FedUpUSA

Archive for the ‘Stimulus Spending’ Category

We of course hear all the time that the government has to “help” the economy, or “prime the pump.”

The problem is that it’s a lie — not due to intentions, but due to what has to happen for it to work as claimed and intended.

Let’s first define “Stimulus” and “Work”:

“Stimulus”: A deficit spending bill or bills by government — intentionally borrowing money to spend it in excess of tax revenues for the purpose of attempting to foster economic growth.

“Work”: A Stimulus program can be said to have “worked” if it produces more than it costs in tax revenue.  That is, it “works” if it produces economic change sufficient to fund itself over a reasonable amount of time.  If it does not then the program must be deemed a failure, since it is impossible to sustain it permanently and yet the desired goal will not come to pass; at best a temporary substitution — not stimulus — can be obtained.

Let’s look at history in terms of percentage of GDP:

Pay careful attention to this chart.  Note that government tax revenues are about $2 trillion, more or less.  We’ll be kind and call it $2.5 trillion (the last couple of years it has fallen short.)  This means that the government taxes about 17% of GDP.

Therefore, the reciprocal of that percentage of GDP that shows up as tax revenues must be the multiplier of economic activity of the “Stimulus” in order for it to be revenue neutral!

That is, each dollar of deficit spending must produce about six dollars of new economic activity in order for the amount of tax revenue generated from that stimulus to offset the spending that took place.

This has never happened.  Ever.  Even the most-generous of economic estimates on stimulative spending have left the multiplier below 2.0.  Yet a 2.0 multiplier would require that government tax half of GDP for it to be neutral!

This is the fundamental reason that all of the “stimulus” program attempts to lift the economy out of recession over the last 30 years instead fueled the debt bubble.  The only “pump” they primed was the one marked “Leverage“!

The Keynesian view of “pump priming” isn’t wrong because it is too small or misdirected, it is wrong because there is no reasonable program that the government can put into place that will have an economic multiplier of 6 in the real economy. 

As such these programs “worked” in the 08-11 timeframe through substitution only and have never been self-sustaining — even in the 1980s and 1990s.

This is the fundamental flaw in attempting “stimulus” measures; the only exception would be were you to first run a surplus and bank it — you could then spend that without debt consequence.  Unfortunately that course of action — to run and bank surpluses in anticipation of future need — has never been taken by our government.

As debt saturation is reached it becomes even worse.  Now there is no ability to drive consumer and business behavior to take on more debt — that is, instead of producing more pyramiding of debt in the private economy all the “stimulus” does is directly go to GDP, meaning that 2/3rds to 5/6ths of the “stimulus” literally winds up as new and unfunded debt on the federal balance sheet! 

The harder and faster you dig the deeper the hole gets!

Sorry Krugman, Obama, Reid and others: The math always wins.

The pretense of centralized control of history is wearing thin.

The single greatest conceit of the Status Quo in the U.S., China and Euroland is that systems and trends can be tightly controlled. That conceit is slowly being revealed as hubris, as all sorts of things are spinning out of the control of the centralized authorities and financial elites in each geopolitical power center.

Does anyone really think the people of Greece will stand idly by while the state treasures of their nation are transferred to the banks which foolishly lent billions to a visibly risky enterprise? The banks, of course, lent freely to insolvent governments throughout the European Union, confident in the backstop of the E.U. itself.

The analogy to subprime mortgages in the U.S. is near-perfect: banks lent freely to extremely risky borrowers, breezily confident that their worker-bees in the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Treasury and Congress would all toil feverishly to transfer the risk to the U.S. taxpayers, by whatever means were necessary.

Does anyone really think the uprisings against this transfer of national wealth to the “too big to fail” banks in Europe will fade as unemployment rises and the true costs of the transfer become apparent to all?

Does anyone really think there is no chance that the citizens of one of the nations lined up to be stripmined by the E.U. will openly rebel against the stripmining, throwing out their government until they find some politicians who are not spineless lackeys and factotums of the financial Status Quo?

Does anyone really think the banks are really that precious to the people they are stripmining? Just how awful would it be if all the big banks with exposure to sovereign debt in the E.U. went belly up and were declared insolvent? A handful of very wealthy managers would lose their jobs, a handful of very wealthy owners would lose their stake, and all the pension funds and mutual funds which bet on the infinite passivity of the citizenry and the infinite checkbook of the E.U. would lose, too.

It’s called Capitalistic risk and return, baby, and return can be negative. All the big players assumed the citizenry would quietly line up to have the clothing ripped from their backs and their flesh flayed to extract the pound of flesh “owed” the banks. But as the citizenry of Europe wake up to costs of the stripmining, which extends now to the taxpayers of Germany, Finland and beyond, they are withdrawing their support of the financial Status Quo.

Here is my plea: Ireland, Please Do the World a Favor and Default (November 29, 2010).

Things are spinning out of the control of the centralized mandarins in the E.U. They seem to have borrowed the Federal Reserve’s playbook to keep the stripmining proceeding as planned: lie, frequently (practice helps); obscure systemic risks by printing money; and issue a foul sewage of propaganda about how nicely the economy is “recovering” to mask the real game, which is diverting the national income stream to the banking cartel.

The levers of interest rates, credit and money supply do not control larger trends; the appearance of control is illusory. The E.U. and the Fed are both busily applying the duct tape of various monetary machinations to the overheating boilers of the global economy, and presenting their frantic improvisations as “finely tuned, guaranteed to work” policies. As things spin out of their control, reality is poking through their rice-paper facade of “normalcy” and control.

Here in the U.S., the Fed’s game plan of stripmining the nation to “save” the banking cartel is based on a cruel deceit I explained yesterday in The ‘Baseball’ Economy: The Fed Strikes Out (May 24, 2011): while the Fed maintains incentives for financial speculation and backstops any cartel losses in those speculations, it claims its policies are designed to “boost employment” in the real economy.

That is the world’s most dangerous joke: if you believe it, you die from extreme irony. What the Fed is actually doing is starving the real economy and thus precluding any gains in employment as it diverts the national income to fatten the insolvent banking cartel.

Does anyone seriously believe their scam can endure? As I described in Your Pick, Ben, But One Goes Off the Cliff (April 22, 2011), the Fed’s policies are setting up multiple double-binds. The Fed cannot finesse the unraveling of the entire financialization project.

There is currently a “great debate” over QE3, the next round of Fed “stimulus” (read stripmining). As things spin out of control, it no longer matters what the Fed does. That is, after all, their central conceit and the basis of their power: that the Fed actually controls anything. This quote, attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, is increasingly relevant: “Do you know what amazes me more than anything else? The impotence of force to organize anything.”

The Fed claims it can force the real economy to “grow” by forcefeeding it credit. But all the Fed is really doing is fattening the banking cartel with guaranteed profits (borrow from the Fed for free and then deposit the funds at the Fed for interest) and enabling another speculative frenzy which generates fees and profits for the banking cartel while the U.S. taxpayers play bagholder.

The Fed has lost control of the reaction to QE3. There is no “surprise” in QE3, so the potential positive is lost. Whatever the limitations the Fed imposes on QE3, they will be recognized as limiting the “high” of the credit-cocaine injected by the Fed.

If the Fed chooses an open-ended, essentially infinite QE3, then it will be recognized by the market that the Fed has lost all control and the pretense of “growth” is truly threadbare. No matter what the Fed does with QE3, the results will be negative. If they try to finesse a limited QE3, the markets will recognize the policy is unable to force-feed more speculative bubbles. If the Fed unleashes the printing press, then inflation will wrench free of the last rotten ropes restraining it, and the market will recognize that the current stock and bond bubbles are so tenuous that only unlimited money printing can keep them inflated.

Simply put, things are spinning out of the Fed’s control. The Fed has been transferring the wealth of the nation to the banking cartel and the financial Power Elite for three long years, and the fraud at the heart of their claim to be “stimulating” the real economy is now in plain view.

Does anyone really believe Japan’s economy is under control? The tragedy at the out-of-control Daiichi Fukushima reactors might well be an analogy for the entire Japanese economy. Does anyone seriously believe Japan’s over-indebted experiment in endless quantitative easing will sustain a demographic sea change and yet another explosion of debt to support rebuilding and more “stimulus,” i.e. bailing out Japan’s insolvent banking cartel, which has been insolvent for 20 years?

As for China: inflation is now out of control. Party authorities are frantically pulling the same levers of monetary policy, but the wires connecting the levers to the real economy have snapped. All their efforts to “cool” rampant speculative bubble-blowing and rampant inflation are failing. Taking their cue from the U.S., they are desperately trying to mask their loss of control with doctored statistics, but the conceit cannot endure for much longer: rents are rising even as housing sales decline. Local governments are still borrowing and speculating wildly, in a last-ditch effort to prop up their own income streams, which are dependent on real estate speculation and land grabs from peasants.

Things are spinning out of control. Trends are beyond the feeble grasp of central financial authorities. Power is based not just on controlling events in the real world but on the perception of having some control over the real world. Once the central banks’ control over large-scale trends and systems is revealed as illusory, then the unraveling of the Status Quo’s powers will gain momentum.

Of Two Minds

The facsimile of U.S. “growth” now depends entirely on Central State manipulation and stimulus of risk trades and financial slight-of-hand.

The U.S. economy has become increasingly dependent on asset bubbles, financial legerdemain, credit expansion, Federal borrowing and the manipulation of risk trades to maintain the illusion of “growth.” Compared to an economy based on organic demand and productive growth, the current U.S. economy is a travesty of a mockery of a sham, and has been since 2001.

There are a number of factors at work, but let’s start with two: the ratchet effect, and the Keynesian Project.

In the ratchet effect, increases are easy and resistance-free: it’s incredibly easy to hire more employees in bureaucracies, for example. But once the ratchet has advanced, it is nearly impossible to return to the previous tooth in the gear.

So for a city government to expand payroll from 10,000 to 20,000 employees was effortless, to reduce a 20,000 person payroll back to 10,000 is exceedingly painful.

The ratchet effect is a key feature of addiction. When one beer no longer creates a “buzz,” then the consumer drinks two, and so on, until a six-pack is the new baseline. Below that level of consumption, the addict gets panicky, for the entire necessity of creating a buzz is at risk of catastrophic failure.

The U.S. economy is now addicted via the ratchet effect to unprecedented levels of Federal borrowing and Federal Reserve credit creation and manipulation. Let’s set aside the fact that America’s Central State has by some calculations guaranteed some $13 trillion in private financial assets via TARP, AIG’s backstop, the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, etc.–roughly the size of the entire GDP of the nation.

Let’s focus instead on the fact that the Federal government must borrow and spend 11% of GDP ($1.5+ trillion) every year, and the Fed must buy $1 trillion in impaired private assets or new Treasury debt annually (another 7% of GDP) just to create an illusory GDP growth of 2.5% a year. So we’re spending/injecting 18% of the GDP to conjure a “growth” of 2.5%.

That means we’re spending/injecting $7 to create $1 of “growth” in GDP. And thanks to the ratchet effect, there’s no going back now without systemic disruption. Does anyone seriously believe spending $7 to birth $1 of “growth” is sustainable? If so, then let’s eliminate that $1.5 trillion deficit spending and the Fed’s $1 trillion-a-year purchases of impaired debt and Treasury bonds, and see if GDP “grows” via organic demand and production.

Everybody knows what would happen: the wheels would fall off the illusory “recovery.” The “recovery” is precisely analogous to an alcoholic who claims to be sobering up but who is actually drinking seven beers a day to get a buzz when a few years ago he only quaffed two or three a day.

Here is the Keynesian Project in a nutshell. Unfettered Capitalism works in straightforward cycles: the organic business cycle of expansion, overcapacity and overleverege inevitably leads to a credit bust in which those whose borrowing exceeds their ability to service their debt go broke, and the dominoes of overcapacity and credit expansion topple as losses mount and consumption based on increasing debt falls.

Bad debt gets wiped out, along with “pyramid-scheme” type assets (mortgaged assets are leveraged to buy more mortgaged assets) and excess capacity. As production declines, workers are laid off and consumption declines, further pressuring impaired financial assets.

As Marx had foreseen, these cycles increase in depth and severity. Though Marx invoked dialectical theory and history rather than the ratchet effect, the basic idea is the same: Capitalism becomes increasingly dependent on financial capital, and the resultant crises eventually become severe enough to take down Capitalism as a sustainable productive system.

Keynes’ proposed to counter these worsening business cycle implosions with massive injections of Central State borrowing and spending. The atmosphere of fear as assets, credit and consumption all contracted would be replaced by a revival of “animal spirits” (the magical elixir of Capitalism), consumption would be stimulated by direct government spending on capital projects and welfare (fiscal stimulus), and banking credit would be restored via stimulative Central Bank credit expansion (monetary stimulus).

But Keynes failed to grasp what Marx had intuited: the ratchet effect. Once the Central State ramped up deficit spending and expansive credit, then the organic economy became dependent on that new level of Central State spending and credit expansion.

As I described in the Survival+ analysis, in effect the central State rescued Monopoly Capital by partnering with it. This results in a financial/State Plutocracy which “saves” the organic economy by taking control of its income streams, credit creation and financial assets.

That is the U.S. economy in a nutshell: a travesty of a mockery of a sham. The consumer became dependent on easy, cheap credit and home equity extraction to maintain his/her consumption. The student became dependent on easy, cheap credit to fund his/her increasingly costly college education. Monopoly capital became dependent on financial slight-of-hand, the debauchery of credit, fraudulent mispricing/masking of risk, stupendously leveraged bets on risk assets, etc. for its swollen profits. Politicans became dependent on unlimited borrowing and spending to keep the illusions of competence, sustainability and “growth” alive.

State and local governments became casinos, dependent on skimming the profits from asset bubbles and financial fraud. Where did New York City’s and New York State’s rising revenues come from? By playing dealer on Wall Street’s scam tables, skimming a steady share of the profits.

Where did California’s bloated state revenues come from? The skimming of capital gains from the Ponzi-scheme real estate bubble.

The stock market rally circa 2003-2008 was merely Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham Phase I. In those glory years of the Central State/Cartel-Capital manipulation, it only required $2 of stimulus and credit expansion to blow $1 in asset bubble “growth.”

But alas, the growth was bogus, illusory, a simulacrum of organic growth, a house of credit cards and fraud that toppled when one card’s overleveraged precariousness was inadvertently exposed.

Now we are in Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham Phase II. As Marx had foreseen, the crises are ratcheting up: now it’s taking $7 of State/Plutocracy intervention to conjure up a pathetic $1 in “growth.” Both are now totally dependent on the substitution of bubbles and fraud for real productive growth.

What Marx failed to foresee was the Central State’s rescue of Cartel-Capital via a partnership: the Central State is now as dependent on financial capital’s maximization of fraud and credit expansion as the Financial Plutocracy is dependent on the Central State to mask and enable its expansion of income and control.

The problem is, of course, that the system cannot support borrowing and spending $7 to create $1 of “growth” for long: eventually, as in all business cycles, the cost of borrowing will exceed the ability of the borrower to service that debt. That’s what Keynes failed to foresee: the way in which the partnership of Central State and Cartel-Capital requires ever greater credit and State debt expansion just to keep the system afloat, never mind growing.

If I loan you $1 trillion at zero interest, with no principal payments, then the cost of servicing that $1 trillion loan is zero. Pretty easy to service zero, isn’t it? That’s the core strategy of the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury.

That’s been Japan’s “secret” for 20 years: as long as the lenders (the Japanese citizenry and life insurance companies, etc.) accepted near-zero interest, then the cost of borrowing additional trillions has been bearable.

But as soon as that $1 trillion requires a serious interest payment, then the ratchet-effect game ends. We are not there yet, but the endgame is no longer over the horizon.

What will TMS Phase III require? $10 in Central State stimulus for $1 in nominal GDP “growth”? Or will it be $20 for every $1 of bogus “growth”?

The stock market is a reflection of this ratcheting up of Central State/Monopoly Capital intervention and manipulation. The stock market took off in the mid-1990s in the “easy money” era, and that led to the Phase I bust of 2000-2001.

That required TMS Phase II, which led to the next asset bubble in 2007-08, and that orgy of fraud and credit/leverage expansion led to an even more severe Phase II bust 2008-09.

If the partnership attempts Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham Phase III, then the consequent bust should return the stock market to pre-Phase I levels: The Dow around 4,000 and the SPX around 400.

Neither the public nor the Standard-Issue Punditry (SIP) understand the addiction-like dynamics of the Central State/Cartel-Capital partnership’s increasingly ineffective interventions on behalf of a facsimile of normalcy and “growth.” Like the addicted junkie, the Central State/Cartel-Capital partnership is approaching the point where their “high” requires ever higher doses of smack.

Nobody knows when the higher doses finally become lethal, but we do know there is such a point.

Live debate on deflation/hyperinflation, February 10, 9 p.m. EST . Most of you are already familiar with bloggers Stoneleigh of The Automatic Earth and Gonzolo Lira. Both are well-informed, articulate and persuasive, so the exchange on a topic of importance to us all (deflation vs. hyperinflation) is sure to be compelling.

Of Two Minds

Back in February 2009, the U.S. Congress passed an $862 billion “economic stimulus” bill to help the struggling American economy recover from the horrible financial crisis of 2007 and 2008.  Right now, federal agencies are spending this stimulus money at the rate of approximately 196 million dollars an hour, and they will continue to spend it in staggering amounts up until the September 30, 2010 deadline.  Unfortunately, instead of being spent on useful projects that would revitalize U.S. industry and put American workers back to work, much of this money is being flushed directly down the toilet on some of the most wasteful projects imaginable.  The truth is that nobody is better at wasting money than the U.S. government.  In fact, some of the things that the U.S. government has been spending money on are absolutely mind blowing. 

The following are just some of the examples of “stimulus waste” that we have seen over the last 16 months….   

*Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida used $15,551 in stimulus money to pay two researchers to study how alcohol affects a mouse’s motor functions.

*The U.S. government handed over a staggering $54 million in “stimulus cash” to Connecticut’s politically-connected Mohegan Indian tribe, which runs one of the highest grossing casinos in the country.

*Syracuse professor of psychology Michael Carey received $219,000 in federal stimulus money for a study that examines the sex patterns of college women. 

*A dinner cruise company in Chicago got nearly $1 million in stimulus funds to combat terrorism.

*$233,000 in stimulus money went to the University of California at San Diego to study why Africans vote.

*The Cactus Bug Project at the University Of Florida was allocated $325,394 in stimulus funds to study the mating decisions of cactus bugs.  According to the project proposal, one of the questions that will be answered by the study is this: ”Whether males with large weapons are more or less attractive to females.”

*One Denver developer received $13 million in tax credits to construct a senior housing complex despite that fact that the same developer is being sued as a slumlord for running rodent-infested apartment buildings in the city of San Francisco.

*Sheltering Arms Senior Services was awarded a contract worth $22.3 million in stimulus money to weatherize homes for poor families in Houston, Texas - but a new report from Texas Watchdog says that the weatherization work was performed so badly that 33 of the 53 homes will need to be completely redone.

*A liberal theater in Minnesota named ”In the Heart of the Beast” (in reference to a well known quote by communist radical Che Guevara) received $100,000 for socially conscious puppet shows.

*California’s inspector general found that $1 million in stimulus funds for a program to give summer jobs to young people was improperly used for overhead expenses such as rent and utility bills.

*Landon Cox, a Duke University assistant professor of computer science, was awarded $498,000 in stimulus money to study Facebook.