The case for debt deflation

Capitalism is dead, credit new king, says Duncan   

 

"... Recognizing that the world operates on a different set of rules from the laissez-faire capitalism of the 19th century is among the key arguments in Duncan’s 2012 book, “The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy.”
While it might seem like an arcane economic question, Duncan said that, in fact, the stakes are huge.
Global policy makers are running out of time to take advantage of opportunities offered up by the new system to help resolve the crisis, or otherwise face sliding into a corrosive period of economic contraction and rising geopolitical tensions, he said.
“The danger is that this new economic paradigm will collapse through debt deflation,” Duncan said.
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State of the Union

25 Horrible Statistics About The U.S. Economy That Barack Obama Does Not Want You To Know

Michael Snyder, Contributor
Activist Post

The human capacity for self-delusion truly is remarkable. Most people out there end up believing exactly what they want to believe even when the truth is staring them right in the face.

But is the U.S. economy really improving? The truth is that it is not.

The rate of employment among working age Americans is exactly where it was two years ago and household incomes have actually gone down while Obama has been president. Home ownership levels and home prices continue to decline. Meanwhile, food and gasoline continue to become even more expensive. The percentage of Americans that are dependent on the government is at an all-time record high and the U.S. national debt has risen by more than 5 trillion dollars under Obama. We simply have not seen the type of economic recovery that we have seen after every other economic recession since World War II.
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A sea of red flags waving

22 Red Flags That Indicate That Very Serious Doom Is Coming For Global Financial Markets
If you enjoy watching financial doom, then you are quite likely to really enjoy the rest of 2012. Right now, red flags are popping up all over the place. Corporate insiders are selling off stock like there is no tomorrow, major economies all over Europe continue to implode, the IMF is warning that the eurozone could actually break up and there are signs of trouble at major banks all over the planet. Unfortunately, it looks like the period of relative stability that global financial markets have been enjoying is about to come to an end. A whole host of problems that have been festering just below the surface are starting to manifest, and we are beginning to see the ingredients for a "perfect storm" start to come together. The greatest global debt bubble in human history is showing signs that it is getting ready to burst, and when that happens the consequences are going to be absolutely horrific. Hopefully we still have at least a little bit more time before the global financial system implodes, but at this point it doesn't look like anything is going to be able to stop the chaos that is on the horizon.
The following are 22 red flags that indicate that very serious doom is coming for global financial markets....
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CEI World Economic Outlook April 2012

THE CONTINENTAL ECONOMICS CURRENCY REVIEW

WORLD ECONOMIC OUTLOOK APRIL 2012

Conclusion

Most of the trends that can be observed currently have been in place for some time and most likely will continue so. The longer these trends of rising commodity prices will continue, the more they become incompatible with rising bond and stock prices. One of these two groups must give in. For the first group - gold, oil and commodities - to crash, the emergence of a deflationary depression will be required. This scenario cannot be fully excluded. For the second group - bonds and stocks - to crash, an outbreak of inflation will do. Over the past decades, and particularly in the past couple of years, monetary and fiscal policies of the major economies of the world have provided all that is necessary for hyperinflation to happen. Nevertheless, an outbreak of hyperinflation should not be considered as a certainty. The world economy finds itself in the curious situation that conditions for both, inflation and deflation, have been prepared. The world economy resembles a boat on high sea that has been loaded up with explosives. Either a spark will make the load explode before the boat will sink or the boat will sink on its own and take all that’s on board down with it to the ground. 

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No end in sight

The True Cost Of The Greek Bailout Emerges

Submitted by Tyler Durden

Two months ago many scoffed at us when we calculated that based on preliminary information, "The Cost Of The Combined Greek Bailout Just Rose To €320 Billion In Secured Debt, Or 136% Of Greek GDP ." We clarified as follows: "Some of our German readers may be laboring under the impression that following the €110 billion first Greek bailout agreed upon and executed in May 2010, the second Greek bailout would cost a "mere" €130 billion. Alas we have news for you - as of this morning, the formal cost of rescuing Greece for the adjusted adjusted adjusted second time has just risen to €145 billion, €175 billion, a whopping €210 billion, bringing the total explicit cost of all Greek bailout funds to date (and many more in store) to €320 billion. Which incidentally is a little more than Greek GDP (which however is declining rapidly) at 310 billion, only in dollars. So as of today, merely the ratio of the Greek DIP loan (Debtor In Possession, because Greece is after all broke) has reached a whopping ratio of 136% Debt to GDP. This excludes any standing debt which is for all intents and purposes worthless. This is secured debt, which means that if every dollar in assets generating one dollar in GDP were to be liquidated and Greece sold off entirely in part or whole to Goldman Sachs et al, there would still be a 36% shortfall to the Troika, EFSF, ECB and whoever else funds the DIP loan (i.e., European and US taxpayers)! Another way of putting this disturbing fact is that global bankers now have a priming lien on 136% of Greek GDP - the entire country and then some now officially belongs to the world banking syndicate." Well, as it turns out, we were optimistic (which incidentally is always the case when we try to account for government stupidity and lies). To wit:
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European debt crisis

27 Statistics About The European Economic Crisis That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe
The economic crisis in Europe continues to get worse and eventually it is going to unravel into a complete economic nightmare. All over Europe, national governments have piled up debts that are completely unsustainable. But whenever they start significantly cutting government spending it results in an economic slowdown. So politicians in Europe are really caught between a rock and a hard place. They can't keep racking up these unsustainable debts, but if they continue to cut government spending it is going to push their economies into deep recession and their populations will riot. Greece is a perfect example of this. Greece has been going down the austerity road for several years now and they are experiencing a full-blown economic depression, riots have become a way of life in that country and their national budget is still not anywhere close to balanced. Americans should pay close attention to what is going on in Europe, because this is what it looks like when a debt party ends. Most of the nations in the eurozone have just started implementing austerity, and yet unemployment in the eurozone is already the highest it has been since the euro was introduced. It has risen for 10 months in a row and is now up to 10.8 percent. Sadly, it is going to go even higher. As economies across Europe slide into recession, that is going to put even more pressure on the European financial system. Most Americans do not realize this, but the European banking system is absolutely enormous. It is nearly four times the size that the U.S. banking system is. When the European banking system crashes (and it will) it is going to reverberate around the globe. The epicenter of the next great financial crisis is going to be in Europe, and it is getting closer with each passing day.
The following are 27 statistics about the European economic crisis that are almost too crazy to believe....
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Facts about US tax system

24 Outrageous Facts About Taxes In The United States That Will Blow Your Mind
The U.S. tax code is a complete and utter abomination and it needs to be thrown out entirely. Nobody in their right mind would ever read the whole thing - it is over 3 million words long. Each year, Americans spend billions of hours and hundreds of billions of dollars trying to comply with federal tax requirements. Sadly, it is the honest, hard working Americans in the middle class that always get hit the hardest. The tax code is absolutely riddled with loopholes that big corporations and the ultra-wealthy use to minimize their tax burdens as much as possible. Many poor people do not pay any income taxes at all. The dishonest are rewarded for cheating on their taxes (if they can get away with it) and the ultra-wealthy have moved trillions of dollars to offshore tax havens where they can avoid U.S. taxation altogether. Our system is incredibly unfair to the millions of hard working people in the middle class and upper middle class that drag themselves out of bed and go to work each day and try to do the right thing. In addition, the current U.S. tax system is incredibly inefficient, it diverts a tremendous amount of resources away from more valuable economic activities, and it has chased thousands of businesses and trillions of dollars out of the United States. The U.S. tax code is such a complete and utter mess at this point that it can never be "fixed". The only rational thing to do is to abolish it completely, and any politician that tells you otherwise is lying to you.
The following are 24 outrageous facts about taxes in the United States that will blow your mind....
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US competitiveness by sector - all negative

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US competitiveness on the decline

A Harvard Business School study that Niall Ferguson pointed us to today shows the U.S. has fallen severely behind in terms of international competitiveness.
The study, from January, found that for Harvard alums personally involved in a company relocation decision, 57 percent said the decision "involved the possibility of moving existing activities out of the U.S."
Meanwhile, only 9 percent considered moving existing activities from another country into the U.S.

Read more: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-05/markets/31292148_1_competitiveness-niall-ferguson-activities#ixzz1rHLcLYtA

Disaster is just around the corner

19 Signs Of Very Serious Economic Trouble On The Horizon
We should enjoy these last fleeing moments of tremendous prosperity for as long as we can, because when they are gone they won't be coming back. As I noted the other day, all of this false prosperity in the United States has been financed by the 15 trillion dollar party that we have been enjoying. We are adding about 150 million dollars to our debt every single hour so that we can continue to enjoy an inflated standard of living. Unfortunately, nobody in the history of the world has ever been able to keep a debt spiral going indefinitely, and our debt bubble will burst eventually as well...

Right now the U.S. government can still borrow trillions of dollars at super low interest rates thanks to games being played by the Federal Reserve. But it is simply not possible for this Ponzi scheme to last too much longer. When it ends, the pain will be extremely great.
And even in the short-term there are some extremely troubling signs for the U.S. economy.
The following are 19 signs of very serious economic trouble on the horizon....
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Comment: The establishment or, if you want so, some secret powers, have decided that Obama may stay in office earstwhile. Re-electin should happen in a more optmistic atmoshphere in order to verify the polling results although actual voting and the published results are not necessarily the same.

The triumph of corporate state capitalism

45 Signs That America Will Soon Be A Nation With A Very Tiny Elite And The Rest Of Us Will Be Poor

In America today, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and big government and big corporations are the mechanisms by which this is happening.
Posted below are 45 signs that America will soon be a nation with a very tiny elite and the rest of us will be poor....
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Comment: While Europe gets ruined by welfare state capitalism, in the US it is corporate state capitalism which ruins the country.

$ 15 trillion party over - who pays the bill?

The 15 Trillion Dollar Party
If you knew that you could live in luxury for the rest of your life but that by doing so it would absolutely destroy the future for your children, your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren would you do it? Well, that is exactly what we are doing as a nation. Over the past several decades, we have stolen 15 trillion dollars from future generations so that we could enjoy a dramatically inflated level of prosperity. Our 15 trillion dollar party has been a lot of fun, but what we have done to our children and our grandchildren has been beyond criminal. We ran up the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the planet and we are sticking them with the bill...
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Comment: There's no solution in sight. It is already too late for a change of course. That's why the authorities keep on going as before. Everbody knows we're doomed.