Student Loans

Bill Gross' latest monthly missive begins with some political commentary on the latest presidential election, pointing out the obvious: after the euphoria comes the hangover, completely irrelevant of what happens to the Fiscal Cliff: 'whoever succeeds President Obama, the next four years will likely face structural economic headwinds that will frustrate the American public. “Happy days are here again” was the refrain of FDR in the Depression, but the theme song from 2012 and beyond may more closely resemble Strawberry Fields Forever, as Lennon laments “It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out.” Why is it so hard to be someone these days, to pay for college, get a good-paying job and retire comfortably?" And while political campaigns were just that, the truth is that nobody has the trump card to a perfect quadrangle of problems which will mire the US economy for years to come, among which i) debt/deleveraging; ii) globalization, iii) technology, and iv) demographics. Gross' outlook is thus hardly as optimistic as all those sellside reports we have been drowned by in the past 2 weeks, hoping to stir the animal spirits one more time: 'We may need at least a decade for the healing.... it is getting harder to maintain the economic growth that investors have become accustomed to. The New Normal, like Strawberry Fields will “take you down” and lower your expectation of future asset returns. It may not last “forever” but it will be with us for a long, long time." Sad: looks like it won't be different this time after all...

Remember Michael Feroli? The JPM economist who "predicted" US Q4 GDP would be boosted by 0.5% due to iPhone sales (don't laugh: yes, US GDP, not that of China where the iPhone is actually produced, but the US where the consumer merely incurs more record student loans to be able to afford it)? Well, the same JPMorganite has now cut his Q4 GDP expectation to 1.5% for all the same reasons why we penned the second Q3 GDP revision: namely ugly internals, a surge in hollow government and inventory contributions to "growth", and a collapse in the purchasing power of the US consumer (who somehow is still expected to boost Q4 GDP with iPhone sales). And while there is no mention of the iPhone in his just released downward revision, he still believes the cell phone will provide a boost to Q4 GDP. In other words, of the 1.5% in GDP growth in Q4, the iPhone will account for 33% of this! One really can not make this up.

The NY Fed's quarterly smorgasbord of everything debt-related to the good old American household has little fresh and exciting from the top-down as the nation in aggregate (according to the data) continues to delever - though ever so slightly this time (-0.7% to $11.31tn of total consumer indebtedness) driven mostly by a drop in mortgage indebtnedness (defaults?). However, bottom-up things are a little more interesting; aside from the aforementioned Student Loan debt bubble going 'pop', the glorious states of California, Nevada, New Jersey, and New York each have a little something special for us to focus on as our nation (rightly so) slides uncomfortably down the deleveraging path and along with average collections at record highs, surging auto loans, and jumps in Nevada's new foreclosures, there's a little here for everyone. As Keynesian Yoda might have said, "Deleveraging is the path to the dark side; deleveraging leads to reduced credit demand; reduced credit demand leads to less growth; and less growth leads to suffering," though he might have also added (on the de minimus deleveraging that actually occurred): "size matters not."

We have already discussed the student loan bubble, and its popping previously, most extensively in this article. Today, we get the Q3 consumer credit breakdown update courtesy of the NY Fed's quarterly credit breakdown. And it is quite ghastly. As of September 30, Federal (not total, just Federal) rose to a gargantuan $956 billion, an increase of $42 billion in the quarter - the biggest quarterly update since 2006. But this is no surprise to anyone who read our latest piece on the topic. What also shouldn't be a surprise, at least to our readers who read about it here first, but what will stun the general public are the two charts below, the first of which shows the amount of 90+ day student loan delinquencies, and the second shows the amount of newly delinquent 30+ day student loan balances. The charts speak for themselves.

The key to understanding higher education in the U.S. is to grasp that it is at heart just another debt-dependent neofeudal cartel. In other words, it is just like sickcare and the national defense complex. The most implacable enemy of innovation is monopoly. If you're protected from real competition, then you have no incentive or need to innovate. That is the essence of cartel-capitalism and the neofeudal model. In the case of the higher education cartel, the Federal funding is both cash grants and loans issued to newly minted debt-serfs. Student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy like other debt; these loans have ballooned to about $1 trillion. This is the essence of the neofeudal model: a protected Elite parasitically extracts wealth from the debt-serfs below. Should the debt-serfs resist, the State steps in to coerce compliance. The problem with protected cartels (neofeudal fiefdoms) is that they are unsustainable.

In a vise between government crack-downs and reluctant students

Student debt has seemingly been the transmission channel of choice for pumping credit into the US economy for the last few years as the government addition of $1 trillion has done nothing but leave those under-55 with fewer and fewer jobs (especially above-minimum-wage jobs) while saddled with non-extinguishable debt. Of course, this 'pump' of credit has had the usual unintended 'inflationary' consequence of raising tuition prices (which as we noted this morning was the main driver of inflation in the UK overnight). So what would be fair? Cue: A Petition to "Provide University graduates the ability to trade their Diplomas back for 100% tuition refunds" The hope-driven (or hopelessness) push into higher education (and implicitly higher debt), in a nation where the marginal benefit of Calculus 101 over a strong right 'burger-flipping / coffee-machine-pressing' wrist is falling by the day, seems to warrant further societal protection. All that's needed is 25,000 signatures to move this forward.

Following one of the highest monthly jumps in consumer credit in August, the September data showed that following the drop in household savings to a multi-year low, consumers naturally retrenched, and had no choice but to pay down debt. As the just released G.19 confirmed, in September, households once again reduced their credit card debt, which declined by $2.9 billion to $852 billion. This was the fourth such decline in six months, confirming that at the discretionary level where banks have supervision over borrowings, the consumer is still nowhere near willing to relever. Where, there was leverage, a lot of it, was once again in the government sector, which funded $13.8 billion of the total $14.6 billion rise in NSA credit, and where non-revolving credit: read loans for Government Motors, at least those that have not been record channel stuffed (as reported previously) and Federal Student Loans, which are now over $1 trillion, rose by $14.3 billion in one month. Of course, the difference between revolving and non-revolving credit is that while banks expect the former to be paid off eventually, Uncle Sam has no such illusions on any low APR debt it hands out to anyone who asks for it (and if the proceeds from student loans are used to purchase iPads, so be it).

Both capitalism and democracy promise the opportunity for upward mobility. Capitalism offers upward mobility to anyone with a profitable idea or productive skillset and work ethic. Democracy implicitly promises a "level playing field" of meritocracy, where talent, drive and hard work open opportunities for advancement. Crony capitalism offers wealth to the class that already possesses it. Feudalism bestows "rights" to wealth to a favored few. In a way, upward mobility is a real-world test of a nation's economic and social order: if upward mobility exits in name only, then that nation is neither capitalist nor democratic. Stripped of propaganda and misleading labels, it is a feudal society or a crony-capitalist economy masquerading as a capitalist democracy.  The wealth that could have been transferred to the next generation has been consumed suporting a "middle class" lifestyle and providing the next generation with what was once the basis for advancement: a university education, healthcare insurance, a reliable vehicle, etc. Now that jobs are hard to find and compensation is low, the next generation still needs the accumulated wealth of the household to get by. That is not upward mobility, it is downward mobility, on a vast and largely unnoticed scale.

The debates are over; and perhaps last night's 'chat' was the least interesting from any substantive angle of any of the interactions given the candidates tendency to agree on virtually everything (apart from bayonets) - and still say absolutely nothing. In the interests of being fair and balanced - as we always are - we present two sides of this epic farce. First, the Asian animated interpretation - for some light-hearted insight into just how our potential leaders are perceived across the ocean after last night's debate; and second, a more retrospective view by Ben Tanosborn on the three 'meaningless' debates - and the questions that should have been asked. "Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have shown to be equally adept at dealing with trivia and secondary issues... and equally inept at dealing with every substantive issue."

Government programs created in the 1960s created a culture of dependency, government control, relentlessly higher debt, materialism, and willful ignorance. The incompetence, arrogance, ineptitude and insanity of government officials at the Federal, State, and Local level are stunning to behold. We need to ask ourselves whether we the people are getting better government service and efficiency today; with government spending at 35% to 40% of GDP, than we did in the 1950’s and early 1960’s when government spending was 20% to 25% of GDP. We doubt that most people are getting 60% more value from our benevolent government today than they did in the 1950’s. By encouraging dependency and reliance upon the all-powerful government, the motivation to educate yourself, get married before having children, work hard, and pull yourself out of poverty is diminished. Can a small minority of critical thinking citizens lead a revolution that topples the existing social order and restores the Republic to its founding principles of liberty, self-responsibility, civic duty, and mutual obligation to future generations?

With 20 days left to the big day and the candidates seemingly in a tighter race than many expected it seems appropriate to look at how the equity market is and will be positioned for a potential changing of the guard if Mitt Romney wins or if incumbent Barack Obama remains in charge. Credit Suisse has created a comprehensive 'cheat-sheet' outlining key issues for the election for each candidate, the sector impact of an Obama or Romney victory, and the extent to which that impact is already factored into current market prices. Everything you wanted to know about gaming the outcome of the election but were afraid to ask.

The majority of Americans seem OK with just waddling through life, accepting the lies and misinformation blasted from the boob tube and their various iGadgets by their owners, gorging themselves to death on Twinkies and Cheetos, paying 15% interest on their $10,000 rolling credit card balance, and growing ever more dependent on the welfare/warfare state to provide and protect them from accepting personal responsibility for their lives. A minority of critical thinking people have chosen to question everything they see and hear being spewed at us by the propagandist mainstream media. What do 'we, the people' want? As it seems the entitlement “free shit” mentality permeates our culture. The question is whether we will stand idly by, fiddling with our gadgets, tweeting about Honey Boo Boo, or will we regain our sense of duty to the future generations of this country.

While everyone and their pet rabbit 'Dave' in the media seems to 'believe', there’s plenty of debate about—and money riding on—the question of whether we are in the midst of a sustainable recovery in the housing market. Nobody knows for sure, of course, but there are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic. While it is easy to focus on the traditional indicators of supply and demand and start believing that the long-awaited recovery in the property market has arrived at last, the fact is that much has changed in the wake of the events of the past decade, a development that is likely to weigh on prices for many years to come.

Following a major miss in July consumer credit which declined by $3.3 billion (since revised to a -$2.5 billion decline), it was only natural that August would be the opposite, and see a rebound over consensus. Sure enough, the August total consumer credit number came in at $2.73 trillion, an increase of $18.1 billion from last month, on expectations of an increase by $7.25 billion. Why did the number rise? Same reason as always: a government-funded pump into non-revolving (i.e., Student and Government motor loan) credit which soared by $14 billion while revolving credit posted a modest $4.2 billion increase unable to even offset the July decline. But in headline scanning algo news, this was the highest jump in post-revision (recall last month the Fed completely redid its consumer credit series data which is now useless for any analysis going back before December 2010). Yet oddly even with this massive pump the stock market has refused to rebound and instead is acting in a very odd fashion and the now traditional green color of stock moves has taken on an odd reddish hue that is unfamiliar to the current generation of traders.