Tag: student loans

ECONOMIC REPORT CARD – FAIL

We are now three and one half years into Barack Obama’s presidency. I thought a few pertinent charts would help us assess the success of his economic policies. Upon his election he demanded an $800 billion stimulus package in order to keep the unemployment rate from surpassing 8%. The $800 billion was to be spent over two years we were told and then government spending would be scaled back to pre-stimulus levels. There were 145 million Americans employed when Obama was elected. There are 9 million more working age Americans today than there were in 2008. There are now 142.4 million employed Americans. So, we’ve added 9 million potential workers and still have 2.6 less Americans employed. We have the same number of Americans employed as we did in early 2006, when there were 17 million less working age Americans.

The Obama stimulus plan was passed with everything he wanted. Democrats controlled the House and Senate and gave him exactly what he proposed. By October 2009, the unemployment rate was 10%. Obama’s stimulus package and economic policies have been so successful that he has been able to get the unemployment rate all the way down to 8.2% after three and one half years, even though he said his stimulus package would keep the unemployment rate under 8%. And all it took to get the unemployment rate down to 8.2% was for 8 MILLION Americans to leave the labor force. A critical thinking person who doesn’t swallow the crap peddled by the BLS and the rest of the government propaganda machine might question WHY 8 million Americans would leave the workforce when people desperately need income. If the labor participation rate had stayed constant, the current unemployment rate is 10.9%.

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The long-term chart below tells the true story. The BLS classifying millions as not in the labor force is a crock. The Obama apologists and sycophants peddle a false storyline about Baby Boomers retiring as the cause for this labor force decline. The fact is people over the age of 55 have the highest participation rate in history and it continues to rise. Of the 142.4 million employed Americans, only 114 million works more than 35 hours per week, with 28.4 million working part-time. That means that 20% of those employed are part time workers with no benefits. In 2008, prior to the ascendency of Obama, there were 125 million full-time workers and 20 million part-time workers. Obama has been able to increase the percentage of part-time workers from 14% to 20% in just over 3 years. Remember this fact when Obama touts the 3 million new jobs he’s created since 2010.

If you were wondering what the 8.5 million Americans who have left the labor force since 2008 were doing, look no further than the millions of bedrooms now functioning as classrooms for the University of Phoenix and the other on-line, for profit diploma mills that have proliferated with the doling out of hundreds of billions in cheap government student loans. These for profit diploma mills know how to game the system and get their money even if the students drop out after a few months. They educate 12% of students, receive 25% of federal student aid and account for nearly 50% of loan defaults. Sounds like a great business model.

Low interest Federal government loans have skyrocketed from $100 billion when Obama took office to $450 billion today. Total student loan debt has surpassed $1 trillion, with the average student graduating with $25,000 of debt and many more burdened with $100,000 or more of debt. Those part-time jobs making lattes at Starbucks aren’t cutting it. Default rates are already at a ten year high and are poised to skyrocket as more people graduate into a jobless job market. Not only is the American taxpayer on the hook for the $450 billion of direct Federal student loans, but the Federal government is guaranteeing another $450 billion. When the student loan bubble pops, the taxpayer financed bailout will be epic. And this is all being engineered by the Obama administration in order to artificially reduce the unemployment rate. Does this graph remind you of another bubble that resulted in a few problems for the American taxpayer?

After three and a half years, Obama’s policies have led to 11 million less full-time workers and 8 million more part-time workers – just like he drew it up on the board when he committed $800 billion of your tax dollars to saving our economy through classic Keynesianism. Obama declared the stimulus would be a two year jolt to get our economy back on track. Federal government spending was $2.7 trillion in 2006, $2.7 trillion in 2007 and $3.0 trillion in 2008, the last three years of Bush’s administration. If spending stayed on a standard trajectory, it would have been $3.1 trillion in 2009, $3.2 trillion in 2010, $3.3 trillion in 2011 and $3.4 trillion in 2012. With the end of the Iraq occupation in 2010, it should have dropped by $200 billion, resulting in total spending of $3.1 trillion in 2011 and $3.2 trillion in 2012.

Obama declared the stimulus would be short-term. Federal government spending should have risen to $3.5 trillion in 2009, $3.6 trillion in 2010 ($300 billion stimulus – $200 billion Iraq withdrawal), and then revert back to $3.3 trillion in 2011 and $3.4 trillion in 2012. Let’s see whether Obama was honest in his promises:

Federal Government Spending

2009 – $3.5 trillion

2010 – $3.5 trillion

2011 – $3.6 trillion

2012 – $3.8 trillion

After three and one half years of stimulus spending, Cash for Clunkers, Home Buyer Tax Credits, mortgage modification programs, Fannie, Freddie & FHA accumulating billions in bank losses, zero interest rates, QE1, QE2, Operation Twist, unlimited student loans, wars of choice in the Middle East, mark to fantasy accounting standards for Wall Street, and hundreds of billions in bonuses for criminal bankers, we are left with a $5.3 trillion (50% increase) higher national debt and a $300 billion (2.3% increase) higher real GDP. That’s not exactly a big bang for your Keynesian buck. The response you will get from the Obama apologists is, “Imagine how bad it would have been if we didn’t spend the money”. This is a classic liberal response when their solutions are a total failure. Krugman will declare that if we had only spent another $2 trillion all would be well.

As you can see, Obama and all the politicians in Washington DC are really good at spending your money on pork projects, paying off campaign contributors and compensating their corporate cronies. Do you see any reversion back to normalized spending? How can current spending be $300 billion higher than the two stimulus years if Obama was telling the truth in 2009? The Obamanistas declare we are still in an emergency and must borrow and spend to save the economy. The emergency never ends for politicians of both parties. This is how they have bastardized John Maynard Keynes’ theory. They love to implement spending when the economy is in the dumper, but they forget his admonition to pay down debt during the good times. It never happens. There will always be another emergency. Even 2nd grade level Sesame Street fans can see the Federal government spending and debt accumulation never reverses. It couldn’t be any more obvious, unless you are an intellectually dishonest Keynesian ideologue hack (aka Krugman).

This brings us to the crowning economic achievement of the Obama administration. His most successful program is unequivocally the SNAP food stamp program. When Obama assumed power in January 2009 there were 32 million Americans on food stamps and the annual cost of the program was $44 billion. Today there are 46 million Americans on food stamps and the annual cost is pacing at $75 billion. He has been able to get fully 15% of the U.S. population enrolled in this fantastic program and the Department of Agriculture is even running advertisements to convince more people to join.

And don’t worry about any restrictions. You can buy as much soda, ice cream, cheetos, and fudge brownies with your SNAP card as you choose. Of course, you are still free to purchase higher end fare.

A cynical less trusting soul than me might even conclude that Obama’s goal is to provide government entitlements to as many people as possible in order to win votes in the upcoming election. One might ask how he can tout an economic recovery and the millions of “new” jobs he has created since 2010, when 6 million people have been added to the food stamp rolls since his economic recovery officially began in 2010. I’m confused by the Obama distinction between success and utter failure.

Not far behind the food stamp program, the SSDI program has been another resounding Obama success. He has been able to enroll twice as many participants in this program as jobs created since the end of the recession. There are already 10 million people on SSDI costing the American taxpayer in excess of $150 billion per year. There are 250,000 people per month applying for benefits and the program will be broke by 2015. In a shocking development, when people began to roll off the 99 week unemployment gravy train, the number of new SSDI applications soared. I guess they were depressed at not being able to collect unemployment for two more years.

Bob Adelman recently summed up the SSDI scam:

“The program, funded federally but administered by the states, is being milked by many who have run out of unemployment benefits and other resources and haven’t been able to find work. At present one out of every eight working-age, non-retired individuals receive disability payments, some for “mental disorders” and “back pain.” Claims for mental disorders, for instance, have more than tripled from 10 percent of cases in 1982 to 32.8 percent in 2012, with half of those based on “mood disorders” such as depression or anxiety. Back or neck “problems” have increased by 31 percent and were the top cause of disability for 50- to 64-year olds. Depression and anxiety and other emotional problems increased by 20 percent, and now constitute one-third of all disability claims. Once on the rolls, beneficiaries have little incentive to return to work because their disability entitles them to additional benefits such as food stamps, Medicaid, Section 8 housing, and student-loan forgiveness. As a result less than one half of one percent of those on disability ever go back to work.”

I’m depressed by the results of Obama’s economic policies. Maybe I should apply for SSDI.

It appears that former college professor Obama never paid attention in his macroeconomics undergraduate course. The “guns versus butter model” doesn’t enter the equation for a profound thinker like Barack. Why do hard choices need to be made when Ben Bernanke is manning the printing press? In the real world, a nation has to choose between two options when spending its finite resources. It can buy either guns (invest in defense/military) or butter (invest in production of goods), or a combination of both. This can be seen as an analogy for choices between defense and civilian spending in more complex economies. Politicians and bankers have been ignoring this rational model since 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window. Why make difficult choices when you can borrow and print your way to prosperity? As a country we’ve chosen guns, butter, BMWs, McMansions, free unfunded healthcare, unfunded pensions, unfunded sickcare, and DHS implemented security for all. In order to prove himself tougher than George W., Obama, the socialist, has actually increased war spending by 23% to an all-time high. Fiat currency is an amazing invention. Guns, butter and healthcare for all.

Mainstream media liberals like Ezra Klein dutifully trot out charts and storylines trying to convince the ignorant masses that Obama is not to blame for the soaring national debt. They declare it was the Bush tax cuts and his wars. This blame Bush storyline is growing old as Obama has already extended the Bush tax cuts once, ramped up wars in the Middle East and cut payroll taxes for the last two years. The Office of Management and Budget has calculated the total increase in the national debt will be $7.8 trillion after eight years of Obama, 269% more than was accumulated during the Bush reign of error. I believe the $7.8 trillion is ridiculously optimistic. The national debt has increased by $5.3 trillion since Obama took office. It will go up another $200 billion by the end of this fiscal year. It will surely exceed $1 trillion per year during a 2nd Obama term as he would extend most of the Bush tax cuts, extend the payroll tax cuts, continue to increase war spending, and the hidden delayed Obamacare costs would arrive. His eight year report card will show a $9.5 trillion increase in the national debt, reaching the magic grand total of $20 trillion. The national debt to GDP ratio will be close to 120%.

This scathing assessment of Obama’s economic policies is by no means an endorsement of Mitt Romney or his economic plan, since he has never provided a detailed economic plan. After four years of a Romney presidency, the national debt will also be $20 trillion as his war with Iran and handouts to his Wall Street brethren replace Obama’s food stamps and entitlement pork. There was only one presidential candidate whose proposals would have placed this country back on a sustainable path. The plutocracy controlled corporate mainstream media did their part in ignoring and then scorning Ron Paul during his truth telling campaign. The plutocracy wants to retain their wealth and power, while the willfully ignorant masses don’t want to think. The words of Ron Paul sum up what will occur over the coming years as the interchangeable pieces of this corporate fascist farce drive the country to ruin:

“Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers.” 

“A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank.”

“Believe me, the next step is a currency crisis because there will be a rejection of the dollar, the rejection of the dollar is a big, big event, and then your personal liberties are going to be severely threatened.”

 

The politicians, bankers and corporate titans running this country are too corrupt and cowardly to reverse the course on our path to destruction. The debt will continue to accumulate until our Minsky Moment. At that point the U.S. dollar will be rejected and chaos will reign. The Great American Empire will be no more. At that time sides will need to be chosen and blood will begin to spill. Decades of bad decisions, corruption, cowardice, ignorance, greed and sloth will come to a head. The verdict of history will not be kind to the once great American Empire.

order non hybrid seeds

SEVEN YEARS OF COLLEGE DOWN THE DRAIN

“If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.” ― Frank Zappa

I think Frank was onto something. There is much debate going on today about whether a college degree is worth the cost. The editorial below has much truth in it. The more government has gotten involved in higher education, the more fucked up it gets. The government provides grants and low interest loans to anyone that can scratch an X on a loan document. When the crisis hit in 2008, the Federal government took complete control of the student loan program. Look what happened next.

Does that graph remind you of another graph? How about mortgage debt and home prices. It will end the same way, with you the taxpayer footing the bill for a massive write-off totaling in the hundreds of billions. Whenever the government says they are solving a problem, they are surely making it worse. Is it a good thing that anyone can get a low interest student loan? Obama and his minions wouldn’t be dishing out these loans so unemployed people will not be counted as unemployed, would he?

Student loan debt is now in the vicinity of $1 trillion. It cannot be extinguished in bankruptcy (thanks to the Boomers who hid in college during Vietnam and defaulted on their loans en masse).  As the article points out, 30% of the borrowers drop out without graduating. These people will be and are defaulting in large numbers. Those who graduate have an average debt of $25,000, with many exiting college with more than $100,000 of debt. This anchor around their necks will keep them from buying houses, starting families, and buying cars. With the Boomers unable to retire, the job market is upside down. There are fewer and fewer jobs for these graduates in their fields.

When I went to college in the 1980s it cost about $8,000 per year to go to Drexel University. It was a good college, but nowhere near one of the top schools. With my accounting degree I was able to get a $20,000 per year job with an accounting firm. Today it costs $41,800 plus another $8,000 for room and board. I commuted so my room and board was $0. It costs $50,000 per year and starting accounting jobs pay $40,000 to $50,000 per year. So the cost to attend Drexel has gone up sixfold since the 1980s, but starting salaries have only doubled. The payoff is even worse for liberal arts graduates.

The government interference, manipulation and control of the student funding market has caused the prices to skyrocket. Anyone who has taken Econ 101 should understand. The proliferation of easy low interest debt to anyone who thinks they are college material has artificially boosted demand. The supply of colleges is static. Therefore, the government created high demand, based on cheap debt, leads to much higher tuition costs. If the government was out of the equation, the number of people lured into this game would drop dramatically. Colleges would be forced to compete on price and would need to offer more financial aid. Only the best colleges would have pricing power.

This would leave the for profit publicly traded diploma mills like the University of Phoenix, Corinthian Colleges, and Career Education up a creek without a government paddle. These parasites feed off the government teat. They know how to game the Federal student loan system to maximize their quarterly profits. Educating people so they can obtain good jobs is not a priority for these lowlife institutions. They lure in the 40 year olds that have been laid off with the promise of new careers with an online education. There great at marketing, great at gaming the student loan golden calf, and not so great at getting jobs for their graduates. Do you really think the 533,000 enrollees at the University of Phoenix are getting a top notch education for their borrowed money?

They have about as much chance of getting a good job as Bluto.

“Christ. Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the fucking  Peace Corps.”

 

College too costly, too subsidized

Thursday, May 31,2012

WHAT PEOPLE subsidize, they get more of. Consequently, about 40 percent of Americans have college degrees, compared with 5 percent in 1940. This growth industry has been unnaturally boosted by government subsidizing higher education with direct funding and more indirectly with low-interest student loans.

This has been mistaken for progress. In reality, it is the victory of the entitlement-minded over those who foot the bill. Ironically, they often are the same young people. As with all income-redistribution schemes, it has unpleasant, unintended consequences.

Almost everyone now realizes living off borrowed money is one of the causes of today’s faltering economy. Bills come due. They don’t always buy what was intended.

Home mortgages inflated to reckless amounts and credit card debt buried consumers. They provided short-term joy rides, only to become great financial burdens. Defaults are economically damaging. Lenders lose, borrowers lose and the economy eventually self-corrects with contractions, as seen in recent years.

The more than $1 trillion in student loans is another symptom of short-sighted appetites for instant gratification, oblivious to long-term consequences. These debts, much like government-subsidized and incentivized mortgages, have ballooned to ruinous levels.

COLLEGE ENROLLMENT is up 38 percent in the past decade. More than 20 million people are enrolled. Some students amass six-figure loan debts by graduation, and too often can’t even find a paying job.

Nearly 30 percent of college students with loans drop out. Dropouts, according to the Education Sector think tank, are four times more likely to default on their loans. Many students who stay in college increase likelihood of default by working to meet expenses. That requires taking fewer courses, lengthening their stay but decreasing odds of graduating.

Much of this problem results from the misguided notion that anyone who can pick up a pencil should attend college. As columnist Robert Samuelson wrote in the Register, “We overdid it. The obsessive faith in college has backfired.” As Register editorial writer Mark Landsbaum previously noted, “Not only is a college education not necessarily all it’s cracked up to be, it’s not as necessary as you’ve been led to believe.”

Government-backed loans and subsidies encouraged colleges to accept more students because tuition is paid upfront, unlike tuition debts. The result is completely unwarranted enrollment numbers.

VOCATIONAL EDUCATION has been downplayed and bad-mouthed. Even in our high-tech culture, 69 percent of jobs don’t require post-high school degrees, the government says. To admit more students, entrance standards were lowered. “We’ve dumbed down college,” Mr. Samuelson wrote.

“Forty five percent of college students hadn’t significantly improved their critical thinking and writing skills after two years,” concluded the authors of a book, “Academically Adrift.”

Unfortunately, the herd mentality persists, urging and luring ever more young people onto campus, instead of creating new vocational and tech opportunities and private-sector apprenticeships. Living off borrowed money remains attractive, at least until the bill comes due, especially for the unemployed.

— The Orange County Register

ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL

Americans have an illogical love affair with their vehicles. There are 209 million licensed drivers in the U.S. and 260 million vehicles. The U.S. has a higher number of motor vehicles per capita than every country in the world at 845 per 1,000 people. Germany has 540; Japan has 593; Britain has 525; and China has 37. The population of the United States has risen from 203 million in 1970 to 311 million today, an increase of 108 million in 42 years. Over this same time frame, the number of motor vehicles on our crumbling highways has grown by 150 million. This might explain why a country that has 4.5% of the world’s population consumes 22% of the world’s daily oil supply. This might also further explain the Iraq War, the Afghanistan occupation, the Libyan “intervention”, and the coming war with Iran.

Automobiles have been a vital component in the financial Ponzi scheme that has passed for our economic system over the last thirty years. For most of the past thirty years annual vehicle sales have ranged between 15 million and 20 million, with only occasional drops below that level during recessions. They actually surged during the 2001-2002 recession as Americans dutifully obeyed their moron President and bought millions of monster SUVs, Hummers, and Silverado pickups with 0% financing from GM to defeat terrorism. Alan Greenspan provided the fuel, with ridiculously low interest rates. The Madison Avenue media maggots provided the transmission fluid by convincing millions of willfully ignorant Americans to buy or lease vehicles they couldn’t afford. And the financially clueless dupes pushed the pedal to the metal, until everyone went off the cliff in 2008.

America is proving itself to be insane as described by Albert Einstein:

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

The 2008 cataclysm was created by the voracious greed and avarice of Wall Street, sustained by corrupt politicians in Washington, non-existent regulation by banking regulators, Federal Reserve easy money policies, unspoken guarantees of Fed bailouts if Wall Street excess risk taking blew up, and millions of delusional Americans with an unlimited credit line. Excessive debt created the problem. Adding debt is the present solution to the problem. And the accumulation of debt will lead to a tipping point that destroys the U.S. dollar and topples the Great American Empire.

This spiral of government sponsored debt financed debacles has shockingly accelerated as we have supposedly been experiencing an economic recovery for the last two years. The 2008 financial meltdown was the result of too much debt peddled to too many people who never had the means or intentions to repay the debt. The Wall Street peddlers of debt didn’t care if it got repaid because they had already packaged it, bribed Moodys and S&P to rate the toxic garbage as AAA, and sold it to their “clients”. Then they made derivatives bets that it wouldn’t be repaid and raked in billions more as their Ponzi scheme unwound. There was just one problem with their master plan. The Wall Street titans made their derivate weapons of mass destruction so complicated and confusing that their own evil organizations of Harvard MBAs didn’t understand them. Enough hubristic CEOs existed at enough financial firms (AIG, Lehman, Bear Stearns, Citicorp) to bring the entire system crashing down as the toxic derivatives intertwined every major institution in the worldwide banking cabal.

What has happened since those dark days of 2008 is mind blowing in its epic proportions and epic stupidity. To quote Doug Casey, “Not only haven’t we done the right thing, we’ve done the exact opposite of the right thing.” It is absurd and ultimately suicidal to cure a debt disease by administering massive doses of more debt. But that is exactly what those in power have done. The National Debt has risen from a $9.7 trillion to $15.6 trillion, a 61% increase in three and a half years, while our real GDP has grown by $244 billion, a 1.9% increase. Not exactly a fabulous return on investment. But at least there are 7 million less people employed today than there were at the peak in 2008. Plus, senior citizens and middle class savers have seen $450 billion of annual interest income they were earning in 2008 pilfered from their savings accounts and handed to the Wall Street banking elite through Ben Bernanke’s ZIRP.

The Federal Reserve has tripled their balance sheet (actually your liability) from $950 billion to $2.9 trillion. Various other Federal government controlled bureaucracies (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA) have stealthily subsidized hundreds of billions in losses on behalf of the criminal Wall Street banks. Other Federal government run agencies (BLS, BEA, CBO) exist solely to massage, manipulate, misuse, and malign economic data and financial projections in order to muddle, misinform and mislead the American people about the true nature of our ongoing economic calamity. Propaganda and obfuscation are the scheme of choice by the powers that be. They are counting on decades of government run public education to insure that millions of non-critical thinking dullards will be unqualified or uninterested in the truth about our grim economic prospects. The oligarchy’s master plan has centered on houses, automobiles, and the illusion of a jobs recovery.

Whenever I’m trying to understand the motivations of the sociopathic Washington politicians, Wall Street bankers and mega-corporation CEOs, I always come back to the words of master manipulator Edward Bernays:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” – Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928

The relatively small number of wealthy men thinks they are smarter than the masses and can manipulate them through their control of the government, the financial system and the media. The players in this game remain the same, but they have switched positions. The debt accumulation which led to the 2008 collapse was heavily concentrated on the books of the ruthless Wall Street psychopathic banks and on the backs of a readily pliable public. Today, the Federal government and the Federal Reserve have switched positions with their banker puppet masters, essentially shifting all past and future debt onto the backs of the American middle class. The Federal Reserve Flow of Funds Report, issued two weeks ago, reveals the extent of this blatant scheme to screw the American people in order to save and further enrich the Wall Street psychopaths who won’t be satisfied until their looting and pillaging leads to complete collapse and the world erupting into a world war. The despicable facts are as follows:

  • Total U.S. credit market debt has RISEN from $50.9 trillion in 2007 to $54.1 trillion as of 12/31/11, a $3.2 trillion increase.
  • Household debt has declined from $13.8 trillion in 2007 to $13.2 trillion as of 12/31/11. The mainstream media would point to this $600 billion decline as proof that Americans have embraced austerity and have learned their lesson. Of course that would be a lie. The Wall Street banks have written off $200 billion of credit card debt and the 5 million completed foreclosures extinguished another $800 billion of mortgage debt. The truth is that consumers have continued to pile up debt.
  • Much has been made of corporate America being flush with cash. If they are so flush, why have they added $900 billion of debt since 2007, an increase of 13% to an all-time high of $7.8 trillion?
  • The revealing data shows up in the financial company data. These Wall Street national treasures have reduced their debt from $17.1 trillion in 2008 to $13.6 trillion as of 12/31/11. How were they able to do this, while writing off $1 trillion of consumer debt?
  • You guessed it. They dumped it on the American taxpayer. The Federal government increased their debt from $5.1 trillion to $10.5 trillion. And our old friends called government sponsored enterprises (Fannie, Freddie, Student loans) increased their debt from $2.9 trillion to $6.2 trillion. Wall Street banks and millions of deadbeats who chose to game the system and live the good life have effectively foisted their $4.5 trillion of debt upon the backs of middle class taxpayers who lived within their means. Another $4.2 trillion has been pissed down the toilet by Obama with his $800 billion Keynesian porkulus program, home buyer tax credits, cash for clunkers, green energy boondoggles, 47 million people on food stamps success story, 99 weeks of unemployment, doubling of SSDI membership, and his multiple wars of choice in the Middle East.

The average hard working, taxpaying American has been enslaved in debt of such proportions that they will never be able pay it off. Your share of the $15.6 trillion National Debt is now $50,000, and growing by $4,500 per year. Your share of the future unfunded liabilities, created by the people you elected, is approximately $350,000. This crushing burden is in addition to the $13.8 trillion of mortgage, credit card, student loan, and auto loan debt Americans have accumulated in the last three decades of delusion. Forty percent of all credit card users do not pay-off their credit card every month and carry an average balance of $16,000 at an average interest rate of 15%. Good to see the Wall Street banks passing along some of their 0% borrowing windfall to their “customers”.

Source: TF Metals Report     

Pedal to the Metal

You may have noticed the corporate mainstream media, crooked politicians and lying Wall Street shills attempting to pound the economic recovery storyline into the consciousness of a terminally distracted populace. This is part of the Bernays inspired master plan of a small cabal of powerful men to control the public mind and keep our mass consumer society functioning smoothly so these corporate fascists can continue to gorge upon the carcass of a once vital republic. Decades of mass media consumer indoctrination, dumbing down of children through public school education and the conscious manipulation of attitudes and opinions of the malleable masses has succeeded. The invisible government of the rich and powerful has effectively converted responsible citizens into mindless consumers of products, bought with debt, peddled by associates of the invisible government. The crowded shopping malls, automobile showrooms, and restaurants are a testament to the power of propaganda and the intellectual bankruptcy of a vast swath of the American population.

Only psychopaths would encourage and condone behavior that would financially enrich themselves while destroying the lives and personal wealth of millions. The invisible government (Wall Street bankers, D.C. political hacks, mega-corporate executives, mass media titans) exhibits all the traits of a psychopath as described in a recent Harvard Business Review article:

  • Glibness and superficial charm
  • Lack of empathy
  • Consistent decisions in their self-interest, even where it is ethically questionable
  • Chronic, sometimes transparent lies, even with regard to minor things
  • Lack of remorse
  • Failure to take responsibility for their actions, and instead blaming others
  • Shallow emotions
  • Ignoring responsibilities
  • Persistent focus on gratifying their own needs at the expense of others
  • Conning and manipulative behavior

Do you recognize any of these traits in our president (Obama), congressmen (Weiner, McCain) Wall Street bankers (Dimon, Blankfein), corporate CEOs (Immelt), and mass media titans (Murdoch)? These people and many more like them will stop at nothing to further their self-serving agenda. They are intelligent and highly skilled at lying and manipulation. They lack empathy and don’t care what others think as they relentlessly pursue riches and power no matter the damage they inflict upon the people they so casually abuse, scorn and look down on. These are the people attempting to convince you that the path to economic recovery is through increased spending by consumers, utilizing debt supplied by them.

The entire recovery theme is a sham, financed by the Federal government with your tax dollars and the tax dollars of future unborn generations. I’ve arrived at this conclusion after pondering what I’ve been seeing with my own two eyes and through the insightful analysis found in the non-mainstream media (Zero Hedge, Jesse, Mish and many others). The mantra being pounded relentlessly by the mainstream media is that retail sales are booming and the unemployment rate has declined significantly, therefore an economic recovery is at hand. The chart below reveals the dramatic surge in vehicle “sales”. The annual pace is all the way back to 15 million, from the low below 10 million in 2009. The brief surge in mid-2009 was due to Obama’s highly successful Cash for Clunkers program that cost taxpayers $2.8 billion or $24,000 per car sold. It was highly successful for Government Motors (GM) and their union workers (Obama voters).

This rapid surge in auto sales has also resulted in a boost to overall retail sales, which have reached an all-time high. Automobile “sales” make up 18% of the retail sales number, by far the largest segment. The “record” retail sales are the result of surging gasoline sales, swelling food inflation, and a somewhat confusing cascade of car sales. It’s somewhat confusing until you realize how and why the 50% rise in vehicle sales has been accomplished by our Bernaysian masters. Retail sales in the first two months of 2012 are up 8.2%, led by a 9.2% wave of motor vehicle sales. Auto sales are at levels last seen in early 2008. This seems peculiar, since there are still 7 million less employed people in the country than in early 2008 and the real median household income is 9% lower than it was in early 2008. Real average hourly earnings have fallen for the last three months and are 1.2% lower than they were in October, 2010. A critical thinking person might ask himself, how could American households with less jobs and lower wages increase their purchases of automobiles by 50% in the last two years?

The answer is just what you expected. A phenomenal amount of debt peddled to people without the means or intent to ever repay the debt by the usual suspects: Ally Financial, Capital One, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and Bank of America. These fine upstanding institutions control 25% of the auto loan market. They doled out $24 billion of new car loans in the 4th quarter of 2011, with an outpouring of loans to those downtrodden subprime borrowers and an extension in the average loan length beyond 6 years. Subprime borrowers now account for 45% of all auto loans. As a refresher, subprime borrowers generally have little or no assets, have a history of late payments or defaulting on obligations, and have low incomes. No worries there. When has making hundreds of billions in subprime loans ever caused a problem before. Ally Financial CEO Michael Carpenter had this to say about the market:

“We have seen crazy, irrational competition in the subprime end of the marketplace, which is one reason why more banks are targeting the lower end of the market.”

Bank of America and Capital One increased their market shares of the auto loan market by 40% in the 4th quarter as they attempt to keep up with Ally Financial in reckless lending to deadbeats. If you aren’t familiar with Ally Financial, then you should be. You own 74% of this POS. Here is a brief summary:

  • GMAC, after contributing mightily to the financial crash of 2008 through their reckless subprime mortgage (Ditech) and auto lending and requiring a $16 billion bailout from American taxpayers, changed its name to Ally Financial in 2009. It’s sort of like John Dillinger using acid to try and change his fingerprints.
  • Ally Financial provides financing for all GM and Chrysler customers and dealers and is the market share leader in auto lending.
  • Ally Financial still owes the American taxpayers $12 billion.
  • Ally Financial is a ward of the Federal government and will do anything it is told to do by Obama. The recent foreclosure fraud settlement required Ally to pay $250 million to the customers it defrauded. They will only pay $110 million based on their inability to pay $250 million. Sounds like a company that should be increasing their subprime loan portfolio. Obama and his minions instead received a commitment from a lender they own and control to cut principal for delinquent borrowers and refinance underwater borrowers. And Obama didn’t even offer us a cigarette afterwards.
  • Ally Financial, along with Capital One, failed the Federal Reserve stress test last week. Ally, Capital One, Bank of America, and Citicorp are dead banks walking. Brilliant bank analyst Chris Whelan succinctly sums up their fate after analyzing the Federal Reserve stress test results:

“When you get to junior liens and HELOCs you will understand why I have been saying that Ally Financial and BAC need to be restructured. With a plus 20% loss rate on second liens, Ally has substantial capital issues to put it mildly. But look at C right behind them with a loss rate in the mid-teens followed by BAC. Yikes. This type of loss rate is typical for credit cards and both of these second lien portfolios are > $100 billion.

And the real lesson, dead friends, is that the good old USA is a subprime nation, a society of individuals whose aggregate probability of default is probably around a “B” to “CCC.” Convert the loss rates in the stress tests to bond ratings using the break points from Moody’s or S&P and tell me what you see.

Last point on Ally Financial: Yikes. Probably the weakest results of the whole group. Memo to POTUS: File Ch. 11, sell auto biz and bank to GM in 365 sale. Liquidate ResCap. Declare success. But do not be surprised if BAC follows if Ally goes into bankruptcy. The one thing that the Fed almost completely ignores is the vast financial risk facing BAC and Ally, and to a lesser degree, WFC, JPM and C.”

When you understand this background, anecdotal evidence that seems absurd starts to make sense. I spend two hours per day on the road and have plenty of time to observe my surroundings. I drive through the Mantua section of West Philadelphia every day. The average household income in this neighborhood is $16,000. The average home value is $25,000. The true unemployment rate exceeds 40%. At least 20% of the properties are vacant and the neighborhood resembles Baghdad. Last week, I counted six brand new vehicles with registration tags in their back windows in a one block radius of this neighborhood. Every block has newer model Ford Expeditions, GMC Sierras, BMWs, Acuras, Cadillacs, and Mercedes sprinkled among the squalor. Someone is loaning these people the money to buy these $40,000 vehicles or approving them for leases. This neighborhood puts the SUB in subprime. No financial firm worth spit would make a six year $35,000 auto loan to someone in this neighborhood unless they were instructed to do so by the Federal government or were guaranteed that the future loss would be borne by someone else – YOU.

The GM, Chevy and Chrysler car dealer ads in my local paper actually have the following headline in bold:

Have credit problems? NO PROBLEM

Most of the ads don’t even list the prices of the vehicles. They either tout the 72 month 0% financing or they list the monthly lease cost. It seems that virtually any vehicle can be leased for $300 per month or less these days. This might explain why 25% of all vehicles are leased today. In reality, 25% of the cars being “sold” today are really just being rented for three years. Both the lessors and lessees are basing these transactions upon delusions and assumptions which will likely blow up in their faces and again cost – YOU.

An auto lease payment is based upon interest rates, the cost of the car, subsidies from the auto makers, and the expected residual value of the vehicle at the end of the three year lease. When have financial companies ever miscalculated any of these assumptions? How about 2001-2002 and 2008-2009? The reason auto leases are ridiculously low is because Ben Bernanke’s zero interest rate policy is providing free money to Ally Financial and the rest of the Wall Street zombie banks and creating huge mal-investment – Again. The auto makers see no risks, as the used car market has been extremely strong for the last year and they anticipate continued strong demand for cars as they come off their three year leases. Therefore, they have estimated the residual values three years out at a very high level. The strong used car market may have been slightly impacted by the destruction of 700,000 vehicles under Obama’s Cash for Clunkers debacle. The combination of excessively low interest rates and excessively high residual value estimates leads to ridiculously low lease rates. The sales statistics for the first two months of 2012 reveal why this will blow up in the faces of lessors and the predictably incompetent financial drug dealers.

Feb-12

 % Chg Feb’11 YTD 2012
Cars

612,145

23.9

1,080,466
Midsize

304,601

25.6

532,818
Small

225,061

26.5

397,838
Luxury

81,476

22.7

147,647
Large

1,007

-85.8

2,163
Light-duty trucks

537,251

7.6

982,217
Pickup

148,956

13.8

273,430
Cross-over

225,621

0.4

412,974
Minivan

64,849

15.3

111,764
Midsize SUV

54,827

15.3

101,813
Large SUV

16,783

-5.4

31,566
Small SUV

13,926

24

25,951
Luxury SUV

12,289

12.4

24,719

 

It seems the delusional American public and their love affair with big SUVs, pickups, and their 8 cylinder luxury wheels will continue until they are hit over the head with the baseball bat of $5 a gallon gas. The Madison Avenue Bernays disciples have molded the minds and formed the opinions of millions of easily influenced, financially ignorant superficial Americans into believing the vehicle they drive is a true measurement of success. These people choose being up to their eyeballs in auto debt or perennial renters of luxury vehicles to appear prosperous to their neighbors and coworkers rather than actually achieving real success through the time honored tradition of earning more than you spend and saving the difference. The fact is that 80% of all the vehicles being sold in the U.S. are SUVs, pickups, crossovers, minivans, and larger cars that get 25 mpg or less.

As gas prices continue to rise towards $5 per gallon, a war with Iran looming in the near future, interest rates beginning to rise, and the country headed back into recession (MSM is wrong about the recovery), the car makers are poised to again experience enormous losses. Auto makers will have a sense of déjà vu as they have committed an epic blunder by overestimating the future value of the gas guzzlers they have been leasing. As a result, when the leases expire and auto makers take back the SUVs and pickups that get 15 mpg and attempt to resell them, the losses will run into the billions of dollars. There will be no one buying used gas guzzlers, with gas costing $5 per gallon. As the millions of subprime borrowers realize they can’t afford car payments, paying 40% more for gas, and trying to put food on the table, auto loan delinquencies will soar. This is as predictable as the housing market collapse in 2005. None of this matters to the psychotic governing elite who only care about the illusion of recovery today. These vampire squids will not be satisfied until every drop of blood is sucked out of the national carcass.

Ally Financial is part of the Federal Government and is being used to promote the agenda of the governing elite. They join Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal student loan peddlers as the primary tools of the corporate fascist powers that control this country. The nominal private ownership of these companies is a sham, as the state dictates how they will be run and who they will benefit. This corporate fascist empire is built upon an unholy alliance between big banks, big business, big media and big government, with each protecting and enriching each other. The psychopaths who are drawn to these organizations want to control people. They desire power, wealth, and the ability to manipulate public opinion. Their tactics include spreading fear and an atmosphere of paranoia in order to convince the populace that more government action will improve their lives. We are headed towards economic and financial collapse as these psychopaths will never willingly reverse course and the majority of our population has become so degraded (have you been to a Wal-Mart lately) that they are incapable or unwilling to confront the psychopaths.

Doug Casey in the latest Casey Report explains how evil and stupidity are a deadly combination:

“I would like to suggest that what really distinguishes political elites from normal people is not just a predilection for stupidity but a real capacity for evil. Evil might best be defined as the intentional and usually gratuitous commission of acts that are cruel or unjust. A person who commits many evil acts is a sociopath. The sociopaths who are naturally drawn to government eventually come to dominate it. They’re very dangerous people. They reset the social mores of the country they control. After a certain point, a critical mass is reached, and it’s GAME OVER. I suspect we’re approaching that point.”

The next time you hear a government drone, Wall Street shyster, or corporate mainstream media whore declare we are experiencing an economic recovery try not to laugh out loud. Their agenda doesn’t include making your life better. You are not in the club. Prepare accordingly.  



 

ILLUSION OF RECOVERY – FEELINGS VERSUS FACTS

“There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as the final and total catastrophe of the currency involved.” – Ludwig von Mises

 

The last week has offered an amusing display of the difference between the cheerleading corporate mainstream media, lying Wall Street shills and the critical thinking analysts like Zero Hedge, Mike Shedlock, Jesse, and John Hussman. What passes for journalism at CNBC and the rest of the mainstream print and TV media is beyond laughable. Their America is all about feelings. Are we confident? Are we bullish? Are we optimistic about the future? America has turned into a giant confidence game. The governing elite spend their time spinning stories about recovery and manipulating public opinion so people will feel good and spend money. Facts are inconvenient to their storyline. The truth is for suckers. They know what is best for us and will tell us what to do and when to do it.

The false storyline last week was the dramatic surge in new jobs. This fantastic news was utilized by the six banks that account for 80% of the stock market trading to propel the NASDAQ to an eleven year high and the Dow Jones to a four year high. The compliant corporate press did their part with blaring headlines of good cheer. The entire sham was designed to make Joe the Plumber pull out one of his 15 credit cards and buy a new 72 inch 3D HDTV for this weekend’s Super Bowl. When you watch a CNBC talking head interviewing a Wall Street shyster realize you have the 1% interviewing the .01% about how great things are.

What you most certainly did not hear from the MSM is that the NASDAQ is still down 42% from its 2000 high of 5,048. None of the brain dead twits on CNBC pointed out the S&P 500 is trading at the exact same level it reached on April 8, 1999. Twelve or thirteen years of zero or negative returns are meaningless when a story needs to be sold. On Friday the hyperbole utilized by the media mouthpieces was off the charts, leading to an all-out brawl between the critical thinking blogosphere and the non-thinking “professionals” spouting the government sanctioned propaganda. Accusations flew back and forth about who was misinterpreting the data. I found it hysterical that anyone would debate the accuracy of BLS (Bureau of Lies & Swindles) data.

The drones at this government propaganda agency relentlessly massage the data until they achieve a happy ending. They use a birth/death model to create jobs out of thin air, later adjusting those phantom jobs away in a press release on a Friday night. They create new categories of Americans to pretend they aren’t really unemployed. They use more models to make adjustments for seasonality. Then they make massive one-time adjustments for the Census. Essentially, you can conclude that anything the BLS reports on a monthly basis is a wild ass guess, massaged to present the most optimistic view of the world. The government preferred unemployment rate of 8.3% is a terrible joke and the MSM dutifully spouts this drivel to a zombie-like public. If the governing elite were to report the truth, the public would realize we are in the midst of a 2nd Great Depression.

 

The unemployment rate during the Great Depression reached 25%. Without the BLS “adjustments” the real unemployment rate in this country is 23%. Cheerleading and packaging the data in a way to mislead the public does not change the facts:

  • There are 242 million working age Americans. Only 142 million Americans are working. For the math challenged, such as CNBC analysts, that means 100 million working age Americans (41.5%) are not working. But don’t worry, the BLS says the unemployment rate is only 8.3%. Things are going so swimmingly well in this country the other 33.2% are kicking back enjoying the good life.
  • The labor force participation rate and employment to population ratio are at 30 year lows. The number of Americans supposedly not in the labor force is at an all-time record of 87.9 million. A corporate MSM pundit like Steve Liesman would explain this away as the Baby Boomers beginning to retire. Great storyline, but the facts prove that old timers are so desperate for cash they have dramatically increased their participation in the labor market.

 

  • The data being dished out by the government on a daily basis does not pass the smell test. The working age population since 2000 has grown by 30 million people. The number of people working has grown by only 4.7 million. A critical thinker would conclude the unemployment rate should be dramatically higher than the reported 8.3%. But the government falsely reports the labor force has only increased by 11.8 million in the last eleven years. They have the gall to report that 17.9 million Americans just decided to leave the workforce. The economy was booming in 2000. It sucks today. Don’t more people need jobs when times are tougher? The Boomers retiring storyline has already proven to be false. The fact that 46 million (15% of total population) people are on food stamps is a testament to the BLS lie. A look at history proves how badly the current figures reek to high heaven:
    • 2000 to 2011 – Not in Labor Force increased by 17.9 million.
    • 1990’s – Not in Labor Force increased by 5 million.
    • 1980’s – Not in Labor Force increased by 1.7 million.
  • The Not in the Labor Force category is utilized to hide how bad the employment situation in this country really is. They conclude that 17 million out of 38 million Americans between the ages of 16 and 24 are not in the labor force. That is complete bullshit. From the time I turned 16, I worked. Everyone I knew worked. I worked through high school and college. It is a lie that 45% of these people don’t want a job. If you dig into their data, you realize the horrific state of employment in this country:
    • 74% of 16 to 19 year olds are not employed
    • 85% of black 16 to 19 year olds are not employed
    • 31% of black 25 to 54 year old men are not employed
    • 40% of 20 to 24 year olds are not employed
    • 22% of 25 to 29 year old males are not employed
    • 22% of 50 to 54 year old males are not employed
    • According to the BLS, 11% of men between 25 and 54 are not in the labor force

Not only is real unemployment at Depressionary levels, but those that do have jobs are falling further and further behind. Wages have gone up less than 2% in the last year and have been rising at an annual rate below 3% for the last four years. According to our friends at the BLS, inflation has risen 3% in the last year. This is almost as ludicrous as their unemployment rate. Anyone living in the real world, as opposed to the BLS model world, knows that inflation on the things we need to live has been rising in excess of 10%. It is a fact that if you measure CPI exactly as it was measured in 1980, at the outset of our great debt inflation, it exceeds 10% versus the fake 3% reported without question by the MSM to a non-thinking public. A poor schmuck making the median salary of $25,000 who gets a 2% raise thinks he has $500 more to spend when in reality he has lost $2,000 of purchasing power. Federal Reserve created inflation is an insidious hidden tax that destroys the 99%, while enriching the 1%.

Until Debt Do Us Part

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein

The recovery storyline being touted by the oligarchy of politicians, bankers and media is designed to make consumers feel better. This is a key part of their master plan. Any honest assessment of the financial disaster that struck in 2008 would conclude it was caused by too much debt peddled to too many people incapable of paying it back, too few banks having too much power, the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates too low for too long, and that same Federal Reserve doing too little regulating of the Too Big To Fail Wall Street mega-banks. I wonder what Albert Einstein would think about the “solutions” rolled out to fix our debt problem. Would he find it insane that total credit market debt has actually risen to an all-time high of $53.8 trillion, up $533 billion from the previous 2008 peak? Our leaders have added $6.1 trillion to our National Debt in the last four years, a mere 66% increase. This unprecedented level of borrowing certainly did not benefit the American people, as real GDP has risen by $96 billion, or 0.7%, over the last four years.

Would Einstein find it insane that the governing elite would encourage the 4 biggest banks, that were the main culprits in creating a worldwide financial collapse, to actually get bigger? The largest banks in the U.S. now control 72% of all the deposits in the country versus 68.5% in 2008. The Too Big To Fail are now Too Bigger To Fail. Rather than liquidating the bad debts, breaking up the insolvent banks, selling off the good assets to well run banks, firing the executives, and wiping out the shareholders & bondholders foolish enough to invest in these badly run casinos, the powers that be chose to protect their fellow .01% brethren and throw the 99% under the bus.

Ben Bernanke, in conjunction with Tim Geithner and his masters on Wall Street, implemented a zero interest rate policy designed to enrich the Wall Street banks, force investors into the stock market, and encourage Americans to borrow and spend like it was 2005 again. Rather than accepting that our economy has been warped for decades, with over-consumption utilizing debt as the driving force, and allowing a reset, the Federal Reserve insanely encouraging banks and consumers to do the same thing again. We do know Bernanke has stolen $450 billion of interest income going to savers and senior citizens and handed it to Jamie Dimon, Vikrim Pandit, Lloyd Blankfein and the rest of the Wall Street cabal. The “austerity is bad” storyline is pounded home on a daily basis by the politicians, corporate chieftains, Wall Street billionaires, and MSM pundits. The definition of austere is “practicing great self-denial”. Did you see the mob scenes on Black Friday? Americans are incapable of any self-denial, let alone great self-denial, and the masters of our country will not allow it to happen. One look at our GDP figures confirms the non-austerity occurring in this country. In 2007, prior to the collapse, consumer spending accounted for 69.7% of GDP. Today, consumer spending accounts for 71% of GDP, with investment accounting for 12.7% of GDP. In the good old days of 1979 prior to the epic debt bubble, when the financial industry do not run this country, consumer spending accounted for 62% of GDP and investment accounted for 19% of GDP. What an insane concept. You spend less than you make and save the difference. You then invest that money where you can get a reasonable return (.15% in a money market account is not exactly reasonable).

As Ludwig von Mises pointed out, a false boom created by credit expansion will ultimately collapse. We had the chance in 2008 – 2009 to voluntarily abandon the Wall Street induced credit expansion and allow our country to reset. The pain and misery would have been great, especially for the 1% who own most of the stocks, bonds and peddle the debt to the ignorant masses. As you can see in the chart below, the powers that be need debt per employed American to grow at an ever increasing rate to maintain their power and wealth. The miniscule reduction in debt from 2009 to 2011 was unacceptable. The governing powers will not be satisfied until von Mises’ final currency catastrophe is achieved.

Bernanke and his Wall Street puppet masters’ plan is actually quite simple. It’s essentially a confidence game. A confidence game (also known as a con, flim flam, gaffle, grift, hustle, scam, scheme, or swindle) is an attempt to defraud a group by gaining their confidence. The people who commit such tricks are often known as con men, con artists, or grifters. The con man often works with one or more accomplices called shills, who help manipulate the mark into accepting the con man’s plan. In a traditional confidence game, the mark is led to believe that he will be able to win money or some other prize by doing some task. The accomplices may pretend to be random strangers who have benefited from successfully performing the task. Bernanke and the 1% are the con men. They are attempting to defraud the 99% by convincing them their “solutions” will benefit them. The shills acting as accomplices are Wall Street bankers, bought off economists, politicians, journalists, and mainstream media pundits. You are the mark. The game has multiple facets but is based on more freely flowing low interest easy debt. The con man has reduced interest rates to zero at the behest of his puppet masters. The Wall Street accomplices offer enticing financing to the marks for big ticket items like automobiles, furniture and electronics. As the marks go further into debt, the Wall Street shills report record earnings ($26 billion from loan loss reserve accounting entries), consumer spending rises and GDP goes higher. The mainstream media accomplices dutifully report an improving economy. The government accomplices massage the employment and inflation data and declare a jobs recovery with no inflation. The marks are supposed to feel better about the future and spend even more borrowed money. This is what is considered a self-sustaining recovery by the psychopaths running this country.

All you have to do is open your daily paper to see the confidence game in full display. Last week the MSM reported another surge in automobile sales. Our beloved American automobile manufacturers are back baby!!! Automobile sales are now pacing above 14 million on an annual basis. This is up from the depths of the recession in 2009 when the annual rate was below 10 million. We’ve breached the Cash For Clunkers level and there is nowhere to go but up. The storyline is that Obama was right to save GM and Chrysler with your tax dollars. They are now making splendid vehicles (except for the exploding Chevy Volts) and employing millions of Americans. This is a true American comeback success story. Clint Eastwood should do a commercial about it.

There is one little problem with this storyline. It’s bullshit. Remember GMAC? You bailed them out when all their subprime auto and mortgage loans went bad in 2009. They have a brand new business plan. Change your name to Ally Bank and start making as many subprime auto loans as possible. You will be happy to know that according to Experian, 45% of all auto loans being made today are to subprime borrowers. What could possibly go wrong? In addition, the average loan term has grown to almost 6 years. Executives at Ally Financial said that subprime car lending had become “very attractive” because profit margins on the loans more than cover the cost of expected losses from borrowers who fail to repay what they owe. I’m sure they have everything completely under control. Gina Proia, a company spokeswoman, said the company places “greater emphasis on the higher end of the nonprime spectrum” and only lends to people who show they can pay. I can’t believe they are restricting their loans to only people who they think can pay. I’m surprised Obama isn’t condemning them for such restrictive loan terms. If you open your paper to the auto section you will see financing offers of $0 down-payment, and 0% interest for 7 years across the board on most models. But why buy, when you can lease a luxury automobile for $300 per month? It is simply amazing how many vehicles you can “sell” when “credit challenged” Americans can rent them for seven years. I wonder if this explains why I see dozens of $40,000 luxury autos parked in front of $25,000 dilapidated hovels during my daily commute through West Philadelphia. It also seems the Big Three are “selling” a few extra vehicles to their dealers in January as pointed out by Zero Hedge. No need to let a few facts get in the way of a feel good story.

  • Ford month-end inventory 86-day supply at end of Jan. (492k vehicles) vs 60-day supply (466k) as of Dec. 31
  • Chrysler had 83-day supply (349k units) end of Jan. vs 64-day (326k units) as of Dec. 31
  • GM month-end inventory 89-day supply (619k units) vs 67-day supply (583k) Dec. 31

The facts prove the issuance of billions in easy credit is creating the illusion of recovery. Non- revolving (auto & student loans) consumer credit outstanding is now at an all-time high of $1.7 trillion. Even with billions in bad debt write-offs since 2009 the amount outstanding has risen by $100 billion. Does this sound like austerity is gripping the nation? The Federal government is dishing out student loans like candy, as hundreds of thousands of students get worthless degrees from for-profit diploma mills like the University of Phoenix and its ilk. By keeping them occupied in school, the government is able to keep them in the Not in the Labor Force category. Not to be outdone, our friends at GE Capital, Wells Fargo and the other too big to fail entities have been doing their part on the revolving credit side of the scam. I’ve recently been seeing an ad by the largest U.S. furniture retailer, Ashley Furniture, offering 0% interest with no payments for 7 years. I don’t know about you, but my kids destroy a couch in less than 7 years. Wells Fargo Credit doesn’t seem too worried. A critical thinker might ask, how can Wells Fargo possibly make money offering these terms? But there is the rub. Ben Bernanke is loaning Wells Fargo money at 0% so they can perpetuate the confidence game. These insane bankers truly believe they can kick start this moribund debt saturated economy by issuing billions more in debt to people incapable of repaying them. Einstein would be amused.

The McKinsey Group put out a report a couple weeks ago analyzing the amount of American household debt and optimistically concluding that it could be back on a sustainable path by 2013. Mike Shedlock pointed out that sustainable is in the eye of the beholder. It seems the bright fellows at McKinsey haven’t grasped the concept of regression to the mean. First of all their analysis is flawed because real disposable personal income is actually declining and Ben Bernanke’s master scam is working and Americans are now adding to their household debt. The little blue line has turned upwards since they gathered their data. Secondly, as Mish so accurately points out, the sustainable level of household debt is really at the levels prior to the debt bubble that began in the early 1980s. That is a debt level of approximately 70% of disposable personal income, as opposed to the current level of 110%.

The implications of household debt levels regressing to their long-term mean would be catastrophic to the 1%. Their kingdom of debt would come crashing down. Their power and wealth would be swept away. This is why it is so vital for them to create the illusion of recovery. Their confidence game is built upon an ever increasing flow of credit expansion. It will not work. There is no avoiding the final collapse of a boom created solely by credit expansion. Those in power will never voluntarily relinquish their grand game of pillaging the wealth of the nation, so economic collapse will be the ultimate result. They will continue to use propaganda, printing presses, and half-truths to further their agenda. But those who examine the facts will come to a logical conclusion that we are being sold a great lie.

“Half the truth is often a great lie.” – Benjamin Franklin



PEACOCK SYNDROME – AMERICA’S FATAL DISEASE

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”  – Aldous Huxley

 

Researchers at the University of Texas recently published a study about why men buy or lease flashy, extravagant, expensive cars like a gold plated Porsche Carrera GT. There conclusion was:

“Although showy spending is often perceived as wasteful, frivolous and even narcissistic, an evolutionary perspective suggests that blatant displays of resources may serve an important function, namely as a communication strategy designed to gain reproductive rewards.”

To put that in laymen’s terms, guys drive flashy expensive cars so they can get laid. Researcher Dr Vladas Griskevicius said: “The studies show that some men are like peacocks.  They’re the ones driving the bright colored sports car.”

Lead author Dr Jill Sundie said: “This research suggests that conspicuous products, such as Porsches, can serve the same function for some men that large and brilliant feathers serve for peacocks.” The male urge to merge with hot women led them to make fiscally irresponsible short term focused decisions. I think the researchers needed to broaden the scope of their study. Millions of Americans, men and women inclusive, have been infected with Peacock Syndrome. Millions of delusional Americans thought owning flashy things, living in the biggest McMansion, and driving a higher series BMW made them more attractive, more successful, and the most dazzling peacock in the zoo.

This is not an attribute specific to Americans, but a failing of all humans throughout history. Charles Mackay captured this human impulse in his 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds:

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

The herd has been mad since 1970 and with the post economic collapse of 2008, some people are recovering their senses slowly, and one by one. The country was overrun by flocks of ostentatious peacocks displaying their plumage in an effort to impress their friends, families and work colleagues. What set the flaunting American peacocks apart was the fact they financed their splendid display of plumage with $0 down and 0% interest for seven years.  The lifestyles of the rich and famous miraculously became available to the poor and middle class through the availability of easy abundant credit provided by the friendly kind hearted Wall Street banks and their heroin dealers at the Federal Reserve.

The United States has experienced a four decade long “expenditure cascade”.  An expenditure cascade occurs when the rapid income growth of top earners fuels additional spending by the lower earner wannabes. The cascade begins among top earners, which encourages the middle class to spend more which, in turn, encourages the lower class to spend more. Ultimately, these expenditure cascades reduce the amount that each family saves, as there is less money available to save due to extra spending on frivolous discretionary items. Expenditure cascades are triggered by consumption. The consumption of the wealthy triggers increased spending in the class directly below them and the chain continues down to the bottom. This is a dangerous reaction for those at the bottom who have little disposable income originally and even less after they attempt to keep up with others spending habits.

This cascade of expenditures could not have occurred without cheap easy credit, supplied by Wall Street shysters and abetted by their puppets at the Federal Reserve through their inflationary policies. Real wages are lower today than they were in 1970. Coincidentally, the credit card began its ascendance as the peacock payment of choice in 1970. There are now over 600 million credit cards in circulation in the U.S. in the hands of 177 million fully plumed peacocks and peacock wannabes.

Monthly Payment Nation

“Consumerism re­quires the services of expert salesmen versed in all the arts (including the more insidious arts) of persuasion. Under a free enterprise system commercial propa­ganda by any and every means is absolutely indis­pensable. But the indispensable is not necessarily the desirable. What is demonstrably good in the sphere of economics may be far from good for men and women as voters or even as human beings.”  – Aldous Huxley

 

 

The country seemed to do just fine from 1945 through 1970 with no credit card debt and moderate levels of auto loan debt. In fact, this period in U.S. history was marked by strong economic growth created by capital investment, savings, and the American middle class realizing the American dream of a better life based upon their work ethic. Around about 1970, the intersection of Baby Boomers coming of age, the belief that social justice for all was a noble goal, and Nixon’s closing the gold window, opened Pandora’s Box and the evil released has brought the country to the precipice of ruin. Today, consumer credit outstanding totals $2.43 trillion, or $22,000 per household. It peaked at $2.6 trillion in 2008 and the storyline fed to the masses was that Americans had seen the light and embraced frugality by paying off their debts. As with most storylines spouted by the mainstream media, it was completely false. The Wall Street banks wrote off over $200 billion since 2008, while delusional peacocks continued to finance and lease gas guzzling luxury automobiles, while charging their purchase of an iPad2 and Lady Gaga concert tickets on one of their 13 credit cards.

It seems a vast swath of America refuse to shed their peacock feathers. This explains why you see BMWs, Mercedes, Escalades, and Porsches parked in the driveways of $100,000 houses. Automobiles are the truest representation of American peacock syndrome. Very few people look at a car purchase in a rational long term financial sense. It’s about impressing the neighbors, your peers and your family. Driving a brand new luxury car gives you the appearance of success. The neighbors don’t know you are in debt up to your eyeballs. This explains why 30% to 40% of all luxury cars are leased. A man could buy a $20,000 Honda hybrid with 10% down and finance the rest at 0.9% for three years. His monthly payment would be $500. After three years he would own the car outright, with the added benefit of getting 45 mpg. He could then invest the $500 per month for the next seven years in gold and silver or something else that benefits from Federal Reserve created inflation. In today’s society this would be the act of a doo doo bird.

  

 

Why drive a putt putt car when you can drive the ultimate peacock machine – a BMW 528i with 24-valve inline 240-horsepower 6-cylinder engine with composite magnesium/aluminum engine block, Valvetronic, and Double-VANOS steplessly variable valve timing, 10-way power-adjustable driver’s and front passenger’s seat with 4-way lumbar support, and memory system for driver’s seat, steering wheel and outside mirrors, along with high-fidelity 12-speaker sound system, including 2 subwoofers under the front seats, and digital 7-channel amplifier with 205 watts of power. Plus it looks really cool. This materialism machine can be leased for the same $500 per month that the doo doo bird pays for his Honda hybrid. Of course, after three years of renting luxury wheels the peacock has to turn in the 528i and lease an equally luxurious auto because driving an economy car would now harm his reputation. Colorful plumage is everything to a peacock.

Sometime over the years Americans lost their bearings and began to ignore a basic truth. The only way to accumulate wealth is to spend less than you make and save the difference. Over a ten year time frame the peacock will have dished out $60,000 renting luxury cars, while the doo doo bird will have expended $21,000 during the first three years and then invested $500 per month for 84 months, leaving him with a net $25,000 asset, based on a modest investment return of 5%. The doo doo bird ends up $85,000 wealthier than the peacock at the end of ten years. If you peruse the car dealer advertisements in your local paper, the price of the car is rarely even printed, only the monthly lease payment or 0% financing offer. There is a reason why the average American lives paycheck to paycheck, has no emergency fund for a rainy day, and has virtually no retirement savings socked away. Status, reputation and the appearance of success became more important to millions of Americans than living within their means and actually sacrificing and doing the hard work required to succeed. Delayed gratification is an unknown concept in America.

In 1970, 37% of households consisted of 4 or more people and we somehow managed to get by with one four door car per household. Today, only 24% of households consist of 4 or more people. There are 113 million households and over 250 million passenger vehicles, or 2.2 per household. So, even though the number of people in our households has shrunk dramatically, we needed 120% more vehicles to transport our vast quantities of stuff. Not only do we have more vehicles, but the size of these symbols of gluttony has doubled and tripled, with fitting names like: Tundra, Navigator, Titan, Yukon, Suburban and Hummer. Every soccer mom with two kids needed a 20 foot long, 6 foot high Yukon with an 8 cylinder engine, getting 12 mpg to shuttle around little Aiden and Chloe to their ten scheduled weekly activities. It wasn’t only automobiles that Americans went gaga over. The average home size in 1970 was 1,400 square feet (we drive cars bigger than that today). By 2009, the average home size reached 2,700 square feet. God knows we need 12 rooms for our 2.4 person households. The expenditure cascade started as a trickle in 1970 but became a raging uncontrollable waterfall by 2008.

 

Delusional Americans have been slowly lured into the web of debt and living their lives based upon whether they can make the monthly payment on their debt. I can anticipate the outrage from those who declare it wasn’t them, it was the other guy. Everyone has an excuse for why they aren’t to blame, but the facts speak otherwise:

  • Non-revolving (auto & education) debt outstanding is at an all-time high of $1.64 trillion.
  • The average auto loan is now $27,000 with a loan to value ratio of 80% to 90%, down from 95% in 2007.
  • Auto dealers are now offering $0 down and 0% interest for 72 months on many models. Ask yourself how a finance company can make a profit with those terms.
  • There are 54 million households with a revolving credit card balance, proving that approximately 50% of Americans are attempting to live above their means.
  • The average credit card debt per household with credit card debt is $14,687.
  • The average APR on a new credit card is 15%, even though the banks can borrow from the Federal Reserve for 0.25%.
  • In 2009, the United States Census Bureau determined there were nearly 1.5 billion credit cards in use in the U.S. A stack of all those credit cards would reach more than 70 miles into space — and be almost as tall as 13 Mount Everests.
  • 76% of undergraduates have credit cards, and the average undergrad has $2,200 in credit card debt. Additionally, they will amass almost $20,000 in student debt.
  • On average, today’s consumer has a total of 13 credit obligations on record at a credit bureau. These include credit cards (such as department store charge cards, gas cards, and bank cards) and installment loans (auto loans, mortgage loans, student loans, etc.).
  • Over 90 percent of African-American families earning between $10,000 and $24,999 had credit card debt. What bank in their right mind would issue a credit card to someone making $15,000 per year?
  • Discussing credit card debt is highly taboo. The topics at the top of the list of things that people say they are very or somewhat unlikely to talk openly about with someone they just met were: The amount of credit card debt (81%); details of your love life (81%); your salary (77%); the amount you pay for your monthly mortgage or rent (72%); your health problems (62%); your weight (50%). I wonder why?
  • Penalty fees from credit cards added up to about $20.5 billion in 2009, according to R. K. Hammer, a consultant to the credit card industry. Don’t be one day late with that credit card payment. It’s good to be a bank.
  • The average late fee was found to have risen to $28.19, way up from $25.90 in 2008. Consumer Action reported that late fees reached up to $39 per incident.
  • The volume of gasoline purchases placed on credit cards jumped 39% last month from a year earlier, compared with a 21% increase in June 2010. Food shopping increased 5% after falling 7% last year. The value of an average transaction on credit cards outpaced the gain for debit cards, showing consumers are increasingly relying on borrowing to pay for gasoline and other necessities.

After decades of a debt financed contest to display the gaudiest plumage, is the average American happier? Considering more than 10% of all Americans are on anti-depressant drugs, I’d say not. The rat race for status, the appearance of wealth and visible faux displays of success do not increase well-being. If most of our earnings are spent on an empty game of status, we should not expect much improvement in our quality of life. There is something perverse about having more than enough. When we have more, it is never enough. It is always somewhere out there, just out of reach. This is the attitude that drives the criminals on Wall Street and politicians in Washington DC to constantly seek more power and wealth. The more we acquire, the more elusive enough becomes. Much of the debt financed purchases of consumer trinkets, baubles and gadgets is nothing more than an expensive anesthetic to deaden the pain of empty lives.

Based upon the facts, the average American has not benefitted from the decades long materialistic frenzy. They have sacrificed their futures for the fleeting glory of ephemeral riches. In fact, the average American could not have participated in the expenditure cascade had they not been enabled by the financial industry and cheap plentiful money provided by the financial industries’ drug dealer – the Federal Reserve. The financial industry complex used their power and wealth to utilize all means of propaganda and mass media outlets to convince Americans that debt was good and more debt was even better. I’ll address the insidious aspects of the unholy union of debt and propaganda in Part Two – Propaganda Nation Built Upon Delusions of Debt.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans cling to their borrowed peacock feathers as the butcher of reality bears down upon them. The end won’t be pretty. The brave conquerors of strip malls across the land can enjoy their toys, gadgets, and treasures for awhile longer, but they need to remember one thing – Glory is fleeting and death can come suddenly.

 

“For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.”

Last scene from the movie Patton