National Debt

And War is a racket...

Plenty of progressives up till literally yesterday were saying yes yes, Piketty’s theoretical framework leaves much to be desired, but he’s a top scholar when it comes to the trends he’s documented. And now that much of that empirical work might be totally bunk, the defense is to argue that yes yes, the historical data might be the exact opposite of what Piketty claimed, but boy he offers some compelling theoretical predictions with which we must grapple. Until this sorry episode, we had no idea just how much progressives hated rich people, and how little regard they had for intellectual integrity.

Sometimes a chart is worth a thousand words, and this is one. Real Median household income peaked way back in 1999 at $56,000 and by 2012 it was down 9% - an unprecedented decline. It goes without saying that Washington’s Keynesian ministrations on the money printing and national debt front didn’t much help. Yet the mainstream narrative blathers on that the business cycle expansion is back on track and that last month’s numbers were a tad better than the month before. The table below says that’s all Keynesian bread and circuses - the fleeting uptick interval between the serial bubbles and busts that our Washington overlords have condemned the people to endure.

A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass - at the expense of the United States.

"Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the National Debt."  -  Herbert Hoover

The roll off of the massive slice of the population known as "baby boomers" in the years ahead will have a significant and profound impact on the economy and the markets. In my opinion, there is simply not enough attention paid this issue and it is an important one.  However, since demographic impacts take a very long time to mature, they are ignored by the mainstream media which are focused on the 24-hour news and market cycles. 

It's been a while since we looked at Japan's debt situation. Here is the dire update.

The New York Fed's historical appreciation society has looked back at what was likely the US' first crash and foud that Alexander Hamilton's actions in 1792 which they claim "appears to have effectively managed the crisis with little or no long-term spillover to the economy," has now become the blueprint for manipulative intervention until this day by the central planners who know far better than 'us' collectively... but there are some lessons that Bagehot has that are worth remembering...

News that China is soon to surpass the United States as the largest economy in the world is a stark reminder of how the American people are harmed by the welfare-warfare state, crony capitalism, and fiat currency. The only way to avoid continuing collapse is to finally reject an interventionist foreign policy, stop bailing out and subsidizing politically powerful industries, and restore a free market in money.

Whenever the beltway bandits run low on excuses to run-up the national debt they trot out florid tales of crumbling infrastructure - that is, dilapidated roads, collapsing bridges, failing water and sewer systems, inadequate rail and public transit and the rest. This is variously alleged to represent a national disgrace, an impediment to economic growth and a sensible opportunity for fiscal “stimulus”. But most especially it presents a swell opportunity for Washington to create millions of “jobs”. One thing is clear. There is no case for adding to our staggering $17 trillion national debt in order to replace the bridges of Madison county; or to fix state and local highways or build white elephant high speed rail systems; or to relieve air travelers of paying user fees to upgrade local airports or local taxpayers of their obligation to pay fees and taxes to maintain their water and sewer systems. At the end of the day, the ballyhooed national infrastructure crisis is a beltway racket of the first order. It has been for decades.

The Fed has launched everyday Americans and investors into uncharted economic territory... The Fed’s money-printing policies have driven the markets straight upward, lighting up a new post-crash asset bubble. Their constant price fixing creates, prolongs, and inflates the cycle of booms and busts... and since gold is the ultimate insurance policy against that type of uncertainty, it is very likely to benefit from the Fed’s policies. What's more, consuming ever more than it produces, the US has slipped into record debt levels. The national debt has hit the astounding sum of $17.5 trillion, surpassing America’s total GDP for the first time in 2012. As Grant Williams asks (rhetorically in this brief interview): does the Fed have all of this under control? Probably not... and that is why you need an "unsure-ance" policy.

Tax time, but not pay-up time. 

"Just after the United States entered World War II, two simultaneous initiatives unfolded that would dictate elements of financing after the war, through the joint initiatives of foreign policy measures and private banking whims. Plans were already being formulated to navigate the postwar peace, especially its international power implications for finance and politics, in the background. American political leaders and scholars began considering the concept of “one world” from an economic perspective, void of divisions and imbalances. Or so the theory went. The original plans to create a set of multinational entities that would finance one-world reconstruction and development (and ostensibly balance the world’s various economies) were conceived by two academics: John Maynard Keynes, an adviser for the British Treasury, and Harry Dexter White, an economist in the Division of Monetary Research of the US Treasury under Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau."

• Top Medicare Doctor Paid $21 Million in 2012, Data Shows (BBG)
• Separatists build barricades in east Ukraine, Kiev warns of force (Reuters)
• Greece launches sale of five-year bond (FT)
• High-Frequency Trader Malyshev Mulls Accepting Outside Investors (BBG)
• U.S. defense chief gets earful as China visit exposes tensions (Reuters)
• GM Workers Who Built Defective Cars Fret About Recall (BBG)
• Kerry, Congress Agree: Superpower Status Not What It Was (BBG)
• Crimeans Homeless in Ukraine Seek Solace in Kiev Asylums (BBG)
• JPMorgan's Dimon says U.S. banks healthy, Europe lagging (Reuters)

America is being run by an unelected gang of essentially self-perpetuating PhDs. The notion of an economics coup d’ etat is not so far-fetched.  So the last 35 years have brought the greatest exercise in mission creep ever undertaken by an agency of the state. That explains why the monetary politburo persists in its absurd quest to force more debt into an economy which is already saturated with $59 trillion of the same. To pretend, as does Yellen and most of the monetary politburo that they must plow ahead printing money at lunatic rates because Congress so mandated it, is the height of mendacity. The Fed has seized power and is not about to let go - common sense be damned, and the constitution, too.

If you are not Professor Paul Krugman you probably agree that Washington has left no stone unturned on the Keynesian stimulus front since the crisis of September 2008. By the time the “taper” is over later this year (?) the Fed’s balance sheet will exceed $4.7 trillion - $4 trillion in new central bank liabilities in six years. All conjured out of thin air.  Professor Krugman proposing to “do something”... In short, Krugman wants to double-down on the lunacy we have already accomplished. Unfortunately, we are presently nigh onto “peak debt”; there is no “escape velocity” because the Fed’s credit channel is broken and done. Going forward, the American people will once again be required to live within their means, spending no more than they produce. By contrast, Professor Krugman’s destructive recipes are entirely the product of a countrafactual economic universe that does not actually exist. He wants us to borrow and print even more because our macro-economic bathtub is not yet full. And that part is true. It doesn’t even exist.