The lie is comfortable, an illusion easy to live with, familiar, and safe.
Writing from the ‘disgraced profession’ of economics, James K. Galbraith speaks of the unspoken, the many frauds and deceptions underlying the recent financial crisis centered in the US. Many will read this and shake their heads in agreement, but will be unable to take the next logical step and internalize the implications of the depth and breadth of the dishonesty that enabled it then, and continues to sustain it, even today. Galbraith is asking ‘why’ and framing a further inquiry into the consequences of this unwillingness to reform.
"Some appear to believe that "confidence in the banks" can be rebuilt by a new round of good economic news, by rising stock prices, by the reassurances of high officials – and by not looking too closely at the underlying evidence of fraud, abuse, deception and deceit. As you pursue your investigations, you will undermine, and I believe you may destroy, that illusion."
It is easier to go with the flow, relax, rationalize, and be diverted and entertained by ‘the show.‘ The truth may set you free, but before that it can make you feel very insecure and uncomfortable, especially when it requires challenging the ‘official story’ and policy decisions. Better to say nothing offensive to the oligarchs, and even occasionally to utter intelligent sounding condemnations of those who dare to question the very things you wonder about, and fear, in order to prove your loyalty and to reassure yourself that you are a right-thinking, practical individual. For the disparity that is unavoidably noticed between what is seen and what is said makes one uneasy, fearful that they are losing their bearings, if not reason. And the vested interests play on those fears. See Techniques of Propaganda
The consequences of ‘extend and pretend’ will be to worsen the final outcome, the day of reckoning.
"The initial deviation from the truth will be multiplied a thousandfold." Aristotle
The banks must be restrained, the financial and political system reformed, and balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustained recovery.…
Great commentary as usual from Jeff Saut’s most recent weekly missive. In it, Mr. Saut provides the differing opinions of several market experts on the big deflation vs. inflation debate. As regular readers know, I am far from worried about inflation running out of control mainly due to continuing negative trends in the labor market, weak borrowing trends and the private sector’s debt induced weakness. It’s always important, however, to get the perspective of several differing sources and Mr. Saut provides some excellent opinions.
First up was Dr. Lacy Hunt of Hoisington Investment Management:
“Dr. Hunt began by stating that the current conventional beliefs are: monetary/fiscal policy is wildly stimulative and therefore inflationary; our debt problems are behind us; and the current account deficit is going to explode with a concurrent dollar dive combined with higher interest rates. Lacy went on to suggest that all of those beliefs are false. Certainly the Federal Reserve has been expanding its balance sheet, but the velocity of money (the frequency with which a unit of money is spent in a particular period of time) has been cut in half. Consequently, M2 money supply is growing at its slowest rate in decades, which is not sufficient to promote sustained GDP growth (according to Lacy Hunt). Speaking to fiscal policy, Lacy stated that the government spending multiplier is less than 1 and the tax multiplier is actually negative. This means if taxes go up by $1 it takes more than dollar’s worth of spending out of the economy. Lacy concluded that if over indebtedness is the problem, how can taking on more debt be the cure? He believes the risk premiums are, and have been, insufficient to buy stocks and therefore bonds are his preferred investment.”
Paulson and Co. was represented by Claudio Macchetto. Paulson’s firm has been wildly bullish since 2009 and is now in the v-shaped recovery camp:
“Refuting Dr. Hunt was Paulson & Company’s Claudio Macchetto, who is bullish on stocks, thinking we are in a sustained economic recovery that might even be V-shaped. While he put the odds of a double-dip recession at only 5%, he did suggest that sovereign debt defaults are a real risk. He continued by noting the government is “printing” its way out of the problem (money creation). He thinks
Michael Pettis really gets at the heart of the fallacious argument that China is somehow bankrolling the United States government. The fact is the Chinese have fixed their currency at an exchange rate which induces a current account surplus with the U.S. and…
If China runs a current account surplus, it must accumulate net foreign claims by exactly that amount, and the entity against which it accumulates those claims (adjusting for actions by other players within the balance of payments) ultimately must run the corresponding current account deficit. And as long as China ran the largest current account surplus ever recorded as a share of global GDP, and the US the largest current account deficit ever recorded, and especially since China also ran an additional capital account surplus (i.e. other non-PBoC agents ran a net capital inflow), it was almost impossible for the PBoC to do anything but buy US dollar assets. Given the sheer amounts, a substantial portion of these assets had inevitably to be USG bonds.
This was not a discretionary lending decision. It is the automatic consequence of China’s currency regime, in which it pegs the RMB to a foreign currency, in this case the dollar. Why? Because when the PBoC decides on the level of the RMB against the dollar, it does not do so by passing a law, and making it a capital crime for anyone to trade at a different price. What it does is far simpler. It offers to buy or sell unlimited amounts of RMB against the dollar at the desired price.
No one will sell dollars for less than what they can get from the PBoC, nor will anyone buy dollars for more than what they can pay the PBoC, so all transactions get done at that price. That is how the PBoC (or any other central bank that intervenes in the currency market) sets the foreign exchange value of its own currency.
This means that as long as it wants to set the exchange rate, then, it must take the opposite position of the market. Since the rest of the market is a net seller of dollars (China runs a current and capital account
Valentine’s day revisited through the eyes of Eric and from an economic perspective. The same principles that are used in choosing which stock to buy can be used in selecting a mate, or the other way around. – Ilene
Steve Levitt’s Freakonomics bestseller highlighted that many quirky phenomenon can be analyzed using economic reasoning, or really, assuming individuals are self interested, and applying statistics and logic to that. Many people find this application of ‘economics’ much more interesting than applying such logic to widgets or muni bonds, so why not just get all those cost and indifference curves in price/quantity space out of economics textbooks, and replace with sexy pictures and fun sex trivia? One could then see economic lessons on Spike TV, right after Manswers. After all, sex is an object of exchange just like any other commodity, but a lot more fun for college-aged students to contemplate.
For example, Charlotte Allen’s article on the New Dating Game, and Lori Gottlieb’s book on why women should settle rather than become spinsters, brought forth a lot of ‘Freakonomic’ issues around dating, sex and marriage, and generated considerable blog buzz (see Robin Hansen, Slate, Jezebel). Writing about these matters is always sure to get people excited, because these are issues people feel they understand pretty well, so people who disagree are way wrong! This got me thinking about the fun book, Mathematics and Sex, which is good nerd porn. Consider the application of economic models to the following issues:
Asset pricing: Choosing a young man for a long-term mate means evaluating his future value; you don’t want a young hottie who won’t age well. Hot Chippendale dancers with low intelligence aren’t good buys. But then, if you want to get the next billionaire, should you try to find the next Bill Gates or Warren Buffet? These are true nerds, and at 18 they weren’t attractive to most women (Buffet writes candidly about his social ineptness as a young man). So, should women glom on to nerds? Well, it could be that nerds have a higher top return, but lower average return, so this isn’t optimal even abstracting from their obviously lower current value. Fads based on conspicuous successes can alter the value of current young men. Perhaps your dad was a prior bubble (eg, he…
Rosey was really on point yesterday with these excellent thoughts:
We realize that the nerdy economics term of “The Great Recession” has already been coined, but let’s face facts — this was not a recession, nor was it great. It was not the Great Depression, either, but it was (is, in fact) a depression. So let’s call it the “Not So Great Depression”.
Now what makes a depression different than a recession is that depressions follow a period of wild credit excess, and when the bubble bursts and the wheels begin to move in reverse, we are in a depression. A recession is a correction in real GDP in the context of a secular expansion, which is what all prior nine of them were, back to 1945. But this was not a mere blip in real GDP — it is a post-bubble credit collapse. This is not a garden-variety recession at all, which an economic downturn triggered by an inflation-fighting Fed and excessive manufacturing inventories. A depression is all about deflating asset values and contracting private sector credit. In a recession, monetary and fiscal policy works, even if the lags can be long. In a depression, they do not work. And this is what we see today.
The stock market typically rolls over shortly after the last Fed rate hike at any given cycle. That didn’t happen this time. The Fed last hiked rates in the summer of 2006 and yet the stock market didn’t peak until after the first rate CUT … that does not happen in a normal cycle.
Even with a 0% funds rate, the economy could still not turn around, and that is exactly what happened in the 1930s in the U.S. and in the 1990s in Japan. When the central bank takes rates to zero and that does not do the trick in helping the economy or the markets find the bottom, and then has to engage in an array of experimental strategies and radically expand its balance sheet, then you know you are in a depression.
Moreover, when, a year after the onset of quantitative easing, we see money velocity and the money multipliers still in decline, then you also know that the liquidity is not being re-circulated in the real economy but perhaps finding
There has been quite a lot of hub-bub today about President Obama’s fat cat remarks and his meeting with bankers exhorting them to lend. Let me tie these events in with a few other themes into a comprehensive picture of what is happening in politics and banking.
In a nutshell, we are getting a bunch of populist rhetoric which is pure politics to induce banks to lend recklessly and save the economy when basic economics would tell you that there is a deficit of lending capacity and demand for credit. It is the absurd kabuki theater of depression economics.
Just to review:
Two days ago, President Obama used his weekly address to the nation to sound off on banking reform, using unusually aggressive and populist language.
It was quite a day for the economics profession and all of these events are related.
Playing politics
The first relationship comes via David Rosenberg, who lamented the damned if you do, damned if you don’t message that politicians like Obama are sending banks with their empty populist rhetoric. Rosenberg wrote:
Below we highlight President Obama’s weekly address, in which he blames the big bad banks for luring borrowers into the myriad of products during the credit bubble, a bubble that in our view was promulgated by the nation’s policymakers.
When things go awry, however, it is very easy for those in Washington to point the fingers
I believe Washington is arguing that the U.S. simply has no credibility left to start a war for any good reason, nor is a war a cure for a recession. Thus a war is not a good idea. Not to say that economic reasons are moral and ethical justifications for starting wars, regardless. – Ilene
PhD economist Marc Faber predicts that the U.S. will launch a war to distract people from the bad economy.
China’s largest media outlets – Sohu.com – wrote in October 2008 that the Rand corporation, a leading U.S. military advisor, lobbied the Pentagon for a war to be started with a major foreign power in an attempt to stimulate the American economy:
According to French media, well-known U.S. think tank RAND Corporation … has submitted [to the Pentagon] an evaluation report assessing the wage a war to shift the feasibility of the current economic crisis…
Continued deepening of the U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis and economic downturn, developed to a certain extent, is likely to trigger a war in order to achieve the purpose of the crisis passed.
(Google’s translation services are crude approximations, but Yihan Dai confirmed the translation of the original).
Is Faber right? Is the Sohu.com report accurate?
I don’t know.
However, "military Keynesianism" – using military spending to stimulate the economy – has been U.S. policy for half a century. And the economist who coined that term said that such a policy always and "inexorably" leads to "an actual war" in order to justify all of the military spending.
Therefore, any studies which disprove the efficacy of war as an economic stimulus -see this and this – are important for balance.
In addition, contrary to popular belief, some writers say that the reason that WWII actually stimulated the U.S. economy was not because of America fighting the war. Specifically, they argue that America’s ramped-up production of armaments for the British before the U.S. entered the war was the thing which stimulated our economy.
To try to sort some of this out, I spoke with a PhD professor of economics with a background in international conflict in July 2008 to find out whether war…
Welcome to Ryan Grim! Ryan is the senior congressional correspondent for the Huffington Post and former staff reporter with Politico.com and Washington City Paper. He’s the author of the book, "This Is Your Country on Drugs" and won the 2007 Alt-Weekly Award for best long-form news-story. – Ilene
Here is a good article to consider when you are pondering how it is that nearly all mainstream economists toe the line with respect to monetary economic dogma.
As I have so often asserted: there is a darn good reason why these people have gone to such great lengths to nail down support from economists and government: their business is extremely lucrative. They have quite literally achieved the alchemist’s dream of converting lead to gold (i.e. money). The only difference is that the Fed doesn’t need even a lead mine. They can convert "nothing at all" to "gold."
This article, however, might lead one to believe that this Fed influence is a recent development; the author cites people who say this is how it has been since about the 1970s. Well, maybe the Fed’s total dominance of academia is that recent, but their campaign began at least 15 years before the legislation that founded the Fed.
The big city bankers of that turn of the century era put together a comprehensive program involving a blizzard of articles for the public and for economists. They founded university chairs for "right thinking" economists, they lobbied legislators. The activities described by Rothbard and others went on and on. In my opinion, none of this — then or now — was done because these people thought it would be good for the public or for the economy. They did it because it opened the door to unlimited theft. Okay … the perpetrators probably didn’t admit to themselves they were thieves. They probably just believed that unlimited wealth was their destiny because they were just so much smarter than everybody else.
If you doubt the Fed’s destructive control over economic thought, please read this article. – Tom
Paul Krugman’s New York Times Magazine article of September 6th maintains that externalities are the most important factor in market failures, but then never considers whether or not large “externalities” caused the failures of 2007. By ignoring externalities, the usually brilliant Mr. Krugman illustrates why economists didn’t see the market crash and Great Recession. The unintended and unrecognized effects of negative externalities were probably the largest factor that contributed to the summer of 2007crash, yet economists virtually ignore these cultural and sociological phenomena that almost resulted in economic seppuku.
Mr. Krugman wrote a single sentence about externalities when he said “…economists admitted that there were cases in which markets might fail, of which the most important was the case of “externalities” – costs that people impose on others without paying the price, like traffic congestion or pollution.”
According to Wikipedia (which has a pretty good article on externalities): “In economics, an externality or spillover of an economic transaction is an impact on a party that is not directly involved in the transaction. In such a case, prices do not reflect the full costs…of production…or a product or services…In a competitive market, the existence of externalities would cause either too much or too little of the good to be produced or consumed…If there exists external costs such as pollution, the good will be overproduced by a competitive market, as the producer does not take into account the external costs when producing the good…economics has shown that the existence of externalities result in outcomes that are not socially optimal.”
A good web site for first year economics students, Tutor2u also has a description of externalities. “Externalities are common in virtually every area of economic activity. They are defined as third party (of spill-over) effects arising from the production and/or consumption of goods and services for which no appropriate compensation is paid…Externalities can cause market failure if the price mechanism does not take into account the full social costs and social benefits of production and consumption…This leads to the private optimum output being greater than the social optimum level of production. “
A little bit of translation is needed at this point. Bubbles are characterized
Robert Frank returns to the point he made in Alpha Markets, i.e. that Charles Darwin provides the "true intellectual foundation" for economics. Though the example this time is male elk rather than bull elephant seals, the central point – and it’s one worth giving more thought to – is that "Individual and group interests are almost always in conflict when rewards to individuals depend on relative performance." In these situations, which occur frequently in economic and social relationships, the assumption in neoclassical economic models that the maximization of self-interest is consistent with the maximization of social interest does not hold, and failure to recognize this has " undermined regulatory efforts … causing considerable harm to us all":
Smith’s basic idea was that business owners … have powerful incentives to introduce improved product designs and cost-saving innovations. These moves bolster innovators’ profits in the short term. But rivals respond by adopting the same innovations, and the resulting competition gradually drives down prices and profits. In the end, Smith argued, consumers reap all the gains.
The central theme of Darwin’s narrative was that competition favors traits and behavior according to how they affect the success of individuals, not species or other groups. As in Smith’s account, traits that enhance individual fitness sometimes promote group interests. For example, a mutation for keener eyesight in hawks benefits not only any individual hawk that bears it, but also makes hawks more likely to prosper as a species.
In other cases, however, traits that help individuals are harmful to larger groups. For instance, a mutation for larger antlers served the reproductive interests of an individual male elk, because it helped him prevail in battles … for access to mates. But as this mutation spread, it started an arms race that made life more hazardous for male elk over all. The antlers of male elk can now span five feet or more. And
The S&P 500 got off to weak start and, after retracing a modest morning rally, spent most of the day in the shallow red with an intraday low of 0.63%. But in the last seven minutes of trading, the index recovered enough to a make a small gain of 0.14%. This is the fourth advance, the first was Monday's 1.60 surge, but the last three have ranged from 0.05% to 0.17% with today's close near the high of the miserly three-day series.
The index is now up 5.02% for 2012, which is 6.93% off the interim closing high.
From an intermediate perspective, the S&P 500 is 95.2% above the March 2009 closing low and 15.6% below the nominal all-time high of October 2007.
Below are two charts of the index, with and without the 50 and 200-day moving averages.
And it was shaping up to be such a good year. According to the latest just released HSBC hedge fund performance update, increasingly more funds are starting to lose it, certainly for the month, but increasingly more for the year. How many LPs will be eager to keep on paying 2% management fees (forget performance) to funds who at best are long AAPL (at least 226 of them), and at worst have underperformed the S&P, for the second year in a row, by anywhere from 5 to 15%?
TIF - Tiffany & Co., Inc. – A surprise earnings miss and a reduced full-year profit and sales forecast from luxury jewelry retailer, Tiffany & Co., took some of the luster out of its shares today, with the stock trading down 8.5% at $56.55 as of 11:50 a.m. in New York. Options activity on Tiffany this morning suggests mixed sentiment on the st...
RealNetworks, Inc. (NASDAQ: RNWK) today announced that it has reached an agreement with the Washington State Attorney General over discontinued e-commerce practices. In accordance with the settlement agreement, RealNetworks has committed to:
Discontinuing the use of pre-checked boxes for purchases of RealNetworks subscription products; Spelling out more clearly the material terms of RealNetworks product offerings; Offering online cancellation of subscription offerings; Enhancing RealNetworks customer support guidelines regarding cancellation. Statement from Thomas Nielsen, President & CEO of RealNetworks:
"About two years ago, the Washington State Attorney General's Office contacted us regarding concerns they had with some of our e-commerce practices.
To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...
First we'll go to the technicals. Back in mid April I had opined a 'bear flag' formation was being created. [Apr 17, 2012: Potential Bear Flag Forming] But the market being the difficult beast it is, head faked everyone and rather than a break down from said flag it first went UP and nearly touched yearly highs. This caused everyone to think the bear flag had failed…. only to lead to a horrid May in the market. Generally a bear flag will resolve relatively quickly but the longer...
Despite the fact that U.S. equities are well-positioned and well-supported to go up, once again it is the headlines out of Europe—especially Greece—that are scaring off investors. Some are saying that it is now likely (and even desirable) that Greece will default on all its sovereign debt, withdraw from the euro, and severely devalue its domestic currency (Drachma?). This will allow them to operate a balanced budget while pumping cash into growth initiatives, rather than suffer the ravages of Germany-mandated austerity.
Some say, so what? Greece makes up only about 2% of the Eurozone’s overall economy. Nevertheless, you might say that t...
Markets died and then rallied to flat again as European leaders “prepared contingencies” for a possible Grexit
Markets died hard and fast earlier today as major indexes registered as much as 1.5% of losses after news that Euro zone officials were unofficially “preparing contingencies” for a Greek exit from the Euro. Unofficial statements were not enough to keep markets down however, as major indexes rallied back to flat levels by the end of the day.
So the world continues to wait on Europe, as the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEACA:SPY) gained .05%, the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (NYSEARCA:...
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This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).
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In this article, please revisit an article written two years ago titled, "The Calm Before the Storm." This article focused on the patent cliff that was looming in the pharmaceutical industry, that was later picked up by the New York Times and several other bloggers! Subsequent articles were written about big pharma company's revenue streams, and the pros and cons of of their later stage pipelines. Other articles have also attempted to identify smaller biotechs with the potential to reap big reward...
My last weekend update is dated from January 30 so after a long hiatus, here is an update of our virtual portfolio. Since the last update, we have closed the AA Money portfolio due to a lack of enthusiasm (and activity) and I have stopped tracking the FAS strangle as the low VIX makes it hard to get rewarded for the risk! But we have added a small $5KP virtual portfolio which does not use any margin.
FAS Money
We have had to recover from a big move up by FAS and a low VIX which keeps option prices low. But the portfolio has gaine about 10% since the last update.
Last update P&L - $5499.00
IWM Money
Not a lot of activity in this portfolio where the main focus is on the large IWM BCS. But the portfolio has grown over 20% since the last update.
Last update P&L - $1998.00
$5KP Portfolio
This is the virtual portfolio that replaced the AA Money portfolio. It does not use margin and we will keep holdings under $5K.
AAPL $50K P...
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Robert Frank returns to the point he made in Alpha Markets, i.e. that Charles Darwin provides the "true intellectual foundation" for economics. Though the example this time is male elk rather than bull elephant seals, the central point – and it’s one worth giving more thought to – is that "Individual and group interests are almost always in conflict when rewards to individuals depend on relative performance." In these situations, which occur frequently in economic and social relationships, the assumption in neoclassical economic models that the maximization of self-interest is consistent with the maximization of social interest does not hold, and failure to recognize this has " undermined regulatory efforts … causing considerable harm to us all":
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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