Global Economic Crisis

The Bureau of Labor Statistics latest jobs report suggested  114,000 non-farm jobs were added in September, while the national unemployment rate dropped from  8.1 percent to 7.8 percent. With the U.S. presidential election only one month away, the Republicans naturally claimed that something was fishy about the jobs report. Just as naturally, the Obama administrations maintained that the BLS statistics are compiled by non-partisan professional bureaucrats. So, what’s the answer?

They are both right. The BLS numbers may be honestly compiled, but they are based on abstractions and sampling assumptions, and are frequently corrected long after their original release. Furthermore, the numbers being argued about are the U3 data, which is an incomplete measure of unemployment in the U.S. economy. The more reliable U6 data, which includes part-time workers unable to find fulltime employment, is still well into double digit figures.

The more interesting aspect of the latest LBS data is this; even if the 114,000 new jobs figure is correct, it is below the level required to match new entries into the labor force. In other words, the U3 (and U6) rate should have risen instead of declined. Why didn’t it? Simple explanation: the long-term unemployed are being “removed” from the statistical  measurement of the labor force. If the BLS considers you a “discouraged” worker, you are no longer compiled under the data for unemployed workers. This may look more positive for the upcoming presidential election if you are President Barack Obama, but it does nothing to facilitate economic growth.

There is another dimension to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data which demonstrates its utter irrelevancy to the overall health of the economy. The numbers in the BLS report, or the claims by the Obama campaign regarding total jobs creation since the president took office, not to mention GOP candidate Mitt Romney’s boast that as president, he would somehow “create” 12 million new jobs, miss what is most relevant to a comprehensive economic recovery in the United States.  The real issue is the decline in purchasing power by the U.S. labor force, concomitant with a parallel increase in economic power of a very small financial oligarchy. As is well know by labor statisticians, frequently the new jobs created (or promised) are actually lower paying fulltime jobs, or part-time positions with significantly reduced levels of compensation. The cumulative impact  of this phenomenon has been the erosion in the  size and collective purchasing power of America’s middle-income  labor force, leading to weaker consumer demand and a collapse in housing values.  Neither President Obama nor Governor Romney has on offer a realistic and cogent plan to address the real core issue underlying the factors that have left the U.S. labor force diminished not only in its employee count, but more importantly, in its financial capacity. Until the latter issue is addressed, all the promises made by American politicians for a future economic recovery are political rhetoric and nothing more.

WALL STREET KILLS--A CHILLING NOVEL ABOUT WALL STREET GREED GONE MAD

 To view the official trailer YouTube video for “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

Wall Street Kills-Official Trailer

In a world dominated by high finance, how far would Wall Street go in search of profits? In Sheldon Filger’s terrifying novel about money, sex and murder, Wall Street has no limits. “Wall Street Kills” is the ultimate thriller about greed gone mad. Read “Wall Street Kills” and blow your mind.

 

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Almost instantaneously, as soon as governments across the globe went into unparalleled debt to bail out their financial systems beginning in 2008, economists openly were discussing  the impossibility of ever paying back those sovereign loans, and that a different solution was required. The answer, so the economists said amongst themselves, was targeted inflation. In effect, so argued those economists, inflation significantly higher than recent levels, targeted at a level of at least 5 percent, would be “good.”

Why would inflation, a fiscal and monetary circumstance which human beings by instinct regard as an ill omen, be seen in such positive hues by economists as renowned as Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman? The answer is that inflation is viewed as the ideal solution for eliminating sovereign debts that can never be repaid. In effect, inflation is the methodology by which a nation-state defaults on its loan obligations stealthily. The printing presses expand money supply beyond the level generated through real economic productivity, in the process depreciating the value of the currency. The nation-state , on paper, doesn’t default on its loan repayments, since the contractual obligation is repaid in monetary terms. However, inflation depreciates the value of the currency, so the outstanding loan obligation shrinks in real terms. In addition, so argue the economists, inflation, by destroying the value of money, discourages savings, leading to higher spending and improved economic growth.

It is a neat gimmick, one resorted to by indebted sovereigns throughout history. However, despite claims by economists that precisely targeted inflation has worked in the past, history tells a different story. In the great majority of examples where countries deliberately employed inflation as a fiscal and economic policy, the results were not only counterproductive; very often the social anguish created by the policymakers resulted in political consequences of dire proportions. One can look back at Weimar Germany’s bout of inflation, which went out of control and morphed into rampant hyperinflation. There are many countries that experimented with inflation at levels far less  than those experienced by Weimar Germany and, more recently, Zimbabwe, which still did no good and much harm economically and socially.

The basic problem with modern economic policymaking is that it is too fixated on fiscal gimmickry to resolve core problems. Whether it  is quantitative easing and “Operation Twist” by the Federal Reserve or stealth sovereign bond purchases by the European Central Bank,  the “experts” play fiscal games rather than address the fundamental factors underlying the global economic crisis; flawed systems and economic architectures that have transformed nations that formerly focused on production into entities of debt-financed consumption.  Regrettably, instead of coming to grips with the true underlying factors responsible for the first global economic depression of the 21st century, the economists advising our policymakers look increasingly towards inflation, and the destruction of whatever financial assets are still retained by the increasingly beleaguered middle class, as the last best hope for resolving the sovereign debt crisis.

It is unfortunate that our modern-day economic gurus have not read Santayana, who warned that those who disregard the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them.

WALL STREET KILLS--A CHILLING NOVEL ABOUT WALL STREET GREED GONE MAD

 To view the official trailer YouTube video for “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

Wall Street Kills-Official Trailer

In a world dominated by high finance, how far would Wall Street go in search of profits? In Sheldon Filger’s terrifying novel about money, sex and murder, Wall Street has no limits. “Wall Street Kills” is the ultimate thriller about greed gone mad. Read “Wall Street Kills” and blow your mind.

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As a percentage of GDP, China’s economic stimulus program of 2009 was the largest in the world, and second place to the U.S. in monetary terms. Ironically, the supposedly communist economy of the People’s Republic of China became the last best hope of world capitalism, in the wake of the global financial and economic crisis that began in 2008. Now, it appears, things may be unwinding in a bad way for Beijing.

Copying its capitalist rivals, Beijing’s hybrid government/private economy poured massive amounts of cash into creating new asset bubbles, particularly in real estate. China built shopping malls with no customers, cities with no inhabitants and roads with no traffic. Extravagantly redundant infrastructure was constructed with stimulus money, goosing China’s GDP with annual double digit growth rates. This model was clearly unsustainable; China’s leaders were hoping to buy time so that the nation’s major export markets in Europe and the U.S. would recover with their own stimulus programs, and resume  their buying spree of cheap Chinese goods.

“Kick the can down the road” became the official credo of economic policymakers responding to the global economic crisis. As with other economies pursuing this shortsighted policy prescription, China failed to address the fundamentals of its economic challenge. The proportion of domestic consumption as a share of  GDP in China is less than half the ratio of its customers in the developed world. With its economic ascendancy dependant on overseas customers, the stagnation and contraction of the economies of those customers leaves a void that Beijing cannot cover by building the economic version of sand castles.

With the Eurozone tottering on the edge of the abyss, the U.K. mired in recession and the U.S. growth rate so anemic, even with trillion dollar plus annual deficits, that it is now at stall speed, it appears that the policymakers in Beijing may have lost their stimulus spending bet.  Domestically, the Chinese PMI  (Purchasing Managers Index)  has slumped to the lowest level in eight months. Other indicators, even amid the opaqueness of China’s official economic data, point increasingly towards a hard economic landing  for the world’s second largest economy. The consequences will be dire, not only for  China, but also for the global economy as a whole.

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WALL STREET KILLS--A CHILLING NOVEL ABOUT WALL STREET GREED GONE MAD

 To view and listen to the YouTube video audio excerpt  “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

Free Sex Murder Book Excerpt From “Wall Street Kills” (Erotic Snuff Movie Thriller)

Sex, murder, financial power and pathological greed come together in the explosive suspense thriller by Sheldon Filger, WALL STREET KILLS: A NOVEL ABOUT FINANCIAL POWER, VIOLENT SEX AND THE ULTIMATE SNUFF MOVIE.
This video provides a free audio reading from chapter one of “Wall Street Kills.” The scene depicted involves two characters from “Wall Street Kills” having a business conversation in a Los Angeles suburb. One character is Peter Hoffman, director of new business development for a secretive Wall Street hedge fund and private equity group. The other character is Daniel Iachino, president of a major independent film company specializing in “adult entertainment” for niche markets. Hoffman is on a mission to investigate if portraying unsimulated violent death in the form of entertainment would be a lucrative business investment. The conversation between the two men quickly focuses on the phenomenon of snuff movies.

 

 

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He emerged in the months prior to the global financial and economic crisis that erupted in the fall of 2008, warning of a deadly convergence of worrying economic and financial dangers. Nouriel Roubini, economics professor at New York University and owner of his own consultancy firm, issued warnings  that in retrospect seem almost magically prescient. Roubini’s prediction that the contraction in housing prices in the U.S. housing market would metastasize into a devastating financial hurricane seemed so incomprehensively dire, the pundits and eternal optimists on Wall Street dubbed him with the moniker of “Dr. Doom.”

For those not punch-drunk on Wall Street’s propaganda, Nouriel Roubini even issued what amounted to as a checklist of discrete steps that would occur until the investment banks imploded, leading to a fiscal Armageddon. During the summer of 2008, the checkmarks on Roubini’s list of foreboding prognostications accumulated, until Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, and the global economic crisis erupted with fury as credit markets worldwide went into cardiac arrest.

Now, four years later, Roubini is back with his prophecies of gloom and foreboding for the global economy. Dr. Doom has taken to the airwaves, warning policymakers as well as the public that there is a high probability that a perfect economic and fiscal storm will erupt in 2013. Essentially, Roubini’s forecast is as follows; until the November U.S. presidential elections  of this year, there will be a deceptive calm before the storm, as every major economy plagued with severe fiscal problems continues to kick the can down the road. Come 2013, there will be a convergence of several major negative metrics. These include the worsening Eurozone debt crisis, likely leading to the exit of Greece from the monetary union. China will face a hard economic landing, and the United States, its economic growth and job creation performance already anemic, will face a high probability of a renewed economic recession, particularly in a political environment favoring austerity. In addition to those economic factors, there is one other element in the turbulent brew that comprises Roubini’s prediction of a perfect economic storm in 2013; Iran. If the Iranian nuclear issue is not resolved peacefully, which at present seems highly doubtful, there is a high probability of a military conflict occurring in the region, which will add further strains upon the global economy, particularly if oil prices spike to highly elevated levels.

Dr. Doom is back, with  a characteristically gloom-laden warning about likely economic trends for 2013. Unlike the pontificators among the politicians, Wall Street glad handlers and central bankers, Roubini’s analysis of future economic trends does have the virtue of reasoned logic  as opposed to overly-optimistic rhetoric. Finally, Nouriel Roubini’s record in predicting future trends impacting the global economy and financial system has been inherently more reliable than the forecasts offered by the U.S. Federal Reserve, as well as by the policymakers in America and Europe.

WALL STREET KILLS--A CHILLING NOVEL ABOUT WALL STREET GREED GONE MAD

 To view and listen to the YouTube video audio excerpt  “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

Free Sex Murder Book Excerpt From “Wall Street Kills” (Erotic Snuff Movie Thriller)

Sex, murder, financial power and pathological greed come together in the explosive suspense thriller by Sheldon Filger, WALL STREET KILLS: A NOVEL ABOUT FINANCIAL POWER, VIOLENT SEX AND THE ULTIMATE SNUFF MOVIE.
This video provides a free audio reading from chapter one of “Wall Street Kills.” The scene depicted involves two characters from “Wall Street Kills” having a business conversation in a Los Angeles suburb. One character is Peter Hoffman, director of new business development for a secretive Wall Street hedge fund and private equity group. The other character is Daniel Iachino, president of a major independent film company specializing in “adult entertainment” for niche markets. Hoffman is on a mission to investigate if portraying unsimulated violent death in the form of entertainment would be a lucrative business investment. The conversation between the two men quickly focuses on the phenomenon of snuff movies.

 

 

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Following in the wake of a string of downgrades of the Eurozone, including S & P cuttings its rating on France, Fitch has joined in with its own updated list of woes. Italy, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia and Cyprus have had their sovereign debt ratings cut by Fitch, just before the most recent Eurozone emergency leaders summit on the sovereign debt crisis. It seems surreal that the most recent emergency meeting is on the topic of “economic growth,” just as more quarterly results show  negative growth from various Eurozone members.

It is unlikely that the increased rhetoric emanating form the mouths of European politicians that their monetary bloc is just on the cusp of a new wave of economic growth will impress the ratings agencies. The question then is this; who will investors trust? Will it be the ratings agencies, which are falling all over each other in their ratings cuts and negative outlook with respect to the Eurozone, or will they place their bets on European politicians, who so far are batting a big fat zero in all their multitude of prognostications on the trajectory of the global economic crisis? I suspect the answer will not surprise many.

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Speaking at the Asia Society conference in Australia, Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, issued a sharp warning on the direction of the global economic and sovereign debt crisis. He told journalists, “I think we are entering a new danger zone and I think that confidence in economic leadership has been slipping and it will be important that the primary economic actors take steps both short and long term to restore that.”

The words of Zoellick reflect unusual candor from a high level policymaker involved in global economic activity.  In essence, he confirms what my blog has been stating for many months; the empirical evidence suggests that the political actors in the major advanced economies are utterly inept when it come to economic and fiscal policy, and their collective incompetence is sending the whole world over a cliff.

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A highly tangible outcome of the global economic crisis and its first stage, the so-called Great Recession, has been the deleveraging underway by households and businesses throughout major advanced economies. In the United States and United Kingdom, consumers who boosted consumption on the basis of easy credit as opposed to higher disposable incomes are now tightening their belts and battening down the hatches. The predictable result has been a decline in aggregate demand. This is where the neo-Keynesians enter the fray, preaching the gospel of mega-deficit spending by governments.

The classical economic theory as developed by John Maynard Keynes holds that in times of severe economic contraction in the private economy, it is permissible for the sovereign to go into debt and increase spending to compensate for the falloff in consumer and other private sector expenditures. The rationale is that this short-term increase in the public debt will retard the rise in unemployment, limit the impact and duration of the economic recession and in the long run lead to overall better economic performance, with limited effect on the ratio of public debt to GDP. Though advocates and opponents can offer differing views on the historical validity of Keynes and his counter-cyclical concepts of sovereign  intervention in the economy, there is no doubt that his theory is intellectually cogent and based on a serious analysis of economic problems, particularly in regards to the Great Depression of the 1930s. However, is the current wave of unprecedented sovereign indebtedness equally cogent? If John Maynard Keynes were still alive, he would likely take issue with the massive tidal wave of red ink being unleashed by politicians as their antidote to the global economic crisis.

Though John Maynard Keynes is portrayed as a deficit-loving interventionist, in reality he was not. What is left out of the description of his theory in regards to counter-cyclical fiscal policy is that Keynes also believed that in times of relative prosperity sovereigns should create budget surpluses. He belief was that booms and busts were an integral characteristic of modern capitalism, and that  the accumulation of reserves during times of plenty would enable governments to engage in temporary deficit spending to combat a severe recession, without creating the long-term danger of exploding national debt to GDP ratios. This is an aspect of Keynes’s views on fiscal policy that has been conveniently forgotten by the modern interpreters of Keynesian economics.

Since World War II, the U.S. has seldom run balanced budgets. If generally accepted accounting principles were applied to official U.S. federal government budget reports, which require taking into account future liabilities for Social Security and Medicare, then during this period the United States has always run large fiscal deficits, even during times of relative economic prosperity. What this means in reality is that the conditions laid out by John Maynard Keynes for allowing a sovereign to engage in deficit spending during a recession, namely building budget surpluses during periods of economic expansion, have never been adhered to.

During the Great Depression,  the U.S. government did engage in substantial deficit spending within the framework of the New Deal, but with a ratio to GDP far lower than what is currently occurring on President Obama’s watch. This fiscal policy was engaged in with a cumulative national debt to GDP ratio nowhere near the current level, and with a large base of domestic savers prepared to buy U.S. government debt, in contrast with the present day reliance on foreign buyers of U.S. Treasury Bills.

If John Maynard Keynes were alive today, I suspect he would be horrified at the manner in which his economic theories have been distorted, and the likely outcome of such fiscal profligacy.

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The economic metrics are truly surreal. The Dow Jones and other equity indices are soaring to the skies, while Wall Street boasts about its executive bonuses, which are at record levels. Amid the obvious creation of a new asset bubble, courtesy of the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks, coinciding with a return to megalomaniacal arrogance by the titans of finance, the real economy continues to plummet, despite claims that many economies have retuned to positive GDP growth. But with unemployment at record levels and continuing to grow, it is clear to many that the so-called economic recovery is based on a facade of fragility. It may take only one major international crisis to collapse the global financial house of cards.

In case you have not noticed, Iran is going full steam ahead with its opaque and ambitious nuclear program. Israel has continued to hint that time is running our for a peaceful resolution  of the controversy over the Iranian nuclear program, which it suspects is a covert atomic weapons program, aimed ultimately at them. However, the rhetoric from Israel has been toned down somewhat of late. That, in my opinion, is not a good sign. While the Israelis were loudly engaging in military manoeuvres suggestive of preparations for an attack on Iran, it was clear that this was a psychological game, aimed at putting pressure on Tehran and the international community. It is when the Israelis become quiet over what their military is preparing for that the world may be about to experience a surprise Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities. This would clearly spark a regional conflict, which will likely involve the United States, which now has military forces deployed on two different frontiers with Iran.

A regional conflict in the Middle East, beginning with a military exchange between Iran and Israel, could be the kiss of death for the global economy. Imagine another interminable conflict in that volatile region, with the major chokepoint for oil exports from the Persian Gulf to the primary industrial economies, the Strait of Hormuz, being interdicted by Iranian missiles. Oil prices would soar beyond their historic highs, sending the current false economic recovery into an authentic global depression.

The world may be just a single regional war short of a full-throated economic meltdown, and that fearsome war may be coming to a theatre near you, sooner than anyone can imagine.

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In confronting a  crisis of epic proportions, one can do the heavy work of crafting a well conceived, comprehensive strategy. But why bother, when short-term gimmicky is politically more feasible. Thus we have this absurd counter-cyclical gimmick, the so-called “cash for clunkers” boondoggle, being offered by the Washington establishment as their “answer” to the  massive problems confronting the automobile industry, not only in America but globally as well.

Throughout the world, a vast car manufacturing infrastructure has been constructed at great expense and high leverage, designed for global demand of almost one hundred million cars per year. However, the Global Economic Crisis has unleashed massive demand destruction in many key categories of consumer durables. In the case of autos, worldwide demand is currently just above fifty million units per annum, rendering it almost impossible for most automobile manufacturers to generate a profit, whether they are located in Detroit, Tokyo or Stuttgart. The challenge is massive, global and complex. Yet, the geniuses in Washington have come up with a solution that is small, local and simplistic beyond all measure.

The concept of the “cash for clunkers” program is very simple and superficially enticing, as are most gimmicks. Trade in the old jalopy that was on the verge of being junked anyways, since it had no trade-in value on the open market. The federal government will fund  a $4,500 credit that will go towards the purchase of a shiny new automobile, thus stimulating the economy. As to be expected, the response from those with dilapidated vehicles on the verge of being dropped off at the local scrap yard has been  substantial, in the process depleting the original one billion dollar appropriation for the program. Also not a surprise, the politicians rushed to provide another  $2 billion for the program, to the delight of car dealerships across the land.

While on the surface  the program may be seen as an economic stimulus initiative at work, no one should be fooled into believing that this is a carefully designed, long-term strategic answer to the worst economic contraction to occur in the United States since the Great Depression. And most notably, the supposedly strong response to the program actually betrays its supercilious essence. For one thing, four of the the five most popular cars being purchased under “cash for clunkers” are foreign brands, meaning the impact on the domestic auto industry is minor at best.

Beyond the fact that  domestic car manufacturers are only partially benefiting from the program, it must  also be remembered that every dollar of credit being distributed under the program’s auspices is from U.S. taxpayers, at a time of massive, multi-trillion dollar deficits. Using borrowed money to subsidize the purchase of foreign made automobiles, along with domestic models, does not make much economic sense. However, there is another aspect to this program that has thus far escaped scrutiny.

A major driver of the Global Economic Crisis was the stampede of consumers who were enticed into buying new homes they could not afford, due to the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates beyond prudent levels. This created a real estate bubble, and we all know the consequences of that. Now, with “cash for clunkers,” it just may be possible that many of the consumers taking advantage of the credit largesse from Washington are those with incomes that were inadequate for  a new car purchase, but have been persuaded by their own government to take the plunge on a new automobile loan, courtesy of this deficit-financed program. What happens if many of these new car owners end up defaulting on their auto loans, as the recession deepens?  This is by no means a small possibility, given the current dynamics of the nation’s most severe economic contraction since the 1930s. In effect, the American taxpayer may be financing a new wave of consumer loan defaults down the line, further exacerbating what some are now calling the Great Recession.

“Cash for Clunkers” is really a showroom lemon, masquerading as brilliant economic policy. The politicians may think it is ingenious; my own view is that it is symptomatic of the intellectual bankruptcy that has come to dominate Washington’s response to the nation’s descent into financial and economic doom.

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In Q2, Denninger points out, the government’s spending grew by 10.9%, contributing to a positive movement of 3.3% in the second quarter’s reported GDP. Remove that 3.3% from the equation, and the actual Q2 data for the consumer economy witnessed an overall contraction of -5.2%, a figure substantially worse that the official government Q2 report.

The statistical argument raised by Karl Denninger warrants careful consideration by all those who are seeking an accurate gauge of what is actually transpiring in the real economy. Furthermore, the track record of both the Commerce Department and Labor Department has not been exactly stellar with regard to its statistical accuracy in measuring the impact of the Global Economic Crisis on the American economy. Simultaneously with the release of reassuring Q2 numbers, the Commerce Department also admitted it had gotten its evaluation of the recession’s affect on the U.S. economy’s GDP from its onset in Q4 of 2007 through the latter part of 2008 stupendously wrong, now conceding that the actual contraction was -1.9 percent instead of -0.8%, as previously reported.

For More Information on “Global Economic Forecast 2010-2015” please go to the homepage of our website, http://www.globaleconomiccrisis.com 

 

 

　

　

　

　

　

　

 

 

 

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