In the past few days the equity markets, in particular the Dow Jones index, have displayed wild gyrations. One day stocks fall sharply, followed by a near equal climb the following day, only to shortly afterwards swing down sharply again. The sentiment-driven swings on the world’s bourses display extreme nervousness  by investors. Increasingly, they are beginning to catch on that the “recovery” was no secular recovery following the  global economic and financial crisis of 2008, but a short-lived stabilization. Now, reality is catching up fast.

For the past few months, there have been indications of stagnation in the world’s fourth largest economy, Germany, which has been the sole force holding together the debt-ridden Eurozone. Now comes the August figures on German exports: a decline of 5.8 percent (http://www.dw.de/german-exports-take-a-deep-dive-in-august/a-17983575), the worst contraction in Germany’s critical export sector since January of 2009, at the worst point of the global economic crisis.

The German export contraction is merely a hint of what is happening globally. Trade growth is slowing, inhibiting the ability of sovereigns to finance their massive structural deficits and cope with record high levels of unemployment. The geopolitical situation is very bad and getting worse, pointing to further erosion in economic confidence. It may be that the global economy is only one major crisis away from another catastrophe, as in 2008. And the sources of that next crisis are everywhere around us: the Islamic State war in the heart of the Middle East; looming tension with Iran over the nuclear issue; border tensions between India and Pakistan;  a territorial dispute in the Far East that pits China against Japan and Vietnam. Then there is the Ukraine crisis, pitting Russia against most of Europe and the United States. On top of the geopolitical flashpoints, there is now the emerging global health crisis involving the Ebola virus. Any one of these flash points can trigger a “Black Swan” event that could plunge all major economies into a severe recession.

While all those negative indicators envelope our world, central banks across the globe are giving increasing signs that sooner rather than later the policy of essentially zero-interest rates will have to be reversed, as the distorting effects  of artificially low rates cannot be maintained in perpetuity. Yet, it has been largely those low rates, in combination with the unleashing of a flood of liquidity, that are largely responsible for the limited economic growth that has occurred since 2008, along with the recovery of the world’s stock markets from their worst losses  incurred during the onset of the crisis.

The mood swings on Wall Street and elsewhere appear to be the tracing of a fiscal and economic electrocardiograph, delineating that not all is well with the global economy, and the warning signals are flashing red. Underlying and reinforcing those fears is the knowledge within the financial community that sovereigns expended so much of their capital in coping with the last worldwide economic crisis, there is little left for policymakers to react with when the next big financial and economic tsunami  strikes the global economy.

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A characteristic of the global financial and economic crisis that erupted in 2008 is that central banks have usurped the role of policy maker in sovereign states from the politicians. In the absence of coherent economic and fiscal policies in the United States, Japan, the Eurozone and United Kingdom, central bankers have employed their power over the printing press with unprecedented vigor, unleashing a tidal wave of liquidity in a desperate effort to stave off a global economic depression. With the manipulative aplomb of a snake charmer, they have sought to push down interest rates to a point where short term rates in most advanced economies are at virtually zero, while arousing confidence from investors and consumers who would have otherwise have little to cheer about.

The central bankers, in the minds of many, are the heroes of the economic crisis, supposedly saving the global economy from credit atrophy and demand destruction while the feckless politicians stood by helplessly. In case you would otherwise be unaware of the supposedly epic achievement performed by the central bankers, they have engaged themselves in a massive public relations drive during the crisis, paralleling their mega-liquidity dumps, seeking to persuade the public that central banks have become the new temples of salvation in an otherwise bleak economic and fiscal dystopia.

There has now emerged a strong voice that seems be throwing a wet blanket over the self-adulation that has become a by-product of central banks. Jaime Caruana is a name largely unknown to the public at large, but intimately familiar to every central banker. He is the general manager of the Bank for International Settlements; the BIS serves as a global clearing house for central banks.  Here is what Caruana had to say at the recently-concluded annual meeting of the BIS:

“Extending monetary stimulus is taking the pressure off those who need to act. Ultra-low interest rates encourage the build-up of even more debt. In fact, despite some household deleveraging in some countries, total debt private and public, has generally increased as a share of GDP since 2007. For the advanced and emerging market economies , it has risen by about 20 percentage points of GDP, or by $33 trillion — and rising government debt has been the main driver. This is clearly not sustainable. Low rates have allowed the public sector to postpone consolidation at the risk of a further deterioration in sovereign credit quality and damage to longer-term growth. There is plenty of evidence that as public debt surpasses about 80 percent  of GDP, it becomes a drag on growth, because it raises debt servicing costs and uncertainty about the future tax burden; it increases sovereign risk premia; and it reduces the room available for counter-cyclical policy.”

In effect, the general manager of the Bank for International Settlements is warning that the radical steps undertaken by central banks during the global crisis can do no more than buy time for the politicians to get their act together and craft sound economic and fiscal policies that are the underpinnings of sustained growth. To believe that central banks can or should continue their artificial pump priming indefinitely as a substitute for true economic reforms is to evade understanding of the scope and limits of what central banks are capable of.

Caruana offered the following summation:

“Borrowed time should be used to restore the foundations of solid long-term growth. This includes ending the dependence ondebt; improving economic flexibility to strengthen productivity growth; completing regulatory reform; and recognizing the limits of what central banks can and should do.”

Regrettably, none of the steps outlined by the BIS general manager have been implemented in any major advanced economy impacted by the global economic and financial crisis. It is likely that the limits of what central banks can accomplish will only be realized when the next major financial crisis arises.

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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.

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In  the last 100 years, encountering a year in which the U.S. federal government has achieved a balanced  budget has been as rare as the chance that Vladimir and Estragon will actually meet Godot. As with most Western economies as well as Japan, fiscal deficits by sovereign governments have become so normative that a term has long been in vogue to describe this phenomenon, the co-called “structural deficit.” But all that was prior to the onset  of the global financial and economic crisis, which erupted in 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. We are all now in new territory, never before encountered  by sovereign governments on such a prolific scale. Welcome to the era of the structural mega-deficit.

In compiling data for my new book, “Global Economic Forecast 2010-2015: Recession Into Depression” (http://www.createspace.com/3403422), I recognized that the size of current and projected fiscal deficits for the United States and other advanced and major economies was so much greater than typical structural deficits, a new terminology was required. The term I have adopted  in my report, “structural mega-deficit,” implies a whole new and unprecedented reality for public financing. In essence, a deficit which approaches or exceeds 10% of a national economy’s GDP, and has an aspect of permanence similar to previously tolerated structural deficits, has entered the fiscally turbulent terrain of structural mega-deficits.

As with private consumers, sovereign economic policymakers have become addicted to debt, nowhere more so than in the United States, Western Europe and Japan. For example, when the Eurozone was established with a single currency, participants were expected to show “prudent” fiscal management of the public finances, by ensuring that their national deficits did not exceed 3% of national GDP. Heaven forbid a balanced budget had even been suggested as an ideal target. Now, however, even the Eurozone’s supposedly responsible 3% cap on annual deficit to GDP ratios is coming apart at the seams, witnessed most recently by the  fiscal crisis in Greece, where the current  budget deficit is expected to reach 12.7% of that nation’s GDP.

It is the United States, however, where the emergence of the structural mega-deficit reaps the most tangible dangers for the global economy. In the past, key economic policymakers throughout the world maintained that a structural deficit of around 3% of GDP could be easily sustained  as long as the national economy produced a modest level of growth. However, there exists no mathematical models that demonstrate how any nation’s economy, including that of the U.S., can sustain structural mega-deficits. With the official U.S. deficit for  the 2009 fiscal year having reached 10% of GDP and the 2010 federal budget likely to produce a deficit in the range of $1.5 trillion, America’s public finances are clearly in a debt trap that is unsustainable by any logical measure. The Congressional Budget Office projects a cumulative deficit of $9 trillion over the next decade; based on the CBO’s track record, the actual deficit is likely to be much worse.

One of the strange paradoxes for the U.S. economy is that in 2009, even with a tripling of the national deficit, the annual payment by the federal government for interest on the national debt was actually lower than the prior year. This was due to the unique and anomalous conjunction of much of America’s national debt being financed by short-term Treasuries with historically low interest rates established by the Federal Reserve. However, with growing doubts on the part of foreign lenders as to the long-term credit worthiness of the United States, it is inevitable that the days when much of America’s growing debt load could be financed at almost zero interest rates will soon end. With  the public debt of the United States  based on an average turnover for refinancing  of four years, the shortest timeframe of any large indebted economy, a spike in bond yields will add potentially hundreds of billions of dollars to the annual U.S. deficit. A time may not be far off when current taxes and other federal government revenue will cover less than half of the annual expenditures of the federal government. All this will be occurring as outlays for Social Security and Medicare begin to exceed revenues, adding further to the structural mega-deficit, and at a rate that will become increasingly voracious.

The ultimate tragedy about the present and future danger of structural mega-deficits in the United States and other major economies is that this is an impending train wreck that can be viewed  from a great distance before its catastrophic impact. Yet, in spite of the clear and obvious unsustainability of structural mega-deficits, with very few exceptions the political leadership in the United States, in both the Democratic and Republican parties, is conspicuously silent.

As if on cue, the Dow Jones index soared to the skies in sequence with the Commerce Department’s triumphant announcement that the third quarter GDP growth in the United States was a robust  3.5 %. After 4 consecutive quarters of economic contraction, the pronouncement that the American economy was now growing, and at a stronger rate than many experts had forecasted, the cheerleaders on Wall Street are celebrating the end of the recession. Hallelujah, the Great Recession is over, the stimulus package has worked!

Not so fast.

Let us journey back into recent history of just over one year ago. It is August 28, 2008 and the Commerce Department has just released its revised growth figures for the second quarter of 2008. It turned out, according to the statisticians at  the Commerce Department, that the American economy grew at a much faster pace than originally reported. The revised Q2 GDP growth figure for 2008 was 3.3%, nearly identical with the Q3 figures now being reported in 2009. The pundits rejoiced at this magnificent economic news, proclaiming that these numbers reflected the success of the $150 billion deficit-driven  stimulus package approved by Congress at the beginning of the year. Analysts proclaimed that the impressive growth figures for  Q2 of 2008 meant that the U.S. economy had dodged a bullet, and thanks to loose fiscal and monetary measures, there would be no recession.

Two weeks after the release of the revised and supremely optimistic quarterly growth figures by the Commerce Department, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, the global financial system went into cardiac arrest and a synchronized recession struck virtually every economy on the face of the earth.

Before celebrating the glorious Q3 numbers for the U.S. economy, I recommend that prudent observers reflect on the massive levels of public indebtedness required to create the accounting metrics that can demonstrate economic growth simultaneously with the devastation of the real economy  and continuing increases in an already staggeringly high level of unemployment. Furthermore, digest the reality that car sales generated by the recent “cash for clunkers” program contributed nearly  1.7% of the 3.5% growth in GDP in Q3. Then, looking at the recent history referred to above, ask the hard questions on how sustainable the trajectory suggested by the third quarter numbers really is.

In my view, the 3.5% Q3 numbers of 2009 are as reliable an indicator of future economic growth as were the 3.3% GDP growth figures in 2008. As George Santayana stated, those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

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

A fundamental dispute over financial policy and regulation in the UK has burst into the open. The Governor of the Bank of England (the UK’s central bank), Mervyn King, delivered a speech that, in effect, called for a British version of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which separated commercial banking from more speculative investment banking in the United States. The Glass-Steagall Act was a product of the Great Depression, which witnessed the mass closure of U.S. banks. By creating a firm Chinese Wall of separation between commercial and investment banking, America was spared a repetition of the financial disaster that followed the stock market crash of 1929, that is until the Clinton administration decided to “modernize” the U.S. financial system by repealing Glass-Steagall. This dose of legislative idiocy was a major cause of the financial meltdown of 2008.

Mervyn King has stated on the public record his belief that commercial and investment banking must be separated in the United Kingdom, or the nation risks a repetition of the recent disasters which have led the British taxpayers to spends hundreds of billions of pounds to prop up their insolvent banks. He feels the Brown government has not gone nearly far enough on banking reform. In his recent public discourse, King said, “To paraphrase a great wartime leader, never in the field of financial endeavour has so much money been owed by so few to so many. And, one might add, so far with little real reform.”

Gordon Brown, it would seem, thinks King is going way too far.  The embattled British Prime Minister was most accommodating in bailing out overleveraged UK banks, but is not so keen to impose the degree of regulatory supervision and restrictions that the Bank of England governor feels is necessary to avoid a future financial disaster. Using his chancellor of the exchequer,  Alistair Darling, as his mouthpiece, Brown rebuked the Bank of England chief for his public expression of concern on banking reform.

In addition to his concern on financial regulation, King has also voiced repeated distress on the growing size of the UK’s structural deficit and national debt. Other economists have warned that the United Kingdom is losing control over its fiscal destiny. In my opinion, without radical changes in the very near future, the next PM of the UK (almost certainly Brown will not be re-elected in next year’s general election) will inherit an insolvent nation.

On September 15, 2008 the supposedly safe, perpetually prosperous world of post-industrial capitalism blew itself up when Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The iconic Wall Street investment bank was forced into this act of extremis when the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the United States turned the securitized mortgage backed debt obligations engineered by the wizards on Wall Street into toxic assets, in the process extinguishing most of the storied investment banks in the United States, including Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch. In those previous cases, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke cobbled together a pseudo rescue, whereby these two firms were absorbed by JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America respectively, with massive financial aid and guarantees against bad debt generously provided courtesy of the American taxpayer. However, when Lehman Brothers stood on the precipice, the economic policymakers in Washington were confronted by the issue of moral hazard, and the growing public distaste with the concept of “too big too fail,” the justification previously issued by Paulson and Bernanke to prop up failing Wall Street firms.

The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve made a decision to allow Lehman Brothers to fold, assuming its demise would not pose a systemic risk to the global financial system.  Shortly afterwards, AIG was also on the verge of bankruptcy, due solely to the exposure of its Credit Default Swap operation spearheaded from its London office. Treasury Secretary Paulson stated that AIG was so large a factor in the global financial system, its business liquidation could not be allowed to occur, regardless of the subsidies required to keep it afloat. Through the middle of 2009, the U.S. government would inject in excess of $180 billion dollars into AIG.

The calculation made by Bernanke and Paulson that Lehman Brothers was expendable, especially in light of the measures taken to save AIG, Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, not to mention Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was destined to be proved fatally flawed, and in rapid order. As with so much else about the Fed and Treasury Department in terms of assessing the systemic impact of the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and its related financial derivatives, they badly underestimated the destructive forces that had been unleashed upon the global financial system by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. When Lehman Brothers imploded, its debris virtually froze the entire global interbank lending mechanism, and brought the flow of credit to a virtual standstill.

An immediate consequence of the disintegration of Lehman Brothers was the accelerating rise in the LIBOR and Ted Spreads, reflecting frozen global credit markets saturated with counterparty risk aversion. Money market funds were being depleted at a dangerously rapid pace, and economic indicators across the globe were heading south at a pace that soon became a free fall. The possibility of another Great Depression was openly being talked about, as it became abundantly clear that Lehman Brothers and its derivatives were far more embedded with the global financial system than the supposedly smart men of finance and economics who ran the Treasury and Federal Reserve had led themselves and the public to believe.

The rest was history. Paulson and Bernanke, in a state of panic, compelled a terrorized Congress to borrow $700 billion and hand it over to Treasury, supposedly to buy up toxic assets polluting the balance sheets of the nation’s banks, under the auspices of a program that came to be known as TARP. Once Paulson got his money, he changed direction, choosing to inject the TARP funds directly into the banks, as opposed to buying toxic assets. The Fed engaged in an unprecedented degree of monetary measures, becoming the lender to Wall Street and corporate America of last resort.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers undoubtedly was a major factor in the November 2008 presidential election, which witnessed the historic triumph of Barack Obama. The new president maintained many of the policies put in place by Paulson after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, reappointed Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve Chairman, and brought in a $787 billion economic stimulus package, also based on borrowed money, to help reverse the worst recession the United States has endured since the Great Depression.

One year after Lehman Brothers disintegrated, the entire world is in the grips of the most severe synchronized global recession since World War II. We are told, however, that things could have been much worse, if the “brilliant” policymakers who had initially misjudged the extent of the economic and financial crisis had not taken such radical steps, all of which have involved an unprecedented level of public debt, and the bailouts generously awarded to the most reckless Wall Street firms. Also, one year afterwards, the extravagant executive bonuses are still being sprinkled on the Wall Street crowd, at levels that rival pre-meltdown levels.

Unquestionably, the demise of Lehman Brothers was a seminal point in global financial and economic history. I do not believe, however, we have witnessed the full consequences of its collapse. I fear that the worst is yet to come.

Under the tutelage of Chairman Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve system has achieved the heights of power, while simultaneously the economy it  presides over has descended to the depths of  despair. This Zen paradox sums of the inexplicable success of Ben Bernanke. Having ignored or mistakenly assessed all the warning signs that the American housing bubble had burst and was set to take down the Wall Street investment banks, the panicky and massive policy measures undertaken by Bernanke in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year have made him the improbable hero of the global financial and economic crisis. With Bernanke set to be reappointed as Fed Chairman by President Barack Obama, it seems both he and the Federal Reserve have successfully consolidated their monetary and economic omnipotence.

Yet, some cracks in the foundations of the Fed’s  previously unassailable power have begun to emerge. Manhattan Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska has issued a ruling in the case of Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System that marks the first challenge to the virtual dictatorship on monetary policy that Bernanke has been able to impose on Congress and the media. The lawsuit had been filed by the Bloomberg news organization after the Federal Reserve refused to disclose the recipients of $2 trillion in emergency loans it provided to troubled banks. The rationalization used by the Federal Reserve for its refusal to follow the legal requirements of the Freedom of Information Act truly defines the meaning of arrogance. If the American taxpayers, who are ultimately on the line for the loans, were to know the identity of the banks receiving financial aid from the Federal Reserve, they would act irresponsibly and perpetuate a run on those very institutions, claim Bernanke‘s minions. In other words, Nixonian logic applied to the massive indebtedness of the American taxpayer, who is not entitled to know for whom the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve is being overloaded with toxic assets.

In its lawsuit, Bloomberg stated that disclosing the beneficiaries of the Federal Reserve‘s largesse is “central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression.”  However, Bernanke and company are not interested in illuminating the public in their understanding of the government’s role in the crisis, especially that of the Federal Reserve. Full disclosure might very well contradict the image being crafted by the Fed’s aggressive public relations program to portray Ben Bernanke as the saviour of the American economy and global financial system.

The Fed may still appeal Judge Preska’s ruling. However, if the ruling prevails and becomes precedent, it will mark a rare but important defeat for the Federal Reserve’s cone of silence and lack of transparency.

Alan Grayson is a Democratic Congressman  representing Florida’s 8th congressional district. He was elected in 2008, having beaten the 4-term Republican incumbent. Despite his freshman status, Grayson is already developing a reputation as a fierce advocate for taxpayer interests in the wake of massive bailouts of the financial sector that have been orchestrated by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. Serving on the Financial Services Committee and subcommittee that deals with capital markets, the congressman, having been a successful entrepreneur, clearly knows how to read a balance sheet and ask relevant questions. Thus, the stage was set when the Florida congressman had the opportunity to question Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke when the latter appeared before Congress to present an update on the economic crisis gripping America and much of the world.

Congressman  Grayson demanded details from Bernanke on a half trillion dollars in  liquidity swaps to foreign central banks undertaken by the Federal Reserve, apparently under the radar and in the dead of night. Demonstrating that he and his staff had done their fact-checking, Grayson noted that in 2007 these swaps with overseas central banks were a mere $24 billion, but had swelled to a staggering $553 billion in 2008 with the onset of the Global Economic Crisis.
The exchange between Grayson and Bernanke appears almost Kafkaesque in its reality-defying character, conveyed in the following, as a clearly uncomfortable Fed Chairman provides a tortured explanation regarding this half  trillion dollar transaction:

Bernanke: “Those are swaps that were done with foreign central banks…”
Grayson: “So who got the money?”
Bernanke: “Financial institutions in Europe and other countries…”
Grayson: “Which ones?”
Bernanke: “I don’t know.”
Grayson: “Half a trillion dollars and you don’t know who got the money?”
Bernanke: “Um, um, the loans go to the central banks and they then put them out to their institutions…”
Half a trillion dollars is a number so grandiose, it defies comprehension unless it is reduced to its ultimate simplicity. These credit swaps that exchanged American dollars for various foreign currencies were done without any consultation with elected officials, and amount to more than $1,800 for every man, woman and child residing in the United States. Under section 14 of the Federal Reserve Act, according to Chairman Bernanke, the Fed’s Open Market Committee (FOMC) can engage in swapping U.S. dollars with foreign central banks without any limitations, at any time, without any requirement for congressional scrutiny. In other words,  “Congressman Grayson, why are you wasting my valuable time with these irrelevant questions,” Bernanke seemed to be implying through his frosty demeanour. Never mind that the Federal Reserve Act was originally passed in 1913, nearly a century ago.

“Is it safe to say that nobody in 1913 contemplated that a small little group of people would decide to hand out half a trillion dollars to foreigners,” Grayson pointed out. He raised as an example New Zealand, which received $9 billion from the Federal Reserve, an amount equal to $3,000 for every one of that nation’s citizens.

The congressman from Florida’s 8th district is to be commended for his focussed inquiries directed at the Fed Chairman, and steadfastness in the face of Bernanke’s evasiveness. More importantly, Grayson raises anew serious questions regarding the unlimited power placed in the hands of the Federal Reserve. The defenders of the Fed’s current position of fiscal omnipotence maintain that its independence from political influence must be preserved. However, the historical record, especially in the last 20 years, clearly shows that the Federal Reserve is influenced politically, either through the executive branch and the power of the President to reappoint the Fed Chairman, or through the large financial institutions on Wall Street, which have a level of access to Fed decision-making not available to any other category of citizens. More importantly, since the onset of the current financial and economic crisis, the Federal Reserve and its chairman have proven to be highly fallible, having made many errors in judgment, not the least being their original overly-optimistic pronouncements when the first tremors from the subprime meltdown arose.

Congressman Grayson’s penetrating inquiry serves as a reminder that the ultimate systemic risk to America’s financial system and economic superstructure stems from allowing a small, fallible clique to make speedy decisions involving incalculable sums of public money without any consultation with or checks and balances from the nation’s elected representatives. This is not only fiscal tyranny by any other name; it is a recipe for unintended and disastrous consequences.

When media reports surfaced last week claiming that the prophet of doom of the Global Economic Crisis, NYU economics professor Nouriel Roubini, had  “improved” upon his previously gloomy economic forecast and predicted the recession would end by the close of 2009, a stock market rally was ignited. It seems it does not take much to facilitate a bear market sucker’s rally on Wall Street at this time of global economic distress, including false rumours. To his credit, Roubini swiftly set the record straight with the following comment on his blog:

“It has been widely reported today that I have stated that the recession will be over ‘this year’ and that I have ‘improved’ my economic outlook. Despite those reports – however – my views expressed today are no different than the views I have expressed previously. If anything my views were taken out of context.”

Nouriel Roubini has consistently stated that he expected the current recession-by far the worst America has experienced since World War II- to terminate by the close of the year. This has been his longstanding forecast. Thus, when he repeated this consistent prediction of his, the media went wild with excitement, discarding the continuity of his forecast and presenting his belief that by the close of 2009 the recession would end as a surprise revelation. With business journalism like this, no wonder the Dow Jones is searching new highs even as employment numbers continue to plummet.

What is noteworthy about Roubini’s most recent insights on the economic situation are their increasingly gloomy tone related to the mid-term and long-term prospects for the American economy. This is largely predicated on the growing fiscal imbalance in connection with the public indebtedness of the United States. Though a supporter of the vast deficit-driven stimulus programs and expensive bailouts of the financial sector owing to his belief that to negate these policy responses would have resulted in the collapse of the global financial system and the free fall contraction of the U.S. economy, Roubini is not unmindful of the their consequences. In that sense, he parts company from other advocates of deficit-creating economic stimulus packages, including Paul Krugman, who prefer to discard the danger of the vastly-expanding debt of the federal government.

In addition to his concern about the ramifications of unprecedented levels of budget deficits, Roubini is also worried that the end of the recession he has long forecasted will now be only temporary, to be followed by a double dip recession during the latter half of 2010, interrupted by anaemic growth of less than 1%.

The forces contributing to what, at best, will be a weak recovery in 2010 are linked to the uniformly negative statistics on employment which, according to Professor Roubini, have a direct impact on an economy as highly dependent on consumer spending as America’s. According to Roubini, commenting on the latest employment numbers,  “these raw figures on job losses, bad as they are, actually understate the weakness in world labor markets. If you include partially employed workers and discouraged workers who left the U.S. labor force, for example, the unemployment rate is already 16.5 per cent. Monetary and fiscal stimulus in most countries has done little to slow down the rate of job losses. As a result, total labor income — the product of jobs times hours worked times average hourly wages — has fallen dramatically.”

In his recent observations on declining labor income and its relationship to the continuing financial and economic crisis, Roubini identifies how this factor will exacerbate several interlocking indices. Consumer loan defaults across the board-mortgages, students loans, credit card debt-will continue to increase, adding to the level of toxicity of assets on the balance sheets of banks, and extending the credit crunch. Government revenues will decline while the need to fund unemployment benefits and other social expenditures will grow, further increasing budgetary deficits. Professor Roubini summarizes the growing contradictions in utilizing fiscal and monetary policy responses as the primary sovereign means of countering the worst global economic disaster since the Great Depression as follows:
“The higher the unemployment rate goes, the wider budget deficits will become, as automatic stabilisers reduce revenue and increase spending (for example, on unemployment benefits). Thus, an already unsustainable U.S. fiscal path, with budget deficits above 10 per cent of GDP and public debt expected to double as a share of GDP by 2014, becomes even worse. This leads to a policy dilemma: rising unemployment rates are forcing politicians in the U.S. and other countries to consider additional fiscal stimulus programs to boost sagging demand and falling employment. But, despite persistent deflationary pressure through 2010, rising budget deficits, high financial-sector bailout costs, continued monetisation of deficits, and eventually unsustainable levels of public debt will ultimately lead to higher expected inflation — and thus to higher interest rates, which would stifle the recovery of private demand.”
This leads to what economists refer to as a “W” or double dip recession. In other words, the very policy responses politicians and their advocates claim are vital to restoring the economy may, by the end of 2010, become the principal enabler of forces that will unleash round two of the Global Economic Crisis.

Nouriel Roubini had warned for years that the subprime mortgage sector would bring about financial and economic calamity, and take down much of the investment banking industry. Today we would all be wise to listen carefully to Professor Roubini’s warnings on the growing danger of a double dip recession and the long-term implications of a fiscal roadmap being pursued by our politicians that, in Roubini’s prescient words, is “unsustainable.” Given his track record, we can only discard the truth of which Roubini speaks at our peril.