Economic pressures

[Danny B]

Past-peak economy rolling over

The corporation is anti family. How could it be otherwise?
S&P 500's Biggest Pension Plans Face $382 Billion Funding Gap
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2...rate-pensions/
If the richest corporations care little for their employees, you can bet that they care even less for the health of families.

3/01 Fed’s Powell: ‘muted’ inflation gives room for wages to rise – Reuters
3/01 Gap, Victoria’s Secret, Tesla: 4,300 store closures already announced – CNBC
So, tell me more about supply & demand for labor.
3/02 Who reaps the gains (asset bubbles) and who eats the losses (stagnating wages) – CHS
How many guesses do i get?
3/02 GDP crash: Goldman, Atlanta & NY Feds see Q1 GDP tumble below 1% – ZH
Remember that GOV spending is counted towards GDP. GOV claims to spend about 24% of GDP. Money out the back door by means of the FED and ESF and PPT brings the total much higher.
3/02 Soaring Canadian insolvencies cripple local banks – Zero Hedge Get used to it.
3/01 “There’s no money” – has China’s shadow-debt reckoning finally arrived? – ZH
China has mad a few attempts to regain control of finance. They freak out when the see the result of just a small decline in GOV liquidity.
3/01 US personal income posts first drop in over three years – CNBC Big surprise.
3/01 1 in 5 corporations say China has stolen their IP in the last year – CNBC
Trump will run them through the wringer.
3/01 Chinese manufacturing shrinks for third straight month in February – CNBC
Like everybody else, they run the printing press at hyperspeed to keep employment going.
Brexit is getting close, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...lanning-brexit

[Danny B]

More of the same

China is rolling over badly. They can never get off the credit tiger.
3/04 China encourages ‘shadow’ lending to boost growth – CNBC
3/04 US and China in ‘final stages’ of trade deal talks – CNBC
Trump will blow them up no matter what.
For the last 150 years, we have worked hard to create labor-saving devices. We have had great success.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ed-humans-2018
Charles Hug smith has all the numbers that you need to know.
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: What Killed the Middle Class?
The Baaken is producing more wastewarer than oil.
"But, that 35.4 million barrels of oil came at a much higher wastewater production cost. How much? How about 22% more wastewater, or 49 million barrels:"
https://srsroccoreport.com/the-bakke...-the-industry/
Shale oil is crashing. They NEVER made a profit.

The December 2018 stock crash has been tough on pensions.
https://www.valuewalk.com/2019/03/pu...unds-bankrupt/
Julius Malema has evidently been smoking Fairy dust.
https://www.rt.com/news/453026-malem...aign=Miximedia
18 signs for the economy
https://www.sott.net/article/408312-...t-18-big-signs
The U.S. army just received a ransom of 50 tons of gold.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...eged-deal-isis

[Danny B]

MMT and peak humans

The overlay of the EU bureaucracy over the considerable, already existing State bureaucracy reduced the GDP of the European Union by 20%. Over 22 million work for GOV in America. This does NOT take into account all the millions of lawyers and accountants who are employed to assure compliance with State mandates. The Federal government can create new money to pay the bureaucrats. Lower levels of GOV can't do this. The lower levels of GOV squeeze the working class in 2 ways. First, they tax the snot out out of the productive class. Second, they squeeze us for every penny they can get by way of fees and fines. They have over $200 trillion stashed away in their piggy bank.
https://www.cafr1.com/

FED GOV spends about 24% of the GDP into the economy with money collected mostly from taxes. Personal taxes run close to 50%.
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/b...-101/revenues/

In the last several years, there have been few legitimate buyers of Treasury bonds. As a general rule, every additional $1 of taxes reduces the economy by $3. FED GOV is loathe to raise taxes. They can't raise taxes and nobody wants to buy bonds. So, the Treasury just prints new money to finance the FED GOV. It appears that FED GOV now wants to do this out in the open. That is why we hear all this talk of MMT.
Here is a LONG article laying out the possibilities and ramifications.
I'll comment later.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/m...y-isnt-helping

As a counterpoint, here is another article that lays out some serious considerations that are rarely mentioned.
https://econimica.blogspot.com/2019/...-underway.html
If you read these 2 articles, you will see that we are approaching a nexus that includes;
A rise in State-created "jobs"
A fall in the birth rate
A rise in automation
A rise in the % of people who are unemployable
A rise in State debt to employ people who have no skills that are in demand in the private sector

[Danny B]

Production there,,, consumption here

I planned to write extensively about the article from Jacobin magazine.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/m...y-isnt-helping
I can't seem to access it now.
I read a lot of writers who seem to get so many things wrong. They look at facts, figures and graphs. It seems that the view from the ivory tower or the penthouse or Statehouse misses a lot of components.
Most of the poverty in the world is due to the fact that different nations entered the Industrial Revolution at different times. Everybody wants modern conveniences but, an underdeveloped country must sell natural resources and / or cheap labor to buy manufactured products that it doesn't produce at home.

One of the biggest things that the pundits miss; it is very common to have production in one area AND consumption in another.
Close to 143 million Americans aged 16 and older commute to work each day. That's about 45% of the population that's on the move at any given time.
It takes workers about 25.4 minutes on average to get where they're going
the 10.8 million workers whose trip lasts an hour or more.
Each year, an estimated 3.3 million Americans face a daily one-way commute of 50 miles or longer. Combined, they make the trip roughly 329 million times annually.
Seven percent of workers have a commute of 100 to 124 miles while 6% go anywhere from 125 to 199 miles one-way.

Global shipping costs have fallen https://voxeu.org/sites/default/files/image/NVF1.JPG
This creates even more mobility for manufacturing. Capital and manufacturing can move easily. George Soros seems to believe that labor should be able to move equally easy. At first view, this is great for the corporatocracy. It can drive labor down to starvation level
China destroyed the wages of their best customers. Now, they want to switch over to domestic consumption. They made attempts to dismount from the credit tiger but, soon gave up. Their working population is shrinking by 1 million a year. Consumption is down worldwide. The CBs try to stimulate the economy by pumping liquidity into the upper loop. The plan is for the banks to loan this new liquidity into the lower loop. This new liquidity has no legitimate takers .
"the current market capitalization of U.S. corporate equities now stands at $40 trillion, twice the level of U.S. Gross Domestic Product – the highest multiple in history"
https://www.hussmanfunds.com/comment/mc190303/

This monetary inflation of the upper loop bled into the lower loop. The general idea of MMT is to recapitalize the lower loop. There is talk of free college and free Medicare for all.
STRANGE, the biggest crash on the horizon is a crash of pensions. Nobody mentions that. Professor Kotlikoff reckons that the unfunded liabilities in America are $ 213 trillion,,,, more or less.
U.S. GOV debt is growing amazingly fast. It hopes to legitimise MMT and get rid of the FED.

3/05 If central banks are the only game in town, we’ve lost – Bloomberg
3/05 Fed’s “wealth effect” enriches the haves at the expense of the young – CHS
3/05 Retail apocalypse heating up in 2019. the major stores on deathwatch – Money
3/05 The stock market and the economy are telling two different stories – CNBC
Desperation everywhere.
3/05 China to slash taxes, boost lending to prop up slowing economy – Reuters
3/05 States consider asset transfers as way to shore up plan funding – Pensions
3/05 “Every indicator is blinking red” – Aussie PMI plunges to record low – Zero Hedge

3/05 There are more $100 bills in circulation than $1 bills, and it makes no cents – WaPo
Gresham's Law says that people will hold the premier currency as a store-of-value.
3/05 China signals loosening of property curbs as Xi’s mantra omitted – Bloomberg
Xi wants to be in control for several more years. He has had to jump back on the tiger to keep employment from crashing.
The monetary inflation that bled over to the lower loop means that the middle class no longer receives a "living Wage". 51% of Americans receive a check from GOV. GOV needs MMT to keep those checks rolling

[Danny B]

inflate to survive,,,MMT to the rescue,,,falling consumption

China tried to crash the party. They industrialized in record time. They had to print more that all the other CBs combined.
Here is a long technical paper showing that they can't stop printing. China created a fake economy that can never stand on it's own. Their greatest fear, DEFLATION.
"Behind everything is the same thing. Keynes was right. Inflation is one monetary evil, but its twin is far, far worse. At least with inflation things are moving, Chinese peasants are progressed up into the middle class even if it is more expensive when they get there."

"Deflation, however, is when everything stops; Dante’s Hell was freezing cold. It doesn’t have to be all at once like in the early thirties, this can be a prolonged affair dragging out across more years than anyone cares to remember. The frog isn’t being slowly boiled, it is being progressively frozen. It is now almost completely frigid, too cold to be able to leap out of the icy water. Stuck here without any other options, it must conserve its energy as best it can and hope that it can somehow survive.

If given a choice, you pick the heat of high inflation over this every day of the week; until you realize it isn’t your choice. It never really was."
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ops+to+zero%29
Great graph, https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...?itok=1nTmYMnr

Armstrong, "We are all connected. There is no possible way for any country to move counter-trend to the whole. The European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan have destroyed their bond markets. Their stupid idea of Quantitative Easing and lowering rates to zero and negative was under their theory that people would borrow if it was cheap enough. Over the years, I have received calls from banks asking me if I wanted to borrow money. They call because we run high cash balances and have no debt. They always want to lend money to people who do not need it,"
"But I am talking about borrowing to expand or buy some business. That is what the Central Banks failed to grasp. If there is no CONFIDENCE in the future, you will not borrow at any rate."
Not completely true. U.S. consumer debt is about $13 trillion. Plenty of people have no plan to pay off their debts.
"As far as the US Federal Reserve, its holding of federal debt is under 20% of the $22 trillion and 30% of the debt is held by foreign governments with 28% held by interagency. The US could not be saved if the Fed tore up its bonds. It is not enough."
"The pension funds are also linked to government debt. Defaulting on government debt would wipe out all pension funds. The interconnectivity is not considered by so many who summarily assume we can just tear it all up."
That's where MMT comes in.

"They will raise taxes dramatically trying to survive. But governments cannot avoid their collapse for nobody is willing to step up and take decisions for the long-term.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ich-end-is-up/
Do not worry, I am sure that when the time comes, the Dems and Reps will work together very closely to bring it all under control.

The bond market is the big kahuna, not the stock market. GOV pushes everybody to focus on the stock market because it is more easily manipulated. Capitalization of the stock market is $40 trillion but, nobody seems to be nervous.
BUT, the stock market eventually depends on consumption. Earnings have been heavily falsified by buybacks but, eventually earnings must fall in accordance with consumption. Consumer debt is about $13 trillion but, even the deadbeats are maxxed out.
Rising interest rates are wiping out consumption.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...-why-15-charts

[Danny B]

All the arguments against MMT

That disappeared article has made a reappearance.

"While adherents strenuously profess that MMT is subtler and more complex than this, its main selling point is that governments need not tax or borrow in order to spend — they can just create money out of thin air. A few computer keystrokes and everyone gets health insurance, student debt disappears, and we can save the climate too, without all that messy class conflict."
"As Wray put it, “The government does not ‘need’ the ‘public’s money’ in order to spend; rather the public needs the ‘government’s money’ in order to pay taxes. Once this is understood, it becomes clear that neither taxes nor government bonds ‘finance’ government spending.”
"Kelton’s paper foreshadowed what would become a trademark of MMT writing: detailed accounting exercises designed to show what happens, mechanically speaking, when the government spends money. These are mobilized to ask “why should the government take from the private sector the money . . . that it alone is capable of creating? "
Sorry, the vast majority of liquidity is created by financial institutions. Only recently, has The FED balance sheet bloated up into the $ trillions.

" Indeed, the entire process of taxing and spending must, as a matter of logic, have begun with the government first creating (and spending) new government money.” Government is as a God, giving economic life through spending: until it spends, we have no money. "
Nope, it's private institutions.
"Absent from Kelton’s paper, Wray’s book, and much of the subsequent MMT literature, is any sense of what money means in the private economy, where workers labor and capitalists profit from their toil and compete with each other to maximize that profit, a complex network of social relations mediated by money."
This may all be true but, those who rent their money add nothing to productivity.

"Knapp argues that the state names the currency by law, and by the practice of only accepting tax payments denominated in that currency. This doctrine, known as chartalism, is in one sense incontrovertible; states feel very strongly about their currency and punish people who counterfeit it. You must pay taxes in the official currency or you will go to jail. No modern country not in crisis would tolerate multiple currencies circulating in its borders "
"The necessity for a government to tax in order to maintain both its independence and its solvency is true for state and local governments, but it is not true for a national government"
"That brings us to the next problem: inflation. When the printing presses run freely, it’s not only reactionaries who think that runs the risk of spiraling prices. As I was researching this piece, many people to whom I described MMT, from Democrats to Marxists, brought it up as a worry. MMTers are coy about the topic"
Inflation is where the great debate takes off. Zimbabwe inflated the snot out of their currency to pay GOVERNMENT WORKERS.

"The standard view of the Weimer inflation is that the German economy, severely damaged by World War I and forced to make huge reparations payments to the victors, wasn’t up to the task — it just didn’t have the productive capacity, and its citizens were both unwilling and unable to pay the necessary taxes. So instead the government just printed money and spent it"
The external drain mandated by the agreement dictated at Versailles. Once agian, State drain.
"government just printed money and spent it, not only to pay its own bills, but to support bank lending to the private sector"
STRAIGHT to the upper loop.
"Wray’s explanation of the Weimar hyperinflation, one of the most dazzling of all time, is odd. The deficits, Wray explained in his book, were caused by the inflation, not the other way around."
Yep, money sent to the upper loop.
" Endogenous money theorists, in contrast, believe that money creation is driven by demand for credit coming from private actors, like businesses and consumers. "
When crashing wages crashed demand in the private sector, the State took over borrowing to save the banks.
"In normal times, the central bank injects enough money into the system to keep the wheels of commerce spinning, but it’s not what generates the spin. The work of production and distribution does that."
The FED's balance sheet has always been tiny . It is the private banks that "inject" money into the economy.
“Now that we all agree that government expenditure can maintain employment we should argue about what the expenditure should be for.”
WAR, of course. What a stupid question.

MMT "Keystrokes will save the Earth! Except they won’t. We need a wholesale revamping of our energy and transportation systems, the spatial organization of our cities, and the fundamental processes of industrial and agricultural production. To do that, we need to step on private capital’s freedom of investment, which strikes at the heart of ruling-class power."
No mention that war is most profitable.
"AOC’s defenders quickly noted, correctly (as she herself had earlier), that no one asks that question when it comes to funding the Pentagon"

'Acritical part of the MMT agenda is a job guarantee (JG), a policy under which the federal government becomes the employer of last resort (ELR). Unlike MMT’s monetary theorizing, the JG has nothing to do with the school’s core chartalist concept, and it deals directly with a crucial aspect of the real economy, namely the labor market. With a JG, the chronically unemployed could find decent work, and the temporarily unemployed would be accommodated until they find permanent work."
They will NOT find decent work.
"At recent levels of US unemployment, Tcherneva estimates 10–15 million people could be employed in a JG program"

"These disruptions would all be good for the working class, but to the bosses they’d look like quasi-revolutionary acts. When I interviewed Kshama Sawant, the socialist member of the Seattle city council who put a $15 minimum wage at the core of her agenda, in 2015, I asked her how she dealt with how system-challenging it was; she didn’t retreat. She said it was “an all-out class battle” — and if the system can’t pay, which it has a very hard time doing, that becomes a tool for showing that system is bad. "
Yep, the system is BAD. There is just no solution for growing automation.
"And if we had a political movement strong enough to force full-employment policies on the state, then why stop with a mere JG"
These people toss around words like "job guarantee" like a stroke of the pen will create jobs. It will never happen.

"If you ask, “Do you really believe the government doesn’t need to tax or borrow to spend,” which is something they frequently do argue, they’ll deny it. When questioned by a sympathetic Ryan Grim of the Intercept about what happens when the government spends without taxing or borrowing (something the United States never does, but bracket that for now), Kelton says it depends on who gets the money"
if it goes, once again, to the upper loop, it will just bring more price inflation.
"If rich people get it, they’d probably save it. If poor people get it, “they’d spend it into the economy.”
Lula tried this in Brazil and, it worked very well.

"Or is it that we shouldn’t worry about deficits at all? Kelton, asked about the Trump tax cuts, said she was ready for Tax Cuts 2.0. So, should we then not worry about the rising ratio of federal debt to GDP that comes with big deficits, and the increased share of spending devoted to debt service (which is a gift to bondholders, who are mostly quite rich)? Will there never be a point at which even the US government might find it hard to float new bonds to pay off the old ones and finance fresh spending? "
There is NO ratio of federal debt to GDP. The new liquidity is created ex nihilo.
" Debt, as the late sociologist James O’Connor said, increases capital’s power over the state: a government that is not pursuing market-friendly policies will find it hard to get a loan. Is that not a concern? Could we solve that problem by just Debt, as the late sociologist James O’Connor said, increases capital’s power over the state: a government that is not pursuing market-friendly policies will find it hard to get a loan. Is that not a concern? Could we solve that problem by just having the Fed buy the bonds? Aside from the fact that that’s technically illegal, isn’t it a few steps down the road to Weimar? At what point would debt become worrisome? As with inflation, MMTers just never say. Aside from the fact that that’s technically illegal, isn’t it a few steps down the road to Weimar? At what point would debt become worrisome? As with inflation, MMTers just never say."
just having the Fed buy the bonds? NO FED and NO bonds
As far as inflation, does the money go to the upper loop OR , does it go to the consumptive loop?

"Congress can pass any budget it chooses, and our government already pays for everything by creating new money.” But the government doesn’t do that. It spends only money gotten from tax revenues or bond sales."
Exactly.
"the government cannot spend via keystrokes money created out of thin air."
when public pensions crash, you will hear a whole new story.
"The major problems at the fiscal level are what we spend money on and what we don’t. If anything, we’re closer to terminal now than we were fifty years ago, when Martin Luther King Jr said, “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

"More broadly, we have a private economy driven by exploitation, overwork, asset stripping, and ecological destruction. MMT has little or nothing on offer to fight any of this. The job guarantee is a contribution, though a flawed one, and it’s not at the core of the theory, which proceeds from the keystroke fantasy. That fantasy looks like a weak response to decades of anti-tax mania coming from the Right, which has left many liberals looking for an easy way out. It would be sad to see the socialist left, which looks stronger than it has in decades, fall for this snake oil. It’s a phantasm, a late-imperial fever dream, not a serious economic policy."

OK, there you have it. A long, detailed authoritarian analysis showing that MMT is bunk. We can not let the Treasury create money as needed for the producing economy. We must continue to pay the bankers 1/2 trillion a year to use our own money. We must spend a $1 trillion plus for wars everywhere.
" asset stripping and ecological destruction. MMT has little or nothing on offer to fight any of this."
Not true. The ecological destruction is due in large part to an effort to liquidate tangibles to support enormously bloated credit schemes. Cut down all the Redwoods so that you have tangible collateral that you can leverage to do a hostile takeover of a company that you plan to asset strip. Sears is a prime example.
The arguments against MMT are loaded with lies and ignorance. They keep using words like debt and deficit. Nothing of the sort would be created. THAT is very worrying to those who rent their money. It certainly isn't perfect. Crony capitalism has brought us to the brink of destruction . NOTHING other than MMT can hold back the pension crisis until the time when the elderly can die a natural death.
In Weimar Germany, the elderly were wiped out by price inflation. They would take their life savings and buy a great meal. Then, they would turn on the gas and go to sleep.

[Danny B]

Slow disintegration

"Last February’s “bipartisan” spending bill suspended the debt ceiling — then at $20.5 trillion — until March 1, 2019.
March 1, 2019, falls this Friday.
Friday’s deadline would pass harmlessly if the debt had remained at $20.5 trillion.
But it has not.
Today’s federal debt exceeds $22 trillion."
Meet the new debt ceiling: $22.03 trillion
Mnuchin Invokes Special Debt Measures to Last Until June
Something tells me that this is going to be a drawn out fight.

"Much like the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Inflation of the 1970s, the Great Recession of the 2000s shaped a generation of macro- and monetary economists. We can debate the details. But three things warrant widespread agreement. The Fed generated an unsustainable boom. It followed up with a severe monetary contraction. And it swapped out its traditional operating procedures for a new regime, reducing economic growth and increasing systemic risk in the process."
So, we are on our way to another correction in the markets.
How soon?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...a-sell-trigger

Apparently, bbb debt will get downgraded to junk and everybody will have to unload it.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...bbb-downgrades
We have another record fall, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...-record-levels

Bonds have reversed a 40 year trend and, it's going to get ugly.
https://capitalistexploits.at/what-w...u-have-done/?/
3/07 Tariff mistake smoking gun: trade deficit soars, GDP declines – Mish
3/07 Warren Buffett calls public pension debt a ‘disaster’ – IL News

3/07 Court rules legislature can change terms of health plan for retirees – Laurinburg
It had to come. GOV will reneg on every commitment that it can escape.
3/07 Global economy is sinking fast, and it will take the U.S. with it – SHTFPlan
Supposedly, we will be the last man standing. Except for Russia, of course.
3/07 Tariff mistake smoking gun: trade deficit soars, GDP declines – Mish
3/07 As the economy teeters on the brink of a recession, U.S. debt explodes – ECB
That probably wasn't part of the plan.
3/07 Dollar Tree to close up to 390 Family Dollar stores – US News
If family dollar can't make , you know that things are bad.

"“Last year, Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio stood at 238%, and since 1994, headline inflation has been negative for almost half of the time. "
3/06 BOJ board member calls for more stimulus if economy sinks – Reuters
It hasn't worked for 30 years. Why stop now?
3/07 The US quietly negotiates ‘peace with honor’ in Afghanistan – Boston Globe
Didn't we do that in Viet Nam?

[Danny B]

ECB and Italy,,,Netanayahoo going down at last,,, lies from Armstrong

There is a lot going on but, nothing of special note.
Italy is going to dump it's debt and pull out of the EU. The ECB was the only entity buying Italian debt. Draghi ended bond buying to try to bring some confidence back. The Italians plan to default.
3/08 ECB warns slowdown isn’t temporary: Draghi announces bold stimulus – Mish
My, isn't he bold. His term ends shortly. après nous le déluge.
Italy has a plan "B"
Italy joining China’s new Silk Road raises eyebrows in Washington
BRICS bank to issue loans of up to $40 billion by 2022
Italy plans to suck up to whoever has cash.

Armstrong, Private Blog – Euro Crash
Posted Mar 7, 2019 by Martin Armstrong

PRIVATE BLOG – Euro Crash Private blog posts are exclusively available to Socrates subscribers.
EU SHOCK PREDICTION: Eurozone will BREAK UP in 2019 amid ...
https://www.express.co.uk › News › World

Jan 2, 2019 - EU SHOCK PREDICTION: Eurozone will BREAK UP in 2019
EU on brink of FINANCIAL TURMOIL: Bloc TURNS in dire economic ...
https://www.express.co.uk › Finance › City & Business
Jan 5, 2019
I fear that the Europeans are going to have a big drop in their standard of living. You French get special mention. Your debt is higher than the Italian debt. Worse yet;
3/07 Truly not getting it: French president Emmanuel Macron’s manifesto – Mish

France has laid a new tax on a few mega companies. This will DEFINITELY blow up in their face.
https://sputniknews.com/europe/20190...-facebook-tax/


Long article but, what it boils down to; The European bond market si pretty much destroyed and investors are going to gold.

The tide is finally turning against israel. It's about time. Netanayahooo has been indicted for corruption but, says that he is not leaving. He is at least as bad as Dick Cheney. Israel has what they call, "the Samson option". They have threatened to nuke ANY State that does not go along with they demands. They have made it very clear that they include Europe as well. Netanayahoooo may have taken his threats too far.
Israeli Navy ready to block Iranian oil exports in transit – Netanyahu
https://www.rt.com/news/453212-israel-navy-iranian-oil/
This isn't a threat against Iran. It is a direct threat against the West and Japan.

A century ago, a hard rock miner had to find <3 ounces> of gold per ton of rock to make it worthwhile. Today, a mining company can survive on 3 grams per ton. The same is true for agriculture. As more machinery and more carbon energy were applied to agriculture, yields went WAY up. OAC talks about getting rid of fossil fuel usage. So, we all go back to farming by hand with no tractors. She shoots her mouth off without ever considering the effects of her so-called policies.
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/20...real-new-deal/


https://theantimedia.com/blood-money...g-endless-war/
Bob Dylan, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGFagK-LuQo

You're going to hear a LOT of lies about MMT. Here is Armstrong with additional lies

"That book all focuses on the elastic creation of money and puts all the blame on the Fed and bankers. I understand that central banks have been demonized and the great conspiracy centers around their ability to create money. Creating money is not really the issue for the amount they have created is peanuts compared to the continued debt created by politicians. Congress just created $1 trillion-plus in December 2015 and nobody noticed."
Yes, the money created by the FED is peanuts. He lumps the private bankers in with the FED. The private bankers have created endless $ trillions. Much of it at the behest of the government
"You now have people proposing the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT or Modern Money Theory) because they have witnessed central banks increasing the money supply post-2007 and have been unable to create inflation."
In 2007, the stock market was at 13,178. Now, it is at 25,473. The inflation was all pumped into the upper loop to keep ALL the bankers and speculators from going broke. The stock market grew,,,, currency inflation bled over into the lower loop, while wages fell.

"The approach of MMT typically seen as an evolution of Chartalism and is sometimes referred to as Neo-Chartalism. They argue that in sovereign financial systems, banks can create money but these “horizontal” transactions that do not increase net financial assets as assets are offset by liabilities. "
What a crock of crab. The entire bond market is counted as an asset. BUT, it is pure debt. When you buy stocks, you are buying future earnings.. For most companies, there are no future earnings. CURRENT government printing is the only thing holding stocks up to their current valuation of 2.6 times historical prices This is MMT in everything but name..

"In MMT, “vertical” money enters the economy through government spending. Since money is legal tender meaning the government accepts it for taxes, this creates the demand for currency. You need the paper dollars to pay the government its pound of flesh."
Another half-truth. We need money for commerce.

"Because the government can issue its own currency at will, under MMT it is argued that the level of taxation relative to government spending is, in reality, a policy tool that regulates inflation. Therefore, under MMT, the dreams of Bernie Sanders making everything free becomes possible."
True, control is necessary. When millions of elderly can not afford to eat, a basic income will be very important.
"We need central banks as a clearing mechanism and to maintain reserves of member banks."
NOPE, that can all be done by the Treasury

"The destruction of the central bank resulted in the Panic of 1837 and the sovereign defaults of the states during the 1840s that occurred after the states had issued debt in an attempt to bailout state banks that went nuts without a central bank to control anything.
You ended up with banks creating their own money and they would print notes and sell them at a discount to brokers in New York"
So, the problem was the private banks.
"The wholesale creation of money did not work well "
This was NOT money. It was private bank debt notes.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ntral-bankers/
So, evil president Jackson destroyed the central bank and private banks ran wild. 1913, we got the FED. 16 years later the economy crashed.

[Danny B]

Consumer debt,,, weakening stock markets

The END will most likely involve a cascade of default. Here are some numbers on consumer debt.
Consumer debt is at about $15 trillion.
Consumer Credit Storms Above $4 Trillion, As Credit Card Debt Hits Record High
Deadbeat Nation? 37 Million Credit Cards Were 90 Days Past Due In 4Q18
Household Net Worth Tumbles By $3.7 Trillion
3/08 US households see biggest decline in net worth since the financial crisis – CNBC
$1.56 trillion in total U.S. student loan debt
44.7 million Americans with student loan debt
11.5% of student loans are 90 days or more delinquent or are in default
Along with record debt comes record woes.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...-record-levels

You already know that Amazon operates on a very thin margin.
France Hits Google, Amazon, Facebook with 3% Digital Tax
Now, Amazon is shafting it's retailers to get a bigger cut.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...alts-purchases

The private sector worker has been squeezed out of collective bargaining. The Non-productive sector is doing quite well.
Making A Fortune: 19 Million Public Employees Across America Cost Taxpayers Nearly $1 Trillion
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamand.../#62dfc9d33b67 So, everybody except the actual productive worker has gotten poorer.

Armstrong said that American stock markets will rise because of foreign capital inflow.
3/08 Nobody believes this market: 2019 worst year for stock outflows since 2008 – ZH
3/08 Goldilocks is over: global stocks tumble on fresh growth fears, China crash – ZH
3/08 Stocks in Asia tumble; China leads losses after trade data disappoints – CNBC
3/08 Nomura warns the S&P is back in the “negative gamma” zone – ZH
3/08 Dow falls as weak jobs report stokes economic growth fears – CNBC

3/08 Dollar hits 52-week high on new ECB stimulus, as old stimulus fails to stimulate – WS
The monetary Viagra isn't working any more.

[Danny B]

Limits of GOV,,,, limits of debt

Keep in mind that society and the state are 2 completely different types of entities. The founding fathers wanted the state to remain quite small. After all, they wanted the parasite to be very small in comparison to the producers. The State is like any other parasite. It doesn't want any limits to it's growth. The lifeblood of the State must be taken from producers. It must constantly extend it's reach if it is to grow. This necessitates more centralization to draw in more support. That is why the State is on a constant hunt for more sources of taxes and fines.

" The limits of politics are the limits of government. In the present era, all government seeks to further centralize power and capital because the era's quasi-religious belief is that centralization is the solution to everything.

This is of course false. Centralization works until it becomes the problem, at which point further centralization of power and capital only speeds system-wide failure. "
" As a result, the greater the government's power, the greater the polarization as the self-serving elites seek to protect their share of the pie as the pie shrinks. Each camp becomes increasingly extreme, and compromise is recognized as a process that erodes every camp's power and income.

The political solution is take-no-prisoners domination and the eradication of rivals' power to veto or contest the domination of the winner. This drive to polarization is the result of centralized elites attempting to distribute the system's increasing failure to their competing elites.

This is the politics of decline and collapse. This is the only possible output of centralized power grabs by self-serving elites, i.e. the status quo. "
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmar19...-fail3-19.html

Most of the tax burden is placed on the worker, as opposed to the corporation. The worker is slowly disappearing.
https://www.thenation.com/article/gi...working-class/
Since wages and aggregate earnings in the productive sector have been falling, the credit bubble that MUST grow,,,, is growing due to more pumping from the CBs. The private sector in America is maxxed out with about $15 trillion in personal debt. The State is taking up the slack in debt growth by adding to Federal debt.

"All in all, and despite a Q4 slowdown, 2018 posted the strongest Credit growth since before the crisis – led, of course, by our spendthrift federal government.

Non-Financial Debt (NFD) rose $2.524 TN during 2018 (5.1%), exceeding 2007’s $2.478 TN and second only to 2004’s $2.915 TN growth. NFD closed 2018 at a record 253% of GDP, compared to 230% to end of 2007"
"Federal borrowings expanded $1.258 TN during the year, up from 2017’s $599 billion"
BECAUSE
"Year-over-year growth in Total Household borrowings slowed ($488bn vs. $570bn), led by a drop in Home Mortgages ($285bn vs. $312bn). Total Corporate borrowings slowed to $532 billion from 2017’s $769 billion."
"Federal debt grew 7.58%, almost double 2017’s 3.74%"
"Treasury and Agency Securities surged $1.656 TN last year – accounting for a full two-thirds of total Non-Financial Debt growth. Combined Treasury and Agency debt ended 2018 at a record $26,955 TN, or 129% of GDP (vs. 2007’s $14.685 TN, or 92%). "
Credit Bubble Bulletin : Weekly Commentary: Q4 2018 Z.1 "Flow of Funds"
You get the idea. SOMEBODY has to keep the credit growth going.

TARP was created because the looming breakdown in the finance system would have been totally catastrophic to everyone except for the die-hard preppers. Not knowing what to do, the State rescued the finance system as a knee-jerk reaction.
" 129% of GDP (vs. 2007’s $14.685 TN, or 92%)" This ISN'T what you call a permanent rescue. FED GOV has lots of channels to pump liquidity into the system. most of them are prohibited by law BUT, when you write the laws, you don't worry about small details.

Europe is a different story. The ECB doesn't have the flexibility of the FED,,, illegal as it might be. Just the same, the ECB is facing oblivion and has gotten desperate. You know that they are pumping liquidity into the banks. In turn, the banks are buying CB debt.
https://sputniknews.com/business/201...bonds-economy/
All the CBs are paying for state debt, even if they try to hide it.

[Danny B]

The ECB shoves the fiscal transmission into reverse.

"The development flies in the face of the European Central Bank’s recent decision to launch a fresh round of stimulus to prod eurozone banks into lending and shore up the single-currency bloc.
Banks across the eurozone have started to purchase their own governments’ bonds "

" Currently, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal all borrow more than they deposit and more tha $800 billion from the previous TLTRO is set to mature over the next two years. Without the extension of the program, defaults could rise sharply.)"
So, the banks need buyers to roll over 800 billion. The ECB is sending them "stimulus".
https://realinvestmentadvice.com/wha...know-03-09-18/
So, the CB prints "money" because the banks need to roll over loans that nobody will buy. In turn, the banks buy GOV paper.

"Australian households are among the world's most indebted when compared with their income."
"The end result? It couldn't cut rates if it needed. That would add heat to a dangerously inflated housing bubble. And it could never raise rates, because that would kill household spending."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-...-bank/10887958

"Of course, given the Government has already been running a “quasi-MMT” program for the last 30-years, the real impact has been a continued shift of dependency on the Government anyway. Currently, one-in-four households in the U.S. have some dependency on government subsidies with social benefits as a percentage of real disposable income at record highs."
MMT suggests correctly that debts and deficits don’t matter as long as the money being borrowed and spent is used for productive purposes.
You see this everywhere. The money is NOT borrowed.
GREAT graphs, https://realinvestmentadvice.com/eco...ven-realities/

3/11 Socialist revolution: The price (crony)capitalism pays when greed goes unrestrained – GR
3/11 Tax collectors chase rich New Yorkers moving to low-tax states – CNBC
NYC Dangerously Close To Bankruptcy
"Eric Peters: "Everyone Is Wondering What Exactly Is Wrong With Europe""
"The truth is that a currency union is destined to fail without fiscal union. And fiscal union is doomed without political union.

Europe’s architects believed their citizens couldn’t handle that truth. So they locked themselves into a structurally flawed currency union almost impossible to exit, hoping to backdoor their way into fiscal and political union without their subjects quite realizing it. It’s the lie at the heart of Europe. "
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...y-wrong-europe
The European States have a 1 trillion deficit. Germany has a 1 trillion current account surplus. Locking them all into a fiscal union would "equal" out the difference.
3/11 Brexit bombshell: a German Brexit? A scandal of subversive statecraft – Politicalite
The Germans need to Grexit post-haste to keep their 1 trillion


Americans are # 11 when it comes to debt. You Kiwis have done quite well for yourselves.
https://wolfstreet.com/2019/03/09/st...in-11th-place/
3/10 AOC slams capitalism as “irredeemable” system – Zero Hedge
Does the silver spoon get in the way of her talking?
Armstrong, "The government in Finland resigned on Friday after they failed to come up with reform to cut costs in healthcare. Between that trend and government pensions, these two forces are putting pressure to keep raising taxes and lowering the standard of living for everyone else. This is what I mean that we are in the stages of a collapse in socialism."
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...dia-is-silent/

3/11 Chinese credit growth unexpectedly crashes in February – ZH
https://www.rt.com/business/453505-c...s-trade-falls/

Stocks seem to have hit a bump in the road.
https://www.rt.com/business/453414-o...losing-streak/
This is a crosspost but, it would definitely affect markets.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...-golan-heights

ALL the CBs have talked about or,,, tried to raise interest rates. The FED is the exception,,, for now.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ing-about-nirp
China goes on a gold buying spree. Why now?
"Financial analysis published two weeks ago by a major Italian newspaper, Il Sole / 24 Ore (The Sun / 24 Hours), asserted frankly that central banks have been using gold futures and derivatives to suppress the monetary metal's price so they can obtain more of the metal less expensively in advance of its remonetization under new rules promulgated by the Bank for International Settlements to take effect March 29.

Of course the new BIS rules, the "Basel 3" standards, declaring gold in the vault to be a superior asset, equivalent to cash and government bonds, are not news. What's news here is that a mainstream financial news organization has nailed the deception and intrigue of central banks and accused them of rigging the international gold market."
http://www.gata.org/node/18930
So, gold is just as good as government bonds?

[BroMikey]

Financial Structure Decode

[VIDEO]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW7wvbg_z90&t=113s[/VIDEO]

[Danny B]

Population reductine in many costumes

Mikey, dunno, It's too mystical and complex for me. I watched the vid. One thing mentioned was ; Greenspan said that the creation of the FED was a disaster. All the jewish FED heads agreed that we needed 2% price inflation. It generally took them 6% currency inflation to accomplish the 2%. FED head, Paul Volker, a Presbyterian, said that the 2% thing was just BS,
Everything that I read points directly or indirectly towards population reduction. Whether it's the credit bubble or MGTOW or sugar or Bisphenol in the water supply or overuse of antibiotics or vaccination or endocrine disruptors everywhere, etc. National Geographic has a vid" Spermageddon" about how sperm count has been reduced by 50%
I also believe that these efforts at depopulation will be successful. Combine this stuff with global cooling, the pole flip and the weakening of the magnetosphere.
Check "ice age Farmer" and "crop loss.com."
Suspicious Observers has presented a lot of research claiming that Sol has a periodic mini-nova. Read, Mitch Batros,,,, Killshotby Ed Dames. Catastrophe cycle at Suspicious observers. The latest Chinese exploration of the far side of the moon seemed rather pointless.
The Chinese discovered that the moon had been deep fried in the past. The projected date for the next deep fry is 2046 but, it is currently anybody's guess. The climate extremes will get worse and th pension system will crash. It's going to be tough times.

[Danny B]

More speedbumps

MMT would essentially amount to printing up whatever money is needed for State expenses. Armstrong seems to equate this with a repudiation of FED GOV debt. I don't see this as necessarily true. Armstrong said that FED GOV would NEVER default on FED debt because so much of it is owed to foreigners.
Years ago, FED debt was bought by the BLICS. This included Belgium. Belgium had NO dollars to buy bonds. The other entity was the Cayman Islands. This is all hot CIA money. Following the BLICS came "households" and "Other" The FED would send a boatload of pixels to Great Britain and, GB would buy FED bonds. The argument that the U.S. GOV would never default is tenuous at best.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/a...allacy-of-mmt/
The bankers have gotten so used to creating the money supply that the froth at the mouth at the prospect of the Treasury doing it. One of the MANY reasons that JFK was killed was because he issued U.,S. notes. LBJ cut that off 11 days after JFKs death.

Greenspan warned of a housing bubble many years ahead of time. Reportedly, he claimed that the creation of the FED was a disaster.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-...d-dissertation


QUESTION: Marty, just reported this past week America’s trade deficit hit a record $891 billion
"ANSWER: What is reported as trade is not simply trade. The numbers are all screwed up. It tracks actual goods as well as services and that includes capital flows. The accounting system is set up in such a way that capital investment buying bonds, stocks, and real estate go into the Capital Account. However, all dividends and interest earned by a foreigner on US assets then are accounted for in the Current Account. It is the Current Account that people report as trade which is not correct because it also includes interest and dividends. Thus, the more foreigners invest in a country, the more it will erroneously appear to be expanding the trade deficit as interest and dividends flow back on their capital investment."

"Last week, Robert S. Kaplan – who heads the Dallas Fed – penned an essay titled “Corporate Debt as a Potential Amplifier in a Slowdown.”

You can read the entire essay here if you’d like. But it’s not necessary.

In short, Kaplan is worried about how much corporate debt there is since the global financial crisis. He’s also concerned by the huge deterioration in corporate debt quality. "
It's called "rollover",,,, and, play dead.
$9 trillion corporate debt bomb is 'bubbling' in the US economy
goldman warns of $1.3t of corporate debt maturing through 2020
Record Corporate Debt And The Next Financial Crisis:
S&P Global, U.S. Refinancing Study--$4.88 Trillion Of Rated
Corporate Debt Is Scheduled To Mature Through 2023
Most of this debt is rated so low that NOBODY will buy it. Armstrong is predicting a crash in January of 2020.

3/12 Syria vows to attack Israel unless it withdraws from the Golan Heights – Jerusalem Post
I have heard NOTHING from the Trump camp He refused to commit CENTCOM when Syria was re-taking it's lost provinces that were taken by the Saudi-israeli-american-British mercenaries. This will be a litmus test of just how much the chosenites control Trump.
A war in the Golan will definitely affect markets.

3/12 New York City could be about to become much more dangerous – NY Times
3/12 The tragedy of Baltimore – NY Times
3/12 20% of California community college student are homeless – Zero Hedge
A national disgrace. WE spend more per prisoner than we spend per student.

China, like the West allowed everybody and their donkey to create debt instruments. Evidently, they didn't keep good track of this.
"China watchers added another 40% of debt/GDP to the total when, as S&P calculated, China’s local governments had accumulated 40 trillion yuan ($6 trillion) - or even more - in off-balance sheet, or Local government financing vehicles (LGFV)"
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ic-credit-risk

3/12 I’m so, so, so sorry: Baby boomer apologizes on behalf of his generation – NY Daily
What a crock of crab. It was / is the politicians who screwed it up. The District of Corruption demanded that the social security fund buy non-negotiable treasury bonds. Had they bought stocks instead, SS would have lots of money. BUT, the money was needed for wars so, SS has a drawer full of non-negotiable bonds. They pilfered every fund that they could find. It's not the boomers fault. They worked hard.
Kunstler has lots to say.
Ides and Tides - Kunstler

[BroMikey]

[QUOTE=BroMikey;316611]Global cooling is here

https://media.8ch.net/file_store/34e6b015de63fbe98008172236e5edc9e7d32ed1d322a07b15 d80c09813a4697.jpg