Cartoon: Debt Ceiling

Cartoon: Balanced Budget Amendment

Cartoon: It is a Spending Problem

Cartoon: The Natioanl Debt

The Crony-Capitalist Triumph

Nita Ghei writes:

Beware politicians whose legislation bears a grandiose title. You can be certain their schemes will accomplish the opposite of their purported intent. Such is the case with the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law one year ago today. The massive 2,300-page tome - commonly known as Dodd-Frank - promised to fix the financial system, streamline regulation and end bailouts. Like so much of President Obama’s legislative achievements, this bill promised much, delivered little and cost a great deal.

By the Government Accountability Office’s reckoning, implementation will require $1.25 billion in new spending. It’s not cheap marshaling an army of 2,800 newly minted federal bureaucrats wielding fresh power over the private sector. Over the next decade, businesses will shell out $27 billion in fees, assessments and tithes to their new regulatory masters, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates.

The enterprise was a knee-jerk reaction to the financial crisis of 2008, where the feds had just bailed out the investment bankers at Bear Stearns and elsewhere. Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, and then-Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, insisted creation of agencies like the Financial Stability Oversight Council and the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection would crack down on Wall Street and end the ingrained idea that some firms are “too big to fail.”

The actual result has been a mountain of red tape. At least 400 new federal rules will be layered on top of existing regulations. New bureaucracies will have overlapping jurisdiction with existing regulatory bodies...

Far from getting rid of bailouts, Dodd-Frank institutionalized them. Title II empowered the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation with “orderly liquidation” authority, giving the agency discretion to intervene between a financial institution and its creditors in any way it sees fit... That means the “too big too fail” ethic still applies.

Dodd-Frank has largely severed the relationship between risk and return, which is the necessary discipline imposed by a free market. Now, the big banks get to keep the rewards, but American taxpayers bear the risk...

Dodd-Frank has been an expensive exercise in command and control by the federal government. It encourages crony capitalism while undermining free markets and limiting competition. A year later, the folly of this legislation has only grown more apparent.

read the entire essay

Wal-Mart

In 2010, American consumers bought almost as much merchandise at low-priced Walmart ($307.7 billion in U.S. retail sales) as they purchased from the next five largest U.S. retailers combined ($324.5 billion): Kroger ($78.3 billion), Target ($65.8 billion), Walgreen ($61.2 billion), Home Depot ($60.1 billion) and Costco ($58.9 billion).

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State and Local Sales Tax Rates

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New Construction

The Commerce Department reported(.pdf) that U.S. housing starts jumped 14.6 percent to an annual rate of 629,000 and that permits for new construction rose 2.5 percent to a 624,000 rate. As noted here many times over the last couple years, despite what you’ll read today, this really isn’t a big deal since the housing market is extremely depressed, homebuilder stocks now the equivalent of 2002-era dot.com stocks for reasons made clear below.

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Consumer Price Index: 3.6% Annual

The Labor Department reported that consumer prices fell in June for the first time in a year, down 0.2 percent last month due to tumbling gasoline and heating oil prices, but annual inflation rose from 3.4 percent to 3.6 percent.

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Too Big to Fail

Peter Schiff on Bernanke's Gold Comments

Bernanke further disputes the facts by claiming that the only reason people are buying gold is to hedge against uncertainty, or "tail risks" as he calls them. My advice to the Chairman is to ask the people who are actually buying it. As someone who has been buying gold myself for a decade, I can assure him that my gold buying has nothing to do with "uncertainty." In fact, it's just the opposite. I am buying gold because of what is certain, not what is uncertain. I am certain that Mr. Bernanke's incompetence will destroy the value of the dollar and unleash runaway inflation.

read the essay

Gold or Cash?

Cartoon: Moving to China

Impact of the Great Recession

The Great Recession of 2007-2009, coming on the heels of a spending binge fueled by a housing bubble, so far has resulted in over $7,300 in foregone consumption per person, or about $175 per person per month. The recession has had many costs, including negative impacts on labor and housing markets, and lost government tax revenues. The extensive harm of this episode raises the question of whether policymakers could have done more to avoid the crisis.

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The Economy

May Trade Deficit $50.2 Billion

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Economic Recovery, Plunder, and the End of an Empire?

Joel Bowman writes:

...Wrote the French libertarian philosopher in his 1850 classic, The Law:

“See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”

The obvious – and fallacious – rebuttal here is that Wall Street fat cats earn tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of times the salary of government employees. And that’s true. But you don’t have to pay it. If you don’t agree with excessive executive compensation, don’t buy that company’s products. Don’t invest in its stock. Simple. Of course, that won’t stop the government gifting your tax dollars to its Wall Street buddies…but you can hardly blame the grafters on The Street for taking what’s offered. Call it corporatism. Call it crony capitalism. Call it whatever you like. Just don’t call it the free market.

But just because the state can avoid consequences in the short term, that doesn’t mean it can avoid them indefinitely. “Imperial suicide,” as Bill calls it, is nothing new. In 1917, the year of Russia’s October Revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin offered a few predictions for the century ahead:

“Germany will militarize herself out of existence,
England will expand herself out of existence,
and America will spend herself out of existence.”

Had he known the inherent shortcomings of his own political ideology, Bolshevism’s bad boy might also have added, “And Russia…she will plan herself out of existence.”

As for the United States, it seems she is not content with simply spending more than she produces, foisting the unfunded obligations onto future generations; instead, she militarizes, expands, spends AND plans toward her own demise…as all once great empires eventually do.

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Economic Recovery??

Bill Bonner writes:

The fight for recovery is over. The feds have waved the white flag. Maybe…

The Labor Department came out with the latest employment numbers last week. They were atrocious. Only about a fifth as many new jobs as economists expected. Which shows you three things.

First, economists can’t really predict levels of employment, growth, prices, or anything else. And they are especially bad at it when they have the wrong idea of how things work.

Second, the feds have failed. They have been completely unable to make any progress against the downturn.

Third, this is not a recovery. Widely reported in the media was the opinion that the employment numbers were ‘disappointing for the second year of a recovery.’ Well…yes. Because it’s not a recovery. It’s a Great Correction. And this is just what you’d expect.

For the last 4 years – since the beginning of the financial crisis in ’07 to today – economists, analysts, investors and policymakers have had the wrong idea. They thought they were dealing with an ordinary (though perhaps severe) recession, which they thought would be followed by an ordinary (though perhaps weak) recovery.

Not at all! It was not an ordinary post-war recession. So, the ordinary counter-cyclical policy measure – more credit! – didn’t work. This time, the economy already had too much credit. Which is to say, too much debt. It didn’t do any good to add more debt. Households were already drenched in it.

They couldn’t absorb any more. They couldn’t increase their spending by borrowing more money. So, spending couldn’t go up…

Instead, households are struggling to maintain their standards of living in the face of rising consumer prices and flat…or falling…incomes.

And now, the mainstream financial press is finally catching on. Heck, even the US Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, may be opening his eyes.

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Misery Index

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The Federal Budget

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Unemployment

The number of jobs needed per month to keep up with population growth depends on the rate of population growth, and the participation rate. We also have to be clear on the time frame we are discussing. The CBO report is through 2021, and the CBO is projecting the participation rate to fall to 63% by 2021 due to an aging population.

If, instead, we asked how many jobs are needed over the next year to keep the unemployment rate steady using the CBO projection of the participation rate, the answer is very different. The CBO is projecting the participation rate will be at 64.6% in 2012 and the current participation rate is 64.1%...

It would take 187,000 jobs added per month over the next year to hold the unemployment rate steady if the participation rate rises to 64.6%. If the participation rate stays steady, it will take 95,000 jobs added per month.

I also included the number of jobs needed to lower the unemployment rate by one percentage point to 8.2%. If the participation rate rises, then it would take 316,000 jobs per month. If the participation rate stays steady, it would take 224,000 jobs per month to lower the unemployment rate to 8.2%.

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It is a Spending Problem

In the debate about raising the debt ceiling, the reality is often lost that the top 10 percent of income earners—those making more than $113,799 in 2008 (the latest year available from the IRS)—already pay 69.9 percent of the income taxes. The same top 10 percent, however, earn only 45.8 percent of the income.

The IRS also reports that in 2008, the top 25 percent of income earners—those earning $67,280 or more—pay 86.34 percent of the income taxes, yet earn only 67.38 percent of all income in the U.S.

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Production

Technology and Standards of Living

June Unemployment 9.2%

The only good news is that June is over.

There were few jobs created in June (only 18,000 total and 57,000 private sector). The unemployment rate increased from 9.1% to 9.2%, and the participation rate declined to 64.1%. Note: This is the percentage of the working age population in the labor force.

The employment population ratio fell to 58.2%, matching the lowest level during the current employment recession.

U-6, an alternate measure of labor underutilization that includes part time workers and marginally attached workers, increased to 16.2%, the highest level this year.

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Gold Predictions

Higher than $10,000

1. Mike Maloney: $15,000
2. Howard Katz: $14,000
3. Silver-Coin-Investor.com: $7,000-$14,000
4. Jim Rickards: $4,000 – $11,000
5. Roland Watson: $10,800 (in our lifetime)

$5,001 – $10,000

1. Bob Kirtley: $10,000 (by 2011)
2. Arnold Bock: $10,000 (by 2012)
3. Porter Stansberry: $10,000 (by 2012)
4. Tom Fischer: $10,000
5. Shayne McGuire: $10,000
6. Eric Hommelberg: $10,000
7. Gerald Celente: $6,000 – $10,000
8. Peter Schiff: $5,000 – $10,000 (in 5 to 10 years)
9. Egon von Greyerz: $5,000 – $10,000
10. Patrick Kerr: $5,000 – $10,000 (by 2011)
11. Peter Millar: $5,000 – $10,000
12. Alf Field: $4,250 – $10,000
13. Peter George: $3,500 (by 2011-13); $10,000 (by 2015)
14. Jeff Nielson: $3,000 – $10,000
15. Dennis van Ek: $9,000 (by 2015)
16. James Turk: $8,000 (by 2015)
17. Joseph Russo: $7,000 – $8,000
18. David Petch: $6,000 – $$8,000
19. Michael Rozeff: $2,865 – $7,151
20. Martin Murenbeeld: $3,100 – $7,000
21. Dylan Grice: $6,300
22. Aubie Baltin: $6,000 (by 2017)
23. Murray Sabrin: $6,153
24. Harry Schultz: $6,000
25. Paul van Edeen: $6,000
26. Lawrence Hunt: $5,000 - $6,000 (by 2019)
27. Paul Brodsky/Lee Quaintance: $3,000 – $6,000

$5,000

1. David Rosenberg: $5,000
2. Martin Hutchinson: $5,000 (by end of 2010)
3. Doug Casey: $5,000
4. Peter Cooper: $5,000
5. Robert McEwen: $5,000
6. Martin Armstrong: $5,000 (by 2016)
7. Peter Krauth: $5,000
8. Tim Iacono: $5,000 (by 2017)
9. Christopher Wyke: $5,000
10. Frank Barbera: $5,000
11. John Lee: $5,000
12. Barry Dawes: $5,000

$2,500 – $5,000

1. Pierre Lassonde: $4,000 – $5,000;
2. Mary Anne and Pamela Aden: $3,000 – $5,000 (by February 2012)
3. Bob Chapman: $3,000 (by 2011)
4. Larry Edelson: $2300 – $5,000 (by 2012)
5. Luke Burgess: $2,000- – $5,000
6. Ian Gordon/Christopher Funston; $4,000
7. D.P. Baker: $3,000 – $3750
8. Christopher Wood: $3,500 (in 2010)
9. Adam Hamilton: $3,500 (by 2010-11)
10. Eric Roseman: $2,500 – $3,500 (by 2015)
11. John Henderson: $3,000+ (by 2015-17)
12. Hans Goetti: $3,000
13. Michael Yorba: $3,000
14. David Tice: $3,000 (by 2012)
15. David Urban; $3,000
16. Michael Lambert: $3,000
17. Brett Arends: $3,000
18. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: $3,000
19. Trader Mark: $3,000 (by mid-2011)
20. John Williams: $3,000
21. Byron King: $3,000
22. ThumbCharts.com: $3,000
23. Ian McAvity: $2,500 – $3,000 (by 2012)
24. Jeff Nichols: $2,000 – $3,000
25. Graham French: $2,000 – $3,000
26. Sascha Opel: $2,500+
27. Rick Rule: $2,500 (by 2013)
28. Daniel Brebner: $2,500

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Keynesianism Diagnosed

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have found evidence that a retrovirus that has been linked to schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis may also cause Keynesianism. The discovery raises hopes that a cure may be found for this economy-destroying disease.

“The breakthrough was realizing that schizophrenia and Keynesianism have many of the same symptoms,” said Dr. Charles Rivers of the Harvard School of Medicine. “For example, both conditions cause delusions. A schizophrenic may think that the CIA is trying to kill him, while many Keynesians believe that government spending stimulates the economy.”

read the article

Stimulus Spending Equals More Debt, Not Economic Growth

Yet this was the recovery that was aided by the largest Keynesian-style big government “stimulus” since World War II. Since 2008, total federal “stimulus” has been $4.6 trillion, as shown in the chart. As a share of GDP, recent deficit spending has been far greater than during all other recessions since the war.

Biggest Keynesian Stimulus + Slowest Recovery = Time to Rethink Keynesian Theory.

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Inflation: 3.6%

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Cartoon: The Economy

Cartoon: Housing Market

Cartoon: Unemployment

Cartoon: Spending

Cartoon: Debt Ceiling

$2 Trillion in Spending Cuts

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Economic Freedom and Quality of Life

Federal Revenues and Spending

The CBO report and many centrist budget wonks focus more on the problem of rising federal debt than on rising spending. As a result, many wonks clamor for a “balanced” package of spending cuts and tax increases to solve our fiscal problems. But CBO projections show that the long-term debt problem is not a balanced one—it is caused by historic increases in spending, not shortages of revenues.

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GDP Growth

The obvious connection, as I’ve pointed out on many occasions, is that America is becoming a European-style welfare state and it is unavoidable that we will suffer from European-style economic malaise.

P.S. It should be noted that America’s anemic economic performance in recent years is not solely Obama’s fault. As the White House repeatedly points out, he inherited a downturn. That is completely accurate. My complaint, however, is that Obama promised hope and change but instead has exacerbated the big government policies of his predecessor.

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Road Trip: CWS

Legal Plunder

See also Walter Williams' latest essay.

Alan Greenspan, "The Flaw", Laissez-faire, and Moral Hazard

Newsweek reports:

In the fall of 2008, with the global economy in shambles and panic spreading throughout the financial system, a seemingly humbled Alan Greenspan—the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve—appeared before Congress and admitted the unimaginable: there was a “flaw” in his world view that had prevented him from foreseeing the worst credit crisis in American history.

And so begins The Flaw, David Sington’s new documentary about the origins of the financial crisis. The movie, which opened in London last week, makes a compelling argument that the nature of American capitalism has changed in recent decades, giving rise to unstable levels of inequality and a mistaken belief in the self-correcting power of free markets. The Flaw focuses largely on the housing market and offers a far less blistering critique of Wall Street than Inside Job¸ Charles Ferguson’s 2010 Oscar-winning documentary. Yet in both films, Greenspan, who spoke with NEWSWEEK at his office in Washington, D.C., is cast in a similar role—as someone who personifies much of what went wrong with the economy...

Despite his 2008 mea culpa, Greenspan has largely remained steadfast in his faith in laissez faire, arguing against the government’s stimulus package and recent financial regulation. As Congress continues to fight over long-term spending and the future of entitlements, it is precisely this sort of stubborn libertarianism that has enraged Greenspan’s critics and once again cast a spotlight on his legacy.

read the article

Anthony Gregory on the meddling Fed: When All You Have is a Hammer

Murray Rothbard on Greenspan (writing in 1987)

Greenspan's real qualification is that he can be trusted never to rock the establishment's boat. He has long positioned himself in the very middle of the economic spectrum. He is, like most other long-time Republican economists, a conservative Keynesian, which in these days is almost indistinguishable from the liberal Keynesians in the Democratic camp. In fact, his views are virtually the same as Paul Volcker, also a conservative Keynesian. Which means that he wants moderate deficits and tax increases, and will loudly worry about inflation as he pours on increases in the money supply.

There is one thing, however, that makes Greenspan unique, and that sets him off from his Establishment buddies. And that is that he is a follower of Ayn Rand, and therefore "philosophically" believes in laissez-faire and even the gold standard. But as the New York Times and other important media hastened to assure us, Alan only believes in laissez-faire "on the high philosophical level." In practice, in the policies he advocates, he is a centrist like everyone else because he is a "pragmatist."

As an alleged "laissez-faire pragmatist," at no time in his prominent twenty-year career in politics has he ever advocated anything that even remotely smacks of laissez-faire, or even any approach toward it. For Greenspan, laissez-faire is not a lodestar, a standard, and a guide by which to set one's course; instead, it is simply a curiosity kept in the closet, totally divorced from his concrete policy conclusions.

read the essay

The War on Waste

USA Today reports:

President Obama seeks to revive an old war today -- the war on government waste.

Obama has appointed Vice President Biden to head up the Campaign to Cut Waste, a renewed effort to eliminate what the president called unnecessary government programs and "stupid spending that doesn't benefit anybody.

Anthony Gregory responds:

I do not want to understate the evil of government waste. A billion dollars stolen from taxpayers and sent down the drain is an injustice and a moral disgrace of national importance. But government is an organ of plunder, economic dislocation, mass imprisonment, social destruction, persecution and mass murder. Given that it steals our money—certainly a great evil in itself—we’re generally much better off the larger portion of its budget goes purely to waste.

read the essay

Manufacturing v. Farming

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Trade Deficit April 2011: $43.7 Billion

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Trillions Lost During the Great Recession

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Defense Spending

Richard Maybury on Austrian Economics

"The Austrian economists point out that the economy is not a machine, it is an ecology composed of living organisms, people. The Austrian school is in the forefront of the effort to expose the madness of the government's Keynesian and socialist policies."

read the essay

The Next Crisis or the Continuation of the Current Crisis

Gary North writes:

The mainstream financial media are running stories on the next financial crisis. This is unheard of two years into a so-called economic recovery. So weak is this recovery that the old pre-2008 confidence has not returned...

We are being warned in advance by the financial media: expect another major crisis. The bailouts were not enough. The expansion of the monetary base was not enough. The new Dodd-Frank regulatory structure is not enough...

There is no formula to deal with this. There is no organized government response that is waiting in the wings. There will be another crisis. And when it comes, the response will be the same: to preserve the solvency of the biggest banks, at taxpayer expense and at central bank expense. When it comes to bailouts and central bank inflation, it's all "doable." It will therefore be done.

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"It's the economy, stupid"

Ron Paul v. The Fed

Budget Deficit

Bernanke's Speech on the Economy

Here is the transcript.

At the same time, the longer-run health of the economy requires that the Federal Reserve be vigilant in preserving its hard-won credibility for maintaining price stability.

My thoughts: Ha!! Credibility for maintaining price stability? The dollar has lost over 95% of its purchasing power since the Fed was created. That is called failure!!


Mish Shedlock provides some usefully commentary.

Bernanke did everything possible to mitigate his role and the Fed's role in this crisis. His unmitigated gall comes through loud and clear with this bald-faced lie:

"The Federal Reserve's actions in recent years have doubtless helped stabilize the financial system, ease credit and financial conditions, guard against deflation, and promote economic recovery. All of this has been accomplished, I should note, at no net cost to the federal budget or to the U.S. taxpayer."

For starters, were it not for the complete ineptitude of the Greenspan and Bernanke Fed the US would not be in this mess in the first place. Second, there most assuredly is a cost to the Fed's policies.

Prices are higher, wages are not. Banks were bailed out at taxpayer expense. The Fed pays interest on reserves. That interest comes from taxpayers. The Fed's balance sheet is loaded to the gills with garbage from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Fed is not at risk on that garbage because Congress approved unlimited backing for GSE debt. That unlimited backing is over $300 billion and counting. Those losses are not all on the Fed's balance sheet of course. However let's not ignore the Fed's role in getting Congress to pass that blatantly stupid bill.

Let's also not forget the Fed cheerleading fiscal stupidity in Congress, not wanting Congress to do anything about monstrous deficits now. Keynesian and Monetarist clowns never want to do anything now. They always want to do it at the "appropriate" time, which in practice means never.

Most importantly I would like to point out the very real cost of those on fixed income, attempting to get by with higher food prices, higher gasoline prices, etc. I dare Ben Bernanke to face senior citizens and tell them there is no cost associated with interest rates at 0%.

In case you missed it please read Hello Ben Bernanke, Meet "Stephanie". That post is about the plight of those on fixed incomes struggling to get by with rising costs and CD rates at 1%.

Finally, there is an unseen cost to the stupidity of Bernanke's policies. That unseen cost is the cost associated with fostering still more speculation in the financial markets. There is another bubble in the stock market, another bubble in junk bonds, and another bubble in commodities.

We have yet to feel the ramifications when those bubble pop, and they will. Bernanke cannot see those bubbles for the same reason he could not see the bubble in housing, the bubble in credit, the rapidly rising unemployment rate, and countless other things he missed.

Bernanke is a complete fool, trapped in academic wonderland, completely oblivious as to how the real world works. To top it off, Bernanke has the gall to knowingly lie about the real world effects of his blatant stupidity.

Ben Bernanke, you are disgusting.

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Real Spending

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Tax Revenue Rising

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My thoughts: The problem remains spending.

The Debt Ceiling

The Infamous Bernstein-Romer Chart

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Shares of World GDP

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May 2011 Unemployment: 9.1%

The Labor Department reported that nonfarm payrolls rose by just 54,000 in May, far below expectations for a gain of more than 150,000, and the jobless rate rose from 9.0 percent to 9.1 percent, adding to the recent gloom about the U.S. economy that, with each new report, appears to have entered a “soft patch” or, perhaps, something more serious.

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Why Can't Defense Spending Be Cut?

see commentary

Housing Double Dip?

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Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy

A new introduction by Anthony Gregory.

Gregory writes:

The idea that corporate interests, banking elites, and politicians conspire to set US policy is at once obvious and beyond the pale. Everyone knows that the military-industrial complex is fat and corrupt, that presidents bestow money and privilege on their donors and favored businesses, that a revolving door connects Wall Street and the White House, and that economic motivations lurk behind America's wars. But to make too fine a point of this is typically dismissed as unserious conspiracy theorizing, unworthy of mainstream consideration.

We have seen this paradox at work in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse. The left-liberals blame Wall Street and Big Finance for betraying the masses out of predatory greed and for being rewarded for their irresponsibility by Washington's bailouts. At the same time, the Left appears reluctant to oppose these bailouts outright, seeing the spending as a necessary evil to return the global economy to stability, however inequitably. What's more, left-liberals fail to call out President Obama and Democratic leaders for their undeniable hand in all this. They blame Goldman Sachs but see their president, who got more campaign money from the firm than from almost any other source, as a helpless victim of circumstance, rather than an energetic conspirator in corporate malfeasance on top of being the enthusiastic heir and expansionist of George W. Bush's aggressive foreign policy.

The tea-party Right is also hesitant to examine the corporate state too closely. These conservatives detect an elitism in Obama's governance but are loath to earnestly challenge the economic status quo, for it would lead to uncomfortable questions about the warfare state, defense contractors, US wars, the whole history of the Republican Party, and all the typical right-wing assumptions about the inherent fairness of America's supposedly "free-enterprise" system. By refusing to admit that economic fundamentals were unsound through the entirety of the Bush years — by failing to acknowledge the imperial reality of US wars and their debilitating effect on the average household budget — the Right is forgoing its chance to delve beyond the surface in its criticism of Obama's reign.

read the entire essay

The Framework

The Framework: Explained from Mises Media on Vimeo.

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