Public Pension Funding Gap Widens 9 Percent Between 2009 And 2010

"The total gap between the money states had available and what they'll have to pay out in the decades ahead reached $757 billion in 2010, the most recent year for which figures are available. That was up 9 percent from the year before, according to the study entitled 'The Widening Gap Update'."


Read the complete story, here.

Government Intervention Reduces Amplitude At The Expense Of Longer Wavelength

And we're all pretty sick of it, too.

Macroeconomic wisdom from Joe Calhoun, here:

Government intervention in times of recession is seen as the compassionate thing to do but it doesn’t accomplish what it purports to. Intervention – monetary or fiscal – can reduce the amplitude of the business cycle but only at the expense of a longer wavelength. Fiscal policies that provide temporary income support during unemployment only work until the benefits inevitably run out. Bailout programs that rescue badly managed companies only work until further mismanagement destroys the capital provided by the bailout. Monetary policies designed to distort asset prices have no lasting effect and only work as long as the Fed is actively intervening in the market. All interventions may be well meaning but there is no free lunch. Eventually, economic reality must be accepted and the excesses purged.

All PIIGS Among 14 Countries With 10 Year Borrowing Costs In Excess Of 6 Percent

As shown here:

With Deposit Guarantee Schemes in PIIGS Flat on Their Backs, ELA Stands Ready

Bloomberg here had the awful truth buried in an article at the end of May:

Spain has dipped into its guarantee fund, which stood at 6.6 billion euros in October, to cover loan losses for buyers of failed banks. It used the facility to inject 5.25 billion euros into Caja de Ahorros del Mediterraneo when it agreed to sell it to Banco Sabadell SA in December. The deposit-guarantee program will also reimburse the bank-rescue fund for the 953 million euros it paid for a stake in Unnim Banc, which was sold to Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA. (BBVA) The country had 931.2 billion euros of deposits at the end of March, according to ECB data.

In other words, in October 2011 Spain had at best only 7 billion euros guaranteeing roughly 931 billion euros in deposits. After covering the losses mentioned, Spain is down to 0.4 billion euros covering 931 billion euros.

As if that's not bad enough:

Italy’s deposit-insurance program is still unfunded, with banks pledging to contribute if and when necessary. Silvia Lazzarino De Lorenzo, a spokeswoman for Roberto Moretti, chairman of the Interbank Deposit Protection Fund, declined to comment. The country had 1.1 trillion euros of deposits at the end of March, ECB data show.

Compared to Italy which can cover nothing, and Spain which can't cover one tenth of one percent, Portugal looks like a veritable paragon of prudent planning with 0.85 percent of deposits covered:

Portugal has a deposit fund of 1.4 billion euros collected from banks through annual contributions, according to Barclays. The country’s total deposits stood at 164.7 billion euros at the end of March, according to the central bank.

John Mauldin, depending on David Kotok, here, must think that all that is really quite beside the point since the ECB funnels liquidity to the various European national banks through secretive ELA, "emergency liquidity assistance". These transfers then become debts on the books of the sovereigns, which only make their borrowing problems, and their euro area spending compliance problems, that much worse.

Notice the dramatic explosion in ELA funding by the ECB in May 2012.

Obviously, the ECB was getting ready for today's big event.

Between Greece with about 150 billion euros left in the banks and Portugal with a like amount, and Spain and Italy with about 2 trillion euros between them, the ELA backstop for the banks of those four countries represents at best about 10 percent of deposits.

It's a stop-gap measure which might work, but the euro area's problems will only continue to fester and worsen no matter what happens today in Greece.

Who knows, maybe that spat between Merkel and Hollande was just for show so that Hollande gets what he needs today in his own elections in France, after which they'll work it on out.

Hope springs eternal. 

Another Call To Impeach The President, This Time Over His Deportation Order

The president's executive order is an end-run around existing immigration law, as noted here:

If the citizens of this Republic still took the Constitution seriously, Obama would be impeached for his decision to unilaterally grant amnesty to certain illegal aliens. ...

The role of the President, according to Article II, Sec. 3, is to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Obama's refusal to execute Congress's immigration laws (or, for that matter, Congress's Defense of Marriage Act) is an impeachable offense. Article II, Sec. 4 states that the President "shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for... Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors." The deliberate failure to enforce valid immigration law and allow hordes of foreigners to live and work in the U.S. is, arguably, "treason," and doing so in an election year to appease Hispanic voters could certainly be considered "bribery."

The Imperial President Gets Flustered And Loses His Cool

Why does "the smartest president ever" get thrown off so easily, so embarrassingly, so often?

Video here.

Obama March 2011: "I Can't Just Suspend Deportations Through Executive Order"

The story and video are here:

"With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed."

Just another Obama statement with an expiration date. 

Obama Is The Imperial President Democrats Thought Bush Was

Charles Krauthammer says it like it is, quoted here:

“This is out-and-out lawlessness. You had a clip of the president himself say months ago ‘I cannot do this on my own because there are laws on the books.’ Well, I have news for president — the laws remain on the books. They haven’t changed.”

“He proposed the DREAM Act of which the executive order is a variation. He proposed a DREAM Act. The Congress said no. The Congress is the one who makes the laws. What the administration does is it administers law.”

“And in fact, what it is pretending to do is to use discretion. That’s what the Homeland Security said. This is not discretion. Discretion is when you treat it on a one-by-one basis on the grounds of extenuating circumstances. That is declaration of a new set of criteria, which is essentially resurrecting the legislation that the Congress has said no to.”

“And I think this is not how you run a constitutional republic. This ought to be in the hands of Congress, and it is an end-run. And what’s ironic of course is for eight years, the Democrats have been screaming about the imperial presidency with the Bush administration — the nonsense about the unitary executive. This is out-and-out lawlessness. This is not how you govern. And I think that is the first issue that should be on the table.”

Refinery Shutdowns Drive Up Cheapest Price Of Gasoline in Grand Rapids, MI, To $3.62

The national average for gasoline is nearly $3.55, but in Grand Rapids, Michigan, our cheapest gasoline today is $3.62 because of supply shortages due to refinery shutdowns in Illinois.

Oh, Only They Can Call Each Other Cool

Spain's Bankia As Crooked As It Looks: Cooked The Books Using "Dynamic Provisioning"

And the EU knew about it. So says Jonathan Weil for Bloomberg.com, here:

One of the catalysts for last weekend’s bailout request was the decision last month by the Bankia (BKIA) group, Spain’s third-largest lender, to restate its 2011 results to show a 3.3 billion-euro ($4.2 billion) loss rather than a 40.9 million-euro profit. Looking back, we probably should have known Spain’s banks would end up this way, and that their reported financial results bore no relation to reality. ...

One of the more candid advocates of Spain’s approach was Charlie McCreevy, the EU’s commissioner for financial services from 2004 to 2010, who previously had been Ireland’s finance minister. During an April 2009 meeting of the monitoring board that oversees the International Accounting Standards Board’s trustees, McCreevy said he knew Spain’s banks were violating the board’s rules. This was fine with him, he said.

“They didn’t implement IFRS, and our regulations said from the 1st January 2005 all publicly listed companies had to implement IFRS,” McCreevy said, according to a transcript of the meeting on the monitoring board’s website. “The Spanish regulator did not do that, and he survived this. His banks have survived this crisis better than anybody else to date.”

McCreevy, who at the time was the chief enforcer of EU laws affecting banking and markets, went on: “The rules did not allow the dynamic provisioning that the Spanish banks did, and the Spanish banking regulator insisted that they still have the dynamic provisioning. And they did so, but I strictly speaking should have taken action against them.”

Why didn’t he take action? McCreevy said he was a fan of dynamic provisioning. “Why am I like that? Well, I’m old enough to remember when I was a young student that in my country that I know best, banks weren’t allowed to publish their results in detail,” he said. “Why? Because we felt if everybody saw the reserves, etc., it would create maybe a run on the banks.” ...

Someday maybe the world’s leaders will learn that masking losses undermines investor confidence and makes crises worse. We can only hope they don’t manage to blow up the whole financial system first.

Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Pact Favors Multinationals Over Sovereigns

If I didn't know better, I'd say fascism for Obama is merely a now worn out model for a grander scheme of global governance by elites who exercise that rule as staff of multinational corporations and think of themselves as citizens of the world.

From HuffPo, here:

[A] newly leaked document is one of the most controversial of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. It addresses a broad sweep of regulations governing international investment and reveals the Obama administration's advocacy for policies that environmental activists, financial reform advocates and labor unions have long rejected for eroding key protections currently in domestic laws. ...

[F]oreign corporations operating within the U.S. would be permitted to appeal key American legal or regulatory rulings to an international tribunal. That international tribunal would be granted the power to overrule American law and impose trade sanctions on the United States for failing to abide by its rulings. ...

Two United Nations groups recently urged global governments not to agree to trade terms currently being advocated by the Obama administration, on the grounds that such rules would hurt public health.

Such foreign investment standards have also come under fire at home, from both conservative sovereignty purists and progressive activists for the potential to hamper domestic priorities implemented by democratically elected leaders. The North American Free Trade Agreement, passed by Congress in 1993, and a host of subsequent trade pacts granted corporations new powers that had previously been reserved for sovereign nations and that have allowed companies to sue nations directly over issues.

While the current trade deal could pose a challenge to American sovereignty, large corporations headquartered in the U.S. could potentially benefit from it by using the same terms to oppose the laws of foreign governments. If one of the eight Pacific nations involved in the talks passes a new rule to which an American firm objects, that U.S. company could take the country to court directly in international tribunals.

Public Citizen challenged the independence of these international tribunals, noting that "The tribunals would be staffed by private sector lawyers that rotate between acting as 'judges' and as advocates for the investors suing the governments," according to the text of the agreement.

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism here is so beside herself she's wondering if Obama can be impeached over this.

Retail Collapses in The Netherlands, Unsold Housing Inventory Nearing Spanish Levels

So says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, here:

Dutch retail sales collapsed by 11pc in April, even worse than the 9.7pc drop in Spain. (Royal holidays cannot explain this). ...

This is not contagion from Greece or any such nonsense. It is the result of the eurozone's destructive policy mix. ...

The consequence of Holland’s accelerating downward slide may well be an anti-euro coalition in The Hague this Autumn.

I reported from Amsterdam in April that the Dutch property market is tipping into deeper slump, with the inventory of unsold homes nearing Spanish levels . . .: Rabobank said home prices have fallen 11pc from their peak in August 2008, or 15pc in real terms, leaving up to 500,000 people in negative equity. The stock of unsold properties has doubled to 221,000 since 2008, almost double the declared level in the US on a per-capita basis.

"It Is The Government, Not The Citizen, Who Spent Too Much"

So says Geert Wilders of The Netherlands, quoted here:

The Dutch prime minister said his country faced a crisis and asked parliament to push through budget cuts after his government lost the support of its main political ally and tendered its resignation.

"Standing still is not good for the Netherlands. The problems are serious, the economy is stalling, employment is under pressure and government debt is growing faster than the Netherlands can afford," Prime Minister Mark Rutte told parliament on Tuesday, according to Reuters.

"Those are the facts and nobody can run away from them. I'm standing here without pretences, it is up to parliament and the voters."

Geert Wilders' Freedom Party had backed the government for the past 18 months but said he was no longer willing to be dictated to by Europe.

"It is the government, not the citizen, not Henk and Ingrid, who spent too much. Either we choose to act in the interests of Henk and Ingrid or we act in the interests of Brussels," Wilders said.

The ECB Is The Central Bank Of Europe In Name Only

So Peter Morici, here:

“The real problem is the European Central Bank doesn’t have the tools it needs to guarantee the solvency of these (European) banks,” Peter Morici, Professor at University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, told CNBC Asia's "Squawk Box".

“The Federal Reserve put two trillion dollars into banks. The European Central Bank has to, in a crisis, be empowered to do that by some sort of emergency consensus and take up the role of the Federal Reserve’s place in the United States. It simply does not have these powers right now,” Morici said.

Does The Fed Have The Guts To Let The Market Prove Itself, Now That Operation Twist Is Ending??

I doubt it. Capitalism died here long ago. But we'll see.

Meanwhile Zero Hedge had this chart in May showing the coincidence of stock market rises with the onset of the various tranches of quantitative easing efforts by the US Federal Reserve.

Story here.

Chicago Mob Violence: If The Problem Were Truly Controlled Last Year, Why Do You Have To Get Control Again This Year?

The reporting on uncontrolled black mob violence in Chicago is as absurd as the excuses for it:

Police Supt. Garry McCarthy pointed out earlier this week that there were similar mob attacks last summer, and his department was able to get the problem under control. He said he believes they’ll be able to do it again this year, and it’s a matter of making sure his officers are where they’re supposed to be, to prevent these incidents from happening.

One thing is clear: Rudy Giuliani Rahm Emanuel is not.

Rumors of Grexit Leading to Spanic Might Prompt Quitaly and Finally Fixit

The Euro humor, coming from Matthew Lynn, here, is deadly serious:

“A fresh panic in Spain might be followed by rising demands for Italy to quit if it doesn’t get the same terms its Mediterranean neighbor has been offered, followed by a Finnish departure from the single currency that might finally bring the whole saga to a climax,” he said.

A game of dominoes, started by Greece.

Weez All Bruthas In That Great Fraternity The Mystic Knights Of The Sea

Global Fascism: Casually Described, Matter of Factly Accepted

Today's must-reading comes from The Wall Street Journal, where a libertarian correctly describes the current state of affairs as a global fascist order, but uncritically accepts it as a fact which explains things rather than as a disease to be cured:

The Greek tragedy began with a fiscal crisis—brought on by the government spending more money than it took in—that became a banking crisis. In Spain, there is a fiscal crisis that exacerbates a banking crisis.

Fiscal and banking crises are often linked because in modern economics the state and banking are joined together. Banks purchase government debt, supporting the state, and governments guarantee the liabilities of banks. When one party is weakened, so is the other. ...

The banks, not fiscal deficits, will be the undoing of the euro.

The author believes federal union as in the US should have come first in Europe before the common currency, in order to equalize structural differences in labor markets among other things, for example taxes and spending.

Yes, it should have, the more securely to anchor the foundations of fascism. Somehow ancient memories kept that from happening in Europe, and Spaniards and Greeks still think of themselves as such and not as Europeans who answer to Brussels and the European Central Bank.

But unlike Europe federal union in the US has allowed the partnership between government and banks to run the show unfettered, the more ominously so since 1913 with The Federal Reserve Act, a measure which concentrated power in the hands of the few and took it away from the many.  The bankers were put first in line for Federal Reserve Notes. Citizens last. Like sheep they turned in their gold.

Augmented by the growth of the imperial presidency which got its impetus first under Wilson and then under FDR, the Congress claimed its role in the new cabal in the 1920s by stopping the natural and constitutionally prescribed growth of representation, enhancing nothing but its own importance. Trading on insider information, election to the US House or Senate has become a path to wealth and power, if not fame.

These all act in concert to protect their gig, not yours, not America's.

In its fecklessness and greed, however, the government by turns has lost control of the money creation process, most notably since 1971, and has ceded it to the banking interest and cannot get it back. Our national debt may now surpass our $15 trillion GDP and gold may be $1,600 the ounce, but it takes a banker to really screw things up and create an over the counter market in derivatives with a notional value in excess of $600 trillion. 

The banks won't be the undoing only of the Euro.     

Read the entire column here.