Medicare cuts or equally savage tax increases or hyperinflation to destroy the vast debts.
Perhaps economists lack imagination, or perhaps they don’t want to be cut off from Wall Street and corporate subsidies, but Social Security and Medicare are insufficient at their present levels, especially considering the erosion of private pensions by the dot com, derivative and real estate bubbles. Cuts in Social Security and Medicare, for which people have paid 15 per cent of their earnings all their lives, would result in starvation and deaths from curable diseases.
Tax increases make even less sense. It is widely acknowledged that the majority of households cannot survive on one job. Both husband and wife work and often one of the partners has two jobs in order to make ends meet. Raising taxes makes it harder to make ends meet--thus more foreclosures, more food stamps, more homelessness. What kind of economist or humane person thinks this is a solution?
Ah, but we will tax the rich. The rich have enough money. They will simply stop earning.
Let’s get real. Here is what the government is likely to do. Once Washington realizes that the dollar is…
Kotlikoff: The IMF Says That the US Is Bankrupt, and They’re Right
by ilene - August 11th, 2010 11:21 pm
Kotlikoff: The IMF Says That the US Is Bankrupt, and They’re Right
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
I have not read it yet, but Kotlikoff has a book out called "Jimmy Stewart Is Dead" which was reviewed in April by Craig Heimark at Naked Capitalism.
I have not followed Kotlikoff closely and will attempt to read some of his more serious material in the near future. I did listen to a long discussion on Bloomberg television this afternoon, and he made some real sense to me, although he did not penetrate the miasma of corporate sloganeering that represents the minds of the anchors. They seem to lean to the ‘cut everything that is not a subsidy to or a cashflow owned by the oligarchy’ school of economic reform. And he takes that sort of supply side hoaxing to task, and harshly.
I have to take a closer look at his analysis of Social Security, which is highlighted in this Bloomberg piece (quelle surprise). But his comments on the need for reform in the financial system was point on.
He disagrees with both the supply siders and the demand siders, favoring a systemic overhaul and reform, and so my interest in what he says is obvious.
Bloomberg
U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don’t Even Know
By Laurence Kotlikoff
Aug 10, 2010Let’s get real. The U.S. is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills.
What it can and must do is radically simplify its tax, health-care, retirement and financial systems, each of which is a complete mess. But this is the good news. It means they can each be redesigned to achieve their legitimate purposes at much lower cost and, in the process, revitalize the economy.
Last month, the International Monetary Fund released its annual review of U.S. economic policy. Its summary contained these bland words about U.S. fiscal policy: “Directors welcomed the authorities’ commitment to fiscal stabilization, but noted that a larger than budgeted adjustment would be required to stabilize debt-to-GDP.”
But delve deeper, and you will find that the IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt. Section 6 of the July 2010 Selected Issues Paper says: “The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates.” It adds
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Economists Cut Growth Estimates
by ilene - August 11th, 2010 3:40 pm
Economists Cut Growth Estimates
Courtesy of Mish
Now that it’s perfectly obvious to everyone on the planet that the recovery is not much more than burnt toast, Economists Cut U.S. Growth Forecasts
A lack of jobs will shackle consumer spending and restrain the U.S. recovery more than previously estimated, according to economists polled by Bloomberg News.
Gross domestic product will expand at an average 2.55 percent annual rate in the last six months of 2010, according to the median of 67 estimates in a survey taken July 31 to Aug. 9, down from the 2.8 percent pace projected last month. Household purchases will climb at a 2.25 percent rate, compared with a 2.6 percent gain previously forecast.
“Simply put, job growth in the private sector hasn’t improved as we would’ve expected,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina. “The consumer continues to contribute to growth but at a subpar pace.”
“Unemployment is high, income growth has been pretty slow,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, who lowered estimates for growth and spending. “Household wealth is a lot lower than it was three years ago.”
“The pace of economic recovery is likely to be more modest in the near term than had been anticipated,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement after meeting yesterday.
Revised Estimates Still Too Optimistic
Why was everyone so optimistic in the first place? There was no real reason for it. The answer of course is Fooled by Stimulus.
However, the economists still don’t get it. Second half GDP is likely to be closer to 0% than 2.55%. Negative GDP is plausible.
Did the Recovery Stall?
Not really. Caroline Baum explains in Economy Lost Momentum While I Was Pulling Weeds
The post-mortems on the July employment report made me realize I’d missed the recovery.
While I was watching my garden grow, the U.S. economy “lost momentum,” according to every news report I read or heard over the weekend. Somewhere between the budding of the peonies and the blooming of the rudbeckia, private-sector job growth downshifted.
Which brings me to the point: In order to lose momentum, the U.S. economy has to have momentum to begin with. If it had any, I missed it.
What we had was a government-prescribed course of
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An Avoidable Depression
by ilene - August 6th, 2010 4:10 pm
An Avoidable Depression
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Courtesy of MIKE WHITNEY at CounterPunch
The economy has gone from bad to worse. On Friday the Commerce Department reported that GDP had slipped from 3.7% to 2.4% in one quarter. Now that depleted stockpiles have been rebuilt and fiscal stimulus is running out, activity will continue to sputter increasing the likelihood of a double dip recession. Consumer credit and spending have taken a sharp downturn and data released on Tuesday show that the personal savings rate has soared to 6.4%. Mushrooming savings indicate that household deleveraging is ongoing which will reduce spending and further exacerbate the second-half slowdown. The jobs situation is equally grim; 8 million jobs have been lost since the beginning of the recession, but policymakers on Capital Hill and at the Fed refuse to initiate government programs or provide funding that will put the country back to work. Long-term "structural" unemployment is here to stay.
The stock market has continued its highwire act due to corporate earnings reports that surprised to the upside. 75% of S&P companies beat analysts estimates which helped send shares higher on low volume. Corporate profits increased but revenues fell; companies laid off workers and trimmed expenses to fatten the bottom line. Profitability has been maintained even though the overall size of the pie has shrunk. Stocks rallied on what is essentially bad news.
This is from ABC News:
"Consumer confidence matched its low for the year this week, with the ABC News Consumer Comfort Index extending a steep 9-point, six-week drop from what had been its 2010 high….The weekly index, based on Americans’ views of the national economy, the buying climate and their personal finances, stands at -50 on its scale of +100 to -100, just 4 points from its lowest on record in nearly 25 years of weekly polls…It’s in effect the death zone for consumer sentiment."
Consumer confidence has plunged due to persistent high unemployment, flat-lining personal incomes, and falling home prices. Ordinary working people do not care about the budget deficits; that’s a myth propagated by the right wing think tanks. They care about jobs, wages, and providing for their families. Congress’s unwillingness to address the problems that face the middle class has led to an erosion of confidence in government. This is from the Wall Street Journal:
"The lackluster job market continued to weigh on confidence. The share of
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The Money Market Piggybank is Shattered
by ilene - August 2nd, 2010 11:53 pm
The Money Market Piggybank is Shattered
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker
USA Today is out with a mystery that I will help them out with…
They ask the question "Where did the $1.1 trillion that just came out of ultra low-yielding money market funds just go?"
Then they go on to point out that the average bank account’s interest rate is .75% versus the ridiculous .04% that traditional money market funds are paying, so maybe some of the $1.1 trillion went there.
Then we are treated to the usual stats about "how much gosh darn cash has been sucked into bond mutual funds" – $700 billion in the last 18 months says TrimTabs. The growth of assets in bond funds cannot explain the money market sapping alone, because we all know that a lot of those inflows are coming from stock people that are scared and asset allocators that are hopping aboard the bond bandwagon (bondwagon?). It’s the disillusioned stock market money that’s pumping into bond funds more than anything else.
The article also posits that investors may be skipping the money market funds and going straight for money market instruments, like buying treasuries directly. I’m not seeing much of that at the retail level at all.
So where did a trillion dollars just go when it left the universe of over 1600 money market funds?
Easy. Some of it may have gone to bond funds, but my bet is that an inordinate amount went toward everyday Americans paying their everyday bills. That’s right, I believe that the investor class is finally starting to pay regular expenses and cover the bills with their money market funds, turning that New Normal maxim about the coming of higher savings rates on its ear.
I don’t have statistical confirmation of this hunch just yet (and I’m actually not sure where to get it), but this is what I’m beginning to see firsthand. Brokerage and investment accounts are becoming a piggybank for investors who are nowhere near retirement.
They will not be buying-and-holding as the commercials have programmed them to do while their businesses and household balance sheets are on their last legs. They will put the capital that’s been earmarked for "investment" to much better use than a $40 annual return on $10,000 in a money market fund.
With underemployment still raging and business…
Four Deformations of the Apocalypse
by ilene - August 1st, 2010 8:19 pm
Barry Ritholtz made this comment in summarizing the article:
In short, the party became more focused on Politics than Policy.
I bring this up as an intro to David Stockman’s brutal critique of Republican fiscal policy. Stockman was the director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. His NYT OpEd — subhed: How the GOP Destroyed the US economy — perfectly summarizes the most legitimate critiques of decades of GOP economic policy.
I can sum it up thusly: Whereas the Democrats have no economic policy, the Republicans have a very bad one.
Four Deformations of the Apocalypse
By DAVID STOCKMAN, NY Times
Excerpts:
This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one.
The first of these started when the Nixon administration defaulted on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world. Now, since we have lived beyond our means as a nation for nearly 40 years, our cumulative current-account deficit — the combined shortfall on our trade in goods, services and income — has reached nearly $8 trillion. That’s borrowed prosperity on an epic scale.
[...]
The second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt.
[...]
The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector. Here, Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation. As a result, the combined assets of conventional banks and the so-called shadow banking system (including investment banks and finance companies) grew from a mere $500 billion in 1970 to $30 trillion by September 2008.
But the trillion-dollar conglomerates that inhabit this new financial world are not free enterprises. They are rather wards of the state, extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives. They could…
Consumer Metrics Institute Growth Index
by ilene - July 31st, 2010 7:59 pm
Doug Short compared recent data from Rick at Consumer Metrics Institute using chart overlays of the GDP and S&P. He also provides additional commentary. (In case you missed my interview with Rick back in April, it’s here.) – Ilene
Consumer Metrics Institute Growth Index
Courtesy of Doug Short
Note from dshort: The 91-day Growth Index continues its downward slide with data now available though July 29th. Note that the Real GDP numbers are updated with the BEA’s revised estimates from 2007 through First Quarter 2010. See the explanation here.
The three charts below focus on the ‘Trailing Quarter’ Growth Index, which is computed as a 91-day moving average for the year-over-year growth/contraction of the Weighted Composite Index. The index gives a nearly real-time daily snapshot of consumer behavior across a wide variety of consumption categories. The 91-day period is useful for comparison with key quarterly metrics such as GDP. Since the consumer accounts for over two-thirds of the US economy, one would expect that a well-crafted index of consumer behavior would serve as a leading indicator. As the chart suggests, during the five-year history of the index, it has generally lived up to that expectation. Actually, the chart understates the degree to which the Growth Index leads GDP. Why? Because the advance estimates for GDP are released a month after the end of the quarter in question, so the Growth Index lead time has been substantial.
Has the Growth Index also served as a leading indicator of the stock market? The next chart is an overlay of the index and the S&P 500. The Growth Index clearly peaked before the market in 2007 and bottomed in late August of 2008, over six months before the market low in March 2009.
The most recent peak in the Growth Index was around the first of September,…
EXTEND & PRETEND: Stage I Comes to an End!
by ilene - July 30th, 2010 12:58 am
EXTEND & PRETEND: Stage I Comes to an End!
The Dog Ate my Report Card
Courtesy of Gordon T. Long
Both came to an end at the same time: the administration’s policy to Extend & Pretend has run out of time as has the patience of the US electorate with the government’s Keynesian economic policy responses. Desperate last gasp attempts are to be fully expected, but any chance of success is rapidly diminishing.
Whether an unimpressed and insufficiently loyal army general, a fleeing cabinet budget chief or G20 peers going the austerity route, all are non-confidence votes for the Obama administration’s present policies. A day after the courts slapped down President Obama’s six month gulf drilling moratorium, the markets were unpatriotically signaling a classic head and shoulders topping pattern. With an employment rebound still a non-starter, President Obama as expected was found to be asking for yet another $50B in unemployment extensions and state budget assistance to avoid teacher layoffs. However, the gig is up: the policy of Extend and Pretend has no time left on the shot clock nor for another round of unemployment benefit extensions. A congress that is now clearly frightened of what it sees looming in the fall midterm elections is running for cover on any further spending initiatives. The US electorate has been sending an unmistakable message in all elections nationwide.
The housing market is rolling over as fully expected and predicted by almost everyone except the White House and its lap-dog press corp. Noted analyst Meredith Whitney says a double dip in housing is a ‘no brainer’ with the government’s HAMP program clearly a bust as one third of participants are now dropping out. The leading economic indicator (ECRI) has abruptly turned lower, signaling the economy is slowing rapidly without the $1T per month stimulus addiction, which has kept the extend and pretend economy on life support.
The gulf oil spill that was initially stated as 1000 barrels per day has been revised upwards faster than the oil can reach the surface. It now appears to be north of 100,000 barrels per day. A 100 percent miss is about in line with the miss on how many jobs the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) was going to create. Also, it appears the administration can’t even get its hands around the basics of administration management during any crisis event. Teleprompter politics…
Frugality the New Reality in Australia; Predatory Customers Addicted to Discounts
by ilene - July 21st, 2010 4:11 pm
Frugality the New Reality in Australia; Predatory Customers Addicted to Discounts
Courtesy of Mish
I have commented many times on US Consumer and Corporate Frugality but inquiring minds might be interested in happenings down under. Frugality has gone global.
Predatory Customers Addicted to Discounts
The Herald Sun reports Retailers could take years to recover because customers addicted to discounts.
A bargain frenzy since the global financial crisis has led consumers to expect and accept only slashed prices.
The dire forecast, from market research company TNS director Chris Kirby, comes as bored staff in some stores are put to work cleaning, tidying and changing window displays because of a lack of customers.
At some sites, especially fashion outlets, stock is discounted by up to 70 per cent as soon as it hits shelves to attract shopper interest.
"Consumers are no longer willing to accept the first price they find. They know there’s a good chance of finding it cheaper somewhere else," Mr Kirby said. "In essence the industry is training us to become professional, if not predatory, consumers."
The caution came as a Commonwealth Bank economic index that tracks credit and debit card transaction value trends across a wide range of industries reported the weakest spending since the height of the global financial crisis in early 2008.
Desperate Retailers Slashing Prices by 75 Percent
Please consider Retailers slashing prices by 75% as Queensland sales slow
One retail organisation, the United Retail Federation, said the slump was at its worst in Queensland, where small retailers were struggling to move stock, even after heavily discounting items.
The bleak picture is at odds with scenes of hundreds of shoppers queuing at lay-by counters to take advantage of major toy sales.
Thousands of bargain hunters queued at Big W stores for the start of its two-week toy sale, which ended last week.
One Gold Coast shopper complained of a four-hour wait at her local Big W store, and of being hit in the ankles with shopping trolleys in the stampede.
Target will follow with its toy sale from July 22 to August 4, having already released its 72-page catalogue offering 120 half-price bargains.
But Australian Retailers Association director Russell Zimmerman said retailers generally were finding it difficult to clear stock, even at hefty discounts. "It’s tough out there and retailers are finding it harder
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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