GDP – Page 6 – The Burning Platform

FOURTH TURNING – THE SHADOW OF CRISIS HAS NOT PASSED – PART ONE

“Imagine some national (and probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake. All you know in advance is something about the molten ingredients of the climax, which could include the following:

Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)
Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race, nativism, or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias, and mercenaries hired by walled communities
Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax revolts, one-party hegemony, major constitutional change, secessionism, authoritarianism, and altered national borders
Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction”

The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe – 1997

When you read pertinent passages from Strauss & Howe’s prophetic assessment of history from a generational perspective, eighteen years after its publication and seven years into the Crisis they forecasted with uncanny accuracy, you find yourself shaking your head and appreciating their visionary generational appraisal of antiquity. Those who scorn The Fourth Turning either haven’t read it, are ignorant of the cyclical nature of history, blindly believe in never ending human progress, or their salary is dependent upon not acknowledging the truth. A year consists of four seasons – Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. A long human life of 80 years consists of four phases – childhood, young adulthood, mid-life, and old age. Human beings tend to associate themselves with the cohort born within the roughly 20 year period that makes up one phase of life.

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Members of a generation share an age location in history, tend to share some common beliefs and behaviors, including basic attitudes about risk taking, culture and values, civic engagement, family life, and tend to have a sense of common perceived membership in that generation. The generational attitudes, moods, leaders, and events that occur during recurring 80 year cycles drive the pathway of history. Strauss & Howe have been able to document the Turnings of Anglo-American history back to 1435. Like the seasons in a year, there have been cyclical turnings every twenty years or so for centuries. They can be described as High (Spring), Awakening (Summer), Unraveling (Fall), Crisis (Winter). Each turning is a reflection of generational interactions, moods, and attitudes. We are now seven years into a Crisis that will likely not climax until the late 2020’s.

Saeculum	(climax year) Crisis (Full Era)	Time from one Crisis climax to next Crisis climax
Revolutionary	(1781) American Revolution (1773–1794)
Civil War	(1863) Civil War (1860–1865)	82 years
Great Power	(1944) Great Depression and World War II (1929-1946)	81 years
Millennial	(2025?) Global Financial Crisis (2008–2029?)	81 years?

Continue reading “FOURTH TURNING – THE SHADOW OF CRISIS HAS NOT PASSED – PART ONE”

CONSUMPTION CRASHES IN DECEMBER

Let the spin begin. The country has clearly entered recession, but the government bureaucrats, corrupt politicians, criminal Wall Street bankers, and their corporate media mouthpieces refuse to acknowledge the truth. They have too much wealth at stake to report the facts. They need to exit the markets before the muppets.

Consumer spending in December collapsed at the greatest rate in five years. Remember 2009? It wasn’t a great year for the economy.

That always happens when the economy is growing at 4%. Right? That always happens when the unemployment rate has plunged to 5.6%. Right? That always happens when the weather was downright balmy compared to the Polar Vortex December last year. Right? That always happens when consumer confidence is supposedly at 7 year highs. Right?

I thought the massive savings from the collapse in gasoline prices was supposed to translate into huge spending gains and boost the economy to new heights. That was the MSM storyline, and they are sticking to it.

Despite the absolutely dreadful data, the spin started immediately. They grasped onto the 0.3% increase in personal income as a straw of positivity. One problem. The increase wasn’t driven by people with jobs getting higher wages. And the increase was actually only 0.28%. The press release reveals the truth you won’t get from CNBC or any of the other corporate shill networks.

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/pi/2015/pdf/pi1214.pdf

Here are my observations, which you won’t hear elsewhere:

Continue reading “CONSUMPTION CRASHES IN DECEMBER”

THE GREATEST DECEPTION EVER TOLD

The American Dream and government statistics – you’d have to be asleep to believe either. The blatant disregard for the truth and the utter contempt for the common man by the ruling class in NYC and DC is breathtaking to behold. The lies, obfuscation, misinformation and propaganda issued by the government and mindlessly regurgitated by their MSM lackey brigade has approached hyper-speed as this shitshow we call America descends into an epic clusterfuck of deception, corruption and fraud.

Exposing The Deception: How The US Economy “Grew” By $140 Billion As Americans Became Poorer

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/23/2014 11:12 -0500

This is simply stunning.

Regular readers will recall that last month, at the same time as the US Bureau of Economic Analysis reported was a far better than expected 3.9% GDP (since revised to 5.0% on the back of the previously noted Obamacare spending surge), it also released its Personal Spending and Income numbers for the month of October, or rather revised numbers, because as we explained exactly one month ago “Americans Are Suddenly $80 Billion “Poorer“” thanks to (upward) revised spending data and (downward) revised income. What this meant a month ago is that as a result of a plunge in the imputed US savings rate, some $80 billion in personal savings was revised away from the average American household and right into the US economy.

After all, something had to grow the US GDP by a massive amount in order to give the Fed the green light it needs to hike rates eventually, just so it can then ease when the global dry powders from all the other central banks is used up.

And sure enough, this is how just one month ago, personal income was revised lower…

… Even as personal spending was revised higher:

Leading to an $80 billion revision lower in personal saving, and by mathematical identity, a comparable growth in US GDP.

* * *

Fast forward to today when we find that… absolutely nothing has changed, and in order to boost US GDP some more, the BEA engaged in precisely the same data revision trick!

On the surface, today’s Personal Income and Spending data were inline to a little bit better than expected:

Personal Income supposedly rose 0.4% in November, up from a 0.3% revised growth in October, and in line with expectations.
Personal Spending supposedly also rose, this time by 0.6%, up from an upward revised 0.3%, and just above the 0.5% expected.

So far so good: nothing abnormal, and in fact, in isolation this data would be good, suggesting the US consumer is spending more as the year closes.

And then we looked at the Personal Savings number: it was reported at 4.4% in November, down from 4.6% in October. Which is odd because last month, the October savings rate was disclosed as 5.0%, in turn down from a downward revised 5.6% in September.

Wait, could the BEA be engaging in precisely the same deception in November as it did in October.

Why yes, Virgina: not only did the US Department of Economic Truth completely fabricate its GDP numbers earlier, but the way it got to said fabrication is by fudging – for the second month in a row – both the entire Personal Income and Personal Saving data series.

Behold what the original data looked like in October, in November, when the extensive and already documented data revision took place, and just now, when the December data shows that the BEA once again revised everything just as it had previously.

To wit: here is Personal Income, revised substantially lower yet again, for every single datapoint of Q3 and then some, from July until October!

Sure enough, here is the revision to Personal Outlays: once again, a reduction in income magically meant that US household spent more in retrospect. As the chart below shows, Personal Outlays (Spending) was revised higher from July until October as well. What is most impressive is how the revision shifted the slope of US personal spending from one of Slowdown as reprted in October, to a literal explosion based on the latest data.

So how was all this spending funded? Simple: Americans “supposedly” dug massively into their savings, and as the following chart shows, Personal Savings have now crashed from what was originally an “unrevised” 5.6% in September, subsequently revised to 5.0% in November and 4.5% currently, and all the way down to 4.4% in November. Incidentally, this is the lowest savings rate since 2013, and the lowest savings rate for the month of November since 2006!

So what do all these revisions mean numerically? Luckily we can put absolute numbers alongside the savings rates, and as the following chart show, as of September 30, or the end of Q3, when US GDP supposedly soared by 5% annualized we now know that data revisions of personal income and spending alone generated…

… A whopping $140 billion in GDP!

So what does this mean? Well, as we learned earlier US GDP grew in Q3 by a nominal $272 billion to $17.6 trillion. We now know that more than half of this increase came from, drum roll please, data revisions!

In other words, US GDP, using pre-revision data, would have been less than 2.5%. But that woul dhardly lead to the euphoric blow-off top rally we have seen today which sent the DJIA for the first time ever above 18,000, which in turn is so critical to boost consumer confidence so Americans will, in real life, do what the BEA hopes they have already done at least on paper, and that is reduce their savings by a whopping 20% at the end of September, or by some $140 billion, to $593 billion in order to spend, spend, spend.

And the other irony: as the BEA also reported, what did Americans allegedly spend the bulk of their savings on?

Obamacare.

So in short, today the market is euphoric and hitting all time highs because Americans dug into their savings and spent billions on the “Affordable” Care Act.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the short answer why the US is “growing” when the rest of the world is mired in a triple (or quadruple if one is Japan) recession.

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis

YEAH THIS MAKES SENSE

The world hangs on every word uttered by Grandma Yellen as if she controls the world. Why doesn’t the average American see through the smoke and mirrors? The current monetary policy of the Federal Reserve is beyond ridiculous based upon history and the economic numbers being pumped out by the government. The world is so fucked up and the people so delusional or ignorant, they don’t realize the entire economy and financial system has been captured for the benefit of Yellen’s owners on Wall Street. Here is a little comparison to show how ridiculous Yellen’s policies are at this moment.

GDP growth 2nd quarter 2007 – 3.1%

GDP growth 2nd quarter 2014 – 4.6%

# of Americans employed 2007 – 146 million

# of Americans employed 2014 – 147 million

Unemployment Rate 2007 – 4.7%

Unemployment Rate 2014 – 5.8%

Fed Funds Rate 2007 – 4.75%

Fed Funds Rate 2014 – 0.10%

Money market returns for little old ladies 2007 – 4.25%

Money market returns for starving little old ladies 2014 – 0.09%

So we have an economy supposedly growing faster than the economy in 2007. We have more people employed than 2007 and according to the government and mainstream media we are adding 300,000 jobs per month. The unemployment rate has plummeted from 10% to 5.8%. Home prices have risen by 25% since 2012. The stock market is near all-time highs. Corporate profits have never been higher.

Can someone please explain to me why the Federal Reserve would need to keep interest rates at 0% if the all of the above is true. Based upon the figures from 2007, the Federal Funds rate should be at least 4%.

So is the government lying about the economic figures or is Yellen lying about the need for emergency level interest rates? Do you now understand who Yellen works for? It’s really really hard being the Federal Reserve Chairman. You have to decide whether to not raise interest rates or not raise interest rates, depending upon what Jamie Dimon instructs you to do.

SHOULD YOU BELIEVE WHAT THEY TELL YOU OR WHAT YOU SEE?

Sometimes I wish I could just passively accept what my government monarchs and their mainstream media mouthpieces feed me on a daily basis. Why do I have to question everything I’m told? Life would be much simpler and I could concentrate on more important things like the size of Kim Kardashian’s ass, why the Honey Boo Boo show was canceled, the Victoria Secret Fashion Show, whether I’ll get a better deal on Chinese slave labor produced crap on Black Thanksgiving, Black Friday, or Cyber Monday, fantasy football league standings, the latest NFL player to knockout their woman and get reinstated, Obama’s latest racial healing plan, which Clinton or Bush will be our next figurehead president, or the latest fake rape story from Rolling Stone. The willfully ignorant masses, dumbed down by government education, lured into obesity by corporate toxic packaged sludge disguised as food products, manipulated, controlled and molded by an unseen governing class of rich men, and kept docile through never ending corporate media propaganda, are nothing but pawns to the arrogant sociopathic pricks pulling the wires in this corporate fascist empire of debt.

I’m sure my blood pressure would be lower and my mood better if I just accepted everything I was told by my wise, sagacious, Ivy League educated, obscenely wealthy rulers as the unequivocal truth. Why should I doubt these noble, well intentioned, champions of the common folk? They’ve never misled us before. They would never attempt to use two highly publicized deaths as a lever to keep black people and white people fighting each other and not realizing all races are now living in a militarized police surveillance state supported by the one Party. They would never use their complete control over the financial, political, judicial, and media organisms to convince the masses that voting for one of their hand selected red or blue options will ever actually change anything. They would never engineer the overthrow of a democratically elected government, cover up the shooting down of an airliner, and attempt to blame their crimes on the leader of a nuclear power in their efforts to retain a teetering global empire. They would never overthrow or wage economic warfare on countries that don’t toe the line regarding the continued dominance of the petrodollar in global commerce.

Sadly, I’m cursed with a mind that questions everything and trusts no one in authority or associated with the status quo. It’s the reason I don’t read newspapers or watch mainstream media television entertainment propaganda, disguised as news. It’s the reason I will never vote in a national election again. The lesser of two evils is still evil. I’m skeptical of every piece of data fed to the sheep by the government apparatchiks working for the state. The faux journalists being paid millions by one of the six corporations controlling the media and dependent upon the government, Wall Street bankers, and mega-corporations for their advertising revenues regurgitate whatever they are told by those pulling the purse strings. The mainstream media are nothing but propaganda peddlers for the Deep State and truth telling is prohibited in their world of deception, debt, and denial. Their job is to sustain, enhance, and further enrich the status quo by engineering consent through what they report and what they do not report. The true ruling powers who operate in the shadows behind the scenes are men of power, wealth, status and education who truly believe they are better equipped to consciously manage and manipulate the public mind to achieve their ends. They are disciples of the Edward Bernays School of deception, manipulation and propaganda.

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.” – Edward Bernays

The Nazis were pikers compared to the technologically savvy Madison Avenue maggots and Silicon Valley snakes who mold the opinions, tastes, and beliefs of the iGadget addicted, vapid, unintelligent, unquestioning, zombie-like masses who beseech to be led, told what to do and what to believe. A vast swath of the population don’t read books or even know how to read above a grade school level. They couldn’t write a coherent paragraph if their life depended upon it. But they can twitter, text, Instagram, and facebook at the speed of light. Try walking down any street in an American city without some iGadget distracted oblivious moron bumping into you. The addicting nature of today’s technology is being used by the ruling elite to monitor, control, and make you respond the way they choose.

Facebook, corporate media organizations, quasi-government organizations, and the NSA are creating a corporate totalitarian state where the slaves willingly sacrifice their privacy, liberty and freedom for mindless entertainment and distractions. The 21^st Century totalitarian state captures your political beliefs, daily activities, habits, interests, spending behaviors, organizational associations, love life, pictures, psychological makeup, and fears from your own postings on the internet. With the right algorithms they can uncannily predict how you will react to different situations and messaging. They can also uncover threats to the status quo. Under the guise of keeping you safe from terrorists they are actually ferreting out subversives and radicals who refuse to conform to their idea of a good citizen slave. We will all be subject to our own Room 101.

Dan Kaplan in his recent article about Facebook as a tool for totalitarianism lays out the extreme threat to our future:

Today’s totalitarian demands a more subtle way to influence cultural and political sentiment. But if you got your hands on an algorithmically filtered newsfeed? One that could control the stories people see every day and influence their emotions across geographic, political and economic lines? You’d be in business.

But then there was the mood-influence study that scandalized us for a couple of weeks this year. Facebook changed the tone of content showing up in people’s feeds to test the impact it could have on their moods. The results, not too surprisingly, suggested that Facebook has the power to manipulate sentiment at scale.

Given how easy it is to scare people about the scary-seeming-but-actually-low-risk Ebola, and how dumb we all get when we are afraid, it is not crazy to think that under the wrong circumstances — like one or two more mass-scale terrorist attacks on major cities — modern democracy gives way to something akin to 1984.

If Big Brother were to seize the reins of power, sure, he’d use the cable news the way it’s being used today. But Facebook’s data maw, targeting power and sentiment-manipulation capabilities would be far more insidious. Whether this is what we become or not comes down to the future we choose to build.

The saddest part of this episode of mass delusion, mass confusion, and mass media collusion is that even though we are moving towards Orwell’s totalitarian vision of society, thus far, technology, triviality and an unending array of distractions have lured the masses into passive preoccupation with egotistical pleasures. We’ve been persuaded to love our servitude while drowning in a sea of irrelevance, diversions, and trifles. We continue to amuse ourselves to death while forging our own chains of debt and yielding to the direction of an all-powerful welfare warfare surveillance state that promises to protect us from phantom threats while actually abolishing our rights, freedoms, and liberties. No coercion necessary. We have been trained to love our servitude.

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World

Arrogance, Desperation, Lies & Truth

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” – Aldous Huxley

The level of data massaging by the government and their co-conspirators on Wall Street and in the corporate media is a futile attempt at a happy ending that will never come to fruition. The intensity and relentlessness with which the state and its quasi-state minions attempt to paint a false picture of economic recovery is equal parts arrogance and desperation. The arrogance is a function of successfully pulling off the greatest heist in world history from 2003 through 2008 with no adverse consequences, no criminal charges, no penalties for their crimes, and more power and wealth than they had prior to 2003. The only way to stop sociopaths is to throw them in jail or kill them. In our dystopian paradise of greed, they were rewarded with trillions in rescue packages by their cohorts in crime at the Federal Reserve and in Congress. They’ve paid themselves billions in bonuses for gorging at the Federal Reserve trough of QE and ZIRP. The desperation is borne from the fact that after $7.5 trillion of debt added by the Federal government and $3.5 trillion of debt created by the Federal Reserve since 2009, the Greater Depression for average Americans deepens by the day.

The men pulling the strings behind the scenes are drunk with power and their hubris allows them to believe their own infallibility and blinds them to the dire consequences for our country when their debt Ponzi scheme fails. But, as we grow ever closer to the day of reckoning, they will use every means at their disposal to paint a positive picture, regardless of the facts and reality for the average person. The examples of twisting, distorting and outright lying about the economic reality of our times are endless. These are some of the major false storylines peddled by our benevolent corporate fascist leaders:

The BLS reported 321,000 jobs added in November and the unemployment rate at 5.8%. Jobs are plentiful, based upon these statistics.

A skeptical critical thinking individual might ask a few questions or point out a few inconvenient facts the government purveyors of propaganda might not want us to ponder:

The non-manipulated, non-seasonally adjusted number of jobs in November FELL by 270,000. The BLS added 600,000 jobs as an adjustment to achieve the headline grabbing result.
If the jobs market is so good, why is the labor participation rate at a 30 year low of 62.8%?
Since 2007 the number of working age Americans has risen by 17 million, while the number of employed has risen by less than 1 million, but the unemployment rate is about the same.
Why would almost 14 million working age Americans leave the labor force since 2007 if the economy is booming and jobs plentiful, with 1.2 million leaving in the last 12 months?
Why would payroll tax receipts be flat with last year if millions of new jobs have been created?
If the country has really added 8 million jobs since 2010, how could real median household income FALL by 2.3%?

According to the government reported figures, the economy hasn’t been this strong since 2007. GDP has supposedly grown at greater than 4% over the last two quarters.

Anyone who is sentient knows consumer spending accounts for 68% of GDP. Capital investments that lead to long term prosperity continue to decline as a percentage of GDP from 20% in 2000 to 16% today. We’ve chosen consumption and financialization over savings and investment. This fact leads to some observations:

If GDP has actually grown by 20% since 2008 how does this correlate with a 6.9% decline in real median household income?
GDP has been goosed by a $69 billion increase in government spending, with the majority going to the military industrial complex. ISIS has been a godsend for our GDP and arms dealer profits.
GDP was increased retroactively by $500 billion last year based on a new way the government accounts for intangibles.
The surge in consumer expenditures over the last two quarters has been in the purchase of services. The higher costs for Obamacare are a boon for GDP. Are they a boon for your bank account?
The trade deficit has fallen as exports of petroleum products have temporarily provided a boost to GDP. The collapse in oil prices will reverse that trend rapidly.

According to the quasi-governmental mouthpieces at the Conference Board, consumer confidence is near a 5 year high, reflecting what should be robust spending.

So we are told by the representatives of corporatism that we are confident about the economy and the future. How does that measure up to the facts on the ground:

Black Friday weekend sales collapsed by 11% versus the previous year. As the pundits tried to blame it on on-line sales (10% of total retail sales), Cyber Monday also proved to be a dud.
If the average person is confident about the future and happy with their economic circumstances, why did they just vote to throw out the bums in November?
If consumers are confident, why have real retail sales, excluding subprime debt goosed auto sales, been flat for the last three months and up only 1% in the last year?
If consumers are so confident, why are credit card balances still $138 billion BELOW where they were in 2008? If all these new jobs are being created why is credit card debt lower than it was in mid-2010? Maybe consumers are so desperate they are using credit cards to pay utility and tax bills and not using them for frivolous Chinese crap at big box retailers.
The increased spending at grocery stores and restaurants is driven by food inflation, not foot traffic. Discretionary spending at furniture, electronics, and sporting goods stores is flat.
Department store sales continue to fall. Sears and JC Penney teeter on the verge of bankruptcy. Delia’s is liquidating and Radio Shack isn’t far behind. The major chains have completely stopped building new stores. The great bricks and mortar unwind relentlessly plods forward. In addition, online growth is stalling as states implement sales taxes.

According to the government, the deficit was ONLY $483 billion in 2014.

This is a real doozy. Obama has been touting how he has cut the deficit through his wise management of the budget. This is where government accounting is used by apparatchiks to mislead the public and obscure the truth. A few pertinent facts are always left out by the politicians touting deficit reduction:

Because of the budget impasse in 2013, the Federal government stopped updating the national debt on a daily basis, but we know from when they started counting again, the debt went up by $2.3 billion per day. Therefore, the national debt on October 1, 2013 was approximately $17.038 trillion. On October 1, 2014 the national debt was $17.875. Therefore, the national debt went up by $837 billion in 2014. Just a smidge higher than the reported deficit of $483 billion.
Interest is not paid on reported deficits. It’s paid on the national debt, so the massaged, manipulated and made over deficit is meaningless. The national debt was always slightly higher than reported deficits, but in the last few years the deviation has grown to a Grand Canyon size.
The deficit number has been artificially lowered by nothing other than accounting entry hocus pocus. The Federal Reserve increasing its balance sheet to $4 trillion out of thin air creates approximately $80 billion of phantom interest profits that are paid to the Treasury. Why don’t they increase their balance sheet to $40 trillion and eliminate deficits all together?
The biggest accounting scam is Fannie and Freddie. Just as the Wall Street banks have created fake profits through accounting entries regarding future losses, Fannie and Freddie have gone the extra mile in helping fake deficit reduction. These bloated insolvent government run pigs required a $187 billion taxpayer bailout in 2009. Amazingly, when you allow criminals to value their assets at whatever they choose, phantom profits flow like honey.
These two horribly run institutions of fraud “generated profits” of $129 billion in 2014 which were “paid back” to the Treasury. That is four times more than Apple or Exxon’s profits during a non-existent housing recovery. Why are their stocks trading at just over $2 per share if they are generating vastly more profits than they were in 2007 when their stocks were north of $70 per share? It’s because the profits are fake. Everyone knows it, but the Federal Deficit is reported $129 billion lower because these insolvent entities pretended to pay the taxpayer back. Accounting entries do not reduce deficits. Spending less than you generate in revenues reduces deficits.

According to the government, we’ve experienced a strong housing recovery since 2010.

The supposed housing recovery storyline continues to be beaten like a dead horse by the Wall Street media (CNBC) and the shills at the NAR. Anyone with a functioning brain (eliminates CNBC bimbos, hacks, and Ivy League economists) can see there has been no real housing recovery:

The 24% rise in home prices (Case Shiller Index) since the 2012 low has been nothing more than a Wall Street hedge fund/Federal Reserve scheme to elevate prices and make Wall Street bank balance sheets less insolvent. Wall Street banks withholding foreclosures from the market while Wall Street hedge funds (Blackstone) use free money from the Fed to buy up housing and rent it out to former homeowners has enriched the .1% while destroying the dream of home ownership for millions.
The percent of first time home buyers remains near record lows, while speculators, flippers, hedge fund managers, and rich Chinese businessmen make up a record number of purchasers. The fact this is a fake housing recovery is proven by mortgage applications to purchase a home sitting at 1995 levels and 30% below 2009 recession lows. Maybe the fact real median household income is also at 1995 levels, real wages keep declining, and labor force participation is at 1978 levels has something to do with real people not being able to purchase a home.

Even with the artificial hedge fund demand, existing home sales are lower than 2013 and languishing at 1999 levels. They are still 25% below 2005 levels, despite the lowest mortgage rates in history. New home sales are a disaster, with no appreciable increase in two years. Apartment construction has far outpaced single family housing construction. After a five year housing recovery, new home sales languish at levels seen at the bottom of our last six recessions. New home sales are 65% below the 2005 peak and at levels seen in the early 1960’s when there were 130 million less people living in the country.

According to the corporate media, the auto market is hitting on all cylinders with annual sales of 16.4 million, the highest since 2006.

Pretending to sell automobiles to people without the means to pay you for the automobile is always a good business idea. Of course, when you have Ally Financial and the rest of the Wall Street banking cabal doling out 7 year 0% loans and subprime auto loans like candy, it’s easy to move inventory. The temporary boost to GDP by issuing more bad debt always works out in the long run. Right?

If the auto business is booming why have GM profits fallen from $9.2 billion in 2011 to $5.4 billion in 2013, and on course to fall to $4 billion in 2014? Record levels of channel stuffing produces sales gains, but no profits. Why is their stock 25% below its 52 week high and lower than it was in 2010 when it was IPO’d after being rescued by Obama?
If the auto business is booming why are Ford’s profits falling by 35% versus last year and lower than they were in 2010? Why is their stock price 16% below its 52 week high and still 20% below its 2010 price?
Auto loan debt is at an all-time high of $950 billion, up 33% since 2010 when the Fed, Wall Street, and the political class in the fetid D.C. swamp decided they needed new debt bubbles in auto loans and student loans to jump start our moribund economy.
There are 65 million auto loans outstanding, and the average debt now stands at $17,352. Over 30% of auto “sales” are actually leases. The rest are financed over an average of 65 months. Virtually all new car sales are nothing more than 3 to 7 year rentals. It’s amazing what easy money from the Fed can produce.
Over 31% of all new auto loans this year were to subprime borrowers. They now account for 36.5% of all outstanding auto loans. You become a subprime borrower by defaulting on previous debt obligations. In a shocking development, auto loan delinquencies surged by 13% in the last quarter, with subprime loan delinquencies skyrocketing by 18%. When has issuing billions of debt to subprime borrowers ever caused problems before?
Only a University of Phoenix African Studies major is more of a subprime risk than the millions of ecstatic Escalade drivers cruising around our urban ghetto paradises. The average student loan debt is now $33,000. Until the Obama administration went Keynesian, student loan debt was primarily in the private sector. When Obama entered the White House total student loan debt was $620 billion and delinquencies totaled $50 billion. There are now $1.3 trillion of student loans outstanding, with the Federal government accounting for $830 billion and guaranteeing a large portion of the rest. Delinquencies have skyrocketed to $125 billion, as another taxpayer bailout beckons.

According to the corporate mainstream media pundits, the plunge in oil prices from $100 per barrel to $61 per barrel is unequivocally good for the economy. The shale oil boom has worked its magic and happy times are here again.

Sometimes you have to wonder whether the highly educated spokesmodels on the corporate mainstream media are really as vacuous and clueless as they appear or whether they are just paid to look pretty and mouth the corporate line. They seem incapable of comprehending the unintended consequences of various events. The collapse in oil prices is one of those events.

There is no doubt that lower oil prices will lower the price of gas for the average American. Estimates say they will save $368 per year, which can be spent elsewhere. The highly paid shill economists who declare this will boost spending seem to be math challenged. Retail sales figures include gas stations. What isn’t spent there will be spent in another category, most likely healthcare or groceries as prices in both areas continue to escalate. It’s a zero sum game. No new spending will occur.
The worldwide supply of oil has only increased marginally over the last few years. The U.S. shale boom has been offset by declines elsewhere (Libya, Iran, Mexico). The reason for the collapse is the same reason for the 2009 collapse – worldwide demand is contracting. Europe is in a depression. Japan is in a depression. Russia’s economy is contracting. China is decelerating rapidly. The U.S. demand is flat. The implications of another global recession after five years of central banks printing trillions of fiat currency are alarming to say the least.
The cost to extract shale oil and transport it to a refinery capable of processing it is high. Honest analysts will tell you that a price of $70 to $80 is required to breakeven. Most companies don’t build breakeven into their plans. Bakken shale oil sells at a discount of about $14 per barrel due to the difficulty of extraction, transport, and processing. It is now selling for $47 per barrel. The number of permits for new rigs fell by 40% in November when oil was still selling for $75 per barrel. Do you think permits for new wells will fall at a price of $61 per barrel? Capital spending by the energy industry accounted for 33% of all capital spending in the last few years. I’m sure some other industry will pick up the slack. Right?
It seems the shale oil boom has resulted in a few jobs being created since the 2010 recession trough. In fact the states where fracking is prevalent have accounted for all the job growth in the nation. I wonder if a shale oil bust will have any employment implications. There are 9.3 million jobs related to the energy industry across the country. The plunge in oil prices created by Saudi Arabia in the 1980s created a depression in Texas which contributed to the S&L crisis. This plunge will reveal who has been swimming naked in the high yield bond market and derivatives market.

These are just a few examples among a multitude of lies. Others include: stocks aren’t overvalued, gold isn’t money, inflation is good for you, and ISIS terrorists are an imminent threat to your way of life. Every feel good story fed to the masses by the oligarchs running this shitshow we call America is no different than the propaganda doled out by other infamous totalitarian regimes throughout history. We believe things because we’ve been conditioned to believe them. The crony capitalist oligarchs are intelligent enough to invent theories to explain how the world should work, but not intelligent enough to interpret their models correctly. When they act on their theories (Keynesianism), their actions appear to be those of a lunatic. Despite all evidence refuting their theories, their arrogance and hubris lead them to destruction. The collective insanity of this world is almost too much for a rational thinking person to grasp. The extremely wealthy men operating in the shadows will use every means at their disposal to retain power, enhance their wealth, and crush dissent.

“Being a card carrying member of the privileged class means never having to say I’m sorry, much less ‘not guilty.’ Power is doing what you want when you want, and consequences are for everyone else. Or perhaps these titans of modern industry and the halls of power are at heart just good natured bumblers, who in a genuine belief destroy lives and crash economies, while pursuing insane ideological assumption put forward by vested interests, all the while stuffing their pockets, and crushing all dissent with the political skills of a Machiavelli and the ruthlessness of Al Capone.” – Jesse

The two party system is nothing but a ruse designed to keep the people believing they have a say in how things are run in this country. Both parties support the military industrial complex. Both parties support the militarization of police forces around the country. Both parties support the mass surveillance of its citizens. Both parties do the bidding of their rich corporate and special interest benefactors. Both parties favor deficit spending for eternity. Both parties believe the government should expand its role in our everyday lives. Both parties do the bidding for and protect the Wall Street interests who really run this country. No more proof is needed than what has occurred over the last five years, as criminal Wall Street bankers were rewarded for their malfeasance with trillions of dollars from taxpayers and their puppets at the Federal Reserve. While we were allowing ourselves to be distracted, amused, entertained, and indebted, the oligarchs were busy conducting a silent coup.

“Let’s be clear about this, the oligarchs are flush with victory, and feel that they are firmly in control, able to subvert and direct any popular movement to the support of their own fascist ends and unslakable will to power.

This is the contempt in which they hold the majority of American people and the political process: the common people are easily led fools, and everyone else who is smart enough to know better has their price. And they would beggar every middle class voter in the US before they will voluntarily give up one dime of their ill-gotten gains.

But my model says that the oligarchs will continue to press their advantages, being flushed with victory, until they provoke a strong reaction that frightens everyone, like a wake-up call, and the tide then turns to genuine reform.” – Simon Johnson

The oligarchs have had a good run. The system cannot be reformed from within. The corruption runs too deep. The system is broken and can’t be fixed. There is no doubt in my mind that a collapse approaches which will make 2008/2009 look like a walk in the park. The anger, blame and retribution will sweep away the existing social order and replace it with something new. It will be up to the people to decide what happens next. We were warned two centuries ago by a wise man. Hopefully, we’ll get a 2^nd chance.

“However political parties may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” – George Washington

IT’S ALL GOOD, RIGHT?

It really isn’t hard to connect the dots and see the real economy in the real world, outside Wall Street, is a disaster and getting worse by the hour. Below are a bunch of dots that have been issued in the last 24 hours. Here are the facts.

Real disposable income has risen at a 1.8% annual rate over the last four months. Meanwhile, real consumer spending has increased at a 2.4% annual rate over the last four months. I thought all those jobs Obama talks about should result in wages. Why is disposable personal income so pitiful if the unemployment rate is really 5.9%? And of course, these figures are based upon a fake inflation rate of less than 2%. We all know it is 5% or higher.

If things are going so well, why are unemployment claims surging to the highest level in 3 months? Shouldn’t the wonderful holiday season be resulting in massive retail hiring to service all the well off citizens buying more shit they don’t need, with money they don’t have? Consumer debt outstanding will surely hit a new high in December.

Maybe the lack of disposable income is because the number of people receiving free shit for not working is now at a 14 year low. As we know, government transfers of our money to people not working counts as personal income in the warped minds of government bureaucrats. It looks like the free rides are getting shorter.

With the stock market hitting new highs every day, the millionaire pundits on the corporate mainstream media are ecstatic as the wealth of billionaires and bankers skyrockets. If it is good for Wall Street it must be good for Main Street. Right? Not according to Gallup. It seems the Americans living in the real world ain’t so ecstatic. They plan to barely spend more on Christmas than last year, and 6% LESS than they spent in 2011 and 2012. How about 17% less than they spent in 2007? How about 16% less than they spent in 1999? Does this jive with an economic recovery and a stock market at all-time highs?

Back in the real world of businesses, it seems things aren’t so good. Zero Hedge pithily describes the situation:

The Durable Goods ex-transports number dropped by a whopping -0.9%, far below the 0.5% increase expected, and the biggest drop since the December -1.8% tumble which was blamed on the Polar Vortex. It is unclear what the October tumble will be blamed on: the Ebola scare? The Bullard Bottom?

If the high level numbers weren’t enough proof, how about an iconic American manufacturer? Their sales and profits are falling. They expect sales for the current quarter to PLUNGE by 21%. That only happens in recessions. I thought the agricultural economy was booming. Maybe not.

Deere’s stock slips after downbeat outlook for equipment sales

By Tomi Kilgore

Published: Nov 26, 2014 7:18 a.m. ET

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Deere & Co.’s stock DE, +0.31% fell 3.4% in premarket trade Wednesday, after the farm equipment maker beat fiscal fourth-quarter profit and sales forecasts, but provided a downbeat outlook for equipment sales. For the quarter ended Oct. 31, the company reported earnings of $649.2 million, or $1.83 a share, down from $806.8 million, or $2.11 a share, in the year-earlier period, but above the FactSet consensus analyst estimate of $1.57. Revenue fell 5% to $8.97 billion, as equipment sales fell 7%, but topped analyst forecasts of $7.73 billion. For the current quarter, Deere expects equipment sales to fall 21%, on expectations of a continued pullback in the agricultural sector. “The slowdown has been most pronounced in the sale of large farm machinery, including many of our most profitable models.” The stock has lost 3.9% so far this year through Tuesday, compared with a 12% gain in the S&P 500.

The government laughingly told the sheep that GDP in the 3rd quarter had soared. A critical thinking person might wonder how that could be. We know from the data presented above that the consumer has not been spending, because they don’t have anything to spend. As detailed below, corporate profits crashed in the 3rd quarter. We’ve got corporate profits growing at 2.1% when the PE ratio of the S&P 500 is 20. Based on every valuation method ever used, the stock market is now overvalued by at least 50%.

Growth in corporate profits slows sharply in third quarter

By Jeffry Bartash

Published: Nov 25, 2014 8:31 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – Growth in adjusted corporate profits slowed sharply in the third quarter, new government figures show. Adjusted pretax profits increased by $43.8 billion, or a 2.1% annual rate. That’s down from $164.1 billion, or an 8.4% increase, in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Profit figures are adjusted for depreciation and the value of inventories.

So despite these factual data points, the MSM and Wall Street will party on with the belief that Grandma Yellen and the rest of the corrupt central bankers around the globe will devalue the world to prosperity. Or at least provide prosperity to the .1% that control them.

THANK THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX FOR THE “SOARING” GDP

We don’t need no stinking wage growth or consumer spending. We’ve got our corporate arms dealers fighting evil terrorist around the globe with your tax dollars. That equals economic prosperity in our warfare/welfare empire of debt. Don’t forget to buy stocks with all your disposable income. Grandma Yellen says you need to accumulate more assets to become rich.

Why Did Q3 GDP Jump: Thank ISIS And The “War On Terror”

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/30/2014 09:10 -0400

As we noted previously, the main reason why Q3 GDP surprised to the upside was thanks to yet another accounting gimmick, where it wasn’t the US consumer leading to US growth, as has historically been the case, but because the government stepped up, and boosted GDP by the most since Q2 2009.

So just which aspect of government taxpayer fund recirculation was responsible for this sudden boost in US “growth” (leaving aside the philosophical debate whether government capital allocations ever lead to grwoth)?

The answer is shown in the chart below showing the quarterly change in US National Defense spending: at by $30 billion, it was the most since 2008!

In short: thank you ISIS and renewed war on terror.

And what is more disturbing, as we noted earlier, is that the Fed had this data when it decided yesterday to end QE and to present its “surprisingly hawkish” assessment of the economy, suggesting the Fed is comfortbale with defense spending as a marginal leader of US growth (and is also not seeing any snow whatsoever this winter)

So… the “Fed war put” anyone?

Source: St. Louis Fed

10 YEAR TREASURY YIELDS AT 2008 CRISIS LEVELS

The 10 Year Treasury yield this morning is 2.35%. It was 3.04% earlier this year and 4% in 2010. In a healthy growing economy with GDP supposedly exceeding 4%, and real inflation running at 5%, would the 10 Year Treasury be trading at 2008 financial crisis levels? Of course not.

If Obama and his minions, touting our growing economy and millions of “new” jobs one month before the mid-term elections, are telling the truth than why have rates plunged from 3.04% to 2.35% since the beginning of this year? This is while the Fed has been tapering their QE heroine injections. When 10 year rates fall by 23% in nine months it is signaling trouble ahead.

HOW LOW CAN WE GO?

Chart of the Day

For some perspective on all-important long-term interest rates, today’s chart illustrates the 30-year trend of the 10-year Treasury bond yield (thick blue line). As today’s chart illustrates, the 10-year Treasury bond yield has moved within the confines of a 28-year downward sloping trend channel. Since 2008, the trend channel has narrowed slightly (see dashed gray lines). The recent spate of economic concerns (Europe, China, etc.) and geopolitical issues (ISIL, Ukraine, etc.) has encouraged a flight to safety resulting in a decline of the 10-year Treasury bond yield over the past ten months. In fact, the 10-year yield is currently at a level similar to what occurred during the height of the financial crisis in late 2008.

Poverty Report Contradicts GDP Claims

Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

It is amazing how the government manages to continue selling Brooklyn Bridges to a gullible public. Americans buy wars they don’t need and economic recoveries that do not exist.

The best investment in America is a highly leveraged fund that invests only in large cap companies that are buying back their own stocks. Many of the firms repurchasing their stocks are borrowing in order to push up their stock prices, executive “performance bonuses,” and shareholders’ capital gains. The debt incurred will have to be serviced by future earnings. This is not a picture of capitalism that is driving the economy by investment.

Neither is consumer spending driving the economy. The US Census Bureau’s 2013 Income and Poverty Report concludes that in 2013 real median household income was 8 percent below the amount in 2007, the year prior to the 2008 recession and has declined to the level in 1994, two decades ago! http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p60-249.pdf Even though real household income has not regained the pre-recession level and has declined to the level 20 years ago, the government and financial press claim that the economy has been in recovery since June 2009.

Neither is an increase in consumer debt driving the economy. The only growth in personal debt is in student loans.

Real retail sales (corrected with a non-rigged measure of inflation) remain at the level of the bottom of the recession in 2009. Macy’s , J.C. Penny’s, and Sears store closings are further evidence of the lack of retail sales growth, as is the fact that two of the three dollar store chains are in trouble. Walmart’s sales are declining.

The basis of auto sales hype is subprime loans and leases taken by those who cannot qualify for a loan to purchase.

Housing starts remain far below the pre-recession level, which is not surprising when available jobs are part-time with no benefits. Such jobs cannot support the formation of households and purchase of homes.

Where does the government’s second quarter 2014 real GDP growth rate of 4.6 percent come from? It comes from an understated inflation measure and jiggled numbers. It is not a correct figure. Nothing has occurred in the economy to turn it from a first quarter decline of more than 2 percent into a second quarter growth of 4.6 percent.

The 4.6 percent number is pulled out of a hat to set the stage for the November election.

It is extraordinary that economists and the financial media permit the government to get away with its false economic reporting. Of course Wall Street likes good news . . . but fake news that misleads investors and covers up economic policy mistakes?

Clearly, something is wrong with the government’s economic reporting. It is not possible to have real GDP growth when real median family incomes are declining and business investment consists of corporations buying back their own shares. Either the government’s GDP estimate is incorrect or the Census Bureau’s Income and Poverty report is incorrect. Apparently Washington doesn’t understand that if it is going to rig the numbers, it must rig all the numbers.

The rigged inflation measures create illusionary real GDP growth. They also block cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security pensions. Indeed, the main purpose of the rigged inflation measures is to get rid of “socialistic” Social Security by allowing inflation to gradually erode away the real values of “entitlements.” Republicans always want to cut “entitlements” that people have paid for over their working lifetime with the payroll tax. But Republicans never want to cut the payroll tax. They need the revenues in order to bail out the big banks and to pay for never-ending wars.

Washington has been conducting needless wars abroad for 93 percent of the 21st century at a cost of trillions of dollars. More trillions have been wasted bailing out banks that deregulation permitted to become “too big to fail.” During the past seven years, millions of Americans have lost their jobs and their homes, and food stamp rolls have reached record numbers. These hurting Americans have been ignored by policy-makers in Washington.

Clearly, government in America is focused on something different from a healthy economy and the well being of citizens. We call it democracy, but it’s not.

You Can’t Feed a Family With G.D.P.

Guest Post by Neil Irwin

The most important thing to know about the state of the United States economy was revealed in a report Tuesday morning that Wall Street barely noticed.

Every year, the Census Bureau delivers a sweeping set of numbers that give the richest annual picture of how much Americans are making, how many are living in poverty, and how many have access to health insurance. The numbers are backward-looking, covering conditions from a year ago. But the new numbers, released Tuesday, in many ways tell us more about how well the economy is serving — or failing — the mass of Americans than data that create hyperventilation in the financial markets.

The census numbers on what American families made last year are as mediocre as they are predictable. We now know that if your household brought in $51,939 in income last year, you were right at the 50th percentile, with half of households doing better and half doing worse. In inflation-adjusted terms, that is up a mere 0.3 percent from 2012. If you’re counting, that’s an extra $180 in annual real income for a middle-income American family. Don’t spend your extra $3.46 a week all in one place.

Growth Hasn’t Translated Into Gains in Middle-Class Income

Until around 1999, overall economic growth tended to correspond with growth in earnings for middle-income Americans. Since then, the two have diverged sharply.

Going back a little further, the numbers are even gloomier. The 2013 median income remained a whopping 8 percent — about $4,500 per year — below where it was in 2007. The 2008 recession depressed wages for middle-income Americans, and they haven’t recovered in any meaningful way. And 2007 household incomes were actually below the 1999 peak.

There are a few sunnier points in the report. The poverty rate fell to 14.5 percent, from 15 percent. And as the White House Council of Economic Advisers points out, incomes rose a good bit more in 2013 for the median family — that is households where people who are related live together — than they did for the more widely cited measure of households, which includes singles and roommates.

But the new evidence that pay is stagnant for middle-income families strikes us as the most important thing contained in this report. That’s partly because it is supported by so much other evidence, some of which we have written about recently.

This simple fact may be the most important thing to understand about today’s economy: Around 1999, growth in the United States economy stopped translating to growth in middle-class incomes. In the last 15 years, median income has been more or less flat while there was far sharper growth in, for example, per capita gross domestic product.

There are various potential reasons. Evolving technology favors those with the most advanced skills and allows companies to replace formerly middle-class workers with machines. Declining union power gives workers less power at the bargaining table over wages. Cultural norms have shifted such that top executives and financiers are paid much more compared with regular workers than they used to be.

But there really is no mystery as to why public opinion has been persistently down on the quality of the economy for years. You can’t eat G.D.P. You can’t live in a rising stock market. You can’t give your kids a better life because your company’s C.E.O. was able to give himself a big raise.

The rubber-meets-road measure of whether the economy is working for the mass of Americans is median real income and related measures of how much money is making its way into their pockets and what they can buy with that money.

And the newest census numbers show that the nation experienced virtually no progress on that frontier in 2013, and remains far behind where we were seven years ago. Americans feel disappointed by the economy; the new data show that they have good reason.

THANK ISIS FOR LOWER GAS PRICES

While Obama takes bows for oil prices dropping from $100 per barrel to $93 per barrel due to our shale oil revolution, maybe we should be thanking those dreaded ISIS terrorists. They are evidently dumping Iraqi and Syrian oil into the market at $40 per barrel. The world oil markets adapt to supply and demand through the mechanism of pricing. If these existential threat terrorists really are dumping oil onto the market at $40 per barrel, then prices would be driven downward. Shouldn’t we be thanking them? The other possibility is that the worldwide economy is contracting and demand is slowing dramatically. That couldn’t be the case. My beloved government tells me we are growing like gangbusters.

I have a few of questions about how a few thousand ignorant terrorist ragheaded camel fuckers can somehow successfully run oil refineries, pipelines and oil wells and sell 80,000 barrels of oil per day.

How do they manage to do this without the U.S. knowing who is buying the oil?

Who is buying this oil?

Are they getting paid in cash?

Are banks involved in these transactions?

Where are they depositing the $97 million per month?

We keep introducing sanctions against Russia, but our Empire can’t stop a bunch of terrorists from selling 80,000 barrels of oil per day?

So, these terrible terrorists are using our military equipment that we gave them to fight our enemies Assad and Iran, and they are lowering our gas prices by selling oil really cheap to our allies (maybe even ourselves), but we need to eliminate them. Now I understand. It’s as logical as Bush telling us to take a 7 year loan and buy a $50,000 GM to defeat the terrorists. Or we have to scrap free market capitalism to save free market capitalism. I’m beginning to understand.

DEMAND COULDN’T BE CONTRACTING. RIGHT?

NO, THE GOVERNMENT GDP REPORT IS NOT AN ONION ARTICLE

You know when Onion articles are more believable than government reported data, your country has jumped the shark. Last quarter your government reported GDP GROWTH of 0.1%. They ultimately admitted it was really NEGATIVE 2.9%. Now the government goes back and “adjusts” 15 years worth of their worthless data and surprise surprise, it was ONLY NEGATIVE 2.1%.

Now these BEA drones have the balls to report a 4% 2nd quarter increase. This figure is beyond laughable. It is complete and utter bullshit. Three months from now they will revise it to 1.5%. They needed a big number today because the world situation is going to shit and Obama’s approval rating hits new lows every day.

Zero Hedge points out that the BEA admitted to making wild ass guesses about the two biggest components of the surge because they had incomplete June data. The downward revisions will follow after they get their all-time stock market high based on bullshit data.

They had the gall to say that consumer spending spiked when major retailers have been reporting shitty 2nd quarter sales. Who do you think is lying?

They say that residential construction surged in the 2nd quarter. We know for a fact that new home construction plummeted in the 2nd quarter. All of the housing market is lower than last year. How can durable goods purchases be surging (appliances, furniture, electronics) when the retail sales figures for those retailers are negative versus last year?

This entire report is bogus. I know it, you know it, and the government drones know it. But CNBC and the rest of the captured corporate media will shout the awesome news from the mountaintops and the Wall Street shysters will pump the rigged market with their HFT supercomputers.

All is well in our Brave New World of finance and propaganda.

Q2 GDP Surges 4%, Beats Estimates Driven By Inventories, Fixed Investment Spike; Historical Data Revised

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/30/2014 08:54 -0400

Moments ago the Commerce department reported Q2 GDP which blew estimates out of the water, printing at 4.0%, above the declining 3.0% consensus, as a result of a surge in Inventories and Fixed Investment, both of which added over 2.5% of the total print, while exports added another 1.23% to the GDP number. The full breakdown by component is shown below.

What is interesting is that the Commerce Department announced that as a result of incomplete June data, the biggest components of the GDP beat, Inventories and Trade, were estimated. In other words, assume that future revisions of Q2 GDP will be lower, not higher, as the actual data comes in, and especially as the CapEx data, which contrary to the GDP report, has not rebounded. Speaking of revisions, today the BEA also released its annual revision of all data from 1999 to Q1 2014, which made last quarter’s -2.9% print a more palatable -2.1%, in the process throwing everyone’s trendline calculations off as yet another GDP redefinition was implemented.

The chart of the original and revised data is shown below.

We are currently combing through the years of revisions and will provide a snapshot shortly but for the time being here is Bloomberg’s take:

2Q personal consumption up 2.5% vs est. up 1.9% (range 1.5%-2.9%); prior revised to 1.2% from 1%
Core PCE q/q 2% vs est. 1.9% (range 1.4%-2.3%)
Gross private investment up 17% in 2Q after falling 6.9% in 1Q
Residential up 7.5% after falling 5.3%
Purchases of durable goods jumped 14%, most since 3Q 2009
Corporate spending up 5.9% vs little changed q/q
Inventory accumulation added 1.7ppts to GDP

OUR TOTALITARIAN FUTURE – PART TWO

In Part One, I asked questions your keepers don’t want to answer truthfully, while providing the contextual setting for how our over-populated world is progressing relentlessly towards a future of war and totalitarianism.

Totalitarianism Now

“Where the republican or limited monarchical tradition is weak, the best of constitutions will not prevent ambitious politicians from succumbing with glee and gusto to the temptations of power. And in any country where numbers have begun to press heavily upon available resources, these temptations cannot fail to arise. Over-population leads to economic insecurity and social unrest. Unrest and insecurity lead to more control by central governments and an increase of their power. In the absence of a constitutional tradition, this increased power will probably be exercised in a dictatorial fashion.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958

Huxley wrote his dystopian masterpiece in 1931 before the rise of Stalin, Hitler and Mao and their murderous totalitarian empires, sustained by torture, mass murder, surveillance, and fear. Orwell wrote 1984 in 1948, after living through the nightmare of World War II and witnessing the malevolent systematic terrorism inflicted upon innocent populations by psychopathic tyrants like Hitler and Stalin. World War II killed 65 million people. Stalin’s purges killed 20 million Russians, and Mao murdered 45 million of his own people. It appeared that Orwell’s gruesome vision of a future of brutality, surveillance, and fear would come true.

Instead, Huxley’s vision gained ground in the post war world of cheap oil, mass production, consumerism, and TV advertising. It was found that government through terror works on the whole less well than government through the non-violent manipulation of the environment and of the thoughts and feelings of individual men, women and children. Propaganda, amusements, materialism, easily accessible debt, and relentless media messaging convinced the masses to love their enslavement and never dream of revolution. It worked as long as energy and debt remained cheap and plentiful.

The 4.4 billion increase (157%) in the world’s population since Huxley’s warning in 1958 is attributable to vast supplies of cheap easily accessible oil, natural gas and coal, which have allowed technological and agricultural advancements that have vastly expanded food production, water purification, global transportation, and medical advancements. With the peak in traditional worldwide oil production reached around 2005, and modest subsequent production increases obtained only by mining tar sands, fracking shale and drilling in deep water at much higher production costs, the era of cheap plentiful energy has come to an end.

Propaganda and storylines about vast reserves and energy independence fail to acknowledge the concept of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI). Once it requires investing more than one barrel of oil in energy to extract one barrel of oil, the game is over. We are approaching the limits of growth because our remaining energy resources will require much more capital investment and higher prices for companies to make that investment. Oil prices were $25 per barrel when George Bush and the neo-cons launched their Iraq Freedom campaign in 2003. Eleven years later, with U.S. oil production at 44 year highs and consumption at 2000 levels, a barrel of oil is over $100 per barrel. The combination of increased demand from developing countries, vastly higher production costs, and global unrest in the areas of the world storing “our” oil under their sand will put a floor on prices, with spikes upward as resource wars flare up around the globe.

It is not a coincidence that the world economic system collapsed in 2008 after oil prices topped $140 per barrel. World food prices also spiked to all-time highs in 2008. The surge in food prices in 2011 to new highs was the impetus for the Arab Spring and social unrest across the Middle East and Africa. The FAO World Food Index spiked to levels only exceeded in 2011 earlier this year. Oil prices have surged as high as $106 and have averaged over $100 in 2014. Do you think it is just a coincidence that social unrest across the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe has surged in the last few months? Rising prices and the increasing scarcity of food, water and energy resources push the desperately poor towards revolution.

Societal strife, economic decline, poverty, lawlessness, and resource deprivation in third world countries result in dependency upon a central authority to sustain the masses. In the poorest countries without a long history of democracy, the people turn to a strong leader to save them. Before long too much power is accumulated in too few hands and totalitarian regimes are born. The world is awash in the blood spilled by dictators (North Korea, Egypt, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Iran, Tunisia, Syria, Sudan) and presidents in name only (China, Vietnam, Nigeria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, Russia, Argentina).

Dreadfully poor people with no hope for a better future turn to radical religion, extremist ideas, and psychotic leaders. A full belly trumps freedoms and liberties. It is not surprising that despots proliferate in the poorest countries with the highest population growth rates. The so called developed world in the U.S. and Europe had been able to sidestep and even take advantage of these developing countries until the 2008 financial collapse. The oligarchs have treated the third world as slave plantations to be reaped, plundered and pillaged. Their banker solution to a crisis caused by the fraudulent issuance of debt products has been to redouble their looting and pillaging campaign through the issuance of even more debt in order to further enrich themselves at the expense of the many.

Huxley saw it beginning to happen even during the late 1950’s:

“Meanwhile impersonal forces over which we have almost no control seem to be pushing us all in the direction of the Brave New Worldian nightmare; and this impersonal pushing is being consciously accelerated by representatives of commercial and political organizations who have developed a number of new techniques for manipulating, in the interest of some minority, the thoughts and feelings of the masses.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958

I think Huxley underestimated the lengths to which a minority of criminal wealthy bankers, their crony capitalist corporate co-conspirators, and feckless bought off politicians would go in their sociopathic manipulation of the masses to gorge themselves upon the world’s resources and wealth. In 1958 the manipulators only had TV in its infancy and independent newspapers published by journalists who attempted to report the truth. They’ve come a long way baby.

The Deep State, Silent Government, Oligarchs, TPTB, or whatever term you want to employ to our Brave New World Controllers have mastered the art of propaganda, manipulation, distraction, and social engineering to such an extent the majority of Americans have come to love their techno-narcissistic, debt saturated, welfare/warfare, surveillance state. When a minority of evil minded men gain control of a nation’s currency, own and control the few remaining propaganda news outlets, run the mega-corporations selling toxic poison processed food and iGadgets to the masses on debt issued by Wall Street banks, pay-off the politicians writing legislation and tax codes, and brainwash the youth through government controlled education, your Brave New World nightmare has arrived.

Huxley believed that over-population was not an immediate threat to the personal freedoms of Americans and Europeans due to their long history under democratic constitutions. Of course our national debt of $276 billion in 1958 was only 57% of our annual GDP of $482 billion. The population of 175 million could easily be sustained, with ample supplies of energy, food and jobs. The standard of living for families rose consistently and an economy based upon savings, capital investment, and producing things flowed wealth across all classes – raising all boats. Banks accumulated deposits from citizens and leant money to small businesses. There were no stock options, derivatives, stock buybacks, or trading profits. People borrowed sparingly and saved for the things they wanted.

Huxley predicted trouble by the beginning of the twenty first century if the population of the U.S. continued to outpace the available resources to support that population. He was right again. The party ended in 2000.The National Debt has soared to $17.6 trillion, or 104% of GDP in 2014. Why did the debt go up by a factor of 64 while GDP only advanced by a factor of 35? In 1958, prior to the blossoming of the welfare/warfare state, there were little to no unfunded liabilities. Today the total exceeds $200 trillion. A country adding debt at this astronomical rate is a country consuming far more than it is producing. Depletion of resources, overconsumption, and economic decline lead to debt expansion and centralized government control. When 20% of all households depend upon food stamps to survive, your country has too many mouths to feed and a failing economic system designed to serve the oligarchs and impoverish the peasants.

Consumer debt outstanding in 1958 totaled $48 billion, all non-revolving debt mainly for auto purchases. The credit card did not exist. Consumer debt outstanding today totals $3.2 trillion. Has this 6,667% increase in consumer debt benefitted the average person or Jamie Dimon and his ilk? Is it a rational choice of consumers in a free capitalist market or is it a result of coordinated actions by the banking cabal and their captured government benefactors to enslave the masses in debt while keeping them dumbed down and distracted by electronic gadgets produced in slave labor camps overseas under the guise of globalization? Huxley didn’t anticipate Federal Reserve bankers and cowardly captured politicians purposefully inflating away 88% of the U.S. dollar’s purchasing power as they expanded the welfare/warfare state through monetary manipulation, abandonment of gold backed currency and unfettered debt expansion. The result is real wages haven’t advanced in the last 40 years, while corporate profits reach record heights and a small cadre of oligarchs reap the rewards of debt enslavement of the many.

The Ponzi scheme system created by the invisible “leaders” of the supposedly free developed world required never ending growth to support the never ending issuance of debt in order to keep the fleecing of the masses operation running smoothly. This is where increasing population and resource depletion have thrown a monkey wrench into their printing press operation. The autocrats harvested energy and minerals resources from third world countries, while utilizing the catch phrase of globalization, as a cover for their wage arbitrage mechanism to continue their worldwide pillaging scheme. The Ivy League educated moguls are extremely smart when it comes to figuring out new and creative ways to screw the common folk, but their unparalleled hubris and arrogant disregard for humanity blind them to the ultimate consequences of their malevolent machinations. There will be blood and they will not escape unscathed. War is coming, but not the war they anticipate.

The definition of totalitarianism is a political system in which the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible. Our two party farce of a political system is aligned to control our lives through laws, regulations, rules, bylaws, procedures, tax codes, taxation, inflation, and debt, enforced by government apparatchiks, bureaucrats, politicians, bankers, police state thugs, and when all else fails – the military. While the masses were distracted by facebooking, texting, twittering, instagramming, taking selfies, playing Words with Friends, engaging make believe enemies on their PS3 or Xbox, watching the Kardashians on one of their 700 cable TV stations, or shopping for Chinese produced crap at one of our 1.5 million cookie cutter chain retail boxes, those in control of this country covertly turned the nation into a surveillance state while militarizing local police forces. They know the endless growth story is over. Our oppressors fear the repercussions when the masses realize it’s all been a big lie and they are left impoverished and hungry. They are attempting to instigate foreign wars, while preparing for the coming civil war.

The confusion, chaos, mayhem and war currently shaking the foundations of our planet are a direct result of too many people jammed into too small of a space with too few resources and too few opportunities for economic advancement. Poor, deprived, hungry people with nothing to lose begin to lose it. Revolution, civil unrest, radicalism, the rise of extremists and despots, and totalitarian regimes are the result. The invasion of Iraq was about oil. The overthrow of Gaddafi was about oil. The ongoing attempt to overthrow Assad is about a natural gas pipeline to Europe in order to isolate the Russians. The Ukrainian coup is about Russian natural gas and oil. The sanctions and saber rattling over Iran’s nuclear program is really about their oil. The United States is utilizing their military industrial complex and CIA assets to instigate turmoil and war around the world in an effort to gain control over the dwindling energy resources in the Middle East and Africa. Russia and China are blocking U.S. efforts at every turn, as the world inches ever closer to a major resource war.

Huxley’s Brave New World dystopian America had a good run from 1950 until 2000. Our keepers kept us fat, dumb, distracted, and in debt up to our eyeballs. Since 2000 Orwell’s 1984 dystopian Surveillance States of America seems to be taking shape, under the watchful eye of our very own Big Brother, the NSA. Fear, punishment, slogans (See Something Say Something) and appeals to non-thinking patriotism have replaced freedom, liberty, individual rights, the Constitution, personal responsibility for our own lives and questioning authority. The propagandists created the War on Terror as a way to keep the ignorant masses fearful and cowering behind the skirts of Big Brother. The 2008 financial collapse was another crisis that couldn’t go to waste. The Federal Government has expanded the spending of your tax dollars by 40% since 2007. The DHS concentrates on the internal enemy – you. The military industrial complex creates new foreign enemy threats every day – Hussein, Gaddafi, Ahmadinejad, Assad, and now Putin.

The monetary and fiscal policies of the country have remained in permanent crisis mode because the Ponzi scheme can’t be maintained without a constant debt fix. As our permanent state of crisis devolves into war, our remaining liberties will be stripped away in the name of safety, security and unquestioned support of the state. Huxley knew that we would consume, obey and submit until dictatorship became almost inevitable. Will you sit idly by while a small cabal of power hungry men destroys our country? Will you send your sons off to wars manufactured by tyrants as cannon fodder to further enrich the military industrial complex? Will you make a stand when they begin to round up subversives, dissenters, and malcontents under the guise of protecting you from domestic terrorists? Will you choose liberty and freedom over repression and descent into captivity and totalitarianism? The choice is yours.

“But liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government. And permanent crisis is what we have to expect in a world in which over-population is producing a state of things, in which dictatorship becomes almost inevitable.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958