Joe's Investo-Blog

http://pragcap.com/those-who-ignore-history

by The Pragmatic Capitalist (pragcap.com)

My position over the last 2 years has been as follows: this is a Main Street debt crisis. I have been highly critical of the government’s incessant interventionist policies over the last few years largely because they ignore the actual problems at hand. First it was Mr. Bernanke saving the banks because he believed the credit crisis started with the banking sector. The great monetarist gaffe ensued. Tim Geithner piled on with the PPIP. FASB jumped on board the bank rescue plan by altering the accounting rules. And then the icing on the cake was the Recovery Act, which, in my opinion, just shoveled money into the hole that had become the output gap, without actually trying to target the real cause of the crisis – those burdened by the debt. In essence, the various bailouts primarily targeted everyone except the people who really needed it.
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Asset Allocation, Banks, Economics, Financial Crises, Growth Asset Allocation, debt, deleveraging, Economics, economy, EU, fiscal policy, history, strategy, The Administration, US treasury

…Especially for Currency Issuing Soveriegn States

Escaping the Sovereign Debt Trap: The Remarkable Model of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia

http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=20473

by Ellen Brown

The current credit crisis is basically a capital crisis: at a time when banks are already short of the capital needed to back their loans, capital requirements are being raised. Nearly a century ago, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia demonstrated that banks do not actually need capital to make loans – so long as their credit is backed by the government. Denison Miller, the Bank’s first Governor, was fond of saying that the Bank did not need capital because “it is backed by the entire wealth and credit of the whole of Australia.” With nothing but this national credit power, the Commonwealth Bank funded both massive infrastructure projects and the country’s participation in World War I.

President John Adams is quoted as saying, “There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.” The major conquests today are on the battlefield of debt, a war that is raging globally. Debt forces individuals into financial slavery to the banks, and it forces governments to relinquish their sovereignty to their creditors, which in the end are also private banks, the originators of all non-cash money today. Read more…

Banks, Currencies, Economics, Financial Crises, Inflation/Deflation Banks, collapse, Currencies, debt, deflation, Economics, exchange rates, history, IMF, inflation, The Fed, trade, US treasury

Money Supply Confuses Deflation’s Confused Proponents
By John Tamny

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2010/07/27/money_supply_confuses_deflations_confused_proponents_98592.html

The great British political economist John Stuart Mill long ago noted that “the whole of goods in the market” composes “the demand for money.” To put it more simply, money is just the measuring rod that facilitates the real exchange of actual goods and labor.

As such, when production and labor increases, so does the supply of money. Conversely, when both decrease the supply of money declines. To make basic what is basic, money supply’s expansion and decline is a function of production.

This is important in light of all the handwringing among deflation’s confused proponents at present, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Daily Telegraph the most notable in this regard. Watching the “Ms” in decline, Evans-Pritchard notes that they did much the same in the 1930s, and naturally suggests we’re headed for a 1930s style Great Depression.

Assuming we are, it can’t be stressed enough that a decline in the monetary aggregates would be and is a symptom of reduced economic activity, not a driver of same as Evans-Pritchard supposes.

Considering deflation itself, the total perversion of its meaning continues to reach staggering heights. That deflation is always and everywhere a symptom of rising currency values doesn’t seem to concern its true believers despite the fact that the world’s currencies are mostly in decline. That Japan’s deflation was a function of the yen tripling in value against gold (the opposite direction of the world’s currencies today) is wholly ignored by a deflation cult convinced that Japan’s sufferance of an overly strong yen mirrors a period of broad currency weakness. That prices fall all the time thanks to productivity enhancements doesn’t concern its religionists either. That there’s little interest in accessing credit during periods of deflation (borrowers aren’t eager to take out loans that will rise in cost) hasn’t shaken the beliefs of an economic sect that mistakes an inflationary lack of credit for deflation.
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Banks, Currencies, Economics, Inflation/Deflation Asset Allocation, Banks, Currencies, debt, deflation, Economics, exchange rates, fiscal policy, history, inflation, liquidity trap, monetary policy, monetary velocity, quantitative easing, The Fed, US treasury

http://comstockfunds.com/default.aspx?act=Newsletter.aspx&category=SpecialReport&newsletterid=1534&menugroup=Home&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

We understand that we have discussed the debt problem in this country for what seems to be forever, but we can’t stop talking about it now that the debt is clearly the catalyst for the latest stock market downturn. Debt is discussed by the pundits on financial TV also, but in almost every case the discussion revolves around government deficits relative to GDP or government debt relative to GDP. They are constantly comparing the U.S. government debt to every other country in the world (especially Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain-PIIGS). We believe that the government debt should be taking a back seat to the private debt which is much larger and must eventually be deleveraged.
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Banks, Currencies, Economics, Financial Crises, Inflation/Deflation, uncategorized Banks, Bonds, collapse, debt, deflation, Economics, economy, fiscal policy, history, inflation, liquidity trap, monetary policy, monetary velocity, quantitative easing, The Fed, US treasury

by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/7857595/RBS-tells-clients-to-prepare-for-monster-money-printing-by-the-Federal-Reserve.html

Entitled “Deflation: Making Sure It Doesn’t Happen Here”, it is a warfare manual for defeating economic slumps by use of extreme monetary stimulus once interest rates have dropped to zero, and implicitly once governments have spent themselves to near bankruptcy.

The speech is best known for its irreverent one-liner: “The US government has a technology, called a printing press, that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”

Bernanke began putting the script into action after the credit system seized up in 2008, purchasing $1.75 trillion of Treasuries, mortgage securities, and agency bonds to shore up the US credit system. He stopped far short of the $5 trillion balance sheet quietly pencilled in by the Fed Board as the upper limit for quantitative easing (QE).

Investors basking in Wall Street’s V-shaped rally had assumed that this bizarre episode was over. So did the Fed, which has been shutting liquidity spigots one by one. But the latest batch of data is disturbing.
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Asset Allocation, Economics, Financial Crises, Inflation/Deflation Banks, collapse, debt, Economics, economy, fiscal policy, history, inflation, monetary policy, The Administration, The Fed

By Paul Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28krugman.html

Recessions are common; depressions are rare. As far as I can tell, there were only two eras in economic history that were widely described as “depressions” at the time: the years of deflation and instability that followed the Panic of 1873 and the years of mass unemployment that followed the financial crisis of 1929-31.

Neither the Long Depression of the 19th century nor the Great Depression of the 20th was an era of nonstop decline — on the contrary, both included periods when the economy grew. But these episodes of improvement were never enough to undo the damage from the initial slump, and were followed by relapses.

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.
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Asset Allocation, Economics, Financial Crises, Inflation/Deflation, Markets Banks, collapse, congress, debt, deflation, Economics, economy, EU, fiscal policy, history, IMF, monetary policy, strategy, taxes, The Administration, The Fed

There Is No Such Thing as a Sovereign Budget Deficit.

By Mike Whitney

Deficits create demand. Demand generates spending. Spending generates economic activity. Economic activity generates growth. Growth generates jobs, increases government revenues, reduces deficits and ends recessions.

Simple, right?

When consumers have too much debt, they will not spend no matter how low interest rates are. This is not theory, this is fact.

If the government cuts spending at the same time as consumers, then overall spending declines and the economy slips into recession. This is what the deficit hawks want–a return to recession. This is politics, not economics.

KEYNE’S KOAN: Increasing the deficits, lowers the deficits
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Economics, Financial Crises, Inflation/Deflation, Politics Asset Allocation, collapse, Currencies, debt, deflation, Economics, EU, exchange rates, fiscal policy, history, IMF, inflation, monetary policy, Politics, Regulators, trade

Read the entire article here: http://baselinescenario.com/2010/03/04/why-exactly-are-big-banks-bad/#more-6656

Big banks cannot be reined in through some clever tweaking of the rules. The issue before us is intensely political – just as it was in the first decade of the twentieth century (and in Jackson’s era). There is again a confrontation between concentrated financial power and our democracy. One side will win and the other side will lose.

The banks start with a definite edge. The public relations machines of today’s bankers may be even more effective than those of Morgan and Rockefeller – although the campaign contributions and control of the Senate exercised by those titans was immense.

But it is still early days – the Senate legislation expected this week or next will achieve nothing, except make the stakes clearer and motivations more transparent. If the banks win this round, as seems likely, they will become even larger – and more dangerous. At current scale, our megabanks bring no social benefits and great social risks.

Just as a hundred years ago, the consensus on big banks has to change. In this instance, either we break them up or they will soon break us all.

Banks, Financial Crises, Politics Banks, collapse, history, Politics, Regulators, The Fed, US treasury

Recently Sally Hutchins commented on a recent post as follows:

Please continue. So printing more money is creating more debt? Educate me. Love, Sally

Love? Yep. She’s my adorable sister.

Hi Sally:

Let me try to answer your question as succinctly as I can.

“Printing money” is a term used today that nobody really knows what it means. Historically it meant the government physically printed little pieces of paper which were then spent into circulation by buying goods and services the government needed. For example, in the Revolutionary War, the government printed continentals to pay the troops. Allegedly, British counterfieting rendered the currency eventually worthless. Again, when New York Bankers refused Abraham Lincoln additional financing during the Civil War, Lincoln then decided simply to print “greenbacks” to pay the troops. It worked. Merchants accepted greenbacks because Lincoln decreed that greenbacks would be accepted by the government for the payment of taxes. “Greenbacks” remained in circulation for decades and largely contributed to massive subsequent economic growth.

Today, 99 percent of all money in circulation isn’t currency at all, but mere electronic blips or signals recorded on the computerized ledgers of the banking system. Obviously actual printing of money doesn’t really happen anymore in any meaningful way. However, “money creation” is probably a more appropriate term. Money is created when a bank makes a loan. Presto. That’s it. I already know that you’re going to ask Read more…

Banks, Economics, Financial Crises, Inflation/Deflation, Politics Banks, collapse, Currencies, debt, deflation, Economics, economy, fiscal policy, history, inflation, monetary policy, Politics, taxes, The Fed, US treasury, war

Harsh lessons we may need to learn again
By Joseph E. Stiglitz (China Daily)

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2009-12/31/content_9249981.htm

Joseph Stiglitz recounts five “harsh lessons” from 2009:

1. Markets are not self-correcting.
2. Recent Markets failed because too-big-to-fail financial institutions had perverse incentives.
3. Keynesian policies do work.
4. There is more to monetary policy than just fighting inflation.
5. Not all innovation leads to a more efficient and productive economy – let alone a better society.

The best that can be said for 2009 is that it could have been worse, that we pulled back from the precipice on which we seemed to be perched in late 2008, and that 2010 will almost surely be better for most countries around the world. The world has also learned some valuable lessons, though at great cost both to current and future prosperity – costs that were unnecessarily high given that we should already have learned them.

The first lesson is that markets are not self-correcting. Indeed, without adequate regulation, they are prone to excess. In 2009, we again saw why Adam Smith’s invisible hand often appeared invisible: it is not there. The bankers’ pursuit of self-interest (greed) did not lead to the well-being of society; it did not even serve their shareholders and bondholders well. It certainly did not serve homeowners who are losing their homes, workers who have lost their jobs, retirees who have seen their retirement funds vanish, or taxpayers who paid hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the banks.

Under the threat of a collapse of the entire system, the safety net – intended to help unfortunate individuals meet the exigencies of life – was generously extended to commercial banks, then to investment banks, insurance firms, auto companies, even car-loan companies. Never has so much money been transferred from so many to so few.
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Banks, Economics, Financial Crises, Inflation/Deflation, Markets, Politics Banks, collapse, deflation, Economics, economy, fiscal policy, history, inflation, monetary policy, Politics, taxes, The Fed, US treasury

In today’s Senate hearings to confirm the re-appointment of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Senator Bunning succinctly lays out the greivous mistakes of the Fed in the years leading up to, during, and in the aftermath of the recent financial meltdown. It is hard to refute his argument that the privately owned Fed did nothing for the taxpayers and everything for it’s stockholders, the member banks of the Federal Reserve System.

Statement of Senator Bunning

Four years ago when you came before the Senate for confirmation to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve, I was the only Senator to vote against you. In fact, I was the only Senator to even raise serious concerns about you. I opposed you because I knew you would continue the legacy of Alan Greenspan, and I was right. But I did not know how right I would be and could not begin to imagine how wrong you would be in the following four years.
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Banks, Economics, Financial Crises, Markets, Politics Banks, collapse, debt, deflation, economy, history, monetary policy, Politics, The Fed, US treasury

During the 1991 recession (if you can call it that) Bill Clinton made a campaign issue of “It’s the economy stupid.” It’s true, it is all about the economy. But it’s also a little more fundamental than that. It’s something that people have known intuitively for centuries. In a good economy, there was always “plenty of money” and in hard times it was “money is scarce”. Things haven’t changed, except that now those responsible for money creation are intentionally clouding the picture with all kinds of economic jawboning (dutifully reported daily by the media) to create a paranoia of both hyperinflation and deflation.
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Banks, Economics, Financial Crises, Inflation/Deflation Banks, collapse, debt, deflation, Economics, economy, history, inflation, monetary policy, stock market, The Fed

Most political speeches are just that, a speech, a lot of hot air. However, there exists in our recent history, one speech that single handedly won the cold war.  It is the speech President Reagan delivered to Moscow State University on May 31, 1988.  The New York Times editorialized: “When people some day look back to the milestones of the cold war, they are likely to remember the day Ronald Reagan extolled freedom, while Lenin looked on.” The speech follows in it’s entirety:

President Reagan:

Thank you, Rector Logunov, and I want to thank all of you very much for a very warm welcome.
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Politics history, Politics, strategy, war

This is a transcript of Prof. Joseph Peden’s 50-minute lecture “Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire” given at the Mises Institute Seminar on Money and Government in Houston, Texas on October 27, 1984. The original audio recording is available courtesy of the Mises Institute.

Two centuries ago, in 1776, there were two books published in England, both of which are read avidly today. One of them was Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and the other was Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon’s multi-volume work is the tale of a state that survived for twelve centuries in the west and for another thousand years in the east, at Constantinople.

Yet Gibbon in looking at this phenomenon commented that the wonder was not that the Roman Empire had fallen, but rather that it had lasted so long. And scholars since Gibbon have devoted great deal of energy to examining that problem: how was it that the Roman Empire lasted so long,   Read more…

Banks, Currencies, Economics, Financial Crises, Gold, Inflation/Deflation Banks, collapse, Currencies, debt, Economics, economy, exchange rates, fiscal policy, Gold, history, inflation, monetary policy, taxes, The Fed, US treasury, war