Debt Black Hole Event Horizon

Economic Singularity and the Minsky Moment

"The alternative 'demand support view' also recognizes the need to contain debt accumulation and avoid high inflation, but it pushes for steps to increase demand in the short run as a means of jump-starting economic growth and setting off a virtuous circle in which income growth, job creation and financial strengthening are mutually reinforcing. International economic dialogue has vacillated between these two viewpoints in recent years."

– Lawrence Summers, The Financial Times, October 14, 2012

By John Mauldin

There is indeed considerable disagreement throughout the world on what policies to pursue in the face of rising deficits and economies that are barely growing or at stall speed. Both sides look at the same set of realities and yet draw drastically different conclusions. Both sides marshal arguments based on rigorous mathematical models "proving" the correctness of their favorite solution, and both sides can point to counter factual that show the other side to be insincere or just plain wrong.

Spain and Greece are both examples of what happens when there is too much debt and austerity is applied to deal with the problem. One side argues that the cure for too much debt is yet more debt, while the other side seemingly argues that the cure for a lack of growth is to shrink the economy. It is as if one side argues that the cure for a night of drunken revelry is a fifth of whiskey while the other side prescribes a very-low-calorie diet of fiber and veggies.

Advanced democracies have lost upward mobility

Once upward mobility is lost, "social recession" sets in and the social contract frays

by Charles Hugh-Smith

Both capitalism and democracy promise the opportunity for upward mobility. Capitalism offers upward mobility to anyone with a profitable idea or productive skillset and work ethic. Democracy implicitly promises a "level playing field" of meritocracy, where talent, drive and hard work open opportunities for advancement.

Crony capitalism offers wealth to the class that already possesses it. Feudalism bestows "rights" to wealth to a favored few. In a way, upward mobility is a real-world test of a nation's economic and social order: if upward mobility exits in name only, then that nation is neither capitalist nor democratic. Stripped of propaganda and misleading labels, it is a feudal society or a crony-capitalist economy masquerading as a capitalist democracy.

Japan is an interesting case study. Some readers of last week's series on Japan noted that Japan was still very wealthy and life was good there. Indeed, some commentators have made the case that Japan has purposefully indebted itself to mask the wealth generated by its export machine: The Myth That Japan is Broke. (via Mike H.)

Ben Bernanke's Secret Philanthropy

Our ‘free society’ has awarded a tiny elite the supreme power to control the price of money

by Simon Black

Legendary oilman T. Boone Pickens famously calls America’s oil imports ‘the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the world.’

Pickens is referring to the money that is paid each year to oil exporting nations, particularly those in the Persian Gulf which raked in around $100 billion last year.

No doubt, this is an enormous transfer of wealth. But it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the TRILLIONS that Ben Bernanke gives the world’s elite.

Over the past few years, central banks have created trillions of dollars, most of which they loaned to commercial banks at 0%. The commercial banks then loaned this money to their best customers (and governments) at a slightly higher rate.

The end result is that a huge chunk of those trillions ended up in the pockets of a small handful of people. The banks and their best customers get sweetheart deals to make even more money, while the vast majority of people get screwed with inflation.

Can Europe prevent Asia's rise?

As Asian states become more influential, international institutions will be molded in an Asian image

By Barry Desker 

Attending conferences in Europe and the United States over the past three years, I have been struck by the increasing Western preoccupation with Asia's rise, the growing influence of the rising powers of Asia, and the challenge they pose to Western values and norms governing international institutions. There is resistance to the idea that the rise of these powers will lead to changes in the decision-making practices of institutions such as the United Nations Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. 

Although it is recognized that China, for example, should have a greater stake in international decision-making, the approach has been to ask whether China will abide by the rules set by the US and Europe after World War II. Europeans are particularly concerned about the decline of their influence and the norms and values that are espoused by them in global diplomacy as Asian powers seek a larger role in global affairs and assert their values. 

Malign neglect vs aggressive indifference

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

By Chan Akya 

The last of the US presidential debates confirmed what has been perfectly clear for a while - whether the incumbent or the challenger is in the White House next year, US policies aren't going to change on the economy or foreign policy. 

There is no fresh thinking in politics in general; when it comes to geopolitical matters this trend has simply become that much more apparent in recent months. Iran will be bombed, Pakistan ignored and Russia incensed over the next four years whoever becomes president. China has been tickled pink with all the commentaries over the past few months, secure in the knowledge that nothing will change. 

As I watched in Europe the various political debates over the summer up to Monday evening, a couple of quotations ran through my mind: "Politics is the art of achieving power and prestige with the complete absence of merit", and "The purpose of psychoanalysis is to go from hysterical misery to ordinary unhappiness". 

If elections in democratic countries were a form of mass psychotherapy by putting the misery of past years up for popular opinion with a perspective of setting a new course, or else accepting the same old course of the incumbent, then the question begs - does the democratic process also deliver a number of alternatives that allow people the benefit of real choice?

What Austerity Looks Like

Bankrupt San Bernardino’s new, skeletal government

BY JEREMY ROZANSKY

Three interconnected forces brought the working-class, inland Southern California city of San Bernardino to insolvency: a burst housing bubble and lethargic economic growth; high police and firefighter salaries mandated by the city’s charter; and compounding pension obligations. Bankruptcy should give San Bernardino leverage to deal with the last two, but the big, structural changes required will not be easy or pleasant. Absent such changes, though, salaries and pensions will continue to grow faster than the city’s revenues, crowding out most other government functions and services. San Bernardino offers a telling illustration of austerity’s causes and effects: a tragic failure to think beyond the short term eventually necessitates painful reforms.

We already know something of what San Bernardino’s government will look like in the age of austerity. The city, with a poverty rate equivalent to Detroit’s and a homicide rate that has quietly surpassed Chicago’s, declared a fiscal emergency in early July and officially filed for bankruptcy on August 1. Deferring payments to bondholders just to make payroll, the city has been forced to trim its budget radically.

Three Meaningless Political Debates

The winner cannot be predicted, but we know for sure who the loser will be

By Ben Tanosborn

Holy debates, Obatman!  For all the personal dislike for each other said to exist between these two ordained priests of American capitalism – often misidentified as Free Market Enterprise – Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have shown to be equally adept at dealing with trivia and secondary issues… and equally inept at dealing with every substantive issue. 

Their polemical theatrics have not tackled head on any of the significant issues affecting the nation’s direction – assuming there is a charted course we’re navigating – by way of any specific domestic or foreign policy.  And that unequivocally affects the nation’s viability in the short, medium and long term.

Perhaps substantive matters are not meant to be debated, lest debaters be found out in either deceit or ignorance. Montaigne said it best when he wrote, “Men only debate and question of the branch, not of the tree.”  [Essays II.xii.] And all three debates have been about the branches and foliage… and not once about the tree (our nation) and our need to diagnose its health, and if found to be diseased, propose a plan of cure.  But the duopoly has chosen for us two arborists who either lack mastery in the field or, the most likely reason, lie to the public for motives which are personally or politically expeditious.  That’s the price Americans must pay for their corrupt two-party system.

It would have been helpful if there had been meaningful questions asked of the candidates to the presidency by either the moderator or a select panel of experts; or if the candidates had exhibited vision and/or courage to bring to the debate – something totally absent in all three debates; questions not just for the candidates to answer, but for the voter to better understand what is at stake in this election. Why do we maintain this political taboo that forces us not to look at ourselves, our institutions or our imperial, undemocratic form of government? Is it our Americentricity?

Why The Nobel Peace Prize For The EU Is So Flawed

EU has grown into a bloated, blind, colossal and very dangerous failure

By Raul Ilargi Meijer

While everybody was asleep in a grandiose globalization and unification dream, a dream whose benefits and desirability were - and still are - hardly ever questioned if at all, separate languages and cultures simply remained what they were: separate. Now that globalization starts to show its dark and ugly flipside of economic depression, a repeal of many unifications and a split-up of larger entities, created for economic and political reasons only, into their smaller components, is inevitable.

Unfortunately, the architects who designed and built the larger entities are still in power. And they - which is probably also inevitable - go for double or nothing. That is a real and present danger for Europe, where Europeanization or even Germanification are the prescription du jour for the poor southern Club Med countries and everyone else, but the ultimate diagnosis will be the Club-medification (or Club-medication?!) of the people in the richer north. And that will lead to trouble. Lots of it.

Japan Is Not A Good Example Of How Deflation Typically Plays Out

The coming giant black hole of credit destruction

By Nicole Foss

Japan is not a good example of how deflation typically plays out. As Ilargi points out, they were an exporting powerhouse exporting into the biggest consumption boom the world has ever seen. They also had a very large pile of money to burn through building their four lane highways from nowhere to nowhere, since they were the world's largest creditor when their bubble burst in 1989. This is clearly not our situation.

No one will be exporting their way out of a global economic depression. In contrast, exporters are going to feel the pain big time as their markets dry up. We can expect trade wars and protectionism to abound. Take note Germany, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand etc etc.

We have had the inflation, only instead of a currency hyperinflation, we experienced a 30 year credit hyper-expansion. Either one amounts to an expansion of money plus credit compared to available goods and services, and is therefore inflation. Credit is equivalent to money on the way up, but not on the way down. Credit loses 'moneyness' and credit instruments are massively devalued in a great deleveraging. This is deflation by definition and it is already underway. Debt monetization is nothing in comparison with the scale of the excess claims to underlying real wealth that stand to be eliminated.

The looming shortfall in public pension costs

It is not likely that we can grow our way out of this problem

By Robert Novy-Marx and Josh Rauh

How much will the underfunded pension benefits of government employees cost taxpayers? The answer is usually given in trillions of dollars, and the implications of such figures are difficult for most people to comprehend. These calculations also generally reflect only legacy liabilities — what would be owed if pensions were frozen today. Yet with each passing day, the problem grows as states fail to set aside sufficient funds to cover the benefits public employees are earning.

In a recent paper, we bring the problem closer to home. We studied how much additional money would have to be devoted annually to state and local pension systems to achieve full funding in 30 years, a standard period over which governments target fully funded pensions. Or, to put a finer point on it, we researched: How much will your taxes have to increase?

We found that, on average, a tax increase of $1,385 per U.S. household per year would be required, starting immediately and growing with the size of the public sector. An alternative would be public-sector budget cuts of a similar magnitude, or a combination of tax increases and cuts adding up to this amount.

For some states these numbers are much higher. New York taxpayers would need to contribute more than $2,250 per household per year over the next 30 years. In Oregon, the amount is $2,140; in Ohio, it is $2,051; in New Jersey, $2,000. California ($1,994), Minnesota ($1,928) and Illinois ($1,907) are not far behind.

The captain's fallacy

Kids: Smarter Than Adults

by J. Tucker 

It's happened yet again: I found another movie presumably made for kids that easily beats many of this season's predictable box-office yawners. The movie this time is The Pirates! Band of Misfits. It is the story of a socially complex group of failed pirates -- people doing their best to make a life for themselves outside official channels -- and their captain's search for fame in the "Pirate of the Year" pageant. 

This supposed kids movie is packed with subtleties, ironic humor, more struggles, and passing references to pop culture. It deals with big and important themes like friendship, betrayal, fame, and the love of money. It deftly handles politics, with an evil Queen Victoria and her loot. 

It asks fundamental questions such as is it really stealing if you take it away from the government? It touches on hard questions of vocation and personality, and the difficulties of balancing the love for one's work and the need for material provision. 

The humor even deals with a some sophisticated understanding of probability theory, such as when the captain says concerning the pageant:

"Every time I've entered, I've failed to win. So I must have a really good chance this time!" 

Kids seem understand the captain's fallacy. Do adults? 

Welcome to Berlin - Europe’s cool new capital

The struggles of Greece or Spain seem a very long way away

BY GIDEON RACHMAN

BERLIN does not feel like an imperial city. The new government buildings — the chancellor’s office, the Bundestag and the foreign ministry — have all been designed with plenty of glass and natural light, to emphasise transparency and democracy. The finance ministry is, admittedly, housed in the old headquarters of the Luftwaffe. But most of the grandest architecture is a legacy of the Prussian kings. Modern Berlin presents a more welcoming face, and has become a magnet for tourists and teenagers.

Yet while the German capital has deliberately eschewed the trappings of imperial power, Berlin is increasingly the de facto capital of the European Union (EU). Of course the EU’s main institutions — the commission and the council — are still based in Brussels. But the key decisions are increasingly made in Berlin.

Will Greece have to leave the euro? Ultimately, it will be Germany’s call. Will politicians support further bail-outs for southern Europe? The vital debates will take place in the Bundestag in Berlin, not in the European parliament. Who does the International Monetary Fund call about the euro crisis? The most important conversations take place with the German government and the European Central Bank in Frankfurt — not with the European Commission.

This shift in power from Brussels to Berlin has been accelerated by the euro crisis. Naturally, German Chancellor Angela Merkel still has to go to summits in Brussels and strike deals. But the euro crisis means Merkel is now incomparably the most important leader at the table.

The Battle for Britain

Will David Cameron be the prime minister who lost the United Kingdom as we know it?

BY ALEX MASSIE

"Stands Scotland where it did?" This is the question, asked by Macduff in Shakespeare's Macbeth that now concentrates minds in Edinburgh and London alike. The battle for Scotland is also a battle for Britain in which the stakes could scarcely be higher. In two years' time, Scots will vote in a referendum to decide the future course of their country. The future of Great Britain (established in 1707 by the union between Scotland and England, each previously independent countries and awkward, frequently warring neighbors) is at stake. The choice is stark: reconfirming the country's commitment to the United Kingdom or setting out on a new course as Europe's newest independent country.

For Alex Salmond, the 57-year old leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), these are giddy times, pregnant with promise and possibility. This is the moment -- the chance for which he has been campaigning his entire political life. It has been a long journey to reach this day.

Last week, Salmond, the leader of Scotland's devolved government, welcomed British Prime Minister David Cameron to Edinburgh, where, after months of public squabbling and quiet backstage negotiation, the pair signed an agreement setting the terms and conditions for Scotland's referendum. The plebiscite will be held in 2014 and will -- though the precise wording of the question has yet to be determined -- ask a simple query: Should Scotland be an independent country?

A Golden Opportunity

Germany Should Seize the Moment!

by Patrick Barron and Godfrey Bloom

The euro debt crisis in Europe has presented Germany with a unique opportunity to lead the world away from monetary destruction and its consequences of economic chaos, social unrest, and unfathomable human suffering. The cause of the euro debt crisis is the misconstruction of the euro that allows all members of the European Monetary Union (EMU), currently 17 sovereign nations, to print euros and force them on all other members. Dr. Philipp Bagus of King Juan Carlos University in Madrid has diagnosed this situation as a tragedy of the commons in his aptly named book The Tragedy of the Euro. Germany is on the verge of seeing its capital base plundered from the inevitable dynamics of this tragedy of the commons. It should leave the EMU, reinstate the deutsche mark (DM), and anchor it to gold.

The Structure of the European Monetary Union

The European System of Central Banks (ESCB) consists of one central bank, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the national central banks of the EMU, all of which are still extant within their own sovereign nations. Although the ECB is prohibited by treaty from monetizing the debt of its sovereign members via outright purchases of their debt, it has interpreted this limitation on its power not to include lending euros to the national central banks taking the very same sovereign debt as collateral. Of course this is simply a backdoor method to circumvent the very limitation that was insisted on when the more responsible members such as Germany joined the European Monetary Union.

Corruption of the European Central Bank into an Engine of Inflation

When the ECB was first formed around the turn of the new millennium, the bond markets assumed that it would be operated along the lines of the German central bank, the Bundesbank, which ran probably the least inflationary monetary system in the developed world. However, they also assumed that the EMU would not allow one of its members to default on its sovereign debt. Therefore, the interest rate for many members of the EMU fell to German levels. Unfortunately, many nations in the EMU did not use this lower interest rate as an opportunity to reduce their budgets; rather, many simply borrowed more. Thus was born the euro debt crisis, when it became clear to the bond market that debt repayment by many members of the EMU was questionable. Interest rates for these nations soared.

The Fire Next Time

The dangers of revolutionary thinking

By William Deresiewicz

A new idea seems to be at loose in the land, on the fringes and Facebook, among the young and the disaffected. The system is collapsing—so let it just collapse. There’s nothing we can do about it anyway, and that is probably the best solution after all. The government, the corporations, the fat cats, the vested interests: let them all go smash. We’ll pick up the pieces afterwards and start again.

This is a philosophy (to use the term loosely) that seems uniquely suited to the age. Call it passive revolution. Everything is going to change, and all we need to do is sit back and let it happen. No ideas required, no program or effort. The messianic illusion—of which this, like all visions of revolution, is a form—is a permanent temptation of political life, especially for the young (and we’re all young now). It gave us Obama in 2008, Occupy in 2011. But revolution’s not a game. I wonder, when I hear people talk, with a sort of suppressed schadenfreude, about the coming collapse, whether they have taken the trouble to think, for even a moment, about what they’re suggesting. We’ll pick up the pieces afterwards? What are those “pieces”—the wreck of every system that keeps us fed and safe—going to look like? What makes us think we’ll be the ones who get to pick them up?

Joseph Conrad, who had seen a revolution or two, put it this way:

"A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards comes the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time … The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane and devoted natures, the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement—but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims—the victims of disgust, disenchantment—often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured—that is the definition of revolutionary success."

Liberal democracy, for all of its enormous and inherent flaws, is not a thing to be discarded lightly. The only alternative so far, in modern society, is fascism—and I see lots of fascists at both ends of the political spectrum, lots of would-be commissars and commandants, who would be happy to step into the vacuum. We’ve been here before, between the world wars. Economic crisis, political stalemate: despair at liberal democracy is exactly what they brought on, and fascism, too often, was precisely the result. The hazy dream, the purifying fire: not these again, not these.

Iran: Negotiations or War?

What is the grave threat that justifies a war?

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

“It would be unconscionable to go to war if we haven’t had such discussions,” said Nicholas Burns, under secretary of state in the Bush administration, of reports the Obama White House has agreed to one-on-one talks with Tehran over its nuclear program.

Sen. Lindsey Graham dissented Sunday: “I think the time for talking is over. … We talk, they enrich. It needs to stop. We need to have red lines coordinated with Israel and end this before it gets out of hand.”

Clearly, Graham believes an ultimatum, followed by an attack if Iran denies us “access to their nuclear program,” is the way to “end this.”

What kind of attack?

According to David Rothkopf, writing in Foreign Policy magazine, U.S. and Israeli military authorities are discussing a joint attack, and the idea getting the most traction is “a U.S.-Israeli surgical strike targeting Iranian enrichment facilities.”

“The strike might take only ‘a couple of hours’ in the best case and only would involve ‘a day or two’ overall, the source said, and would be conducted by air, using primarily bombers and drone support.”

Big Brother In France

When you get inside people’s homes there is the possibility to collect a lot of data on individuals

By Jeff Harding

Heating a French home could soon require an income tax consultation or even a visit to the doctor under legislation to force conservation in the nation’s $46 billion household energy market.

A bill adopted by the lower house this month would set prices that homes pay based on wages, age and climate. Utilities Electricite de France SA and GDF Suez SA (GSZ) will use the data to reward consumers who cut power and natural gas usage and penalize those whom regulators decide are wasteful.

“It’s Orwellian,” opposition lawmaker Daniel Fasquelle said by telephone. “The law will create huge inequalities and infringe on people’s individual freedoms. It won’t work.”

Socialist President Francois Hollande is pushing boundaries of privacy and privilege in carrying out a campaign promise to reduce energy costs. France, which built the world’s biggest reliance on nuclear power as other nations buckled under public anxiety over atomic energy, is now seeking support to reward homes for “negawatts,” or not using a kilowatt of power.

The law would be unique to France and is symbolic to the Socialists, a government official who declined to be identified said yesterday. Households bought 35 billion euros ($46 billion) of energy in 2011, including power, gas and other heating fuels.

The legislation drew criticism from trade unions and industry groups. It will add layers of bureaucracy to a power system already attacked in court and antitrust probes for being oppressive for customers and competitors of EDF (EDF) and GDF Suez, the former state monopolies that still dominate supply, opponents said.

Misconceptions about the debasement of money

“But there is no inflation!” 

by DETLEV SCHLICHTER

“But there is no inflation!” – This is a statement I hear quite often, sometimes from people who are, in principle, sympathetic to my arguments, sometimes from people who are less so. In either case, those who state “but there is no inflation” consider it to be a statement of fact and one that they assume must pose a challenge for me. Should the man who argues that we are heading for the collapse of paper money, for some kind of hyperinflationary endgame, not be concerned that all this money printing by central banks around the world has not led to much higher inflation yet? Do present inflation statistics not provide comfort to those who believe in the practicability and even superiority of central-bank-managed fiat money, and do these statistics not allow them to discard my analysis as paranoid?

The short answer is, no.

The long answer I will provide below.

First of all, there is, of course, inflation, and quite a bit of it. In all major industrial countries official inflation is positive, and in some countries inflation has for years been persistently above the official inflation target (UK, Euro Zone). As I keep saying, the debasement of paper money continues. This is meaningful. Also, this inflation is harmful, even if it is not hyperinflation yet. That this inflation is nothing to worry about, or that it is even beneficial is a complete misconception.

Reclaiming Democratic Capitalism

A Misguided Case for Interventionism

By William Voegeli

The woman's face trembles from what appears to be early-stage Parkinson's disease. Combined with the charged words she speaks to the filmmaker's camera, however, her shaking leaves the impression she is also battling to control her anger and despair:

"They have families; have little ones.... Their livelihoods was there. They were making a good wage. And this company comes in and they knocked it all away. They knock their wages down, they take their jobs away, and then eventually they close the plant.

We feel like if he would have wanted to, he was in a position that he could have said, "Hey—these people still got time left." No, that was not the deal. They wanted the machinery; they didn't want us. And that's what they got.

Let's look deeper. Let's look deeper in his life. I think he's a money man...and he's gonna look out for the money people. He didn't look [out] for us little peons, anyway."

"He" is Mitt Romney and "this company" is American Pad and Paper—"AmPad"—in which Bain Capital, the investment firm Romney co-founded and led, once held a controlling interest. In July 1994 it acquired SCM, a manufacturer of hanging folders and writing products with a factory in Marion, Indiana. After the acquisition, according to a New York magazine story on Romney's business career, AmPad fired all of the union workers [at the Marion plant], more than 250 people in total, then hired most of them back at much lower wages; for years, they had gotten health-care coverage as part of their pay package, but now AmPad asked them to pay half of the costs. The whole plant walked out.

Come Home, America

The Democrats could use a bracing shot of McGovernism

By BILL KAUFFMAN

To the slanting wall above my desk is taped a large “Come Home America/ Vote McGovern Shriver ’72” poster. Designed by artist Leonard R. Fuller, the collage fills an outline of the United States with iconographic images, historic statuary, and photos of unprepossessing but individuated Americans. The message is peace and brotherhood and a return to the ideals of the Founders. The mood is civics-class hippie, antiwar wife-of-a-Rotarian, liberal community-college-professor-who-cries-at-“America the Beautiful.” Like George McGovern himself, the poster suggests that a hopeful and patriotic mild radicalism resides on Main Street America. Or as Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe once asked, what’s so funny ‘bout peace, love, and understanding?

Even now, 30 and three years after Sen. George McGovern of Mitchell, South Dakota was buried by Richard M. Nixon under an electoral-vote landslide of 520-17-1 (Virginia elector Roger MacBride, heir to the Little House on the Prairie goldmine, bolted Nixon for Libertarian John Hospers), “McGovernism” remains Beltway shorthand for a parodistic liberalism that is, at once, ineffectual, licentious, and wooly-headed. It stands for “acid, amnesty, and abortion,” as the Humphrey-Jackson Democrats put it.