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The Oil Curse Comes to Washington

April 27, 2018

The Oil Curse Comes to Washington

Prices rise and prices fall.  So, too, they fall and rise.  This is how the supply and demand sweet spot is continually discovered – and rediscovered.

When supply exceeds demand for a good or service, prices fall.  Conversely, when demand exceeds supply, prices rise.  Producers use the information communicated by changing prices to make business decisions.  High demand and rising prices inform them to increase output.  Excess supply and falling prices inform them to taper back production.

This, in basic terms, is how markets work to efficiently bring products and services to market.  Five year plans, command and control pricing systems, and government price edicts cannot hold a candle to open market pricing.  But not all markets are created equal.  The market for gumballs or garbage bags, for instance, is much simpler than the market for solar panels or jet engines.

What we mean is some markets are subject to more government intervention than others; especially, if there’s a large money stream that can be extracted by government coercion.  Sometimes governments nationalize an entire market – for the good of the people, of course.

Strange and peculiar price movements can indicate there’s something else besides natural supply and demand mechanics going on.  On April 6, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) grade crude oil cost about $62.  Ten months ago, that same barrel of WTI oil cost about $43.  About 24 months ago, it was only about $30 a barrel.

Yesterday, April 26, WTI oil was about $68 a barrel.  What’s going on?

Price Fixing Accidents

Indeed, the oil market is subject to mass government interventions the world over.  The push and pull of these hindrances to regular market determined price discovery can prompt wild price distortions.  We don’t pretend to understand the many variables at play that influence the price of oil.  Still, today, we scratch for clarity and edification, nonetheless.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why You Should Embrace the Twilight of the Debt Bubble Age

January 5, 2018

Why You Should Embrace the Twilight of the Debt Bubble Age

People are hard to please these days.  Clients, customers, and cohorts – the whole lot.  They’re quick to point out your faults and flaws, even if they’re guilty of the same derelictions.

The recently retired always seem to have the biggest axe to grind.  Take Jack Lew, for instance.  He started off the New Year by sharpening his axe on the grinding wheel of the GOP tax bill.  On Tuesday, he told Bloomberg Radio that the new tax bill will explode the debt and leave people sick and starving.

“It’s a ticking time bomb in terms of the debt.

“The next shoe to drop is going to be an attack on the most vulnerable in our society.  How are we going to pay for the deficit caused by the tax cut?  We are going to see proposals to cut health insurance for poor people, to take basic food support away from poor people, to attack Medicare and Social Security.  One could not have made up a more cynical strategy.”

The tax bill, without question, is an impractical disaster.  However, that doesn’t mean it’s abnormal.  The Trump administration is merely doing what every other administration has done for the last 40 years or more.  They’re running a deficit as we march onward towards default.

We don’t like it.  We don’t agree with it.  But how we’re going to pay for it shouldn’t be a mystery to Lew.  We’re going to pay for it the same way we’ve paid for every other deficit: with more debt.

A Job Well Done

Of all people, Jack Lew should know this.  If you recall, Lew was the United States Secretary of Treasury during former President Obama’s second term in office.  Four consecutive years of deficits – totaling over $2 trillion – were notched on his watch.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

To Hell In A Bucket

September 15, 2017

To Hell In A Bucket

“No one really cares about the U.S. federal debt,” remarked a colleague and Economic Prism reader earlier in the week.  “You keep writing about it as if anyone gives a lick.”

We could tell he was just warming up.  So, we settled back into our chair and made ourselves comfortable.

“The voters certainly don’t care about the federal debt,” he continued.  “They keep electing the same spendthrifts to office.

“And the politicians know the voters don’t care.  They also know that making more and more promises is the formula for getting reelected.

“Deep down, the aging masses know they need massive amounts of government debt to pay their social security, medicare, and disability checks.  On top of that, many of the so-called gainfully employed are really on corporate welfare; they hang their hats on government contracts to fund their paychecks.

“You know as well I do how this crazy debt based fiat money system works.  The debt must perpetually increase or the whole financial system breaks down.  The best we can hope for is that the ongoing currency debasement merely leads to a subtle erosion of living standards.  That’s the best-case scenario.

“But, again, no one except maybe a handful of your readers’ gives a rip about the federal debt.  Plus, if you’re gonna keep writing about it you need to use better terminology.

“The federal debt has grown at such a rapid rate that standard dollar units no longer capture what’s going on.  The debt numbers are so large it is difficult to distinguish between hundreds of billions and tens of trillions of dollars.

Going Broke at Mach 30

“For better perspective, you need to describe the debt growth in astronomical terms.  You see, astronomers use light years to adjust for large distances.  A light year, as its name suggests, is the distance light travels in one year.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Warnings from Mount Vesuvius

May 19, 2017

Warnings from Mount Vesuvius

“Injustice, swift, erect, and unconfin’d,
Sweeps the wide earth, and tramples o’er mankind” – Homer, The Iliad

When Mount Vesuvius Blew

Everything was just the way it was supposed to be in Pompeii on August 24, 79 A.D.  The gods had bestowed wealth and abundance upon the inhabitants of this Roman trading town.  Things were near perfect.

The lucky residents of Pompeii lived in large homes with elegant courtyard gardens and all the modern conveniences.  Rooms were heated by hot air flowing through cavity walls and spaces under the floors.  Running water was provided to the city from a great reservoir and conveyed through underground pipelines to houses and public buildings.

Fresh fish from the Bay of Naples were readily available in the Macellum (great food market) and countless cauponae (small restaurants).  Entertainment was on hand at the large amphitheatre.  Life was agreeable, affable, and idyllic for all – and it was only getting better.  Everyone just knew it.  They could feel it.  They believed it.

By 79 A.D. Pompeii had experienced nearly uninterrupted advancement from its founding almost 700 years earlier.  That this would ever change was unthinkable.  On the morning of August 24th, who but a doomsayer would suggest there wouldn’t be another 700 years of progress?

Yet, just then, when things couldn’t have seemed more certain, Mount Vesuvius blew.  Nineteen hours later, where there had been life and a thriving civilization, there was silence for the next 1,669 years.

Praying for Death

Viewing events through the lens of history and hindsight is unfair to its participants.  Their missteps are too obvious, their vanities are too abundant, and their inferiorities too absurd.  They appear to be mere imbeciles on parade.

Was George Armstrong Custer really just an arrogant Lieutenant Colonel who led his men to massacre at Little Bighorn?  Maybe.  Especially when Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and numbers over three times his cavalry appeared across the river.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Coming Debt Reckoning

May 5, 2017

The Coming Debt Reckoning

American workers, as a whole, are facing a disagreeable disorder.  Their debt burdens are increasing.  Their incomes are stagnating.

There are many reasons why.  In truth, it would take several large volumes to chronicle all of them.  But when you get down to the ‘lick log’ of it all, the disorder stems from decades of technocratic intervention that have stripped away any semblance of a free functioning, self-correcting economy.

The financial system circa 2017, and the economy that supports it, has been stretched to the breaking point.  Shortsighted fiscal and monetary policies have propagated it.  The result is a failing financial order that has become near intolerable for all but the gravy supping political class and their cronies.

Take consumer spending.  This is the primary driver of the U.S. economy.  Yet it requires vast amounts of credit.  In fact, American consumers presently hold $1 trillion in revolving credit.  At the same time, they have nowhere near the income needed to finance these debts, let alone pay them off.

Remember, the flipside of credit is debt.  Obviously, the divergence of increasing debt and stagnating incomes is a condition that cannot go on forever.  But it can go on much longer than any sensible person would consider possible.

Debt Slaves

If you haven’t noticed, the financial services industry is extremely accomplished at compelling people to go whole hog into debt.  Moreover, the entire fiat based financial system, which depends on ever increasing issuances of debt, hinges on it.  Just a slight contraction of credit, like late 2008, and the whole debt repayment structure breaks down.

On an individual basis, there are only so many credit cards that can be maxed out before the shell game ends.  Wolf Richter, of Wolf Street, recently clarified the relationship between the economy and deep consumer debt:

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Don’t Blame Trump When the World Ends

February 4, 2017

Don’t Blame Trump When the World Ends

There was, indeed, a time when clear thinking and lucid communication via the written word were held in high regard.  As far as we can tell, this wonderful epoch concluded in 1936.  Everything since has been tortured with varying degrees of gobbledygook.

The fall from grace was triggered by the 1936 publication of John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.  The book is rigorously indecipherable.  What’s more, it has the ill-effect of making those who read it dumber.

Nonetheless, politicians and establishment economists remain enamored with Keynes’ gibberish.  For it offers academic rationale for governments to do what they love to do most – borrow money and spend it on inane programs.  In particular, Keynes advocated filling bottles with money and burying them in coalmines for people to dig up as a way to end unemployment.  Somehow, this public works egg hunt would make everyone rich.

Over the years this reasoning has inspired countless government stunts to save the economy from itself.  Not long ago, Keynes devotee, Paul Krugman, took this logic and ran with it to the outer limits of deep space.  In the process, he seems to have lost his mind.

According to Krugman, the proper way to propel an economic growth chart up and to the right is to borrow massive amounts of money and spend it preparing for an alien invasion. Naturally, it takes a Nobel Prize winning economist to come up with such nonsense.

Better Markets

Unfortunately, Keynes’ drivel became the archetypical for illogical economic thought, and still infects economic discourse to this day.  You can hardly browse the headlines of Yahoo finance without your eyeballs being lacerated by it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Guided By Nonsense

June 4, 2016

Guided By Nonsense

“Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction.” — Lewis Carroll

U.S. consumers are at it again.  After a seven year hiatus they’re once again doing what they do best.  They’re buying stuff.

According to the Commerce Department, personal consumption expenditures (PCE), which is the primary measure of consumer spending on goods and services in the U.S. economy, increased $119.2 billion in April.  That marks an increase of 1 percent, and is the biggest one month increase since August 2009…nearly seven years ago.  Indeed, this is quite an achievement.

The consumer, you know, is the primary engine of U.S. economic growth.  Without consumption GDP doesn’t go up; rather, it goes down.  Moreover, in a debt based money system, when GDP goes down the whole financial debt structure breaks down.

We don’t condone it.  Certainly we’d prefer an honest hard money system where savings and investment drives growth as opposed to borrowing and spending.  But our preference has no bearing on reality in this matter.

Still, given the vast array of pretense inherent to a debt based money system, when we hear that PCEs increased by the largest margin in nearly seven years, we take a keen interest.  Naturally, we want to know what’s going on.  Namely, we ask, where’s the money coming from?

Where’s the Money Coming From?

Middle class incomes, the last we recall, scored a big fat rotten goose egg over the last decade.  By this we mean incomes haven’t gone up.  To the contrary, they’ve going down.

Our understanding of this unfortunate situation isn’t based on anecdotes we overheard at the corner donut shop.  Nor is it based on experiences shared by the crusty fellows casting their lines off Belmont Veterans Memorial Pier.  Instead, we have hard evidence and solid proof.  Specifically, we point to the distilled findings of Pew Research released earlier this month.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Other Problem with Debt No One is Talking About

April 4, 2016

The Other Problem with Debt No One is Talking About

Nearly 7 years have elapsed since the official end of the Great Recession.  By now it’s painfully obvious the rising tide of economic recovery has failed to lift all boats.  In fact, many boats bottomed out on the rocks in early 2009 and have been taking on water ever since.

Last week, for instance, it was reported that U.S. credit card debt topped $714 billion in the third quarter of 2015.  That’s up $34 billion from the year before.  Shouldn’t the economic recovery allow consumers to pay down their debts?

Indeed, it should, if only the economic recovery was the result of real, economic growth.  To the contrary, the recovery has been faux growth driven by cheap Fed credit and financial engineering.  Mutual increases in prosperity haven’t occurred.

In particular, those outside the financial services business, and other bubble industries, like government lobbyists, have largely missed out on any increase in income or living standard.  Good paying professional jobs that vaporized during the downturn have been replaced with low paying service jobs.  Consumers have used credit card debt to pick up the slack.

Unfortunately, this short term solution sets up consumers for pain in the future.  At some point, as debt increases faster than incomes, the ability to pay down the principle becomes near impossible.  Even making the minimum payment becomes more and more difficult as new debt is added to the burden each month.

Playing with Fire

“We’re playing with fire now,” said Odysseas Papadimitriou, chief executive of credit statistics and analysis site CardHub.  “Either an unexpected economic downtown or the continuation of current spending and payment trends could be enough to unleash an avalanche of defaults.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Something’s Gone Horribly Awry

January 29, 2016

Something’s Gone Horribly Awry

The S&P 500 has fallen 7.37 percent so far this year.  What to make of it…

Naturally, some people find falling stock prices to be unpleasant.  Others find them distressing.  Another way to look at falling stock prices, however, is like a high-fiber diet.  The effect is necessary to a healthy functioning system.

The simple fact is that stock prices, fueled by speculative liquidity, have long since outrun the real economy.  The disconnect between the two has been widely observable.  The economy’s lagged, incomes have stagnated, yet stocks have soared.

Thus the present, ever so slight reduction in liquidity, and the subsequent lowering of stock prices, is having a cleansing influence.  For it will serve to eliminate marginal businesses, and trim the fat from larger businesses.

Consequently, business owners, managers, and workers of marginal undertakings will have to redirect their efforts into something new…something that’s of greater value.  For example, Walmart recently announced it would be closing 269 stores and laying off 16,000 workers.  Obviously, we don’t wish any harm to hard working Walmart employees.  But we’re also confident many of these 16,000 people will now find a new, more meaningful, and more prosperous purpose in life.

Though it can be painful at times, eliminating and minimizing wasteful activities is how the world becomes more affluent.  On the other hand, propping up negligible endeavors with cheap credit ultimately subtracts wealth from the world.

Mean Reversion

How much more stocks will fall, no one really knows for sure.  Perhaps they’ve already fallen as far as they will.  But we wouldn’t bet our life savings on it.

This is merely conjecture, of course.  But we do recognize that even with the 7.37 percent drop year-to-date, the S&P 500’s Cyclically Adjusted Price Earning (CAPE) Ratio is 23.97.  We also recognize that the CAPE Ratio’s mean, going back to 1881, is 16.65.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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