Category: Social Issues

THE REAL NATIONAL DEBT IS $222 TRILLION

Have your heard either candidate for President discussing the truth in this article? Math is hard, but when you use it correctly it can reveal some ugly truths. Kotlikoff is a truth teller. The drones in government don’t follow the same accounting concepts as the real world. When you put government fake accounting into real world numbers, you realize that the government isn’t running annual deficits of $1.3 trillion per year, but deficits of $11 trillion per year. Every year the present value of the unfunded obligations made by our politicians goes up because the promises are one year closer to being honored.

The true present value of future obligations is $222 trillion. This is $700,000 per person. This is $1.9 million per household. This is what you currently owe. Do you feel better? Both candidates are running on platforms of extending tax cuts and not cutting spending or entitlements. The present value of future obligations will be $260 trillion in four years. And that is without a recession or new war in the Middle East.

The fact is that the $222 trillion will not be honored, because it can’t be. The article makes that clear. This entire fraud of promises, lies and pretending will come crashing down and leave this country in a smoldering ruin. There is no courage to face the truth. What happens when the lies are revealed is anyone’s guess. Fourth Turnings are always interesting. 

Blink! U.S. Debt Just Grew by $11 Trillion

            By Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns –             Aug 8, 2012

Republicans and Democrats spent last summer battling how best to save $2.1 trillion over the next decade. They are spending this summer battling how best to not save $2.1 trillion over the next decade.

In the course of that year, the U.S. government’s fiscal gap — the true measure of the nation’s indebtedness — rose by $11 trillion.

The fiscal gap is the present value difference between projected future spending and revenue. It captures all government liabilities, whether they are official obligations to service Treasury bonds or unofficial commitments, such as paying for food stamps or buying drones.

Some question whether “official” and “unofficial” spending commitments can be added together. But calling particular obligations “official” doesn’t make them economically more important. Indeed, the government would sooner renege on Chinese holding U.S. Treasuries than on Americans collecting Social Security, especially because the U.S. can print money and service its bonds with watered-down dollars.

For its part, economic theory sees through labels and views a country’s official debt for what it is — a linguistic construct devoid of real economic content. In contrast, the fiscal gap is theoretically well-defined and invariant to the choice of labels. Each labeling choice changes the mix of obligations between official and unofficial, but leaves the total unchanged.

Dangerous Growth

The U.S. fiscal gap, calculated (by us) using theCongressional Budget Office’s realistic long-term budget forecast — the Alternative Fiscal Scenario — is now $222 trillion. Last year, it was $211 trillion. The $11 trillion difference — this year’s true federal deficit — is 10 times larger than the official deficit and roughly as large as the entire stock of official debt in public hands.

This fantastic and dangerous growth in the fiscal gap is not new. In 2003 and 2004, the economists Alan Auerbach and William Gale extended the CBO’s short-term forecast and measured fiscal gaps of $60 trillion and $86 trillion, respectively. In 2007, the first year the CBO produced the Alternative Fiscal Scenario, the gap, by our reckoning, stood at $175 trillion. By 2009, when the CBO began reporting the AFS annually, the gap was $184 trillion. In 2010, it was $202 trillion, followed by $211 trillion in 2011 and $222 trillion in 2012.

Part of the fiscal gap’s growth reflects changes in policy, such as the Bush and Obama tax cuts, the introduction of Medicare Part D, and the expansion of defense spending. Part reflects “natural” growth of existing programs, including growth in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates. And part reflects the demographic time bomb U.S. politicians are blithely ignoring.

When fully retired, 78 million baby boomers will collect, on average, more than 85 percent of per-capita gross domestic product ($40,000 in today’s dollars) in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. Each passing year brings these outlays one year closer, which raises their present value.

Governments, like households, can’t indefinitely spend beyond their means. They have to satisfy what economists call their “intertemporal budget constraint.” The fiscal gap simply measures the extent to which this constraint is violated and tells us what is needed to balance the government’s intertemporal budget.

The answer for the U.S. isn’t pretty. Closing the gap using taxes requires an immediate and permanent 64 percent increase in all federal taxes. Alternatively, the U.S. needs to cut, immediately and permanently, all federal purchases and transfer payments, including Social Security and Medicare benefits, by 40 percent. Or it can mix these terrible fiscal medicines with honey, namely radical fiscal reforms that make the economy much fairer and far stronger. What the government can’t do is pay its bills by spending more and taxing less. America’s children, whose futures are being rapidly destroyed, are smart enough to tell us this.

(Laurence Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University, andScott Burns, a syndicated columnist, are co-authors of “The Clash of Generations.” The opinions expressed are their own.)

A MATTER OF TRUST – PART TWO

This is Part 2 of my three part series on trust. Part 1 addressed the history of bubbles and busts and the role trust plays in these episodes. In the end, truth is what matters.

“Trust starts with truth and ends with truth.” – Santosh Kalwar

Hundred Year Bust

 

“Debasement was limited at first to one’s own territory. It was then found that one could do better by taking bad coins across the border of neighboring municipalities and exchanging them for good with ignorant common people, bringing back the good coins and debasing them again. More and more mints were established. Debasement accelerated in hyper-fashion until a halt was called after the subsidiary coins became practically worthless, and children played with them in the street, much as recounted in Leo Tolstoy’s short story, Ivan the Fool.” – Charles P. Kindleberger – Manias, Panics, and Crashes

The Holy Roman Empire debased their currency in the early 1600s the old fashioned way, by replacing good coins with bad coins. Any similarities with the U.S. issuing pennies that cost 2.4 cents to produce and nickels that cost 11 cents to produce is purely coincidental. I wonder what the ancient Greeks would think of our Olympic gold medals that contain 1.34% gold. The authorities have become much more sophisticated in the last one hundred years. Digital dollars are so much easier to debase. The hundred year central banker scientifically manufactured bust relentlessly plods towards its ultimate conclusion – the dollar reaching its intrinsic value of zero.

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” – Henry Ford

Henry Ford made this statement decades before the debasement of our currency entered overdrive. The facts reflected in the chart above should have provoked a revolution, but the ruling class has done a magnificent job of ensuring the mathematical ignorance of the masses through government education, mass media propaganda, and statistical manipulation of inflation data to obscure the truth. Mainstream economists have successfully convinced the average American that inflation is good for their lives and deflation is dangerous to their wellbeing. There are economists like Kindleberger, Shiller and Roubini who have brilliantly documented and predicted various bubbles, despite being scorned a ridiculed by the captured mouthpieces for the oligarchs. But even these fine men have a flaw in their thinking. They can see speculative manias spurred by irrational beliefs and delusional thinking, but are blind to the evil manipulations of bankers, politicians, and corporate titans. They believe that humans with Ivy League educations can outsmart markets and through the fine tuning of interest rates, manipulation of the money supply and provision of liquidity through a lender of last resort, can control the financial system and avoid panics.

Kindleberger understood the dangers, but still concluded that the Federal Reserve lender of last resort was a desirable entity which would be a benefit to the smooth functioning of the economic system and people of the United States.

“I contend that markets work well on the whole, and can normally be relied upon to decide the allocation of resources and, within limits, the distribution of income, but that occasionally markets will be overwhelmed and need help. The dilemma, of course, is that if markets know in advance that help is forthcoming under generous dispensations, they break down more frequently and function less effectively.

The dominant argument against the a priori view that panics can be cured by being left alone is that they almost never are left alone. The authorities feel compelled to intervene. In panic after panic, crash after crash, crisis after crisis, the authorities or some “responsible citizens” try to bring the panic to a halt by one device or another. The learning has taken the form of discovering the desirability and even the wisdom of a lender of last resort, rather than relying exclusively on the competitive forces of the market.” -– Charles P. Kindleberger – Manias, Panics, and Crashes

Kindleberger’s reasoning seems to be that since egomaniac busy bodies in power always interfere in markets in order to convince voters they care; it is desirable to institutionalize this intervention. Book smart academics always think they can outsmart the markets and correct the errors caused by the flaws endemic across all humanity. Well-meaning brainy economists like Kindleberger, Shiller, and Stiglitz easily identify the irrationality of human nature in creating havoc with our economic system, but somehow conclude that human constructs like the Federal Reserve, tinkering with interest rates, controlling money supply, and applying fiscal stimulus can be managed to the benefit of the American people. This is a foolish notion and has been proven to be disastrous for the majority of the American people.

Why wouldn’t the same human flaws that lead to booms and busts manifest themselves in the actions of bankers and politicians selected to manage and control our economic system? Therein lays the problem and the need for a true free market method of dealing with our human frailties. The false storyline of Democratic socialism versus Republican free market capitalism is nothing more than propaganda talking points designed to keep the non-critical thinking public distracted from the looting and pillaging of the nation’s wealth by our owners – the wealthy powerful elite who have captured our political, economic and financial system. The “solution” to create a private central bank has created more crises than it has prevented.

When examining Kindleberger’s list of manias, panics and crashes, you will note that prior to 1913 almost all of these crashes occurred over the course of two years or less. The creation of the Federal Reserve was supposedly in response to the 1907 panic, created by J.P. Morgan, who then nobly came to the rescue of the banking system. He then secretly led the effort to create a central bank that would function as the lender of last resort during future panics. Forbes magazine founder B.C. Forbes later described the meeting that hatched the malevolent plan for the creation of a banker controlled Federal Reserve:

“Picture a party of the nation’s greatest bankers stealing out of New York on a private railroad car under cover of darkness, stealthily riding hundreds of miles South, embarking on a mysterious launch, sneaking onto an island deserted by all but a few servants, living there a full week under such rigid secrecy that the names of not one of them was once mentioned, lest the servants learn the identity and disclose to the world this strangest, most secret expedition in the history of American finance. I am not romancing; I am giving to the world, for the first time, the real story of how the famous Aldrich currency report, the foundation of our new currency system, was written.”

The American people should have been alarmed that a small group of powerful bankers designed the Federal Reserve and it was passed into law in the dead of night on December 23, 1913 with 27 Senators not even in Washington D.C. to vote on the bill. Something done this secretively never leads to a positive outcome. It is beyond question the creation of a private lender of last resort has not ended the boom and bust cycles of our economic system, but it has intensified and protracted them.

The Great Depression, which was precipitated by Federal Reserve easy money policies during the 1920s, Federal Reserve missteps in the early 1930s, and FDR driven government intervention in the markets, began in 1929 and did not truly end until 1946. The easy money Federal Reserve policies during the 1970s, along with Nixon’s closing the gold window, and commencement of our welfare/warfare state, led to a prolonged crisis from 1973 through 1982. The Federal Reserve easy money policies in the late 1990s and early 2000s, along with the repeal of Glass Steagall, belief that bankers could be trusted to regulate themselves, and capture of regulators, rating agencies, and politicians by Wall Street, has led to two prolonged epic busts between 1999 and 2009, with the biggest bust still coming down the track. Putting our trust in a secretive society of bankers has worked out exactly as expected, with bankers and their cronies becoming obscenely wealthy, while the average person has seen 96% of their purchasing power inflated away since the Federal Reserve’s inception.

The illusion of prosperity through debt and inflation does not change the fact that the inflation adjusted wages of blue collar manufacturing workers are lower today than they were 40 years ago. Luckily for your owners, 98% of Americans don’t know or care what the term “inflation adjusted” means. As long as they can keep buying stuff with one of their 15 credit cards, life is good. Ignorance is bliss.

The debate regarding whether markets should be allowed to correct themselves or be saved by the authorities has transcended the centuries. Kindleberger poses the dilemma succinctly:

“There is of course much truth in these contentions, and some danger in coming to the rescue of the market to halt a panic too soon, too frequently, too predictably, or even on occasion at all. The opposing view concedes that it is desirable to purge the system of bubbles and manic investment but that a deflationary panic runs the risk of spreading and wiping out sound investments that may not be able to obtain the loans necessary to ensure survival.” – Charles P. Kindleberger – Manias, Panics, and Crashes

The lack of historical understanding and politically correct education doled out in public schools perpetuates the myth that Herbert Hoover was a do nothing non-interventionist that allowed the Great Depression to worsen because he refused to intervene. The truth is that FDR just continued and expanded upon the massive intervention begun by Hoover. It was Hoover, not Roosevelt, who commenced the policy of piling up huge deficits to support massive public-works projects. After declining or holding steady through most of the 1920s, federal spending soared between 1929 and 1932, increasing by more than 50%, the biggest increase in federal spending ever recorded during peacetime. Public projects undertaken by Hoover included the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the Los Angeles Aqueduct, and Hoover Dam. His description of the advice of his Treasury Secretary has been passed down to the ignorant masses as his actual policy. But it’s another false storyline propagated by the mainstream media.

“The leave-it-alone liquidationists headed by Secretary of Treasury Mellon felt that government must keep its hands off and let the slump liquidate itself. Mr. Mellon had only one formula: ‘Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.’ He insisted that, when the people get an inflationary brainstorm, the only way to get it out of their blood is to let it collapse. He held that even panic was not altogether a bad thing. He said: ‘It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.” – Herbert Hoover

In retrospect, Andrew Mellon’s advice, if followed, would have resulted in a short violent collapse, with a true recovery within a year or two (aka Iceland). This exact scenario had played out over the prior three centuries, as detailed by Kindleberger. The monetary intervention, tariffs, mal-investments, price controls, intimidation of businesses, and overall interference in the markets kept a true recovery from happening. Unemployment was still 19% in 1938, after years of stimulus. It wasn’t until 1946 that the U.S. economy started a real recovery, and that was due in part to the rest of the world being left in a smoldering ruin.

Based on the catastrophic results over the last hundred years, you would think the non-interventionist view on markets would be gaining traction. But, the interventionists gain even more power as they propose and implement more resolutions to the disasters they created with their previous solutions. The belief in the wisdom and ability of a few men to control the levers of a $70 trillion world economy for the good of the many is staggering in its naivety and basis in delusion. “Experts” can barely predict tomorrow’s weather, this month’s unemployment rate, the value of Facebook stock, or the next $5 billion snafu from the Prince of Wall Street – Jamie Dimon. But, we trust that Ben Bernanke, his fellow central bankers, and bunch of political hacks like Geithner know how to micro-manage the world economy.

Kindleberger understood exactly the risks in having an institutionalized lender of last resort:

“One objection to helping either the borrowing banks and industry or lending to capitalists abroad was that it made both less prudent. In the insurance area this effect is called “moral hazard.” It is a strong argument for letting a financial crisis recover by itself, provided one is willing to take a long term view and worry equally, or almost equally, about a future financial crisis, as opposed to the present one. It requires a low rate of interest for trouble.” – Charles P. Kindleberger – Manias, Panics, and Crashes

And there is the rub. It is a rare case when faced with an immediate crisis that a leader will step back and assess the long-term implications of the short-term solutions which will avert or delay the crisis at hand. The present-day economic situation around the world is a result of no one ever worrying about a future financial crisis, because it was never a good time to bite the bullet and accept the consequences of our mistakes and failures. The solution for the last thirty years has been to kick the can down the road. This is how you end up with $100 trillion of unfunded liabilities, with the bill being passed on to future unborn generations.

When you combine this lack of leadership, courage and forethought with the fact that Federal Reserve governors are appointed by partisan political hacks, you produce a deadly potion for the trusting American populace. You end up with spineless weasels like Arthur Burns, who was bullied into easy money policies by Trick Dick Nixon, with the result being out of control inflation and a stagnating economy for ten years. You end up with a once staunch proponent of a currency backed by gold – Greenspan – turning into a tool for the Wall Street elite and rescuing them from their folly and extreme risk taking with other people’s money. You get a former Bush White House toady like Bernanke whose only solution to every problem is to fire up the helicopter and drop gobs of cash into the clutches of his Wall Street puppeteers. Whenever human nature is allowed to interfere with and tinker with the free market economic process, miscalculation, error, over-confidence, desire to please, self-interest, greed, and hubris lead to disaster.

Those who scorn the notion of a currency backed by gold are believers in the false premise that highly educated arrogant men are smarter than the markets and are capable of making the right decisions that will benefit the most people. These are the same people who prefer the actual results since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971 to be obscured, miss-represented and ignored. In 1971 total credit market debt outstanding was $1.7 trillion. Today it stands at $54.6 trillion, a 3,200% increase in the 40 years since there were no longer immediate consequences for politicians over-promising, Wall Street over-lending, consumers over-borrowing and central bankers over-printing.

The GDP of the U.S. was $1.1 trillion in 1971, with consumer spending only accounting for 62% and capital investment accounting for 16%. Today, GDP is $15.6 trillion with consumer spending accounting for 71% and capital investment only 12%. Trade surpluses of the early 1970s are now $600 billion annual deficits. Total debt to GDP has surged from 155% in 1971 to 350% today. The illusion of prosperity has been built on a mountain of debt with an avalanche imminent.

The truth is that human beings cannot be trusted to do the right thing. We are weak and susceptible to irrational and short-term thinking that now imperil our entire economic system. Did the gold standard prevent booms and busts prior to 1913? No. Since we are human, booms and busts cannot be prevented. Did the gold standard prevent politicians and bankers from making foolish self-serving short-term decisions that would have long-term negative consequences? Yes. A currency backed by nothing but the hollow promises of liars, swindlers and racketeers is destined to fail. Gold functioned as an alarm bell that revealed the machinations and frauds of politicians and bankers. It can be trusted because it has no ulterior motives, no ego, no desire to be loved, and no plans to run for re-election. It is an inconvenient check on do-gooders, warmongers, inflationists, and Keynesians. That is why it will never be embraced by either party or any central banker. It’s too truthful.

Kindleberger’s fears regarding the moral hazard of rescuing those who have taken excessive risk have been fully realized ten times over. The maestro – Alan Greenspan – should have his picture next to the term moral hazard in the dictionary. His entire reign as savior of American crony capitalism was marked by his intervention in markets to protect his bosses on Wall Street. His solution to every crisis was to lower interest rates and print mo money: 1987 Crash, Savings & Loan crisis, Gulf war, Mexican crisis, Asian crisis, LTCM, Y2K, bursting of internet bubble, 9/11. The Greenspan Put guaranteed the Federal Reserve would always come to the rescue with unlimited liquidity to prop up stock prices. Investors increasingly believed that in a crisis or downturn, the Fed would step in and inject liquidity until the problem got better. Invariably, the Fed did so each time, and the perception became firmly embedded in asset pricing in the form of higher valuations, narrower credit spreads, and excess risk taking. The privatizing of profits and socialization of losses continued and accelerated under Bernanke. These helicopter twins talked a good game, but their game plan only had one play – print money. Those Ivy League educations have proven to be invaluable.

The Federal Reserve’s last shred of credibility and illusion of independence has been obliterated by their increasingly blatant backstopping of recklessly criminal Wall Street banks and secretive machinations with Washington politicians and foreign central bankers. Bernanke has lied to the American public, encouraged accounting fraud by Wall Street banks, overstepped his legal authority in purchasing toxic assets from Wall Street banks, been involved in the manipulation of LIBOR, screwed senior citizens and all savers with his zero interest rate policy, and used quantitative easing as a method enrich Wall Street at the expense of the general public that bear the heaviest burden of higher food and energy prices. The Bernanke Put is the only thing keeping a clearly overvalued stock market from crashing today. But delaying the inevitable through easy money policies will only exacerbate the pain of the ultimate crash. Bernanke is caught in a liquidity trap and his one weapon of choice is shooting blanks. Bernanke along with his banker and politician cronies have crossed the line of lawlessness in their futile efforts to retain their power and wealth. Jesse eloquently describes how a few evil men have captured our economic and political system:

“The Fed is now engaged in a control fraud, and what appears to be racketeering in conjunction with a few big investment banks. They may have entered into it with good intentions, but they seem to have been turned towards deceit and corruption. This is not an historical event, but an ongoing theft in conjunction with a number of Wall Street banks, and politicians whom they have paid off through a corrupt system of campaign financing and influence peddling. This is nothing new in history if one reads the un-sanitized version. But people never think it can happen today, that somehow yesterday things were different, as if one is looking at some distant, foreign land. This is a facet of the illusion of general progress.

We are now in the cover-up stage of a scandal, similar to Watergate when the White House was stone-walling. The difference is that the corruption and capture of the government is much more pervasive now, and includes a significant portion of the mainstream media, so meaningful reform is difficult. Most of what has transpired so far has been designed to distract and placate the people in their righteous anger. The Fed deceives the Congress and the public, turns a blind eye to glaring conflicts of interest, and is essentially debasing the currency while transferring the wealth of the nation to their cronies. And still the regulators do not enforce the laws they have, and Washington drags its feet while accepting buckets of cash from the perpetrators.” – Jesse

Putting our trust and faith in a few unelected bureaucrats and bankers, who use their obscene wealth to buy off politicians in writing the laws and regulations to favor them has proven to be a death knell for our country. The captured main stream media proclaims these men to be heroes and saviors of the world, when they are truly the villains in this episode. These are the men who unleashed the frenzy of Wall Street greed and pillaging by repealing Glass Steagall, blocking Brooksley Born’s efforts to regulate derivatives, encouraging mortgage fraud, not enforcing existing regulations, and creating speculative bubbles through excessively low interest rates and making it known they would bailout recklessness. They have created an overly complex tangled financial system so they could peddle propaganda to the math challenged American public without fear of being caught in their web of lies. Big government, big banks and big legislation like Dodd/Frank and Obamacare are designed to benefit the few at the expense of the many. The system has been captured by a plutocracy of self-serving men. They don’t care about you or your children. We are only given 80 years, or so, on this earth and our purpose should be to sustain our economic and political system in a balanced way, so our children and their children have a chance at a decent life. Do you trust that is the purpose of those in power today? Should we trust the jackals and grifters who got us into this mess, to get us out?

 

“This story is the ultimate example of American’s biggest political problem. We no longer have the attention span to deal with any twenty-first century crisis. We live in an economy that is immensely complex and we are completely at the mercy of the small group of people who understand it – who incidentally often happen to be the same people who built these wildly complex economic systems. We have to trust these people to do the right thing, but we can’t, because, well, they’re scum. Which is kind of a big problem, when you think about it.” – Matt Taibbi – Griftopia

Thus concludes Part 2 of my three part series on trust. Part 1 addressed our bubble based economic system and Part 3 will document a multitude of reasons to not trust bankers, politicians, government bureaucrats, corporate chieftains, or the mainstream media, while pondering the unavoidable bursting of our debt bubble and potential consequences.

order non hybrid seeds

RECESSION GENERATION

The talking heads predicting an ongoing housing market recovery are just blowing smoke. Critical thinking isn’t in their repertoire. You’ve got this younger generation with mountains of student loan debt and either no jobs or crap jobs. They don’t have the money to buy houses. You have the Boomers who are living in 5,000 sq ft McMansions after their kids have flown the coup. They want to trade down, but there are no suckers willing to buy their montrosities. You have the middle aged people with little or no equity in their houses, so they can’t do jack shit.

And you have the unintended consequences of Ben Bernanke’s zero interest rate policy. Millions of people have refinanced their homes at below 5% interest rates. Just the slightest rise in mortgage rates and the entire market will come to standstill. Who will sell their existing house with a 4% mortgage rate and have to pay 5% for a newer higher priced house? Ben has created a long term problem with his short term solution. What a surprise.

The recession generation is also the screwed generation. By the way, here’s the $16 trillion current bill and the $100 trillion future bill. Credit cards are accepted.

 

Recession Generation Opts to Rent Not Buy Houses to Cars

By Caroline Fairchild – Aug 8, 2012

The day Michael Anselmo signed a lease on his first apartment in New York City, he lost his job at Buck Consultants LLC. He spent about 10 months struggling to pay rent with unemployment benefits. Two years later he’s still hesitant to buy a home or even a road bike.

“Every decision that I have made since I lost my job has been colored by that insecurity I feel about the future,” said Anselmo, 28, who now rents an apartment in Austin, Texas, and works as a consultant for UnitedHealth Group Inc. “Buying a house is just further out on the timeline for me than it used to be.”

Anselmo and many of his peers are wary about making large purchases after entering adulthood in the deepest recession and weakest recovery since World War II. Confronting a jobless rate above 8 percent since 2009 and student-loan debt hitting about $1 trillion, 20-to-34-year-olds are renting apartments, cars and even clothing to save money and stay flexible.

As the Great Depression shaped the attitudes of a generation from 1929 until the early years of World War II, so have the financial crisis and its aftermath affected the outlook of young consumers like Anselmo, said Cliff Zukin, a professor of public policy and political science at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey.

Recession Effects

“This is a generation that is scared of commitment, wants to be light on their feet and needs to adjust to whatever happens,” said Zukin, who’s researched the effects of the recession on recent college graduates. “What once was seen as a solid investment, like a house or a car, is now seen as a ball and chain with a lot of risk to it.”

One key difference is that technology now allows companies to provide younger consumers access to what they want, when they want it and at a reduced cost, said Paco Underhill, founder of New York-based consumer-behavior research and consulting firm Envirosell.

“Renting is something that is in play that wasn’t in play during the Great Depression,” he said. “To a modern generation, ownership isn’t about having it forever, it is about having it when you need to have it,” said Underhill, who has studied shopper behavior.

Hourly Rental

Enterprise Holdings Inc. and Hertz Global Holdings Inc. (HTZ) are expanding in what the Santa Monica, California-based research firm IBISWorld estimates to be the $1.8 billion hourly car- rental business, a segment dominated by younger drivers and made popular by Zipcar Inc. (ZIP) Startups such as Rent the Runway Inc. are supplying high-fashion apparel to satisfy those who want to wear, not own. CORT, a unit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), is increasing its furniture-rental marketing efforts to college students and fledgling households, said Mark Koepsell, CORT’s senior vice president.

“Renting makes a lot of sense,” said David Blanchflower, professor of economics at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and a Bloomberg Television contributing editor. “They have no money and they are not buying fridges and they are not buying the things they normally buy when they set up homes. Their incomes are a lot lower.”

College Graduates

College graduates earned less coming out of the recession, according to a May study by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers. Those graduating during 2009 to 2011 earned a median salary in their starting job $3,000 less than the $30,000 seen in 2007. The majority of students owed $20,000 to pay off their education, and 40 percent of the 444 college graduates surveyed said their loan debt is causing them to delay major purchases such as a house or a car. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in March it appeared student loans had reached $1 trillion “several months” earlier.

The U.S. economy shrank 4.7 percent from December 2007 to June 2009, making it the deepest and longest slump in the post- war era. In the three years since the recession ended, the economy has expanded 6.7 percent, the weakest recovery since World War II.

Even as the housing market shows some signs of revival, the slow pace of recovery is keeping the younger generation fearful of investments rather than confident about building wealth for the future, said Jeffrey Lubell, executive director for the Center for Housing Policy, based in Washington. First-time home buyers in 2011 accounted for the smallest percentage of the total since 2006, according to the National Association of Realtors. The vacancy rate of U.S. rental properties is at its lowest level since 2002.

Shifting Attitudes

The shifting attitudes also pose a threat to retail sales, said Candace Corlett, president of New York-based retail- strategy firm WSL Strategic Retail. Younger consumers are already comfortable buying used items and borrowing from friends. Renting will only reinforce their tendency not to buy new.

“In a post-recession economy where retailers are trying to make every shopper count, it’s the wrong direction,” she said. Retail sales fell in June for a third consecutive month, the longest period of declines since 2008.

The by-the-hour segment accounts for about 6 percent of the $30.5 billion U.S. car-rental market, a share that is forecast to rise to about 10 percent in five years, according to IBISWorld.

Enterprise’s Customers

St. Louis-based Enterprise, the largest U.S. car-rental company, expanded in the segment in May by acquiring Mint Cars On-Demand, an hourly car-rental firm with locations in New York and Boston. Half of Enterprise’s customers in this segment are under 35, according to company spokeswoman Laura Bryant.

Hertz, which began renting cars by the hour in 2008, plans to equip its entire 375,000-vehicle U.S. fleet with the technology for hourly rental within about a year, said Richard Broome, senior vice president of corporate affairs and communications for the Park Ridge, New Jersey-based company.

“It made sense to reach the younger demographic to get involved in car sharing,” Broome said. Those 34 and younger make up 84 percent of Hertz’s by-the-hour customer base, he said. “The higher costs of insurance, the higher costs of fuel, the economics would lead someone to conclude that it’s a better decision to rent the car or do car sharing than it is to own a car.”

Zipcar, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company that joined the market segment in 2000, says it now has about 731,000 members and more than 11,000 vehicles worldwide. More than half of Zipcar’s customers are under 35, said Mark Norman, the company’s president and chief operating officer.

Formal Wear

“Whether it’s movies by the month, music by the song or formal wear by the occasion, all of those are a smarter way to think about consumption, and Zipcar fits into that really well,” he said. Zipcar’s shares have dropped 43 percent this year under the threat of the new competition.

While sales of new cars are rebounding, 18-to-34-year-olds accounted for 11.8 percent of vehicle registrations for new cars in the five months through May, compared with 16.5 percent in May 2007, according to data from R.L. Polk & Co., an auto- industry research company based in Southfield, Michigan.

Jared Fruchtman, 25, said using Zipcar gives him about $600 more a month to spend on dinners out, cab rides and trips on the weekends.

“It wasn’t financially worthwhile to buy or lease a car right now,” said Fruchtman, who is studying to be a certified public accountant and lives with his girlfriend in a rented apartment in San Francisco.

“I never considered buying,” he said. “It didn’t make sense to tie ourselves down right now.”

High Fashion

That attitude extends to clothes. Rent the Runway, a website that offers high-fashion gowns and other couture for around 10 percent of the purchase price, is also targeting younger consumers. President Jennifer Fleiss, 28, said its business model is “almost recession proof.” Since its start in 2009, the company has grown to about 3 million online members and is adding approximately 100,000 per month. In May 2011, the New York-based company raised $15 million in venture capital from outside investors, said Fleiss. Rent the Runway members typically range from 15 to 35 years old, she said.

Lindsay Abrams, 22, started working in 2009 as an on-campus representative at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, one of 175 colleges with company-sponsored teams to drive brand awareness.

Important Part

“The recession has been an important part of Rent the Runway’s popularity,” said Abrams, who has rented about 15 dresses and is now a customer communications associate for the company. “For people my age, the new thing is renting versus buying. It is a great way to save money.”

Furniture companies are also getting in on the act. Chantilly, Virginia-based CORT, the world’s largest provider of rental furniture, boosted its efforts in 2009 to reach college students and younger customers.

Koepsell, the senior vice president, said the company was “foolish” not to aim for the market earlier. Last year, CORT provided furniture to about 15,000 students and predicts that number will grow to 25,000 this year.

Among CORT’s customers is Michael Ferraiolo, a 20-year-old senior at Virginia Tech, who pays $198 monthly for everything from beds to a coffee table to furnish the rented townhouse he shares with two roommates in Blacksburg, Virginia.

“With the job market such an uncertainty, none of us know where they are going to end up,” Ferraiolo said. “Now, more than ever, you see people moving around in different job markets all throughout their career. We just don’t know what to expect.”

Shifting attitudes about larger purchases aren’t the only reason preventing young consumers from buying. Stricter lending practices and higher requirements for down payments on houses and cars are crowding out buyers, Blanchflower, the Dartmouth economist, said.

Build Wealth

For those who choose to rent not buy, there’s a price to pay, said Lubell of the Center for Housing Policy. By foregoing purchases of assets like homes, young people are giving up on a chance to build wealth, he said.

“What you are seeing is a delay in all the kinds of decisions that require a long-term financially stable future,” Lubell said. “That’s home purchases, that’s marriage and that’s having kids.”

Anselmo, the health consultant who rents an apartment in Austin, Texas, says he understands such arguments. Even so, he can’t bring himself to buy a house.

“The logical person in me gets pissed off when I write a check every month and it just goes down the drain,” he said. “But we are very hesitant.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Caroline Fairchild in Washington at [email protected]

LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR SOME

Remember the immortal words of George Carlin: “They don’t give a fuck about you.”

 

Fed and Treasury Irate at NY Bank Regulator’s Vulgar Display of Public Diligence with Standard Chartered

 
 

The NY Banking regulators clearly do not understand the regulatory ‘hands off’ philosophy of Treasury and the Fed towards the pampered princes of finance and the privileged few.

This was supposed to have been privately settled amongst gentlemen with a gentle wristslap and a thorough coverup.

And of course this exposes the Federal government and their financerati as utter hypocrites, especially when they are stoking the fires of conflict.

Only the little people are meant to suffer for their country. For the favored few, everything is just another law-bending, money making opportunity.

Some of the wording in this is priceless, especially considering the extent of what the Bank had done and with whom.

I won’t be holding my breath for the US regulators to clean up their own manipulated markets and privileged insiders. It might muss someone’s ruffled sleeves and Presidential cufflinks.

Liberty and justice — for some.

Reuters
Exclusive: Regulators irate at NY action against StanChart
By Carrick Mollenkamp and Emily Flitter and Karen Freifeld
August 8, 2012

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) – The Treasury Department and Federal Reserve were blindsided and angered by New York’s banking regulator’s decision to launch an explosive attack on Standard Chartered Plc over $250 billion in alleged money laundering transactions tied to Iran, sources familiar with the situation said.

By going it alone through the order he issued on Monday, Benjamin Lawsky, head of the recently created New York State Department of Financial Services, also complicates talks between the Treasury and London-based Standard Chartered to settle claims over the transactions, several of the sources said.

Lawsky’s stunning move, which included releasing embarrassing communications and details of the bank’s alleged defiance of U.S. sanctions against Iran, is rewriting the playbook on how foreign banks settle cases involving the processing of shadowy funds tied to sanctioned countries.

In the past, such cases have usually been settled through negotiation – with public shaming kept to a minimum.

In his order, Lawsky said Standard Chartered’s dealings exposed the U.S. banking system to terrorists, drug traffickers and corrupt states.

But the upset expressed by some federal officials, who were given virtually no notice of the New York move, may provide ammunition for Standard Chartered to portray the allegations as coming from a relatively new and over-zealous regulator…

Read the rest here.

 
Posted by Jesse

IT’S A MATTER OF TRUST – PART ONE

“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.” ― J.M. Barrie – Peter Pan

     

“The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.” – Lord Acton

Who do you trust? Do you trust the President? Do you trust Congress? Do you trust the Treasury Secretary? Do you trust the Federal Reserve? Do you trust the Supreme Court? Do you trust the Military Industrial Complex? Do you trust Wall Street bankers? Do you trust the SEC? Do you trust any government agency or regulator? Do you trust the corporate mainstream media? Do you trust Washington think tanks? Do you trust Madison Avenue PR maggots? Do you trust PACs? Do you trust lobbyists? Do you trust government unions? Do you trust the National Association of Realtors? Do you trust mega-corporation CEOs? Do you trust economists? Do you trust billionaires? Do you trust some anonymous blogger? You can’t even trust your parish priest or college football coach anymore. A civilized society cannot function without trust. The downward spiral of trust enveloping the world is destroying our global economy and will lead to collapse, chaos and bloodshed. The major blame for this crisis sits squarely on the shoulders of crony capitalists that rule our country, but the willful ignorance and lack of civic accountability from the general population has contributed to this impending calamity. Those in control won’t reveal the truth and the populace don’t want to know the truth – a match made in heaven – or hell.

“Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.” – Aldous Huxley

The fact that 86% of American adults have never heard of Jamie Dimon should suffice as proof regarding the all-encompassing level of ignorance in this country. As the world staggers under the unbearable weight of debt built up over decades, to fund a fantasyland dream of McMansions, luxury automobiles, iGadgets, 3D HDTVs, exotic vacations, bling, government provided pensions, free healthcare that makes us sicker, welfare for the needy and the greedy, free education that makes us dumber, and endless wars of choice, the realization that this debt financed Ponzi scheme was nothing but a handful of pixie dust sprinkled by corrupt politicians and criminal bankers across the globe is beginning to set in. A law abiding society that is supposed to be based on principles of free market capitalism must function in a lawful manner, with the participants being able to trust the parties they do business with. When trust in politicians, regulators, corporate leaders and bankers dissipates, anarchy, lawlessness, unscrupulous greed, looting, pillaging and eventually crisis and panic engulf the system.

Our myopic egocentric view of the world keeps most from seeing the truth. Our entire financial system has been corrupted and captured by a small cabal of rich, powerful, and prominent men. It is as it always has been. History is filled with previous episodes of debt fueled manias, initiated by bankers and politicians that led to booms, fraud, panic, and ultimately crashes. The vast swath of Americans has no interest in history, financial matters or anything that requires critical thinking skills. They are focused on the latest tweet from Kim Kardashian about her impending nuptials to Kanye West, the latest rumors about the next American Idol judge or the Twilight cheating scandal.

Bubble, Bubble, Toil & Trouble

Economist and historian Charles P. Kindleberger in his brilliant treatise Manias, Panics, and Crashes details the sordid history of unwitting delusional peasants being swindled by bankers and politicians throughout the ages. Human beings have proven time after time they do not act rationally, obliterating the economic teachings of our most prestigious business schools about rational expectations theory and efficient markets. The only thing efficient about our markets is the speed at which the sheep are butchered by the Wall Street slaughterhouse. If humanity was rational there would be no booms, no busts and no opportunity for the Corzines, Madoffs, and Dimons of the world to swindle the trusting multitudes. The collapse of a boom always reveals the frauds and swindlers. As the tide subsides, you find out who was swimming naked.

“The propensity to swindle grows parallel with the propensity to speculate during a boom… the implosion of an asset price bubble always leads to the discovery of frauds and swindles”— Charles P. Kindleberger, economic historian

The historically challenged hubristic people of America always think their present-day circumstances are novel and unique to their realm, when history is wrought with similar manias, panics, crashes and criminality. Kindleberger details 38 previous financial crises since 1618 in his book, including:

  • The Dutch tulip bulb mania
  • The South Sea bubble
  • John Law Mississippi Company bubble
  • Banking crisis of 1837
  • Panic of 1857
  • Panic of 1873
  • Panic of 1907 – used as excuse for creation of Federal Reserve
  • Great Crash of 1929
  • Oil Shock of 1974-75
  • Asian Crisis of 1998

Kindleberger wrote his book in 1978 and had to update it three more times to capture the latest and greatest booms and busts. His last edition was published in 2000. He died in 2003. Sadly, he missed being able to document two of the biggest manias in history – the Internet bubble that burst in 2001 and the housing/debt bubble that continues to plague the world today. Every generation egotistically considered their crisis to be the worst of all-time as seen from quotes at the time:

  • 1837: “One of the most disastrous panics this nation ever experienced.”
  • 1857: “Crisis of 1857 the most severe that England or any other nations has ever encountered.”
  • 1873: “In 56 years, no such protracted crisis.”
  • 1929: “The greatest of speculative boom and collapse in modern times – since, in fact, the South Sea Bubble.”

Human beings have not changed over the centuries. We are a flawed species, prone to emotional outbursts, irrational behavior, alternately driven by greed and fear, with a dose of delusional thinking and always hoping for the best. These flaws will always reveal themselves because even though times change, human nature doesn’t. The cyclical nature of history is a reflection of our human foibles and flaws. The love of money, power, and status has been the driving force behind every boom and bust in history, as noted by historian Niall Ferguson.

“If the financial system has a defect, it is that it reflects and magnifies what we human beings are like. Money amplifies our tendency to overreact, to swing from exuberance when things are going well to deep depression when they go wrong. Booms and busts are products, at root, of our emotional volatility.” –  Niall Ferguson

Not only are our recent booms and busts not unique, but they have a common theme with all previous busts – greedy bankers, excessive debt, non-enforcement of regulations, corrupt public officials, rampant fraud, and unwitting dupes seeking easy riches. Those in the know use their connections and influence to capture the early profits during a boom, while working the masses into frenzy and providing the excessive leverage that ultimately leads to the inevitable collapse. As the bubble grows, rationality is thrown out the window and all manner of excuses and storylines are peddled to the gullible suckers to keep them buying. Nothing so emasculates your financial acumen as the sight of your next door neighbor or moronic brother-in-law getting rich. As long as all the participants believe the big lie, the bubble can inflate. As soon as doubt and mistrust enter the picture, someone calls a loan or refuses to be the greater fool, and panic ensues. This is when the curtain is pulled back on the malfeasance, frauds, deceptions and scams committed by those who engineered the boom to their advantage. As Kindleberger notes, every boom ends in the same way.

“What matters to us is the revelation of the swindle, fraud, or defalcation. This makes known to the world that things have not been as they should have been, that it is time to stop and see how they truly are. The making known of malfeasance, whether by the arrest or surrender of the miscreant, or by one of those other forms of confession, flight or suicide, is important as a signal that the euphoria has been overdone. The stage of overtrading may well come to an end. The curtain rises on revulsion, and perhaps discredit.” – Charles P. Kindleberger – Manias, Panics, and Crashes

When mainstream economists examine bubbles, manias and crashes they generally concentrate on short-term bubbles that last a few years. But some bubbles go on for decades and some busts have lasted for a century. The largest bubble in world history continues to inflate at a rate of $3.8 billion per day and has now expanded to epic bubble proportions of $15.92 trillion, up from $9.65 trillion in September 2008 when this current Wall Street manufactured crisis struck. A 65% increase in the National Debt in less than four years can certainly be classified as a bubble. We are currently in the mania blow off phase of this bubble, but it began to inflate forty years ago when Nixon closed the gold window. This unleashed the two headed monster of politicians buying votes with promises of unlimited entitlements for the many, tax breaks for the connected few and pork projects funneled to cronies, all funded through the issuance of an unlimited supply of fiat currency by a secretive cabal of central bankers running a private bank for the benefit of other bankers and their politician puppets. Crony capitalism began to hit its stride after 1971.

The apologists for the status quo, which include the corporate mainstream media, intellectually dishonest economist clowns like Krugman, Kudlow, Leisman, and Yun, ideologically dishonest think tanks funded by billionaires, and corrupt politicians of both stripes, peddle the storyline that a national debt of 102% of GDP, up from 57% in 2000, is not a threat to our future prosperity, unborn generations or the very continuance of our economic system. They use the current historically low interest rates as proof this Himalayan Mountain of debt is not a problem. Of course it is a matter of trust and faith in the ability of a few ultra-wealthy, sociopathic, Ivy League educated egomaniacs that their brilliance and deep understanding of economics that will see us through this little rough patch. The wisdom and brilliance of Ben Bernanke is unquestioned. Just because he missed a three standard deviation bubble in housing and didn’t even foresee a recession during 2008, doesn’t mean his zero interest rate/screw grandma policy won’t work this time. It’s done wonders for Wall Street bonus payouts.

The growth of this debt bubble is unsustainable, as it is on track to breach $20 trillion in 2015. The only thing keeping interest rates low is coordinated manipulation by Ben and his fellow sociopathic central bankers, the insolvent too big to fail banks using derivative weapons of mass destruction, and politicians desperately attempting to keep the worldwide debt Ponzi scheme from imploding on their watch. Their “solution” is to kick the can down the road. But there is a slight problem. The road eventually ends.

At some point a grain of sand will descend upon a finger of instability in the sand pile and cause a collapse. No one knows which grain of sand will trigger the crisis of confidence and loss of trust. But with a system run by thieves, miscreants, and scoundrels, one of these villains will do something dastardly and the collapse will ensue. Ponzi schemes can only be sustained as long as there are enough new victims to keep it going. As soon as uncertainty, suspicion, fear and rational thinking enter the equation, the gig is up. Kindleberger lays out the standard scenario, as it has happened numerous times throughout history.

“Causa remota of the crisis is speculation and extended credit; causa proxima is some incident that snaps the confidence of the system, makes people think of the dangers of failure, and leads them to move from commodities, stocks, real estate, bills of exchange, promissory notes, foreign exchange – whatever it may be – back into cash. In itself, causa proxima may be trivial: a bankruptcy, suicide, a flight, a revelation, a refusal of credit to some borrower, some change of view that leads a significant actor to unload. Prices fall. Expectations are reversed. The movement picks up speed. To the extent that speculators are leveraged with borrowed money, the decline in prices leads to further calls on them for margin or cash and to further liquidation. As prices fall further, bank loans turn sour, and one or more mercantile houses, banks, discount houses, or brokerages fail. The credit system itself appears shaky, and the race for liquidity is on.” – Charles P. Kindleberger – Manias, Panics, and Crashes

Despite centuries of proof that human nature will never change, there are always people (usually highly educated) who think they are smart enough to fix the markets when they breakdown and create institutions, regulations and mechanisms that will prevent manias, panics and crashes. These people inevitably end up in government, central banks and regulatory agencies. Their huge egos and desire to be seen as saviors lead to ideas that exacerbate the booms, create the panic and prolong the crashes. They refuse to believe the world is too complex, interconnected and unpredictable for their imagined ideas of controlling the levers of economic markets to have a chance of success. The reality is that an accident may precipitate a crisis, but so may action designed to prevent a crisis or action by these masters of the universe taken in pursuit of other objectives. Examining the historical record of booms and busts yields some basic truths. The boom and bust business cycle is the inevitable consequence of excessive growth in bank credit, exacerbated by inherently damaging and ineffective central bank policies, which cause interest rates to remain too low for too long, resulting in excessive credit creation, speculative economic bubbles and lowered savings.

Low interest rates tend to stimulate borrowing from the banking system. This expansion of credit causes an expansion of the supply of money through the money creation process in our fractional reserve banking system. This leads to an unsustainable credit-sourced boom during which the artificially stimulated borrowing seeks out diminishing investment opportunities. The easy credit issued to non-credit worthy borrowers results in widespread mal-investments and fraud. A credit crunch leading to a bust occurs when exponential credit creation cannot be sustained. Then the money supply suddenly and sharply contracts as fear and loathing of debt replace greed and worship of debt. In theory, markets should clear through liquidation of bad debts, bankruptcy of over-indebted companies and the failure of banks that made bad loans. Sanity is restored to the marketplace through failure, allowing resources to be reallocated back towards more efficient uses. The housing boom and bust from 2000 through today perfectly illustrates this process. Of course, Bernanke declared housing to be on solid footing in 2007.

The housing market has not been allowed to clear, as Bernanke has artificially kept interest rates low, government programs have created false demand, and bankers have shifted their bad loans onto the backs of the American taxpayer while using fraudulent accounting to pretend they are solvent. Our owners are frantically attempting to re-inflate the bubble, just as they did in 2003. Our deepest thinkers, like Greenspan, Krugman, Bush, Dodd, and Frank knew we needed a new bubble after the Internet bubble blew up in their faces and did everything in their considerable power to create the first housing bubble. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

Human nature hasn’t changed in centuries. We have faith that humanity has progressed, but the facts prove otherwise. We are a species susceptible to the passions of power, greed, delusion, and an inflated sense of our own intellectual superiority. And we still like to kill each other in the name of country and honor. There is nothing progressive about crashing the worldwide economic system and invading countries for “our” oil.

History has taught that there will forever be manias, bubbles and the subsequent busts, but how those in power deal with these episodes has been and will be the determining factor in the future of our economic system and country.

Humanity is deeply flawed; the average human life is around 80 years; men of stature, wealth, over-confidence in their superior intellect, and egotistical desire to leave their mark on history, always rise to power in government and the business world; this is why history follows a cyclical path and the myth of human progress is just a fallacy.

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that History has to teach” – Aldous Huxley

In Part 2 of this three part series I will examine the one hundred year experiment of trusting a small cabal of non-elected bankers to manage and guide our economic system for the benefit of the American people.

 

 

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GoldMoney. The best way to buy gold & silver

 

2012 ELECTION – NEIL HOWE STYLE

Neil puts the 2012 election into a generational perspective. If you are looking for Neil to pick a winner, read no further. He’s an academic at heart and never tells you what he thinks will happen. But, he supplies plenty of data for you to make up your mind. Based on his breakdown of voters by generation it seems that the Millenials will decide this election. They are still strongly in Obama’s camp, but their enthusiasm for Obama has waned. If they don’t vote in significant numbers or if Romney can split the young white vote, the election would go to Romney. The old farts are strongly in Romney’s corner. GenX is split down the middle. The yuuts will decide this election.

Pundits have long been predicting that the presidential election will be much closer and much meaner in 2012 than it was in 2008.  Closer it now is.  According to the RCP Poll Average, the race is now a virtual tie: Incumbent Obama now leads by a mere 1.8 percent over Romney, whereas challenger Obama led McCain by 7.6 percent exactly four years ago.  It will certainly revolve around a very different array of issues—much less argument about the war on terror and GOP performance, and a lot more about the stagnating economy and Democratic performance.

In one respect, however, the next election will be a replay of the last: There will be a historically large divide in the preferences of younger voters (under 30) versus older voters (65+).  In 2008, this divide (21 percentage points) was wider than in any election since the advent of age-bracketed voting data in the 1960s.  The second-biggest divide (16 percentage points) was back in 1972, when nearly half of all young voters voted for McGovern while older voters went overwhelmingly for Nixon.

 

I’ve been tracking generational leanings in the polls pretty carefully.  The Pew Research Center has issued several reports (most notably, The Generation Gap and the 2012 Election) exploring this divide, and Time followed up with its own cover story (“The New Generation Gap”).  More recently, Mike and Morley, Forbes, The New York Times, and many others have also weighed in.

Bottom line: Every generation is today a bit more favorable toward Obama than they were in 2010 and a good deal less favorable than in 2008.  The partisan gap between the Democrat-leaning young and the Republican-leaning old, however, remains as strong as ever—at around 20 percent.

Back in 2008, the big story was how and why today’s rising Millennial Generation voted by a large and decisive margin for the Democrats.  This fall, the media focus may shift.  The big story could be how and why today’s angry, aging Silent Generation put the Republicans over the top.  The relevant parallel here is 1972, when Nixon was able to split the young Boomer vote with McGovern—and then crush McGovern with all voters over age 30.  (Nixon’s popular margin in 1972, 23.2 percent of the electorate, is the fourth largest in U.S. history.)  Romney, of course, cannot hope for Nixon’s margin.  But the basic logic still stands.  Romney doesn’t have to win the youth vote; he just has to contain youth losses enough so that his huge advantage among older voters puts him ahead.

The 2012 election will hinge on the collective choices of five generations of voters, each with a different collective life story shaped by its own location in history.  Let’s take a look at how each of these stories is likely to determine the outcome.  (Throughout, I will borrow shamelessly from Pew’s wonderful cohort-tracking research and graphics.)

Because this piece turned out to be pretty long, I’m going to break it into two posts.  This post will look at the generations themselves.  The next will look beyond generations to the election outcome.

At the very elder edge of the electorate is the G.I. GENERATION, born between 1901-24. (Sample leaders: John Kennedy, LBJ, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Sr.) With its youngest members now age 87 and older, the G.I.s today comprise just 2 percent of likely voters.  Except during the late 1960s and 1970s, this “greatest generation” has always heavily favored the Democrats, having come of age as huge supporters of the “big government” presidency of FDR.  Indeed, in every election from 1994 to 2004, the peers of Jimmy Stewart were more likely than younger Americans to vote Democratic. [See the “Roosevelt” chart on this page from the Pew study.] Even in 2008, according to Gallup, Obama ran almost even with McCain among these overwhelmingly white 80+ voters—better than he did with any other age bracket over 40. Apparently, generation trumps age when it comes to racial bias. Prediction for G.I.s in 2012: slight edge (3 percent) to the Democrats.

Now let’s turn to the “young old.” Dominating the ranks of retirees is the SILENT GENERATION (born 1925-42, today age 69 to 86), comprising 13 percent of likely voters. (Sample leaders: Robert & Ted Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart, John McCain.) Coming of age during the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy presidencies, when Americans generally were voting Republican, the young, conformist Silent leaned more Republican than the rest. While the Silent produced nearly all of the most famous civil-rights leaders and “good government” reformers of the post-war era, they have never favored a strong executive (no Silent has ever been elected President) and have tended to return to their GOP roots as they have grown older.  In seven of the last nine elections, they have voted more heavily than other Americans for Republicans. [See the “Truman” and “Eisenhower” charts on this page.]

Since 2008, the Silent’s pro-GOP tendency has widened considerably, along with their unhappiness with the direction of the country. Polls show the Silent are upset not just because they are “angry” at government (they are twice as likely as Millennials to say this), but also because they are “uncomfortable” with positions they associate with younger Obama Democrats on issues such as immigration, marriage, homosexuality, religion, and the Internet. The Silent are the least-immigrant generation (per capita) in American history, and they grew up at a time when the rules of life were clear and simple. Today they are disoriented by the bewildering diversity of today’s younger generations, and they can’t figure out what the new rules are.

Most Silent recognize that are doing well economically compared to younger Americans. But they worry that America is losing its sense of exceptional “greatness” and gaining an addiction to endless public debt—faults they attribute more to Democrats than to Republicans. Many fear the nation is headed back toward the Hard Times they witnessed in their childhood. According to recent Gallup surveys, the Silent favor Romney by 14 percentage points. Prediction for the Silent in 2012: large margin (15 percent) to the Republicans.

Occupying midlife and already surging past age 65 is the BOOM GENERATION (born 1943-60, today age 51 to 68), today comprising 31 percent of likely voters. (Sample leaders: Bill & Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Condoleeza Rice.) Boomers came of age during the social and cultural upheavals that rocked America during the late ‘60s and ‘70s—giving them a fixation on vision and values that defines them even to this day as a generation of individualists and culture warriors (left versus right, “blue” versus “red”). As they grow older, Boomers increasingly call themselves “conservative,” but not necessarily Republican.

First-wave Boomers (today in their 60s) have more years of education than younger Boomers, have done better economically, vote more reliably, gravitate to humanist or mainstream churches, and vote more for Democrats. Last-wave Boomers (today in their 50s) experienced a rapid fall in SAT scores and college attendance, lag far behind first-wavers economically, vote less often, veer toward atheism or “born-again” evangelicalism, and vote more for Republicans. In recent elections, first-wave Boomers have tilted to the Democrats; their younger brothers and sisters have favored the GOP. [See the “Kennedy/Johnson,” “Nixon,” and “Ford/Carter” charts on this page.] In recent months, Gallup shows Boomers favoring Romney by about 5 percentage points. Prediction for the Boomers in 2012: medium edge (5 percent) to the Republicans, with red-leaning last-wavers slightly overpowering blue-leaning first-wavers.

Today’s emerging leaders and the parents of most school-age kids belong to GENERATION X (born 1961-81, today age 30 to 50). Gen Xers now comprise 35 percent of likely voters, a slightly larger share than Boomers.  Gen X’s share should be much larger, but their tendency to vote less often than older generations dilutes the impact of their raw numbers. (Sample leaders: Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Chris Christie, Kirsten Gillibrand, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal.) The left-alone children of the Consciousness Revolution who later came of age during an era that stressed free agency, personal ownership, and survivalism, Gen Xers have mixed feelings about the two parties. Xers like the social and cultural liberalism of Democrats (whatever “works for me” is perfect), but they also like the economic conservatism of the GOP (hey, don’t even think about picking my pocket!).

Like Boomers, they show a strong political trend from oldest to youngest, but it’s in the opposite direction.  First-wave Xers, born in the early 1960s, first voted during the early Reagan years and have thereafter leaned heavily to the GOP. (Just over 70 percent of today’s state governors and members of Congress born from 1961 to 1965 are Republican—the biggest partisan tilt of any five-year cohort group.) Late-wave Xers came of age with Clinton and now lean more toward the Democratic Party. [See the “Reagan/Bush” and “Clinton” charts on this page.] According to recent Gallup polls, Generation X favors Obama by 1 percentage point. Prediction for Gen Xers in 2012: dead even, with GOP-leaning first-wavers exactly neutralizing Democratic-leaning last-wavers.

Finally comes the youngest generation of voters, the adult members of the MILLENNIAL GENERATION (born 1982-93, today age 18 to 29), comprising 18 percent of likely voters. (As yet, they have no national political leaders.) Twenty years ago, they were the special and fussed-over “Friends of Barney.” Today, they’re telling older Americans to share their toys and put a smile on their face. For Millennials, the team comes first: They are more likely than older voters to favor strong communities, urge consensus solutions, trust “big government,” and shrug at paranoia over privacy. With their trademark confidence, Millennials embrace many of the social trends (related to race, ethnicity, religion, homosexuality, and the Internet) that older voters find threatening. Millennials are the least likely to believe such trends undermine patriotism or family cohesion. They are the most likely to be optimistic about America’s long-term future.

This outlook puts Millennials decisively in the Democratic camp, with roughly two-thirds of them (66 to 32 percent) voting for Obama over McCain in 2008 and (according to Gallup) a smaller yet still impressive margin of three-fifths of them favoring Obama over Romney today. [See the “Bush/Obama” chart on this page.] The big question is whether the waning enthusiasm Millennials now show in re-electing Obama—combined with the extra fervor Silent and Boomers show in defeating him—will allow the GOP to prevail.  Nonwhite Millennials are as overwhelmingly pro-Obama in 2012 as they were in 2008 (roughly a 60 percentage point margin).  Yet Democrats should worry about the recent Pew finding that, among white Millennials, the 10 percentage point margin for Obama in 2008 has been fading away and nearly disappearing over the past year.  If young whites split anywhere close to 50-50 in 2012 (remember, non-Latino whites still comprise 60 percent of this generation), then it hardly matters what young minorities do: The GOP will possess an almost insuperable advantage. Prediction for Millennials in 2012: very large margin (20 percent) to the Democrats, led by a 4-to-1 advantage among young minorities.

It’s always great to have the young on your side. After all, youth represent the future. In the decades to come, if the Millennials stay their political course, they would confer a huge advantage to the Democratic Party. But in the next election, they are still outnumbered by two larger generations of voters (Gen X and Boom), and they may well be outworked by a more energized generation of seniors (the Silent). The young can sometimes lose elections, and lose them badly. It happened in 1972, when the Boomer youth who voted for McGovern were overwhelmed by all the midlife and senior voters (the G.I. and Lost Generations) who favored Nixon.

Two years later, of course, Nixon resigned. The age gap closed almost entirely by the next election and pretty much stayed closed all the way until 2008. As if to close the circle, many of the Millennials who now favor Obama are children of the same young “peacenik” Democrats who once voted for McGovern. That’s what makes elections so fascinating—their power to surprise and to reveal, both who are today and who we will become tomorrow.

If you do all the arithmetic with the voter shares and margin predictions cited above, you will find that my overall prediction is for a dead-even tie between Obama and Romney.  Meaning: The 2012 winner is going to have to put together a generational scorecard that is, in some combination, better than the figures I have revealed.

How likely is it that Obama or Romney will put together that scorecard?  I look at that in the next post.

PART 2

This happens often.  After I write about generational drivers or changes in the social mood, readers will contact me and ask: OK, so much for the drivers and the theory, Neil—what do you think will actually happen?

So let me try to pre-empt those readers.  In my last post, I talked about how and why different generations lean toward or against the 2012 presidential candidates.  In this post, I’ll talk about the connection between generations and some of the more conventional ways pundits currently handicap the election.  I won’t exactly say who I think will win, but I will discuss some of the indicators I am following closely.

Futures Markets.  Everyone knows that Republicans believe in futures markets (and in weird options and derivatives based thereon, like CDFs) more than anyone else.  So here’s the bad news they have to swallow: Futures markets are now predicting Obama to beat Romney by roughly 16 percentage points.  (This is not the predicted voter margin in the election; it is the probability margin by which of most investors think Obama will sneak by in at least a razor-thin victory.)  That’s 57-40 percent on Intrade or 58-42 on Iowa Futures.  Obama has been leading in these markets since last fall.  Bless those markets.  Because of the “law of one price” (look this one up under “arbitrage”), all of these futures market prices have to match, worldwide.  Even brainy liberals (see Infotopia by Cass Sunstein, ) give very high praise to futures markets.

I agree that futures markets have a great track record and need to be taken seriously.  Why do they lean more pro-Obama than the weekly polls?  Maybe they sense that the sentiment for Romney is merely the way Americans vent their anger (always at the incumbent when talking to pollsters) before settling down and voting for the incumbent after all.  Or maybe they sense that the strong preference of the rising generation for a cool and pragmatic Gen Xer as POTUS really does represent where the nation is heading—and that most voters will wake to that fact come November 6.  Young Pompey once declared (to aging Sulla) that “more people worship the rising than the setting sun.”  Maybe the markets agree.

Then again, markets no less than polls can be greatly mistaken this far away from the election.  At the very least, I think that buying a Romney contract on Intrade at $4.00 and waiting to sell it once it hits $4.50 is an extremely safe trade—since sooner or later Romney is bound to have a surge carrying him at least this far.  Even John McCain in 2008 surged in early September to 0.47 in the futures markets.  It is also possible that the markets could gradually drift to a sizable Romney advantage between now and mid-October, and that after Romney wins everyone will congratulate the markets for being so prescient.

The Economy.  According to the Pew Research Center, Romney leads Obama in his handling of one big issue, the economy, no matter how you phrase the question.  And the economy—for example, the creation of jobs and the revival of wage growth—is now far more important to voters than any other issue (environment, gay marriage, immigration, foreign policy, what have you) by a very large margin.  This is a big advantage for Romney.  The unemployment rate is now 8.2 percent; looking at current indicators, it may not decline at all between now and November.  No President since FDR has won an election with an unemployment rate over 7.2 percent.  (That was the rate in November of 1984, when Reagan won re-election; and unlike Obama, Reagan brought the rate down from the date of his first election.)  See The New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight column for a detailed update on the link between the economy and election outcomes.

The economy is as good an argument for Romney as the futures markets are for Obama.  Still, it has potential weaknesses.  Voters have yet to buy into Romney’s economic program—or even to understand it—in any big way.  Is Romney going to cut deficits faster than Obama?  Who knows?  However he runs deficits, Romney says he wants to do it more through tax cuts than spending increases.  Is John Q. Public OK with this?  Also, keep in mind the “no President since FDR” proviso.  If the public comes to equate George W. Bush with Hoover—and Obama with FDR—well then all bets are off.  FDR won as an incumbent in 1936 with an unemployment rate of 16.9% and in 1940 with a rate of 14.6%.

I agree that if the economy worsens in the next couple of months, or if we simply learn more about how bad the economy now is (at least one eminent forecasting group thinks we’re already in a recession, it just hasn’t been called yet), the news will certainly give a further boost to Romney.  But the link between each generation’s pocketbook and vote is seldom simple or direct.  The Silent Generation has done the best economically in recent years and will never bear much of the burden of large deficits, yet the Silent are the most anti-Obama.  For the Millennials, it’s the other way around.  Liberals often complain that red-zone Americans would switch parties if they only understood their own economic self-interest.  Conservatives say the same today about Americans under age 30.  The problem is, most people don’t respond to piecemeal economic incentives.  They either do, or do not, buy into a whole vision.

Likeability.  How much do you like the candidate?  How much would you like to have a beer with him?  These are the sorts of warm-and-fuzzy questions that many political analysts believe turn the tide in an election.  In most of the critical elections I can remember, GOP candidates have had the likeability advantage: Reagan over Carter; Bush Sr. over Dukakis; Bush Jr. over Kerry.  But this election, it’s tipping the other way: The Democratic candidate in 2012 is currently much more likeable than the GOP candidate.  It hardly matters what you ask—which candidate is more “friendly,” “connecting,” “honest,” “good,” “trying,” or “engaged,”—Obama comes out ahead, typically by double digits.  Likeability could be a huge plus in an era of great anxiety when many voters will want to go with their “gut.  It certainly worked for FDR.

Speaking of whom, there actually was a time when the least likeable candidate was, routinely, the Republican.  And that was the 1930s and 1940s.  Herbert Hoover and Alf Landon were less likable than FDR, and Tom Dewey was less likeable than just about anyone, including FDR and Harry Truman.  So Democrats, yes, can be likeable.  Are we reverting to the last Fourth Turning in party likeability?  Or is there a simpler explanation?  Perhaps Mitt Romney, whom nearly everyone who knows him would call him very “likeable,” has simply not yet had the chance to get his charm on in prime time.  We’ll see.

Intangibles & Wildcards.  I give most of the intangibles at this point to Romney.  He is the challenger, and it is an old maxim (though some disagree) that challengers do better late in the campaign.  A much larger share of his supporters say they are “enthusiastic” about this election—no doubt reflecting the higher relative energy of older voters this time around.  He also remains relatively unknown, which means that millions of Americans will be taking a close look at him for the first time in the ten weeks between the GOP convention and the election.  Since much of what is known about Romney thus far is negative (thanks to the attacks from his primary opponents and to the Obama campaign’s efforts to “predefine” him), it is likely that his strengths—for example, his intelligence, wit, and dedication to his family and the community—will get plenty of play.  Romney may surprise voters during the debates by coming across smarter and warmer than most voters are expecting.

Another possible plus for Romney is the “reverse coattails effect.”  Since the GOP are odds-on favorites to retain a majority in the House and gain a majority in the Senate, Romney could be pulled along by state and local candidates.  That assumes of course that most voters prefer to vote a straight ticket and have a single-party government.  It’s often said that Americans are happy with divided government, but according to one recent study a large (and possibly rising) majority say no, they really do want one party in charge.

Any intangibles for Obama?  Confidence, maybe.  Though Obama supporters are less enthusiastic, they are more likely to say they want to cast a positive vote for their candidate (as opposed to voting against the other guy) and are a lot more confident than Romney supporters that their candidate will win.  Obama must hope that confidence doesn’t morph into complacency and that his supporters are still ready to sprint.  Many pundits also say that Obama has an advantage in the electoral college by leading in the bigger states.  That could make a difference, but only if the popular vote is extremely close.

As for wildcards—meaning sudden big surprises—these usually break for the incumbent Commander in Chief, unless voters associate them with mistakes made by the incumbent.  An attack on Iran (by Israel and/or the United States, though the most likely date now mentioned in the media is October, after the election), would likely break favorably for Obama.  Seismic financial news (like a crash triggered by an impending breakup of the Euro) may not break as well, since it may persuade many voters that the world needs better global economic leadership.

Obama and Romney.  Let me conclude with a few thoughts on the two candidates themselves—and how they are, or are not, representative of their generation.

As readers of our books and this blog know, I consider Obama (born, 1961) to be a first-cohort member of Generation X (born 1961-81).  The Gen-X dates we’ve explained and defended at length elsewhere (too many books to hyperlink!).  But what about Obama?  Does he fit the basic Xer picture?  I’ve always thought so: Son of a new-age mom; child of a broken family; growing up disoriented amid incessant travel, change, and social experimentation; coming of age agoraphobic, feeling (as he puts it) “like an outsider”; and ultimately constructing his own persona (like Gatsby), a quality I see in many successful Xers.  What’s more, Obama knows he’s not a Boomer: In his books (Dreams from My Father, The Audacity of Hope), he repeatedly mentions how he feels he came along “after” the Boomers and wants to put an end to much that Boomers have done wrong (culture wars, ideological polarization, and so on).  Back in 2008, Obama often referred to this as a contrast between an earlier “Moses” generation and his own “Joshua” generation.

Obviously, opinions differ about who Obama “really” is.  I think he is at heart a canny survivor, a masterful tactician, a pragmatist who doesn’t let emotions cloud his judgment.  He knows when to play rope-a-dope (always let the GOP make the first budget move, then counter), or when to rouse his base by inveighing against Wall Street tycoons (even while hiring them to staff his Treasury), or when to ignore his own base and make a shrewd cost-benefit call (War on Terror by Predators, anyone?).  On the Boomer cusp, Obama is certainly capable of crusading oratory—which adds to his versatility.  Many of the most memorable crisis-era leaders in American history have been, like Obama, Nomad-Prophet hybrids: FDR, Abraham Lincoln, Sam Adams.  Yet clearly Obama would need a very different and far more effective second term—and another opportunity handed to him by history—to enter these ranks.

As for Mitt Romney (born 1947), no one doubts he is a Boomer.  He’s led a committed religious life; he’s always won accolades as a driven achiever; he’s made tons of money as a blue-chip yuppie; he believes in Values and Culture and Principles; and he tends to see America’s future in heavily moralistic terms (for example, in his recent book, No Apology: Believe in America, he juxtaposes his father’s “Greatest Generation” against his own “Worst Generation”—a dark figure of speech that Obama would never use).  Will his religion be a problem?  There is lots more talk about Mormonism as a Christian heresy among older than among younger Americans, that’s for certain.  Many Millennials are impressed by the strong community ethic of Romney’s LDS Church.

One mystery about Romney, though, is the impression he gives to many of his fellow Boomers that he never shared their passionate coming-of-age experience, never broke from Mom and Dad, and never drank from the same deep well of authenticity and inner fire.  We used to call this the “Dan Quayle problem.”  Boomers have never been drawn to someone who seems to paint by the numbers.  In the GOP primaries, when running against Gingrich and Santorum, Romney consistently did worse among Boomers than among other generations.

Yet in the general election, this weakness may rebound to his advantage.  In the GOP primary, Mitt Romney consistently did better with young voters than any of the other candidates (with the occasional exception of Ron Paul).  Millennials may actually like Romney’s cool and precise 7-point memo responses.  (Romney, far more than McCain, will be able to debate Obama this fall on his own Ivy-League level.)  Silent voters, similarly, may also prefer the buttoned-down Romney over the totally unplugged Boomer radical.

Yet at some point, for all of his advantages on paper, Romney will have to show some flame, some focus, and some real killer instinct.  He will have to get ahead, stay ahead, and systematically thwart his opponent’s comebacks.  In a national election, Romney has not yet demonstrated he has that endurance and resolve.  Obama has.

STORY TIME – WHEN DID YOU WAKE UP?

Dustwallow suggested a thread on when people woke up and realized our economic and political system was corrupt, rigged, dysfunctional, and designed to benefit the few at the expense of the many. I’ll start it off.

I turned 40 in 2003. I knew the world had changed after 9/11 but I was still a diehard Republican. I had voted for Bush in 2000. I was outraged by the 9/11 terrorist attack and fully supported the invasion of Afghanistan. I didn’t question the rapid passage of the Patriot Act. I had never even heard of Ron Paul. I also believed the rhetoric from the Bush administration leading up to the Iraq War. I particularly trusted Colin Powell, so when he went before the world showing pictures of weapons sites and mobile labs, I was convinced.

As the Iraq War got under way and no weapons of mass destruction were found, I began to question the entire story. This coincided with my personal disillusionment with the company I had helped go from $80 million in revenue to $1 billion in revenue. My fourteen years of dedicated service was ending badly as a clueless CEO ruined the company and people I thought were friends threw me under the bus.

After leaving IKEA and being so angry at Bush’s lies that I actually voted for Kerry in 2004, I began to read the writings of Bill Bonner, John Mauldin, Richard Russell, John Hussman, Robert Shiller, Doug Casey, and many of the websites listed on the side of this page. These people opened my eyes to the evils of the Federal Reserve, inflation and debt financed “prosperity”. I began following Ron Paul and reading his articles. I questioned everything I had been taught and everything being spewed at me by the MSM.

When I witnessed the scorn and ridicule heaped upon Ron Paul by the Republican Party establishment during the 2007/2008 debates I was infuriated and decided to write an article. Lew Rockwell published Why We Need Ron Paul in the spring of 2008. I found an outlet for my new found passion at the Seeking Alpha website. My first article on the site in early August of 2008 was Is the Banking System Safe?. I wrote an article per week all through the 2008/2009 crash. I was the third most popular writer on Seeking Alpha, but as they got bigger they tried to censor and edit my articles.

That was when I started TBP version 1 with Crazy Jason. That ended in a scene remiscient of a Quentan Tarantino movie. For the last two years I’ve been running my own site with the help of some good friends at my university.

That is the story of my awakening. Let’s hear everyone’s story, even those who normally don’t post.

 

13,000 – 46,500,000 – 22,500,000 – 8,750,000

Four charts that tell you everything you need to know about the American Empire of Dirt are below. While the 1% who run the rigged financial system of this country utilize their high frquency trading super computers to ramp the Dow Jones back up to 13,000 (still 8% below the level of 2007) in an effort to gorge themselves on the carcasses of the middle class, the true picture of our collapsing empire is there to see for anyone with two eyes and a functioning brain. There are 117 million households in this country and 22.3 million of them are on foodstamps. There are only 75 million owner occupied houses in the country and 30% of them have a mortgage loan greater than the home value. That’s 22.5 million households underwater. There are 243 million working age Americans and only 142 million of them working, with 35 million of those only working part-time. At the same time we have 48 million people collecting Social Security retirement and another 8.7 million people collecting Social Security Disability.

We have re-entered recession. Gas and food prices are rising. Europe is about to collapse. China’s fraud of an economy is coming to a halt. Retail sales have imploded. Consumer confidence is in the toilet. New and existing home sales are falling. But CNBC and the Wall Street shills are telling you its the best time to buy.

Are we living in bizarro world?  

BREAD, BOMBS, BORROWING & OLYMPICS (CIRCUSES)

FBD requested an Olympic thread. Since this is TBP, I can’t post a thread without making my own social commentary. When I was a child I loved watching the Olympics. But I’m not a child anymore. I’m reminded of a bible passage that reflects my current view of the Olympics:

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” – 1 Corinthians 13:11

I now see the Olympics as nothing more than a corporate affair designed to keep the masses distracted. It is the ultimate circus. I did not watch the opening ceremonies. I was out drinking with Avalon at an outdoor bar listening to a decent band. Does anyone else see the ridiculousness and delusion of a broke country, currently in a deep recession, spending $42 million on a 3 hour opening ceremony for a sporting event? I’m just plain tired of the stupidity, willful ignorace, corruption, lies, and delusions that engulf this world.

So here is your Olympic thread FBD. Enjoy.  

I DID NO MORE THAN YOU LET ME DO

First they tortured the Muslim terrorists.

Next they invaded and bombed sovereign Muslim countries.

Then they roamed the Muslim skies with lethal predator drones.

Then they started listening to your phone calls and monitoring your internet messages.

Then they treated you like a terrorist at airports.

Eventually, they will torture those who do not conform to their policies and rules.

Eventually, they will enter your home in the middle of the night without a warrant.

Eventually, predator drones will roam the skies above our cities.

THEY WILL DO NO MORE THAN YOU LET THEM DO. 

THE HANGMAN 

By Maurice Ogden

      Into our town the hangman came,

 

      smelling of gold and blood and flame.

 

      He paced our bricks with a different air,

 

      and built his frame on the courthouse square.The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,

 

      only as wide as the door was wide

 

      with a frame as tall, or a little more,

 

      than the capping sill of the courthouse door.And we wondered whenever we had the time,

 

      Who the criminal? What the crime?

 

      The hangman judged with the yellow twist

 

      of knotted hemp in his busy fist.

And innocent though we were with dread,
we passed those eyes of buckshot lead.
Till one cried, “Hangman, who is he,
for whom you raised the gallows-tree?”

Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye
and he gave a riddle instead of reply.
“He who serves me best,” said he
“Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree.”

And he stepped down and laid his hand
on a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for anothers grief
at the hangmans hand, was our relief.

And the gallows frame on the courthouse lawn
by tomorrow’s sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way and no one spoke
out of respect for his hangmans cloak.

The next day’s sun looked mildly down
on roof and street in our quiet town;
and stark and black in the morning air
the gallows-tree on the courthouse square.

And the hangman stood at his usual stand
with the yellow hemp in his busy hand.
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike,
and his air so knowing and business-like.

And we cried, “Hangman, have you not done,
yesterday with the alien one?”
Then we fell silent and stood amazed.
“Oh, not for him was the gallows raised.”

He laughed a laugh as he looked at us,
“Do you think I’ve gone to all this fuss,
To hang one man? That’s the thing I do.
To stretch the rope when the rope is new.”

Above our silence a voice cried “Shame!”
and into our midst the hangman came;
to that mans place, “Do you hold,” said he,
“With him that was meat for the gallows-tree?”

He laid his hand on that one’s arm
and we shrank back in quick alarm.
We gave him way, and no one spoke,
out of fear of the hangmans cloak.

That night we saw with dread surprise
the hangmans scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
the gallows-tree had taken root.

Now as wide, or a little more
than the steps that led to the courthouse door.
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
half way up on the courthouse wall.

The third he took, we had all heard tell,
was a usurer…, an infidel.
And “What” said the hangman, “Have you to do
with the gallows-bound…, and he a Jew?”

And we cried out, “Is this one he
who has served you well and faithfully?”
The hangman smiled, “It’s a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows beam.”

The fourth man’s dark accusing song
had scratched our comfort hard and long.
“And what concern,” he gave us back,
“Have you … for the doomed and black?”

The fifth, the sixth, and we cried again,
“Hangman, hangman, is this the man?”
“It’s a trick”, said he, “that we hangman know
for easing the trap when the trap springs slow.”

And so we ceased and asked now more
as the hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night
the gallows grew to monstrous height.

The wings of the scaffold opened wide
until they covered the square from side to side.
And the monster cross beam looking down,
cast its shadow across the town.

Then through the town the hangman came
and called through the empy streets…my name.
I looked at the gallows soaring tall
and thought … there’s no one left at all

for hanging … and so he called to me
to help take down the gallows-tree.
And I went out with right good hope
to the hangmans tree and the hangmans rope.

He smiled at me as I came down
to the courthouse square…through the silent town.
Supple and stretched in his busy hand,
was the yellow twist of hempen strand.

He whistled his tune as he tried the trap
and it sprang down with a ready snap.
Then with a smile of awful command,
He laid his hand upon my hand.

“You tricked me Hangman.” I shouted then,
“That your scaffold was built for other men,
and I’m no henchman of yours.” I cried.
“You lied to me Hangman, foully lied.”

Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye,
“Lied to you…tricked you?” He said “Not I…
for I answered straight and told you true.
The scaffold was raised for none but you.”

“For who has served more faithfully?
With your coward’s hope.” said He,
“And where are the others that might have stood
side by your side, in the common good?”

“Dead!” I answered, and amiably
“Murdered,” the Hangman corrected me.
“First the alien … then the Jew.
I did no more than you let me do.”

Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
none before stood so alone as I.
The Hangman then strapped me…with no voice there
to cry “Stay!” … for me in the empty square.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZSS3yxpnFU

QUOTES OF THE DAY

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
― (United States) Congress

“A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated as public nuisances and evicted.”
― Robert Reich

“Religion is like a pair of shoes…..Find one that fits for you, but don’t make me wear your shoes.”
― George Carlin

“Without Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence, there would have been no American revolution that announced universal principles of liberty. Without his participation by the side of the unforgettable Marquis de Lafayette, there would have been no French proclamation of The Rights of Man. Without his brilliant negotiation of the Louisiana treaty, there would be no United States of America. Without Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, there would have been no Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, and no basis for the most precious clause of our most prized element of our imperishable Bill of Rights – the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“It is precisely that requirement of shared worship that has been the principal source of suffering for individual man and the human race since the beginning of history. In their efforts to impose universal worship, men have unsheathed their swords and killed one another. They have invented gods and challenged each other: “Discard your gods and worship mine or I will destroy both your gods and you!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Of all the religions in the world, perhaps the religion of liberty is the only faith capable of purity.”
― Tiffany Madison

RED ALERT – EXHAUSTION SYNDROME ACTIVATED

John Hussman points out the obvious. Obvious to everyone except the the big swinging dicks on Wall Street and the high frequency trading computer nerds. If the market has not fallen because it believes Ben Bernanke will come to the rescue with QE3, then it is already priced in. The previous QE efforts have been nothing but a dose of adrenaline to a patient dying of cancer. They have had zero impact on the real economy. QE has created no jobs. QE has not raised wages. QE has only enriched Wall Street traders and bankers. Recession is here. Europe is imploding. Greece is dead country walking. The market is poised to drop. Are you poised to survive the drop?

Extraordinary Strains

  John P. Hussman, Ph.D.

Just weeks after the enthusiasm over Europe’s plan to plan for the possibility of using the European Stability Mechanism to bail out Spanish banks, the subtle technicality – that direct bailouts would make all of Europe’s citizens subordinate to even the unsecured bondholders of Spain’s banks – has predictably deflated that enthusiasm. On the growing recognition that addressing Spain’s banking problem will mean taking those banks into receivership, wiping out unsecured debt (much of which unfortunately was sold to unknowing Spanish savers as secure “savings” vehicles), and having the Spanish government sort out the damage, Spanish 10-year debt plunged to new lows last week (see chart below), and Spanish yields hit fresh Euro-crisis highs. At the same time, interest rates in Germany, Finland, Holland, Denmark and Switzerland all moved to negative levels looking 2-5 years out. The world is paying these governments to lend money to them, because the only way to acquire other default-free, non-commodity assets is to hire armored trucks and secure vaults to take delivery of physical currency. This set of conditions is not normal or sustainable, and indicates extreme credit market strains in Europe.


The Euro also hit a fresh 2-year low last week at 1.21, just a shade above its 2010 crisis low of 1.20. Likewise, the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds dropped to 1.45%, matching the historic low it reached a few weeks ago. Yields were higher even in the depths of the Great Depression, when the S&P 500 was trading at less than 2 times the pre-Depression level of earnings, the Shiller P/E on 10-year normalized earnings was less than 5, and the S&P 500 was yielding 16%. As a side note, many analysts seem almost woozy at the “incredible value” that supposedly exists in stocks because the 2.3% yield on the S&P 500 exceeds the 1.45% yield on 10-year Treasuries. It’s worth pointing out that prior to the point that inflation took off after 1960, the yield on the S&P 500 exceeded the yield on Treasury bonds in fully 93% of the data.

Keep in mind that once you subtract out the necessary compensation for default risk (which is rapidly increasing in Spain, for example), interest rates represent the value that the economy places on time. Long-term interest rates have plunged to record lows, and real interest rates are negative after inflation. What interest rates are telling you; what the Federal Reserve is telling you; what the equilibrium created by lenders and borrowers is telling you – is that time is economically worthless and that economic malaise will extend for years.

This does not reflect a well-functioning economy. To the contrary, if you look across history and across nations, strong prospects for sustained economic growth are typically accompanied by high real interest rates, because the demand for capital is robust and good ideas have to compete for funding. Interest rates are an indication of both the demand for loans and the incentive to save. It is not “stimulative” to depress interest rates in an environment where households, businesses and governments are desperately trying to reduce debt. That policy may insult the value of time enough to deter people from saving, and to reduce the immediate penalty for assuming even larger amounts of debt (as the U.S. government continues to do), but it should be clear that these actions move the economy further from a sustainable equilibrium, not closer to it.

I do expect that it will be possible to navigate the coming years well, but it will not be by locking in negligible yields and depressed risk premiums in the futile hope that one plus one will end up being something other than two. Prospective returns vary a great deal over the course of the market cycle, and the strategy of varying risk exposure in proportion to the prospective compensation for that risk will be essential.

On the economic front, as we expected based on leading economic evidence, new orders and order backlogs have dropped abruptly in recent reports. These indices are short-leading indicators of production, which is likely to show a striking decline beginning in the July data. Note carefully whether any positive surprises are in May and June data, because these reports will still be mixed. I continue to expect negative employment changes in the coming months, though as I’ve noted before, we may only find this out later on revisions rather than the initial prints in real-time. In any event, I am convinced that we will ultimately learn that the U.S. economy, slightly trailing the global economy, entered a new recession in June.

While July components are still coming in, the chart below shows the most recent condition of coincident U.S. economic data, reflecting a variety of Fed surveys and Purchasing Managers surveys.


The key question – in view of extreme credit market strains in Europe, and accelerating economic deterioration in the U.S. – is why the S&P 500 continues to trade within a few percent of its April bull market high. The answer is simple: investors are scared to death of missing the widely anticipated market advance that they expect to follow a widely anticipated third round of quantitative easing. Good economic news may be a relief for investors, but bad economic news in this context is just as much of a relief because it brings forward the anticipated delivery date of the sugar. The follow-up question, however, is that if more QE is widely anticipated, and a market advance is widely anticipated to result, isn’t that the precise definition of an event that is already priced into the market?

If you look at the Federal Reserve’s own research on quantitative easing – large scale asset purchases (LSAPs) – nearly every paper emphasizes the “portfolio balance” effect. Put simply, as the Fed removes longer-term Treasury securities from the menu of portfolio choices available to investors, it forces investors to consider alternative securities, raising their prices and lowering their yields – with a particular impact in driving down the risk premiums of risky securities. Indeed, as we’ve noted, QE has generally been effective in helping stocks to recover the peak-to-trough loss that they have suffered in the prior 6-month period (though the most recent LSAPs in the UK and Europe have been failures in that regard).

Still, once risk premiums are already deeply depressed (we estimate the likely 10-year prospective total nominal return for the S&P 500 to be only 4.8% annually), once stocks are trading near their bull market highs, and once Treasury debt already sports the lowest yield in history, should investors really expect much of a portfolio-balance effect from further attempts at QE? Frankly, I doubt it, but in the eventuality of a third round of QE, we’ll focus on our own measures of market action – not on any blind faith in the Fed.

The more troubling issue is that Fed papers on the effectiveness of QE focus almost singularly on the effect of QE on interest rates and risk premiums in the financial markets, with the notable absence of any analysis of the resulting effect on the real economy. This is like showing that squirting gas into an engine will make the engine run faster, without any concern for the fact that there is no transmission that connects the engine to the wheels. In a nutshell, the problem with QE is the lack of any material transmission mechanism from monetary interventions to real economic activity. This is a problem that the Fed should have recognized years ago, because there is strong and consistent historical evidence that real economic activity has very weak “elasticity” with respect to financial market fluctuations, particularly in equity values. Invariably, a 1% change in the value of the stock market is associated with a change of just 0.03-0.05% in GDP, and even that change is transitory. What the Fed has been doing is little but bubble-blowing, while at the same time driving the global financial system further from equilibrium rather than toward it.

Unfortunately, I expect these efforts to continue, but I also expect that it will be useless in averting an unfolding global recession. If the Fed was to initiate a third round of QE near present levels, it would likely be disappointing in the sense that it would fail to reverse economic weakness and at the same time would fail to drive equity prices higher than they already are, or interest rates materially lower than they already are. This would damage confidence in the Federal Reserve and force it to resort to language about monetary policy working with “long and variable lags.” Moreover, at a 1.45% yield and an 8-year duration on a 10-year bond, any interest rate increase of more than about 18 basis points a year will now produce a negative total return for the Federal Reserve over the period that the bonds are held, which comes at public expense (reducing the amount of interest that the Fed would otherwise turn over to the Treasury). As a result, talk is presently much cheaper than action. It seems likely that another round of QE will await obvious economic weakness and a significant spike in risk premiums – probably best measured by the depth of the drawdown in the S&P 500 from its most recent 6-month peak. Still, given that the rationale for much higher risk premiums is very real, it’s not clear that QE will have durable effects on stocks even in that event.

In short, a broad array of observable evidence suggests extraordinary strains in Europe, and abrupt though expected deterioration in U.S. economic activity. The Federal Reserve certainly has policy options, but those options have no material transmission mechanism to the real economy. We’ve always viewed the Federal Reserve as having an important and legitimate role in providing liquidity to the banking system in the event of heavy withdrawals; creating new reserves in return for high-quality, default-free securities backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. This remains an important role, but the Fed’s actions have gone far beyond this role into areas that distort financial markets without transmission to economic activity. That’s just a reality we have to accept, and we’ll respond to further interventions with particular attention to trend-following measures of market action.

Here and now, we remain defensive in the face of accelerating strains the global economy – new highs in Spanish yields, negative interest rates across more stable European countries, new lows in the Euro and U.S. Treasury yields, collapsing new orders and backlogs, a sudden plunge in the employment component of the Philly Fed index, collapsing M2 velocity, and other factors. Due to some modest interest-rate considerations, our estimates of prospective return/risk have improved negligibly from the most negative 0.5% of historical observations, and are now among the most negative 0.8% of historical data. This rare extreme keeps us on red alert for now.

Market Climate

As noted above, accelerating strains are evident both in the global economy – particularly Europe – and in the U.S. economy. Stock valuations remain stretched on the basis of normalized earnings. Profit margins are nearly 70% above their historical norms at present, but these margins reflect very high deficit spending and very weak savings rates – something that can be related to corporate profit margins through accounting identities. Unless one anticipates continued deficits indefinitely, either revenues will revert closer to the level of labor compensation, or less likely, labor compensation will increase toward the level of revenues, but in any event the gap will tend to narrow. This may not be an immediate outcome, but stocks are instruments with an effective duration of over 40 years (mathematically, the duration of stocks is essentially equal to the price-dividend ratio, regardless of growth rates or repurchases). The very long-term stream of cash flows matters enormously in asset valuation.

One of the immediate issues I have with stocks here is the “exhaustion syndrome” (see Goat Rodeo) that has re-emerged in recent weeks. Examining the rare past instances of this syndrome, in 1961, 1987, 2000, and early-2008 among others, the key feature is a breakdown in measures of market action from an overvalued, overbought extreme, followed by a recovery rally toward the prior high and accompanied by earnings yields below their level of 6-months earlier. Normally, the recovery carries the market back to the prior “line” of support that surrounds the peak. The emergence of this exhaustion syndrome may seem benign or unimportant, but it has historically been an important precursor of major market declines. Given what are already significant challenges for both the economy and for the prospective return/risk tradeoff in stocks, my concerns about the potential for deep market losses remain elevated.

Investors often have the impression that the market simply collapses once a bull market peak is set, but this isn’t typical. What is typical is exactly the sort of exhaustion pattern we’ve observed since April. To illustrate this, the chart below presents market behavior around several market peaks that were also followed by an exhaustion syndrome as we observe today. The bull market peaks are aligned at 1.0. The remaining scale is set as a fraction of that peak. Time is measured in trading days before and after the bull market peak. Note that after a quick initial decline from the bull market peak, it’s typical for the market to recover much of the lost ground before the downside progress continues, in some cases producing the “exhaustion syndrome” that we presently observe. Exhaustion syndromes can go on for several weeks, but have historically been very dangerous advances to trade, because more often than not, there is a bear market just behind them. This was not the case in three instances: the July 1998 instance – followed by a decline of only 18%, the July 1999 instance – down only 12% over the next several months, and of course the instance in late January of this year, which occurred at about 1326 on the S&P 500 and still hasn’t yet resolved into losses beyond the weakness we saw in May. It’s possible that the market outcome will be benign in this case, and that the market will go on to set further bull market highs. We have no intention of taking that improbable gamble in the face of present headwinds.


Strategic Growth and Strategic International continue to be fully hedged, with a staggered-strike option position in Strategic Growth (which raises the strike prices of the put side of our hedge). We presently estimate the time-decay or “theta” of the staggered-strike position at about 0.25% of assets monthly – which we are willing to accept based on the extremely negative outcomes that are typical of the current climate, and the expectation that we will not remain in this position for a long time. Strategic Dividend Value is hedged at about 50% of the value of its stock holdings, and Strategic Total Return continues to carry a duration of just over one year, with about 10% of assets in precious metals shares and a few percent of assets in utility shares and foreign currencies.

GENERATION SCREWED

Neil Howe with another thought provoking post. He posted this on the same day that a Millenial named James Holmes committed one of the most horrific mass murders in history. Howe’s description of Millenial beliefs and hopes fits perfectly with my thesis about why Holmes snapped. Millenials have very traditional views on success and the American Dream. They believe education will lead to a good job, which will lead to a good income and a nice house in the burbs. Well reality sucks. Howe doesn’t address the current state of affairs, but shifts the discussion to the 2020s when Millenials may get the chance to succeed. That doesn’t cut it in my book. How do the Millenials get through the next ten or fifteen years with staggering student loan debt, lack of good jobs, miniscule income and no chance to buy a house? What does this do to their beliefs and minds? We’ve seen what it did to James Holmes. How many more Millenials will snap?

I was happy to find out that my Generation is actually the most screwed. But that’s alright, we expected it. Gen X relishes being crapped on. We don’t expect much and our expectations keep getting met.

Howe seems to have his own cognitive dissonance. His own books reveal clearly that Fourth Turnings are always violent and bloody, but he doesn’t seem to want to go there. Even when I met him, he didn’t want to talk about that aspect of the current Fourth Turning. I believe the levels of getting screwed that are happening in our society will lead to violence, social unrest and civil war in this country. But I’m Gen X and always expect the worst.

 

Generation Screwed and Unscrewed

“Are Millennials the Screwed Generation?” asks Joel Kotkin in Newsweek.  A professor of urban studies and an astute observer of social trends, Kotkin answers his own question in the affirmative.

He describes a gauntlet of economic challenges facing today’s under-30 Americans that are, I think, pretty well known to readers of this blog.  Some of the adverse trends he cites are mostly of recent (post-2008) origin: High unemployment, falling real median personal and household income, falling median household net worth, a sharply rising share who are living with their parents, a falling share who own their own homes, and (symptomatically) a sharp decline in birthrates by younger moms.

Yet other trends prejudicial to youth, most of which he mentions, have been underway for much longer: a declining national saving rate; rising fiscal deficits; college tuitions rising faster than family incomes; a widening spread between the relative wealth and income of older versus young households; and the steady rise in the share of public spending that goes to the entitled old (pensions, health care)—versus a declining share that goes to future-oriented investment (infrastructure, research, education).

Sounds depressing, I know.  But the reason I emphasize how long many of these trends have been at work is to cast a bit of doubt on whether Millennials are really as screwed as all that.  Keep in mind that back in the early 1980s, many economists and policymakers commented on the “declining fortunes” of late-wave Boomers who came of age during the energy crises and stagflation.  At the time, experts thought that demographic size was the problem: Numbers-driven competition among young workers was depressing Boomer incomes.

Then came the early 1990s, when economists discovered that Gen-Xers–often, at that time, called “Busters”–were even more screwed than Boomers.  (Since there were relatively few of these Busters, the demographic explanation was quietly dropped.)  From the very beginning, a “reality bites” fatalism about diminished economic possibilities emerged as a cornerstone this generation’s very self-image.  Over the next twenty years, as first-wave Gen-Xers moved into their 30s and then their 40s, evidence of “living-standard decline” in their age brackets (despite two-income households and working around the clock) has steadily mounted.

So is there still a good case for calling Millennials yet more “screwed” than these two older generations?  I suppose one could argue that Millennials are uniquely penalized because the adverse trends cited above—savings decline, young-old divide, fiscal bias, etc.—are more advanced and pronounced today than when Xers or Boomers were young.  One could also point to the extreme severity of the recent recession’s impact on youth—for example, the highest unemployment rate over the most months for young adults than during any downturn since the Great Depression.  We know from abundant economic research, starting with Glen Elder’s great book (Children of the Great Depression) that extended unemployment early in life has an impact on future income that lasts long into a person’s career.

On the other hand, of course, one would have to note the even harsher impact of the Great Recession on Gen-Xers and late-wave Boomers (households today age 30 to 60), as I pointed out in my earlier blog post.  And who hurts most during a great famine—the guy who thinks he might someday have a home and kids, or they guy who actually has a home and kids?

One would also have to weigh in the balance certain collective advantages Millennials have enjoyed early in life that their elders did not.  These include arriving as newborns in an era when mothers were more likely to say their newborn was “wanted” and growing up in an era when parents and families (if not always government) spent more time with them, more money on them, spurred them to achieve, and protected them more from harm.  Today, as a result, Millennials have become a generation of youth who commit less crime, cooperate more with each other, take fewer personal risks, and get along much better with their parents.  They are also on track to have the highest educational attainment ever (following college completion rates that actually backtracked for late-wave Boomers and early-wave Gen-Xers).

What’s more, most Millennials already know that history favors them.  Interesting factoid: When asked if being a young person is harder today than it was when your parents were kids, a growing majority of young people since the late 1990s say no, it’s actually easier being a kid today—after decades of polls (in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and early ‘90s) that leaned the other way, with Boomers and Xers bemoaning, year after year, how much harder being a kid is for them.

Kotkin asserts that this generation still believes in a very conventional definition of life success—most aspiring to a stable career and to owning a home in the suburbs.  I agree.  The data I’ve seen point in the same direction.  My favorite recent survey on this topic is the 2011 MetLife Study of the American Dream, which shows that Millennials are significantly more likely than Xers or Boomers to say that a college degree, acquiring wealth, owning a home, and (yes!) even marriage is “essential” to realizing the American Dream.  Most Millennials have a fairly concrete idea of what they want in life, together with benchmarks for getting there, and thus far most surveys (admittedly, not the depressing Rutgers survey cited by Kotkin) indicate that they remain confident that they will someday get there.

But to me, the most persuasive argument for not regarding Millennials as America’s most “screwed” generation is simply this: They are still young.  Even if the economy continues to deteriorate, a steady recovery that gets underway by the early 2020s will still save the future for most of them.  At roughly age 20 to 40, in this case, most Millennials will still be able to launch successful careers in an expanding economy.  Moreover, they will be able to buy homes at record-low prices and buy stock portfolios at record-low P/E ratios.  Which means, by the time they fully occupy midlife in the late 2040s (at roughly age 45 to 65), they may be doing far better at that time, relative to other generations, than people that age are doing today.

So who really is the most screwed generation?  When it comes to aggregate economic security and upward mobility, I think the most screwed generation already know who they are: Generation X.  Consider the scenario described above.  More chaos followed by a steady recovery starting a decade from now would come too late for most Xers—who by then (their first-wavers hitting their early 60s and thinking about retirement) may be looking at senior benefits programs whose generosity has just been cut way back in the name of fiscal austerity and renewed economic growth.  Any Xer protest is likely to be weak and ineffectual.  Most Boomers will be grandfathered, and most of the public’s attention will be focused on saving America’s future for the Millennials.

As Bill and I forecast twenty years ago back in 13th-Gen (I’ve changed the “13ers” here to “Gen-Xers”):

Reaching midlife, the Gen-Xers’ economic fears will be confirmed: They will become the only generation born this century (the first since the Gilded) to suffer a one-generation backstep in living standards.  Compared to their own parents at the same age, the Xers’ poverty rate will be higher, their rate of homeownership lower, their pension and healthcare benefits skimpier.  They will not match the Boomers’ inflation-adjusted levels of disposable income or wealth, at the same age.  Gen-Xers will also experience a much wider distribution of income and wealth than today’s older generations, with startling proportions either falling into destitution or shooting from rags to riches…  Finding their youthful dreams broken on the shoals of market-place reality, Xers will internalize their disappointment.  Around the year 2020, accumulated “hard knocks” will give midlife Xers much of the same gritty determination about life that they gave the midlife Lost during the Great Depression or the Gilded during Reconstruction.

Twenty years later, I think this prediction still stands.  As I read back over it, the only adjustment I would make is to say “early-wave Boomers” where we wrote “Boomers.”  But now let me move on to something else about Xers—the fact that the economy will recover, in part, precisely because Generation X chooses not to insist on its rightful public entitlement in old age.  We wrote about that in 13th-Gen, as well:

Nor will Gen-Xers ever effectively organize or vote in their own self-interest.  Instead, they will take pride in what they don’t receive, in their lifelong talent for getting by on their own, and in their ability to divert government resources to help the young.  Policy experts who today worry about the cost of Social Security and Medicare past the year 2025 seldom reflect on the political self-image of those who will then be entering their late sixties.  Entitled “senior citizens”?  Hardly.  Like Lost Generation elders in 1964–who voted more for Goldwater than any younger generation even after he promised to slash their retirement benefits—old Xers will feel less deserving of public attention than richer and smarter young people who lack their fatalism about life.

Even back in 1993 we had the concepts of generational archetypes firmly in mind.  As readers of The Fourth Turning know, Gen-Xers belong to same (Nomad) archetype as the Lost Generation.  The location in history of both generations, which manifests so many obvious parallels early in life, will continue (I think) to track each other moving forward.  Who is getting hurt worst in the current age of stagnation and deleveraging?  Late-wave Boomers (born after 1950) to some extent, mostly by have their home and retirement assets values hit hard; Generation X most of all; and early-wave Millennials to some extent, mostly by delayed career starts.  Who got hit worst in the Great Depression?  Late-wave Missionaries (born after 1870) to some extent, mainly by losing their savings in failed banks in the early 1930s; the Lost Generation most of all; and early-wave G.I.s to some extent, mostly by having their careers put on hold until VE- and VJ-Day.  Same archetypes, same patterns.

Koktin points out that today’s hard times are pushing most Millennials in the developed world politically toward the left—that is, toward a greater commitment to national collective action by government.  We’ve witnessed this trend in every election globally since 2008—including of course the massive 2-to-1 margin by U.S. Millennials for Obama in 2008.  (In the fall of 2012, U.S. Millennials will almost certainly give another large margin for Obama, but it will be smaller than in 2008 and whether it will be enough to win the election is uncertain; this is an issue I will handle in a future post.)

These political trends also have interesting parallels in the last saeculum.  The Lost Generation, as we document in Generations and The Fourth Turning, leaned Republican and libertarian all its life.  The Lost hated President Wilson for the fiasco of World War I; voted heavily for Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover (though it turned against Hoover with the Bonus Army); comprised the most visible and colorful opponents of FDR; and voted GOP after WWII all the way to Goldwater.  The party valence turned sharply the other way, however, for cohorts born after 1900—those who missed WWI, who belonged (like John Steinbeck) to entirely different artistic circles than the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and who were disposed to mobilize around a new trust in community after the Crash of ‘29.

Although no one collected age-graded polling back in the 1930s, some historians estimate that a very large majority—perhaps 85 percent—of voters under age 35 voted for FDR and the Democratic Party in 1936.  It is widely agreed that this is the first election in which a clear majority of young African-Americans voted for the Democratic Party rather than the party of Abraham Lincoln.  Consulting our own American Leadership Database, we are able to confirm that 28 out of 32 (88 percent) of G.I. senators, representatives, and governors sent to Congress in 1936 were Democrats.  By 1940, 75 percent of incoming G.I.s were still Democrats.

Read the numbers, Republicans, and weep.  That is, unless your new Mormon, whiz-kid, C-suite candidate is able to project a stronger, more hands-on image of strong national leadership than Barack Obama—which may not be setting the bar too high.  Anything is possible.

One last point.  To most Millennials, the whole whiney victimization card (look at me, I’m screwed!) seems like such a stale trope of Boomers and Gen-Xers, that they instinctively recoil from it.  And right on cue, a bona fide Millennial offers a cocky and defiant reply to Kotkin in the Washington Post (“Generation Unscrewed”)—though in a sardonic (“It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)”) tone that may leave all generations mystified.

HOW MANY MORE WILL SNAP?

A portrait of James Holmes is beginning to reveal itself. Personally, I feel what has been revealed about his life should make people more worried. At least with the Tucson murders we could comfort ourselves with the fact that Jared Loughner was clearly a crazed lunatic and his background revealed multiple signs that he would eventually do something crazy. We could blame the system, his parents, drugs, or mental illness. It made us feel safer to rationalize the behavior of a lunatic. But this time something is different.

This kid was brought up in a normal household in San Diego with what appear to be normal parents. He was an athlete who played on the football and soccer teams in high school. He was on the quiet side, but had friends. He worked as a counselor for underpriveleged kids. He liked video games. He was very smart. He graduated from college at the top of his class with a degree in neuroscience, not some worthless liberal arts degree that we like to scorn. But he couldn’t find a job after college. He was forced to work at a McDonalds. Then he tried to hide out in Grad School in Denver, far away from his family and friends.

Now this is why you should be worried. How many young people fit this description? My guess is hundreds of thousands. They did everything right. They listened to their parents. They didn’t get into trouble. They did well in school. They had pretty high self esteem. Then they graduated from college and the real world beckoned. But the country has been gutted by the warfare, welfare, Wall Street policies over the last three decades. There are few if any decent jobs for even the brightest young people. Over the last two years this kid has been holed up in his tiny apartment, accumulating more student loan debt, and getting progressively more depressed and bitter at the world. He’s done everything he thought he needed to do to become successful, but he’s a failure. He keeps asking himself why, but there is no logical answer. The anger against society builds until his mind is overwhelmed with thoughts of revenge against somebody and everybody. Something snapped after months of depression, anger and disillusionment with our unfair system.

There are reports that he was dressed like the Joker. The Dark Knight series of movies are particularly bleak, dark, violent, and not particularly optimistic about our future. People are desperately seeking some sort of logical motive for this mass murder. They will not find one. There is a scene in the first Dark Knight movie that captures the essence of what James Holmes did. This quote from Alfred says it all:     

“Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

No comfort can be gained by categorizing James Holmes as a lunatic. He wasn’t a lunatic for the first 22 years of his life. Did our warped society create the lunatic? Did our economic system that rewards financial criminals, corrupt politicians, and mega-corporations create the lunatic? Did our suburban sprawl, faceless, nameless, materialistic, greedy society create the lunatic? Admit it. The biography of this kid matches many 24 year olds that you know. It might even match the biography of your own son. That is why you should worry. It seems the discussion is already centered around gun control and whether someone with a gun could have prevented this tragedy. I’m not surprised. These are things that we have control over. No one wants to talk about why a seemingly normal young person could snap. We better get a handle on that question, because there are hundreds of thousands of men like James Holmes out there facing the exact same circumstances.

 

DARK KNIGHT MEETS REALITY

So much for funny Friday. I woke up to the news below. A crazed gunman methodically and systematically slaughtered 14 young people and wounded 50 others at the midnight opening of The Dark Knight Rises. He had multiple weapons and used tear gas to disorient his victims before murdering them. It was clear that he planned this well in advance. The authorities have not released his name or any details about his motive. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess his background. I bet he is a 20 year old white guy. We will find out he was a loner in high school. He never had a girlfriend and had few or no friends. His parents are probably divorced. He doesn’t have a job. He’s felt alienated from society and has been living in a fantasy world for years. Somebody probably assessed his mental state within the last two years and concluded he was a danger to himself and others, but the system did nothing. In retrospect, there will be a list of clear signs that he would eventually go off, but no one wanted to get involved.

I think his choice of this movie was purposeful. He didn’t choose Hangover 2. He chose a movie about alienation, pain, societal collapse and darkness. This was done as a statement about our increasingly degenerative society. People communicate on electronic devices. We hole up in our houses or apartments, cut off from human contact. There are evil villians sucking the last vestiges of wealth from the lowly serfs. The anger, pain and disillusion are palpable throughout society. People are confused. They can’t figure out the enemy. Government can’t protect you. Government is the main reason for this alienation. The kneejerk reaction of the liberal dogooders will be to ban guns, as if guns caused this slaughter. Banning guns will not stop the slow methodical decline of our society. It is much larger than guns. It is our entire culture. Materialism, greed, selfishness, profit at any cost, isolation, lack of personal responsibility, and delusional willfull ignorance have overwhelmed our country.

Fourth Turnings always reach a climax when those on the perceived side of good have a final showdown with the perceived side of evil. We are likely a few years from this showdown, but there is no guarantee that good will vanquish evil. A revolution is on the horizon. Everyone will need to choose sides. There will be no one allowed to stand on the sidelines.

My son and his friends went to the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises last night. He arrived home safely. My heart goes out to the mothers and fathers in Colorado whose children will never return.