Look for yourself, here.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Current Growth is Being Swallowed Up by Interest Payments on the Debt
Fiscal year 2011 interest payments on the federal debt (source: treasurydirect.gov):
Debt to the penny as of this moment (source: savingsbonds.gov):
Implied interest rate:
2.95 percent.
But the first report of Q4 GDP was only 2.8 percent.
So the current growth measure is being swallowed up by interest payments on the national debt. Growth is therefore slightly negative just by this measure, not factoring in inflation: minus .15 percent growth.
None dare call it depression.
Global Public Debt Clock: $44 Trillion and Counting
Message to the post-Christian West:
"Owe no man anything."
Sincerely,
St. Paul, Epistle to the Romans 13:8
Watch it here.
Massive Global Central Bank Balance Sheet Expansion Interferes With Interest Rates
So says the data compiled and illustrated by James Bianco in late January at The Big Picture here:
The combined size of [the world's largest] eight central banks’ balance sheets has almost tripled in the last six years from $5.42 trillion to more than $15 trillion and is still on the rise! ...
QE is an expanding of balance sheets via increasing bank reserves. The purpose of QE ... is to increase bank reserves through purchases of fixed income securities in order to lower interest rates. ...
[I]t is fair to compare the size of these balance sheets (now $15 trillion) to the capitalization of the world’s stock markets (now $48 trillion). ...
Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, the eight central bank balance sheets were less than 15% the size of world stock markets and falling. In the immediate aftermath of Lehman Brothers’ failure, these eight central bank balance sheets swelled to 37% the capitalization of the world stock market. But keep in mind that the late 2008/early 2009 peak was due to collapsing stock market values combined with balance sheet expansion via “lender of last resort” loans.
Recently, the eight central bank balance sheets have spiked back to 33% of world stock market capitalization. This has come about not by lender of last resort loans, but rather by QE expansion (buying bonds with “printed money“) even faster than world stock markets are rising.
Some people look at this information as evidence that the intent of the central banks is to boost asset prices to keep the illusion of growth going. But what if it's really just about buying time, attempting to secure lower roll over interest rates for refinancing massive debt loads which have become a giant millstone around the neck of the world?
The total public and private debt of the world's 35 most indebted nations alone tops $57 trillion, which is 95 percent of the $60 trillion in 2011 GDP of the world's 35 most productive nations. Of 27 of those most productive nations (not counting Greece whose 34.38 percent rate is an outlier) shown here, sovereign 10 year bond yields last week averaged 4.2 percent, implying world wide debt service payments of $2.4 trillion just to stay current.
The US alone spends nearly $0.5 trillion annually in debt service payments, and calls it a victory when $0.04 trillion in spending is cut. Meanwhile deficits and debt continue to build, here and abroad.
GDP growth averaging 3.5 percent per annum is the way out, but the debt burden eats up the progress.
This can't go on forever.
Some people look at this information as evidence that the intent of the central banks is to boost asset prices to keep the illusion of growth going. But what if it's really just about buying time, attempting to secure lower roll over interest rates for refinancing massive debt loads which have become a giant millstone around the neck of the world?
The total public and private debt of the world's 35 most indebted nations alone tops $57 trillion, which is 95 percent of the $60 trillion in 2011 GDP of the world's 35 most productive nations. Of 27 of those most productive nations (not counting Greece whose 34.38 percent rate is an outlier) shown here, sovereign 10 year bond yields last week averaged 4.2 percent, implying world wide debt service payments of $2.4 trillion just to stay current.
The US alone spends nearly $0.5 trillion annually in debt service payments, and calls it a victory when $0.04 trillion in spending is cut. Meanwhile deficits and debt continue to build, here and abroad.
GDP growth averaging 3.5 percent per annum is the way out, but the debt burden eats up the progress.
This can't go on forever.
Dodd-Frank is 848 Pages Long, Glass-Steagall was 37 Pages
Robert Lenzner reminds us here that the shorter one worked pretty well for a pretty long time, but the longer one which replaces it is already a disaster.
For The Economist article referred to by Lenzner, see here, including an important cost correction correcting billions to millions. (Oops).
Saturday, February 18, 2012
The Hitch on G.K. Chesterton as Fascist Fellow Traveler
Seen here:
"[Chesterton's] idea of a body [the Roman Catholic Church] that actually did all the official thinking was probably not unrelated to the Mussolini concept of the corporate state. This would be repulsive to the English and American tradition."
Only until FDR, of course, who paved the way in America for the acceptance of the concept of the president as the blended strong man, as described in the memoirs of President Herbert Hoover.
In Spengler's phrase: "There is no contradiction between economic liberalism and socialism."
Can there be any other explanation for the three year somnolence of the 30 million strong Catholic Church in America while a ne'er-do-well poseur attempts to overthrow the country? Roman Catholics are incapable of recognizing tyranny, let alone stopping it, since they actually identify with a divine one. In fact, until recently Obama's social program and Catholics' have been virtually indistinguishable. Which is rather the point of Hitchen's critique of religion, and its heaven as the "Celestial North Korea."
Like many religious groups in America, Catholicism represents a country within the country and is only the most recent but vivid example of our continuing Balkanization and inevitable dissolution as one nation under the Protestant God.
The wall separating church and state in America was not built by Rome.
High Gasoline Prices Are In The News Again: Up 55 Percent Since 2007
For example, from The Associated Press:
The national average for gasoline began the year at $3.28 a gallon. The average price for February so far is $3.49 a gallon. That's up from $3.17 a gallon last February, a record at the time. Back in 2007, before the recession hit, the average for February was $2.25 a gallon. ...
Americans spent 8.4 percent of their household income on gasoline last year when gas averaged an all-time high of $3.51 a gallon. That's double the percentage a decade ago. They could pay even more this year, even though demand is the lowest in 11 years as people drive fewer miles in more efficient cars, says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at OPIS. ...
World oil demand is expected to increase by another 1.5 percent to 89.25 million barrels a day in 2012, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Read the complete story here.
The Rich Should Answer Obama's Class Warfare With A Prosperous Middle Class
As recognized long ago by Aristotle:
Now a tyranny is a monarchy where the good of one man only is the object of government, an oligarchy considers only the rich, and a democracy only the poor; but neither of them have a common good in view.
Tyranny, the worst excess imaginable, [is] a government the most contrary possible to a free state.
Tyranny arises from a headstrong democracy or an oligarchy, but very seldom when the members of the community are nearly on an equality with each other. When there is a want of a proper number of men of middling fortune, the poor extend their power too far, abuses arise, and the government is soon at an end.
A tyrant is chosen out of the meanest populace; an enemy to the better sort, that the common people may not be oppressed by [the better sort].
The Tea Party: A Middle Class Rebellion Against Bailouts
"One of the establishment outrages that led to the middle class rebellion now known as the Tea Party was the $700 billion TARP program that bailed-out a select group of Wall Street and international banks from their bad bets on the U.S. housing market."
As of the End of 2011, President Obama Has Golfed 92 Times
So Keith Koffler for WhiteHouseDossier.com, here.
That means he's averaged about 2.5 outings per month over the three years.
A Moochelle Obama Retrospective from WhiteHouseDossier.com
The first lady, who just returned last month from 17 days of relaxation in Hawaii, is skiing in Colorado on Presidents’ Day Weekend for the second year in a row. ...
Just last August, she sojourned on Martha’s Vineyard, and the month before she travelled to southern Africa for a trip that mixed official business with tourist outings like an African safari. In July 2010, she took an exorbitant excursion to the southern coast of Spain, flying out with friends and family on a large jet that often serves as Air Force 2 and then staying at a ritzy hotel. ...
For her last two Hawaii vacations, Michelle left separately from her husband at extra cost to taxpayers in order to ensure she got the full vacation while the president was forced to remain in Washington a few extra days to finish work with Congress.
Read the full entry, here.
Energy Subsidies to Fossil, Renewable and Conservation Equal to Nuclear '73-'03
So says Wikipedia here, but you'll notice that the data isn't framed that way.
The presentation lumps nuclear and fossil together at $74 billion to make it appear that these "bad" sources received far more in subsidies than poor old renewable and conservation at $26 billion.
But fossil, renewable and energy efficiency subsidies combined totaled $50 billion from 1973 to 2003, matching the subsidies to nuclear over the period.
Perhaps even more interesting fossil received slightly less in subsidies than renewable over the period.
Overall, subsidies amounted to just $100 billion over 30 years, for an average of $3.3 billion per annum, a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions of dollars homeowners extracted from home equity, much of it blown on jet fuel for vacations.
Perhaps even more interesting fossil received slightly less in subsidies than renewable over the period.
Overall, subsidies amounted to just $100 billion over 30 years, for an average of $3.3 billion per annum, a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions of dollars homeowners extracted from home equity, much of it blown on jet fuel for vacations.
Here is the screen shot:
Something funny going on with the reference, though. Must be too controversial:
Friday, February 17, 2012
The Percentage of People Working Hasn't Been This Bad Since November 1983
Get a grip, people. Obama is a fisherman, trolling along the bottom, catching nothing for three years except a good buzz from a boat-full of beer.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Historical Real GDP From BEA, Recent Quarterly, and Annual Data 1996-2011
From the most recent release, Friday, January 27, 2012, here:
The 2011 GDP advance over 2010 of 1.7 percent represents a decline in the pace of recovery of 43 percent, a huge fall-off. The money borrowed (!) to stimulate the economy has done nothing to re-ignite growth, as critics of Keynesianism predicted.
Post-WW2 GDP growth averaged 3.5 percent per annum.
The period from 2001 through 2007 averaged only 2.4 percent.
The back-to-back declines in 2008 and 2009 represent a small depression.
The 2010-11 recovery period so far is averaging only 2.4 percent, a return to the unimpressive growth pattern under one George W. Bush, whose best year in 2004 merely equaled the post-war average.
Real recovery would look more like 6 percent real GDP growth or even higher for a number of years back-to-back.
2010's 3.0 is shaping up to be just a one-off.
Liberal Jonathan Turley Smells An Imperial President In Obama's 'Recess' Appointments
Because the Congress wasn't in recess:
Yet the latest recess appointments push this controversy to a new extreme. The shortest prior period for a recess appointment in recent history was a break of 10 days. In this case, Congress did not intend to take such a recess and took steps to "stay in business" to prevent any end run by the president. Under the Constitution, neither chamber of Congress can recess for more than three days without the consent of the other chamber. This winter, the House expressly declined to give consent — holding sessions every three days to prevent any recess appointments. Moreover, this session was hardly "pro forma." Just three days after going into the session in December, Congress passed the president's demand for a two-month payroll tax holiday extension. So the Obama administration was doing business with Congress on important legislation while simultaneously claiming that Congress was functionally out of session.
Yeah, but most of the House went home, leaving a skeleton crew behind to pass the payroll tax holiday extension for two months, repudiating an earlier vote in the House which called for a one year extension.
Just as bad, the skeleton crew also raised a tax on mortgages for two years to pay for the lousy two month extension. The new tax on mortgages is not just a first, but is utterly insane at a time when the Fed is doing everything it can to stimulate housing through long term interest rate interventions. A tax will only suppress home-buying.
If Republicans had any balls, they'd remove Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor for that.
It's not just an imperial presidency at work in this case, but an unrepresentative House of Representatives.
See Turley's complete remarks for USA Today here, which provide a very reasonable interpretation of the meaning of the conditions under which recess appointments may be made, i.e. when a vacancy occurs during a recess.
Obama's appointments didn't occur during a recess, and the vacancies didn't occur during one, so they're wrong. And so were George Bush's.
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