The Current Asset Allocation Of The United States

Total bond market: $38 trillion (Bloomberg/SIFMA here)

Total stock market: $21 trillion (Wilshire 5000 x 1.2)

MZM money stock:$12 trillion (StLouisFed here)

That's 17% to cash, 30% to stocks, and 53% to bonds.

With stock and bond markets at all time highs, the country really ought to be raising cash.

The 3-Month Treasury Yield Is An "Abomination"

So says John Hussman, here:

The 3-month Treasury yield now stands at a single basis point. Unwinding this abomination to restore even 2% Treasury bill rates implies a return to less than 10 cents of monetary base per dollar of nominal GDP. To do this without a balance sheet reduction would require 12 years of 6% nominal growth (which is fairly incompatible with sub-2% yields), a more extended limbo of stagnant economic growth like Japan, or significant inflation pressures – most likely in the back half of this decade. The alternative is to conduct the largest monetary tightening in the history of the world.

Normalization of yields to even 2% implies 50% balance sheet contraction [see his last graph].

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The latter would mean a contraction of $1.55 trillion or so based on the current level, and that those securities would not mature on the balance sheet for their respective terms and come off naturally over time but quickly in a disorderly fashion, and therefore a bond market debacle is implied, and that to be defensive under this threat is to remain in cash, painful as that is.

Latest Tanana River, AK, Ice-Out In 97 Years Today, Surpassing 1964 Record By Hours

Story here, where they live-blogged the event linked to the official Nenana Alaska "Ice Classic" webcam.

Up there you pays you money and takes you chances. But it's only $2.50 for a ticket, on which you predict the date and time of the ice-out, which seems to occur as early as April 20 and as late as, well, today. If you're the closest, you win the kitty, this year over $318K.

Previously scientists were wont to point to seemingly earlier and earlier ice-outs on this river as evidence of the phenomenon of global warming. The long record in this location, however, has shown a cyclicality of its own which on days like today produces silence from that community. 

It was like watching paint dry overnight, but one guy did show up all alone in the parking lot to entertain everyone for a moment by mooning the cam, which is fixed on the tripod-like marker placed out in the ice every March for the event. 

Ron Fournier: Obama Is An Incompetent, Obfuscatory, Demagogic, Bungling Political Quack And Buffoon

Well, that about covers it from the former Washington Bureau Chief of the Associated Press.

Ron Fournier says all that, and more, for National Journal here.

Obama's IRS, FBI, ATF And OSHA Gang Up Vs. Family At Center Of TrueTheVote

There is must reading here today at National Review about coordinated Obama regime harassment of the family at the center of TrueTheVote.org.

America Remains In A Depression

So says James Rickards, here:

“We don’t have to worry about a recession — we are in a depression,” says James Rickards. “If you take the classic definition of a sustained, long-term downturn with economic growth below trend, then we are in the midst of a depression,” says the senior managing director of Tangent Capital and author of “Currency Wars.” Rickards doesn’t see Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke as having the solution to the economic malaise gripping the county.

Real GDP per capita through 1/1/11 bears this out (I think this gets updated through 1/1/12 this summer in the big annual GDP revision):

The peak to trough decline was 5.1% January 2007 to January 2009.

The metric remains 2.6% off peak.

Obama Remains A Small Man Without The Courage Of His Socialist Convictions

Here The New York Times matter of factly displays Obama the socialist, longing to be free like the character Bulworth ("Yeah, yeah / You can call it single-payer or Canadian way / Only socialized medicine will ever save the day! Come on now, lemme hear that dirty word - SOCIALISM!"):

In private, he has talked longingly of “going Bulworth,” a reference to a little-remembered 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a senator who risked it all to say what he really thought. While Mr. Beatty’s character had neither the power nor the platform of a president, the metaphor highlights Mr. Obama’s desire to be liberated from what he sees as the hindrances on him.

“Probably every president says that from time to time,” said David Axelrod, another longtime adviser who has heard Mr. Obama’s movie-inspired aspiration. “It’s probably cathartic just to say it. But the reality is that while you want to be truthful, you want to be straightforward, you also want to be practical about whatever you’re saying.”

Inflation Year Over Year April Is 1.06%: Bob Brinker Thinks That's Great!

Here's a news flash for you: At 1% inflation it will take about 69 years to halve the value of your money. I said halve it. To many people like Bob Brinker on his radio program "Money Talk" today it is more than acceptable that after 69 years go by your dollar will be then worth 50 cents. That's what the rule of 72 teaches, but our contemporaries couldn't care less about rules, especially involving MATH!

Back in the good old days of the gold standard when you couldn't pull a fast one on the average Joe without getting a bullet in your chest, a dollar from 1774 lost nearly NOTHING of its value by 1899, when you needed an extra 3 cents to buy what $1 bought 125 years prior.

But things have completely collapsed in this country in the 113 years since 1899. Compared to then, in 2012 you needed $28.60 to buy what your $1.03 could buy two years before the close of the 19th century. What would you choose? A loss of 3 cents over 125 years, or a loss of $27.57 over 113 years, for every dollar you own?

The founders of our country would find today's relatively very low rate of inflation an outrage and a cause for taking up arms against the government because the government of the United States is robbing its own people blind as a matter of policy.

None dare call it tyranny.

Obama's Choom Gang In 2012

Another Big Lois Lerner Lie: There Was No Surge In 501(c)(4) Applications In 2010

In addition to trying to deceive the public that the IRS under Obama has been a transparent, apolitical arm of the government by planting the question she took from the audience of an American Bar Association conference, now we learn there was no surge in tax-exempt applications from conservatives as Lois Lerner has said, undermining her excuse that aggregating them in that way was merely an administrative efficiency.

TheAtlantic.com here explains how on Friday it was revealed that the IRS itself provided data to the Inspector General which shows the actual number of such applications went down in 2010, not up as she claimed in testimony:

Lois Lerner is a snake who, sensing a threat, struck before the Inspector General's disclosure that the IRS unaccountably and exclusively targeted Tea Party and other conservative group applications, and then recoiled to the safety of a demonstrably false excuse.

Like the rest of the incompetents in Obama's administration, she can't even lie properly.

Real Compensation Under Obama Down 0.5%, Under Bush Up Almost 8%

Real Comp Under Obama Down 0.5%

Real Comp Under Bush Up Almost 8%

3 Recent Failed Banks Subsidiaries Of Troubled Lansing-Based Capitol Bancorp LTD

Story here in the Lansing State Journal.

Evidently the closure of the 13th bank to fail in 2013 in Scottsdale, Arizona was concluded on a Tuesday for prudential reasons related to the immediately previous two Capitol Bancorp-related closures last week.

Bank failures have normally occurred on Friday nights.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's more bad news to come about Capitol Bancorp LTD.

Whoops! The 13th Bank Failure Of 2013 Was On Tuesday The 14th!

Well now, that's unusual. The 13th bank failure of 2013 occurred this past Tuesday, May 14th. Usually the FDIC waits until Friday late to close a bank. Can you imagine having closed it the day before, on Monday, May 13th? Me either. I guess the Feds are having a little fun with us. Either that or the FDIC is having a baseball game with Goldman Sachs tonight.

The bank in question which failed on Tuesday was Central Arizona Bank, Scottsdale, Arizona, costing the FDIC a measly $8.6 million.

Lefty Rep. Sander Levin Calls For The Head Of IRS' Calculating Snake Lois Lerner

Quoted here:

Sander Levin, the [House Ways and Means Committee's] ranking Democrat, said the IRS and its employees 'have completely failed the American people' by 'singling out organizations for review based on their name or political views, rather than their activity.'

'All of us are angry about this on behalf of the nation,' the left-leaning Michigan congressman said.

Lois Lerner is the civil servant who heads up the IRS division in charge of evaluating charitable and other nonprofit organizations. Levin called for her head.

'Ms. Lerner should be relieved of her duties.' he said.

We must seek the truth, not political gain.'

In what [ousted acting IRS commissioner Steven] Miller called 'a prepared Q-and-A' on May 10, Lerner told an American Bar Association conference about a pending IRS Inspector General report examining the targeting of conservative groups inside the IRS's Exempt Organizations section.

That admission started the media feeding frenzy that has spiraled into a full-blown scandal. The acknowledgement that Lerner went to the event with the intention of publicly disclosing the IG report's existence raised eyebrows on the congressional panel.

The Daily Caller here emphasizes that the disclosure by Lerner was pre-planned and misrepresented as an answer to an innocent question posed by an audience member at the American Bar Association conference when in fact the question was planted:

As it turns out, it was not a spontaneous revelation. The question, said outgoing IRS Commissioner Steven Miller in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee Friday, was planted, as part of a prepared strategy for the IRS to release this information to the public.

Profiles in Courage, or Something

Benito Curly & Barack, As A Trio They're A Crock

Oh Yeah, That'll Work: Incompetent FBI To Investigate Terrorist IRS

The guys who didn't lift a finger to notify Boston police that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a potential threat and then committed illegal searches for his brother in Watertown but skipped the place he was hiding are going to put the heat on their own kind whose job it has become to intimidate the American people?

Might as well have the Crips investigate the Bloods.

Reuters reports here that the focus of the investigation would come down to "speech rights", the only rights liberals care about other than abortion:

Analysts said that a federal criminal prosecution of IRS employees for allegedly violating a taxpayer's speech rights - by delaying or rejecting a conservative group's legitimate claim to tax-exempt status, for example - could be unprecedented and that the offense would need to be egregious.

Why you shouldn't feel "forced" to own stocks.

"The perception that investors are 'forced' to hold stocks is driven by a growing inattention to risk. But Investors are not simply choosing between a 3.2% prospective 10-year return in stocks versus a zero return on cash. They are also choosing between an exposure to 30-50% interim losses in stocks versus an exposure to zero loss in cash. They aren’t focused on the 'risk' aspect of the tradeoff, either because they assume that downside risk has been eliminated, or because they believe that they will somehow be able to exit stocks before the tens of millions of other investors who hold an identical expectation that they can do so."

-- John Hussman, here

If QE Were Cash Going Straight To Shareholders, Markets Would Be Up Just 6%/Year

But, of course, stocks are up almost 17% in the last year, and just under 13% annually over the last three years, and QE is NOT reaching the stock markets anywhere near so efficiently as it would if it were a direct cash distribution to shareholders.

So the penetrating thinker, John Hussman, here:

[T]he suppression of risk premiums [is] the remaining and primary effect of QE. In other words, QE has not increased the value of equities. It has only increased the price, but that increase in price has no significant fundamental underpinning.

To see this, first consider cash flows. Imagine that instead of attempting to boost stock prices indirectly through quantitative easing, the Fed took the candy-land approach of literally handing the $85 billion directly to stockholders to reward them for owning stocks. How much would that direct cash distribution benefit a stock market with a $17 trillion market capitalization? Do the arithmetic. Only 0.5% a month. Yet investors have chased prices at a far more rapid pace as a result of quantitative easing. Remember, of course, that the Fed is not in fact distributing cash to shareholders.

Presently the effect of such QE would probably be even less than 0.5% per month if every point of the Wilshire5000 represents a multiple of $1.2 billion, yielding a total market cap far higher than $17 trillion. A 0.4% per month rate of QE on $20.5 trillion of total market cap comes to $82 billion a month.

Rosie May Be Right: Cash May No Longer Be Safe

David Rosenberg points out that financial repression could go on as long as 2018, here:

[T]he Fed said in its December post-meeting press release that it will not budge from its 0% policy rate until the U.S. unemployment rate drops to 6.5%. It is currently around 8%.

We have done estimates based on various assumptions and found that achieving this Holy Grail likely takes us to the opening months of 2018 or another five years of what is otherwise known as financial repression.

People think their money is safe in cash, but it isn’t.

Following on that, just compare cash in the form of Vanguard's Prime Money Market Fund with stocks in the form of Vanguard's Total Stock Market Index Fund over the last five years and you will see that while cash was relatively safe compared to stocks for the four years up to May 2012 with stocks mostly underperforming cash, since then stocks have firmly broken out, as of about May 31, 2012 (the dot on the chart grabbed from Morningstar).

The only problem is that with a Shiller p/e today of 24.26 it's an awfully rich time to be investing in stocks which have reached new all-time highs.

And the alternatives don't look very attractive either.

At this hour the gold/oil ratio stands at 15 indicating that relative to each other their prices may have normalized but both at high levels relative to the long term.

Housing prices also are at the far upper end of the long term trend prior to the bubble.

And the bond market is within 2% of its highest valuations and also remains expensive to buy.

In my humble opinion the smartest thing to buy under these conditions is any long term debt one may be carrying at a rate of interest higher than about 3.5%. To retire it one would have to deploy capital, i.e. savings, but you can hardly lock in say 6.25% for twenty or twenty-five years anywhere else more easily than by retiring a 30yr-mortgage taken out at that rate in 2007. Bonds have returned less than 5% annually over the last ten years, and one year returns have fallen below 3.5%.

Still, there is no substitute for savings.

The surest way to get a 10% return is to save one dollar of every ten earned.