The Pursuit of Financial Happiness

Recession, Recession, Recession?

2011-12-14T16:22:00.001-06:00

Last week, Lakshman Acthulan of ECRI gave an interview in which he discussed the slow growth in the United States and how economic indicators show we are heading for recession if we are not already in recession.

Watch the interview here.

John Hussman asked last week if we have avoided recession and he found little evidence of any meaningful reduction in recession risks and underlying recessionary pressures are unchanged.

Last week, Jeremy Grantham decried the lack of growth in the United States as a lack of political will to provide jobs, to repair infrastructure, to stop the declining effectiveness of education and training, and government's unwillingness to confront long term issues as well as the drastic decline in income equality. The negative is overwhelming the positive and it is not only framing attitudes, but it has substantially restructured the middle class according to Dan Little and has created a much larger class of unemployed than the official figures, because they are not counted and no longer exist for statistical purposes.

Given the recession in Europe, much less the growing economic crisis in which Europeans think fiscal union is balancing budgets and punishing deficit countries rather than having a common Treasury with taxing powers which enables a proper fiscal transfer mechanism which is economically necessary in any successful currency union and in which Europeans think eurobonds are shared liabilities rather than an issuance of a common Treasury with taxing powers, and the slowing growth in China, recession risks are emerging globally and the an implosion in Europe could drive the world into a depression.

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Blogging, Clients, and the Impending European Implosion

2011-12-12T06:49:00.001-06:00

In the first week of October, it became obvious that what needed to be done in Europe to avoid a financial crisis which will become a global financial crisis will not only not be done -- it is being ignored and economic history denied in immoveable Orwellian terms. The EU Summit was a colossal failure and, despite media reports to the contrary, nine countries, other than the UK which opposes the Treaty changes, must consult their parliaments and Ireland may need to seek public approval. Since the euro has never survived a public vote, it will be interesting to see to what extent the EU will go to suppress any public vote in Ireland or elsewhere as it did in Greece prior to staging its coup d'etat and deposing the democratically elected government of Greece.

To hear more of my analysis, including my concern that the euro has become an enemy of democracy, of the European economic crisis, listen to my most recent radio interview here.

It became my duty to serve my consulting and advisory clients to get them to position themselves appropriately consistent with their business model and to rebalance individual portfolios defensively. Anyone who has not taken by advice or implemented my advice: Good Luck. Desired results require decisive and informed action.

Consequently, I have not been blogging despite have several large articles researched which I have not had the time to write. I would like to write everyday. However, I do not like to write just to write but when I have something substantive to say. What little advertising is on this blog site is obvious and minimal. The links --- all links --- within my blogs are substantive sources and often offer different views. No links within my blogs are advertising, which I find a repugnant practice. Blogging is not about making money; it is about ideas and communication and discussion. Other bloggers, not all, have found my practice of link referencing sources, much as academic papers would be referenced, and providing extended reading material through those links as impediments to cross publication. On the other hand, individual opinions without substantiation seldom rise to Proustian levels. It also means I do not close my mind to different viewpoints and attempt to remain true to the data and the developing macroeconomic environment. I have never been a joiner of cliques and have been schooled in critical thinking in which no one's opinions, including my own, are sacrosanct. If this offends others, so be it.

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Europe & Its Danger to the Global Economy

2011-12-10T15:21:00.000-06:00

In a 12/3/2011 radio appearance on Saturday Session with Bishop, I discussed how serious the economic situation is in Europe and the potential consequences the current economic and political policies of the eurozone could have for Europe, the U.S., and the world.

Listen to it here. There is a Bernanke news lead in to the actual interview.

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Is the Euro Steeped in Self-Deception and Suicidal Delusion?

2011-10-30T06:00:00.001-05:00

After only one day, the Euro Deal of the recent EU Summit began to wilt under the bright heat of the flood lights of rational scrutiny. On Day 2, we saw a repetition of how the German Constitution is a fundamental stumbling block to a politically united eurozone fiscal union with additional pleadings which could force Bundestag approval of EFSF bond purchases (not the bond purchase program but the actual individual purchases themselves).

We also saw on Day 2 the Erste Group bank of Austria suddenly writedown its CDS portfolio by 1.49 billion euro creating a a 750 million euro shortfall just two weeks after projecting a profit and reducing its 2010 profit 12%. It reduced its CDS portfolio to 300 million euro yesterday from 5.2 billion euro as of the end of September. It also announced it was cancelling its repayment of 1.2 billion euro in State aid, while proclaiming it had no intention of requesting new State aid as it would cover the loss with a 35% (only) return of executive bonuses and the use of retained earnings over the next three quarters. It should be noted that the Erste Group had substantial exposure to Eastern Europe as do Greek bank Subsidiaries in Eastern Europe.

Worse, not only is Sarkozy seeking China's investment in EFSF bonds or the SPV to be created (Van Rompuy is on record from earlier in the year favoring consideration of Chinese investment), but Klaus Regling, the executive director of the EFSF, was not only already talking with the Chinese but even suggesting that EFSF debt could be issued in Yuan. It is economically incompetent for a sovereign nation with its own fiat currency to issue debt denominated in a foreign currency. For a monetary union with no fiscal transfer mechanism to issue debt in a foreign currency (Yuan), when its member nations are under credit attack for debt already denominated in a foreign currency (euro), is beyond incompetent; it is economically suicidal.

The surplus countries of the eurozone have the money to invest in the deficit countries; there is no need for foreign investment in eurozone debt which will cause the euro to be sold and dollars purchased by the eurozone countries which will strengthen the euro and make eurozone exports more expensive. The surplus eurozone countries, in order to economically correct trade imbalances within the eurozone, should be using the current account surplus funds to invest in the infrastructure and manufacturing of the deficit countries. The Euro Deal of this past week has not increased the equity stake of member nations; it only has the member nations providing insurance guarantees.

The one size fits all approach of the eurozone just does not work. The deficit countries cannot export and privatize their way into surplus under austerity. The current account surpluses needed to drive down the existing high private sector leverage and public sector deficit in the deficit countries is too massive (even in Ireland) to be obtained from export growth and the privatization of public assets.

Yet, the mantra of convergence, competitiveness and austerity remain as the key mistakes enshrined as European Monetary Union holy grails carry forwarded from the EMU 1991 currency crisis. Convergence never happened. Kantoos Economics, a German economics blog, has had two recent posts which exemplify the group think mindset of the European Monetary Union. One was on competitiveness in which a post by Kash Monsori is used in an attempt to show how misunderstood the European concept of "competitiveness" is and that imposed austerity in the deficit countries is not a self fulfilling economic disaster. The second post on Kantoos Economics is on the "necessary" rigidity of currency unions and internal devaluation as the only method of adjustment for trade imbalances with a currency union. If Kantoos Economics wants to take on a non-European on competitiveness, then Kantoos would be well advised to take on Rebecca Wilder who has shown the "competitiveness" concept as promulgated in the eurozone is a chimera in which all countries must be like Germany in which the concept has become to mean the efficiency of the economy as a whole involving "...strong macro-prudential policy, infrastructure, efficiency and income gains, savings, etc." In fact, the concept of competitiveness more generally describes and reflects data from a variety of factors such as education, infrastructures, institutions, technological development, health, macroeconomic environment, market efficiency, labor efficiency, and innovation to name a few. It is always best when theory adapts to the reality of data rather than morph data to fit a phantasmagorical theory.

When one looks at worker statistics, the Greek worker works longer hours for less money than workers in other EU countries. However, most Greek workers are involved in agriculture and the worker productivity has a smaller euro value. For productivity to improve, there needs to be technological improvement within Greece. In fact if you look at the northern and southern eurozone countries, there is no evidence of profligacy and laziness. What you will see is, the creation of the euro lead t a massive flow of capital from the northern countries to the southern countries, because it was profitable for the northern countries. Marshall Auerback and Rob Parenteau have provided a concise and strong economic criticism of the Greek myth of profligacy and the ultimate self-destructive nature of austerity not only on the deficit countries but also on the surplus eurozone countries. They paint a convincing picture of the need for a more coordinated mutually beneficial growth option involving direct investment by the surplus countries in the infrastructure, technological development, and manufacturing of the deficit countries.

The Australian economist, Bill Mitchell, who has been a long time critic of the euro, sees the Euro Deal as one which solves nothing, continues all of the same problems, intensifies the anti-democratic policies of the eurozone, and increases the pressure on the surplus countries to suffer the same fate as the deficit countries.

What does this leave us with? Desperation, human suffering, failed nations, a breeding ground for authoritarian regimes, economic collapse? Or does it leave us with an existential epiphany of NO HOPE and the recognition of a common humanity and purpose that digs down and comes up with the political will to get things done for the best interests of the many and a respect for individual freedom which promotes unbiased, empirical analysis of economic data, the needs of aggregate demand, and recognizes the economic growth power of full employment?

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Euro Deal Euphoria or Wake?

2011-10-28T14:22:00.002-05:00

The announcement of a euro deal emerging from the EU Summit on the "debt" crisis yesterday pleased the markets, but it has solved nothing and appears to have a 100% chance of failure. In fact the deal only further exposes the the fundamental construction weaknesses and limits of the euro which has doomed it to failure.

How far can you kick a can down the road with a dead cat inside? Apparently, only one day. Italian bond yields exceeded 6% at auction today.

Auerback, Wolf, and De Grauwe, among others, have called for the ECB to step up and be a lender of last resort consistent with the role of a central bank. Unfortunately, the ECB by Treaty construction and ECB rules and establishment is not a real central bank and does not have the independent authority to buy bonds, issue currency (the NCBs issue currency under a rigid ratio per nation with the ECB limited to 8% for clearing purposes), or provide liquidity without difficult collaterization guidelines being met. The ECB in setting interest rates has shown an inclination to be overly concerned with headline, rather than core, inflation which has caused rates to raised at least one time to far and maintained unchanged rather than lowering rates which has primarily served Germany and France at the expense of the deficit countries. The ECB can only buy bonds on the secondary market and only of prescribed credit quality. In its attempts to buy bonds on a limited basis to assist in relieving credit pressure and yields, it has faced significant political opposition from surplus countries which has caused it to act as a Fiscal Enforcer and threaten and/or hold back needed liquidity to NCBs in Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and Italy to force national politicians to enact budget cuts and austerity measures despite no public support in those countries. The role of a real central bank is monetary policy with the ability to provide liquidity, buy bonds, set interest rates, and promote monetary stability as well as act as a clearinghouse. To get the ECB to act as a real central bank would require Treaty changes and a complete change in the rules and functions of the ECB. There is not enough time.

Trichet has even recommended a Finance Ministry for the eurozone, but what good would a Finance Ministry have if there is no fiscal transfer mechanism, eurozone taxing authority, and relinquishment of national sovereignty by member countries? The EU and the eurozone has suffered for too long the determination of sovereign policy in member countries by an elite which is defiant of democratic approval.

Munchau has repeatedly expressed doubts on the leveraging proposed for the EFSF and the SPV which will apparently be created. Has everyone forgot how disastrous the big banks SPVs were going into the recent Great Financial Crisis?

Sarkozy is promoting the involvement of China when this would only worsen the economic problems as I and Tim Duy have written citing Michael Pettis.

The 50% "voluntary" haircut is not enough and it is unlikely there will be 100% private participation and 1.4 trillion euro EFSF funding is not enough, particularly if European bank's liquidity and recapitalization is eventually challenged. Additionally, it is popular to overlook the very negative direct effect these haricuts would have on Greek banks if Greece stays in the eurozone.

Many commentators have questioned the jury-rigged euro deal's attempt to structure 50% haricuts as not a defined default triggering CDS. In fact, in just one day, Fitch has said the 50% haircuts do constitute a default and will affect Greece's credit ratings send the euro down.

The eurozone crisis band aid approach of temporary patches is not sustainable and is just setting the stage for recession and the eternal re-emergence of the very same problems.

Is the eurozone a monetary union with a stable currency benefiting all of its members or is it a tontine in which the last remaining country becomes the Imperial power and the other countries its colonies? Meanwhile, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, and Spain are being repeatedly raped and France has been moved to the credit rating coming attraction.

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BRICS to the Rescue? Kiss Eurozone Growth Goodbye

2011-10-24T08:05:00.000-05:00

In September, when Michael Pettis' private newsletter discussed how destructive a BRICS rescue of the eurozone or any eurozone country by buying bonds would be, his observations and conclusions were too obvious to justify further comment. Here is a shorter public version of the newsletter.

Bottomline, if China and Brazil were to buy sovereign bonds in the eurozone or EFSF eurobonds (if any are ever approved), it would would mean the eventual shift of financial flows to the BRICS from the eurozone stifling eurozone economic growth, because, as Pettis said, "foreign investment simply replaces domestic savings, undermines the manufacturing sector, and raises unemployment or debt." As the BRICS bought European bonds, the Europeans would be forced to buy United States bonds, US dollars would be sold to buy euro and the euro would strengthen while trade balances would shift to the BRICS, particularly China. This is the consequence of foreign investment. To make matters worse, as Pettis points out, the foreign investment is not needed as Europe is awash in capital in the surplus countries.

Yet, as the trade surplus nations of the eurozone continue to avoid the trade imbalances within the eurozone, this possible scenario is being floated as the EU Summit draws out with France and Germany unable to agree and the UK demanding all EU countries participate. This will only seriously aggravate the eurozone problem as, according to Pettis, "the increase in foreign investment would simply be matched either by an equivalent reduction in domestic savings or an equivalent increase in domestic debt to counteract the rise in unemployment. Rather than ease the burden, in other words, foreign investment simply replaces domestic savings, undermines the manufacturing sector, and raises unemployment or debt."

If the BRICS want to help Europe then they need to invest in infrastructure and manufacturing in the eurozone and, particularly, in the peripheral countries.

If BRICS buy eurozone peripheral sovereign nation bonds through the EFSF or individually, the eurozone can kiss economic growth goodbye and the currency problems of the euro multiply with decreased savings, increased debt, increased unemployment, and loss of trade surplus to non-eurozone countries.

As we indicated in our last post, the eurozone needs to decide if it will be a fiscal European Union or if it needs to break up.

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Has Germany Castrated the Euro?

2011-10-22T22:50:00.003-05:00

The German Bundestag now has the legal authority to require the German government to submit all EU proposals which will have budgetary effect to the Bundestag for approval prior to negotiation committing Germany to any agreement. This virtually prevents the German executive from negotiating any substantive EFSF or other economic support for the eurozone as a whole, or particular member countries, through the EU, ECB, or EFSF.

Despite early French-German discord, there was some renewed hope that a 3 trillion euro package could be put together for the EFSF only to have the German Finance minister quickly and very publicly state that no miracle cure will emerge from tomorrow's EU Summit on the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis and further stating that the process for resolution will take much longer into next year, which has again placed focus and pressures on bank credit and liquidity rather than the more centrally important issue of sovereign risk in a monetary union without any fiscal transfer mechanism.

The EU Summit tomorrow will not only be a disappointment, but it could well be the ultimate stone thrown on the victim of European union. The 3 trillion euro package has been reduced to 2 trillion and now they are again talking of 1.3 trillion with no additional public sector haircuts beyond 50%, when it is obvious is needs to be much larger if not 80% or more, at the insistence of the ECB, although that would only amount to a 22% writedown of Greek debt and far too little money to provide bank recapitalization and sovereign credit support. European banks alone face a potential 7 trillion loan contraction. A conservative economic stabilization fund would need at least 10 trillion if bond buying to support sovereign credit is included to provide some (this is an off the cuff figure and would only be a temporary solution as the political problems will lengthen the process) time to politically provide either the necessary treaty changes with democratic approval for fiscal union or a planned orderly default and withdrawal of Greece from the eurozone.

Already France is being threatened with a ratings downgrade by Moody's and the S&P is warning of an EMU downgrade blitz. European officials and economists have lost focus on the big picture in attempts to defend cherished political and economic policies which defy real economic data. While Munchau has maintained the optimal fix would be a democratic fiscal union with the alternative an unacceptable public recapitalization of European banks, this, in my opinion, would only further the depth of sovereign risk and potentially endanger democratic rule. Munchau has asserted that the choice will be between fiscal union or break up. Martin Wolf has essentially agreed in the need for fiscal union as first aid will not remedy the eurozone internal balance of payments crisis which is at the heart of the euro currency crisis, as Michael Pettis has clearly described as an economic imperial and colonial relationship.

The European Commission's assessment report has been leaked which shows the total unsustainability of current program and proposals and further discloses the ECB does not agree with the private sector involvement scenarios. The full leaked version can be found here. As Rob Parenteau and Marshall Auerback have asserted in private email communications (of which I was a copied recipient), this document substantially documents not only the unsustainability of current programs but refutes current austerity economic polices as indefensible. In another private email to them from Martin Wolf, he has indicated that Greece's present problem is one of economic flows, which is correct for the current situation in which Greece's debts are denominated in a foreign currency (euro) and default would gain Greece little.

However, any planned, orderly default by Greece would require an immediate take it or leave it redenomination of all Greek debt, public and private, into the new Greek currency. This would establish an economic stock in which the economic flows are secondary as a fiat currency sovereign nation which taxes cannot become insolvent. The market would decide the haircuts and devaluation. Most economic speculation has assumed any Greek default would be within the euro which would be suicidal sacrifice on the alter of European union on the part of the Greece, whose citizens do not appear to want to slink into the darkness of slavery quietly.

The EU Summit tomorrow will not only be a disappointment, it may well be a defining moment of existential despair. In that despair, what choices will the different people of Europe make?

UPDATE:

Here is a post by Rob Parenteau entitled "Leaked Greek bailout document: Expansionary fiscal consolidation has failed" which can be found at Credit Writedowns here.

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Reducing Unemployment Requires Political Will

2011-10-08T16:03:00.000-05:00

In August, I calculated out monthly job growth, to achieve 5% unemployed for both official unemployment rate and for the total unemployed including discouraged workers, at rates 3-4 times more than we have been experiencing for a year and they still took a significant number of years.

As another example here are two graphs and commentary from macroblog at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta showing three scenarios out through 2017 using three monthly job growth rates consistent with prior months of 96,000, 110,000 (from February 2010), and 158,000 (from August 2003) which show they do not come close to achieving normal 5% unemployment. In fact, 110,000 monthly jobs growth is approximately almost enough to keep yup with population growth.

I have discussed at least twice that the employment to population ration and the labor workforce participation ratio have been improving slightly while the number of population working or seeking work has declined despite population growth. We risk seeing these months turning into decades.

If politicians do not belly up to enact the fiscal programs necessary to get people working now -- not a year or two from now -- and get everyone working, not just a million or 1.3 million, then we are going to see recession (at best), social unrest, and the necessity to remove politicians, who have no political will to protect the public good for all of the people and just a chosen few, in order for those politicians to find another trough from which to feed.

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September 2011 Unemployment 16.5%

2011-10-07T16:23:00.000-05:00

While September 2011 official unemployment remained unchanged at 9.1%, total unemployment, including discouraged workers, rose 3 tenths to 16.5%. If one used the older 1994 method for calculating total unemployed, including discouraged, the number would be closer to approximately 23.2%.

Jobs edged up 103,000, but 45,000 of those were returning Verizon workers who had been on strike. The private sector gained a net 137,000 while government continued declining by 34,000 according to the September Jobs Report. This continues to be historically weak. Wages earnings continued to be weak and average weekly work hours were up slightly. Involuntary part-time workers increased to 9.27 million from 8.826 million and those unemployed more than 26 weeks increased 6.242 million from 6.034 million despite thousands falling of into statistical nothingness as extended unemployment benefits expire.

While the employment-population ratio increased to 58.3% and the Labor Force Participation Rate increased to 64.2%, both are increasing partially as the result of less people in the work force looking for work as we discussed two months ago. This chart shows just how dramatically bad it is.

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Michael Pettis on the Euro, Swiss Franc. RMB trading, and Chinese Debt

2011-09-26T16:58:00.001-05:00

In a very long private newsletter received on September 13th, Michael Pettis began with "Slow growth is embedding itself solidly into the US economy and the bond mayhem in Europe continues. The external environment for China is getting worse. This will almost certainly make China’s adjustment – when Beijing finally gets serious about it – all the more difficult. With still weak domestic consumption growth, and little chance of this changing any time soon, weaker foreign demand for Chinese exports will cause greater reliance than ever on investment growth to generate GDP growth.

"Europe’s travails in particular can’t be good for exports. What’s worse, it’s now pretty much official that the euro will fail soon enough." Pettis saw Merkel's assertion that the euro will not fail as an official government denial confirming that it could fail as in the political maxim, "The first rule of politics is never believe anything until it is officially denied." Pettis then proceeds to discuss in depth Otto Henkel's proposal ( "A Sceptic's Solution - A Breakaway Currency") for a two currency euro. Although Pettis thinks there is little likelihood of the creation of two euro currencies dividing the deficit and surplus eurozone countries, he likes the idea, because all the deficit countries will not adjust fast enough as long as they maintain the euro and their economies will continue to contract and debt grow until their electorate rebels. If those countries will then leave the euro and default and the surplus countries will eat the losses, why shouldn't the surplus countries force the deficit countries to leave the euro now? Pettis answers his own question.

If a deficit euro country leaves the eurozone and adopts its own fiat currency, Pettis believes it would be caught in a downward currency spiral such as Mexico in 1982 and 1994 and Korea in 1997 suffered, because a substantial portion of Mexican and Korean debt was denominated in foreign currency. A deficit euro country leaving the eurozone would have its debt denominated in euro. This would be a foreign currency.

My comment in response to Pettis on the above scenarios is the High euro and Low euro bifurcation would merely create to stage productions of the very same play; one with a short and the other a longer audience length of the play. Both would suffer the same, inevitable fate of the exporting country economically subjugating the importing countries with no fiscal transfer mechanism to resolve the current account imbalances creating an inevitable currency crisis as the deficit countries are challenged by the bond market one by one since they cannot guarantee payment under such a system. Any eurozone country which withdraws from the euro must default on all euro debt and immediately redenominate all public and private debt at a fixed conversion to the new fiat currency on a take it or leave it basis and then let the new fiat currency trade freely with the market deciding the devaluation, which must occur. The euro is a foreign currency to all eurozone countries and it would be irresponsible to leave debt in euro when exiting to a fiat currency; yet, almost all scenarios of such exits assume the debt would remain in euro. That would be a fatal economic error.

As Pettis well knows, as he continues, to leave debt in a foreign currency means the devaluation may well not be in line with estimates of overvaluation. It could cause a devaluation of 50% or more, when the overestimate might be only 15-20%. The external debt would rise as its fiat currency devalues, because it would remain denominated in an appreciating foreign currency. The credibility question of bond payment would rear its ugly head again and financial distress cost would rise just as they are now. As domestic borrowers try to hedge the currency risk, investors would flee the new fiat currency in a self-defeating currency crisis involving foreign currency debt. Default would be unavoidable.

For Pettis, this is not an argument for a deficit country to stay in the eurozone, because, if the deficit country "stays in the euro, we will still arrive at default, but much more slowly, and mainly at first through a grinding away of wages and economic growth over many, many years and a gradual building up of debt as Germany refinances Spanish debt at interest rates that exceed GDP growth rates. The default will occur anyway, but only after years of high unemployment." He leaves unstated the likelihood of growing social unrest and intra eurozone national distrust of the surplus eurozone countries.

This is why he likes Henkel's two euro currency idea, but with the surplus country (such as Germany) leaving the euro as Marshall Auerback has repeatedly suggested. The new fiat German currency would immediately appreciate while the euro depreciates, but their banks would still have loans in euro which would cause them significant losses. Pettis thinks the losses would be less and more orderly than a deficit country leaving the euro. Either way the surplus country leaving the euro would take a big hit and it is a waste of time trying to avoid it and it is better to face it and deal with it and "as any good Minskyite would tell you, that means we have to pay special attention to the balance sheet dynamics." Pettis also believes this would set up a two entity Europe of Germany and its associated countries and France and its associated countries.

With respect to the Swiss franc, Pettis believes the Swiss National Bank has decided to become very serious about currency wars. Switzerland is enduring a large inflow of foreign currency and appreciation of the franc with significant negative impact on Swiss exports. "The world is seriously deficient in demand compared to capacity and every country is going to try (has already tried) to capture as large a share of that demand as it can. This means every country is going to try aggressively to export capital or limit capital imports."

"But of course it doesn’t work that way. If capital-exporting countries want to increase capital exports in order to acquire a bigger share of global demand, and capital-importing countries want to limit or reverse capital imports, something has to give way. This is basically what we mean by trade and currency wars."

Switzerland has chosen to slow or eliminate foreign capital inflow by capping the rise of the franc. Pettis believes it cannot work and there will be massive speculative inflows in the Swiss franc on the expectation the inflows will cause the Swiss National Bank to revalue. In a few months the SNB will have to take even more forceful measures. When countries continue to desperately export capital to each other while continually crying foul at attempts to import capital, currency wars will roll on as he explain in his recent Foreign Policy article.

This also means we should not get too excited about news London may become an offshore trading center for the Chinese RNB currency. Every time the suggestion is made that the renminbi will become more international, excitement sweeps the world, although nothing ever really happens. One only has to look at the developing currency wars and understand everyone wants to export capital and no one wants to import it so why would China want its currency to evolve into a reserve currency by trading internationally.

There has also been speculation that a country like Nigeria would want to diversify reserves and hold renminbi, but Pettis thinks this is only a speculative idea based on the renminbi price being heavily subsidized by the PBoC and, therefore, only likely to appreciate. China is unlikely to allow any but the financially small countries to attempt this and does not want to see it at all, since "The PBoC is required to buy up all the dollars offered in exchange for RMB in order to keep the value of the currency where it is, and any increased foreign demand for RMB bonds automatically means that the PBoC must take the other side of the trade. Its reserves will have to increase by exactly the amount of dollars that Nigeria (or any other foreigner) uses to buy the RMB. And the faster China’s reserves rise, the greater than domestic monetary mayhem and the greater the losses the PBoC will ultimately take on the negative carry and the revaluation of the RMB." The short version of his discussion of this in his mid-May newsletter was "...that once you exclude intercompany transactions, nearly all the trade activities denominated in RMB consist of Chinese imports, and almost none of it consists of Chinese exports. Why is this important? Because Chinese imports denominated in RMB result in long RMB positions in Hong Kong, whereas exports result in short RMB positions." Once the speculative demand dries up, there is little real demand for RNB transactions and the off shore RNB market would be very small.

Speculative demand will begin to dry up when the perceptions on the total amount of debt on the Chinese national balance sheet begin to improve. However, debt levels continue to rise and rise very rapidly. Most analysts have downplayed the resulting credit impact of China's spectacular growth. Such an analysis implies China has an infinite debt capacity, which Pettis finds impossible. What concerns Pettis now is that as analysts have caught on to this, the "horror" stories have begun to multiply out of control about "...cash flow squeezes among SOEs and the smaller banks, about unrecorded guarantees and lending by SOEs, about highly pro-cyclical lending by banks, about a huge variety of dubious transactions in the informal banking sector, with non-transparent links to the banking sector, and so on and so on. Everyone nowadays seems to have horror stories. For this reason, Pettis advises we remain skeptical. We should not scare ourselves into overreacting. Pettis does not see China reaching its "... debt capacity until one of three things has happened:

Depositors flee the banking system because of uncertainty about repayment prospects. I think this is unlikely to happen unless inflation rises sharply and, because of the highly adverse cash flow impact of high nominal rates, the PBoC is unable to raise deposit rates sufficiently.

Household transfers are too high. Debt servicing costs should be met out of the increased economic activity generated by the debt. If they aren’t, the balance one way or another must result in a transfer of wealth from one sector of the economy – usually the household sector. As these transfers rise, the ability of that sector to generate growth becomes smaller and smaller. At some point the transfers are too large to be managed, and investment growth must stop. Of course if the government begins to privatize assets and uses the proceeds to clean up the banks and repay loans, this problem need not happen.

The private sector becomes so worried about the possibility of financial instability and rising of financial distress costs that they disinvest faster than the government can invest."
Another way to extend debt capacity limits, according to Pettis, would be similar to Brazil in the mid 1970's when it was "saved" by massive petro-dollar recycling and a subsequent lending boom switching domestic debt to external debt, which allowed Brazil to keep investing and growing until the 1982 crisis and a lost decade. In principle, China could do this, but it is unlikely to become a net foreign borrower as it would also have to reverse its huge current account surplus into a current account deficit. He thinks there would institutional impediments preventing this from happening.

Everyone knows by now that Chinese inflation is down to 6.2% in August, but he finds these numbers to be so much within expectation that he has nothing to add. Inflation appears to have peaked, but the numbers require another month or two of observation and Pettis believes the PBoC also believes this. There is also growing concern among economically literate policymakers about rising debt and weak consumption, because these are basically the same problem. He expects to see comments back and forth on inflation, but a number of policymakers are reluctant to support more expansionary credit growth as a credit contraction is politically very unlikely.

Pettis remains concerned that the Chinese consumption imbalance remains a fundamental problem despite Yukon Huang writing in the Wall Street Journal that consumption is in fact far higher than official government figures and takes issue with Huang's interpretation of the studies cited, because one study actually shows 2/3rds of hidden income accruing to the top 10% wealthiest and almost all to the top 50% and, since the wealthy a much smaller share of income than the poor, it would suggest the consumption imbalance is actually much larger. Pettis also finds the reported size of the imbalance by Huang to be astonishing. Just because the NBS data is awfully wrong, this would not increase China's invulnerability from crisis. In the end, all the possible arguments against the dismissal of the fundamental consumption imbalance problem need not be made, because the balance of payments tell us it is extraordinarily low. "... China doesn’t have either a current account deficit or a balance of zero. It has instead one of the highest current account surpluses ever recorded. This can only happen if the savings rate exceeds by a huge margin the investment rate – which, remember, was itself by 2008 the highest we had ever seen, and which has soared even further in the past few years

"By definition, then, China’s savings rate must be extraordinarily high to allow it both a huge investment rate and a huge current account surplus. Since savings is simply the difference between total production and total consumption, China must also have an extraordinarily low level of consumption in order for the balance of payments to balance. I would argue that it almost certainly does."

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Is President Obama's Jobs Stimulus Old, Tired, and Purposefully Inadequate?

2011-09-18T16:25:00.000-05:00

Enough time has past since President Obama's $467 billion jobs stimulus announcement to provide a re-evaluation of the proposal from different perspectives. John Quiggin, writing from Australia, believes President Obama has recognized he cannot form a bipartisan relationship with the Republican Party and rejected the advice of his advisors and proposed a a more substantial plan, although still modest. Quiggin believes this has set the re-election stage as the Republican Party will reject even this modest package which is one-half the size of the 2009 stimulus and that President Obama has abandoned the speech of austerity presenting a clear choice against the destruction of austerity on unemployment, economic growth, and local and state governments for voters. I would very much like to believe Mr. Quiggin is right, but he ignores the President Obama is personally a deficit hawk and has not yet grasped the economic seriousness of the more than 16%, including the discouraged workers, unemployed workers in America.

On the other hand in America, Robert Reich, a former U.S. Secretary of Labor, finds President Obama's targeting of Medicare and crafting a $2-3 trillion decrease in spending over the next ten years as odd given the economy will still be anemic in 2013 if we manage to avoid a double dip. Such spending cuts are likely to make unemployment stratospheric. Even if the average monthly job growth of the last decade were to miraculously appear, it would still take until 2024 to get official (now at 9.1%) unemployment down to 6%. He sees President Obama reinforcing the Republican conceit that the deficit --- not unemployment and little economic growth --- is the problem. The President failed to propose a more audacious plan to get American workers back to work and provide fiscal support promoting economic growth and this is makes it a failure of both parties.

While President Obama's tax cuts will put about $150 billion into the hands of American households, which could theoretically create a relatively small temporary stimulus, these are not ordinary times and history provides evidence that people save when debt is high, jobs uncertain, and the extra money temporary. What is there to get excited about if unemployment is reduced just a little below 9%?

Macroeconomic Advisers had revised their original estimates of economic impact to GDP growth of 1 1/4% by 2012 by pulling growth forward from 2013, an increase of 1.3 million jobs (the 2009 ARRA provided about 1.2 million jobs), and the spending cuts will cause fiscal drag which will probably not show up until 2013. In essence, the plan is dependent on shifting growth from the future (2013) forward, when the economy will hopefully be better. This is macro economically unrealistic.

James Hamilton wants us to rethink what we need to do to exploit our natural resources to spur economic growth without creating a National Fraud and Exploiters Corps.

Bond Girl at Self-Evident points out that the proposed reduction in itemized interest and other deductions could directly effect the municipal bond market, which is the primary vehicle for infrastructure in this country, through reduced demand. It should be remembered that the ARRA did provide infrastructure projects which were slow to start, but did have some modest temporary stimulus.

If you look at the Georgia Work Program upon which the President will apparently model the unemployed worker training initiative, you will find that the transition time from unemployment to employment is about the same for both those Georgia workers who participated and did not participate, except that those who participated worked 24 hours a week for free and successful hires got jobs which required a high school diploma or less. This is not creating the type of fair labor social contract a true republican democracy should promote and support.

It should be remembered that small businesses, even more than large businesses which have a more sustainable business model, cannot afford to hire without the sales to demand the need. Tax incentives to hire are temporary. Most small businesses cease existence within 5-7 years. Many small businesses being started are unemployed workers who have no choice and are being run on shoe string financing. Tax incentives to hire is an hour glass approach. Tax incentives may create more accounting jobs, but is not likely on a micro economic level, historically, to create demand to hire. The sad fact is that, as happened in the post 2001 recession, job postings are not picking up in volume. Management has devised more efficient ways to not need more employees, particularly in a period of slow economic growth and low sales. In the meantime, the U.S. working age rate of poverty has hit a record high at 13.7% for 18-64, which is up from 12.9% in 2009 and 10.5% in 1966. Since its peak in 1999, household median income is down 7% or 3800 2010 dollars. If the elderly are excluded, household median income is down 10% or $6300, including down 2.6% last year, for the largest decline since 1987. Real income for working age families is at its lowest level since 1994. This is a lost decade for the Middle Class which has intensified the wage and wealth inequality in the United States. This type of inequality has a very corrosive effect on democracy, particularly when 400 families have 50% of the wealth in the United States.

At the same time the reduction in fiscal spending on the national level during a time of financial tightening is the wrong direction and will only make the situation worse. Jobless claims are rising again; retail sales are down; manufacturing is weaker. Rather than focusing on jobs we are told the U.S. Postal Service could "default" on it pension payments required by law, because they are losing money in their operations. We are told rural areas could lose their post offices when the resulting lack of services would be a significant hardship as they are not suburbanites within easy commuting distance of another post office. It is a federal government agency and, as such, it cannot economically default unless Congress and the President have politically decided to let it default. This is misplaced direction. We need to create jobs not find excused to isolate less wealthy Middle Class and poor families from services.

As we pointed out in our prior post on this subject, for $300 billion all unemployed workers could be back working on quality projects in education, infrastructure, health, social needs, and cultural preservation/creativity which would not only create economic growth but enhance the quality of life through the creation of a National Jobs Corps. This means more wealth for more people rather than a select few while creating sustainable economic growth. Is this a problem?

Dear President Obama would you please accept the mantle of leadership and propose an audacious jobs program.

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Edward Hugh Links: On the Eurozone Crisis

2011-09-17T15:34:00.001-05:00

Despite the misplaced hope of the stock markets this past week, the eurozone is headed towards a decision point the leaders of the eurozone do not want to face. I heavily research the eurozone macroeconomic issues as well as China, because they have global implications. The eurozone could quite easily unravel with a Greek default within the euro or the need to bailout Spain or Italy. A currency crisis would ensue and European banks and, quite probably, banks globally could have significant liquidity problems as the interbank market freezes up with the possibility, if nations are not prepared to fund liquidity through their central banks and governments, of some banks failing.

Edward Hugh is an intellectually eclectic British born macroeconomic economist who lives in Barcelona. Whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, he always has something important worthy of consideration to say.

Here are some observations on eurozone and China PMI showing slower growth.

Ireland is being advertised by the eurozone as a success story to sooth the egos of the newly indentured (to European banks) Irish people. What is going to happen to Ireland, which is a trade surplus exporting country dependent on exports for its economic recovery, as the global economy continues to slow down?

High Noon is approaching for Greece

Italy has low growth, an aging population, and is the third largest economy in the eurozone. Can they make the penalty kick?

I have repeatedly stated privately that the breakup of the eurozone into a High euro and a Low euro will only create two stage productions of the same play with different lengths of production and the same tragic ending. Here is Hugh's take on the subject.

Here he discusses recession risks in Germany.

Here he reviews the recession warning on the eurozone periphery.

Here he covers the flashing red lights for eurozone growth.

Hugh correctly identifies Italy, not Spain, as the elephant in the room.

How can Greece devalue?

Eastern European growth is very dependent on Germany.

Why Spain's economy is more different than you think.

The eurozone crisis is imploding. If it will not accept a democratic fiscal transfer mechanism the euro is doomed and the international bond markets have recognized this for some time. The euro is not a fiat currency which can be devalued and as such is a foreign currency, economically, for each and every eurozone country, which means their national debt is denominated in a foreign currency (the euro). Consequently, no eurozone nation can guarantee its debt.

Being informed on the issues involved requires reading many different viewpoints. There is a debt crisis, because this is a currency crisis and it could lead to a bank liquidity crisis and potentially to a global depression.

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Michael Pettis Links on Global Outlook, Japan, and the U.S. Dollar

2011-09-13T03:37:00.000-05:00

Michael Pettis had a recent article in Foreign Policy continuing his concern that the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency is a drag on the U.S. economy.

I have not had the time to write about Pettis' last two private newsletters and here are the abbreviated public versions: On August 17th, he gave his long term outlook for China, the global economy, and the eurozone (very pessimistic) and, on August 25th, he wrote about Japan in which he disagrees with those who would compare the U.S. and Europe to Japan, because Japan's imbalances in the 1990's were different (I, myself, have maintained Japan is like Japan). You are not getting the full versions, but are getting the full extent of his thinking.

I particularly encourage readers to look at his eurozone assessment/predictions given the current approach to a horizon event in Europe with Germany, the Netherlands, and Finland poised to pull the trigger on Greece and sacrifice Italy (the third largest economy in the eurozone).

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President Obama's Frankenstein Stimulus of Old Ideas

2011-09-12T00:55:00.000-05:00

Is my title too harsh? I will let you decide.

The President gave a very uninspiring speech that presented old ideas for rejection providing more stimulus ($450 billion) than expected ($300 billion), although it is little to small economic stimulus creating less jobs than needed strung out over too long of a time with little immediate jobs effect whenever begun. His speech lacked any display of leadership and looks more like a political play to get the political opposition to vote either against a "jobs" bill or come up with another ultimately inadequate stimulus. The 2009 stimulus is largely acknowledged as having been too small and not fast enough in implementation with $800 billion, reduced from an economic recommendation of $1.2-1.3 trillion, when the recession was actually much deeper and should have required approximately as much as $3 trillion to get the job of resilient recovery done. The bullet points, without any details of how the points will be developed or implemented, are here as provided by the White House. Considering some journalists and selected bloggers, such as Krugman, had advance copies embargoed for two weeks, the analysis forthcoming after the speech has not been particularly deep in effort.

Calculated Risk provides a succinct synopsis of the parts and money breakout. Kash Mansoori sees a larger stimulus than I do in the extension of unemployment benefits, extension of payroll tax cuts, infrastructure spending, state and local government jobs, and mortgage refinancing, while finding the employer payroll tax cut, extending 100% financing for businesses, and tax credits for hiring veterans negatives. Mike Konczal, while noting the Obama Administration has been overly optimistic, provides a more deliberative appraisal of the parts, but he believes the tax credits will substantially boost employment, which I do not. Mark Thoma found the proposals bolder than expected, but worries, correctly, that the spending is being funded by front loaded budget cuts which negatively impact aggregate demand which slows growth. The wrong thing to do at this point in time.

We have already written several times on the problems of continuing high unemployment and slowing growth, including the most recent August unemployment figures. Lets take a some additional looks at where we are on growth and unemployment besides our article above. Between 2007 and 2010, the United States ranks just below Portugal and just above Iceland, Spain, and Ireland in the negative percentage of change in total civilian employment. The post recession job picture shows substantial job contraction in all employment sectors except mining and logging, temporary help, motor vehicles and parts, and manufacturing (although at a significantly slower rate of growth). In comparing past jobless recoveries in 1991 and 2001 with 2009, the 2009 jobless recovery comes out much worse and ineffective.

The American Jobs Act is designed to cease at the end of 2012. Menzie Chinn believes it will stimulate GDP and cites the textbook approaches. Extended unemployment and infrastructure spending will help sustain aggregate demand. He refers to Macroeconomic Advisers and their projections of a $300 billion stimulus estimating 1.3 million new jobs (remember the inadequate ARRA of 2009 created 1.2 million jobs) by the end of 2012 and a 1.3% boost in GDP. At $450 billion, the boost in GDP might be closer to 2%, but the effect would tail off quickly. Chinn also quotes extensively from Ezra Klein's summary of economist's reactions. Chinn does lament that Congress has done little to nothing in regard to real financial reform to prevent a new financial crisis.

Felix Salmon is fully in favor of mortgage refinancing, which is another part of the proposal that has no detail as to how it would be done, and believes the benefits out weigh any costs to the government if it paid off the bondholders, because he believes the CBO study on the subject assumes 100% pay off to the holders of the mortgage backed securities. Calculated Risk finds the CBO study reasonable in its conclusions. That is the problem of not having the details to perform any analysis.

Private sector critics have dismissed the idea that any tax break or incentive will spur employment, because businesses hire when there is a demand for their products or services and the demand is not present. This is consistent with my observations. In my observations, I have also provided other sources who do not find the payroll tax cuts providing enough stimulus to be meaningful in promoting sustainable employment and economic growth. The infrastructure bank concept, which also lacks any detail, could be a good idea, but most concepts in this regard do not include sewage and water supplies. The construction jobs will primarily be getting construction workers back to work or full time work. Much of the infrastructure may also require public-private initiatives which could mean privatization of public enterprises. For instance, high speed rail in Illinois means Union Pacific gets to keep all the improvements (and their current employees are doing all the work) and has no contractual or legal obligation to yield to passenger trains making high speed passenger trains half speed trains and, in the case of the State Capitol, dividing the City down the middle of it business district, medical district, and historic areas with two sets of tracks endangering the flow of emergency traffic and diminishing the quality of medical and historic sites. It is all in the details.

Bottom line, what we are seeing here is a lot of old ideas being trotted out with little detail on how the parts would actually work and be implemented. Additionally, the implied attack on Social Security and Medicare through the payroll tax cuts and citing need for reform is unreasonable. The problem with Medicare is the high costs of health care, provider fraud, and Part D having been purposefully designed with no government discount directly benefiting the pharmaceutical industry (for whom the author of Part D now works). In my prior observations on what the President should say, I voiced my concern that pensions, such as Social Security, are deferred compensation not entitlements and health care is a basic human need of which the deprival is a violation of human liberty and life.

If you want to create jobs now, it is relatively simple. Government becomes the employer of last resource providing real work and training on quality projects (not make work) in a variety of sectors for a base wage. They could be part time jobs as well as full time jobs and jobs for teenagers as well as adults. We would not have to worry about discrimination against older workers or veterans. The Australian economist Bill Mitchell has tackled the issue of government being the employer of last resource and the economic arguments for and against and finds it efficient and simple. In doing so, Bill Mitchell refers to the plan of two American Economists, Randall Wray and Stephanie Kelton, which would create a National Job Corps putting all unemployed Americans to work for approximately $300 billion; not the $450 billion proposed by President Obama which might create 1.3 million jobs by the end of 2012.

The United States is paralyzed with dysfunctional politics from both political parties and the President is not providing leadership in forming the political will necessary to get things done and to get them done for the American people. President Obama could be a great President, but he has been too personally concern with deficits to face the harsh reality of over 16%, including discouraged workers, of the population being unemployed. Jobs and growth come hand in hand and with growth comes increased government revenue, increased private spending, and less need for government spending to replace missing private spending to sustain aggregate demand.

Have we been too harsh on President Obama and will he step up to the leadership required of our times? Has President Obama set his eyes on political compromise with a political opposition which would oppose compromise as each jockey for an election campaign advantage? Will he end up ranking somewhere between Franklin Pierce and Herbert Hoover? Even Franklin Roosevelt had to overcome his economic prejudices to deal with the times in which he lived and he learned some of his lessons the hard way as well as from mistakes.

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Guest Blogger: Rob Parenteau on Slaughtering PIIGS - Greek Default

2011-09-10T09:03:00.001-05:00

Rob Parenteau is the sole proprietor of MacroStrategy Edge which provides macroeconomic analysis to institutional and hedge funds for U.S. equity and global balanced portfolio strategies. He is a a Research Fellow at the Levy Economics Institute and the editor of the monthly Richebacher Letter.

Revisiting the PIIGS Led to Slaughter Perspective: Implications of a Greek Default

Last year we provided an analysis (on the Naked Capitalism blog and elsewhere, including the Levy Economics Institute Annual Minsky Conference, and CBC interviews), based on the financial balances approach that suggested a number of problems could arise with the eurozone’s pursuit of what are called “expansionary fiscal consolidations”. Without a large and sustained swing into a current account surplus, the financial balance approach revealed that the pursuit of fiscal consolidation would undermine the ability of the private sector to service the debt loads it had built up during the prior decade of currency union. Simply put, higher taxes and lower government spending drain cash flow from households and firms, and that increases the financial fragility of economies.

For a number of reasons, there appears to be a glaring blind spot with regard to private debt as investors and policy makers remain focused on reducing public debt growth. There is little or no recognition of how changes in fiscal policy may influence the sustainable paths available for the private sector to manage its financial obligations. For example, with regard to the case of Greece, the household debt to GDP ratio soared during the past decade, and is now on par with the rest of the eurozone. However, private sector nonfinancial debt stopped growing in 2008 as the Global Financial Crisis hit, and we have since witnessed the onset of a nominal income contraction since 2009, when fiscal policy became hamstrung by what amounts to a bond investor capital strike.

We currently have in hand an extreme case of this interaction of public and private financial conditions. Investor and policy maker attention is now focused squarely on the prospect of an imminent Greek public debt default. But the issue of a Greek government debt default immediately raises the issue of Greek bank solvency (since much of the Greek public debt is held on their books), and hence provokes the question of how the necessary bank recapitalization could proceed. I doubt the EFSF or ECB (or Qatari investors, for that matter, who must feel like Prince Alwaleed with his Citi holdings) will be in the mood for subsidizing a Greek bank recapitalization if Greece has defaulted on its public debt.

Oddly enough, the level of Greek bank write-offs has been falling since the turn of the year, and private loan growth is once again contracting on a year/year rate as of June. This makes no sense given that nominal GDP growth was contracting at more than a 5% year/year rate through mid year 2011. So what happens if Greek private debt outstanding starts shrinking because Greek banks not only have stopped making new loans, but they can no longer roll the old loans, and in fact, have to shrink their loan books through distress sales of existing assets because they are a) insolvent and b) unable to be recapitalized by the public sector? With regard to the latter, remember that in all likelihood, the Greek government will have to reduce expenditures to match the level of incoming tax revenues if it adopts the default option. Accordingly, there will be little room for them to bootstrap their own bank recapitalization. Possibly if they went completely AWOL, they could reconfigure the Greek central bank to somehow recapitalize the banks, but by then we are on to the new drachma.

I submit with Greece, the world is in all likelihood about to witness yet another case study in Irving Fisher's debt deflation dynamics, which he described a lifetime ago after losing his shirt in the Great Depression – an experience that led him to rethink his conviction that markets are generally self-stabilizing in a general equilibrium fashion. The attempt to move toward zero public debt growth can have very destabilizing results on economies in which the private sector has spent the prior decade leveraging up. This follows from the simple application of double entry book keeping to macroeconomics. As policy authorities who work with the financial balance approach must know, it is a conclusion that depends on no high macroeconomic theory, Keynesian or otherwise. Whether German PM Schauble will be able to recognize that, even as the Greek debt deflation plays out in front of his own eyes, is debatable. Whether the Reinhart and Rogoff Bible will be re-examined for errors or omissions is also debatable. Whether we are about to see “failed nation states” emerge in the eurozone as a result of blithely ignoring these simple principles of double entry book keeping remains to be seen.

Faith based economics is a funny thing that way - although at the moment, it does not look like Zorba is about to get the last laugh, at least not until the debt deflation sewage from the periphery backs up all the way to German banks and German exporters. A Greek public debt default will place the question of the necessary eurozone wide bank recapitalization at the head of the line, which is where the IMF’s Lagarde was trying to place it a week ago before EU officials reeled her back in this week. Even if governments are able to swiftly execute publicly assisted bank recapitalizations in the wake of Greek default, it is high time to recognize that attempting a multi-year, multi-country fiscal consolidation against the backdrop of high private debt to income ratios is bound to produce rising private debt distress, with all that means for the ability of the private sector to generate the income growth necessary to service existing private debt load and higher taxes, and with all that means for the ability of financial institutions to remain solvent. Perhaps this is a lesson best relearned sooner, rather than later. It cost Irving Fisher his fortune, and then his house, before he was prepared to learn that lesson. We need not be so stubborn this time around.

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What President Obama Should Do About Jobs

2011-09-07T03:58:00.002-05:00

There has been a lot written about what President Obama should say in his speech this coming Thursday. There has been speculation for weeks, because the continuing high unemployment attests to the inadequate 2009 stimulus. It has been argued that the ARRA of 2009 merely shifted employed individuals form one job to another and I have stated many times that the construction stimulus merely kept construction workers employed, but the ugly fact is the unemployed are staying unemployed and the older the unemployed individual the less likely they will find employment as they are subject to not only the discrimination of being unemployed but of being older. Surveys of the unemployed show they are losing hope and see a dismal future not only for themselves but for the country and their children. Aggregate demand is contracting and where there is no demand or less demand you do not find job creation. With the growing economic indicator evidence that the U.S., European, and global economies are slowing down to crawl, pre-recession speeds, unemployment is poised to increase if not surge upon any economic shock.

Many commentators have been dismissive that the President will say anything meaningful, while others have weighed in with their opinions as Warren Mosler did in a post and Robert Reich did in this post. Let me tell you what I think President Obama should do and then I will tell you what I think he will do.

Create an infrastructure program which is ongoing to address the inability of cities and states to build and maintain roads, municipal and regional transportation systems, bridges, schools, sewer systems, and water supplies. Water, in particular, is becoming a valuable and increasingly scarce commodity. This will keep construction workers busy and reduce future infrastructure maintenance costs. No significant new immediate jobs here and it will take one to two years to begin.

Create a government run program to restructure underwater home mortgages to reflect true value and get the housing market moving through the FHA and bankruptcy laws. Depressed housing prices are a significant factor in the very slow economic growth and deflation. The current program run through banks has a well documented record of failure and delay. It needs to get done.

Provide funds, perhaps in the form of loans, to local governments and school systems to insure adequate police, fire, and teaching staffing is maintain for the safety and to insure an adequately educated youth for future growth.

Increase Social Security and Medicare payroll "taxes" to apply to all levels of earned income. Social Security is not an entitlement, it is a pension in the form of deferred compensation and the top income level for contributions has never been inflation adjusted. At some point in time, it will have to be admitted that the totally inadequate PPACA will have to be folded into an expanded Medicare program for everyone, because health care is a right to life and denial of adequate health care is ultimately murder. Payroll tax cuts have little economic stimulus effect as it is little noticed by workers in their paycheck and people are saving and paying down debt not splurge buying; business tends to save tax reductions rather than spend when demand for their services and products have not increased.

Concentrate on efficiency cuts in government. Government exists to provide services to its citizens. It is one thing to provide services and another to provide them efficiently. Any business can tell you this.

Create a National Job Corps. This is the only way to create jobs now. It has worked in the past and it can work more efficiently now.

Extend unemployment to those who have lost part-time jobs. Many people, according to the unemployment statistics, are captive to involuntary part-time employment, because they cannot find full time positions. The loss of a part-time job can be devastating. With a National Job Corps, unemployment benefits should be temporary transition funds only.

Unfortunately, the political debate within the U.S. is dysfunctional. The two political parties are engaged in opposition at all costs with a President who holds personal deficit hawk views and who is timidly attempting compromise when, if the President proposed the opposition party's political platform, he would be opposed by that very same party. The President needs to lead and let those who vote against jobs reap the harvest of their constituency at the next election. This political dysfunction and the President's personal deficit cutting sympathies has lead the President and his advisers to flounder economically as they seek politically acceptable policies which do little or nothing rather than what needs to be done. These political concerns have caused the President and his advisers to court the wrong constituency. The economic crisis is not debt; it is jobs and income inequality. The wealthiest top 1% of the population have too much power as can be evidenced from no banker going to jail for the mortgage frauds or engaging in financially and systemically (globally) dangerous trading and business activities. In fact, we bailed them out financially. In a period of aggregate demand contraction (less consumer and business spending), government is the spender of last resort. When politicians stop an economy from growing with deficit cutting at the wrong time, the economy tanks and misery sets in. If you are one of the wealthiest 1%, you suffer, but you also benefit from opportunities for more control and wealth.

I expect President Obama to announce spending cuts.
I expect him to propose incentives to businesses to hire workers.
I expect him to announce a job training program in which workers are trained on the job and the government pays them, much like the State of Georgia is doing and nothing like what Germany does.
I expect him to announce an infrastructure program to build schools.
I expect him to appeal to bipartisanship.
I would not be surprised if he broached the subject of cutting/modifying Social Security and (maybe) Medicare.
I expect him to say, like Hoover, what the financial/banking sector wants him to say.
I expect the amount to be inadequate, say only $300 billion, covered by spending cuts.

We deserve better.

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Jobs = Growth: We Have Neither: Unemployment August, 2011

2011-09-05T16:02:00.005-05:00

Real men (and women) want real jobs. They want to provide shelter, clothing, and food for their families. It is the 18th Century concept of the pursuit of happiness and some people who have loved and fought for freedom thought of it as a God given inalienable right of all free men. What we have seen, since the beginning of the 1960's particularly, is the accrual of GDP growth primarily to the top 1% wealthiest in society at the expense of the remaining 99% of society. We can talk about confidence --- and there appears to be less in the United States, Europe, and globally, but economic data on confidence is always past tense when received. In the final analysis it comes down to real wages and personal income. The myth that increases in the minimum wage increase unemployment has been repeatedly shown by economic studies to be false with moderate increases in the minimum wage having no appreciable effect on jobs. Worker productivity has grown 80% since 1980 while real compensation has only grown 8% and real wages only 7% of which 23.5% of the income went to the top 1%.

The August, 2011 Unemployment report was unchanged (zero net job growth) with unemployment remaining unofficially at 9.1% and total official discouraged workers at 16.2% an increase of one tenth. Using the older 1994 BLS calculation, Shadow Statistics estimates (this graph will change monthly) the total discouraged workers at approximately 22.8%. The number of unemployed remained unchanged with no jobs added, because the participation rate went up to 64% and the employment-population rate went up to 58.2%. The number of workers who could only find part-time work rose to 8.826 million from 8.396 million. The average work week declined to 34.2 hours and the average hourly wage declined one tenth. The participation rate is edging up for older age groups including those 55 years of age and older and it appears it will be getting older. As for education, it appears that educational level is not significant in the ability to find new employment when unemployed and the diffusion index is at 52.2 (below 50 is contractionary) across all industries and is at its lowest level since last September. For a full set of employment graphs at Calculated Risk go here.

Worse, the prior two months were revised down and the major indicators around those who have jobs are weak The average duration of unemployment has dropped while the median has increased, which means that more people are dropping out of the labor force discouraged. There is little remaining the Fed can do leaving the bulk of necessary action in the domain of the government's fiscal policy. The continuing high unemployment is a direct result of the inadequate stimulus applied in 2009 and the destruction of education jobs will have a serious future effect on the ability of the United States to be competitive and to grow economically.

In an extensive analysis of the United States unemployment figures, the Australian economist Bill Mitchell finds a staggering loss of unemployment, increased under employment, a stagnant labor market, and declining economic growth heading towards recession as the result of the inadequate 2009 stimulus and political bickering which is abandoning U.S. workers to oblivion.

If you look at this link from the economist James Hamilton on the current economic condition with respect to the most recent economic reports, you will see that the United States has been making little meaningful progress in recovering from the global financial crisis and has only very slow growth to look forward to in the next six months.

In graphs from Calculated Risk, you can see several measures of recession and where we are in the terms of slow growth. Using some different GDP per capita variations, Doug Short looks at recession indicators in a series of graphs and comes to the conclusion we have not yet fallen back into recession, but we are surely in the a second great contraction. The Consumer Metrics Institute in their August 30 News, which has not yet been posted to their website, argues that the BEA deflators are not correctly portraying nominal GDP in real numbers. By reverse engineering the BEA numbers, the Consumer Metrics Institute says, "When we recast the GDP growth rates using the BLS sourced deflaters we can build the following table showing the past 10 quarters of growth in "nominal" GDP, "real" GDP using the CPI or PPI tables (as appropriate for each individual GDP line item), the per-capita "real" GDP similarly calculated and the per-capita "real" disposable income (again most recent quarter on the left):

"Annualized GDP Growth Rates Past 10 Quarters

	2Q-2011	1Q-2011	4Q-2010	3Q-2010	2Q-2010	1Q-2010
"Nominal" GDP Annualized Growth Rate	3.51%	3.09%	4.16%	3.86%	5.43%	5.52%
BLS Derived "Deflaters"	4.69%	10.65%	2.90%	1.37%	0.36%	4.60%
BLS "Real" GDP Annualized Growth	-1.18%	-7.55%	1.26%	2.49%	5.07%	0.92%
BLS Per-Capita "Real" Annualized GDP Growth	-1.90%	-8.29%	0.32%	1.54%	4.25%	0.11%
BLS Per-Capita "Real" Disposable Income Growth	-0.60%	-3.62%	1.18%	1.46%	4.47%	2.83%

4Q-2009	3Q-2009	2Q-2009	1Q-2009
4.88%	1.94%	-1.14%	-5.23%
2.11%	-0.43%	8.15%	3.61%
2.77%	2.36%	-9.29%	-8.84%
1.82%	1.42%	-10.06%	-9.59%
1.29%	-3.99%	-4.38%	-10.97%"

Consumer Metrics Institute provides several graphs in the August 30 News asserts the double dip has already occurred with this chart below, which is one of several in the August 30 News, and you can find a larger version of it at the Consumer Metrics link above:

The Consumer Metrics Institute bottom line is the revised data shows Q1 2011 was far worse than recognized but the data shows moderation in the contraction rate but the full effect of the contraction has yet to be felt and deflating commodity prices can have a sudden positive impact on the economy.

The failure of government to create jobs now, not just down the road, has become morally inexcusable.

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Guest Blogger: Warren Mosler With Economic Speech for President Obama

2011-09-03T10:50:00.001-05:00

Warren Mosler is an economist, former hedge fund manager, and institutional investment advisor with his own broker/dealer and investment management firms. This article was first posted on his blog The Center of the Universe. I have my own concerns and thoughts on what President Obama should do to create jobs and economic growth with less systemically dangerous financial activity which I intend to write this weekend. Different opinions and analysis are always useful in developing one's own analytical conclusions.

PRESIDENT OBAMA --- USE THIS SPEECH

This is the speech I would make if I were President Obama:

My fellow Americans,

let me get right to the point.

I have three bold new proposals to get back all the jobs we lost, and then some.

In fact, we need at least 20 million new jobs to restore our lost prosperity and put America back on top.

First let me state that the reason private sector jobs are lost is always the same.

Jobs are lost when business sales go down.

Economists give that fancy words- they call it a lack of aggregate demand.

But it's very simple.

A restaurant doesn't lay anyone off when it's full of paying customers,

no matter how much the owner might hate the government,

the paper work, and the health regulations.

A department store doesn't lay off workers when it's full of paying customers,

And an engineering firm doesn't lay anyone off when it has a backlog of orders.

Restaurants and other businesses lay people off when their customers stop buying, for any reason.

So the reason we lost 8 million jobs almost all at once back in 2008 wasn't because all of a sudden

all those people decided they'd rather collect unemployment than work.

The reason all those jobs were lost was because sales collapsed.

Car sales, for example, collapsed from a rate of almost 17 million cars a year to just over 9 million cars a year.

That's a serious collapse that cost millions of jobs.

Let me repeat, and it's very simple, when sales go down, jobs are lost,

and when sales go up, jobs go up, as business hires to service all their new customers.

So my three proposals are specifically designed to get sales up to make sure business has a good paying job for anyone

willing and able to work.

That's good for businesses and all the people who work for them.

And these proposals are bipartisan.

They are supported by Americans ranging from Tea Party supporters to the Progressive left, and everyone in between.

So listen up!

My first proposal if for a full payroll tax suspension.

That means no FICA taxes will be taken from both employees and employers.

These taxes are punishing, regressive taxes that no progressive short ever support.

And, of course, the Tea Party is against any tax.

So I expect full bipartisan support on this proposal.

Suspending these taxes adds hundreds of dollars a month to the incomes of people working for a living.

This is big money, not just a few pennies as in previous measures.

These are the people doing the real work.

Allowing them to take home more of their pay supports their good efforts.

Right now take home pay is barely enough to pay for food, rent, and gasoline, with not much left over.

When government stops taking FICA taxes out of their pockets,

they'll be able to get back to more normal levels of spending.

And many will be able to better make their mortgage payments and their car payments,

which, by the way, is what the banks really want- people who can make their payments.

That's the bottom up way to fix the banks, and not the top down bailouts we've done in the past.

And the payroll tax holiday is also for business,

which reduces costs for business,

which, through competition,

helps keep prices down for all of us, which means our dollars buy more than otherwise.

So a full payroll tax holiday means more take home pay for people working for a living,

and lower costs for business to help keep prices and inflation down,

so sales can go up and we can finally create those 20 million private sector jobs we desperately need.

My second proposal is for a one time $150 billion Federal revenue distribution to the 50 state governments

with no strings attached.

This will help the states to fill the financial hole created by the recession,

and stay afloat while the sales and jobs recovery spurred by the payroll tax holiday

restores their lost revenues.

Again, I expect bipartisan support.

The progressives will support this as it helps the states sustain essential services,

and the Tea Party believes money is better spent at the state level than the federal level.

My third proposal does not involve a lot of money,

but it's critical for the kind of recovery that fits our common vision of America

My third proposal is for a federally funded $8/hr transition job

for anyone willing and able to work,

to help the transition from unemployment to private sector employment.

The problem is employers don't like to hire the unemployed,

and especially the long term unemployed.

While at the same time,

with the payroll tax holiday and the revenue distribution to the states,

business is going to need to hire all the people it can get.

The federally funded transition job allows the unemployed to get a transition job,

and show that they are willing and able to go to work every day,

which makes them good candidates for graduation to private sector employment.

Again, I expect this proposal to also get solid bipartisan support.

Progressives have always known the value of full employment,

while the Tea Party believes people should be able to work for a living, rather than collect unemployment.

Let me add here that nothing in these proposals expands the role or scope of the federal government.

The payroll tax holiday is a cut of a regressive, punishing tax,

that takes the government's hand out of the pockets of both workers and business.

The revenue distribution to the states has no strings attached.

The federal government does nothing more than write a check.

And the transition job is designed to move the unemployed, who are in fact already in the public sector,

to private sector jobs.

There is no question that these three proposals will bring drive the increase in sales we need to

usher in a new era of prosperity and full employment.

The remaining concern is the federal budget deficit.

Fortunately, with the bad news of the downgrade of US Treasury securities by Standard and Poors to AA+ from AAA,

a very important lesson was learned.

Interest rates actually came down. And substantially.

And with that the financial and economic heavy weights from the 4 corners of the globe

made a very important point.

The markets are telling us something we should have known all along.

The US is not Greece for a very important reason that has been overlooked.

That reason is, the US federal government is the issuer of its own currency, the US dollar.

While Greece is not the issuer of the euro.

In fact, Greece, and all the other euro nations, have put themselves in the position of the US states.

Like the US states, Greece and other euro nations are not the issuer of the currency that they spend.

So they can run out of money and go broke, and are dependent on being able to tax and borrow to be able to spend.

But the issuer of its own currency, like the US, Japan, and the UK,

can always pay their bills.

There is no such thing as the US running out of dollars.

The US is not dependent on taxes or borrowing to be able to make all of its dollar payments.

The US federal government can not go broke like Greece.

That was the important lesson of the S and P downgrade,

and everyone has seen it up close and personal and they all now agree.

And now they all know why, with the deficit at record high levels, interest rates remain at record low levels.

Does that mean we should spend without limit and not tax at all?

Absolutely not!

Too much spending and not enough taxing will surely drive up prices and inflation.

But it does mean that right now,

with unemployment sky high and an economy on the verge of another recession,

we can immediately enact my 3 proposals to bring us back to

a strong economy with good jobs for people who want them.

And some day, if somehow there are too many jobs and it's causing an inflation problem,

we can then take the measures needed to cool things down.

But meanwhile, as they say, to get out of hole we need to stop digging,

and instead implement my 3 proposals.

So in conclusion, let me repeat these three, simple, direct, bipartisan proposals

for a speedy recovery:

A full payroll tax holiday for employees and employers

A one time revenue distribution to the states

And an $8/hr transition job for anyone willing and able to work to facilitate

the transition from unemployment to private sector employment as the economy recovers.

Thank you.

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Market & Economy: Hussman and Schiller

2011-08-30T04:55:00.000-05:00

John Hussman always publishes a weekly market and economy commentary on Monday. In this commentary he is commenting on Fed policy, the current economy and state of U.S. financial institutions, market valuation in which he estimates the ten year S&P 500 total return is down to 5.1%, and changed his market climate to hard negative and he notes there seems to be less willingness to lend to corporations. It is not a very pretty picture. Read it here.

Robert Schiller, in an interview, discussed the economic malaise effecting investing and the general economy, cites current market volatility as unhealthy and possibly indicative of a potential equity downturn but definitely fragile. He still finds equities expensive, that housing will remain under pressure, and tells why he likes TIPS. Watch it here.

These are two viewpoints. Like all information, it should be read critically, which means that you do not have to agree with everything or every detail to gain value and knowledge. Information is most valuable when it can be compared and evaluated through comparison and content for relevance.

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Is Buffett Feasting on Bank of America?

2011-08-29T01:58:00.001-05:00

A reader has asked me to comment and explain Warren Buffett's purchase of Bank of America preferred shares in the amount of $5 billion.

Bank of America has a need to raise about $100 billion and has approximately $50 billion in overvaluation of its second loans as well as other mortgage and mortgage related legal exposure. Like Yves Smith at naked capitalism, I have no love for Bank of America, because it is too big, systemically dangerous, and needs to shed the risks of combined commercial banking and investment banking activities. I have asserted, that since the global financial crisis, U. S. banks have been allowed legally to present public accounting statements which, if presented by any other U. S. business entity, would be considered fraudulent. It has recently been selling business segment, such as its Canadian credit card business, and other assets to raise money.

I have indicated when discussing European banks, and it holds true for all banks globally and in the U.S., that the recent market downturn has reduced bank stock prices and bank equity, which puts pressure on them to raise money to maintain Tier I and Basel III liquidity ratios. Bank of America's stock has declined steadily from 1/14/2011 at $15.25 to $6.42 on 8/23 and then rose to $7.76 on 8/26 with the Buffett deal.

If you compare the Goldman Sachs deal Buffet made with this Bank of America deal, you will find it is not as good as the Goldman Sachs deal. Both were for $5 billion in preferred shares, but the Goldman dividend was 10% while Bank of America is paying 6% (8% accumulation if it suspends dividend payments); Bank of America is callable at a 5% premium while the Goldman Sachs shares were redeemable at a 10% premium; with Goldman Buffet received $5 billion in common share warrants with a strike of $115 and exercisable over five years while Bank of America gave Buffett 700,000,000 warrants for common shares with a exercise price of $7142857 ($5 billion) for a seven year period. Some sources have characterized this as a $3 billion gift to Buffett from Bank of America, but the correctly calculated amount of the gift is $1.435 billion with the total value of the assets received at $6.45 billion. Buffett extracted a substantial "fee" from Bank of America. Warren Buffett got a 22.5% discount on total value.

Bank of America preference share class x (Tier 1 equity) had a 7% coupon and was trading at $21 with a $25 par value on the day of this deal for an 8.3% yield. Buffett's Bank of America preferred shares are Tier 2 debt/loss reserves and should have had a market yield of 9%; he is getting 6%. At the time of the deal Bank of America shares were $6.88 and his exercise on the warrants were higher at $7.14 rounded. Linus Wilson, a finance professor, has calculated the market value of the warrants to be $3.17 billion and would be dilutive, of course, of common shares outstanding if exercised.

Since Bank of America needs to raise $100 billion or more, if this deal brings the Buffett imprimatur to Bank of America, it could able to lower financing costs. If their financing costs would be70 basis points lower, it would save $1.4 billion.

With Goldman Sachs, Buffett took the deal on the fixed side and with Bank of America he is taking it on the equity side. Does this make Bank of America an attractive stock? There are hedge funds and mutual funds betting that Bank of America will never be allowed to fail and they are presently losing money. If eurozone banks develop serious liquidity problems and eurozone austerity dries up the European economy with global ramifications as the U.S. economy continues to slow down with continuing high unemployment, because U.S. political leaders refuse to provide fiscal policy to stimulate aggregate demand, then the global, and that includes the United States, economy is going to contract and stay contracted for a significant period of time. If that serious economic decline begins to manifest itself, one of the early signs will be bank liquidity stress.

This is not a market for individual investors to be in individual stocks. Even mutual funds with high financial exposure should be evaluated for the risk of their investments and role within a given portfolio. This is a time for a well diversified mutual fund portfolio individually consistent with age, assets, risk tolerance, income needs, and affordable quality of life. All of the big banks are facing headwinds.

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Uncertainty and European Bank Risks

2011-08-27T14:04:00.001-05:00

The stress of the global financial crisis continue to haunt European banks as the economy continues to slow and bond vigilantes target sovereign debt of countries (such as the countries of the eurozone) who do not have their own fiat money. The emergency lending facilities of the ECB have become more important for many European banks. On last Monday, banks deposited 128.7 billion euro with the ECB and borrowed 555 million euro overnight from the ECB Marginal Lending Facility, which was up from 90 million the prior day. As Greek default becomes more inevitable and other eurozone countries struggle with sovereign debt financing, the interbank lending market has shown increasing stress as the skepticism about bank liquidity throughout Europe grows. On Tuesday, European banks borrowed 2.82 billion euro overnight from the ECB, despite the stigma attached to the Marginal Lending Facility.

As the result of increasingly perceived risk by investors, European banks will pay more for the $100 billion of cash they need to raise by the end of the year. Banks are hoarding cash, depositing it with the ECB, rather than lend it to other banks as political leaders squabble and preach deficit reduction which will only slow the economy faster. Credit Agricol, with significant Greek exposure, posted profits which beat forecasts and felt compelled to complain about unjustified market irrationality and volatility. A Bundesbank board member stressed in public comments that recent dollar money market tensions were far from the 2008 crisis levels and European banks are not facing a funding crisis as the result of U.S. money market funds becoming more selective to whom they lend. The Bundesbank board member emphasized the liquidity available through repos and the ECB's readiness to mitigate problems with the swap agreement with the Fed. On Thursday, the Greek central bank (Bank of Greece) announced it had activated an Emergency Liquidity Assistance program to insure liquidity funding and all small, medium, and large Greek banks, except the National Bank of Greece, have indicated they will participate. A Fitch survey of U.S. money funds showed a 9% decreased exposure to Europe last month and significant caution with respect to Italy and Spain. Bankers have estimated that Italy lost $40 billion worth of money market funding in July. While these figures are miniscule compared to the 8000 billion euro funding of the 91 eurozone banks, it does show the true state and reliance of eurozone banks on short term funding with some 58% of that funding needing to rolled over in two years and 47% in less than one year, but the official line is that there is nothing really wrong with the eurozone banks.

Today, Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund, in a speech at Jackson Hole, said that European banks may need urgent forced capital injections to stem the eurozone's sovereign and financial crisis as they must be strong enough, in her words, to withstand the risks of sovereigns and weak growth. She indicated that while private funding should be the priority, public funding, perhaps through the EFSF, should be ready. She emphasized the IMF's change from immediate fiscal tightening to fiscal programs which allow spending to continue now while economies stay weak and reduce deficits over the long term. This speech occurred at the same time as the second and third largest Greek banks announced an all share merger to be followed with a 500 million euro capital injection.

This IMF changed emphasis which acknowledges the need for public spending to feed growth during periods of declining aggregate demand is a refreshing change from the 1997 austerity mistake the IMF imposed on Japan which stifled growth. Eurozone banks will remain key indicators in a global economy which is slowing down and economic contraction which eurozone austerity has accelerated.

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Radio Appearance Discussing Global Economy

2011-08-26T08:20:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, August 20th, I was a guest on Saturday Session with Bishop on WMAY and streaming live to discuss the global economy. The conversation focused more on China and the United States and briefly touched on Europe, which is a larger and more looming problem, due to time constraints. I am providing a MP3 link to the interview appearance. It is all about growth globally and jobs in the United States and several eurozone countries.

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Does High Frequency Trading Stoke Volatility?

2011-08-25T13:18:00.000-05:00

There is a lot of speculation in the financial media and among individual citizen traders about whether high frequency trading is responsible for market volatility because it ignores fundamental analysis for data trends. Obviously, high frequency trading could increase trading volume and accelerate market trend through volume. While the sheer volume and speed can effect prices and there has been speculation that a high frequency trader could, and maybe has from time to time, driven an equity or futures price up on sells and buys to itself, the real question is the fairness of access. All high frequency traders have direct access to the market through broker-dealers making trades in nanoseconds, causing the question to be raised whether they have the proper structure to insure proper margins and other technical regulatory safeguards. Since a single high frequency trader could send a million or more messages a day to a market with few trades, the cost to the stock exchanges for adequate data networks is very expensive. Individual traders do not have direct access to the market and must meet all regulatory conditions as do broker-dealers who have direct access to the market. The bottom line question is, consequently, one of fairness. Do individual traders get speedy market execution and a fair market price?

The Review of Futures Market has a special issue (Volume 19)of which the first article reviews the research literature and methodologies on high frequency trading and the last article is on the effect of high frequency trading in the futures market. The first study finds high frequency trading is a natural evolution of the trading process, add "quality" to the market through added liquidity, lower trading prices, and reducing bid-ask spreads at the cost of shifting profits, however small on individual trades, through trading volume, only pose a modest manipulative threat because they typically do not hold positions overnight, and only present a problem when they withdraw liquidity from the market causing system breakdown or cascading. The study suggests the need to design electronic trading systems and to slow or interrupt trading and/or change the trading mechanism. The last study finds that high frequency trading increases liquidity in the futures market.

Individual investors would be wise to not spending time researching and fretting about the effect of high frequency trading on equity prices and concentrate on the technical and fundamental information of the equity and the market. You never fight the market and individual investors need a very profound analytical and economic reason to be in individual stocks during a market correction. Consequently, individual investors would be wise to pay attention to not just price movement of the equity and the market, but the volumes. This market is not only in correction but it has been testing March lows for the last two weeks with temporary reflexive rallies of short duration. A week ago last Monday, Monday the 15th, was the fourth market day in successively lower trading volume (down 16.6% that day) even though it went up 213.88 on the DOW. The next day was down in price but up only 6.1% in volume. The next day was up marginally on 14.6% down volume. Thursday of that week it went down 419.63 on up volume of 63.5%. Monday of this week (22nd) the DOW was up only 37.00 on down volume of 20.4%. On Tuesday it was up 322.11 on only 1.7% up volume. On Wednesday, the DOW was up 143.95 but on down volume of 8.5%. All of these days of trading have been volatile. The likelihood that today would be a down price day with up volume would have been a reasonable bet and, in fact, that is what is occurring at this time. By watching price, volume, and economic news, which means knowing what economic reports are coming out on what days not just event news, the individual investor should have some reasonable trend indication which will serve them well as they stay out of individual stocks during any correction and research stocks to buy when the market trends up for more than a short reflexive rally.

Pay attention to technical and fundamental information on both the equities you are researching and the market itself. You can control your buy and sell decisions and learn from them. You cannot make yourself a better trader by researching the effects of high frequency trading.

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Gold is Correcting

2011-08-25T11:57:00.000-05:00

When Gold hit a record $1917 an ounce this week, which was up 16% from earlier this month, trend profit taking set in creating a market correction and gold has been dropping. The Shanghai Gold Exchange on Tuesday raised gold margins by 26% and the CME in the United States on Thursday raised gold margins 22%, both of which undoubtedly created margin calls and more selling. Professional traders have learned and practice profit harvesting in which they reduce positions to capture and lock in gains over 20%, depending on the market and position, and definitely when they have substantial gains, such as 100%. Even private investors who have gold at $400 or $800 basis should have been reducing their positions to no less than their original investment to lock in profits. Gold is a crisis hedge and has been going up accordingly. With the continuing crisis in the eurozone and the determination of eurozone leaders to pursue austerity which will only increase and magnify the problems slowing growth in Europe and globally, gold will stop its downward moves on economic news perceived negatively and start back up. What one wants to avoid is the historically documented reversals of gold from highs to prior lows such as $400 and $800.

Some have characterized this correction in gold prices to panic selling, because it was overbought, and to fears the FED will not satisfy the market with comments on Friday from the Jackson Hole economic discussion meeting, which is reaching for causation since the FED has little it could announce from such an academic exercise. With the margins being raised, we are seeing the same market correction silver saw in May. It was time then to sell silver and it is time now to sell gold and harvest profits.
Dennis Gartman of the Gartman Letter was one of the professional trading advisors who began cutting their gold holdings on Tuesday when gold got "frothy" at $1910. On the same day, Nouriel Roubini was sending messages that gold was in a hyperbolic bubble, which implies a possible correction, although he also acknowledged, as I stated above, that uncertainty is rising and gold should consequently continue upward after a correction. It does not appear that any gold correction will burst the bubble given the uncertainty in Europe and slowing global growth which will make the economies of Europe worse faster, but it will briefly reduce the size of the bubble as the professional and smart traders lock up their profits.

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European Bank Liquidity

2011-08-18T13:57:00.000-05:00

Starting last week we started seeing questions surfacing regarding the liquidity needs of European banks as a result of the volatile swings in the stock markets (if bank stock equity goes down they face the need to raise more capital) and potential opening market attacks on French banks (which I find hard to believe resulted from misinterpretation of a fictional series in a French newspaper). On August 10th, ECB overnight lending facility use jumped $5.75 billion dollars (4.058 billion euro), although it could have been from timing issues as banks awaited the arrival of ECB six month funds. It was noted last week that the LIBOR-OIS (bank credit risk) spread with EURUSD basis swaps was widening but differently than it did in 2008. The LIBOR-OIS was due to a rise in the LIBOR which would indicate the gap is being driven by liquidity measures, but the EURUSD basis swap was increasing on the short end implying near term caution rather than systemic risk. Short term wholesale funding problems are magnified when access to long term funding in senior unsecured debt markets become more independently difficult for banks. Nomura noted the net stable funding ratio shows CASA, SocGen, Bankia, UniCredit, Commerzbank, and Intesa with the lowest ratios, but no European banks have reserve problems and, as of last week, no European bank had gone to the ECB for USD liquidity. In relation to the short term liquidity functions last week, it also appeared that the peripheral eurozone countries were having a collateral crunch as well as a credit crunch.

Yves Smith at naked capitalism noted this week that mid-tier banks are finding it harder to get funding in interbank markets, that five year CDS of eurobanks are trading wider than they did in 2008m U.S> money market funds have cut back on exposure to European banks, eurobanks are have a harder time borrowing euro from the ECB to swap for US dollars, and the eurozone is not prepared for any large scale recapitalization of banks program.

On Wednesday of this week, one European bank borrowed $500 million, which was an unusually large amount for one bank, from the ECB in US dollar liquidity for the first time since February. This would indicate it was probably a larger European bank under temporary stress.

Today, the Wall Street Journal wrote that the New York FED is meeting with the U.S. offices of large European banks to gauge their vulnerability to to escalating financial conditions and potential funding difficulties as U.S. branches of foreign banks became net borrowers of dollars from their overseas affiliates for the first time in a decade. The New York FED President, Dudley, was quick to publicly state this was just a standard FED review.

On this Wednesday, excess liquidity in money markets actually rose 167 billion euro as Euribor lending rates went down.

This has led to a renewed discussion, involving nerves, noise and funding fears, of what level of funding stress European banks may or may not be facing. While there are indications of stress in the wider markets, the spread on the three month Euribor rate and the overnight index swap OIS rates has widen but nowhere near the post-Lehman 2008 peak. What is interesting is the spike is from a drop in the OIS rate not the Euribor, which implies banks think the swap rates will drop and liquidity improve. This would indicate the situation is not one of extreme stress, but an evolving situation which requires watching.

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