What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

It seems reasonable to believe that the Obama administration and the Congressional Budget Office may have taken advantage of the way the failed attempt by labor unions and leftists to oust Wisconsin governor Scott Walker dominated the political news cycle earlier this week. On Tuesday, the CBO released the 2012 version of its long-term federal budget outlook. Somehow, the pencil pushers and spreadsheet generators got this year’s rendition done 17 days earlier than last year’s. How convenient.

How bad is the outlook? As James Pethokoukis and others noted, it’s so frighteningly bad that the CBO couldn’t project its worst-case scenario on the economic impact of the national debt. According to Page 38 in the full report, “Debt would reach 250 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) by 2035 under the assumptions leading to these estimates. CBO’s model cannot reliably estimate output after debt reaches that amount, in the agency’s judgment.”

That’s because, as the Wall Street Journal noted and quoted, “so much debt is so far outside ‘historical experience’ and the CBO’s ‘assumptions might no longer be valid.’” Expressed in layman’s terms: Such a stratospheric level of debt breaks the model, because we’d be going where no country has gone before without experiencing financial collapse.

Shorter-term, the CBO report’s “Extended Alternative Fiscal Scenario” projects that the federal government will hit what many economists consider the danger-zone level of debt — namely the point at which debt held by the public (excluding intergovernmental holdings) reaches 90% of GDP — sometime during fiscal 2021, the same year as its 2011 projection. That 90% threshold is what I characterized in a column last year as when the country will become “Maxed Out America,” reaching the point where the federal government will likely either have a hard time issuing additional debt, or will have to start paying higher than risk-free rates to do so, starting a vicious cycle which will be hard to stop once started.

I believe that the CBO is being unjustifiably overoptimistic. Even if Barack Obama is not reelected, its assumptions about how the economy will perform in the near term seem too rosy. If Obama is reelected, you can almost take it to the bank — or to whatever is left of the banking system at that point — that we’ll get maxed out by the time he leaves office.

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Stagflation is one of the worst economic conditions a country can be in, and the United States just entered it.

It has actually been responsible for revolutions and uprisings in developed countries around the world. Most recently Greece, Spain and Portugal are experiencing severe doses of this dreaded economic condition. It is extraordinarily difficult to work through and often destroys wealth for generations.
Stagflation is simply defined by high unemployment, slow economic growth and high inflation. It makes inflationary and deflationary periods look like a walk in the park. Stagflation usually results in very long, severe recessions.

The best and most effective way to recover from stagflation is for the government to lower rates drastically. The last time the U.S. was in stagflation -- in the late 1970s -- that is precisely how we recovered and prospered. However, it is crucial to understand that we are not in a position to do that today since rates are already at historically low levels. This is a cataclysmic problem. How we got here is debatable, but fixing the situation will be difficult.

The reported unemployment rate is high (8.1%) but a more-accurate level of unemployment is buried in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS); section U-6 of the BLS states that unemployment rate is closer to 14.5%. In any given month, both the number of people considered unemployed and the size of the labor force might change. Because the government measures both variables, it is easy to move people out of the labor force to make unemployment appear smaller.

Currently the labor force is at a 30-year low. Only 63.7%.of the population is working. Think of it this way: 36 % of all people are not working. The last time the labor force was this low occurred in 1970s during another stagflation period.

The second factor of stagflation is slow economic growth. The GDP growth rate is the broadest indicator of how much our economy is growing. We want the GDP to grow more because that means that businesses are growing, making money and people are working. When growth slows, American businesses are not making as much money and must take preventative measures including cutting jobs in order to survive. The GDP is low and trending lower. Across the board most economists have been lowering their growth forecast for the U.S. I don't believe that we will be above 2% at year end

Finally, prices are rising all around the country. The unprecedented printing of money through quantitative easing programs has been responsible for a majority of this sharp price rise. It is well known that the CPI grossly underestimates the actual increase in the cost of living. Prices on all goods and services are rising drastically. If you were to remove all the manipulation and biases that the government uses in its inflation calculation you will see that inflation is running at about 7%.

Clever manipulation of statistics by the government has avoided talks of stagflation until now. Lowering the interest rate was the best card in our hand and we played it too early. Our last options are to lower the corporate tax rate (which the government refuses to do) and practice quantitative easing (which will cause more inflation).

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Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services on Friday affirmed its AA+ long-term credit rating on the U.S., still a notch below the coveted AAA rating, while maintaining a long-term negative outlook.

The ratings service said its sovereign credit ratings on the U.S. “primarily reflect our view of the strengths of the U.S. economy and monetary system, as well as the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s key reserve currency.”

However, S&P said U.S. political and fiscal sovereign credit risks could lead it to lower that rating by 2014.

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This isn’t just hyperbole. A survey of electricity executive indicates 90 percent of them expect the costs of moving away from coal power plants to lead to higher electricity bills for consumers. More than half of the survey respondents predict at least a 10 percent increase.

More than a survey, as Phil Kerpen, President of American Commitment, reports:

…PJM Interconnection, the company that operates the electric grid for 13 states held its 2015 capacity auction…The market-clearing price for new 2015 capacity – almost all natural gas – was $136 per megawatt. That’s eight times higher than the price for 2012, which was just $16 per megawatt.

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But don’t expect this White House to care. They have no reason to. These price spikes are a few years away and will come long after President Obama will face voters for the last time. He’ll either be a President in his last term or a former President, neither of which carry accountability.

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The Blaze reported earlier this afternoon that Spain had finally caved and asked the European Union to save its ailing banking sector with a bailout of up to $125 billion (€100 billion). When news of the Spanish bailout broke, this was also reported [emphasis added]:

Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said Saturday the aid will go to the banking sector only and so would not come with new austerity conditions attached for the economy in general. A statement from the finance ministers of the 17 countries that use the euro explained that the money would be fed directly into a fund Spain set up to recapitalize its banks, but underscored that the Spanish government is ultimately responsible for the loan.

Did you catch that? Spain scored itself a massive no-strings-attached bailout deal. Clearly, this sets them apart from the other eurozone countries that were forced to agree to austerity measures in order to be eligible for financial aid.

But, for lack of a better comparison, the EU is like a family. And as anyone with siblings can tell you, when one kid gets special treatment, all the kids want special treatment. And that’s exactly what is brewing in Ireland.

“Ireland wants to renegotiate its rescue plan to benefit from the same treatment as Spain, which looks set to win a bailout for its banks without any broader economic reforms in return,” the AFP reports.

“Ireland [wants] to ensure parity of the deal with Spain retroactively on its bailout from EFSF [European Financial Stability Facility],” an EU government source told AFP.

The rescue package Ireland agreed to back in November 2010 involved an injection of €85 billion ($112 billion) from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Of course, in order to get their hands on all that money, they had to agree to austerity.

So why was Spain given a sweetheart deal? That’s exactly what leaders in the Emerald Isle want to know.

“Dublin plans to raise the issue during the next meeting of eurozone finance ministers to be held June 21,” the AFP reports.

You know what this means, right? Ireland isn’t going to be the only bailed out country crying foul.

You know who else is going to be unhappy about this?

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Today's worldwide paper-, or "fiat-," money regime is an economically and socially destructive scheme — with far-reaching and seriously harmful economic and societal consequences, effects that extend beyond what most people would imagine.

Fiat money is inflationary; it benefits a few at the expense of many others; it causes boom-and-bust cycles; it leads to overindebtedness; it corrupts society's morals; and it will ultimately end in a depression on a grand scale.

All these insights, however, which have been put forward by the scholars of the Austrian School of economics years ago, hardly play any role among the efforts of mainstream economists, central banks, politicians, or bureaucrats in identifying the root cause of the current financial and economic crisis and, against this backdrop, formulating proper remedies.

This should not come as a surprise, though. For the (intentional or unintentional) purpose of policy makers and their influential "experts" — who serve as opinion molders — is to keep the fiat-money regime going, whatever it takes.

II.

The fiat-money regime essentially rests on central banking — meaning that a government-sponsored central bank holds the money-production monopoly — and fractional-reserve banking, denoting banks issuing money created out of thin air, or ex nihilo.

In The Mystery of Banking, Murray N. Rothbard uncovers the fiat-money regime — with central banking and fractional-reserve banking — as a form of embezzlement, a scheme of thievery.[1]

...

Fiat money is not only inflationary, thereby causing all the economic and societal evils of eroding the purchasing power of money and leading to a non-free-market related redistribution of income and wealth among the people; banks' circulation credit expansion also artificially lowers the market interest rate to below the rate that would prevail had the credit and fiat-money supply not been artificially lowered, thereby making debt financing unduly attractive, especially for government.

It is the artificial lowering of the market interest rate that also induces an artificial boom, which leads to overconsumption and malinvestment, and which must ultimately end in a bust. Mises put it succinctly:

The boom cannot continue indefinitely. There are two alternatives. Either the banks continue the credit expansion without restriction and thus cause constantly mounting price increases and an ever-growing orgy of speculation, which, as in all other cases of unlimited inflation, ends in a "crack-up boom" and in a collapse of the money and credit system. Or the banks stop before this point is reached, voluntarily renounce further credit expansion and thus bring about the crisis. The depression follows in both instances.[4]
III.

A fiat-money regime depends essentially on the demand for money. As long as people are willingly holding fiat money (and fiat-money-denominated government, bank, and corporate bonds, for that matter), the fiat-money regime can be run quite smoothly, for then people raise their demand for fiat money as its supply increases.

As a result, the rise in the money stock does not show up in a change in overall prices of goods and services (while it goes unnoticed that prices would have declined had there be no fiat-money expansion).

If, however, people's demand for fiat money declines relative to the supply of fiat money, the system gets into trouble, for then a rise in the fiat-money supply will show up in price increases — be it consumer or asset prices.

Rising prices, in turn, especially when it comes to accelerating prices increases, bring fiat money's hitherto rather subtle redistribution of income and wealth to the surface. Once people start realizing that fiat money is inflationary, the demand for fiat money starts declining.

If people expect ever-greater increases in the fiat-money supply going forward (without any limit, so to speak), the demand for fiat money falls (drastically) or even collapses altogether. This is what triggers a crack-up boom, as Mises called it.[5]

People desperately exchange fiat money against other vendible items, bidding up the money prices of goods and services, thereby setting into motion a downward spiral, leading to ever-greater losses of the purchasing power of fiat money.

In such an extreme scenario, fiat money can actually become completely destroyed. This is what occurred in the 1923 German hyperinflation, when government issued ever-greater amounts of money, and eventually no one accepted the Reichsmark as money any longer.

To keep the fiat-money regime going, therefore, people must keep their confidence in the value of fiat money. This, in turn, explains the critical role of government-sponsored opinion molders in keeping the fiat-money regime going.

Especially in the field of monetary economics, government-favoring economists take great effort to convince people of the advantages of the fiat-money regime, painting the fiat-money regime — and thus central banking and fractional-reserve banking — in the brightest colors.

What is more, people must be made to think that they benefit from fiat money, that there is actually no alternative to a government-sponsored fiat-money regime, and that abandoning fiat money and replacing it with commodity money would be economically disastrous.

There is an additional and no-less-important factor that works toward upholding the fiat-money regime. It is what can rightly be termed as collective corruption[6]: sooner or later an ever-greater number of people will develop a vital interest in keeping the fiat-money regime going.

This is because a fiat-money regime allows government to expand strongly, thereby corrupting an ever-greater number of people: people seek (allegedly prestigious) jobs, generous handouts, and business opportunities offered by government. People increasingly team up with government, making their personal career and business success dependent on an expanding government apparatus. And many people even start investing their lifetime savings in fiat-denominated "secure" government bonds.

As a result, sooner or later a government default becomes a no-go. In times of crisis, the printing of ever-greater amounts of money for shoring up government finances (and the finances of government beneficiaries) will be cast as the policy of the least evil.

To the great number of those who have become dependent on the government apparatus, printing money to finance government's empty coffers will be seen as preferable to letting financially overstretched public sectors and banks go bankrupt.

The incentive structure provoked by fiat money therefore works toward pushing the system beyond its limit. In other words, fiat money will go through high inflation — even hyperinflation — first before a depression unfolds.

A fiat-money regime cannot be upheld indefinitely, though, because it erodes — via ever-greater government interventionism — the very pillar on which the free market system rests: private property.

Mises put it as follows:

It would be a mistake to assume that the modern organization of exchange is bound to continue to exist. It carries within itself the germ of its own destruction; the development of the fiduciary medium must necessarily lead to its breakdown.[7]

The erosion of the free-market system, in turn, entails a decline of the economy's production capacity, thereby making it increasingly impossible for debtors to service their liabilities, thereby increasing the incentive for running the printing press.

As the Austrian economists have shown, however, there is no escape from the disastrous economic consequences caused by fiat money; high inflation, or hyperinflation, wouldn't do the "trick." In fact, it would make ensuing depression even worse.

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TexasWife25 said:

Ohhh a wall of c&p text, goodie.

Can't you just... sum it up, and then suppy the link?

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TexasWife25 said:

Ohhh a wall of c&p text, goodie.

Can't you just... sum it up, and then suppy the link?

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Wat_Tyler said:

Sometimes, you have to do what you would rather not in order to get ahead.


Like work on Sundays.


Like Wat is off to do.


Fuck entitlement. God chuckled when I was born and said, "this one will work for a living."

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JohnnySavage said:

Mr. Mises has a gross conceptual error of the role of money as a means of effectuating trade.

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fair_warning said:

You're citing Fox? Give us a break or at least credit for a few clues.

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vetteman said:

One wonders how many international bestsellers titled "The theory Of Money And Credit" the Savage Clown has written.

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(CNSNews.com) - Since President Barack Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, the Federal Reserve’s holdings of U.S. government debt have quintupled, according to the Fed’s official monthly balance sheet.

On Jan. 28, 2009, a week after Obama’s nomination, the Fed owned $302 billion in U.S. Treasury securities. On April 25, 2012, the latest date reported, the Fed owned five and a half time that much in U.S. Treasury securities--$1.668 trillion.

That is an increase from January 2009 of $1.366 trillion—or 452 percent.

Under Obama, the Federal Reserve has become the single largest owner of U.S. government debt. When Obama entered office, entities in the People’s Republic of China were the largest holders, followed by entities in Japan. At the end of January 2009, China owned $739.6 billion in U.S. government debt and Japan owned $634.8 billion.

By the end of March 2012, China’s holdings of U.S. debt had grown to $1.1699 trillion and Japan’s holdings had grown to $1.083 trillion.

Together, the Federal Reserve, China and Japan had increased their holdings of U.S. debt by $2.2445 trillion since Obama took office.

The total U.S. government debt grew from $10.6179 trillion to $15.6233 between Jan. 28, 2009 and April 25, 2012. Leaving out the intragovernmental debt—which the federal government owes itself—the publicly owned part of the U.S. government debt has climbed from $6.2955 trillion to $10.8607 trillion, an increase of $4.5652 trillion.

The $2.2445 trillion of that new publicly owned U.S. government debt that was purchased by the Fed, China and Japan equals 49 percent of all the new debt the U.S. government has sold to the public since Obama took office.

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Providence, R.I. — If elections are won partly on the enthusiasm of a candidate’s base, Barack Obama is in trouble. Netroots Nation, the annual left-wing conference for bloggers and activists, held its seventh annual rally here this weekend. The skies were sunny outside, but there was clearly a cloud hanging over attendees inside the cavernous Rhode Island Convention Center.

It wasn’t only last Tuesday’s jarring defeat of public-sector unions in Wisconsin, or President Obama’s refusal to campaign in person against Governor Scott Walker — or unease that the Supreme Court may be only weeks away from sweeping much or all of Obamacare onto the ash heap of history. On Friday, in the middle of the conference, President Obama famously declared that “the private sector is doing fine,” calling into question his campaign’s basic competence in getting out a coherent message.

Indeed, enthusiasm for Obama was decidedly absent from this year’s gathering. Administration officials weren’t invited to attend (Valerie Jarrett and others have appeared in the past), and President Obama limited his role to an unpublicized surprise video shown to delegates late on Saturday, when many people had already left. “Change is hard, but we’ve seen that it’s possible, as long as you’re willing to keep up that fight, I’ll be right there with you,” Obama offered. Not exactly a stirring call to arms, and the tepid applause his video garnered can’t have pleased Team Obama.

Van Jones [COMMUNIST - A_J] — the former Obama administration “green jobs” czar who was forced to resign from the White House after his radical past was exposed — did his best to follow the Obama video with some fiery rhetoric. “We do not have the right to sit here and feel sorry for ourselves and let these people destroy our country,” he yelled.

But after another burst of obligatory fearmongering about the Tea Party — “When they get power, they use it to decimate us!” — even he calmed down and acknowledged that these were tough times for the Left. He claimed the union recall in Wisconsin had been a “potential national breakthrough” but admitted it had fallen short. The local forces “fought alone,” he said. “Let’s be honest now. We’re all friends here.” At that point, someone in the audience shouted out, “Where was Obama?”

“Where were the national Democrats?” Jones replied. “And where were a lot of us?” The questions lingered in the room, and no one addressed them further.

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TexasWife25 said:

Ohhh a wall of c&p text, goodie.

Can't you just... sum it up, and then suppy the link?

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Mark Twain once said that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

Twain wasn’t talking about energy, but his line applies to the EPA’s proposed prohibition on the construction of coal-fired electricity generators. Indeed, we need only look back a few decades to see how the EPA’s misbegotten rule rhymes with what Congress did back in 1978 when it banned the use of natural gas for electricity production.

Yes, you read that right. In 1978, Congress passed the Powerplant and Industrial Fuel Use Act, which prohibited the use of natural gas for electricity generation. Given the surfeit of natural gas now available to American consumers, it’s hard to imagine a time when natural-gas shortages were common. But during the mid- and late-1970s, shortages were a frequent occurrence. Those shortages weren’t caused by a lack of gas resources. As we now know, America sits atop galaxies of the fuel. Instead, the shortages were caused by a briar patch of federal regulations that hampered the development of interstate markets for natural gas.

Nevertheless, political leaders were convinced that a crisis was at hand. And the solution was, wait for it . . . more coal-fired power plants. Indeed, coal was so popular that in April 1977, President Jimmy Carter delivered a televised address to the nation about the “energy crisis” that was gripping the nation. Carter said the U.S., and the rest of the world, was running out of oil and gas, and he declared that “too few” domestic electric utilities “have switched to coal, our most abundant energy source.”

There’s no small amount of irony in the fact that the EPA — which is pushing a phalanx of new regulations on air quality, coal-ash disposal, and other measures — is now trying to shut down some of the very same coal-fired power plants that were built in the 1970s and 1980s as a direct result of the congressional ban on natural-gas-fired electricity production.

In 1987, Congress reversed course and repealed the Powerplant and Industrial Fuel Use Act. Although the law was in effect for less than a decade, it distorted the power sector for years to come. In 1978, natural gas was generating 13.8 percent of U.S. electricity. By 1988 — a decade after the Powerplant and Industrial Fuel Use Act was passed — natural gas’s share of the U.S. electricity business had fallen to a modern low of just 9.3 percent. By contrast, between 1978 and 1988, coal’s share of the U.S. electricity generation market soared, going from 44.2 percent to 56.9 percent, the highest level of the modern era.

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On January 1, 2013, America careens off a fiscal cliff. The largest tax increase in the country's history goes into effect. Spending on defense, Medicare, and other vital areas will be cut indiscriminately. And, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the fiscal cliff may well push the economy back into recession.

One would think that as president, Barack Obama might feel some small concern over the prospect of economic calamity. But so far, there's been nothing. No suggestion on how to remedy the problem, no moves toward bipartisanship, not a single measure set forth to avoid the looming tax increases and indiscriminate cuts. Nothing.

Instead, the president acts like the fiscal cliff is none of his concern. It is, after all, merely a ticking time bomb that has the potential to set the country back to the darkest days of 2008-2009, when the U.S. stock market dropped by more than half from its July 2007 peak. That market debacle accompanied a severe economic recession in which millions lost their jobs, their homes, and their hopes of a secure retirement. That possibility is staring us in the face again, and the president doesn't seem to care. He doesn't even seem to know that a problem exists.

At his June 8 news conference, Obama informed the country that "private sector is doing fine." He also noted that "the private sector has been doing a good job creating jobs." That's news to the 27,000 workers who may lose their jobs at Hewlett-Packard, and to the 25 million who are unemployed, underemployed, or so discouraged they've quit looking for work. If American businesses are doing "just fine," you'd think there would be jobs for everyone.

At his Friday news conference, Obama insisted that the economy "would have been stronger" if Congress had passed his jobs bill. It "would have been stronger" if the Greek economy were stronger (imagine -- the president thinks the U.S. economy is dependent on the performance of a nation the size of Greece!), it "would have been stronger" if states would just go farther into debt and hire more teachers and firemen, it "would have been stronger" if the recent recession hadn't worse than he ever imagined.

Obama is rapidly becoming the "would have, should have, could have" president. He has an excuse for everything, including an 8.2% unemployment rate and the weakest post-recession GDP growth in memory.

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Dances With Falsehoods said:

Ban Natural Gas! No, Ban Coal!
By Robert Bryce, NRO
June 11, 2012


ard telling what the story will be on the stimulus 20 years from now on Diocletian's smoking ruins...

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Dances With Falsehoods said:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/fiscal_cliff_no_leader.html#ixzz1xU1exMSn


<bitter "I hate America" rant snipped>

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