White House

If you haven't heard yet, the United States of America just hit $16 trillion in debt yesterday. On a gross, nominal basis, this makes the US, by far, the greatest debtor in the history of the world.  It took the United States government over 200 years to accumulate its first trillion dollars of debt. It took only 286 days to accumulate the most recent trillion dollars of debt. 200 years vs. 286 days. This portends two key points:

1. Anyone who thinks that inflation doesn't exist is a complete idiot;
2. To say that the trend is unsustainable is a massive understatement.

This is banana republic stuff, plain and simple... and smart, thinking people ought to be planning on capital controls, wage and price controls, pension confiscation, and selective default. Because the next trillion will be here before you know it.

Certified Conspiracy-Free

NOT Because of the Attacks ...

Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his veep clarifies the policy debate (forcing typically middle-of-the-road voters to become more polarized to the size of government) into the November election and materially changes the odds of the fiscal cliff's resolution. As Morgan Stanley's Vince Reinhart notes, "by tying one side to an explicit plan for fiscal consolidation, the Ryan selection makes it much more likely that the campaign will focus on the appropriate role of the government.  That is, the debate will be about the right level of federal expenditure relative to national income, the progressivity of the tax system, and the extent to which family incomes are protected on the downside by Washington, DC." Although theoretically the Ryan pick raises the chance of a benign, before-the-election resolution to the fiscal cliff 'issue', it also worsens the likely outcome if the legislative stand-off continues into 2013 - which the odds suggest is the case.

The topic of Obama and his teleprompters (one of which was stolen a year ago, causing a public appearance delay) has been so pervasive in the "counterculture" that it led to the creation of the term TOTUS. But it wasn't until today that TOTUS is now officially part of the mainstream media lexicon courtesy of this slideshow via Reuters, which should explain just who pulls the strings.

Syria and Iran are, in a way, the first dominos in a long chain of terrible events.  This chain, as chaotic as it seems, leads to only one end result:  Third world status for almost every country on the planet, including the U.S., leaving the financial institutions, like monetary grim reapers, to swoop in and gather up the pieces that remain to be fashioned into a kind of Frankenstein economy.  A fiscal golem.  A global monstrosity that removes all sovereignty whether real or imagined and centralizes the decision making processes of humanity into the hands of a morally bankrupt few. The only people celebrating at the end of the calamitous hostilities will be the hyper-moneyed power addicted .01%, who will celebrate their global coup in private, laughing as the rest of the world burns itself out, and comes begging them for help.

European bourses are down at the North American crossover, all ten sectors in the red, on thin volumes and a distinct lack of data and news flow from the EU and the UK. The risk-off tone in part attributed to the much wider than expected Japanese trade deficit for July, whose exports also fell the most in six months, raising investor concern once again that Asian economy as a whole is stalling. Elsewhere, investor caution over the Greek debt crisis is once again mounting, as EU’s Juncker visits Athens today to meet with the Greek PM Samaras. Overnight it was reported that Greece would present EUR 13.5bln in budget cuts today, higher than the previous EUR 11.5bln, and whilst the country is not asking for more money, Samaras might request more time to implement them. Lawmakers in Netherlands remain critical of providing more aid for the country and continue to push for more reforms, such as spending cuts and privatization, with the Dutch Finance Minister de Jaeger commenting earlier that it is not a good idea for Greece to get more time.

Two days ago, historian Niall Fergsuon had the temerity to voice a personal opinion, one which happens to not exactly jive with the rest of the media's take on current events, on the cover page of Newsweek (Newsweek is still in print?) titled, succinctly enough, "Hit the road Barack: Why we need a new president." The response was fast, furious, and brutal, particularly emanating from what Ferguson has dubbed the "liberal blogosphere." Naturally in an election year, said blogosphere has much CPM-generating rumination to do (after all who knows what happens to all those ad revenues if the US corporate base implodes and all that cash on the sidelines stays there due to "policy uncertainty"), so Ferguson merely provided the chum in the water (once the time comes to pick up the calculators again after the presidential election, things will immediately quiet down but until then there is, sadly, at least two more months of ever rising cacophony). So did Ferguson back off having said his piece? Hell no. In fact, he has just made sure that the "liberal blogosphere" is will be burning the midnight oil for weeks to come engaged in completely meaningless point-counterpoint between itself and the historian, when, in reality nothing changes the simple fact that come August 2016, the US will have a simply idiotic 130%+ debt/GDP completely independent of who is in the White House, or in other words, there very well may not be another presidential election. For now, however, we have much needed bread and circuses. Below is Ferguson's just released interview from Bloomberg TV in which he responds to the salient accusations that have been leveled at him (a more essayistic version can be found here).

In just four short years, our “enlightened” policy-makers have slowed money velocity to depths never seen in the Great Depression.  Hard to believe, but the guy who made a career out of Monday-morning quarterbacking the Great Depression has already proven himself a bigger idiot than all of his predecessors (and in less than half the time!!).  During the Great Depression, monetary base was expanded in response to slowing economic activity, in other words it was reactive  (here’s a graph) .  They waited until the forest was ablaze before breaking out the hoses, and for that they’ve been rightly criticized.  Our “proactive”  Fed elected to hose down a forest that wasn’t actually on fire, with gasoline, and the results speak for themselves.  With the IMF recently  lowering its 2012 US GDP growth forecast to 2%, while  the monetary base is expanding at about a 5% clip, know that velocity of money is grinding lower every time you breathe.

Peripheral stock indices continued to outperform today, as market participants reacted to yet another reiteration of support for ECB’s pledge to do all necessary to defend the Eurozone. As a result, banks in Europe are trading up with decent gains, with health care sector in the red given its traditional appeal as a safe-haven investment. German DAX continues to consolidate above the key 7000 mark, being driven higher by Daimler and Deutsche Bank. Looking at other asset classes, there is visible outperformance in the short-end of the curve, with the in-focus Spanish 2s tighter by around 20bps mark. The ongoing speculation of an intervention in the bond market also weighed on the German Bund, which underperformed its US counterpart. USTs come off overnight highs to trade little changed, with the move attributed to deal related selling. In the FX market, the EUR continued to re-price risks surrounding what is inevitable an unlikely scenario of a Eurozone break up. To the upside, resistance levels are seen at the 55DMA line at 1.2395 and then at 1.2400, which is also an intraday option expiry for the session.

It must be election season because moment ago Reuters just reported that the White House is "dusting off old plans on a potential SPR release as prices rise" according to a source with knowledge of the situation. This too, just like the earlier Corzine news, should not be a surprise. Obama made it expressly clear that with the election fast approaching, he would either force the CME to hike margins, which is also coming, or would proceed with the far dumber step of an SPR release, just so China can full up its own strategic release faster and at a lower cost. The spun version, of course, has to do with Iran, and the fear of "undermining" Iran sanction success. The same sanctions which the US granted key Iran client China a compliance waiver...

It was not enough that the Fed's Richard Fisher was 'allowed' on CNBC this afternoon to expropriate himself and his merry-Fed-men from his 'fanatical' colleague nemesis Rosengren; but Maria B., for one glorious moment, asked a question so sensible it was stunning: "Is The Fed Bailing Out The White House?" The notably business-man-background Fisher was wonderfully heretical in explaining that additional stimulus would have little impact, that the Fed's action would indeed 'look political', and that "US lawmakers need to get their fiscal act together." While he doesn't see a high likelihood of a recession in 2013, he comprehends clearly the wait-and-see 'defensive crouch' that businesses are in given the huge uncertainty. On a slow day, with so much print-and-it's-all-fixed hope, the clarifying vision of at least one man on the FOMC is perhaps worth holding onto.

In America, winning the Presidency has proven to be a question of how much money you're willing to spend. The trend constantly shows that, he who spends the most money on elections, usually wins.

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney's selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his running mate has generated renewed interest in the House-passed budget resolution that Ryan authored. Ryan's budget outline would reduce the deficit more quickly and impose more fiscal restraint than the President's budget proposal. However, as Goldman notes. while both proposals would increase revenues due to the scheduled expiration of the payroll tax cut at year end, the President's would raise income taxes as well. Rep. Ryan's plan, on the other hand, would cut spending sharply in 2013 and 2014, even though it assumes a one-year delay in the spending cuts under the "sequester" set to take effect at year-end. If the President wins reelection and/or Democrats hold their majority in the Senate, a bipartisan compromise would be necessary to enact fiscal reforms. This has been difficult to achieve over the last year or so and we expect compromise to be even tougher. We continue to believe that the economic effects of allowing the fiscal cliff to take effect in full will be the greatest motivation for members of Congress to reach an agreement.

The Obama administration is evil.  Sorry, there is no other adjective to describe it at this point.  They know they are corrupt, they embrace their corruption and now they are doing everything possible to silence anyone who dares call them out on it.  The latest case of Obama’s war on whistleblowers relates to how the Scientific Integrity Officer within the Interior Department, Dr. Paul Houser, was attacked when he started raising some scientific and environmental questions.