FedUpUSA

Archive for March, 2011

A recent Gallup survey shows Gallup’s Job Creation Index Sees Its Best Week Since Sept. 2008

Gallup’s Job Creation Index reached +14 during the week ending March 20 — its highest weekly level since the week ending Sept. 28, 2008. Thirty-two percent of employees nationwide say their companies are hiring and 18% say their companies are letting workers go. This is a slight improvement over the prior week, when 31% of companies were hiring and 18% letting go, and a similar reading for the month of February.

Pessimism About Finding a Quality Job Is Lowest Since October 2008

Thinking about the job situation today, would you say that now is a good time or a bad time to find a quality job?

While 83% of Americans in a separate question think March 2011 is a “bad time” to find a quality job, this is the lowest percentage since October 2008. Still, for more than two years, at least 8 in 10 Americans have been pessimistic about the job market.

Americans’ perceptions of the market for quality jobs have shown similar improvement in recent months. Nevertheless, more than 8 out of 10 Americans believe quality jobs remain hard to find.

Regardless, to the degree that the jobs situation is improving, it continues to be insufficient to significantly lower overall underemployment and unemployment.

Inquiring minds may also be interested in Gallup Poll Pegs Unemployment Rate at 10.2%, Underemployment at 19.9%, Same as Last Year

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Most Americans believe that we still live in a capitalist system and that free markets primarily determine the growth and development of our economy.  But is that really the case?  No, sadly it is not.  The truth is that the U.S. Federal Reserve does a tremendous amount of central economic planning.  So what makes the central economic planning that the Federal Reserve does different from the central economic planning that communist China does?  Yes, in China it is the government that does the central planning and in the United States it is a private central bank that does the central planning, but other than that are there any huge differences?  And if our economy is centrally planned, then how can we continue to claim that we still have a free market capitalist system?

Certainly China goes into greater detail in their economic planning, but that does not mean that the economic planning that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government do is not similar.

After all, free markets do not set interest rates in this country – the Federal Reserve does.

The Federal Reserve also determines what the money supply will be.

The Federal Reserve is the one that decides if inflation is too high or too low.

The Federal Reserve is the one that decides if unemployment is too high or too low.

In addition, the Federal Reserve has a tremendous amount of regulatory power over U.S. banks and the entire financial system.  Most Americans simply do not realize how much power the Federal Reserve has over our banks.  Just last year Federal Reserve officials walked into one bank in Oklahoma and demanded that they take down all the Bible verses and the Christmas buttons that the bank had been displaying.

Like the communist Chinese, the Federal Reserve is not elected and it is essentially accountable to nobody.

Like the communist Chinese, the Federal Reserve also picks winners and losers.  You see, not all financial institutions are treated equally by the Fed.  For example, some have access to the Fed’s discount window and others do not.

How is that fair?

Certainly the Federal Reserve does not do all of the central economic planning in this country.  The U.S. government loves to get involved in economic planning as well.  For example, the U.S. government has decided that there are certain types of light bulbs that we are allowed to buy and certain types of light bulbs that we are no longer going to be allowed to buy.  It doesn’t matter that the new light bulbs are far more dangerous to children or that most of us would still like to have the choice to buy the old light bulbs.

But getting back to the Federal Reserve, how “democratic” or how “capitalist” is it to have 12 unelected people sitting around a table deciding the economic direction of this country?

The truth is that we live in a system that simply does not trust free markets and that believes that our economy needs to be “managed”.

I have to admit that my thinking on these issues was stimulated when I recently read an excellent article by Vitaliy Katsenelson in which he asked the following question….

It is a fundamental tenant of American capitalism that central planning of economies doesn’t work in the long term, whether in Soviet Union historically or in China today. But I often wonder: How is the Fed’s Board of Governors – the proverbial 12 guys in a room – any different than the 24 guys in a room who make up the Chinese politburo?

Is Katsenelson not right about this?

How in the world is the Fed’s Board of Governors all that much different from the Chinese Politburo?

In both cases, a group of unelected elitists makes the major economic decisions for all the rest of us.

That certainly does not sound like “capitalism” to me.

Would the free markets really produce worse results for our economy than the Federal Reserve does?

Would America ever have gone through the Great Depression if the Federal Reserve had not been created in 1913?

Would we have experienced the financial crash of 2008 if the policies of Greenspan and Bernanke had not created tremendous bubbles in the financial system?

Would the U.S. dollar have lost over 95 percent of its value since 1913 if the Federal Reserve was not around to constantly inflate our currency?

Would the U.S. government have the largest debt in the history of the world if we were not using the debt-based monetary system imposed upon us by the elite international bankers?

Now that the total debt of the U.S. government is $14,228,193,126,138.72, it is getting really hard to deny that the federal government is drowning in debt.

Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher unknowingly indicted the very system he serves when he recently made the following statement….

“If we continue down on the path on which the fiscal authorities put us, we will become insolvent, the question is when.”

If the Federal Reserve had never been created, and the U.S. government had been issuing debt-free currency all this time, it is entirely conceivable that we would have absolutely no federal government debt at this point.

But defenders of the Federal Reserve tell us that if not for the brilliant people over at the Fed, America would be an economic basket case by now.

Oh really?

In case anyone has not noticed, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has a very long track record of incompetence.  Nearly every major judgment that he has made since taking over that position has been wrong.  If one of us could go down the street and appoint the manager of our local Dairy Queen as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, it is very doubtful that person could do a worse job than Bernanke has done.

Unfortunately, most Americans do not understand this.  Most Americans are still convinced that “the greatest economy on earth” will just keep roaring along forever.  Most Americans are spending and partying as if everything is going to be just fine.

Sadly, as Richard Daughty recently pointed out, most Americans will not wake up and realize just how bad our economic problems really are until it is too late….

In fact, to use an analogy, the economy is like a group of overpaid people, milking the government for every dollar and benefit they can get, on a chartered airplane that has been certified as “unsafe,” where one minute everybody is having fun, drunk as skunks, laughing and telling dirty jokes, and the next minute the plane is plunging out of the sky, out of fuel, one wing is in flames, the engines are dead, the entire electrical system is kaput, and, worst of all, the beverage cart is completely empty of cold beer and those little bottles of different kinds of tasty liquors. Uh-oh!

Most Americans have become so “dumbed down” that they still won’t even understand what is happening even after the economy has collapsed.  Newsweek recently found that 63 percent of Americans do not know how many justices are on the Supreme Court and 29 percent of Americans cannot even name the current Vice-President.

America today is rapidly degenerating in many of the same ways that the Roman Empire once did.  Tens of millions of Americans are lazy, slothful and absolutely addicted to entertainment.  It is frightening to see just how many Americans did not show any empathy during the recent crisis in Japan or when we started launching missiles on Libya.  The following mini-documentary that was recently posted on YouTube does a beautiful job of making this point….

So is there any hope for America?

Let us hope that people wake up, because there are going to be even more economic disasters coming our way.  Right now a large percentage of the American people don’t even know enough to realize what the real problems are, much less what the solutions may be.

When most Americans talk about economics, they instantly start blaming “Obama” or “Bush” and a lot of them never even bring up the Federal Reserve.

But it is the Federal Reserve that has the most power over our economy.

If Americans want to blame someone in Washington D.C. for the economic mess that we are in, the number one culprit is the Federal Reserve.

Yes, Obama, Bush and virtually every member of Congress has played a role in our economic nightmare as well.  But it is the Federal Reserve that is actually “managing” our economy.

We would have been much better off if we had allowed free markets to “manage” our economy all this time, but very few Americans actually seem to still believe in free markets anymore.

The Economic Collapse

Today there are two very different Americas.  In one America, the stock market is soaring, huge bonuses are taken for granted, the good times are rolling and people are spending money as if they will be able to “live the dream” for the rest of their lives.  In the other America, the one where most of the rest of us live, unemployment is rampant, a million families were kicked out of their homes last year and hordes of American families are drowning in debt.  The gap between the rich and the poor is bigger today than it ever has been before.  In fact, this article is not so much about “rich vs poor” as it is about “the rich vs the rest of us”.  Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke keep touting an “economic recovery”, but the truth is that the only ones that seem to be benefiting from this recovery are those at the very top of the economic food chain.

Below you will find 14 funny statistics about this economic recovery and 14 not so funny statistics about this economic recovery.  Actually, if you find yourself deeply struggling in this economy you will probably not find any of the statistics funny.  In fact, you will probably find most of them infuriating.  After all, there are very few people that actually enjoy hearing about how well the rich are doing when they are barely able to pay the mortgage and put food on the table.

In any event, the 28 statistics below show the stark contrast between the “two Americas” that share this nation today.  Many liberals will likely try to use these statistics as an example of why we should tax the rich.  But handing more money to the government is not going to magically create more jobs for the poor.  What the American people desperately need are good jobs, and many liberals don’t seem to understand that.  Many conservatives will likely try to use these statistics as evidence that “capitalism” is working.  But the truth is that what we have in the United States today is not capitalism.  Rather, it is more aptly described as “corporatism”, because money and power is increasingly becoming concentrated in the hands of gigantic corporations that individuals and small businesses simply cannot compete with.  The truth is that when wealth is concentrated at the very top it does not “trickle down” to the rest of us.  In the old days the wealthy at least were forced to hire the rest of us to run their factories and their businesses, but with the advent of globalism that isn’t even true anymore.  Now they can just move their factories and businesses overseas to places where they can legally pay slave labor wages to their employees.

Very large concentrations of money and power are almost always bad for the prosperity of average citizens.  Our founding fathers never intended for our central government to have so much power and they never intended for giant corporations to have so much power.  But we have abandoned the principles of our founding fathers.

When large concentrations of power (whether governmental or corporate) are allowed to flourish, it almost becomes inevitable that the gap between the rich and the poor will grow.  We are seeing this happen all over the world today.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that any of this is going to change any time soon.  In the United States, both the federal government and multinational corporations are constantly attempting to grab even more power.  It has gotten to the point where individual Americans really don’t have much power left at all.

In any event, hopefully you will find the following statistics informative or at least entertaining.  The wealthy are most definitely enjoying an “economic recovery” while most of the rest of us are still really struggling….

Funny – Who said that the titans of Wall Street couldn’t look hot?  According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, facelifts for men jumped 14 percent last year.

Not Funny – According to the U.S. Labor Department, unemployment actually increased in 351 of the 372 largest U.S. cities during the month of January.

Funny – The average bonus for a worker on Wall Street in 2010 was only $128,530.  It appears that more Wall Street bailouts may be needed.

Not Funny – During this most recent economic downturn, employee compensation in the United States has been the lowest that it has been relative to gross domestic product in over 50 years.

Funny – According to DataQuick Information Systems, the sale of million dollars homes rose an average of 18.6 percent in the top 20 major metro areas in the U.S. in 2010.  But is spending a million dollars on one house really worth it?  After all, over the past several years there have been times when you could buy a house in some bad areas of Detroit for just one dollar.

Not Funny – In 2010, for the first time ever more than a million U.S. families lost their homes to foreclosure, and that number is expected to go even higher in 2011.

Funny – According to Moody’s Analytics, the wealthiest 5% of households in the United States now account for approximately 37% of all consumer spending.  Most of the rest of us don’t have much discretionary income to spend these days, but at least we have Justin Bieber, American Idol and Dancing with the Stars to keep us entertained.

Not Funny – According to Gallup, the U.S. unemployment rate in mid-March was 10.2%, which was virtually unchanged from the 10.3% figure that it was sitting at exactly one year ago.

Funny – According to the Wall Street Journal, sales of private jumbo jets to the ultra-wealthy are absolutely soaring….

Sales of private jumbo jets are so strong that Airbus and Boeing now have special sales forces devoted to potentates and the hyper-rich.

Not Funny – There are now over 6.4 million Americans that have given up looking for work completely.  That number has increased by about 30 percent since the economic downturn began.

Funny – Porsche recently reported that sales increased by 29 percent during 2010.  Even Porsche jokes are coming back into style….

Question: Why did the blonde try and steal a police car?

Answer: She saw “911” on the back and thought it was a Porsche.

Not Funny – Approximately half of all American workers make $25,000 a year or less.

Funny – Cadillac recently reported that sales increased by 36 percent during 2010.

Not Funny – According to the U.S. Energy Department, the average U.S. household will spend approximately $700 more on gasoline in 2011 than it did during 2010.

Funny – Rolls-Royce recently reported that sales increased by 171 percent during 2010.

Not Funny – According to a new study by America’s Research Group, approximately 75 percent of all Americans are doing less shopping because of rising gasoline prices.

Funny – According to the New York Post, Barack Obama enjoyed a total of 10 separate vacations that stretched over a total of 90 vacation days during the years of 2009 and 2010.  Apparently Barack Obama was not talking about himself when he told the American people the following….

“If you’re a family trying to cut back, you might skip going out to dinner, or you might put off a vacation.”

Not Funny – When 2007 began, 26 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, an all-time record 44 million Americans are on food stamps.

Funny – Ralph Lauren reported a 24 percent increase in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2010.  It is good to know that preppies are thriving in this economy.

Not Funny – The Ivex Packaging Paper plant in Joliet, Illinois is shutting down for good after 97 years in business.  79 good jobs will be lost.  Meanwhile, China has become the number one producer of paper products in the entire world.

Funny – Luxury jewelry retailer Tiffany & Co. recently announced that their profits increased by 29 percent in the 4th quarter of 2010.  All of the men that did not buy their women jewelry during the holidays are trying to keep this particular news item from getting passed around.

Not Funny – Average household debt in the United States has now reached a level of 136% of average household income.

Funny – In 2009, only 18,288 vehicles with a price tag of $100,000 or more were sold in the United States.  In 2010, 32,144 such vehicles were sold.  It appears that “showing off for chicks” is now very much back in style.

Not Funny – The U.S. economy now has 10 percent fewer “middle class jobs” than it did just ten years ago.

Funny – Porsche has announced that they will soon be taking orders for their first hybrid sports car, the 918 Spyder.  The price tag on one of these puppies will only be $845,000.

Not Funny – The average CEO now makes approximately 185 times more money than the average American worker.

Funny – Barack Obama recently played only his 61st round of golf since moving into the White House.  Many are now concerned that Obama is simply not getting enough free time.

Not Funny – According to one recent study, 21 percent of all children in the United States were living below the poverty line during 2010.

The Economic Collapse

The dollar has reached a point of double-bind for the Fed: push it down further or allow it to rise, it won’t matter: either way, stocks will fall off a cliff.

I’ve got a funny feeling that all the ramp-and-camp, extend-and-pretend POMO games propping up stocks are about to stop working. That would of course trigger a long, deep slide in equities, because as we all know, it’s the Federal Reserve’s games which have goosed the market to its current lofty heights. The market’s confidence in the Bernanke Put–that is, the belief that the Fed will never let stocks decline– remains supremely undimmed.

A lot of very good technical analysts see sentiment reaching lows which usually mark market bottoms. I am not so sure about this interpretation, for the investors intelligence readings are still complacently bullish.

Other very good technical analysts haven’t yet seen a break in the long-term uptrend, so they too have reservations about any real decline.

Various Wall Street analysts are predicting a “mild correction” of 7% to 10%, after which it’s off to the races once again–a pause that refreshes the permanent Bull.

I’ve got a funny feeling that it’s lose-lose time for the Fed’s games. here’s the basic game plan: inject tens of billions of free money into the “risk trade,” i.e. equities and commodities, ramp the futures markets when volume and liquidity are low, and crush the U.S. dollar.

It’s practically a perfect inverse correlation: when the dollar tanks, stocks move higher, and when stocks hit bottom then the dollar peaks. Think see-saw: when one tops out, the other hits bottom, and vice versa.

Interestingly, there is a rough correlation with the 40-week (9 month) cycle that many chartists watch. If that holds in the chart of the dollar, then the dollar should rise to a near-term peak in about 8 to 12 weeks. That further suggests stocks will crater.

Notice that the dollar has been driven down to an important inflection point. If the Fed forces it below the 75 level, then that opens the way to 72 and a careening collapse below the line-in-the-sand at 71. 

There’s an inherent limit to the “drive the dollar down to boost equities” game: inflation, which is already on track to hit 8.3% in 2011 (via Zero hedge). 

For there’s another see-saw dynamic: the lower you push the dollar, the more all the imports the U.S. depends on cost, generating a loss of purchasing power that is often called inflation. 

Here is a simple real-world definition: you pay more for the same (or smaller) goods and (degrading) services than you did in the recent past, though your wages have been stagnant for decades. 

Though the Ministry of Propaganda is running full-tilt pumping out statistics that “prove” inflation is near-zero, the recent “you can’t eat iPads” heckling of a Fed official reflect the growing disbelief in these official pronouncements. 

So here’s the lose-lose double-bind: if the Fed continues destroying the dollar, then they will feed the rising-input-costs monster which devours corporate profits like a 10-year old devours Oreos. In a climate where consumers’ incomes haven’t risen for decades in real terms, passing on higher prices is a non-starter. 

So profits will take a hit, and since the market has priced in ever-higher profits, the market will plummet when profits “unexpectedly” decline. 

But if the Fed insists on pushing the dollar below 75 in the hopes of pumping up equities, they risk triggering a meltdown of the dollar globally and forcefeeding the rising-input-costs monster until a positive feedback loop kicks in and inflation sinks its teeth into the economy. As noted above, that will destroy corporate profits and thus the stock market’s lofty valuations. 

I also have a funny feeling about this chart. The NASDAQ, heavily dependent on a few superstars like AAPL and riddled with gaps all the way up from its lows in August, could be topping out not for a few weeks but for years.

The always excellent and provocative Imperial Economics blog of B.C. has published some eye-opening charts which overlay the current bullish utopia with those from previous eras. The sobering conclusion is that if history echoes, then the market is about to roll over in a massive decline that will last a year or two. 

As I noted in Sorry, Fed and People’s Bank of China: You Can’t Have It Both Ways (March 15, 2011), you can’t pump up money supply and credit to goose “risk trades” in stocks and commodities without inflating asset bubbles and triggering runaway input-costs, i.e. inflation that destroys profit margins and impoverishes stagnant-wage households. 

But if the Fed takes its hands off the game controller and allows the dollar to rise, then equities crash anyway. 

In other words, the dollar is at a point where either path leads to stocks crashing. Go ahead and destroy the dollar, and the rising-input-costs monster will gut stocks and impoverish households. Back off and let the dollar rise, and the risk trades (equities and commodities) will plummet. 

Take your pick: the result is the same. 

Disclosure: I opened a long position in UUP, the U.S. dollar ETF yesterday, and added to my QID short against the NASDAQ 100. 

 Of Two Minds