National Debt

Last week we heard from Nomura's bearded bear as Bob Janjuah restated his less-then-optimistic scenario for the global economy. Today his partner-in-crime, Kevin Gaynor, takes on the bullish consensus cognoscenti's three mutually supportive themes in his usual skeptical manner. While he respects the market's potential view that fundamentals, flow, valuation, and sentiment seem aligned for meaningful outperformance, it seems actual positioning does not reflect this (yet). Taking on each of the three bullish threads (EM policy shift as inflation slows, ECB has done and will do more QE, and US decoupling), the strategist teases out the reality and what is priced in as he does not see this as the March-2009-equivalent 'big-one' in rerisking (warranting concerns on chasing here).

The great lie that drives the fiat global financial locomotive forward is the assumption that there is no other way of doing things.  Many in America believe that the U.S. dollar (a paper time-bomb ready to explode) is the only currency we have at our disposal.  Many believe that the corporate trickle down dynamic is the only practical method for creating jobs.  Numerous others have adopted the notion that global interdependency is a natural extension of “progress”, and that anyone who dares to contradict this fallacy is an “isolationist” or “extremist”.  Much of our culture has been conditioned to support and defend centralization as necessary and inevitable primarily because they have never lived under any other system.  Globalism has not made the world smaller; it has made our minds smaller. By limiting choice, we limit ingenuity and imagination.  By narrowing focus, we lose sight of the much bigger picture.  This is the very purpose of the feudal framework; to erase individual and sovereign strength, stifle all new or honorable philosophies, and ensure the masses remain completely reliant on the establishment for their survival, forever tied to the rotting umbilical cord of a parasitic parent government. 

Everyone's favorite oracular-orifice-of-the-oval-office may perhaps have met his match (if not in real terms, in rhetoric) as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Warren Buffett call each other's bluff...again. As reported in Time's Swampland, the cantakerous Kentuckian said that if Buffett was feeling 'guilty' about paying too little in taxes, he should 'send in a check'. The flim-flam improves though, as Buffett mocks the 'Buffett Rule Act' that enables the rich to donate 'extra' money on their tax form as a "policy only a Republican could come up with" and then goes on to lay down the gauntlet, pledging to match one-for-one all such voluntary contributions made by Republican members of Congress. "I'll even go three for one for McConnell", Buffet pronounced (with a metaphorical white glove to McConnell's face) noting that he was not worried about the bill. So there it is, Republicans only have to donate $50 billion toward paying down debt to bankrupt Buffett.

All you need to know.

We have now entered the fifth year of this Fourth Turning Crisis. George Washington and his troops were barely holding on at Valley Forge during the fifth year of the American Revolution Fourth Turning. By year five of the Civil War Fourth Turning 700,000 Americans were dead, the South left in ruins, a President assassinated and a military victory attained that felt like defeat. By the fifth year of the Great Depression/World War II Fourth Turning, FDR’s New Deal was in place and Adolf Hitler had been democratically elected and was formulating big plans for his Third Reich. The insight from prior Fourth Turnings that applies to 2012 is that things will not improve. They call it a Crisis because the risk of calamity is constant. There is zero percent chance that 2012 will result in a recovery and return to normalcy. Not one of the issues that caused our economic collapse has been solved. The “solutions” implemented since 2008 have exacerbated the problems of debt, civic decay and global disorder. The choices we make as a nation in 2012 will determine the future course of this Fourth Turning. If we fail in our duty, this Fourth Turning could go catastrophically wrong. I pray we choose wisely. Have a great 2012.

Financial contagion in Europe is pushing already fragile global economies towards recessions, and the risk of slipping into global recession are rising significantly. Indeed, as we have warned for many months, there is a real risk of a global Depression given the scale of the debt levels in most western countries and the massive imbalances globally. A senior Chinese official, Chinese Vice Premier Wang, said yesterday that a ‘chronic’ long term global recession is certain to happen and China must focus on domestic problems. While all the focus has been on Europe in recent weeks, markets may again focus on the not inconsequential matter of the appalling US fiscal position which could see further market volatility and the dollar come under pressure again. Washington's latest fractious effort to come to grips with its mounting debt looks set to end in failure today as negotiators look set to announce they have failed to reach a deal. The Congressional ‘supercommittee ‘charged with cutting the US government's crushing $15 trillion debt looks set to admit failure which should support gold. SPDR Gold Trust, the world's largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, reported a rise of 3.631 tons from a day earlier to 1,293.088 tons in its holdings, the highest in more than three months. The ETF witnessed an inflow of 24.422 tons last week, the biggest one-week rise in holdings since mid-August. Commerzbank say they expect to see gold trading at $1,800/oz by the end of the year. Barclays says it is sticking with a fairly bullish call for gold and says it sees the price at $1,875/oz in Q4, according to Reuters. Deutsche Bank say they expect periods of risk aversion to remain through 2012 and their strongest conviction trade remains long precious metals and specifically gold, according to Reuters.

By now everyone has seen and played with the US debt clock via usdebtclock.org whereby anyone who so wishes, can find every little detail about America's current sad fiscal state. The fact that America currently has just under $14 trilllion in national debt should be no surprise to anyone who professes to having an even modest interest in the state of the US economy. Yet a new feature on the "debt clock", namely one which extrapolates future debt at current rates of advancement (instead of one based on the always completely inaccurate CBO estimates), and looks at US debt in the year 2015 will probably make many stop dead in the their tracks. If anyone thought that $14 trillion in 2010 debt is bad, just wait until we hit $24.5 trillion in total US national debt in 2015. And it gets even more surreal: total US Unfunded Liabilities are estimated at $144 trillion, roughly $1.2 million per taxpayer... Was that a pin dropping?

Keep It Simple, Stupid. Words to live by. Remember that when someone starts explaining which way the smoke on an electric train is gonna blow, you should probably check your wallet. I’m tired of convoluted explanations of simple problems. It distracts people from the truth, which is usually the intent of those doing the explaining. The end result is large numbers of people pretending to understand things they don’t. Bernie Madoff’s “success”, ETFs, Treasury auctions, the housing market. The easiest way to confuse people is with numbers so mind-numbingly big they mean nothing to the average person. What’s 13 and a half Trillion dollars supposed to mean to Joe Sixpack? This is the best I could come up with.

Not China, not Russia, not North Korea, not Iran, not terrorists...According to Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the "single biggest threat" to American national security is the US national debt, which is either $8.85 trillion (public debt), $13.4 trillion (total national debt), $20 trillion (total debt including GSE debt), or $124 trillion (total debt including unfunded obligations), depending on one's definition of the word "debt." And as Zero Hedge has long been warning, the imminent increase in interest rates (sooner or later), will eventually put the country in an untenable funding position. "Tax payers will be paying around $600 billion in interest on the
national debt by 2012, the chairman told students and local leaders in
Detroit." The Chairman (the real one, not his pale imitation over at Marriner Eccles) politely forgot to add that the successful rolling of nearly $600 billion in debt per month is likely an even greater threat to national security.

When I read Paul Krugman and the other Keynesian boneheads saying that our debt is not a problem, they quote figures about our debt of $13.3 trillion versus our GDP of $14.6 trillion not being so bad. That is only 91% of GDP. They point to World War II when our national debt reached 120% of GDP. They say everything worked out after that. Today our reported National Debt is $13.362 TRILLION. This is the first big lie. There are two entities named Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that happen to be 80% owned by the US government. Anyone who thinks these two companies can operate without the backing of the US Government are delusional. The US taxpayer is on the hook for these two disastrously run companies. Somehow, government accounting doesn’t require their debt to be considered the responsibility of the US taxpayer. This is a fraud, pure and simple. Their debt is our debt.

Debt is like herpes: ignore it long enough and it just disappears on its own.

All Hail Octavia!
U.S. government stages fake coup to wipe out national debt