We Didn't "Financially Engineer" Our Way Out Of The Great Depression, We Won A World War

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/21/2015 11:51 -0400

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-21/we-didnt-financially-engineer-our-way-out-great-depression-we-won-world-war 

Excerpted from Artemis Capital Management letter to investors,
The arms race of devaluation is not free and has come at the cost of massive global debt expansion. There is no precedent in financial history for a robust economic recovery absent either debt reduction or rampant inflation.  We never deleveraged, in fact we just doubled down. According to a recent McKinsey study the world has reached $200 trillion of debt in 2014 (286% of global GDP), which is a staggering 40% increase from 2007 levels (+$57 trillion). In China, debt has grown four times faster than GDP since 2007, and half of that debt is linked to their property market. The world has simply shifted private debt to the public balance sheet.

The private risk transfer to the public balance sheet can also be seen in the evolution of credit default swap pricing since 2007. Notice the sharp divergence between global sovereign CDS (red) and financial corporate CDS (blue) starting in 2013. The next major global crash will likely be driven by unhealthy sovereign credit rather than corporate credit. The next Lehman moment will be the financial collapse of a major developed country instead of a bank.

There are those who point to aggressive central banking of the late-1930s as the model for de-leveraging post-depression but this argument is highly flawed.

We didn’t financially engineer our way out of the Great Depression - we won a World War.

It’s extremely helpful in the de-leveraging process if you are the only capitalist industrial power left in the world untouched by utter and complete destruction. De-leveraging from the Great Depression had as much to do with the blood, sweat, and tears of American soldiers, the development of nuclear weapons, and the fact we were an ocean removed from the battlefield on both sides, as anything related to fiscal and monetary policy from the era.

I don’t think some investors are being radically honest when they omit this brutal truth in their analysis of late-1930s as model to argue for more quantitative easing. More quantitative easing is a great thing if you run a large risk parity fund but it will not help the American middle class.

Dollar Moves Shake The World: "Federal Reserve Could Start A Currency War"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/17/2015 20:30 -0400 

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-17/dollar-moves-shake-world-federal-reserve-could-start-currency-war

There is a war, a currency war, and the war is, ultimately, on us.

In many respects, Americans have fallen far, and hard, from the liberty they once had.

Rather than living under a sound currency, modern Americans live under an economic despotism. There are monopoly men who tightly control the money, and are all the more insidious in their subtlety, and quietness in the shadows.

Today, things are so bad that they face economic enslavement and a rapid theft of their wealth through the debasement of the dollar’s value. Not only is the destruction of the dollar systematic and planned, but it is designed to leave Americans holding the bag. The money passes round and round, but it trickles down from the big banks, who are loaned the money free at zero percent interest by the Federal Reserve under its QE program, created to “fix” the 2008 economic crisis that nearly brought the world to its knees.

Now, literally any action at all – especially including no action – by the Federal Reserve has a direct impact on the value of the U.S. dollar, and greatly determines the course of world events, and especially whether or not average people can pay the bills.

According to The Street, it is an all out currency war that will have direct impact on budgets large and small:

The stock market stays high because the Fed is not going to raise short-term interest rates. The Fed is not going to raise short-term interest rates because the U.S. inflation rate remains low. The inflation rate remains low because the value of the U.S. dollar is high. The dollar is strong because world commodity prices have fallen and have “driven up the dollar and held down U.S. import prices.”

According to the Financial Times, the last three items mentioned are interrelated. Furthermore,it now seems as if momentum is picking up within the Federal Reserve to postpone any increases in it policy rate for an extended period of time. That inaction may not be the best decision in terms of the relative strength of currencies.

[…]

According to this argument, the stock market should begin to fall because the Fed is raising interest rates

The key connector here seems to be the relationship between the value of the U.S. dollar and any action that the Federal Reserve might take on raising short-term interest rates.

The Fed is the only thing propping the stock market up – when, or if, it moves, there will be a crash, that will call bad debtors and impoverish entire social security systems. But things aren’t much better if they stay still, either. According to The Street:

[I]f the Fed does not raise its target policy rate, other countries will have to take further action to ease up further on their economic policies. The European Central Bank will extend its quantitative easing. The Bank of England will not raise its policy rates.

The Peoples Bank of China will attempt to achieve further ease so that the renminbi will fall against the U.S. dollar.

In effect, this looks like a currency war, and the world cannot afford a currency war at this time.

The Federal Reserve needs to take these things into consideration in making their policy decisions. They are, after all, the global reserve currency and they cannot avoid the responsibilities that go along with this position.

[…]

If the Federal Reserve does not raise interest rates, the value of the US dollar will fall and this will have an impact on the commodity prices of emerging nations, causing import prices and U.S. inflation to rise.

How did the Federal Reserve get so much power over the American economy – and that of the world’s? There have been many stages of the theft which are too numerous to list, but which are generally well known to those familiar with its odious origins as a design by the banking cartel.

Started under conspiratorial circumstances back in 1913, the Federal Reserve has established itself as a private central bank for the country, though it is not part of the U.S. government. Since its inception, the Fed has driven the dollar down to just a fraction of its original value.

Since the U.S. went off the gold standard under the shadow presidency of Henry Kissinger in 1971, the dollar has plummeted in status to a worthless piece of paper. Meanwhile, however, the dollar was the world reserve currency, and was the currency that traded for oil during a time of supply crisis, it has retained an accepted – and therefore valued – status so long as America dominated foreign policy (in part by managing more and more wars) and maintained its status.

The banksters operated the monetary and financial system that led the world by trading in petrodollars, and in turn, forced oil rich nations like Saudi Arabia to invest on Wall Street, as well as reluctant powers like Japan, who were forced to open up their markets to foreign investment during the oil crisis.

But now world power is shifting. The dollar is dying, and the Federal Reserve has become a leviathon that is too big to die, and too bloated to be effective. In its enormous capacity, it is facilitating the theft of TRILLIONS and TRILLIONS of dollars from the American people:

Americans face a further decline in their standard of living in all cases, market-wide conditions that the Fed alone can determine. Their wealth is rapidly evaporating.

If the Fed raises rates, the market will crash. On the otherhand, if it doesn’t raise rates, and continues indefinitely on its course of quantative easing, investors, middle class and working families, businesses, as well as pensions, benefit programs and insurance policies will also die a slow painful economic death.

Already things are hovering dangerously on edge, and squeezing in tightly.

Did The Fed Intentionally Spark A Commodity Sell-off?

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/30/2015 17:00 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-30/did-fed-intentionally-spark-commodity-sell
Submitted by Leonard Brecken via OilPrice.com,
The intention here is the bring facts to light so the public can decide.
I’m not quite sure what to believe on how and why oil prices remain more than 50 percent below free cash flow break even for most independent E&P companies. I know for sure it’s not just one reason and is more likely a confluence of events.
Part of the reason oil prices broke new six-year lows is tied to hedge funds shorting equities and pressuring equity pricing through shorting oil. Another reason is the desire of private equity firms to buy assets on cheap and some banks seeking M&A fees. Obviously OPEC policy has a part to play. There is also no doubt that EIA statistics mistakenly leave the impression that production has remained resilient throughout the summer. But the spark that set the ball in motion was the dollar strength as every major money center bank in the U.S. recommended going long EU equities and long the dollar because of further monetary easing in Europe.
The inverse correlation between the U.S. dollar and oil prices in June was virtually 100 percent, but that has changed more recently, as I have noted previously. At that time, investors here in the U.S. plowed into biotechnology and technology and went short oil as if they knew what assets central banks were going to buy and not buy based on all the free money from Europe and Japan.
Since the financial crisis began the cozy relationship between money center banks and the Federal Reserve, since the bail outs, is well known. For example, Goldman Sachs’ deep ties to the U.S. government are notorious and, not surprisingly, they led the charge in calls for a downturn in oil. So has the media, as I have extensively documented all year here.
On the other hand, oil inventories on paper in the U.S. were rising into the fall of last year for sure while the economy was weakening in the U.S. and in China, the largest importer of commodities. So the merits of weaker commodity prices stand on their own to an extent. The correction to $70 from $100 was justified, but the crash to levels not seen since the crisis of 2008-2009 are overblown. Now the cries comparing the 2015 crisis to the 1986 oil demise rise as well. Are economic conditions that bad?
For oil, demand has greatly accelerated, in fact. Then why go long the riskier, higher beta technology that, at their highs and still to this day, are still being pumped? To make matters worse, record short positions in oil futures and equities still exist, eclipsing even the 2008-2009 meltdown. So where did this long tech, short commodity trade derive from and why? One possibility is the Federal Reserve itself; either indirectly, through monetary policy, or directly.
When the markets corrected last fall, Fed officials did not shy away from additional use of monetary policy or Quantitative Easing (QE). The cries from Wall Street were as loud as ever for it.
By early 2015, the economy had weakened, and GDP dropped below 2 percent growth on an annual basis. But Wall Street’s cries were largely silent, other than to say the Fed shouldn’t raise rates. The Fed, on the other hand, instead of threatening to ease, is instead threatening to tighten; the opposite of what we heard when markets fell similarly in 2014. The question is, why the change, despite fundamentals weakening?
One theory is that some within the Fed realized that QE wasn’t working, and never worked, thus another path was needed. But what alternative did they have, since rates were already ZERO?
So maybe they changed course and took a strong dollar policy vs. a weak one to intentionally weaken the commodity sector and thus boost consumer spending. Throughout this down turn, that message has been repeated by Yellen herself many times, as a source of economic stimulus and for sure has been repeated over and over in the media and the talking heads of Wall Street.
Wall Street is notorious for not fighting Fed policy, so they turned to other asset classes such as technology to blow that bubble up even further. But then why was there such a desire to close the Iran deal so suddenly, which would further add to global oil supply?
This theory isn’t as farfetched as it initially seems, especially considering that Wall Street has been investing based on central bank policies for 6 years now, moving money where easing occurs around the globe and putting very little into real fundamentals. It’s something to consider in explaining prices.

Why The Bear Of 2015 Is Different From The Bear Of 2008

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/24/2015 08:27 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-24/why-bear-2015-different-bear-2008
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Are there any conditions now that are actually better than those of 2008?
It's tempting to see similarities in last week's global stock market mini-crash and the monumental meltdown that almost took down the Global Financial System in 2008-2009. The dizzying drop invites comparison to the last Bear Market that took the S&P 500 from 1,565 in October 2007 to 667 on March 9, 2009.
But this Bear is beginning in circumstances quite different from 2007-08. Let's list a few of the differences:
1. Then: Markets and central banks feared inflation, as WTIC oil had hit $133 per barrel in the summer of 2008.
Now: As oil tests the $40/barrel level, markets and central banks fear deflation.
2. Then: China had a relatively modest $7 trillion in total debt, considerably less than 100% of GDP.
now: China's debt has quadrupled from $7 trillion in 2007 to $28 trillion as of mid-2014, an astonishing 282% of gross domestic product (GDP)
3. Then: Central banks had a full toolbox of unprecedented monetary surprises to unleash on the market: TARP, TARF, BARF (OK, that one is made up) rescue packages and credit guarantees, quantitative easing (QE), zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) and direct purchases of mortgages, to name just the top few.
Now: The central bank toolbox is empty: every tool has already been deployed on an unprecedented scale. Every potential new program is simply a retread of QE, yield curve bending, asset purchases, etc.--the same old bag of tricks.
4. Then: Central banks had a relatively clean slate to work with. Interventions in the market and economy were limited to suppressing interest rates in the post-dot-com meltdown era.
Now: Central banks have never stopped intervening since 2008. The market is in effect a reflection of 6+ years of unprecedented central bank interventions. Rather than a clean slate, central banks face a global marketplace that is dominated by incentives to speculate with leveraged/borrowed money established by 6 years of central bank policies.
5. Then: Interest rates had rebounded from the post-dot-com lows in 2003. The Fed Funds rate in 2006-07 was above 5%, and the Prime Lending Rate exceeded 8%.
Now: The Fed Funds Rate has been screwed down to .25% for 6+ years--an unprecedented period of near-zero interest rates.
6. Then: The average 30-year mortgage rate was above 6% from October 2005 to November 2008.
Now: Mortgage rates have been under 4% in 2015.
7. Then: The U.S. dollar only soared in financial crises as capital flowed to safe havens in late 2008-early 2009 and again in 2010.
Now: The U.S. dollar began a 20% increase in mid-2014, in the midst of what was generally perceived as a solid global expansion.

8. Then: The U.S. dollar fell sharply from 2006 to 2008, and again in 2010 to 2011, boosting the overseas profits of U.S. corporations that account for 40% to 50% of total multinational corporate profits.
Now: The rising dollar has crushed the overseas profits of U.S. corporations. The soaring USD has also crushed emerging market currencies and stock markets, and forced China to devalue its currency, the the RMB (yuan)--a devaluation that triggered the current global meltdown in stocks.
9. Then: The global boom 2003-2008 was widely viewed as a tide that raised all ships.
Now: Central bank policies are recognized as engines of inequality that have widened income and wealth inequality for 6+ years.
Are there any conditions now that are actually better than those of 2008? Or are conditions now less resilient, more fragile and more dependent on unprecedented central bank interventions?

CONSUMERS NOT FOLLOWING ORDERS

Posted on June 15, 2015 by JimQ

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/06/consumers-not-following-orders.html 

Last week the government reported personal income and spending for April. After months of blaming non-existent consumer spending on cold weather, shockingly occurring during the Winter, the captured mainstream media pundits, Ivy League educated Wall Street economist lackeys, and Keynesian loving money printers at the Fed have run out of propaganda to explain why Americans are not spending money they don’t have. The corporate mainstream media is now visibly angry with the American people for not doing what the Ivy League propagated Keynesian academic models say they should be doing.
The ultimate mouthpiece for the banking cabal, Jon Hilsenrath, who does the bidding of the Federal Reserve at the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal, wrote an arrogant, condescending, putrid diatribe, directed at the middle class victims of Wall Street banker criminality and Federal Reserve acquiescence to the vested corporate interests that run this country. Here are the more disgusting portions of his denunciation of the formerly middle class working people of America.

We know you experienced a terrible shock when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 and your employer responded by firing you.

We also know you shouldn’t have taken out that large second mortgage during the housing boom to fix up your kitchen with granite counter-tops.

You should feel lucky you’re not a Greek consumer.

Fed officials want to start raising the cost of your borrowing because they worry they’ve been giving you a free ride for too long with zero interest rates.

We listen to Fed officials all of the time here at The Wall Street Journal, and they just can’t figure you out.

Please let us know the problem.

The Wall Street Journal was swamped with thousands of angry responses from irate real people living in the real world, not the elite, QE enriched, oligarchs living in Manhattan penthouses, mansions on the Hamptons, or luxury condos in Washington, D.C. Hilsenrath presumes to know how the average American has been impacted by the criminal actions of sycophantic Ivy League educated central bankers and their avaricious Wall Street owners.

He thinks millions of Americans losing their jobs and their homes due to the largest control fraud in financial history is fodder for a tongue in cheek harangue, blaming the victims for the crime. Hilsenrath reveals he is nothing but a Fed flunky who is fed whatever message they want the plebs to hear. His job is to obscure, obfuscate, spread disinformation, and launch Fed trial balloons to see whether the ignorant masses are still asleep. The Fed and their owners can’t understand why their propaganda hasn’t convinced the peasantry to follow orders.
A system built upon an exponential increase in debt, cannot be sustained if the masses stop buying Range Rovers, McMansions, stainless steel appliances, 72 inch HDTVs, iGadgets, bling, and boob jobs on credit. His letter to America reeks of desperation. The Fed and their minions have used every play in their Keynesian monetary playbook, and are losing the game in a blowout. With a deflationary depression beginning to accelerate, they have no game.
Despairing mothers, unemployed fathers, impoverished grandmothers, and indebted young people are supposed to feel lucky because they aren’t starving to death like the wretched Greeks. We do have one thing in common with the Greeks. We’ve both been screwed over by bankers and corrupt politicians. Did you know you’ve been given a free ride by your friends at the Federal Reserve? Did you know that zero interest rates and $3.5 trillion of Quantitative Easing (aka money printing) were implemented to benefit you? According to Hilsenrath, the Fed lending money at 0.25% to their Wall Street bank owners, who then allow you to borrow from them at 15% on your credit card, represents a free ride for you. Are the subprime auto loan borrowers, who account for 30% of all auto sales, paying 13% interest getting a free ride?
Hilsenrath is purposefully lying. Bernanke and Yellen have been saying they want to start raising interest rates for the last four years. Remember the 6.5% unemployment rate bogey set by Bernanke in January 2013? Unemployment dropped below 6.5% in early 2014 on its way to 5.5% today. Did they raise rates? In 2013 we had two consecutive quarters of 4% GDP growth, with no Fed rate increase. In 2014 we had two consecutive quarters of 4.8% GDP growth, with no Fed rate increase. We have added ten million jobs and the stock market has tripled since 2009, with no Fed rate increase.
We are supposedly in the sixth year of an economic recovery and the Fed is still keeping the discount rate at a Lehman “world is ending” emergency level of .25%. Six years after the last recession the discount rate was 5.25%. The last time the unemployment rate was this low the discount rate was 4%. The only ones getting a free ride from the Fed’s zero interest rate policy and QE to infinity have been Wall Street banks, the .1% who live off the carcasses of the dying middle class, zombie corporations who should have gone bankrupt, and politicians who keep running up the national debt with no consequences – YET. The Federal Reserve is a blood sucking leech on the ass of America. Their cure has been far worse than the original illness – Wall Street criminality. In fact, their cure has been to reward the Wall Street criminals while spreading cancer to the working class and euthanizing senior citizens.
Hisenrath and his puppet masters at the Fed can’t figure you out. For decades you have followed their orders and bought Chinese produced shit with one of your 13 credit cards. The Bernays’ propaganda playbook has produced wins for the ruling class since the early 1980’s. Their record is 864 – 0 versus the working class. Our entire warped economic system since the 1980’s has been dependent upon an exponential increase in debt peddled by Wall Street to citizens, government and corporations to give the appearance of a growing, healthy economy.
An economy built upon the consumption of iGadgets, Cheetos, meat lovers stuffed crust pizza, and slave labor produced Chinese baubles, along with the production of enough arms to blow up the world ten times over, and the doling out of trillions to the non-productive class, is doomed to fail. Maybe I can explain the situation in such a way that even an Ivy League educated central banker or a Wall Street Journal faux journalist will understand.
Maybe Jon and his Fed cronies could be enlightened by a look at the American consumer before the bubble boys (Greenspan, Bernanke) and gals (Yellen) at the Fed, along with the corporate fascist takeover of our political system, and the propaganda spewing corporate media monopolies, combined to deform our financial and economic system for their sole enrichment. The lack of spending by consumers might just be due to some of the following factors:

• Back in 1980 income meant money earned through working, investing, and saving. The amount of personal income made up of wages totaled 60% in 1980. Today it totals 51%. Interest earned on savings accounted for 14% in 1980. Today it accounts for 8%, as the Fed has punished seniors and savers with negative real interest rates. Since 2009 the Fed has robbed over $1 trillion in interest income from seniors and savers with their zero interest rate policy and handed it to the Wall Street banking cabal. Bernanke didn’t just throw seniors under the bus, he ran them over, backed up over them, and ran them over again.
• In a shocking development, government welfare transfers accounted for 11% of total personal income in 1980 and have risen to 17% today. Only the government could classify money which has been absconded at gunpoint from working Americans in the form of taxes and redistributed back to other Americans as welfare payments, as personal income. If you take money from your left pocket and put it in your right pocket, is that income? The replacement of wages and interest by welfare redistribution payments has not benefited society whatsoever.
• In 1980 consumer credit outstanding as a percentage of personal income totaled 15%. Today it totals 22%, an all-time high. It is higher than the bubble peak in 2007-2008. Real per capita disposable income has only risen by 88% over the last 35 years. Meanwhile, real per capita consumer debt has risen by 288%. Wages and earnings from saving have been replaced by debt. The propagandists for consumerism have convinced the ignorant masses to spend money they don’t have, while pretending to be wealthier and successful. Consumer debt currently stands at a towering all-time high of $3.4 trillion, almost ten times the $350 billion level in 1980. Hilsenrath and the Fed are upset with you because credit card debt still lingers $122 billion, or 12% below 2008 levels. It has forced them to dole out $900 billion of government controlled subprime debt to University of Phoenix wannabes and any deadbeat that can scratch an X on an auto loan application. The U.S. economic system is like a Great White Shark that must keep swimming or it will die. The Federal Reserve run U.S. economic system must keep generating debt or it will die. They are growing desperate and you are not following orders.

• Before the grand debt delusion overtook the populace, they were saving 11% of their disposable personal income. In 1980, Depression era adults still believed in saving for large purchases such as a house, car, appliance or home improvement. The young adult Boomers didn’t have the same experiential deterrent. They were convinced by the Wall Street debt peddlers, Madison Avenue maggots, and corrupt politicians that saving was for suckers. Live for today, for tomorrow may never come. Well tomorrow did come. Boomers are entering their retirement years with $12,000 in retirement savings, while still in debt up to their eyeballs. There have been 10,000 Boomers turning 65 every day since 2010. This will continue unabated through 2029. This demographic certainty was already depressing consumer spending, as this age demographic spends far less than 25 to 54 year olds. Factor in the pitiful amount of savings and you have an ongoing spending implosion.

• The propaganda machine was so well oiled, the savings rate actually reached 1.9% in 2005, as the masses all believed they would live luxurious retirements off their home equity windfall. How’d that delusion work out? The current level of 5.6% is seen as troublesome by the powers that be. They cannot accept the crazy concept of saving and investment when their entire warped paradigm is built upon borrowing and consumption. Banks don’t make money when you save and they despise when you use cash. They can’t sustain their opulent lifestyles without their 3% VIG on every electronic transaction, 15% compounded interest on the $5,000 average credit card balance, billions in late fees for being one day late with your payment, $4 on every ATM transaction, and the myriad of other fees and surcharges designed to bilk you and keep you from saving. The saving rate will continue to climb as people have no choice to make up for years of living beyond their means.
• Hilsenrath is willfully ignorant as he pretends to not understand why the American people will not or cannot accelerate their spending. It is really quite simple. Even a PhD should be able to understand. Real median household income was $52,300 in 1989. Real median household income today is $51,939. The median household has made no economic advancement in the last quarter of a century. And this is using the manipulated lower CPI figure. Using a true inflation rate would show a dramatic decline over the last 25 years. There has been virtually no wage growth during this supposed six year recovery. The industrial base of the country has been gutted, except for the production of arms to blow up brown people in the Middle East. Young people have $1.3 trillion of student loan debt weighing them like an anchor, and those Ruby Tuesday waitress jobs and Home Depot cashier jobs aren’t going to cut it.

• So we have the demographic dilemma of aging, under-saved, over-indebted Boomers who are being forced to spend less. We have an over-indebted, under-employed youth who don’t have anything to spend. And lastly we have the 25 to 54 year old age bracket who should be in their prime earning and spending years who are still 4 million jobs short of where they were in 2007 before the Fed induced financial collapse. The only age bracket to gain jobs since the crisis has been 55 to 69, as they have been forced to work to make up for their lost interest income. The only people making job gains are those least likely to spend.

• The spending crescendo in 2004 through 2007 was fueled by the Greenspan housing bubble and the $3 trillion of mortgage equity withdrawal used to buy BMWs, in-ground Olympic size pools, Jacuzzis, vacations to Tahiti, home theaters, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, and boob jobs, by delusional, apparently brain dead Americans who fell for the Bernaysian propaganda spewed by the Wall Street criminal class, hook line and sinker. The majority of shell shocked underwater home owners have been unable to sell since the housing crash. A 35% price decline will do that. The Fed has created $3.5 trillion out of thin air, more than quadrupled their balance sheet with toxic mortgages from Wall Street, artificially suppressed interest rates to bring mortgage rates to record lows, and was a co-conspirator along with Fannie, Freddie, FHA, and Wall Street hedge funds (Blackrock) to delay foreclosure sales and pump home prices with their buy and rent scheme. The result has been unaffordably high prices, mortgage applications at 1997 levels (60% below 2005 levels), first time buyers at a record low, and a non-existent housing recovery – despite the MSM propaganda saying otherwise.

• The last data point which might help the math challenged Hilsenrath understand why you aren’t spending is total U.S. vehicle miles driven. The chart below shows a relentless climb from 1982 through to the 2008 collapse. It coincides with the debt fueled consumption orgy over this same time frame. The unrelenting expansion of retail outlets and importing of cheap Chinese crap required a lot of trucks to haul the crap. It required a lot of trips to the mall in the minivans and SUVs by soccer moms living in our suburban sprawl paradise. In case you hadn’t noticed, the fastest growing retailer in the U.S. since 2008 has been Space Available. The well run retailers like Home Depot and Wal-Mart saw the writing on the wall and stopped expanding. The badly run retailers like Sears and JC Penney have been closing hundreds of stores. And the really badly run retailers like Radio Shack have gone bankrupt. Vehicle miles have essentially flat-lined for the last six years as retailers are closing more stores than they are opening, job growth has been non-existent and commerce within the U.S. is stagnant. If we were experiencing a real economic recovery, vehicle miles would be surging.

So this concludes my little tutorial for the Ivy League educated central bankers at the Fed and the Wall Street Journal Fed mouthpiece – Jon “I don’t understand” Hilsenrath. I know it is difficult for people to understand something when their paycheck depends upon them not understanding it, but this is pretty simple stuff. Pompous, arrogant, egocentric assholes who write for the Wall Street Journal, run JP Morgan, or control monetary policy for the world, know exactly what they have done, what they are doing, and who is benefiting. We all know the benefits of ZIRP and QE have gone only to the .1% who run the show. We know income inequality is at all-time highs. We know TPP will be passed, because the corporate fascists control the purse strings of our political class. We know the status quo will be maintained at all costs by the Deep State.
We know mega-corporations continue to ship jobs overseas and replace us with cheap foreign labor. We know the current administration actively encourages illegals to pour over our borders, swamp our social safety net, increase crime, and take jobs from Americans. We know the government has us under mass surveillance and will not hesitate to use all of that military equipment in the hands of local police against us. The will of the people is nothing but an irritant to those in power. They might not have us figured out, but a growing number of critical thinking, increasingly pissed off people, have them figured out. The debt expansion days are numbered. A deflationary depression is in the offing. The coming civil strife, financial panic, war, and overthrow of the existing social order will rival the three previous tumultuous upheavals in U.S. history – American Revolution, Civil War, Great Depression/World War II. Fourth Turnings are a bitch.
Hopefully I’ve explained the situation to the satisfaction of Jon and Janet. The mood in this country is darkening by the day. There is no going back to the good old days of yesteryear. They are long gone. No amount of debt issuance and propaganda is going to work. The system is overloaded. The people are angry. The politicians are captured. The banking elite are ransacking the nation for every last dime they can get their grubby little hands on. The military industrial complex is itching for war with Russia and China. The world hates us. If you can’t see it coming, you are either blind, dumb, or an Ivy League educated economist. So go out and spend to make your slave owners happy.
www.theburningplatform.com

When You Think The Financial World Can’t Get Any Crazier… This Happens

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/09/2015 19:49 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-09/when-you-think-financial-world-can%E2%80%99t-get-any-crazier%E2%80%A6-happens
Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man
When you think the financial world can’t get any crazier… this happens
The world has truly gone mad.
We’ve become accustomed somewhat in the last several years to historical anomalies such as zero percent interest rates, Quantitative Easing, competitive currency devaluation, etc. by governments and central banks the world over.
It’s almost become the new norm.
But then there’s always something that happens that shocks us all over again.
And just like with any other addiction, the infusion of ridiculous and unsustainable policies has to be that much more potent to have any effect.
Two such developments have just taken place in the financial world.
First, Switzerland became the first to issue 10-year government bonds with a negative yield.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Especially in the last year we’ve seen governments issue short-term debt with negative interest rates. But now the Swiss government is the first that will actually profit from its long-term 10-year debt.
It’s insane.
Just like in a bad infomercial—“But wait, there’s more!”
The government of Mexico just sold 100-year bonds denominated in EUROS. Also the first ever of its kind.
A few years ago, Mexico sold its first 100-year bond—that one was denominated in US dollars. Later, they sold another century-bond in British pounds.
You can just imagine the figures at the Mexican central bank’s meeting going: “Well, that went great. I wouldn’t have believed we could ever get away with that… Hey, what if we tried to do it in euros next time, haha?”
So they did. They took advantage of the European Central Bank’s unprecedented stimulus and issued a 100-year bond in a currency that most likely won’t even be around in the next decade.
Who’s dumb enough to buy this stuff—10-year debt at negative yields and 100-year debt in a doomed currency?
Institutional investors, of course—large pension funds and the like. You might look at news like that and think, well, that’s crazy, I’d never do that. But the fact is, it’s being done with YOUR MONEY.
Just like Winston Churchill commented that it’s false to characterize the fighting at places like the Somme, Verdun etc. in WWI as battles, when they were actually more like prolonged sieges, what’s happening in the financial world today is similar.
Currency wars is a term that’s been used frequently in recent years to describe what the world’s central banks and governments are doing.
In fact, this isn’t a currency war at all—it’s much more like a currency siege.
And when you think it can’t get any worse, it does.
Just like in WWI when nobody expected the amount of destruction and misery that happened. Heavy artillery barrages. U-boats. Tanks. Poison gas… It just kept getting worse and worse.
The financial world today is the same. Billion dollar stimulus packages. Quantitative Easing 1, 2, 3… Negative interest rates. Negative long-term debt yields. Cash withdrawal and transaction controls. Higher taxes. Capital controls…
It doesn’t stop. And it’s even getting worse.
Who are the losers now? Just like in WWI, they’re the guys in the trenches. They’re not the politicians making these decisions—the losers are the rest of us.
This isn’t a siege of one nation against the other. The siege is against us.