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On the Global Numbers - CIA Edition
The CIA has some new 2011/2012 numbers for the world's economy. These numbers are as "good" as the countries who post the individual data, so it's safe to be suspect. That said, I found them interesting.
There's 7B of us. I love the CIA's precise estimate.
Only 47% of the population is in the workforce. 28% of the population is under 14 years of age, 8% is older than 65.
Of the 3.3 potential workers, fully 9.2% are unemployed.
I was surprised to see that the global unemployment rate had risen in 2012 by .8%. That's a big change, It comes to an additional 26m people. Overall, some 300m people are looking for work. The numbers are big, the direction is bad. There is a case to be made about political stability with this many people not working.
The estimate for the USA is that 13m people are now unemployed. The US share of world unemployment is 4.3%, while US population is 4.4%. In other words, the US is right in the middle of the pack on unemployment. Not bad for the leading industrial economy........
2012 was a so-so year for global growth, down YoY and down significantly from 2010.
The CIA measures total GDP, it came to a whopping $83T in 2012. The US share is 19%.
Global GDP rose $2.2T in 2012. How did that happen? Easy, more debt, money and inflation. The stock of money rose $6.1T, about 3Xs the increase in GDP. Given this, why is gold falling?
Where did all the new money come from? Debt, of course. Domestic and cross border debt marched ever higher:
Domestic debt rose by $5.1T, while cross bordered indebtedness rose $5.4T. Total debt is up by $10.5T while GDP rose only $2.2T. From this I conclude that it takes $1 of debt to produce a measly 20 cents of growth. Who was it that said that debt was an efficient stimulus for growth? There is no evidence of that in the CIA numbers.
The world is running a budget deficit. The government deficits increased by 3.8% (Vs. GDP of 3.3%) and by $2.7T (Vs. $2.2T of real growth). On balance, for each $1 increase in government debt, GDP rose by 80 cents.
Total government debt as a share of GDP is now at 65%.
The large deficits are happening even though global tax rates are high. There is not much blood to be had from the taxpayer's stone:
Inflation was tame in 2012. With all that money sloshing around, one would think that the inflation numbers have to be headed higher.
The CIA data for 2012 is a mixed bag. There is no crisis at the moment, but there are troubling signs:
- Unemployment is dangerously high, social problems will be the result.
-Global growth is occurring as a result of ever higher debt loads, and a rapidly expanding money supply. Total debt is rising much faster than economic output. Every year we get more leveraged. The "efficiency" of debt is waning.
-Inflation is not a big issue today, but there is every reason to believe that this can't be sustained.
Spy versus Spy
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You shop for groceries every day?
Good grief, you have no life.
Isn't there anything you could read, or make, or grow, or ANYTHING that would be a better use of your time??
I shop for groceries twice a week; that is more than enough to hit the sales. Every day - that's compulsive behavior.
You obviously have no clue about my life, so...
How many kids do you have, by the way?
Oh, okay. Didn't think so.
So you can stock one of those mini fridges that you find in hotels once a week and that's good for you?
Nice. Get the National Enquirer while you're there? You know, so you can read something?
You are so full of shit its coming out of your ears. Rude and condescending too.
It certainly appears you live in some other alternative reality from the rest of us when it comes to shopping and eating.
I do that here too. But you must have some better shopping secrets than I have. The whole chickens are way up this year alone. The canned veggies and beans are in smaller cans or same sized cans with more air on top. The bags of chicken legs, thighs or breasts from the local restaurant supply are also up about a buck for 5 pounds since two years ago.
When I was a pup in 1961 or so, a bag of 'Lay's New Era Potato Chips' was 69 cents for the 16 ounce bag. Last year, the one pound bag had 13 ounces and was $4.39. As of today, there are 11 ounces in the $4.39 one pound bag.
This is in Western Washington, not Texas. Maybe we're getting hit harder here because of transportation costs, but it's getting tougher to keep the food budget from growing faster than my beltline.
and that freezer you own is extremely expensive. most of the world including 'first world' western europe doesn't have walk in sized freezers. we fund that freezer with the expeditions to places that have our oil under their soil. you are one of the people probably the biggest whiners when you kids get damaged keeping the price of your electric bill down. enjoy it, but remember what the real price is. and that real price doesn't include the damage you did to other human beings trying to maintain a minimal standard of living.
i thank providence, my parents would think they were financial genies for saving 10 cents on a pound of chicken, but in entailed driving 10 miles north and 10 miles south. so, in the end they saved nothing. but - they killed time and they were 'shopping'. my mother finally got it in the end. stay local, buy from owners, spend your time doing edification and good things.
Ermmm, it's attached to the refrigerator. You know, the high-efficiency refrigerator? That costs twelve dollars a year to operate?
I have a large yellow tag to prove it. :/
And all the stores I go to are within one mile of each other. Can't waste all day driving to the next town when I can come to Bruce's post and have so much fun!
here is something I'm gonna try and make this week end.
Cuisineaz.com chez les chefs - Tartare de boeuf aux copeaux de parmesan, foie gras, tomates confites et truffes d'été - l'eau vive
SOrry, Orly but I like meat!
Lighten up, this fight club thingie gets to some very dizzyily.
Oh, no worries, falak. I am just the only one who doesn't ignore akak while he's spouting his stupidity. Everyone else just rolls their eyes and moves along. He has his followers, to be sure, but green arrows don't make anything right.
Besides, it is a good weapon to have in Fight Club: subtlety. :D
Foie gras? Truffles? Raw hamburger? Man, that's living. My kids wouldn't touch that stuff.
Okay, if I didn't tell them what it was, then smothered it in cheese...
Ha!
:D
P.S. Just got back from the store:
Three packages of chicken breasts, six breasts per package...
Fontina cheese, Asiago cheese and Romano cheese packages- on sale-with a coupon for one free when I bought the store-brand premium bacon, which I did...
A gallon of cheap American wine...
Pepperoni slices...
and a Dr. Pepper for my boy.
Fifty-two dollars. I can easily get six meals out of that. Easy.
And talk about save money? Make your own pizza! The cost basis is like three bucks, plus it's fresh and you get it how you want it every time. I have the best recipe for pizza dough, if anyone is interested.
Akak just needs to learn how to shop or move out of his red state or something...and stop desperately wishing his "stacks" will increase exponentially in value, 'cause they won't.
I guess it sucks to be so wrong about so many things.
:/
Ugh.
Water/saline pumped chicken, BGH cheese, sodium nitrate and high fructose corn syrup.
Sounds like "stroke belt" food.
Spoiled children have been a problem ever since Tyler went yahoo with those damned arrows.
Thanks for your comments, Orly. I travel a bit, and it's not easy to remember what I paid where, but I was buying ham for a dollar a pound up in the Carolinas. There must be 25 all you can eat buffets within 10 miles of where I sit, and this after the biggest drought in my lifetime.
Don't know where inflation is headed, but the group think gets on my nerves, and it leads no where.
My next pick-up will be nat gas, because I won't buy another until I can get what I want.
I won't buy a house unless I can install a water based heat pump. Many of my basic costs are dropping like a rock. Gubbermint has a lot of guns, but they don't always win;)
It's just that they want so badly for their dreams of financial ruin to plague the world so that they can say they were right all along, whilst they sit and fondle their tubes of gold.
That's just not happening and they are frustrated beyond containment. I can understand that but a simple cure would be to just open your eyes and look around: things are not going to hell in a handbasket. It's tough, sure, but nothing we can't muddle through, given enough ingenuity and determination.
They just want so badly for things to be horrible for everyone, frankly in a perverted sort of way. I feel sorry for them, truth be told.
:/
Living in the center of the country where food is produced and things are made gives a certain confidence and security, a depth of field, that the urban folk never seem to feel. There is always a nihilism in them. They feel they are one wrong move from complete disaster..., because they are.
Listen, bitch, I have done ALL of my own grocery shopping for the last 30 years, and NOBODY notices and keeps track of prices more than I, so don't even try, in your outrageous and pro-establishment agenda-driven bias, to tell me what overall prices have and have not done in any given period of the past 30 years you would care to name. I have had all the evidence I need of the ongoing and never-ending dollar depreciation in front of me on a weekly if not daily basis for decades now, and no utterly insulting reality-denier such as yourself is EVER going to convince me otherwise. That is quite aside from the infinitude of evidence for the same that can be drawn from a multitude of other sources. So please take your ridiculous lies elsewhere, because nobody is buying them here.
Your kind of wholesale dishonesty digusts me to the very depths of my soul.
Frothing at the mouth again with your fake indignation? Tut tut, you're like a preacher at the pulpit, casting off the demons with the threat of disingenuous pro-establishment agenda-driven bias. "And i will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and pro-establishment agenda-driven anger bias , those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers, and you will know my name is Akak when i lay my disingenuous pro-establishment agenda-driven bias moniker upon you!!" Have you tried getting some fresh air lately? or taking a shit? because you sound like you need one.
Why dont you just explain to the girl why you think she is mistaken insted of all that high and mighty gibberish? Its all very....whats the word i am looking for??? ah yes, disingenuous. (you love that word dont you?)
Hey akak, chill it down, man, we know what we're dealing with so no need to get excited...
Orly has probably just forgot to mention that prices are practically unchanged if compared to her discretionary income, her bankster bonus has been constantly rising. Not an easy job being a paper pusher, I'm telling you...
+1 Akak
I see older white folks who do not have EBT cards scouring the grocery store for a few items that they can afford. I see O voters and illegals with 2 carts loaded with shit. They usually peel off a big wad of cash for the few things they are not getting free.
The cost of food is skyrocketed. The food companies cut ingredients, make the boxes smaller and thinner plus other things. Orly must be shopping from a dumpster behind Piggly Wiggly.
Lost in all this discussion (at least what I speed read, anyway) is that inflation is the expansion of the money supply and credit. Rising prices are a result of, but not inflation itself. Obviously there is the malinvestment that comes about from businessmen thinking that savings is adequate as rates are low thus they should builld up things like homes and whatnot. The reality there of course is that savings is foregone consumption; a claim on real supply; purchasing power. People have exhausted their savings and the Fed replaced that real capital with 'paper capital,' but ultimately it becomes apparent that building all the homes etc was not warranted, and then they all liquidate to get back to 'dry powder' and the bubble bursts. It is NOT from a lack of demand. Demand is practically infinite. What is lost on 'economists' outside of Austrians is that 'demanders' have to supply something of value, too. Every transaction has the buyer also a seller, and vice versa. 'Selling' paper devalued FRNs for tangible things like a home doesn't cut it as the supply of the former is practically infinite.
But back to the inflation and its resulting in higher prices, what is missed is the opportunity cost. Certainly Shadowstats' #s are accurate and use proper methodologies and indeed prices are rising 7-9% per annum. But even if say some item like corn is only up 1%, what if in a free market its price would have fallen by 3% due to increased productivity? Therefore accounting-wise sure the price increase is just 1%, but really the increase of what would have been is 4%. Inflation robs people of reaping the benefits of their productivity. The 19th century had purchasing power always going up and perpetual deflation, and it was great. Now legitimate valuations and capital formation is not happening as those who produce real value are not identified easily since paper pushers have a fiat monopolized legal tender system that they use to suck out wealth from real producers.
So just consider the whole damages of inflation, and consider things like what prices would have been had there been no .gov getting involved. And people are definitely doing substitution at the supermarket, too, which is rising prices, too, as quality goes down. Don't fall for the hedonics and substitution sleight of hand those B(L)S scumbags want to trick you with.
Excellent points, Fisher.
It has been observed, though, that the holders of all this money (credit...), i.e., the TBTF banks, are not pumping it into the economy. It is perhaps harder to get a loan now than it was in 1957.
Also, they are paying diddly interest on savings accounts, CDs and what have you. The banks are simply covering their costs on bad paper so that they can mark-to-market (in their minds, anyway...) their assets. Oh, and get their year-end bonuses...
All of this so-called "printing" has done exactly nothing to the real economy.
What say you?
We've exported all that inflation abroad as we lacked the industrial capacity to produce the things we consume. Those dollars don't 'disappear', though, so the Asians could and will send a tsunami of USD back to our shores. They are drowning in US denominated debt, and should consume their own goods. And even though banks aren't lending as much, maybe, it still is inflation because without those excess reserves/liquidity, they would have failed, which is what should have happened. And again, regarding inflation, even if prices are falling, like they were in the Roaring 20s, they might not be falling enough along with productivity gains. Prices were falling in the 20s, but they still were propped up higher to keep the UK pound up, and then the bubble burst and then the gov did everything conceivable to prolong and exacerbate the Depression.
Inflation is heterogeneous by the way. Some things like homes get inflated more as that is what people look to get their hands on more. Of course .gov in calculating CPI loves to underweight things like healthcare and overweight TVs that are very pure market based and thus are coming down in price and improving quality. Some people call this biflation, where things you need like food/fuel go up, and other things you were counting on as 'assets' go down. It's not like prices all across the board go up at once. I think you vastly underestimate the concept of opportunity cost as far as even if velocity of money isn't so high, what would have happened had the bailouts not have happened.
I'm 21 years old and have a significant percentage of my wealth in physical PMs. I can't stand having FRNs sit in the bank earning no interest knowing the Fed is printing $85 billion/month not to mention other injections like Kevin Henry and FRBNY. It just eats at me, and it is just amazing to see people like last week say 'cash is king' again. The way some people think, they could print literally quadrillions of euro and USD and the ratio say goes down to EURUSD=1.28 and they would say the USD is 'stronger'...yeah, compared to other fiat toilet paper. But priced in terms of real things, like gold, it has been blowtorched.
And when I go pick up some groceries I'm seeing prices go up considerably. Sure commodities have supply/demand intricacies, but they all are priced in terms of FRNs which are being created ad infinitum.
First of all, money has no value, anything with value cannot be money ... Money measures worth the same way a measuring tape measures size. Period.
Second, the entire world (with few exceptions) is in a deflationary environment, that is, the cost of obtaining the repayment medium is greater than the amounts to be paid back. Price is a very small component of both inflation AND deflation.
The exceptions to world deflation are outposts such as Belarus and Iran as well as countries with semi-private forex markets w/ large capital inflows such as China and Brasil.
Finally, worthwhile money is not useful if you cannot gain it. In America there is a money shortage ... which means both a credit and currency shortage.
inflation denial is experiencing inflation
Indeed, as witnessed directly below by the "O".
Rents are rising quickly again this year. Its about 5% yoy for my properties if I'm trying to keep the tenant. Its almost 10% if I'm looking for someone new.
Anyone connected in any way with the CIA is a CUNT. Stop wasting our time with this shit....
Probably at least 80% of the people employed by the CIA are decent individuals, who are separated by many layers of compartmentalized knowledge from what a very small minority of those within the CIA actually do, or have knowledge about. I agree that, overall, the CIA actually works for the banksters, (as Smedley said, war is a racket, and so, covert war the worst of those rackets). However, just like the vast majority of the people who work for the big banks are decent people that have no control over what their bank does, so too, the vast majority of people who work for the CIA are relatively decent individuals, who do their own jobs, without ever knowing or doing any of the evil things that the CIA is famous for, like providing the jackals to back up the economic hit men.
CUNT: Curiously Uniformed Nationalistic TROGLODYTE
TROGLODYTE: Tyrannical, Repulican-Oriented, God-Loving Obstructionist Deploying Yaweh's Ten EXCREMENTS.
"-15"
Who'd have thought that ZH was populated by a bunch of religious nazis...
For those who can't count: "Troglogyte" references "those who live in the dark, aka, "caves"; and the reference is to CIA operatives, so if you didn't make that connection, who'z stupid being offensive--ly stupid--here...
EXCREMENTS: EXemplars Creating Republican Elementary Moral Edicts Necessitating Tyrannical ENGAGEMENT
ENGAGEMENT: Eviscerating Native "Gangs," Aka, Godless Entities; thus, Motivating Endless Nugatory TRAGEDY
Intensely Deranged Incoherent Oppositonal Transgressor.
lol good one
BTW, you do understand the original (that got me thinking--or not thinking, as you might suggest) C-word reference was with respect to the CIA?
It's just a vulgar word than no one wants to hear. There are, perhaps, better words to describe CIA, as that particular word refers to one thing and one thing only, as most would attest.
CIA are many things but they aren't that.
"It's just a vulgar word than no one wants to hear..."
Hence, I was redefining it--in context.
I understand.
:D
You've never been to England, have you?
Let's just say that I personally know many English people, especially women, who do not appreciate that word and leave it at that.
Sorry, but you obviously haven't hung out enough with the British or the Irish. Their use of "cunt" (which is how I was using it) has NOTHING to with the vagina, or even anything to do with women, for that matter. And believe me, it is a PERFECT description of anyone who would lower themselves far enough to work for the fucking CIA. If you work for the CIA, you have FAILED IN LIFE. Have a great day....
Thanks for playing! You win.
Seriously?
Are these the whacka-doodle games that play in your head?
Are you secretly Gary Bussey or something?
:/
Not much else to do at 2:00a...
...said the vulgar little man.
The funny thing, of course, is that being a vulgar little man puts me about a thousand rungs higher on the humanity ladder than any of the whores who work for the CIA...
Orly... you've been peeking ? Teehee...
Everything will be fine. World economy and government is always messy but always manages to work things out. Too much attention paid to numbers and facts can be distracting from our goals. We shouldn’t be swayed from our path to progressive perfection by incremental failure. Continual talk of corrupt governments and crony capitalism are unfair and should be silenced from the conversation as they do nothing to contribute to our goals of economic justice. It is unfair to point out these negatives when our leaders are only doing what is in our best interest.
Now, can you please stop the surveillance drones from hovering over my house! Seriously, they are keeping me awake!
Just shoot them down from your porch with a shotgun aimed into the air. That'll apparently scare them off.
And if you hit one, the neighbors will understand.
Thanks for the even handed approach, Bruce. These are the folks who missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the rise of China, but as you point out, we work with what we have.
Like most here, I expect serious inflation. The governments can't pretend to pay their debts any other way, but I see lots of churning, and honest to god deflationary forces.
I was amazed to see half the local paper (central Florida) taken up by foreclosure notices. Propaganda says they are gaining on that. Wages are a bad joke. Nat gas is making inroads into trucking in spite of Rufus, and that has to help food & energy eventually. Nat gas also has electricity costs nailed to the floor.
What I don't see yet is the mechanism. After 6 years of trying to force feed money/inflation into the economy, the Fed has failed its prime directive. How do we get to inflation, serious inflation, from here? Any thoughts?
Start with the "Affordable Care Act"
This will require thousands of doctors and supporting staff and facilities.
The Government has not yet realized that the Federal Reserve can not PRINT these REAL RESOURCES.
Result price inflation in the medical sector.
When interest rates make a move up price inflation will accelerate.
This will precipitated by Congress.
Congressmen and some Fed Reserve officials are pressuring Bernake to stop QE! Truly unbelievable as that's the only way to kick the deficit "can", which Congress created, down the road.
If Bernake allows interest rates to rise the bond market will collapse. Then Ben will have to jump in and buy from all sellers.
When the market realizes that tere is a sucker buying all Treasuries everyone will sell and the economy will be inundated with $11 Trillion looking for a place to go. Voila, hyperinflation.