US Birthrate Declines From Replacement Rate To 1.87

So says a report in USA Today, here:

As the economy tanked, the average number of births per woman fell 12% from a peak of 2.12 in 2007. Demographic Intelligence projects the rate to hit 1.87 this year and 1.86 next year — the lowest since 1987. ... The U.S. fertility rate has been the envy of the developed world because it has remained close to the replacement rate of 2.1 (the number of children each woman must have to maintain current population) for more than 20 years.

This Is Capitalism? Negative Interest Rates Mean Capital Is Being Destroyed.

So says Jeffrey Snider, here:

It cannot be a true capitalist system that is creating negative interest rates throughout the "developed" world since capitalism, at its very core, values capital. Negative interest rates are the very real signal that capital is being destroyed at will. Since this capital destruction is not localized, and does not appear to be temporary, this strongly suggests that some exogenous force (exogenous from the perspective of a system that values capital) is uniformly acting upon the global system in a manner that does not conform to what would fairly be called capitalism. ...

Today's negative interest rates are the prime signal that money is more valuable than capital, a consequence that only monetarism and financial domination could produce willingly. In all those countries experiencing the renewal of the receding economic tide of re-recession (or just continued depression for simplicity's sake) there sits an activist central bank at its modern core. ...

[T]he real economy appears to be fighting back, rejecting money and credit as a workable solution.

That's Hysterical: Do 2 Recessions Equal 1 Depression?

So Paul Vigna in The Wall Street Journal, here:

"Do two global recessions equal a modern depression? We seem destined to find out."

Notice the word "modern",  as if to say we in our time are much too advanced to have an old-fashioned depression like they had way back in the day. You know, a god-awful depression where massive numbers of people go hungry and die before their time.

The fact is depressions happen. They have a technical character. You can measure them. Some are indeed severe, as in 1920. Some are also short, as in 1920. Some are relatively shallow, as in 2008 or 1937, and go on forever due to incompetence. Some are severe and go on forever due to incompetence, as in 1931, or in Greece today. Our problem is that we won't agree to agree on a name for this depression enemy this time around because depressions don't happen in "modern" times. Insisting that depressions don't happen in "modern" times is actually a form of hubris. And you know what cometh before a fall. But try telling that to an entire civilization.

By the way, isn't the "modern" age over already? The old right in America, you know, the opposition to FDR in the 1930s, used to stand against the modern age which FDR, and Wilson before him, represented. There's still a magazine in print by that name which hails from the conservative ethos of that very time and continues to talk about this, which really is a mark of true conservative distinction, seeing that conservatism at its best brings forward into the present the truths, and critiques, of the past. But "modern" truly is an old conception which is getting a little long in the tooth to continue to be used of this age when we have clearly moved on in any number of ways, except perhaps in our conceits. An exception to this might be our nostalgia for Glass-Steagall, which makes us sort of conservatives of modernism, if it's permissible to speak that way.

But I digress.

What thoughtful people are worrying about at this moment is that we could re-elect this incompetent boob, Barack Obama, who is working on the choom gang, and finally go really and truly insolvent while he fritters away four more years getting in touch with his inner Arnold Palmer. Some people think insolvency is actually his objective, which to my mind gives him way more credit than he deserves. He seems to think money grows on trees, planted by the financial, insurance and real estate sectors, but hasn't yet figured out that his usefulness to them comes with an expiration date not unlike the expiration dates which attach to all the promises he has made and end up going poof into the air.

When liberals finally do conclude the emperor has no clothes on, this indeed will be all over, but the problem with that is that most liberals went to public school. They won't figure it out until it's way too late. Say 2022, if they live that long.

The left already figured it out, however, in the first year of Obama's presidency, but decided to make their strategy of destroying the country Obama's strategy by continuing to support him. This was an inflexion point where all that stupid talk from the right about how we share some common ground with the left should have come to an end. I don't recall the left saying they had any common ground with us. Instead what we got and continue to get from Republicans and other liberals is incredulity about Obama's failure to have learned anything by now.

Here's a newsflash for you: He has no intention of learning anything. Republicans continue to misunderstand his opposition, as is their wont. Saddam Hussein was not worth getting angry about, but they did, and Barack Obama is worth getting upset about, but their response is . . . Romney. No wonder Democrats have contempt for Republicans. The stupid party.

No, everything now depends, unfortunately, on the residuum of common good sense among the rank and file out there, the apolitical people who simply have had enough of this. Considering the depths of our social dissolution, however, and Obama's attempts to subsidize that with food stamps, free cell phones, disability payments and the revivification of welfare (what else would you expect from a drug addict?), it is hard to remain optimistic about them, but that's probably all we've got remaining.

"The Great Depression, after all, actually comprised two technical recessions, 1929-1933 and 1937-38, not that most people could tell the difference.

"What would you call a 7-10 year period of suppressed growth and stagnant wages, of economies on the verge of collapse and overwhelmed leadership? You could do worse than “depression” – lowercase “d” to be sure, and we’ll hope for a great new age on the other side of it. But a depression all the same."


I'll see you at the polls in November, voting for Romney. I'll be the one with a clothes pin on my nose.

And I'm going to keep it because I have a feeling I'm going to be needing it.

Samuel Johnson For Our Overly Political Times

"How small, of all that human hearts endure,

That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

Still to ourselves in every place consign'd,

Our own felicity we make or find:

With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,

Glides the smooth current of domestic joy."

The poetry is Oliver Goldsmith's, but Johnson wrote it.

Methodism Remains A Grandmother Of Bolshevism

Jewish Lutheran Atheist

Mark Tooley says as much here for The American Spectator:

Methodism, rather than stepping back to reflect on its 30 year initially successful but ultimately failed Prohibition crusade, instead accelerated its political activism. The Methodism Building became the headquarters of America's Religious Left in Washington, D.C., housing radicals of every cause especially from the 1960s onward. It still clung to an uncompromising perfectionism that insisted evil could be banished, and the New Jerusalem established, with the passage of just a few more laws.

Of course, presidents and congressmen no longer "tremble and gobble" before Methodism and its lobbyists, who are largely ignored. Banning handguns, even after 40 years of endorsement by Methodism, will never happen. But maybe other uncompromising idealists and utopians, who believe human nature can be transformed at the stroke of a pen, will heed the lessons of Methodism and Prohibition. 

No One Can Spell Today

Leave It To Forbes To Offer The SOCIALIST Thought Of The Day

There's nothing like the smell of class warfare in the morning.

The Whole World Is Turning Japanese, He Really Thinks So

So says Scott Sumner, here:


Wherever people draw a line, bond yields just seem to plunge right through, to one record low after another. And we know from Japan that they can go even lower. But what does this mean?

It probably means multiple things. ... We are looking at BOTH low inflation and low real GDP growth for many years to come. ... Japan is the future of the world.

Most Important Thing Obama Has Transformed

Dem. Sen. Patty Murray Is Willing To Throw Middle Class Under The Bus

Unless Sen. Murray and the Democrats get what they want, the middle class is indeed expendable.

All taxpayers would be punished by Democrats' unwillingness to compromise with Republicans, who were elected to get spending under control, but no one more so than those Americans who file at the bottom of the income ladder in the 10 percent bracket, if current tax rates are allowed to expire as the Democrats threaten. Those hapless souls at the bottom will have to pay in the 15 percent bracket in that event, a tax rate increase of 50 percent.

It is remarkable that Democrats are willing to punish the poor in this way if they can't punish the rich in theirs.

Republicans want current progressive tax rates for all taxpayers made permanent, but Democrats do not. In Democrats' opinion, the rich don't deserve to pay their currently much higher rates, but need to pay even higher ones to meet a definition of fair Democrats demand to write by themselves. Nevermind a tax increase of any kind anywhere in this economy will be negative for growth. As for the spending cuts, Democrats agreed to those in the face of a downgrade to America's bond rating, but they weren't enough, and the AAA rating went into the ashbin of history. If those cuts were going to be inadequate, why did Democrats vote for them, and why aren't they calling for steeper ones now in order to restore the country to AAA?

In France, new socialist government tax increases on the rich are driving the wealthy out of the country, taking their money with them to friendlier, lower-tax-rate neighbors, which will deprive France not only of the tax revenue, but of the investment capital.

Expect the same here if the Democrats get their way.

Here is Sen. Murray, quoted in The Christian Science Monitor:

With the US economy speeding toward a year-end fiscal cliff of some $560 billion in higher taxes and draconian spending cuts, Sen. Patty Murray (D) of Washington bluntly laid out her party’s position on how Congress should handle the nation’s coming fiscal travails: Go big or go over the ledge.

“Millions of jobs could be lost through the automatic cuts, programs families depend on would be slashed irresponsibly across the board, and middle-class tax cuts would expire.  And once again, if Republicans won’t work with us on a balanced approach, we are not going to get a deal,” said Senator Murray,  the Senate’s No. 4 Democrat, in a speech at the Brookings Institution on Monday.

“[I]f we can’t get a good deal – a balanced deal that calls on the wealthy to pay their fair share – then I will absolutely continue this debate into 2013, rather than lock in a long-term deal this year that throws middle-class families under the bus,” she said.

Right On Schedule, Obama's Pals In FIRE Start To Snap Up Your American Dream

Having unleashed all that pent up capital in the American dream of home equity, skimmed it, and tag-teamed it, leaving you underwater and broke, Obama's pals in the financial, insurance and real estate sectors from Wall Street are starting to swoop in and gobble up your broken dreams.

Stephen Gandel reports for Fortune, here:

In the past six months or so, a number of investment firms, hedge funds, private equity partnerships and real estate investors have turned into voracious buyers of single-family homes. And not just any homes, but foreclosures. Investment banks, who also want in on the action, are lining up financing options to keep the purchases going.

Take for instance private equity mega-firm Blackstone Group (BX). ... Blackstone now owns 2,000 single-family homes. At $300 million, that might be small compared to Blackstone's overall real estate portfolio of about $50 billion. But it's one of the biggest piles of homes ever intentionally put together (banks and Fannie and Freddie are sitting on many more foreclosed homes, but that's a different story) by an institutional investor, and it's likely not the largest portfolio out there these days. ...

[L]andlords have always tended to be mom-and-pop outfits often not owning more than a few dozen units confined to one area. Large Real Estate Investment Trusts and private equity funds generally focused on apartment buildings and commercial real estate, like malls and office buildings. That appears to be changing.

Robert Fitch tried to tell everyone that this is what was coming under Obama, because it's what Obama helped make happen on the near south side of Chicago's Loop as a state senator. Obama helped throw out all the poor black people there, nearly 50,000 of them, so his friends could buy up the land, develop it, and make lots of money off it. They ended up helping finance him to the US Senate and The White House.

Looks like they might be at it again.

I first read about it here.

"The United States Is Based On Guns, You Know"

So says Ice-T here:

Ice-T: Yeah, it's legal in the United States. It's part of our Constitution. You know, the right to bear arms is because that's the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It's to protect yourself from the police.

A Baker's Dozen Pays 6% Or More On 10yr. Paper

Romney's Sins

In no particular order. Just making my list . . . and checking it twice.

• thinks the 1st Amendment is first
• wants to index the minimum wage to inflation
• supports ethanol subsidies
• flipped on abortion at least 3 times
• supported Obama's murder of an American citizen
• supports TARP
• has a weird religion
• thinks W prevented a depression
• believes in the individual mandate in principle
• was soft on public unions in Ohio
• thinks government coercion in healthcare is conservative
• believes in progressive income taxation
• reassures liberals by pledging to soften up conservatives
• reassures liberals that Republicans like him can make liberal extremism seem almost mainstream
• supports domestic partner benefits
• thinks it's a good idea to shift away from fossil fuels
• he's way too rich to lead the charge to abolish the progressive tax code even if he wanted to
• the world's getting warmer and humans contribute to that
• farm subsidies are a national security issue
• supports No Child Left Behind
• agrees with Milos Forman: Obama's no socialist
• Bain Capital bailed out companies just like Obama bailed out GM and Chrysler
• corporate restructuring is job creation
• "We must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern"
• "ObamaCare is not worth getting angry about"
• "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush"
• "Fox is watched by the true believers"
• spending cuts will cause a recession or even a depression
• gladly accepts support of John McCain in 2012 even though McCain said in 2010 that Obama's was a left-wing crusade to bankrupt America
• won't light his hair on fire for that angry mob, the Republican base

It Is All FIRE Now

So says L. Randall Wray:

They screwed workers out of their jobs, they screwed homeowners out of their houses, they screwed retirees out of their pensions, and they screwed municipalities out of their revenues and assets.

Financiers are forcing schools, parks, pools, fire departments, senior citizen centers, and libraries to shut down. They are forcing national governments to auction off their cultural heritage to the highest bidder. Everything must go in firesales at prices rigged by twenty-something traders at the biggest and most corrupt institutions the world has ever known.

Read it all at this link.

Make No Mistake: The Libertarians Are The Enemies Of Humanity

the ideal state of labor under libertarianism

Libertarians are the very enemies of living, especially the likes of John Tamny, who doesn't want you to live in a place for long, have a job there, a house, a family, friends, roots or a history. In short, no country, no patrimony, just rootless searching for the next dollar, until you drop:

Along the lines of the above, Moretti makes the essential observation that quite unlike Italians (Moretti grew up in Italy) who tend to live where they grew up, Americans are constantly moving. Absolutely. Americans are “restless amid abundance” to quote De Tocqueville (as Moretti does), and they are because they’re constantly in search (I would argue this a function of Americans descending from restless immigrants, hence the need for more of them) of better opportunities. If so, the last thing our federal minders would want to do would be to subsidize a stationary state. Housing subsidies are just that, so let’s abolish them in order to facilitate what makes us so great. End of story.

Republican Judd Gregg, Author Of TARP, Now Promotes Superstition

What an embarrassing load of claptrap, here, from the Republican author of TARP, without any basis in facts, just pure superstition about dates, which is just a cover for the real point of the article, a weaseling defense of TARP in the face of Neil Barofsky's critical book on the subject, being released this week:

September is a month where unusual and often extremely damaging things seem to happen. It is the month that kicked off the Great Depression and led to Black Monday a month later. It also is the month in which, in 2008, the nation came close to a total economic collapse. ...

[T]here have been numerous sharp stock market downturns in September. Why these events seem to crowd into September is a subject of a great deal of conjecture.  There is no consistent answer. But it seems September is the point in the year where people assess where they have gone, and what the next year will be like, and make investment decisions based on their conclusions. ...

Unfortunately, this year, September may be a decisive month for the world and our nation’s economy. ...

This will probably be undeniably clear by September. ...

Not long, one suspects. September. ...

September has been a good time for such a reaction. ...

Municipalities, Others, May Have Lost Tens Of Billions Of Dollars On LIBOR-Tied Bonds

So says this story from The Fiscal Times:

As the world has learned in recent months, the banks behind Libor have been reporting incorrect lower rates to make their finances appear more stable. ...

The revelations sparked a major class action lawsuit filed earlier this year by the city of Baltimore, which entered into dozens of swap-based municipal bond contracts in the past decade that were tied to Libor. The suit accused more than a dozen financial institutions involved in setting Libor rates of engaging in a systematic conspiracy that resulted in “hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in ill-gotten gains.”

“Just about every jurisdiction in the U.S. was affected,” said Michael Hausfeld, one of the attorneys representing Baltimore. “It affected hedge funds, money market investors, institutional investors. The total losses could exceed tens of billions of dollars.”

Possible LIBOR Penalties Hardly Match The Enormity Of The Crimes

CNBC reports, here:

Activity in the Libor investigation, which has been going on for three years, has quickened since Barclays agreed last month to pay $453 million in fines and penalties to settle allegations with regulators and prosecutors that some of its employees tried to manipulate key interest rates from 2005 through 2009. ...

Morgan Stanley recently estimated that the 11 global banks linked to the Libor scandal may face $14 billion in regulatory and legal settlement costs through 2014.

These sums are paltry in comparison with the enormity of the skim operation siphoning off profits on hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of transactions.

It almost sounds like the lowball fines were themselves defined by the very regulators already suffering from "regulatory capture".

Satyajit Das, here, provides an in-depth exploration of the LIBOR scandal which includes considerable speculation about the sums lost. He points out that by one unrealistic estimate up to $80 billion is involved, which means the actual damages are far south of that.

On the other hand, he includes this:

Many American corporations and municipalities entered into interest rates swaps where low rates would have resulted in significant losses. The International Monetary Fund estimates the amount lost by municipalities at US$250 billion to US$500 billion in 2010. If successful action is brought under US anti-trust regulation, then banks may be liable for punitive triple damages.

Investment bank Morgan Stanley estimates that losses to banks could total (up to) US$22 billion in regulatory penalties and damages to investors and counterparties, equivalent to around 4-13% of banks’ 2012 earnings per share and 0.5% of book value. In reality, it is difficult to accurately quantify potential losses.

It would seem as of this moment that both banks and regulators have a significant legal and financial interest in suppressing the actual extent to which those last in line for money were fleeced.

Neil Barofsky, TARP "Watchdog", Blasts Financial Fascism In New Book

And Gretchen Morgenson of The New York Times provides a favorable review, here:

He is Neil Barofsky. Remember him — the man whose job it was to police the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program? And his new account, a book titled “Bailout” (Free Press), to be published on Tuesday, is a must-read. ...

He soon discovered that the [Treasury] department’s natural stance of marching in lock step with the banks meant that he had to question its policies and programs repeatedly to ensure that taxpayers weren’t at risk for fraud and abuse.

“The suspicions that the system is rigged in favor of the largest banks and their elites, so they play by their own set of rules to the disfavor of the taxpayers who funded their bailout, are true,” Mr. Barofsky said in an interview last week. “It really happened. These suspicions are valid.” ...

Meaningful changes to our broken system may finally come about, he writes, if enough people get angry. His conclusion is this: “Only with this appropriate and justified rage can we sow the seeds for the types of reform that will one day break our system free from the corrupting grasp of the megabanks.”

At the center of that whole sordid affair of regulatory capture at the time was Tim Geithner at Treasury, former head of The New York Federal Reserve Bank, who obviously isn't simply morally challenged with respect to paying his taxes, but also with respect to reporting LIBOR irregularities.

Unfortunately for us, we not only had two candidates for president in 2008 who voted FOR TARP (Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama), in 2012 the Republican candidate still defends it, as recently as March here in USA Today Away:

"There was a fear that the whole economic system of America would collapse, that all our banks or virtually all (banks) would go out of business," Romney told a town-hall-style forum in Arbutus, Md. "In that circumstance, President Bush and Hank Paulson said, 'We've got to do something to show we are not going to let the whole system go out of business.' I think they were right. I know some people disagree with me, I thought they were right to do that.".

And not only that, Romney is as unlikely as anyone to get angry about bailouts in future. We can't even get Romney to be angry about ObamaCare.

It's not even clear Obama's recent $100 million in attacks against Romney's personal character have made him mad, especially when it's the subject of speculation on conservative talk radio. Here Rush Limbaugh notes Romney "finally" gets ticked off about Obama's (plagiarizing) use of (Elizabeth Warren's) "you didn't build that", but even Rush isn't 100 percent convinced:

RUSH: You know, folks, I think this actually made Romney mad! I actually think that what Obama said finally ticked Romney off. I think Romney now has realized Obama is not a nice guy who's just befuddled and wrong. That was Romney's prior description of Obama: "He's a nice guy, just doesn't know what he's doing." I think this really got to Romney. Let's squeeze one more in here...

RUSH: Yes, siree bob! Something lit a fire. I am convinced that what Obama said actually has made Romney mad. Not in an insulting way. It has made him mad over what we're up against now. And, of course, as I say: The Obamaites are saying that their guy was "taken out of context." Right. Okay. ...

RUSH: Have you seen anything on Romney's speech in Irwin, Pennsylvania? "A little bit." Well, before we go to the break, let's play sound bite nine again and then follow it up with the last one. This is Romney on fire yesterday in Irwin, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. He's really ticked off now, I think. This is about Obama saying (impression), "You started a business? You didn't do that! You didn't make that happen! You didn't build that. Uhhhh, you didn't -- you -- you -- you had help! You had a road, a bridge. You didn't do that."

And I think Romney is really ticked. I think there's now a fire burning under the posterior. So here are the two bites. Just bang 'em back-to-back, Mike.

If conservatives aren't sure if Romney's really angry, who is? The man is cool, I tell you, as in passionless, just like Obama. And that is the prerequisite for deception.

On the outstanding problems of our time, from massive bailouts of the banking system to government coercion in healthcare, Gov. Romney is on the same side as Obama and the Democrats.

Some choice!

Meanwhile, the American people just shrug.

A country that can't get angry about anything is a country that deserves what's coming to it (see France).