Washington D.C.

Curious how the student loan bubble, just shy of $1 trillion, and now the largest debt portion of the US household non-mortgage wallet,  bigger than credit card and auto loan debt - affects your state? Then the following three charts just out from the NY Fed are for you. What the data shows is that less than 12% of the population in Hawaii has student loans, while the record is in D.C. at over 25%. All those "students" in the nation's capital. Really? But that's not all. While the average loan balance is under $21,000 in Wyoming, it is once again highest in D.C., with the average loan balance over $40,000. It is almost as if D.C. "students" have learned how to game the system.

Just in case conventional wisdom thought there was some limit beyond which financial crime and fraud in the US would or could not cross, here comes the city of Harrisburg, bankrupt for nearly two years, proving everyone wrong as usual. 'The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged the City of Harrisburg, Pa., with securities fraud for its misleading public statements when its financial condition was deteriorating and financial information available to municipal bond investors was either incomplete or outdated." Of course, if one is sinking, might as well take down as many as possible with it, because in the long-run, etc... right Keynesian fanatics?

JPM wasn't satisfied with demonstrating its implicit control over the US bond issuing authority by promoting Matt Zames to the post of COO, the same Matt Zames who courtesy of his Chairmanship of the TBAC, also effectively runs the US Treasury where he "advises" the brand new Treasury Secretary who has no idea what he is doing. Oh no. Just to cover all its bases, Jamie Dimon's firm decided to also take over the SEC as well.

The political class set in motion the eventual obliteration of our economic system with the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Placing the fate of the American people in the hands of a powerful cabal of unaccountable greedy wealthy elitist bankers was destined to lead to poverty for the many, riches for the connected crony capitalists, debasement of the currency, endless war, and ultimately the decline and fall of an empire. The 100 year downward spiral began gradually but has picked up steam in the last sixteen years, as the exponential growth model, built upon ever increasing levels of debt and an ever increasing supply of cheap oil, has proven to be unsustainable and unstable. Those in power are frantically using every tool at their disposal to convince Boobus Americanus they have everything under control and the system is operating normally. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Two days in Washington D.C. kept caterers busy but produced a 2,126 word communique long on slogans and short on anything actionable. The G-20 statement (below) can be boiled down simply, as we tweeted,

G-20 statement: "if we all lie, same as nobody lying"

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 19, 2013

And just to add one more embarrassing detail for them, while section 4 discusses "Japan's recent policy actions," not only does Canada's finance minister James Flaherty believe they "didn't discuss the Japanese Yen," but Japan's Kuroda believes, comments on 'misalignments', "were not meant for the BoJ."

Jobs in and of themselves do not guarantee well-being. Suppose that the employment is to dig huge holes and fill them up again? The supply of labor is limited. We must not allow government to create jobs or we lose the goods and services which otherwise would have come into being. We must reserve precious labor for the important tasks still left undone. Instead of praising jobs for their own sake, we should ask why employment is so important. The answer is, because we exist amidst economic scarcity and must work to live and prosper. That’s why we should be of good cheer only when we learn that this employment will produce things people actually value, i.e., are willing to buy with their own hard-earned money. And this is something that can only be done in the free market, not by bureaucrats and politicians. While the free market, of course, does not mean utopia, the path to jobs that matter is the free market.

MERS: The Center of the Mortgage Scam

Today any lingering doubts that the market is a complete and manipulated farce were put to rest following the epic embarassment that was the early release of FOMC minutes due to what Steve Liesman announced was a leak of the March minutes yesterday to a hundred or so staffers and various lobby organizations, which means the minutes promplty became public knowledge to anyone and everyone connected to Washington, such as all hedge funds, banks, and other financial firms. Everyone, except of course, the general public. Which is why we politely petition the Fed to add us and all of ours readers to the early distribution list for the Minutes and all other releases that are leaked in advance of distribution to the general public. Since we have all given up on any pretense of a "fair and efficient" market, it is only "fair" (at least until such time that Chairman Bernanke decides to finally start throwing €500 and ¥100,000,000,000,000  bills out of helicopters).

We urge readers to make liberal use of the Fed's contact page and request "fair" and equal treatment with those who in the eyes of the Fed are more equal than all others.

If the economy is getting better, then why does poverty in America continue to grow so rapidly?  Yes, the stock market has been hitting all-time highs recently, but also the number of Americans living in poverty has now reached a level not seen since the 1960s.  Yes, corporate profits are at levels never seen before, but so is the number of Americans on food stamps.  Yes, housing prices have started to rebound a little bit (especially in wealthy areas), but there are also more than a million public school students in America that are homeless.  That is the first time that has ever happened in U.S. history. So should we measure our economic progress by the false stock market bubble that has been inflated by Ben Bernanke's reckless money printing, or should we measure our economic progress by how the poor and the middle class are doing?  Because if we look at how average Americans are doing these days, then there is not much to be excited about. Unfortunately, that bubble of false hope is not going to last much longer.  In fact, we are already seeing signs that it is getting ready to burst.

• George Soros: 'What Japan is doing is actually quite dangerous because" (BBG)
• North Korea lacks means for nuclear strike on U.S., experts say (Reuters)
• Yellen latest to hint about slowing of QE3 (FT)
• Hollande approval rating hits new low (FT)
• Hollande Dismisses Reshuffle as Crisis Hits Popularity (BBG)
• Japan Upper house approves full 5 year term for BOJ gov. Kuroda (BBG)
• US: Plan to Cap Tax Breaks Is Gaining Steam (WSJ)
• BOE Says Investors May Be Taking ‘Too Rosy’ a View of Stress (BBG)
• Kiwis Say ‘Ni Hao’ as China Ties Trump Australia Sales (BBG)
• Obama Avoids Trading Threats With North Korea’s Kim (BBG)

Deposit Insurance at a bank, any bank in Europe, is now meaningless. A bond indenture, any clause, any paragraph, any promise or assurance; now meaningless. The notion of private property, land, cash, house; now meaningless. The European Union will take what they want as they deem it necessary and the IMF will follow along. The question has been asked, during the last few days, why the bond holders of Cyprus were not tagged along with the bank deposits. We can answer the question. Virtually all of the Cyprus sovereign debt is governed under British law and so the EU did not pursue this course. Greece came first. Lesson one and "shame on you." Cyprus comes second and now "shame on me." What will come next? What will you tell your partners or your shareholders when they say, "You should have known." You will have no excuse!

Thirty cities at the center of the nation’s most populous metropolitan areas faced more than $192 billion in unpaid commitments for pensions and other retiree benefits, primarily health care, as of fiscal 2009. Pew notes that these cities had 74 percent of the money needed to fully fund their pension plans but only 7.4 percent of what was necessary to cover their retiree health care liabilities. Cities typically count on investment earnings from their pension funds to cover two-thirds of benefits. During the Great Recession, though, returns were lower than expected, and unfunded pension liabilities grew in nearly all of the cities. Even cities with well-funded systems struggled to keep up their yearly contributions as local tax revenue plummeted during the recession, and while pension assets have largely returned to pre-recession levels, they still must make up for years of lost growth, as liabilities continue to rise. So pressure for reforms is not expected to lessen. New York and Philadelphia may have the largest unfunded liability per household, but it is Chicago and Pittsburgh that have the lowest funding levels for pensions and the lowest retiree health care funding levels - while Washington D.C. tops the list in both. Benefits down, taxes up.

"US equities, what is there to say? Successive new highs; record buybacks (Miller-Modigliani and ESOP rules, OK!); multi-year heaviest mutual fund buying; vol a whisker off its Crisis Era lows; margin debt rising as fast as in 2000 and 2007; put-call ratios depressed; cumulative A/D in the stratosphere; junk bonds near yield lows; leveraged loan prices back at Blue Sky, mid-2007 levels—and now the jobs numbers giving everyone an all over warm glow"

The free-money party never ends; but perhaps this 55 seconds of animated reality, created by The Daily Reckoning, will remind some of the after-effects of rising food prices, "pay nothing" savings accounts, and higher taxes.

The U.S. health care system is a giant money making scam that is designed to drain as much money as possible out of all of us before we die.  In the United States today, the health care industry is completely dominated by government bureaucrats, health insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations. At this point, our health care system is a complete and total disaster.  Health care costs continue to go up rapidly, the level of care that we are receiving continues to go down, and every move that our politicians make just seems to make all of our health care problems even worse. At the same time, hospital administrators, pharmaceutical corporations and health insurance company executives are absolutely swimming in huge mountains of cash.  Unfortunately, this gigantic money making scam has become so large that it threatens to collapse both the U.S. health care system and the entire U.S. economy.