Category Archive: 5.) The United States

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What’s Germany’s GDP Without Factories

2019-05-09

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2019-05-09

Europe Real GDP, 2007-2013
It was a startling statement for the time. Mario Draghi had only been on the job as President of the European Central Bank for a few months by then, taking over for the hapless Jean Claude-Trichet who was unceremoniously retired at the end of October 2011 amidst “unexpected” chaos and turmoil. It was Trichet who contributed much to the tumult, having idiotically raised rates (twice) during 2011 even as warning signs of crisis and economic weakness...

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What Would It Take to Spark a Rural/Small-Town Revival?

2019-05-07

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2019-05-07

Net farm Income, USDA 1970- 2010
There are many historical models in which the spending/investing of wealthy families drives the expansion of local economies. The increase in farm debt while farm income declines is putting unbearable financial pressure on American farmers, who must be differentiated from giant agri-business corporations. This is placing immense pressure on farmers, pressure which manifests in rising suicide rates.

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Good Riddance to a “Nothing-Burger” Trade Deal

2019-05-06

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2019-05-06

U.S.Dollar's Share of Global Peyments
China has expanded its domestic debt to fund its growth, much of which qualifies as malinvestment, creating financial vulnerabilities its government is anxious to mask. As I noted in Trade Deal Follies: The U.S. Has Embraced the World's Worst Negotiating Tactics (April 8, 2019), the trade deal was a Nothing-Burger for the U.S. Without any consequences for violating trade deals, China violates all trade deals, starting with the WTO.

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Income Inequality and the Decline of the Middle Class in Two Charts

2019-05-04

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2019-05-04

CBO Income Before, 1980 - 2019
These two charts of average incomes of U.S. households by quintile (bottom 20%, middle 60% (20%+20%+20%) and top 20%) have both good news and bad news. (Charts are from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office -- CBO).

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The Accelerating Decay of the Middle Class

2019-05-03

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2019-05-03

The Fruit of Financialization
Ironically, their ample compensation allows them to avoid the poor-quality services they've designed for everyone below them. If we define middle class by the security of household income and what that income can buy rather than by an income level, what do we conclude? 

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What Tokyo Eurodollar Redistribution Really Means For ‘Green Shoots’

2019-05-02

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2019-05-02

TIC - US Banking Data
Last April, monetary officials in Japan were publicly contemplating ending asset purchases under QQE. This April, they are more quietly wondering what other financial assets they might have to buy just to keep it all going a little longer. I’d suggest something like the clouds passing over the islands or the ocean water surrounding them. Nobody would notice either way and it would be equally as effective.

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The Erosion of Everyday Life

2019-05-01

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2019-05-01

Wages aren't keeping up
Working hard and doing what you're told is no longer yielding the promised American Dream of security, agency and liberty. Volume One of Fernand Braudel's oft-recommended (by me) trilogy Civilization & Capitalism, 15th to 18th Century is titled The Structures of Everyday Life. The book describes how life slowly became better and freer as the roots of modern capitalism and liberty spread in western Europe, slowly destabilizing and obsoleting the...

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There Are Two Little Problems with “Taxing the Rich” to Pay for “Free Everything”

2019-04-30

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2019-04-30

Federal government total expenditures, 1960-2010
No super-wealthy individual or household is going to pay billions in additional taxes when $10 to $20 million will purchase political adjustments. The 2020 election cycle has begun, and a popular campaign promise is "free everything" paid for by new taxes on the super-wealthy. Who doesn't like free stuff? Who will vote for whomever offers them free stuff? No wonder it's a popular campaign promise.

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Globally Synchronized…

2019-04-29

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2019-04-29

WTO Global Trade, 2007-2019
The economic sickness is predictably spreading. While unexpected in most of the world which still, somehow, depends on central banking forecasts, it really has been almost inevitable. From the very start, just the utterance of the word “decoupling” was the kiss of death.

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Durably Sideways

2019-04-28

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2019-04-28

Durable Goods New Orders, SA 2013-2019
Next month, in the durable goods series, the Census Bureau will release the results of its annual benchmark changes. In May 2019, the agency will revise the seasonal adjustments going back to January 2002. Unadjusted data will not be, well, further adjusted.

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Push Them Hard Enough and the Productive Class Will Opt Out of Servitude

2019-04-27

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2019-04-27

State and Local Spending vs Private GDP, 1950-2010
People love their big paychecks, but they also value their sanity. One of the most astonishing manifestations of disconnected-from-reality hubris is public authorities' sublime confidence that employers and entrepreneurs will continue starting and operating enterprises no matter how difficult and costly it becomes to keep the doors open, much less net a profit.

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The Feedback Loop of Doom: When Mobile Creatives and Capital Abandon Unaffordable, Dysfunctional Cities

2019-04-26

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2019-04-26

State and Local Spending vs. Private GDP Multiples of 1950 Values
When the 4% who generate the jobs and tax revenues have had enough and leave, the effects quickly impact the 64%. At the end of any trend, everyone's a true believer: this trend is so enduring, so broad-based, so based on unchanging fundamentals that it will never ever reverse.

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If “Getting Ahead” Depends on Asset Bubbles, It’s Not “Getting Ahead,” It’s Gambling

2019-04-25

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2019-04-25

Workers share of national income 1994-2020
Given that the economy is now totally and completely dependent on inflating asset bubbles, it makes no sense to invest for the long-term. Beneath the endlessly hyped expansion in gross domestic product (GDP) of the past two decades, the economy has changed dramatically. The American Dream boils down to social and economic mobility, a.k.a. getting ahead through hard work, merit and wise investments in oneself and one's family.

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How Empires Fall: Moral Decay

2019-04-23

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2019-04-23

Income Inequality and Political Polarization 1947-2009
There is a name for this institutionalized, commoditized fraud: moral decay. Moral decay is an interesting phenomenon: we spot it easily in our partisan-politics opponents and BAU (business as usual) government/private-sector dealings (are those $3,000 Pentagon hammers now $5,000 each or $10,000 each? It's hard to keep current...), and we're suitably indignant when non-partisan corruption is discovered in supposed meritocracies such as the college...

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America’s Forced Financial Flight: Fleeing Unaffordable and Dysfunctional Cities

2019-04-22

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2019-04-22

Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers 1925-2000
The forced flight from unaffordable and dysfunctional urban regions is as yet a trickle, but watch what happens when a recession causes widespread layoffs in high-wage sectors. For hundreds of years, rural poverty has driven people to urban areas: cities offer paying work and abundant opportunities to get ahead, and these financial incentives have transformed the human populace from largely rural to largely urban in the developed world.

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Business cycle could define Trump’s re-election chances

2019-04-20

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2019-04-20

Trump's Approval Rates are Stable, 2016-2019
President Trump’s focus on getting re-elected in November 2020 may have implications for his economic policy choices.As we move closer to the 2020 presidential election, Trump has been blatantly leaning on the Federal Reserve to be more accommodative and has been trying to appoint nominees who share his preference for loose monetary policy to the Fed board.

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The Next Financial Crisis Won’t Be Caused by Fraud: This Time Will Be Different

2019-04-18

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2019-04-18

All Sectors, Debt Securities and Loans, Liability, 1960 - 2019
Financial crises come in two flavors: fraud and credit-valuation over-reach.Fraud-based financial crises may differ in particulars, but they share many traits: perverse incentives are institutionalized; the perverse incentives reward figuring out how to evade oversight via fraud, embezzlement, masking risk, etc. which are soon commoditized; regulations are gutted by insider-funded lobbying; regulators fail to do their job in hopes of getting...

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Green Shoot or Domestic Stall?

2019-04-17

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2019-04-17

U.S. Industrial Production, SA 2007-2019
According to revised figures, things were really looking up for US industry. For the month of April 2018, the Federal Reserve’s Diffusion Index (3-month) for Industrial Production hit 68.2. Like a lot of other sentiment indicators, this was the highest in so long it had to be something. For this particular index, it hadn’t seen better than 68 since way back in March 2010, back when the economy looked briefly like it might actually recover.

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No Fix for Recession: Without a Financial Crisis, There’s No Central Bank Policy Fix

2019-04-15

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2019-04-15

All Federal Reserve Banks: Total Assets 2004-2018
There are no extreme "fixes" to secular declines in sales, profits, employment, tax revenues and asset prices. The saying "never let a crisis go to waste" embodies several truths worth pondering as the stock market nears new highs. One truth is that extreme policies that would raise objections in typical times can be swept into law in the "we have to do something" panic of a crisis.

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Assange and the Unforgivable Sin of Disemboweling Official Narratives

2019-04-14

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2019-04-14

S-Curve of Expansion, Maturation, Stagnation and Collapse
There is really only one unforgivable sin in the political realm, and that's destroying the official narrative by revealing the facts of the matter. This is why whistleblowers who make public the secret machinery of the elaborately artful lies underpinning all official narratives are hounded to the ends of the Earth.

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