John Mauldin describes why we should be concerned about Greece and increasing debt.

Link: What Does Greece Mean to You?

It seems we did not learn the lessons of this crisis very well. First, we have not fixed the problems that made the crisis so severe. We have not regulated credit default swaps, for instance. And European banks are still highly leveraged.

Why is Greece important? Because so much of their debt is on the books of European banks. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth. And just a few years ago this seemed like a good thing. The rating agencies made Greek debt AAA, and banks could use massive leverage (almost 40 times in some European banks) and buy these bonds and make good money in the process. (Don’t ask Dad why people still trust rating agencies. Some things just can’t be explained.)

Except, now that Greek debt is risky. Today, it appears there will be some kind of bailout for Greece. But that is just a band-aid on a very serious wound. The crisis will not go away. It will come back, unless the Greeks willingly go into their own Great Depression by slashing their spending and raising taxes to a level that no one in the US could even contemplate. What is being demanded of them is really bad for them, but they did it to themselves.

But those European banks? When that debt goes bad, and it will, they will react to each other just like they did in 2008. Trust will evaporate. Will taxpayers shoulder the burden? Maybe, maybe not. It will be a huge crisis. There are other countries in Europe, like Spain and Portugal, that are almost as bad as Greece. Great Britain is not too far behind.

The European economy is as large as that of the US. We feel it when they go into recessions, for many of our largest companies make a lot of money in Europe. A crisis will also make the euro go down, which reduces corporate profits and makes it harder for us to sell our products into Europe, not to mention compete with European companies for global trade. And that means we all buy less from China, which means they will buy less of our bonds, and on and on go the connections. And it will all make it much harder to start new companies, which are the source of real growth in jobs.

And then in January of 2011 we are going to have the largest tax increase in US history. The research shows that tax increases have a negative 3-times effect on GDP, or the growth of the economy. As I will show in a letter in a few weeks, I think it is likely that the level of tax increases, when combined with the increase in state and local taxes (or the reductions in spending), will be enough to throw us back into recession, even without problems coming from Europe. The research was done by Christina Romer, who is Obama’s chairperson of the Joint Council of Economic Advisors.

And this next time, we won’t be able to fight the recession with even greater debt and lower interest rates, as we did this last time. Rates are as low as they can go, and this week the bond market is showing that it does not like the massive borrowing the US is engaged in. It is worried about the possibility of “Greece R Us.”

Bond markets require confidence above all else. If Greece defaults, then how far away is Spain or Japan? What makes the US so different, if we do not control our debt? As Reinhart and Rogoff show, when confidence goes, the end is very near. And it always comes faster than anyone expects.

The good news? We will get through this. We pulled through some rough times as a nation in the ’70s. No one, in 2020, is going to want to go back to the good old days of 2010, as the amazing innovations in medicine and other technologies will have made life so much better. You guys are going to live a very long time (and I hope I get a few extra years to enjoy those grandkids as well!). In 1975 we did not know where the new jobs would come from. It was fairly bleak. But the jobs did come, as they will once again.

Paul Brodsky at QB Asset Management Co. warns:

There are more American net-debtors than net-savers and US federal and state governments are deeply indebted. Thus, it is politically expedient for policy makers to inflate away the burden of existing and future US debt repayment (which will grow as the burden shifts from private and state debtors to the government).

Link: Is Gold a Crowded Trade? by Paul Brodsky

Investing in gold is tough because it challenges the investor to come to terms with the faults of his or her government, and then to act upon them. It requires the admission that there is risk in holding cash. This is counter-intuitive to this generation’s vintage of financial asset investor accustomed to thirty years of a credit build-up alongside declining interest rates.

There is certainly much more chatter in the press than in years past surrounding gold, and there certainly is more US retail investment (through ETFs) than there has been. That has been reflected to some degree in its rising price, no doubt. An ounce of gold has risen from about $250 in 1999 to current levels, having moved higher in each year and making it one of the best performing assets over the last ten years. So then, is a person that pays $1,100 an ounce today top-ticking the market by entering a crowded trade that has little upside and great downside?

We don’t think so.

Do your own research. Call your investment advisers and ask them what percentage, if any, they recommend investors allocate towards precious metals. Ring up prominent friends with substantial portfolios and ask them how much gold they have as a percentage of their portfolios. What about your fund managers overseeing, say $50 billion? Are they actually long $2.5 billion to $5 billion in precious metal plays? Our guess is that the figures in both cases will be very small, say 5% to 10% (if any at all).

Let’s extend this thinking. If people you know have only dipped their toes in the water and are doing more watching than investing in gold, then the past ten years of price appreciation must have come from elsewhere. Did it come from institutional investors? No, not in any great way. Most mutual and pension funds that report their holdings don’t own any gold – zip – other than very minor positions in precious metal mining stocks (and these stocks usually comprise less than 1% of their holdings). Hedge funds? Yes, it seems hedge funds have been buying gold but of those that have, most have less than 10% of their holdings in precious metals.

What about foreign central banks, Middle-East sheiks, Russians, ultra-wealthy families around the world? Yes, we would argue they “get the joke” and have been diversifying their wealth out of their home currencies and fiat currency-denominated assets into this scarcer currency.

Currently there is about $55 billion in global gold and silver ETFs – that’s it. (Does that qualify to be in the top ten of the any single issue in the DJIA?) It is estimated that all the gold mined in the last 5000 years is about 130,000 metric tons (each tonne converts into about 35,274 ounces). It’s a cube that would be roughly the size of a tennis court.

So let’s say there are 4.6 billion ounces of gold above ground, which means that at about $1,100/oz, the total global market value of all mined gold is currently worth a little over $2 trillion. By comparison, US Treasury debt was approaching $13 trillion, last we looked and we believe total US equity market capitalization is about $11 trillion. And then there are other bond markets (at least $8 trillion) money market funds, etc. There is also real estate.

In the US alone there is estimated to be about $65 trillion in present value private sector credit outstanding and trillions more in unfunded government obligations. And then there are the financial assets (stocks and bonds), real estate and public sector obligations for the rest of the world.

Global central banks are trying to keep it all afloat by printing even more money (by making more debt). The response by central banks to declining velocity has been and will continue to be the same as their responses to credit deflation – they will continue to print money. They may give it to their fractionally reserved banks that may then use the money multiplier to distribute more credit and in turn raise systemic velocity, or they may give it directly to debtors in the hope they will spend like drunken sailors again.

There is enormous embedded inflation already and more to come. The high-powered money has already been created; it is leveragable and it is there to increase velocity. Higher prices must follow.

Will the Fed and other central banks withdraw liquidity? No, never. They never have and they never will regardless of how many tools they proclaim are in their toolbox to do so. If money velocity picks up leading to rising consumer prices, it will also lead to rising market-priced interest rates. They may decide to cut back their monetization, but they will not drain money.

We can look at price inflation contemporaneously or we can throw the ball ahead of the receiver. The result will be the same. The defense is blitzing; Jerry Rice is standing all alone in the end zone; Joe Montana is going to get sacked….but the ball is already in the air.

***

At current valuations the gold market is a tiny speck in relation to where perceived global wealth is being housed. The fundamental issue is one of ratios and relative future value. Our bet is that the gold-to-everything-else spread will narrow substantially. We are indifferent to whether gold rises to $10,000/oz. while the DJIA stays at 10,000 or gold stays at $1,100 while stocks and bonds crater. (In fact, we would love it if gold stayed at current levels while financial assets fell because then we would greatly increase our purchasing power vis-à-vis the rest of humanity and wouldn’t owe any capital gains tax!)

Further, we think that fundamentally gold is worth many multiples of its current price. Remember, it rose from $35/oz to $880/oz in a matter of nine years from 1971 to 1980, and the piece de resistance came in the last few months when everyone had to own it and its price went parabolic (it became a bubble).

There is chatter and there are fundamentals. (Consider that 250,000 people watch CNBC on a good day and 10 million people regularly watch Good Morning America. And remember CNBC and most business media focus on financial assets, not commercial business.) We think the gold chatter is a bunch of financial asset predators talking up their businesses. Needless to say, we don’t think gold is a crowded trade.

Conclusion: Future global US dollar-based claims are now estimated to be above $100 trillion versus a current US dollar monetary base of about $2 trillion. Global markets, policy makers and politicians are beginning to recognize that existing US dollar-denominated public and private credit (claims) cannot be settled with current USDs outstanding. Either far more USDs must be manufactured or credit must deflate far more.

2. Expectations: Three “Flations”

- Price Inflation/Deflation: Price deflation is a natural economic function (through competition, economies of scale and innovation); price inflation (though monetary/credit inflation) is a political construct meant to offset the natural tendency of prices to decline

- Credit Inflation/Deflation: Credit inflation temporarily warps pricing structure of goods, services and wages, which leads to broad economic and asset mal-investment

- Monetary Inflation/Deflation: The only true inflation/deflation metric (“inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon…”), the growth or decline in a currency’s monetary base best defines the increase or decrease in that currency’s purchasing power over time.

Conclusion: In the current lexicon, “deflation” is commonly and mistakenly confused with economic contraction. They are very different dynamics that may not correlate. Monetary growth/contraction may cause rising/falling nominal prices over time independent of changes in supply/demand fundamentals (see Zimbabwe). Thus, money and credit growth from an economy’s political dimension could synthesize nominal output growth while real (inflation-adjusted) output and real asset values may contract. Real output and assets are produce sustainable economic capital and employment over time.

3. US Monetary Base

- M0 = Money in circulation plus bank reserves held at the Fed
- High-powered money => May be leveraged further through fractionally-reserved banking system
- M0 just increased 135% in last 18 months

4. Reflexive Cause & Effect
- Output contraction => central bank generated monetary inflation
- Monetary Inflation in the form of M0 (new money given to the banking system) unaccompanied by a further bank system multiplier effect and/or by an increase in monetary velocity (thereby increasing M1, M2, M3) will effectuate a different form of monetary inflation
- Will checks be sent to homeowners (debtors, not creditor banks) made out to their servicers?

In a global paper currency monetary regime, where banking systems do not multiply their new high-powered money and where velocity does not rise (i.e. today’s environment), price inflation is a lagging consequence of monetary inflation. Demand-led output growth does not matter; indeed contracting demand is likely to push prices higher because it engenders more aggressive policy intervention.

Q: So what has been the true rate of inflation already experienced?

A: Something closer to 135% than popular price baskets. Of course, this may not be manifest through price inflation in any discrete year and it is likely the goal of policy makers to drag it out.

Q: Will policy makers withdraw the inflation they have already created?

A: Yes, if they don’t mind economic contraction. No, if they do not want to witness substantial credit deflation leading to output contraction and rising unemployment.

Q: What will be the ultimate outcome of global central bank monetary inflation?

A: It seems inevitable that there will be a new global monetary regime. That is not as radical as it sounds, given the current one is only 39 years old and no paper money system has ever lasted throughout millennia.

Q: Would Americans suffer from a new global regime?

A: American debtors would benefit from inflation because the burden of their debts would be inflated away vis-à-vis their higher nominal wages and asset prices. American dollar holders would suffer because they would lose future purchasing power, as would dollar-denominated bondholders because the purchasing power from their coupon interest and principal repayment would be inflated away.

David Galland interviews Andy Miller about the next downturn in the real estate market and its impact on financial institutions.

I hope Andy Miller is wrong but I fear he is right.

An Insider’s View of the Real Estate Train Wreck – John Mauldin, Outside the Box

David Galland: Andy Miller has been singularly successful in pretty much all aspects of the real estate market, including financing and developing large projects – such as shopping centers, apartment communities, office buildings, and warehouses – from one end of the country to the other. His expertise has also allowed him to build an impressive business providing assistance to large financial institutions that need help in dealing with problem commercial real estate loans. As you might suspect, business is booming.

Back in 2007, Andy was almost alone among his peer group in foreseeing the coming end of the real estate bubble, and in liquidating essentially all of his considerable portfolio of projects near the top. There are people that think they know what’s going on, and those who actually know – Andy very much belongs in the latter category.

As you’ll read in the following excerpt from my latest interview with Andy, who now spends considerable time each day helping the nation’s biggest banks cope with growing stacks of problem loans, he remains deeply concerned about the outlook for real estate.

No one has been more right on the housing market in recent years. So, what’s coming next? Some of the housing numbers in the last few months look a little less ugly. Could housing be getting ready to get well?

MILLER: I don’t think so.

For all intents and purposes, the United States home mortgage market has been nationalized without anybody noticing. Last September, reportedly over 95% of all new loans for single-family homes in the U.S. were made with federal assistance, either through Fannie Mae and the implied guarantee, or Freddie Mac, or through the FHA.

If it’s true that most of the financing in the single-family home market is being facilitated by government guarantees, that should make everybody very, very concerned. If government support goes away, and it will go away, where will that leave the home market? It leaves you with a catastrophe, because private lenders for single-family homes are nervous. Lenders that are still lending are reverting to 75% to 80% loan to value. But that doesn’t help a homeowner whose property is worth less than the mortgage. So when the supply of government-facilitated loans dries up, it’s going to put the home market in a very, very bad place.

Why am I so certain that the federal government will have to cut back on its lending? Because most of the financing is done via the bond market, through Ginnie Mae or other government agencies. And the numbers are so big that eventually the bond market is going to gag on the government-sponsored paper.

The public doesn’t have any idea of the scale of the guarantees the government is taking on through Fannie, Freddie, and FHA. It’s huge. If people understood what the federal government has done and subjected the taxpayers to, there would be a public outrage. But you can’t get people to focus on it, and it’s very esoteric, it’s very hard to understand. But it’s not something the bond market won’t notice. The government can’t keep doing what it has been doing to support mortgage lending without pushing interest rates way up.

Refinancings of single-family homes are very interest-rate sensitive. Consumers have their backs against the wall. They have too much debt. Refinancing their maturing mortgages or their adjustable-rate mortgages is very problematic if rates go up, but that’s exactly where they’re headed. So anyone who’s comforted by current statistics on single-family homes should look beyond the data and into the dynamics of the market. What they’ll find is very alarming.

On that topic, recent data I saw was that something like 24% of the loans FHA backed in 2007 are now in default, and for those generated in 2008, 20% are in default, and the FHA is out of money.

MILLER: Fannie Mae had a $19 billion loss for the third quarter of 2009, and they are now drawing on their facility with the U.S. Treasury. We have all forgotten that Fannie and Freddie are still being operated under a federal conservatorship. On Christmas Eve, the agency announced that they were going to remove all the caps on the agencies.

Beyond the obvious, that the real estate market has taken pretty significant hits and some banks have been dragged under by their bad loans, what has really changed in real estate since the crash?

MILLER: I think the first thing that changed was that people learned that prices don’t go up forever. Lenders also saw that underwriting guidelines for commercial real estate loans, especially in the securitization markets, were erroneous. They realized that some of their properties had been financed too aggressively, but still, I don’t think even at the fall of Lehman, anybody was predicting a wholesale collapse in commercial real estate. But they did see they should be more circumspect with loan underwritings. In fact, after the fall of Lehman, they completely stopped lending. I think they realized we had been living in fantasy land for 10 years. And that was the first change – a mental adjustment from Alice in Wonderland to reality. Today it’s clear that commercial properties are not performing and that values have gone down, although I’ve got to tell you, the denial is still widespread, particularly in the United States and on the part of lenders sitting on and servicing all these real estate portfolios. People still do not understand how grave this is.

Right now there are an awful lot of banks that do an awful lot of commercial real estate lending, and for about a year now you’ve been telling me that you saw the first and second quarter of 2010 as being particularly risky for commercial real estate. Why this year, and what do you see happening with these loans and the banks holding them?

MILLER: It’s an educated guess, and it hasn’t changed. I still think that it’s second quarter 2010. The current volume of defaults is already alarming. And the volume of commercial real estate defaults is growing every month. That can only keep going for so long, and then you hit a breaking point, which I believe will come sometime in 2010. When you hit that breaking point, unless there’s some alternative in place, it’s going to be a very hideous picture for the bond market and the banking system. The reason I say second quarter 2010 is a guess is that the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the FDIC can influence how fast the crisis unfolds. I think they can have an impact on the severity of the crisis as well – not making it less severe but making it more severe. I will get to that in a minute. But they can influence the speed with which it all unfolds, and I’ll give you an example. In November, the FDIC circulated new guidelines for bank regulators to streamline and standardize the way banks are examined. One standout feature is that as long as a bank has evaluated the borrower and the asset behind a loan, if they are convinced the borrower can repay the loan, even if they go into a workout with the borrower, the bank does not have to reserve for the loan. The bank doesn’t have to take any hit against its capital, so if the collateral all of a sudden sinks to 50% of the loan balance, the bank still does not have to take any sort of write-down. That obviously allows banks to just sit on weak assets instead of liquidating them or trying to raise more capital. That’s very significant. It means the FDIC and the Treasury Department have decided that rather than see 1,000 or 2,000 banks go under and then create another RTC to sift through all the bad assets, they’ll let the banking system warehouse the bad assets. Their plan is to leave the assets in place, and then, when the market changes, let the banks deal with them. Now, that’s horribly destructive.

Just to be clear on this, let’s say I own an apartment building and I’ve been making my payments, but I’m having trouble and the value of the property has fallen by half. I go to the bank and say, “Look, I’ve got a problem,” and the bank says, “Okay, let’s work something out, and instead of you paying $10,000 a month, you pay us $5,000 a month and we’ll shake hands and smile.” Then, even though the property’s value has dropped, as long as we keep smiling and I’m still making payments, then the bank won’t have to reserve anything against the risk that I’ll give the building back and it will be worth a whole lot less than the mortgage.

MILLER: I think what you just described is accurate. And it’s exactly a Japanese-style solution. This is what Japan did in ’89 and ’90 because they didn’t want their banking system to implode, so they made it easier for their banks to sit on bad assets without owning up to the losses. And what’s the result? Well, it leaves the status quo in place. The real problem with this is twofold. One is that it prolongs the problem – if a bank is allowed to sit on bad assets for three to five years, it’s not going to sell them. Why is that bad? Well, the money tied up in the loans the bank is sitting on is idle. It is not being used for anything productive.

Wouldn’t banks know that ultimately the piper must be paid, and so they’d be trying to build cash – trying to build capital to deal with the problem when it comes home to roost?

MILLER: The more intelligent banks are doing exactly that, hoping they can weather the storm by building enough reserves, so when they do ultimately have to take the loss, it’s digestible. But in commercial real estate generally, the longer you delay realizing a loss, the more severe it’s going to be. I can tell you that because I’m out there servicing real estate all day long. Not facing the problems, and not writing down the values, and not allowing purchasers to come in and take these assets at discounted prices – all the foot-dragging allows the fundamental problem to get worse. In the apartment business, people are under water, particularly if they got their loan through a conduit. When maintenance is required, a borrower with a property worth less than the loan is very reluctant to reach into his pocket. If you have a $10 million loan on a property now worth $5 million, you’re clearly not making any cash flow. So what do you do when you need new roofs? Are you going to dig into your pocket and spend $600,000 on roofing? Not likely. Why would you do that? Or a borrower who is sitting on a suburban office property – he’s got two years left on the loan. He knows he has a loan-to-value problem. Well, a new tenant wants to lease from him, but it would cost $30 a square foot to put the tenant in. Is the borrower going to put the tenant in? I don’t think so. So the problems get bigger.

Why would the owner bother going through a workout with the bank if he knows he’s so deep underwater he’s below snorkel depth?

MILLER: It’s always in your interest to delay an inevitable default. For example, the minute you give the property back to the bank, you trigger a huge taxable gain. All of a sudden the forgiveness of debt on your loan becomes taxable income to you. Another reason is that many of these loans are either full recourse or part recourse. If you’re a borrower who’s guaranteed a loan, why would you want to hasten the call on your guarantee? You want to delay as long as possible because there’s always a little hope that values will turn around. So there is no reason to hurry into a default. None.

So that’s from the borrower’s standpoint. But wouldn’t the banks want to clear these loans off their balance sheets?

MILLER: No. The banks have a lot of incentive to delay the realization of the problem because if they liquidate the asset and the loss is realized, then they have to reserve the loss against their capital immediately. If they keep extending the loan under the rules present today, then they can delay a write-down and hope for better days. Remember, you suffer if the bank succumbs and turns around and liquidates that asset, then you really do have to take a write-down because then your capital is gone.

So here we are, we’ve got the federal government again, through its agencies and the FDIC, ready to support the commercial real estate market. They’ve taken one step, in allowing banks to use a very loose standard for loss reserves. What else can they do?

MILLER: Well, obviously nobody knows, but I can guess at what’s coming by extrapolating from what the federal government has already done. I believe that the Treasury and the Federal Reserve now see that commercial real estate is a huge problem. I think they’re going to contrive something to help assist commercial real estate so that it doesn’t hurt the banks that lent on commercial real estate. It’ll resemble what they did with housing. They created a nearly perfect political formula in dealing with housing, and they are going to follow that formula. The entire U.S. residential mortgage market has in effect been nationalized, but there wasn’t any act of Congress, no screaming and shouting, no headlines in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times about “Should we nationalize the home loan market in America.” No. It happened right under our noses and with no hue and cry. That’s a template for what they could do with the commercial loan market. And how can they do that? By using federal guarantees much in the way they used federal guarantees for the FHA. FHA issues Ginnie Mae securities, which are sold to the public. Those proceeds are used to make the loans. But it won’t really be a solution. In fact, it will make the problems much more intense.

Don’t these properties have to be allowed to go to their intrinsic value before the market can start working again?

MILLER: Yes. Of course, very few people agree with that, because if you let it all go today, there would be enormous losses and a tremendous amount of pain. We’re going to have some really terrible, terrible years ahead of us because letting it all go is the only way to be done with the problem.

Do you think the U.S. will come out of this crisis? I mean, do you think the country, the institutions, the government, or the banking sector are going to look anything like they do today when this thing is over?

MILLER: I know this is going to make you laugh, but I’m actually an optimist about this. I’m not optimistic about the short run, and I’m not optimistic about the severity of the problem, but I’m totally optimistic as it relates to the United States of America.

This is a very resilient place. We have very resilient people. There is nothing like the American spirit. There is nothing like American ingenuity anywhere on Planet Earth, and while I certainly believe that we are headed for a catastrophe and a crisis, I also believe that ultimately we are going to come out better.

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Andy Miller is the co-founder of the Miller Frishman Group (www.millerfrishman.com), which includes three companies serving different sectors of the real estate market – from mortgage brokerage and banking, to the building, management, and marketing of commercial real estate across the United States. His firm is currently deeply involved in the distressed real estate business, assisting lenders across the nation with their growing portfolios of non-performing loans.

Craig Harris at EarthBlog News describes why he’s concerned about the still unfolding financial crisis.

Click on the link to read the whole post.

Link: An Introspective Look at the Future of America, by Craig Harris

If the FED had done nothing, the whole system would have quickly degenerated into a deflationary collapse and failure of the financial system due to insolvency. The course the FED chose however is the one myself and many others predicted beforehand… the FED chose to solve the problem of too much debt by creating even more debt by taking the unprecedented action of buying it’s own debt under euphemisms like “quantitative easing” and “debt monetization” and also covert buying to artificially force negative real return rates of interest. Through this course of action, the FED so far has been able to turn what would have been a rapid deflationary collapse into a decaying inflationary depression which is euphemistically called “a recession that is now over” by the six people who control 96% of the global media and attempt to pass off propaganda as “news” to a woefully misinformed, dumbed down and apathetic general public.

Going forward, if the FED doesn’t buy enough of their own debt, then interest rates on the long end would rise and the risk becomes a deflationary collapse into insolvency for the FED and it’s banking system. If interest rates remain effectively at zero on the short end and artificially suppressed by quantitative easing on the long end, then the real estate market can recover and the banks can regain solvency. If interest rates rise as the free markets would argue for however, then the real estate market sinks even further, the US dollar rises, and greater insolvency of the banks follows. The higher interest rates go, the thinner the knife edge gets and the FED would quickly find itself staring into another October 2008 collapse kind of situation. On the other hand, if by buying enough of their own debt they can keep short and long term interest rates down, then the free money percolates through the banking system, puts pressure on the dollar, lifts commodity and real estate prices and pulls out of the collapse via inflating away the debt so long as they can avoid run away hyperinflation in the process. This is the path we have traveled throughout 2009.

The key point is that the FED has had the option of doing two things…creating even more debt in order to save itself and the banking system, or do nothing and watch themselves collapse into a mass of failure, loss of power and control, insolvency and domino style bankruptcy and default. They have chosen the expected course, which is to increase the debt and print money, which is the way they save themselves and their banking system. In short, given a choice between saving the people and saving themselves after a collapse, they have taken the expected course which is to attempt to save themselves. What else would you expect? If they had wanted to save the people they would have taken the peoples bailout money and handed it to them in the form of a check. Instead they handed it to the banks.

Although they have been somewhat successful in reducing the insolvency of the banking system, they have effectively created a giant wealth transfer mechanism whereby all the money that disappeared in the collapse was re created out of thin air and given to the banks and wall street. I think of it as a sort of shell game. The money disappeared from Mom and Pop’s 401k and re appeared on the balance sheets of the banks via freshly created new money (debt). As a result, we have something still called “free market capitalism” which is not free market capitalism at all. We have emerged from this crisis with a sort of financial oligarchy where a few entities who control all the wealth and power also control politics and media. Understanding this will help to understand issues like “healthcare reform” which will involve you paying more and getting less, with the primary beneficiaries being the oligarchies who control health care and insurance.

The one major point I have to make at this time is throughout 2009, there was no action taken that put the average citizen in a better position, but instead during the course of the year there was a gigantic wealth transfer from the citizens to the banking system, effectively orchestrated by the so called “people’s representatives” who are in fact, all owned by the banking system and Wall Street with half a dozen or so oligarchies and lobbyists in a public display of fraud, malfeasance and corruption that sets a new historical precedent.

I have been and remain of the opinion that the ultimate “solution” to this crisis will be for the entities who now control the wealth and power to accumulate even more wealth and power via a global central bank and global currency which now for the first time in public has been discussed on and off throughout 2009 and described as the New World Order by such luminaries as Henry Kissinger. So looking out beyond 2010, I see a new global reserve currency emerging and a global central bank which will effectively also be a global governing authority where the heads of state effectively report to the group of central bankers and their anonymous shareholders who effectively control the money, power and politicians on a global scale. When the global currency is introduced, only then do I expect a sort of collapse of the US dollar versus this global currency. In this way, the world can carry on while the former global reserve currency called the US dollar will be free to depreciate to a level where solvency is regained and the now unpayable US debt is inflated away to the point where it can be repaid in depreciated dollars. US citizens will experience a continued decay as the US becomes to resemble more and more, a third world country. Detroit is already there. The corporate media won’t show it to you but if you do a youtube search on Detroit what you see will shock you.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at The Telegraph describes the overspending and debt problems in Greece. It could provide some insight into what happens when government bonds (debt) cannot find any buyers.

Link: Greece tests the limit of sovereign debt as it grinds towards slump

Greece is disturbingly close to a debt compound spiral. It is the first developed country on either side of the Atlantic to push unfunded welfare largesse to the limits of market tolerance.

Euro membership blocks every plausible way out of the crisis, other than EU beggary. This is what happens when a facile political elite signs up to a currency union for reasons of prestige or to snatch windfall gains without understanding the terms of its Faustian contract.

When the European Central Bank’s Jean-Claude Trichet said last week that certain sinners on the edges of the eurozone were “very close to losing their credibility”, everybody knew he meant Greece.

The interest spread between 10-year Greek bonds and German bunds has jumped to 178 basis points. Greek debt has decoupled from Italian debt. Athens can no longer hide behind others in EMU’s soft South.

“As far as the bond vigilantes are concerned, the Bat-Signal is up for Greece,” said Francesco Garzarelli in a Goldman Sachs client note, Tremors at the EMU Periphery.

The newly-elected Hellenic Socialists (PASOK) of George Papandreou confess that the budget deficit will be more than 12pc of GDP this year, four times the original claim of the last lot. After campaigning on extra spending, it will have to do the exact opposite. “We need to save the country from bankruptcy,” he said.

Good luck. Communist-led shipyard workers have already clashed violently with police. Some 200 anarchists were arrested in Athens last week after they torched streets of cars in a tear gas battle.

Mr Papandreou has mooted a pay freeze for state workers earning more than €2,000 a month. This has already set off an internal party revolt. “There is enormous denial,” said Lars Christensen, emerging markets chief at Danske Bank. “They don’t seem to understand that very serious austerity measures are needed. It is a striking contrast with Ireland,” he said.

Brussels says Greece’s public debt will rise from 99pc of GDP in 2008 to 135pc by 2011, without drastic cuts. Athens has been shortening debt maturities to trim costs, storing up a roll-over crisis next year. Some €18bn comes due in the second quarter of 2010 (IMF).

Modern economies have reached such debt levels before, and survived, but never in the circumstances facing Greece. “They can’t devalue: they can’t print money,” said Mr Christensen.

The tourist trade is withering, down 20pc last season by revenue. Turkey was up. It is hard to pin down how much is a currency effect, but clearly Greece has priced itself out of the Club Med market. Wages rose a staggering 12pc in the 2008-2009 pay-round alone (IMF data), suicidal in a Teutonic currency union. Greece has slipped to 71st in the competitiveness index of the World Economic Forum, behind Egypt and Botswana.

Greece has long been skating on thin ice. The current account deficit hit 14.5pc of GDP in 2008. External debt has reached 144p (IMF). Eurozone creditors – German banks – hold €200bn of Greek debt.

A warning from Bank of Greece that lenders must wean themselves off the ECB’s emergency funding has brought matters to a head. Default insurance on Greek debt jumped 40 basis points last week.

Greek banks have borrowed €40bn from the ECB at 1pc, playing the “yield curve” by purchasing state bonds. This EU subsidy has made up for losses on property, shipping, and Balkan woes.

The banks insist that they are in rude good health. EFG Eurobank has halved reliance on ECB funding. “Greek banks are very liquid: we maintain billions in extra liquidity,” it said. Yet markets are wary. Recession has come late to Greece, but will bite deep in 2010. It takes three years for defaults to peak once the cycle turns.

David Marsh, author of The Euro: The Politics of The New Global Currency, said the danger for EMU laggards is that the ECB will begin to tighten before they are out of trouble. It is German recovery that threatens to stretch the North-South divide towards breaking point.

Athens squandered its euro windfall. For a decade, EMU let Greece borrow at almost the same cost as Germany. It was a heaven-sent chance to whittle down debt. Instead, the country dug itself deeper into a hole by running budget deficits near 5pc of GDP at the top of the boom.

Like Labour under Brown, idiot leaders mistook a bubble for their own skill. But the consequences in EMU are more dreadful. Austerity may prove self-defeating, without the cure of devaluation. Greece risks grinding deeper into slump.

The EU can paper over this by transfering large sums of money to Greece. But will Berlin, Paris – and London, also on the hook – feel obliged to bail out a country that has so flagrantly violated the rules of the club, not least by holding Eastern Europe’s EU entry to ransom over Cyprus? That is neither forgotten, nor forgiven.

During the panic last February, German finance minister Peer Steinbruck promised to rescue any eurozone state in dire trouble. He is no longer in office. The pledge was, in any case, a bounced political cheque even when he wrote it. Greece can assume nothing.

via John Mauldin

John Mauldin at Thoughts from the Front Line describes the ugly secrets of the unemployment report.

Link:  The Ugly Unemployment Numbers

John Mauldin describes the hyperinflation that infected Argentina in 1989, emphasizing that it was a political decision to print money to cover massive budget deficits. Now the United States is tempted to follow that path rather than make the painful adjustments to less spending. Excerpts below.

Link:  Catching Argentinian Disease – John Mauldin – InvestorsInsight.com

As is often said, those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it. … the United States in particular, and the developed world in general, are faced with a series of very unpleasant, if not downright bad choices. The time for good choices was ten years ago. Now we face the prospect of painful decisions, no matter what we do. It is not a matter of pain or no pain, of somehow avoiding the consequences of our bad decisions, it is simply deciding how much pain we will take and when, or allowing the pain to build up to a climactic event. Today we look at what I think would be the worst choice of all.

Catching Argentinian Disease

At the beginning of the 20^th century, Argentina was the seventh richest nation on earth. It’s very name means “silver.” “As rich as an Argentine” was a byword. Even after falling from the heights through a series of bad decisions, the country was still so wealthy that, in 1946 when new president Juan Peron first visited the central bank, he could remark that “There was so much gold you could barely walk through the corridors.”

Argentina had actually defaulted on its debt in the late 19^th century, not once but twice! But still they managed to avoid destroying the currency and devastating the country. But in 1989, after years of massive budget deficits that were financed with borrowing from abroad and Argentinian citizens, the country was left with so much debt and no one was willing to lend it any more money, that the leaders felt compelled to resort to the printing press.

There were no prices on any items in the grocery stores. There was a man with a microphone who would announce the prices of various items, often increasing the price every few hours by 30% or more. Workers would get their pay in cash and rush to the store to buy anything, as by the end of the week their pay would be worthless. Of course, shelves were empty. The US dollar was king, and could purchase things at amazing prices. I heard stories that were truly compelling. (It made me wish I had gone shopping in Buenos Aires at the time!)

Interestingly, the dollar is still the real medium of exchange. I was told by several people that if you want to buy a house for half a million dollars, you bring the physical cash to the closing. One person counts the money and the other checks the paperwork and title. Argentina has the second largest hoard of physical dollars in the world, only exceeded by Russia. Is it any wonder they are concerned with the value of the dollar?

Let’s look at some quotes from Niall Ferguson’s recent book, The Ascent of Money:

“The economic history of Argentina in the twentieth century is an object lesson that all the resources in the world can be set at nought by financial mismanagement… To understand Argentina’s economic decline, it is once again necessary to see that inflation was a political as much as a monetary phenomenon…

“To put it simply, there was no significant group with an interest in price stability…

“Inflation is a monetary phenomenon, as Milton Friedman said. But hyperinflation is always and everywhere a political phenomenon, in the sense that it cannot occur without a fundamental malfunction of a country’s political economy.”

Look at the chart below. Using realistic assumptions, It suggests that the annual US government fiscal deficit will approach $2 trillion in 2019. How can we come up with what looks to be about $15 trillion over the next ten years? The Argentinian answer was to print the money.

In the US, the short answer is that unless the US consumers become a massive saving machine, to the tune of 8% or more of GDP and rising each year, and willingly put their savings into US government debt, it’s not going to happen. So sometime in the coming years, interest rates are likely to start to rise in order to compensate bond investors for what they perceive as risk. That will bring us to some very difficult and painful choices.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, this scenario could be averted IF the Obama administration produced a credible plan to lower the deficit over time and stuck to it. But today’s thought process is about what happens if they don’t.

Ferguson pointed out in the quotes above that hyperinflation is always and everywhere a political decision. Governments have to choose to print money. In theory and in practice, what would happen if the Fed decided to accommodate a politicized US government that wanted to spend money on favorite projects and support groups, maybe even deserving programs like health care or defense or pensions or Social Security? Money they could not borrow?

Then Peter Schiff and like-minded thinkers would be right. Once you start down that path, it is hard to stop short of the brink. Brazil got to 100% inflation per month and has really lowered that level over time, but it is not easy.

In such a scenario, you want to own hard assets. Gold. Foreign currencies. Stocks. Almost anything other than the currency that is being printed.

I was asked at almost every speech about that scenario. In Latin America, hyperinflation is not a theoretical issue; it has been reality. More than one person commented on that no one in US economics schools studies hyperinflation. It is required material in Latin America. For many Latin Americans, the dollar has been their safe haven. And now they are worried, with good reason.

For the record, I do not think the US will experience hyperinflation as long as the Fed maintains its independence. Read the speeches from various Fed governors and regional presidents. These are strong personalities, and they understand that going down that path ends in massive tears. Bernanke warned just a few weeks ago that the government needs to get serious about the fiscal deficit. Watch the rhetoric from the Fed heat up after his reconfirmation and the confirmation of two new governors in the first quarter.

The Fed has committed to buy a fixed amount of government debt in its quantitative easing program. That commitment will be finished by the end of the first quarter (if I remember correctly). Then comes the tricky part.

I have been writing for a long time that the main force in the economy right now is deflation. The Fed will fight deflation tooth and nail. But they don’t have to buy government debt to fight deflation. They can buy mortgage securities, credit card securities, commercial paper, etc. That will have the effect of easing without encouraging the government to run massive deficits. And such debts are naturally self-liquidating, while government debt is not, at least not in the same way.

I believe the Fed will maintain its independence. Not to do so is to court economic disaster of the first order. These are bright and serious men and women. They get it.

Media, government officials, and some economists say the Recession is over; other observers say that the causes of the Financial Crisis continue to undermine economic health.

Michael Panzner, one of my favorite guides through the financial crisis turmoil, pointed to the list below on James Wesley Rawles’ blog. If you find reading this list depressing, remember that awareness is essential to preparation. Being prepared always beats being blindsided.

Link: Twenty-Two Reasons Why this Recession is Different and Why it Will Endure – SurvivalBlog -  James Wesley Rawles

1. A broken global credit market that has not fully recovered. See: After Lehman, U.S. firms adjust to new face of credit
2. Lack of transparency in Mortgage-Backed Securities and other re-packaged debt instruments. See: Geithner Blames Lack of Transparency for OTC Derivatives Hit on Market.
3. The increasing Federal debt, which is growing at an unprecedented rate. See: The National Debt Clock.
4. Mountains of consumer and corporate debt. See: Observations on the US Debt.
5. The Federal budget deficit. See: Federal Deficit Hits All-Time High of $1.42 Trillion.
6. Ever-expanding bailouts. (I call this The MOAB.) See: As More Companies Seek Aid, ‘Where Do You Stop?’
7. Monetization of the National Debt. See: Fed Could Expand MBS Purchases. (Can you spell Oroborus?):
8. The destruction of the American consumer economy. (It had been artificially credit-driven). See: A Year After The Crisis, The Consumer Economy Is Dead.
9. Chronic unemployment, possibly much higher than officially reported. See: Alternate Data at ShadowStats.
10. More than $500 Billion USD in hedge funds that have borrowed short and lent long. See: Assets invested in hedge funds increase by $100bn
11. A double wave of residential mortgage rate resets. See: this chart of scheduled mortgage interest rate resets.
12. Continued down-ratcheting of house prices. See: Housing Prices Will Continue to Fall, Especially in California
13. The under-reported “shadow inventory” of foreclosed houses. See: The “Shadow” Foreclosure Inventory
14. The very likely collapse of commercial real estate (“the other shoe to drop”.) See: Is a commercial real estate bust inevitable?
15. A huge crisis lurking in over-the-counter derivatives. See my analysis published in 2006 and the dozens of articles on the Derivative Dribble Blog.
16. Under-funded pensions. See: Almost half of top unions have under funded pension plans.
17. A coming wave of municipal bond and municipal bond hedge fund failures. See: The Failure of Leveraged Municipal Bond Hedge Funds.
18. Increasing numbers of bank failures. See: FDIC: Bank Failures to Cost Around $100 Billion.
19. Insurance company collapses–some, like AIG, were foolish enough to insure more than a trillion dollars in derivative contracts. See: AIG: Is the Risk Systemic?
20. Worsening state, county, and city budget crises. See: State prepares for shutdown as budget deadline looms, and this article from a liberal site: Predicting Worse Ahead from America’s Economic Crisis.
21. Loss of faith in the US Dollar, on the FOREX. See: Dollar’s reserve currency status in focus as G-7 finance ministers meet.
22. The coming mass currency inflation, following some asset deflation. See: Which is more likely in 2010: Deflation or inflation?
    

Michael Panzner says this list has a few overlapping elements and some that are missing (e.g., the terrible state of our nation’s infrastructure), but publisher Jim Rawles does a decent job of getting the point across.

Richard Heinberg describes the growing awareness that the American way of life – I’d call it unsustainable consumption – is dysfunctional. These leaders of the transition are growing food locally, investing in local economies, rebuilding skills, and preserving local ecosystems.

Link: MuseLetter #204 / April 2009: Post Carbon Institute Manifesto – The Time For Change Has Come

The winds of social change are upon us. Consumerism as we’ve known it is at death’s door—not because everyone has joined the Sierra Club, but because suddenly nobody can afford to buy much of anything. Our new historical moment requires different thinking and strategies, but it also opens new opportunities to solve some very practical problems. Ideas from the environmentalist community that for decades have been derided by economists and politicians—reducing consumption, re-localizing economic activity, building self-sufficiency—are suddenly being taken seriously, and people want to know more about them.

Quietly, a small but growing movement of engaged citizens, community groups, businesses, and elected officials has begun the transition to a post-carbon world. These early actors have worked to reduce consumption, produce local food and energy, invest in local economies, rebuild skills, and preserve local ecosystems. For some citizens, this effort has merely entailed planting a garden, riding a bike to work, or no longer buying from “big-box” stores. Their motivations are diverse, including halting climate change, environmental preservation, food security, and local economic development. The essence of these efforts, however, is the same: they all recognize that the world is changing, and the old way of doing things, based on the idea that consumption can and should continue to grow indefinitely, no longer works.

Alone, these efforts are not nearly enough. But taken together, they can point the way towards a new economy. This new economy would not be a “free market” but a “real market,” much like the one famed economist Adam Smith originally envisioned; it would be, as author David Korten has said, an economy driven by Main Street and not Wall Street.

Thus far, most of these efforts have been made voluntarily by exceptional individuals who were quick to understand the crisis we face. But as the collapse unfolds, more and more people will be searching for ways to meet even basic needs. Families reliant on supermarkets with globe-spanning supply chains will need to turn more to local farmers and their own gardens. Many corporations—unable to provide a continuous return on investment or to rely on cheap energy and natural resources to turn a profit—will fail, while local businesses and cooperatives of all kinds will flourish. Local governments facing declining tax revenues will be desperate to find cheap, low-energy ways to support basic public services like water treatment, public transportation, and emergency services.

What we need now are clarity, leadership, coordination, and collaboration. With shared purpose and a clear understanding of both the challenges and the solutions, we can manage the transition to a sustainable, equitable, post-carbon world.

Elements of a transition strategy have been proposed for decades, with few notable results. Usually these have been presented as independent—sometimes even contradictory—solutions to the problems created by fossil fuel dependency and consumerism. Now that business-as-usual is ceasing to be an option for mainstream society, these strategies need to be re-thought and re-articulated coherently, and to become the mainstream. But this will require coordinated effort on the part of those who understand both the problems and the solutions.

Jon Markman at Money Morning describes the indicators that suggest a strong recovery is imminent. Excerpts below.

Link: Here’s Why the U.S. Rebound Will Be Stronger Than You Think – Jon D. Markman – Money Morning

What’s the best way to follow a Great Recession?

How about with a Great Recovery …

According to the latest data from the Economic Cycle Research Institute, the economy is poised for its strongest recovery in more than 30 years. The monthly growth rate of its Weekly Leading Index is now sitting at a level that has not been witnessed in at least four decades.

That’s big.

… the ECRI weekly leading index is the only gauge of the economy that I have found to have real usefulness as a forecasting tool. Unlike the linear measures that most indexes use, it uses non-parametric measures to look around the corner and figure out what’s coming.

It was early in calling the recession two years ago, and caught a lot of heat; and it was early in calling the recovery early this year, and has caught a lot of heat. ECRI chief Lakshman Achuthan told Reuters that with the WLI at new record highs, “the economic recovery will prove to be far more resilient in coming months than most believe possible.”

This evidence fits well into the envelope of views that I have expressed here repeatedly over the past few months: The path to recovery will be bumpy, with painful problems like stalled employment growth causing a lot of doubts and fears. But with governments and central banks pouring money into the global economy in unprecedented amounts via fiscal stimulus and low interest rates, we have a high level of conviction that the recovery is unstoppable, and that equities will continue to plow forward in anticipation of the fundamental improvements becoming more visible later.

Favorite positions to take advantage are still exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with heavy overseas and economic exposure. Right now that includes iShares Global Financial Sector Exchange Traded Fund (NYSE: IXG) and iShares Metals & Mining (NYSE: XME); on dips it includes iShares Emerging Markets (NYSE: EEM) and Vanguard FTSE World Ex-USA Small Cap (VFWIX). And after a brief period of underperformance, tech stocks might be ready to roll again, especially hardware like SPDR Semiconductors (NYSE: XSD).

Bears Still on the Prowl

But don’t get complacent – not now, not ever – because bears are still on the prowl. They still think they are going to win, and they are just looking for the right time to attack again – when bulls are vulnerable. I know this because I hear from them all day long.

Their main argument (from a fundamental perspective) continues to be that weak employment figures will undermine consumer buying during the holidays; consumers are saving more and spending less, and can’t get bank loans; and companies are deleveraging. And then from a technical perspective, bears also harp on the lack of volume in this up move. But there are three key counterpoints:

First, employment is a lagging indicator, and may be in secular decline. We’ve been through this a dozen times so I won’t lay out all the points. But the main idea you may recall is that companies first go overboard in hiring (2004-2007), then they go overboard in firing (2008-2009), then they start to enjoy having fewer employees to pay (2009), and only later do they realize that to grow again they’ll have to start re-hiring (2010-2012). At this point in the cycle, investors give companies bonus points for cutting expenses, and that means reducing headcount. So don’t look for real investors to penalize companies’ shares during periods of reduced employment.

Second, consumer saving is paradoxically terrible for consumers and a boon for banks and businesses, which is another reason stocks have been buoyant. You see, when families start to save a lot they tend to put their money in a bank savings account for safety. They’ll earn 1% if they’re lucky. On the other side of that 1%, laughing like crazy, are bankers who then turn around and loan that money out to big business at 6%-plus, or buy bonds yielding 4% to 12%. The banks are making a killing on consumer savings, which is really sad, but it’s the truth. This is one reason we are overweight banks in our ETF portfolio.

Later on in the cycle, when the Federal Reserve starts to deploy its so-called “exit strategy” and begins to raise interest rates, the “spread” between what banks pay for money and what they can receive in corporate loans will narrow. And only then will banks turn their attention back to consumer loans, giving a new boost of fuel to that leg of the recovery.

Third, the volume is relatively low. I believe that the reason for this is that because the public is just not on board with this new bull cycle – yet. I’m not going to go through the math of all the cash sitting in money market accounts. But all of you reading this today, who care about stocks and are taking matters into your own hands, are in the minority.

Most of the public just doesn’t care. They still feel wounded and abused by the market during the decline last year, and don’t trust their money managers, and don’t trust the recovery. So until the public starts to feel more comfortable again – probably when the Dow Jones Industrials gets back to around 12,500, which is where it was in the summer of 2008 – volume is probably going to stay light. Just ask your friends at work if you don’t believe me.