Great Depression

Much has been made lately of Jack Welch's "turn" on the Administration regarding the BLS data for September.  It seems a bit odd that Jack would be worried about this now since Zerohedge readers have been exposed to reports that this has been going on for a few years.  Why now Jack?

The other day the Huffington Post ran an article by a Bonnie Kavoussi called “11 Lies About the Federal Reserve.” And you’ll never guess: these aren’t lies or myths spread in the financial press by Fed apologists. These are “lies” being told by you and me, opponents of the Fed. Bonnie Kavoussi calls us “Fed-haters.” So she, a Fed-lover, is at pains to correct these alleged misconceptions. She must stop us stupid ingrates from poisoning our countrymen’s minds against this benevolent array of experts innocently pursuing economic stability. Here are the 11 so-called lies (she calls them “myths” in the actual rendering), and Tom Woods and Bob Murphy's responses.

According to the Paul Krugman, the “confidence fairy” is the erroneous belief that ambiguity over future government regulation and taxation plays a significant role in how investors choose to put capital to work. To the Nobel laureate, the anemic economic recovery in the United States shouldn’t be blamed on this “uncertainty” but rather a “lack of demand for the things workers produce.” The theory which puts a lack of aggregate demand as being the cause of economic recessions has the issue backwards.  Demand by itself doesn’t add to the stock of goods in society; only production does.  Because economic theory deals with the interactions of mankind it needs to be applicable to all times and places.  On a desert island, only a true charlatan would insist that a “lack of demand” is holding the primitive economy back from its full potential.  Desert islands are no different from today’s economy; both are still dominated by scarcity.  If the world economy is ever going to recover, the obstacles put in business’s place have to be lifted to make way for investment in real, tangible goods and services.  Consumption will come after.

While the 0.4% perfectly unmanipulated and totally coincidental swing in the unemployment rate in an Obama favorable direction one month before the election came at a prime time moment for the market, one hour ahead of the open, setting the market mood for the rest of the day (which despite all best efforts still closed red, valiant efforts by Simon Potter and the FRBNY's direct pipe to Citadel notwithstanding), there was one other, far more important data point released by the government's department of agriculture, sufficiently late after the market close to impact no risk assets. That data point of course was foodstamps (or the government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, aka SNAP), and we are confident that no readers will be surprised to learn that foodstamp usage for both persons and households, has jumped to a new all time record.... Finally, and putting it all into perspective, since December 2007, or the start of the Great Depression ver 2.0, the number of jobs lost is 4.5 million, while those added to foodstamps and disability rolls, has increased by a unprecedented 21 million.

Ben Bernanke is so desperate to find support regarding his steal from the poor and give to the 0.01% policies he is now telling blatant lies about famous, dead economists that can’t refute what he says.  In this case Milton Friedman.  In his Q&A today, The Bernank claimed:

BERNANKE: MILTON FRIEDMAN WOULD HAVE SUPPORTED WHAT FED DOING

Well I suppose it’s easy to make things up about people that can’t claim otherwise, but he made a big mistake this time.  Why?  Because Anna Schwartz, who co-wrote the famous work “A Monetary History of the United States” with Milton Friedman in 1963, actually came on the record on several occasions calling out The Bernank and saying there’s no way Friedman would agree.  The sad part about this is it seems Bernanke waited until Schwartz died to really start spewing the lies.  This guy is not only dangerous he is despicable and increasingly desperate… Don’t take it from me though, back in October 2008 Anna Schwartz had this to say in the Wall Street Journal.

To properly understand the events of the time (and to put them in today's context), we believe, like the FEE, that it is factually appropriate to view the Great Depression as not one, but four consecutive downturns rolled into one. These four “phases” are: I. Monetary Policy and the Business Cycle; II. The Disintegration of the World Economy; III. The New Deal; IV. The Wagner Act. The first phase covers why the crash of 1929 happened in the first place; the other three show how government intervention worsened it and kept the economy in a stupor for over a decade. The following brief clip and article shine a light on how bad things were and what was done in the name of 'helping' - there are many shocking analogies for current government-inspired acts from taxation to protectionism to money-supply 'tricks'. Everyone has heard the sage observation of philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It’s a warning we should not fail to heed.

Traditionally, when it comes to reading behind the manipulated media's tea leaf rhetoric and timing major inflection points in the economy, the most accurate predictor are financial firms, whose sense of true economic upside (or downside) while never infallible, is still better than most. Yet unlike employment, which is usually a lagging, or at best concurrent indicator, one aspect that has always been a tried and true leading indicator, has been real estate demand, in this case rental contracts. Due to the long-term lock up nature of commercial real estate contracts, firms are far less eager to engage in rental transactions (and bidding wars) when they expect a worsening macroeconomic environment. Which is why news that office vacancy in Manhattan's Plaza district, the area between Sixth Avenue and the East River from 47th to 65th streets, anchored by the landmark Plaza Hotel at Fifth Avenue and Central Park South which is home to some of the nation’s most expensive and prestigious office towers, and where America's largest hedge funds and PE firms have their headquarters, has just risen to 12.3%, or a two year high, is probably the most troubling news for the economy and a real indicator of what to expect of the immediate future.

In the midst of the Great Depression, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon famously advised President Hoover to “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate” instead of propping each industry up with tax dollars.  This liquidation doctrine would “purge the rottenness out of the system” and make certain that “people will work harder” and “live a more moral life.”  Contrary to popular belief, Hoover did not take Mellon’s advice and went forth with his own version of the New Deal that gave relief to farmers and supported wage rates in certain industries.  These efforts, which were exacerbated under the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, effectively prevented the market from clearing.  The boom of the late 1920s that was driven by the Federal Reserve’s monetary inflation was not allowed to bust.  Instead of liquidating the debt and allowing the economy to reach a sound footing, both the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations attempted to manage it back to health.  The result was the longest period of unemployment ever recorded in American history.

A massive 13% collapse in durable goods, the biggest since January 2009; a $20 billion miss to annualized Q2 GDP estimates, and well below the lowest estimate, 60+ weeks of constant upward BLS revisions to initial claims "data" and not to mention assorted atrocious economic (note: not to be confused with market - the two are now completely unlinked) data from around the globe. And what does the White House say: the data shows that the "US is making progress." We sure wouldn't want to know what it would look like if after 3 episodes of easing, trillions injected into the economy via the Fed, and of course $6 trillion in extra debt the US was not making progress. Oh and yes, everything else is Bush's fault.

While a gold standard could work, we remain sceptical that it will be considered (barring a serious financial crisis, perhaps associated with highly volatile inflation). In large part we blame the low probability on culture. The world economy has, over the past century, morphed into a highly integrated, government dominated system guided by conventional wisdom (group think). The self-reliant, individualism of the free market has been left behind in favour of a ‘new age’ of coddled consumerism. Culturally this represents a very powerful force in our view, one which minimises creative options/solutions to economic impasses. On this basis we are cautious of predicting such a radical solution to monetary imbalances.

The Constitution, Magna Carta and Democracy Itself Are Based on the Idea that – Without Checks and Balances – Those In Power Will Take Advantage of Us

Let’s review the tricks the central banks & governments have available to beat back any financial challenges presented by the debt reaper.

• Money tool # 1 = deficit spending. For years, the G7 countries have believed that spending more than you make, will create jobs and prosperity. To measure the success of this strategy, we invite you to hang out in Spain, Greece or Italy.
• Money tool # 2 = cut interest rates to 0%. All the really smart people in the World know that lower interest rates encourage people and companies to borrow more money and spend this money. To measure the success of this strategy, we invite you to hang out at the US Federal Reserve and help them count the $1.5 trillion in excess money held by the big banks.
• Money tool # 3 = when all else fails print money. Everyone knows by now the reason the Great Depression was great was because no one had the idea to print money to kick start the economy. To measure the success of this strategy, we definitely do not invite you to visit Japan. The Japanese have been printing money for over 10 years and that hasn’t shaken their economy from its funk one bit.

As we enter the always dangerous months of September and October, central bankers and governments just can’t get their heads around the fact that their cherished money tools are not shaking the World. Never one to quit, someone somewhere muttered “we must do something” – and something they did.

Ouch ...

The torching of US embassies across the Muslim world may have been put on the backburner, perhaps driven by the withdrawal of virtually all embassy personnel across the affected regions, but the anti-US sentiment, whether predicated by some movie or not - and oddly enough nobody appears to have set any French embassies on fire following the Prophet Mohammad cartoon which appeared earlier this week, continues. The latest affected country: Pakistan, where "police opened fire on rioters who were torching a cinema during a protest against an anti-Islam film Friday, killing one man on a holiday declared by the government so that people could demonstrate against the video." So, the government specifically creates a "holiday" to protest the video then shoots people who protest the video? Does anyone else get the feeling that all authorities here are urgently doing their best to preempt a war? Was there a secret G-50 meeting in which it was decided the world was too overpopulated and a war was desperately needed? Surely that is ludicrous: just look at the natural growth that the world experienced after the first great depression unaided and unabetted by such trivialities as world war.

What Do Economic Indicators Show?  What Do Economists Say?