The Economy is a Lie, too
Dr. Roberts is a former assistant Secretary of the Treasury, so he knows whereof he speaks on economics issues. And, for the record, he was equally scathing of economic policy under Bush II’s regime.
Flashback: US credit shrinks at Great Depression rate prompting fears of double-dip recession | Nassim Taleb on the economy: ‘We still have the same disease’ | Flaherty sees deficit, debt, and timetable to return to surplus all expanding | Investors dump money market funds | Scotiabank: Global economy set to recover, China and developing nations to lead | More US Bank Failures and The Coming Deposit Insurance Bailout | Underwhelming GDP growth fails to move stocks, loonie | A Stock Market Rally Engineered by Government | Central bank of Canada stands ready to inflate currency in response to strong loonie | Bank of Canada declares recession over | Cost Of US Bailout Hits A Whopping $24 Trillion Dollars | Second wave of economic crisis coming, international regulation necessary Brown warns | Budget officer ‘can’t tell’ if stimulus plan working | TSX sinks below 10,000 on World Bank outlook | Financial crisis: Worst may be still ahead, says IMF chief | ‘New world order’ needs better economic grounding: Carney | ‘Reduced pace of deterioration’ indicates economy on the mend: Flaherty | Stimulus needed now, Bank of Canada says | Optimistic central bank expects speedy economic rebound
Paul Craig Roberts, PrisonPlanet.com
September 22, 2009
Americans cannot get any truth out of their government about anything, the economy included. Americans are being driven into the ground economically, with one million school children now homeless, while Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announces that the recession is over.
The spin that masquerades as news is becoming more delusional. Consumer spending is 70% of the US economy. It is the driving force, and it has been shut down. Except for the super rich, there has been no growth in consumer incomes in the 21st century. Statistician John Williams of shadowstats.com reports that real household income has never recovered its pre-2001 peak.
The US economy has been kept going by substituting growth in consumer debt for growth in consumer income. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan encouraged consumer debt with low interest rates. The low interest rates pushed up home prices, enabling Americans to refinance their homes and spend the equity. Credit cards were maxed out in expectations of rising real estate and equity values to pay the accumulated debt. The binge was halted when the real estate and equity bubbles burst.
As consumers no longer can expand their indebtedness and their incomes are not rising, there is no basis for a growing consumer economy. Indeed, statistics indicate that consumers are paying down debt in their efforts to survive financially. In an economy in which the consumer is the driving force, that is bad news.
The banks, now investment banks thanks to greed-driven deregulation that repealed the learned lessons of the past, were even more reckless than consumers and took speculative leverage to new heights. At the urging of Larry Summers and Goldman Sachs’ CEO Henry Paulson, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Bush administration went along with removing restrictions on debt leverage.
When the bubble burst, the extraordinary leverage threatened the financial system with collapse. The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve stepped forward with no one knows how many trillions of dollars to “save the financial system,” which, of course, meant to save the greed-driven financial institutions that had caused the economic crisis that dispossessed ordinary Americans of half of their life savings.
The consumer has been chastened, but not the banks. Refreshed with the TARP $700 billion and the Federal Reserve’s expanded balance sheet, banks are again behaving like hedge funds. Leveraged speculation is producing another bubble with the current stock market rally, which is not a sign of economic recovery but is the final savaging of Americans’ wealth by a few investment banks and their Washington friends. Goldman Sachs, rolling in profits, announced six figure bonuses to employees.
The rest of America is suffering terribly.
The unemployment rate, as reported, is a fiction and has been since the Clinton administration. The unemployment rate does not include jobless Americans who have been unemployed for more than a year and have given up on finding work. The reported 10% unemployment rate is understated by the millions of Americans who are suffering long-term unemployment and are no longer counted as unemployed. As each month passes, unemployed Americans drop off the unemployment role due to nothing except the passing of time.
The inflation rate, especially “core inflation,” is another fiction. “Core inflation” does not include food and energy, two of Americans’ biggest budget items. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) assumes, ever since the Boskin Commission during the Clinton administration, that if prices of items go up consumers substitute cheaper items. This is certainly the case, but this way of measuring inflation means that the CPI is no longer comparable to past years, because the basket of goods in the index is variable.
The Boskin Commission’s CPI, by lowering the measured rate of inflation, raises the real GDP growth rate. The result of the statistical manipulation is an understated inflation rate, thus eroding the real value of Social Security income, and an overstated growth rate. Statistical manipulation cloaks a declining standard of living.
In bygone days of American prosperity, American incomes rose with productivity. It was the real growth in American incomes that propelled the US economy.
In today’s America, the only incomes that rise are in the financial sector that risks the country’s future on excessive leverage and in the corporate world that substitutes foreign for American labor. Under the compensation rules and emphasis on shareholder earnings that hold sway in the US today, corporate executives maximize earnings and their compensation by minimizing the employment of Americans.
Try to find some acknowledgement of this in the “mainstream media,” or among economists, who suck up to the offshoring corporations for grants.
The worst part of the decline is yet to come. Bank failures and home foreclosures are yet to peak. The commercial real estate bust is yet to hit. The dollar crisis is building.
When it hits, interest rates will rise dramatically as the US struggles to finance its massive budget and trade deficits while the rest of the world tries to escape a depreciating dollar.
Since the spring of this year, the value of the US dollar has collapsed against every currency except those pegged to it. The Swiss franc has risen 14% against the dollar. Every hard currency from the Canadian dollar to the Euro and UK pound has risen at least 13 % against the US dollar since April 2009. The Japanese yen is not far behind, and the Brazilian real has risen 25% against the almighty US dollar. Even the Russian ruble has risen 13% against the US dollar.
What sort of recovery is it when the safest investment is to bet against the US dollar?
The American household of my day, in which the husband worked and the wife provided household services and raised the children, scarcely exists today. Most, if not all, members of a household have to work in order to pay the bills. However, the jobs are disappearing, even the part-time ones.
If measured according to the methodology used when I was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, the unemployment rate today in the US is above 20%. Moreover, there is no obvious way of reducing it. There are no factories, with work forces temporarily laid off by high interest rates, waiting for a lower interest rate policy to call their workforces back into production.
The work has been moved abroad. In the bygone days of American prosperity, CEOs were inculcated with the view that they had equal responsibilities to customers, employees, and shareholders. This view has been exterminated. Pushed by Wall Street and the threat of takeovers promising “enhanced shareholder value,” and incentivized by “performance pay,” CEOs use every means to substitute cheaper foreign employees for Americans [How Well-Educated, Hard-Working Americans are Treated in America, By Rennie Sawade, WashTech News, September 14, 2009 ]. Despite 20% unemployment and cum laude engineering graduates who cannot find jobs or even job interviews, Congress continues to support 65,000 annual H-1B work visas for foreigners.
In the midst of the highest unemployment since the Great Depression what kind of a fool do you need to be to think that there is a shortage of qualified US workers?
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Budget measures would improve credit access | $12B for infrastructure forms key pillar of stimulus package | Few surprises as government turns on the spending taps | U.S. Senate confirms Geithner as treasury secretary despite reservations | Iceland’s government collapses | Optimistic central bank expects speedy economic rebound | Ottawa risks erasing decade of debt reduction | Canadian, U.S. energy policies to be inextricably linked: Prentice | Business Development Bank will get $350M injection, Clement says | Prominent Economist: Crisis Caused By Government Interventions | New UK bank bailout | Vancouver dodges public referendum requirement for funding to finish Olympic Village | Zimbabwe unveils 100 trillion dollar banknote | Financial crisis: Bank of America given $138bn rescue package | Q&A: Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks with The Post’s John Ivison | Premiers to press Harper for infrastructure boost | Vancouver mayor to recall legislature to handle Olympic Village crisis | Bring in a Canadian securities regulator: Flaherty’s handpicked business panel | Merged Citigroup, Morgan brokerage would be largest | Obama to visit Canada, Tories to propose ‘integrated carbon market’ | Brace for a big, ‘comprehensive’ budget: Harper | Canadians starting to save cash, shun debt | GM’s U.S. bailout deal bars strikes | European Leaders Call For New Global Order | Transport Minister Baird calls for dramatic action on stimulus package | Obama calls for ‘dramatic action’ on stimulus package | UK PM unveils ‘New Deal’ plan to create 100,000 jobs | Flaherty vows short-lived deficit, consults corporate chiefs on spending initiatives | Analyst: One Third Of Banks Could Collapse or Merge In 2009 | Auto bailout gives Federal, Provincial governments incremental nationalization powers | Banks won’t say where U.S. bailout money going | UK: Bailiffs get power to use force on debtors | Kissinger Calls For New International System Out Of World Crises | Canadian auto bailout could reach more than $4-billion | U.S. to spend $17.4-billion to ‘rescue’, nationalize auto industry | Harper government plans deficits as deep as $30 billion | Flaherty appoints business leaders to economic advisory council | IMF Chief Warns Of Riots In Response To Economic Crisis | Bank of Canada ready to monetize distressed equities | Canada may backstop ABCP rescue: Flaherty | The ugly spectre of ‘new Keynesianism’ and the self-appointed Guardians | Army ‘Strategic Shock’ Report Says Troops May Be Needed To Quell U.S. Civil Unrest | Federal government, Ontario agree on $3.3B auto bailout package | ‘Outrage’ greets banks’ failure to match rate cut | State to bail out, control US auto industry | Get close to Obama on economy and security, paper says | Financial Times: And now for a world government | Terence Corcoran: It’s Twilight for Detroit and the U.S. economy | Mexico to downsize metal in coins to save a few cents | Automakers seek $6B aid package from Ontario, federal government | Bank of England mulls “nuclear option” of cash injection | Zimbabwe tackles cash shortage amid riots and looting | Icelanders storm central bank in protest | Liberals and NDP sign unprecedented pact; to pursue stimulus, carbon taxes | UN Climate Change Conference open with call for ‘co-operation’ | UK closer to joining euro, EU commission president says | Iceland turns 90 amid economic ruin, currency freeze | TSX drops 600 points, N.Y. also falls | Britain buys control of Royal Bank of Scotland | Iceland inflation soars to 17.1% | Canada in recession: OECD | Maybe we should look at Zimbabwe before trying to print our way out of a money crisis | Britain to introduce massive stimulus package | Obama appoints architects of economic collapse, financial globalism to economic team | Jim Flaherty Urging Greater Federal, International Control over Canadian economy | Citigroup seeks ‘emergency cash’ | Deficits ‘essential,’ Harper says | Harper vows Canada will remain open to international trade | 5 injured during protest in Iceland over economic meltdown | ‘Hard decisions’ needed during economic crisis: throne speech | Paulson, Bernanke defend change of plan: $700-billion now to be given directly to banks | After G20 meeting, Ottawa ready to spend to spark economy | Congress Accuses Federal Reserve Bagman Of Bailout “Bait and Switch” During Angry Hearing | Flaherty eyes sale of Canadian government assets | Analysts Predict Hyper-Inflation To Push Gold To $2000, Oil to $300 | Terence Corcoran: Rescuers pulling market under | U.S. government won’t use bailout fund to buy troubled assets | Ottawa to pour another $50B into mortgage markets | Bank of Canada adds $8B to credit markets | Merrill CEO: Economic Environment Recalls 1929 | Fed Hides Destination Of $2 Trillion In Bailout Money | PM, premiers agree to speed up infrastructure investment | Flaherty lauds Keynesian global ‘economic stimulus’ strategies | Who are the Architects of Economic Collapse? | The Bush gang’s parting gift: a final, frantic looting of public wealth | IMF may need to “print money”, act as “world’s central bank” as crisis spreads | Morgan Chase Exec Brags Bailout Is for Takeovers, Restructuring, Not Lending | Draft letter calls on IMF to play critical role in financial crisis | Ottawa to guarantee interbank lending | More cash needed to save economy: Bernanke | Wall Street banks in $70bn staff payout | German parliament backs bail-out | Regulator says brokers failed on ABCP, sets new guidelines | US Bailout Cost Heads Towards $5 Trillion | Market Euphoria Dissipates | Loonie leaps, then reverses course | $25B credit backstop for banks ‘not a bailout’: Harper | Brown wants ‘global’ bank support | US considers following British example of taking stakes in banks | New World Order: Global co-operation, nationalisation and state intervention – all in one day | TSX closes up 226 points in wild day after rate cuts | Federal Reserve Moves to Monetize Commercial Paper Debts | Stocks recoup some losses after markets hit by panic selling | Star column blames ‘Capitalism’ for market woes, offers false choice: Authoritarianism or Socialism | Bank of Canada greases financial system with $12B in new cash | Stock markets drop despite bailout | Why Paulson’s Plan is a Fraud | Representatives Were Threatened With Martial Law In America Over Bailout Bill | Congress Rejects (First) Bail-Out Plan | Congressman Ron Paul: Bailout Will Destroy Dollar, World Economy | Paul Martin calls for ‘global solution’ | Markets sink as woes spread | UK banking shares plunge as crisis deepens | Congressman Ron Paul Schools Fed Chairman Bernanke on the Bailout Plan | Bailout is “petty cash”, Inflation is the Federal Reserve’s real crime | Private Federal Reserve Makes Power Grab as Bush, McCain Urge Congress to Approve Plan | Canadian Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal in ABCP case | Last major investment banks in U.S. change status | U.S., British market regulators ban short-selling | Next Federal Reserve bank bailout round could cost taxpayers 1$ Trillion Dollars | Bank of Canada piles on in global inflationary swindle | Central banks continue inflating global economy | Central Banks Move to Transfer Wealth from Taxpayers to Banks | Crisis on Wall St. as firms collapse | Goldman-Sachs Alumni Hold Reins of Financial System | Frontrunners emerge in scramble to save another major bank | Lehman Brothers on Verge of Collapse, Wall Street Fears | US Treasury nationalizes Freddie Mae, Fannie Mac | Cities Debate Giving Away Public Infrastructure to Bankers | Court Grants Big Banks Immunity from Lawsuits over Derivatives Losses | Bush Calls for New Highway Tolls, More Private Funding of Roads | US mortgage firm bailout includes rider clause to expand police state: all credit card transactions now to be reported to IRS | Global ‘liberalization’ illusion under threat. Economist calls for world economic regime, Keynesian saviour. Irony? | Federal Reserve cites global stakes in Fannie and Freddie rescue | Financial ’super cop’ role for Fed | What Really Killed Bear Stearns? | Soros points out regulated markets fail to operate on market fundamentals, calls for more regulation | Competition study calls for lowered barriers to foreign ownership, bank mergers | Massive overhaul urged on foreign investment in airlines, media, and banks | Bilderberg Seeks Bank Centralization Agenda | Secretive Bilderberg Group Reverses Policy, Releases Press Release and Attendance List | Banks face “new world order,” consolidation: report
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Great article that articulated much of what I’ve been suspecting.
November 3rd, 2009 at 1:16 am
[...] under scrutiny at G20 summit | Credit card debt balloons | If passed, HST locked in through 2012 | The Economy is a Lie, too | Swine flu ‘could kill millions unless rich nations give £900m’ | IMF approves $13bn gold [...]
December 14th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
[...] under scrutiny at G20 summit | Credit card debt balloons | If passed, HST locked in through 2012 | The Economy is a Lie, too | Swine flu ‘could kill millions unless rich nations give £900m’ | IMF approves $13bn gold [...]