Stock market investment blog

Get this sequence of logic:

Bernake: The coordinated response of the central banks saved the world from a financial meltdown
Bernake: Now government has to raise taxes and spend less

Ok, here is reality:

He, and his beleif system and many structural assumptions was a huge part of the latest financial meltdown

He did not see any need to be concerned about a sub prime bubble or exotic instruments as per the Open Market Meeting Notes of the time

Six months into the recession and in mid 2008 the Fed offically said their likely would not be a recession

Six months later they said the worst of the unemployment would be 6.1 % in early 2009 and full and rapid recovery would commence at that point

They just absorbed/created as much American debt in the last two years as was created in all the time from the time we started putting in electric lines in some cities until 1995

They did not save anything…they extended and pretended

Yet its time for us to pay higher taxes now that he saved the world from a problem he sponsored or “sheparded” into being and never saw and even after seeing it badly mis called its depth and nature.

Yet he is not challenged on any of this.

We forget that the Fed’s charter is not to help the nation or the citizens of the nation. It is to preserve the banks. That is its actual charter.

So who is in charge around here? And what are they doing?

Here’s an article on corporate debt and the risk that if leveraged companies cannot get access to credit, they default on their maturing bonds and go into bankruptcy. The act of defaulting is deflationary, all other factors held constant.

Fed monetizations are less than the decline in total credit outstanding for now but inflation could accelerate if the Fed panics later this year and starts monetizing at an increasing rate.

Just talked to a friend who had some interesting things to say about the economy, particularly about how we are being misled by the government and Wall Street:

This is the front end of a recession – the tougher back end is in front of us.

Jobs are a lag…not a lead factor. This is not an inflation or inventory driven correction…this is a global credit and banking collapse.

Name a recession with a 17% unemployment rate on the front side since the panic of 1837? The 17% is not the government number of course – Birth death model corrections and other “assumptions” should not be accepted just becasue it convieniences them…the same calaculation basis used in the Great Depression (which was 30-33% at its trough) yields a number roughly north of 17% right now.

Japan is the second largest economy in the world. It dropped 41% in May and 43% in June….name a time when a major nation dropped like that on the front side of a recession?

You know, its a misnomer to call the end of the decline “a recovery” …thats Orwellian. The economy dropped like a stone…and the relief some think they see is the flattening out at an economy much smaller than it used to be…but with out the cash and credit to expand again normally found at the beginning of a true recovery…its not going to get better. Sorry.

What do you think about the economy? Are we flattening out? How long until we see an actual recovery and not just less of a decline?

You’ve probably seen the headlines about how Buffet says the economy is in shambles. If you haven’t already, take a look at the full interview because it doesn’t sound to me that he thinks we’re a hopeless case. He’s basically saying we will recover but there’s a risk of inflation and it may take some time to recover.

Interestingly, until we recover, until consumers start getting more spending power, I don’t see how inflation could be a problem…

Some people are hoping for an economic recovery this year but I am not so sure any respite will last more than a few months because I don’t see evidence that consumer spending will increase.

Due to relatively high unemployment and many workers who are unable to get raises, how greatly can consumer spending increase? If consumer spending doesn’t increase, corporate profits can’t increase much.Neither can government revenue.

So how is the economy supposed to recover?

Some more interesting stuff on Warren Buffet. He talks about insurance, real estate, Moody’s and more.

This article talks about how the new 10% tax incentive (up to $8,000 max) makes it a good time to buy a first home.

That’s from now until Nov. 30 or Dec.1 depending on which newspaper article you believe. In the article linked above, one couple amended their 2008 return and are expecting a check in a few weeks. They say that needs to be done by April 15th so I guess now you’d have to wait till you pay your 2009 taxes.

Anyway, this article says things might be working and real estate may be ready to lead a US economic recovery. It’s possible but I’m not sold that we’re in a recovery right now.

We’re looking for “green shoots” in areas that got us into trouble in the first place – excessive consumption, mis-allocated capital, and a trading mentality. We’re celebrating firms like Goldman and JP Morgan because they made good trading gains while credit to the real economy continues to be cut.

If you believe like the Administration and Wall Street that we’ve got a “confidence” problem, then growing housing starts indicates improvement. If you that we have a structural problem with the economy, then a drop in building over-supplied assets is actually good news.

Lower housing prices can be a good thing because it means that workers can prosper at lower compensation levels, which means that we can start regaining cost advantages relative to our trading partners and taking back industry lost as well as creating new industry. All it would take would be to let the zombies on Wall Street go under.

Many Americans are tired of giving money to AIG. It does not seem to be making things better. However, if the government were to allow AIG to collapse, the rest of the economy would go with it.

AIG is a different kind of animal when compared to the Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers. Those companies were allowed to collapse because they were more or less self contained. As an insurer, AIG has its hands in way too many cookie jars. Many large and somewhat stable companies have assets that are backed by AIG, if you remove AIG from the equation, these stable companies are now are a huge risk to default themselves. There credit ratings will suffer and you would see another Bear and Lehman like spiral.

The government will keep pumping in capital until the nasty spiderweb that AIG has created can be untangled and bankruptcy can occur gracefully. Until then, get used to the abyss of soul sucking sorrow that is AIG.

It seems that AIG has been a major underwriter of Mortgage Insurance. Of course, in keeping with the times, they were fraudulent about the underwriting of these policys.

AIG categorized its instruments as Credit Swap Defaults, rather than the Mortage Insurance that it really was, because they did not have the liquid assets to qualify these instruments as Insurance.

Say bye to AIG and there would be a domino effect throughout the international banking industry, as many institutions far and wide hold what they think, and are counting on as positive assets, would be in fact worthless.

Here’s the problem: if you insure against loss in a case where a catastrophe can hit almost all your insurance customers are once, you’re screwed.

Was AIG dumb? Yes. Did they understand the risks they were taking? No.

But now look at who bought the insurance. Banks that were trying to hedge their exposures. Did they understand the counterparty risk they were taking by using AIG? No… but AIG was rated AAA so they thought there was no risk.

How much money has the Government handed over to AIG? And how many installments have already been made? I lost count, but one cannot help but notice this repetitive propping up of AIG at any cost. I think I understand why.

Check out the unsold inventory numbers – Reductions in demand were so steep in December that producers were not able to stop in time. That Inventory will be standing there for quite some time, When the quarter gets re stated in 180 days (like they always do) the decline will have been sharper.

Better (as in more current) indicators of actual economic activity would be found looking at Commercial Rail traffic trends or miles driven. Total traffic is down over 16% y-o-y. That suggests that second quarter GDP will be much worse than 4Q08.

The impact of global declines has not yet fully hit our economy. Only one of several reasons why the “this is good, we will now rebound faster” idea is not sound this time around. Many were surprised when at the end of last year, economic data was not as bad as they projected. Part of the reasons was that the excess inventory problem had not fully hit the market. Expect it to hit soon, and hit hard.

It’s a pretty vicious spiral. Consumers don’t buy goods from stores. Stores have inventory sitting on shelves and warehouses, so they don’t buy from manufacturers. Manufacturers don’t get the capital to produce goods (since no one is purchasing). To make end meets, they lay off workers. These workers (consumers) are unable to purchase goods from stores. Hence the spiral.

Add another dimension – the warehouse concept for retail is built on turns per square foot. If people aren’t buying, each marginal purchase picks up cost per square foot. Lower margins can only last for awhile, especially when leverage has been used to fund the stores. Then, take it a step further in regards to the cost function of the supply chains that are no longer at optimal levels. When you have a system that depends on stability, there is no way to forecast the impact of our present instability.

Sophisticated and large supply chains are narrowly optimized (ODE/PDE) and all the hubs, spokes, trucks, rail cars, depots, warehouses and racks and the people within are built to a forecast demand point which squeezews all excess out of the system within a narrow range of the demand forecast….but change the demand forecast downward in a somewhat significant way and the fixed and semi fixed costs escalate all out of proportion to straight line revenue declines.