The end of democracy

Simon Watkins and Helia Ebrahimi in The Mail on Sunday (p.58) give a graph showing that sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) purchased over £20 billion worth of British business in the last three years, and report a prediction that SWFs will own £6 trillion of world assets by 2015.

Wikipedia estimates the world's stockmarket capitalisation at $51 trillion and bonds at $45 trillion. Taken together, in sterling terms, that's about £49 trillion. So in seven years' time, sovereign funds are expected to control 12% of the market. This is significant: you'll recall that and EU countries require declarations of shareholdings at various levels between 2 and 5 per cent (3% in the UK), as seen in Appendix 5 of this document, and anyone owning over 1% of a company's shares has to declare dealings if the company is the subject of a takeover bid.

My hazy understanding of democracy is that it includes two crucial elements, namely, the vote, and the right to own personal property. We're losing both. What is our freedom worth when collectively, governments not only employ large numbers of people directly, but many more of them indirectly, through ownership of the businesses for which they work?

What does the vote matter? Here in the UK, we have had a coup by a small, tightly organised (and unscrupulous, even if and when principled) group who have realised that what matters is the swing voter in the swing seat, and nothing else. "What works is what matters" - a slogan that, superficially, seems simply pragmatic, but actually slithers away from identifying the principal objective: you can only tell if it works, when you know what you want it to do. And under our first-past-the-post system, with constituencies determined (how? and who is on the committee?) by the Boundary Commission, I could vote for the incumbent or the man in the moon, but I'm going to get a Labour Party apparatchik in my ward.

And I don't think the system will be reformed if "the other lot" get in, either: "Look with thine ears: See how yond Justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark in thine ear: Change places, and handy-dandy, which is the Justice, which is the thief?" Structural issues matter: we are cursed by the psephologists, spin doctors and databases.

And as for property, when sovereign wealth funds go from being the tail that wags the dog, to becoming the dog, multinational businesses will be less concerned to satisfy the local shareholder, who may also be an employee. Big MD (or Big CEO) will have his arm around the shoulders of Big Brother.

We worry so much about wealth, and forget what it's for: not just survival, but independence, respect, liberty. Now, the peasants are fed, housed, medically treated, given pocket money, have their disabilities catered for, their children taught, and their legal cases expensively considered. So many of them are fat, enforcedly idle, addled with drink and drugs, chronically ill and disabled, negligent of their offspring and familiar to the point of contempt with the legal system. Despite (because of) their luxuries, they suffer, like the declawed, housebound cats in some American dwellings.

What matters is what works; these outcomes don't matter, except that they work for a class - which I think is becoming hereditary - that seeks, retains and services power. I have said to friends many times that we are seeing the reconstruction of a pan-European aristocracy, disguised as a political, managerial and media nexus.

The American Revolution was about liberty, not wealth, and it is one of the few major nations where the mice did, for a long time, succeed in belling the cat; there was a period here, too, when Parliament could call the King's men to a rigorous account. Now, even in America, the abstract networks of money and power are turning the voters into vassals of the machine that sustains them. As here, the political issues there will soon be welfare, pensions, Medicare and other elements of the badly-made pottage for which we sell our birthright.

As for Bombardier Yossarian in Catch-22, the first step back to our liberty is to stop believing in the benevolence of the system.

BTW: the man who wrote "The Anarchist Cookbook" later converted to Christianity. The one thing not to do with the system is to try to smash it - you'll only get something worse.

Flat Broke and Berserk

Stagflation? Who can say?

Paul Kasriel says no to seventies-style stagflation, for two reasons: oil supplies aren't being choked off, and unions are weak. He may be right.

But I understand that the Saudis are keeping oil production at an unsustainably high level, even though this is damaging the quality of the remaining underground reserves. In French wine-growing terms, this is known as "faire pisser les vignes". And given the Peak Oil issue, we're going to find that countries like Russia and Iran may use their energy supplies to further their own agendas.

As to union wage demands, yes, the brothers are no longer so united; but the voters may yet get together behind a politician who promises to maintain living standards. I predict this will be achieved by writing checks/cheques on the future, i.e. inflation. That's after the current bout of monetary deflation, of course.

Which brings us to currencies. It's a good week for readers of Julian Phillips: here he discusses how in rural India, the rupee is on a flexible gold standard to avoid the depredations of taxation and bribery; and here he looks at possible plans by G7 nations to place your money under house arrest, to prevent it fleeing the country.

Is this back to the 70s, or the 60s? As Wikipedia reminds us, "In the summer of 1966, with the value of the pound falling in the currency markets, exchange controls were tightened by the Wilson government. Among the measures, tourists were banned from taking more than £50 out of the country, until the restriction was lifted in 1979. "

Pursuing my "sell up and get a (possibly horse-drawn) caravan" theme, I note it's a tradition of the Romanies to collect large pieces of Royal Crown Derby pottery - beautiful, thickly patinated with gold, easily identifiable in the event of theft, and impossible to melt down. Soon it'll be time to join the raggle taggle gypsies, O.

Until then, I have to have a replacement car (they tell me Fiat stands for "Fix It Again Tomorrow"), so I'm off to a second-hand auto supermarket today. Let's see if there is any real sign of recession hitting big-ticket items.

The low interest trap

The UK's residential housing stock is now worth an estimated £4 trillion. But this valuation is powered by £1.2 trillion in mortgages, an average first time buyer loan of £140,000, a loan/income multiple of 3.61 and the base interest rate at 5.5%.

In 1987, the average first-time buyer borrowed £25,000, with a loan/income multiple of 2.1 and the base interest rate at 10.5%.

So the modern housebuyer now takes on 72% more debt in relation to income. Interest rates (and house values) may go up and down, but the amount borrowed is a hard - and now heavy - number. All this for the same thing we had 20 years ago - a safe place to sleep.

One might think that the true value of our housing is the gross less debt, i.e. (4 - 1.2 =) £2.8 trillion. That approach would work, if each house had the same proportion of debt. But it must be far less than that, since most of the debt is on the shoulders of the young(ish) - if they halved their initial borrowing, there would have to be a severe impact on house prices generally.

What would houses be worth if no-one could borrow more than 2 years' income against them? What if there were no mortgages at all? What will happen - what will the multiplying effect be - when the housebuying generation finds itself so burdened with taxes and high food and energy costs, that it cannot afford to take on such large home loans?

In whose interest has all this money-lending operated?

In cartoon-caveman times, chasing the bear or sabre-toothed tiger out and seizing the cave would be a day's work. Now it takes 20-25 years (sometimes far more) to chase out the bank. Have we progressed?

Will sovereign wealth funds support the market?

BBC Radio 4 broadcast an interesting programme on sovereign wealth funds tonight. Is it not possible the oil exporting and trading surplus nations will be looking for a home for their capital, at the same time as private investors and overborrowed institutional investors are trying to cash out?

If so, the real story is not yet another impending market crash, whose effects may in any case be softened by an influx of new money that has political motive and so is not so narrowly focussed on a fair market price; instead, the major issue may be that, just as the West's industrial base has been hollowed-out, so its equity base may be attenuated in the same way.

In other words, our countries are like a man who has lost his job and is just about to find out that his pension scheme has been raided.

Laying it on the line

Some people will act beyond their self-interest. Karl Denninger is an expert investor, but is moved to be an economic prophet for his country and like other prophets, despairs of the passivity of his people:

This financial weapon of mass destruction is going to detonate.

It will make it impossible for the government to pay your Medicare and Social Security benefits.
It will result in double the tax burden you have now being laid on your children and grandchildren, OR MORE.

And when that happens, if I am still alive I'm going to spend MY MONEY on a full page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal (or whatever the "mainstream media" is at that point) telling your kids (who will then be adults) that you scr*w*d them on purpose because you were too much of a cheap j*ckoff to get on a plane and go raise h*ll in Washington DC to put a stop to this cr*p!

I wonder what their reaction will be to "Dear Old Dad" when they're living in poverty as a direct consequence of you fiddling while Rome burns?

I wonder if Moses used expletives when he came down off the mountain and found the people worshipping a statue of an ox?

Good man.

Cut and run?

Atash Hagmahani does pessimism in a flowery and Orientally allusive way, but the bottom line is familiar: stagflation is on the way, if not here already, thanks to financial imprudence and the offshoring of work.

His action points are interesting, including starting to save hard (and I agree that's technically possible, though many people might find this hard to sell to their life-partners) and (more controversially) not wasting money on a college education for your children:

They will spend vast amounts of money (much of it borrowed) on an education that is economically worthless; the jobs they could not get out of high-school will still be out of reach after college.

I think that recommendation needs qualification. It seems to me that in poor countries, the well-off are even better-off. Surely it's more important to ensure that your children, if capable and hard-working, either pursue courses that train them for well-paid work, or at least go to universities that raise their ambitions and help them make useful social connections.

But I think he's right to think that we'll soon find we're in a game of musical chairs with most of the seating removed. Another of Hagmahani's options is simply to quit the country. It's time to really think out of the box.

All our banks are sub-prime

The Mail on Sunday reports plans by the British Government to borrow money from the Middle East, on Islamic Sharia terms - that is, without, technically, paying interest.

Never mind the Islamophobic subtext: Islam is not the only religion to object to charging interest (which was illegal in France up to the Revolution of 1789). According to The Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review by Isaac Smith Homans, William B. Dana (1849) (found by Google search here):

The Jewish law prohibited all usury between Jew and Jew, although it was allowed between Jews and foreigners. (Ex. 22 : 25 ; Levit. 25 : 36, 37 : Deut 23 : 19, 20. Compare Ps. 15 : 5 ; Ezek. 18 : 8, 13, 17, Ac.) The reason of this distinction, according to Father Ambrose, was, that God designed usury as one of the ways of making war upon the Canaanites and other heathen nations.

The Canon Law, as it is called, i. e., the ecclesiastical law of the Roman Catholic Church, pronounces the taking of interest, even the least, to be a mortal sin, and declares those who defend the practice to be heretics.

The interpretation of usury as a form of warfare is resonant.

There is also the unreligious technical point, that the money supply must increase to cover the interest charged. Either that, or ultimately all the money in the world will end up in the hands of the money-lenders.

This may not have mattered quite so much when the world was not so monetized - when we built our own houses, grew our own food, drew water from wells and rivers, and made our own clothes. It has to be said that none of it, generally, was as nice as today (though at least water didn't come in plastic bottles that took seven times as much water to make); but as more and more of reality nowadays has a price ticket on it, the inexorable demands of interest must either create unbounded inflation, or by seizing all our assets, enslave us. Perhaps usury is indeed a form of aggression.

Which leads me to wonder where money came from in the first place. How can you invent something, define the world with reference to your new creation (and possession), and use it to claim - to seize - ownership of the world? This is to make the money-issuer - originally the King or Emperor - lord of all the Creation he can control. So is power the only game in town? Maybe civilised life, the quiet enjoyment of one's own hard-won personal property, is merely an illusion, a time-out in the game. But impoverish the middle class and all bets are off - as Germany found out in the 20s and 30s. How foolish must a State be, to allow its mismanagement of finance to threaten the social order. Still, the Germans weren't entirely responsible for the WWI peace treaty that led to the total wreck of their economy; by contrast, look at this latest from Karl Denninger on the current, State-permitted mess.

The power of the State to coin money is nothing to the way the banks multiply it. Something like a mere 3% of all money is in notes and coins; the rest is deposits and credit - i.e. promises. Instead being charged a modest fee for guarding your cash (which is, I understand, the practice of the traditional Swiss bank), you're paid what you think is a nice rate of interest - but thanks to fractional reserve banking, your deposit can be multiplied and loaned out, at even higher rates. No wonder the banks always seem to have the nicest locations, including converted Tudor houses in little Warwickshire villages.

Swelling the capital within the economy ultimately pushes up prices, though as money-lenders become more cautious and call loans back in, the opposite happens; but meanwhile, the expanded money supply also builds-in massive future inflation, because interest must come back, as well as all the existing capital. Even if some of this fake capital is lost because of asset write-offs, the lenders will seek to make up for it by charging more interest on the loans that haven't defaulted. And the difference between the small interest paid out to you on your little deposit, and the larger interest demanded on the much greater loan base, pays for all the overheads and leaves over enough, and more than enough.

Meanwhile, the temporarily bloated money supply inflates assets, including assets that really you must have, such as a roof over your head. In the UK, the M4 measure of money supply has approximately doubled since 2000 - and house prices have done almost exactly the same. But I don't have the power to say, I don't believe in borrowing money so I won't pay so much for your house. And since you (quite understandably) will refuse my lower offer, I will have to rent instead - at a rate that reflects the price of houses. What would houses cost - what would rents be - if home loans were illegal?

So now, in the wake of sub-prime (and other, earlier financial bubbles), we're all clapping our hands to save Tinkerbell's life. The government pumps yet more funny money into the economy to shore up the confidence tricks of bankers, and in the case of Northern Rock, their own voter base. If we understood what this "Tinkerbell" is really like, and what she's been up to, perhaps we'd be better off letting her die.

Except the law's on her side, and she'd take us and our families down with her. After all, by agreeing to borrow, we fix an obligation in nominal terms, even if (owing to events beyond our control, but not necessarily beyond that of the money-makers, and money-fakers) the assets decline in nominal terms. In fact, by first expanding and then contracting the money supply, it is possible for lenders to take your assets and any additional capital that you personally contributed, then reinflate the assets later. Hey presto, they've grabbed your cash. No wonder some Americans trash the house before mailing back the keys.

I think that for those who have the liberty to do so, escape comes in two stages: get your cash out, then buy whatever you need so that in future, you depend on the money system as little as possible. You should also stay mobile - the State needs captives, and a house is an excellent way to tie you by one leg. And the licence plate on a car is the next best thing to a tag clipped onto your ear. Unfortunately, in an overcrowded island like ours, this doesn't seem realistic, but maybe that's why an Irish girl told me, years ago, that farsighted (and typically pessimistic) Germans were buying into rural Ireland. Perhaps in America, or some other land blessed with a lower ratio of population to fertile land, we may escape with the raggle taggle gypsies. Velvet-clad slavery, or freedom and poverty?

What care I for a goose-feather bed?
With the sheet turned down so bravely, O!
For to-night I shall sleep in a cold open field
Along with the raggle taggle gypsies, O!

UK public debt twice as bad as America's

David Walker, the US Comptroller General, reckons the debts and unfunded liabilities of the USA amount to some $53 trillion, which assuming GDP of $13.75 trillion means a debt-to-GDP ratio of 3.85. Mr Walker, now retiring, has taken his "Fiscal Wake Up Tour" round America for two years, warning Cassandra-like of the woe to come if things don't change soon.

"Wat Tyler" of the redoubtable blog Burning Our Money reckons UK debts and unfunded liabilities to be some £9 trillion, which assuming GDP of $2.472 trillion (c. £1.26 trillion today) means a debt-to-GDP ratio of 7.16. Sir John Bourn (74) is the UK's equivalent of David Walker, and recently left office after a tenure of 20 years. A Google news search using the terms "Sir John Bourn", "debt" and "warning" yielded nothing today.

We worry about mortgages, but according to this site:

"Recent figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) showed average first-time buyers borrowed 3.24 times their income - the highest level ever recorded...Many lenders will calculate a debt income ratio, which as a rule of thumb should not exceed 40%. " (i.e. 0.4; my highlights)

Bonds: up or down?

Where's safe for your money? It's like a minefield: we seem to be zig-zag running between financial explosions. Housing? Overpriced, full of bad debt. The stockmarket? Due to drop when earnings revert to the mean. The commodity market? Distorted by speculation and manipulation.

How about bonds? Clive Maund thinks US Treasuries are due for a pasting as yields rise to factor-in inflation; but Karl Denning is still firmly of the DE-flation persuasion and thinks a stockmarket fall may be our saviour:

The Bond Market no likey what's going on. The 10 is threatening to break out of a bullish (for rates) flag, which presages a potential 4.20% 10 year rate. This will instantaneously translate into higher mortgage and other "long money" rates, destroying what's left of the housing industry.

There is only one way to prevent this, and that's for the stock market to blow up so that people run like hell into bonds, pushing yields down!

He also gives his own theory as to why the Fed stopped reporting M3 money supply rates:

The moonbats claim that The Fed discontinued M3 because they're trying to hide something. In fact they discontinued M3 because it didn't tell you the truth; it was simply NOT capturing any of the "shadow" credit creation caused by all the fraud (and undercapitalized "insurance" which, in fact, is worth zero), but it sure is capturing the forcible repatriation into bank balance sheets when there is no other when it comes to access to capital for companies and governments.

So, two elephants are riding the bond seesaw: fear of inflation, and fear of losing one's capital. I hope the plank doesn't snap. Antal Fekete reckons the bond market can take all the money you can throw at it - but what goes up will come down.

Cash still doesn't seem like such a bad thing, to me.

A secular bear market in housing?

It's now generally accepted that houses are overpriced. I think valuations will not only go down, but (notwithstanding bear market rallies) stay down for at least a generation.

Here's some reasons, some having a longer-term effect than others:

• house prices are now a very high multiple of earnings, choking the first-time buyer market.
• presently, there is increasing economic pessimism, which will further inhibit buyers.
• the mortgage burden now lies in the amount of capital to be repaid, rather than the interest rate; that's much harder to get out of, and will prolong the coming economic depression, either through the enduring impact on disposable income, or through the destruction of money by mortgage defaults on negative-equity property - and as valuations fall, there will be more and more of the latter.
• fairly low current interest rates allow little room to drop rates further to support affordability - and at worst, rate drops could sucker even more people into taking on monster mortgage debt. But interest rate reductions are unlikely to benefit borrowers anyway. The banks have survived for centuries on the fact that while valuations are variable, debt is fixed. They got silly with sub-prime, but by George they will remain determined to get all they can of their capital back, and preserve its value. The people who create money literally out of nothing - a mere account-ledger entry - are now tightening lending criteria and will continue to press for high interest rates; for now, they will content themselves with not fully passing on central bank rate cuts, so improving the differential for themselves, as compensation for their risk.
• food and fuel costs are rising, and given declining resources (including less quality arable land annually), a growing world population and the relative enrichment of developing countries, demand will continue to soar, cutting into what's left of disposable income.
• our economy is losing manufacturing capacity and steadily turning towards the service sector, where wages are generally lower.
• the demographics of an ageing population mean that there will be proportionately fewer in employment, and taxation in its broadest sense will increase, even if benefits are marginally reduced.
• the growing financial burden on workers will further depress the birth rate, which in turn will exacerbate the demographic problem.

In short, there will be less money available to chase house prices; and in my view, less to chase investments, too. It may be very similar in the USA - as Jim from San Marcos says now (repeating himself from last May):

A market goes up when more people want to buy, than those that want to sell. Well, all of these first time home buyers have no spare cash for the Stock Market. The Baby Boomers, sometime in the future are going to want to sell. The question arises, "Sell to Whom?"

Returning to houses, there are still those who think valuations will continue to be supported by the tacit encouragement of economic migration to the UK.

Now, although this helps keep down wage rates at the lower end (where is the Socialist compassion in that?), the government is pledging the future for a benefit which is merely temporary, if it exists at all. Once an incoming worker has a spouse and several children, how much does he/she need to earn to pay for the social benefits consumed now and to come later? State education alone runs at around £6,000 ($12,000) per annum per child.

And then there's the cost of all the benefits for the indiginous worker on low pay, or simply unemployed and becoming steadily less employable as time passes. And his/her children, learning their world-view in a family where there is no apparent connection between money and work. The government makes get-tough noises, but in a recessionary economy, I don't think victimising such people for the benefit of newspaper headlines will be any use. I seem to recall (unless it was an Alan Coren spoof) that in the 70s, Idi Amin made unemployment illegal in Uganda; not a model to follow.

So to me, allowing open-door economic migration to benefit the GDP and hold up house prices doesn't work in theory, let alone in practice.

Besides, I maintain that in the UK, we don't have a housing shortage: we have a housing misallocation. There must be very many elderly rattling around alone in houses too large and expensive for them to maintain properly. This book says that as long ago as 1981, some 600,000 single elderly in owner-occupied UK property had five or more rooms; the ONS says that in 2004, some 7 million people were living alone in Great Britain. Then there's what must be the much larger number of people who live in twos and threes in houses intended for fours and fives. Before we build another million houses on flood-plains, let's re-visit the concept of need.

Maybe we'll see the return of Roger the lodger - if he's had a CRB check, of course.

Would I buy a second home now? No. Would I sell the one I live in? I'd certainly think about it - in fact, have been considering that for some years.

Reversion to mean

Echoing recent comments by Vitaliy Katsenelson (also on Barron's), Jeremy Grantham thinks profit margins will decline towards normal and the Standard & Poor's 500 will head from its current c. 1334 to 1100 in the year 2010 - a drop of about 18%.

Grantham is emphatic that borrowed money is not a stimulant to the economy:

I have an exhibit that shows the 30 years prior to 1982 when the debt-to-gross domestic product ratio was completely flat at 1.2 times. Total debt is defined as government debt, personal debt, corporate debt and financial debt. Then in the 25 years after 1982, the flat line goes up at a 45 degrees angle from 1.2 times to 3.1 times GDP. Massive. In the first 30 years, when debt is flat, annual GDP growth is its usual battleship, growing at 3.5% and hardly twitching. After the massive increase in debt, GDP, far from accelerating, grew at 3%. So debt in the aggregate does not drive the economy. The economy is driven by education, man-hours worked, capital investment and technology.

That last sentence is really pregnant. I'm not sure about the man-hours (the closer we approach peasanthood, the harder we'll work), but I think that on both sides of the Atlantic, we've been falling down on the other three.

In Britain, our government has failed to distinguish between investing in education, and managing it - and where it has tried to do the latter, has pursued a Romantic-heritage political agenda. Capital investment? Going abroad. Technology? Ditto - and eagerly taken up (if not positively filched) by our Eastern trading partners.

I live in what used to be Car City; now, the vast Longbridge site is being redeveloped for housing and shops - in other words, open prison for the new ex-industrial underclass.

But Rome, too, kept control of its plebs with bread and circuses for a couple more centuries, before it fell.

Will monetary inflation be absorbed by the bond market?

In the previous post, I looked at the expectation that interest rates will rise. But it seems that freaky things can happen if the government tries to stimulate the economy by progressively cutting interest rates and pumping more money into the system.

Professor Antal E Fekete thinks that in a deflationary environment, governmental attempts to reflate by introducing more money will be thwarted by the ability of the bond market to soak up the excess liquidity. Higher bond yields result in lower bond valuations, so reducing interest rates inflates the price of bonds. Fekete says that halving the rate doubles the bond price, and since mathematically you can halve a number indefinitely, the bond market can absorb all the fiat money you can create. Therefore, you can have hyperinflation and economic depression at the same time.

This trap is possible because the abandonment of the gold-and-silver standard means that the dollar has no limit to its expansion. And bond speculators have their risk covered by the need of the government to return to the market for renewed borrowing. If the Professor is right, it would be a nasty trap indeed.

But maybe our conclusion should be that this explains why interest rates must rise.

A quibble on style: especially in England, money is regarded as dull. So financial commentators try hard to add flavour, and in the Professor's case, too hard - it has been difficult for me to detect the meat of the argument under its many-spiced similes. Byron's Don Juan comes to mind:

And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,
But like a hawk encumber'd with his hood,
Explaining Metaphysics to the nation--
I wish he would explain his Explanation.

Warren Buffett's misleading optimism

Jonathan Chevreau reports Warren Buffett's bullishness on the US economy, long-term; but the real gem in this piece is the extensive, but cogent and crunchy comment by Andrew Teasdale of The TAMRIS Consultancy, who analyses Buffett's real approach to equity valuations.

Teasdale points out that although interest rates hit 21% in 1982, there was less debt, higher disposable income and lower valuations: relative to disposable income, debt is a bigger burden today than it was 25 years ago. He summarises his position pithily:

It is also worthwhile remembering that not everyone holds a Buffet portfolio and not everyone has the luxury of a 220 year investment horizon. If I was a long term investor with no financial liabilities arising over the next 15 years equities would be my preferred asset class relative to cash and bonds, but I would be mindful of valuations in determining where I put my money.

Not all the bad debt has yet surfaced, and as Karl Denninger comments, even at this stage Citibank has recently been forced to borrow foreign money at 14%, and other banks at over 7%, in preference to the 3% Federal Funds rate, presumably to keep the scale of their insolvency in the dark.

Inflation is increasing, therefore money-lenders are going to want more income to compensate for risk and the erosion of the real value of their capital. For the yield to rise, the capital value of bonds has to fall.

So I read Teasdale's summary as implying that for now, it's cash rather than either bonds or equities.

The Golden Compass doesn't work

FTSE closed today down at 5,724.10, a point first reached (travelling the other way) in December 1998. The longer-term chart above suggests to me a glass ceiling. Or flogging a dead horse (I can't tell you how some ten-year-olds I know misheard that last saying recently, or how their conversation continued. That generation appears to be developing backwards from middle age.)

Adjusted for inflation, the line would look worse, of course. I think my gut feeling was right ten years ago: essentially, we've been going down since the late nineties.

But what inflation measure to use? Gold seems to go down together with equity sell-offs, rather than seesawing against them. And unlike with the Dow, there doesn't seem to be an easily accessible index of the FTSE priced in gold terms; but GATA last week went very public with their theory that gold is being held down by surreptitious selling - and has been quietly disappearing from central bank vaults. This is something I've touched on a number of times before, and MoneyWeek gives its take on it here. Meanwhile, here's the ad:

The New World Order: a philosophical objection

A deep essay by Christopher Quigley here, but one I intend to re-read. Marxist philosophy always made my eyes water, practically instantly, as I have little tolerance for prolonged abstract multisyllabic holy-rolling, but I'll steel myself because we have to have some understanding of the madness that seems to have seized our modern conspiratorial ruling class. "Affairs are now soul-size".

Gold chart confusion

Here's a chart of gold against inflation as measured by CPI, from Captain Hook, and it suggests that high as it is now, the price of gold is still below its 1973 - 1997 average:

... and here's another reproduced on the Contrarian Investor's Journal (possibly from TedBits, which I'll come to in a moment), which seems to show the opposite:

... and here's another from Ty Andros's TedBits, comparing gold to gobal financial liquidity:

Which line of reasoning would you support at this time?

Why equities should go down

I'm breaking radio silence because of a brilliantly lucid article (from the subscription-only Barron's site) found for us by Michael Panzner.

Vitaliy Katsenelson explains that the current average price-earnings ratio may seem cheap, but that's because recent profit margins have been well above the 8.5% trend. Even allowing for a shift since 1980 away from industry towards the higher-margin service sector, the present 11.9% profit margin should be seen against a longer-term background figure of around 8.9 - 9.2%, which if current p/e ratios continue would imply a downward stock price correction of 22 -25%.

This chimes with Robert McHugh's "Dow 9,000" prediction from last July. And in many fields it's usual for overshoot to occur in the process of regression to a mean, so if it holds true in this case we could see even deeper temporary lows.

Day traders, be warned: this piste is a Black Run.

Au revoir

It looks as though the bear market has begun, though of course, events are liable to make fools of all of us. A recent peak was in October last year and if we take a recession as lasting typically 30 months, we should be grounding by around April 2010.

I've done my best to add my voice to the growing chorus of somethingmustbedonners, and tried to warn investors as I did in the late Nineties - not that I'm wise, but I seek out the wise. This won't put off the day traders, who rush in where angels fear to tread and will try to make fortunes on the rattlesnake-fast turns of bear market rallies; some will get it right, and fair play to you, as they say.

For the rest of us, I don't think I can better the common sense, brevity and clarity of this in the comments section from Jim in San Marcos, answering an investor's query as to what to do:

The basic premise is to pay off your debts and have some spare cash in the bank. There will be layoffs.

Buying a big item right now could tie you to a commitment that could be more than you anticipated. I know of one person already that was surprised by a layoff. They didn't see it coming.

If it gets worse, a lot of people will be selling big ticket items to raise cash. There should be some pretty good deals out there.

Money isn't everything, and there are bigger issues facing us: the growing military as well as economic power of Russia and China; our failure to nurture and educate our young, which points up the selfishness of our adults; the threat to democracy that is big government combined with big business, and the growing divide between an increasingly internationalist managerial class and a resentful, paralysed underclass whose numbers grow while our economies shrink and twist. And perhaps it is not entirely paranoid to suggest that there are many (often well-meaning, by their lights) proto-revolutionaries hacking away at the cultural and social ties that bind us, still dreaming that Bakunin was right when he said that the urge to destroy is also the urge to create.

I now have to take some time out to set my own affairs in order - too many commitments, personal and professional. Good luck to you all, and thanks for reading and commenting.

We have tracked the beast to his lair

Many an honourable man is underrated. Richard Daughty (aka The Mogambo Guru) takes this opportunity to show that the banks created the problems that some of them are now called upon to solve. It's like that film (Blowback) where the arsonist villain turns out to be a firefighter. Doubtless no-one will suffer condign punishment for using inflation to steal from gullible savers.

Meow boing splat

Both Karl Denninger and Michael Panzner interpret yesterday's rise on the Dow as a bear market rally. There are already references to "dead cat bounce", but we haven't anywhere nearly touched the bottom, I think.

People speak of the crash of 1929, but it took much longer for the crisis to work through and there were lots of opportunities for investors to step off with smaller losses. There were also plenty of traps for those who thought it was time to buy back in.

Here's a chart (source) of the process:

As they say, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Today's central banks are acutely aware of this past history and do not wish to be remembered for making the same mistake, i.e. worsening the situation by deliberately contracting the money supply.

However, Denninger and others think we can't stop this contraction anyway, once the credit bubble has been pricked, and attempts to reflate will merely devalue the currency while failing to stimulate the real economy.

Dow 9,000 prediction fulfilled

As at the time of writing, the Dow is 11,820.24 and gold $875.90/oz. The Dow/gold ratio is therefore below 13.51 and has (perhaps fleetingly) fulfilled Robert McHugh's prediction.

Whether the Dow falls below 9,000 nominal in the course of a severe recession is something we shall have to see.

Funny line

Traders described the losses on the FTSE 100 Index as "incredible", with the Footsie at one stage plummeting by as much as 330.7 points.

(Press Association release today.)

Less than 6%. Maybe they should raise the minimum age to be a trader.

Oh, and the PA uses the hack line "More than £x billion was wiped off the value of ... shares". Enough experience for cliche, not enough to remember history.

"See what I mean? Kids!"

It can't happen here

The US bemoans its fate, but we in the UK have also had something of a crash in the last three months, too. FTSE on 12 October: 6,730.70; now: 5,578.20 - 17% down.

It can't happen here
It can't happen here
I'm telling you, my dear
That it can't happen here
Because I been checkin' it out, baby
I checked it out a couple a times, hmmmmmmmm

(The Mothers of Invention)

There was a period of hip journalism in the 60s and 70s that thought it clever to quote pop trash as if it were Holy Writ, and I'm afraid I couldn't resist the cheek. Retro, but maybe appropriate for a rerun of the econogrind of those years.

Trad wins out over Progressive

Jazz is in vogue, and so, it seems, are old-fashioned financial virtues (though not, of course, here in the Western world). Ty Andros points out what I have long suspected: we've been failing for a long time, and only inflation has hidden the truth from the masses. He goes back further than I would, and suggests the real-wealth stagnation in G7 countries began in 1990-1991.

Ben Bernanke half-joked about dropping money from helicopters if necessary; now the first $500 tax rebate parcels are on their way. Andros says we're into a Ludwig von Mises"crack-up boom" which means that nominally, assets won't fall in price, but in reality they will be eaten hollow by inflation:

“Volatility is opportunity” and it is about to SOAR! (As you will see in the next installment of the 2008 Outlook) They will “Print the money” as the unfolding “Crack up Boom” powers generational moves in grains, commodities, currencies, and stocks are on the table.

Danger of systemic breakdown

Doug Noland looks at the world of financial speculation, which has used loads of borrowed money to boost returns, and worries that as liquidity dries up, the market will become inefficient. This is, I think, one of the things about which Richard Bookstaber has warned. Perhaps the gunslinger day traders should assure themselves of the robustness of their counterparties when playing with futures and options.

We've just had a crash

... and Robert McHugh figures that the US stock market (as measured by the Wilshire 5000 Index) has already lost $2.6 trillion in the last three months.

He's begging for inflation now, rather than a useless stimulant later when the mule has died.

The $1 trillion loss figure reappears

Thomas Tan thinks the addition of plausible losses in the credit default swap market to write-offs in other areas of banking, could bring the total hit on the US financial system to the $1 trillion mark.

Economics in the dark

In 1971, the economist Stafford Beer brought the cybernetic revolution to Chile. His key perception was that economic decisions needed not only accurate, but timely information. So he set up a computer network and data analysis systems to empower the government's ministries without overloading them with irrelevant data.

In advanced economies, it's important for companies, banks and individuals to receive such information, too.

But nearly 40 years later, the USA needs to re-learn the lesson. The Federal Reserve ceased reporting M3 money supply data in 2006; accurate assessment of inflation is complicated by "hedonic adjustment" and periodic (and tendentious?) alteration of the types of item included in price surveys; the Bureau of Labor Statistics seasonally adjusts unemployment figures so that an increase can sometimes appear to be a decrease; nobody (not even the lenders) yet knows the full figures on bad loans and "Tier 3 assets"; it is not even clear how we should assess a nation's wealth (GDP per capita seems a misleading measure).

How can you navigate without up-to-date information? Even in the nineteenth century, Mississippi river pilots had to keep track of the river's changes, or risk getting stranded on new sandbars. And as John Mauldin reports, party political manoeuvering is stymying two appointments to the Federal Reserve's Board, at a time when the Fed most needs to concentrate on resolving the unfolding complex financial crisis.

Even given the right data, decision-making has become tougher. Increasing global interconnection and wealth transfer between nations means that normal cycles may be broken by epochal linear developments, so the past is now a very unsafe guide to the future.

We need clarity, direction and vision.

Panzner votes DE (flation)

Michael Panzner is in the DE camp, because the bubble was caused by credit creation: "The way up is the way down" (a maxim of both Taoism and Heraclitus, apparently; but then the Greeks have always been great travellers and interested in ideas).

In his excellent book (reviewed here last May), he suggests that inflation will come afterwards (actually, not just IN- but HYPER-).

A small town in Germany

The TV was on, and I forget what programme we were watching. Sometimes they were Dutch - we were near the border - but more often German. I was eleven, and would watch anything. Even the adverts were fun, linked by shorts featuring little cartoon characters, the Mainzelmännchen. HB cigarettes, Allianz insurance, Bear condensed milk ("Nichts geht über Bärenmarke……Bärenmarke zum Kaffee!")

Then a newsflash cut in: the President of the USA had been shot on a visit to Dallas and had been rushed to hospital. My father went upstairs. The programme resumed.

My father came down. I still remember him buckling his belt over his uniform, as ever uncomfortable and determined to do his best, a stocky man with a straight back, now full of tension. He watched with us as another newsflash came: the President was dead.

I think the camp sent a driver with a Jeep; in any case, Dad was gone. We watched some more TV, interrupted by occasional updates and speculation. Then it was time for bed. Flannel pyjamas, cotton sheets, the heavy blankets that trapped your feet. I went to sleep.

Lights woke me, illuminating the curtains. Heavy engines, headlights passing, heading in the direction of Düsseldorf. One after another after another. Now, I know they were tank transporters, racing to position the heavy armour in readiness for the Red invasion.

And now there are no more Communists, or so it seems. We buy fuel from the Russians, hardware and toys from the Chinese. The people my father, a gentle and sensitive man, was prepared to die fighting, are our friends and trading partners. As reported by The Independent, Chinese interests even supported our Conservative leader and former Prime Minister, Edward Heath (Sir Edward protested the following week, saying the claims were "misleading and inaccurate" - but did not go so far as to say that they were untrue). Surely, we're all friends now. After all, Dad had helped the Germans start to rebuild their country; he'd worked with German civilians, learned to speak the language fluently, married a German refugee. Wars happen, and so does peace. The people of the world are vexed by their leaders, yet love for one another endures and triumphs.

But Communism is not a nation, and does not love people. Everything, even its own most ardent supporters, can be burned on the altar of abstract principle. Informed that a general nuclear war would kill a third of humankind, Mao said good, then there would be no more classes.

And dictators, dressed in a little brief authority, ignore warnings. On the eve of World War II, when the conflict could yet be averted, Hitler was with guests in Berchtesgaden when the clouds over the mountains assumed an ominous red and yellow appearance. A woman told him "Das bedeutet blut, und mehr blut" ("This means blood, and more blood"); Hitler trembled, but then said if it must be so, it must be so.

As gypsies and beggars used to sing:

So proud and lofty is some sort of sin
Which many take delight and pleasure in
Whose conversation God doth much dislike
And yet He shakes His sword before He strike

(The Watersons performed it on "Frost and Fire", which our English teacher played to us in the late Sixties. I associate it with cold, freshness, the musty fragrance of the Monmouthshire woods, animism, hope.)

By degrees, this brings me to the current state of affairs. Our leaders wish us to believe that the history of our fathers is at an end, and now only efficient administration remains to be achieved. The revels of democracy are ended; they were fun, but their time is past.

No: as Christopher Fry said, "affairs are soul size", still. Although I do believe that sudden and total conversion is possible, as in James Shirley's now implausible-seeming play "Hyde Park" (who would have believed the Earl of Rochester's conversion? - and there are those who still doubt it, not knowing how the sinner hates sin), I doubt that all who worked with the old Soviet and Chinese Communist regimes have abandoned their principles and plans. Like the remark about the significance of the French Revolution (variously attributed to Chou En-Lai and Mao Tse-Tung), it's "too early to say".

Even if our leaders should be gullible or merely suborned, Jeffrey Nyquist reminds us again that there are still people who think differently from us, and we must be prepared. It is not all right to be weak, whether militarily or in our economies. Good fences (and good borders) make good neighbours.

Punish the perp

Karl Denninger says we should make the people who caused the subprime problems pay for the consequences. Either they should burn up with their own debt (Marc Faber has said some players should be taken out of the game) or pass on the grief to their shareholders, issuing new shares to raise capital and so diluting the existing stockholders' portion.

Unfortunately, we in the UK have chickened out - for party political reasons to do with its power base in the north of England, the Labour government is currently holding the baby in the case of insolvent lender Northern Rock, even though the tax payer is on the hook for nearly $120 billion as a result. (Hey, that's nearly as much as the proposed new tax break to reflate America - and our population is one-fifth the size of yours!)

Hope you have better luck - or better leaders - over there. Buy a Lottery ticket and hope?

Dow 9,000 update

Dow 12,082.31, gold $880.50/oz, so the Dow is now worth 13.72 ounces of gold as against Robert McHugh's prediction of 13.51.

Nearly there, and the new announcement of a $145 billion reflation may push gold that extra yard.

Stocks may follow bond yields down

Bob Bronson gives us a striking graph of the apparent correlation (since 2000) between the stockmarket and the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds. There is now a very wide gap between the two and seemingly the implication is that stocks are overdue for a large correction.

Here we go

Two from Karl Denninger in the last two days:

Monday, he reasserted his belief in DE-flation; but as I've been saying for some time, maybe the real issue is the divide between haves and have-nots, and he deals with that, too. No point being rich if you daren't go out.

Yesterday, he sounded the bells for a possible crash today. Maybe this is when Robert McHugh's prediction is fulfilled.

Time to buy into Northern Rock?

Two hedge funds have punted heavily on the British lender that the government has supported with £55 billion.

The share price has slumped from over £12 last February to 69 pence, assisted by the gleefully gloomy 20/20 hindsight of the news media. We had voxpops today from small "windfall share" demutualisation shareholders ruefully reckoning their notional losses and admitting they can't find the (now-near worthless - ha!) certificates.

One of Sir John Templeton's maxims is "The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell."

Let me offer two of mine: "Never buy what the fund managers try to sell you at financial adviser seminars", and "Remember the journalists who had their pensions in Equitable Life with-profits, because EL didn't (ugh!) pay commissions".

If I had the spare, I might speculate on NR. Hedge funds may be able to afford losing money, but they certainly don't go out of their way to do it. I wonder what will happen?

Oil to crack the dollar?

Nathan Lewis reminds us how, when President Nixon cut the dollar's link to gold in 1971, OPEC protected the real value of its oil with price rises (thus earning a reputation for having caused our inflation).

Now that the gold dinar has been introduced in Malaysia, Lewis wonders whether the dirham should link to gold, too, so oil exporters can avoid being robbed by a falling dollar.

Brownouts and lines at the gas station again, perhaps.

USA / UK Sovereign Wealth Funds?

Shares are supposed to be the best long-term investment, better than bonds or cash. The usual concern is the time horizon of the investor. Who lives longer than a state like America or Britain?

Foreign governments with trade surpluses (based on artificially low currency exchange rates and stupid overspending by the West) are building up trillions in reserves and eyeing our companies and real estate. If our own leaders aren't willing to rebalance the world economy, the least they can do is get a piece of the action.

Why not?

Dow 9,000 update

Last year, Robert McHugh predicted that the Dow would drop to 9,000, if not in nominal terms then in relation to gold. The Dow was then 13,238.73 and gold $666.30/oz, which means that it took 19.87 ounces of gold to buy the Dow. McHugh's prediction implies the Dow dropping to 13.51 gold ounces (a fall of 6.36 ounces).

The Dow is now 12,606.30 and gold $894.90, so the Dow is now worth 14.09 gold ounces. It has fallen by 5.78 ounces out of the predicted 6.36, so the prediction is 90.9% fulfilled so far.

McHugh will be fully correct if, for example, the Dow remains unchanged and gold rises to $933/oz; or if gold stalls, the Dow will need to fall to 12,090.

To Gordon Brown: please remit £4bn ASAP

From Bob Hoye in Safe Haven yesterday:

"U.K. Sold 395 tonnes of gold at an average price of $274.9 per ounce. The first sale at $254 caught (or caused?) the low point in a 20-year slide in the price of gold.

The losers are us, Brown's gold sales raised around $3.49 billion.."

-- Telegraph.co.uk , January 2, 2006

That was written when the price was $627 and at today’s gold price of $895 the position would be worth $11.4 billion. And - remember the reason for selling was to improve central bank returns - what did they buy with the funds?

I make that a loss of $8 billion to date, or £4bn sterling.

We hear a lot about accountability. If only politicians could be made personally financially accountable.

Or if they could be paid to go away. In recent times, it would have saved the country a fortune if each senior politician had been given £10 million to do nothing at all.

Debt and slavery

Doug Noland sees the debt crisis spreading to the corporate sector; David Jensen writes a letter to the Governor of the Bank of Canada, including very telling graphs of mounting debt and the bubble in the financial markets; Michael Panzner discusses a piece from the Financial Times on the threat of a downgrade of America's historic AAA credit rating, and refers to the weakening of the USA's military pre-eminence; Sol Palha worries about the acquisition of Western assets by sovereign wealth funds ("Slowly but surely America and Europe are going to be owned by foreigners. The irony is that Congress is trying to keep immigrants out of this country but right in front of their eyes foreigners are slowly gobbling up huge chunks of this country.").

All this leads me to Jeffrey Nyquist's grim, but compelling latest piece. He despairs of the irrelevance of mainstream political discussion, especially as the polling process rattles on, and paints a far greater picture. I think you should read it all, but here are a few extracts:

What is happening in the news today, what is happening in the markets and in the banking system, has profound strategic implications... There are no invulnerable countries... If a government does not see ahead, make defensive preparations, establish a dialogue with citizens, lead the way to awareness and responsibility, then the nation stumbles into the next world war unarmed and psychologically unprepared.

Even worse, today's politics has become a politics of "divide and conquer" in which one constituency is played off against another: poor against rich, non-white against white, the secular against the religious. Before a positive outcome is possible, we must have unity and we must have reality.

It's more comfortable to ignore the crying of Cassandra, but maybe Nyquist is like Churchill in the pre-WWII political wilderness, trying to prepare us for the next conflict. We in Britain only just made it, and how we have paid for that struggle ever since.

But it was a price worth paying. History would have been very different, and very horrible I am sure, if Churchill had listened to some in his Cabinet in 1940 who advised him to make a deal with the Nazis. He said, “If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.” It's a line that even now has tears pricking my eyes. The appeasers were silenced by the sound of deeply-moved men banging their fists on the Cabinet table in agreement and applause.

My worry is that I don't see men of that calibre now. As Lord Acton said in a letter to a bishop, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Commenting on the House of Commons after the Great War, Stanley Baldwin remarked on the presence of "A lot of hard-faced men who look as if they had done very well out of the war". Today, the faces are softer, the hair expensively dressed, the manner relaxed and affable, but behind it all one senses cold-hearted, selfish betrayal. To be charitable, it may be that our leaders and ex-leaders don't fully realize the negative consequences of all their deals, compromises and consultancies.

As our reckless debt is progessively converted into ownership, we may find out how much we took our freedom for granted. It's a lot harder to get back.

The Bible has something to say on this, too (and no, I'm not a preacher, this is to show that the issues endure throughout history): Leviticus, Chapter 25 deals with debt, buying and redeeming slaves, and how the chosen people should be treated differently from the heathens - for the latter, enslavement is perpetual.

Gold, the dollar and the Dow

Gold supporters seem to be waiting for a reprise of the heady days of 1980. I think this is another case where you need to decide whether you are a speculator or a long-term investor.


Here's a relatively recent graph of the price of gold, adjusted for inflation (admittedly, inflation can be defined in many ways):

On this chart, it looks as though gold's median price would be around $600/oz, so currently it's above trend and presumably the elevated value factors-in some economic concern.

Now, here's a chart correlating the Dow and gold:It seems harder to spot an average here, since each peak is much higher than the one before. But taking the Dow as it is now (12,606.30) and the current price of gold ($894.90), the present ratio of 14.08 ounces would be in the middle range of the variation since the mid-1920s.

So a purchase of gold now looks like a speculation, rather than a bargain.

Waves and tides

A most apposite article by the Contrarian Investor, in which he considers how all this economic information leaves us confused as to the future direction of the economy. It's like getting millimetre-accurate radar images of all the waves in the harbour, without knowing about the effect of the moon on the tides. Not that the information itself is accurate, anyway.

Stuffed

Michael Panzner hands on a piece from Naked Capitalism: expert, inside opinion is that the banks are so gorged with bad debt that America will mimic the "melancholy, long withdrawing roar" of Japan's ebb tide.

Something's gotta give

Interest on official debt in the USA runs at $430 billion for 2007, and rising steeply, according to the Treasury's own figures (htp Michael Panzner, quoting Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis); total government debt is now c. $9.2 trillion.

It's more serious than that, of course: James Turk quotes the Comptroller General, David M Walker's estimate that total liabilities, including commitments to future social security benefits, are around $53 trillion. The government's annual revenues are only around 5% of this figure, so the credit card looks like it's pretty much fully-loaded.

However it happens, it seems something must give way under the strain. Frank Barbera reckons the Dow has plenty further to fall (and possible interim correction or not, he thinks gold looks good). Prieur du Plessis concurs, quoting Nouriel Roubini's comment that "... a lousy stock market in 2007 will look good compared to an awful stock market in 2008."

Bob Bronson thinks the downturn will be long as well as hard. He in turn quotes the chairman of the National Bureau of Economic Research: this one “could be deeper and longer than the recessions of the past.”

Boris Sobolev also looks to gold, but prefers the smaller companies because of all the money that's piled into the majors.

In case we in the UK should be tempted by schadenfreude, Ashraf Laidi predicts that sterling will accompany the US dollar's fall against other currencies. From what I read in connection with the USA, a weakening currency may provide a temporary boost to exports, but also inflate the cost of imports; so I don't suppose that our following the dollar will do us much long-term good, either.

Of course, it's possible to dismiss all this as group-think wall-of-worry stuff, but maybe that would be double-bluffing ourselves. Sometimes, things are exactly what they seem. Banks have consistently turned a profit for centuries, on the inexorability of debt.

Oil splat

"Oil crunch" doesn't sound right, although it might be appropriate to shale oil: Jeffrey Brown outlines what looks like a compelling thesis on growing domestic energy consumption by major oil exporters. He thinks that the top five producers will be using all their own supplies by around 2030, and concludes that the USA must rapidly reshape its transportation system:

In simplest terms, we are concerned that the very lifeblood of the world industrial economy—net oil export capacity—is draining away in front of our very eyes, and we believe that it is imperative that major oil importing countries like the United States launch an emergency Electrification of Transportation program--electric light rail and streetcars--combined with a crash wind power program.

That is just the tip of the iceberg, surely: residential and office heating/lighting, mechanised farming, supermarket shopping, centralised medical facilities - so much will have to be reviewed and planned.

Twang money, encore

The Contrarian Investor is also struck by the elasticity of fiat money, and how this vitiates attempts to make fair comparisons and store wealth. Gold for the long term, he thinks.

In the short term, we have this contest between credit contraction and currency expansion. I'm getting the feeling it'll be the first followed by the second, which is what Michael Panzner predicts in "Financial Armageddon".

Grab your pension now, inflation-proof it?

Tony Allison looks at the threats to your prosperity in retirement. A bird in the hand?

Killer greens

Stuart Staniford takes a point I've read recently in Vernon Coleman's "Oil Apocalypse", about biofuels threatening food supplies for the world's poor, and extrapolates frighteningly:

... both oil and cereals are global commodity markets. If it's profitable to make food into fuel in the US, even without a subsidy, then it's profitable elsewhere also - possibly more so given lower labor costs. So the basic growth dynamics are the same. The infection just hasn't got as strong a grip on the whole globe yet, but it's growing at similar rates.

... I expect oil prices to increase in the medium term, though certainly they could go down in the short-term if the credit crunch affects the global economy enough.

... When we have a bidding war between the gas tanks of the roughly one billion middle class people on the planet, and the dinner tables of the poor, where does that reach equilibrium?

... We noted earlier that according to the UN about 800 million people are unable to meet minimal dietary energy requirements. That is 12% of the world population. [...] we can estimate that a doubling in food prices over 2000 levels might bring 30% or so of the global population below the level of minimal dietary energy requirements, and a quadrupling of food prices over 2000 levels might bring 60% or so of the global population into that situation.

Zero sum for the lower echelons

Martin Hutchinson (07 January) makes my case, with particular reference to Tata and Jaguar-cum-Land Rover :

... it seems likely that the most skilled Westerners will continue to give their countries a comparative advantage against emerging markets. However, there is no guarantee that these research-intensive sectors are likely to support the entire Western population, far from it. They are highly cyclical, benefiting hugely from an active stock market and venture capital market. Further there is no evidence that innovation itself, as distinct from the fruits of recent past innovations, is significantly expanding as a percentage of output -- indeed, research expenditure has if anything declined.

... Since the majority of location-dependent jobs in Western countries are low-skill it therefore follows that if governments wish to protect local living standards, they need to discourage low-skill immigration. Except in Japan, they have not been doing so; both in the EU and the United States low-skill immigration, frequently illegal immigration, has got completely out of control and is immiserating the working classes.

... the economic histories of a high proportion of the Western population under 30, except the very highly skilled, will involve repeated bouts of unemployment, with job changes involving not a move to higher living standards but an angry acceptance of lower ones. By 2030, it is possible that the median real income in the United States and Western Europe may be no more than 50-60% of its level today.

This will expose the democratic divide between those who vote and influence the system in their favour, and the rest. The class division could sharpen as "I'm all right Jack" is replaced by "One can't complain, Piers".

Sackerson awards a Prose Prize for Hutchinson's use of the term "immiserating".

P.S.

... and presumably this will have an obvious effect on residential property prices. Who's for selling up and buying a caravan?

Gold boom, gold bust

Brady Willett offers his predictions for 2008, including (at some stage) a major correction in the gold price, and Chinese equities.

I've reported expert comment before, about the vulnerability of gold to market manipulation and speculation. I think I'll keep on sitting out this dance.

Inflation or deflation: an expert writes

So it's not just me, even chart analysts like Captain Hook can't decide about IN vs. DE.

Also heartening to see my suggestion re insider jiggery-pokery echoed here:

As an aside, I still don't know what to make of the triangle / diamond in Goldman's chart (see Figure 4) other than they plan to squeeze stocks higher under the cover of low volumes over Christmas holidays in justifying their bonuses.

A winning combination

The Daily Mail alleges a new craze called "celebrity maths", where you combine two famous faces to make a third. Who might be the third here?

And what other political combinations would you like to see?

Gold and liberty

Fear, and the resentment of the oppressed, are more dangerous than bullish aggression.

I watched a programme last night about how we very nearly had the Third World War in 1983. This was a time when Russia was especially paranoid about the West's military intentions - spies were even ordered to report how many lights were on in late evening at the Ministry of Defence in London, apparently not knowing that the offices were lit so the cleaners could do their work.

Then in September, a Soviet spy satellite, fooled by sunlight reflecting off high-level cloud, reported not one, but five missile launches from America. The Russian monitor on duty ignored the klaxon and flashing screen, backed his judgment and told his superiors it was a false alarm, for which he was ultimately discharged from the Army. Wikipedia says his name is Stanislav Petrov. He's certainly worth more than the $1,000 the Association of World Citizens could afford to award him. We may owe him our lives.

Looking for updates on the gold dinar, I came across this blog by a Pakistani, in which he looks to the Islamic dinar as a way of breaking the enslavement of the world by a fiat-currency banking cartel. Irrespective of whether he's justified in his analysis of the situation, or reasonable in his hopes for such a currency, we should note the victim-perception. I seem to recall a maxim (from Sun Tzu?) that you should fear a weak enemy.

Which brings us back to the economic vulnerability of the UK and USA. Weakness can invite aggression, but also makes the weak fear an attack even when it isn't coming. Worryingly for a potential aggressor, weakness may be feigned:

22. If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. ("Laying Plans")

I don't think you can truly be free until you are strong and independent. We need to get our houses in order, so we can deal with others from a secure base - which is safer for all involved.

Iraq may have the last laugh

A company called Sebastian River Holdings is substantially increasing its investment in Iraq:

... prior to the war with Iraq the Dinar was $3.00+ per US Dollar.

...Today the country is almost debt free; Iraq is one of the leaders in oil, natural gas and holds a huge amount of gold in its country.

... The Company believes in the near future there will be a revalue of the Iraq Currency, it is the Company's opinion after doing its due diligence and public statements from Iraq's government officials, that the revalue could come in at between .82 and 1.00 per US Dollar.

Twang

Jim in San Marcos borrows and discusses a chart showing homeowners' equity. As residential property prices drop, more borrowers move into negative equity. He says bank-owned properties (REOs) are already pricing-in a fall of 30%+.

"Examine the disappearing equity. It came from no where and is going back to no where."

That's what happens when credit becomes a form of currency, as the bullion moralists keep reminding us.

Why are banks allowed to create so much "fiduciary money"? Who does own the Fed?

Bitter medicine

The Levy Economics Institute runs a range of figures through its economic model and decides that it is pessimistic for the short-to-medium term, but guardedly hopeful for the state of the US economy afterwards:

... the present crisis is already more serious than any that has occurred before in modern times.

... Our projections, taken literally, imply three successive quarters of negative real GDP growth in 2008. Spending in excess of income returns to negative territory, reaching -1.6 percent of GDP in the last quarter of 2012—a value that is very close to its “prebubble” historical average.

... while the rate of growth in GDP may recover to something like its long-term average, all our simulations show that the level of GDP in the next two years or more remains well below that of
productive capacity.

... We conclude that at some stage there will have to be a relaxation of fiscal policy large enough to add perhaps 2 percent of GDP to the budget deficit.Moreover, should the slowdown in the economy over the next two to three years come to seem intolerable, we would support a relaxation having the same scale, and perhaps duration, as that which occurred around 2001.

Our projections suggest the exciting, if still rather remote, possibility that, once the forthcoming financial turmoil has been worked through, the United States could be set on a path of balanced growth combined with full employment.

Raving sane?

"Deepcaster" (Financial Sense, January 4) looks again at the mysterious ownership (and creation) of the US dollar by a private bank, the Federal Reserve. The more one reads about it, the weirder it gets - it's like finding out that ET really does exist!

The conspiracy theory here is that the Fed and other central banks are a cartel that not only inflates the money supply, but has created trillions in derivatives, partly to manipulate the investment markets. "Deepcaster" accuses this cartel of engineering drops in the gold price, just when you'd think gold should be emerging as a natural currency.

He brings in the Amero theory, too - ultimate replacement of the destroyed dollar by a new North American currency, presumably so the crooked poker game can continue with fresh cards.

Can anyone please shed light on all this? For example, who EXACTLY are the owners of the Fed?

If nobody knows or is willing to tell, perhaps one of us should claim ownership - "finders, keepers".

Unemployment B-L-S---

Market Ticker: The Recession of 2008

Karl Denninger reports that the US unemployment rate has hit 5%. He thinks - and it's certainly plausible - that we're already in a recession. Especially if Rob Kirby is right, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is lying about the scale of job losses in the financial industry.

Marquess of Queensberry rules?

One envies the cheerful liberal economists such as those at Cafe Hayek, but will their principles work in a world where other, much darker forces are working? As I suggested in September, there may be those who will use the tools of international trade and investment as part of a vengeful and destructive plan.

Now, Jeffrey Nyquist treats us to another Sino-Soviet frightener, and Nadeem Walayat sees even more potential enemies, who may not refrain from below-the-belt blows. The enemies of the Open Society abide. Are our Western politicians prepared? Will they defend us?

Gold and the Dow

Prudent Bear's excellent presentation "The case for a secular bear market" includes a graph of the Dow divided by the price of gold, from 1920 to 2005.

Taking the present values - Dow 13,056.72, gold $864.80 - the formula works out at 15.098, which suggests that the Dow is still well above trend.

Some would see this as indicating a coming gold spike; but another way to rebalance is for the Dow to fall. As credit deflation takes hold, I suggest that in 2008, both gold and the Dow will drop below their current levels, but the Dow more than gold.

UPDATE

Gary Dorsch is looking at the same ratio ("By the end of 2008, the DJI to Gold ratio might tumble towards 10 oz’s of gold"), but thinks the rebalance could happen the other way, through destructive inflation.

If so (and he doubts that it's possible), Karl Denninger thinks you'd still be better off betting on the Dow, using call options:

So tell me again - if you believe in "hyperinflation" - why do you want to buy the clear LOSER of an asset that metals represent, when you can buy index CALLs and, if your thesis is correct, you will make an absolute stinking FORTUNE!

(Of course if you're wrong and the DOW is under 16,000 by the end of the year, that $20,000 is totally flushed. That's the price of poker - but again - just how sure are you that "The Fed" is going to "hyperinflate"? And by the way, no, I don't think they are - in fact, I don't think they CAN.)

SECOND UPDATE

Gary Tanashian sets a target of $920 for gold, but anticipates a drop-back anytime; but longer term, Julian Phillips can't imagine governments NOT hyperinflating, to avoid the horrors of deflation.

The astrologers continue to mutter and gesture over their charts.

Dead Cat Splat

Some expect the market to drop, but bounce quickly as in 2000. Vince Foster says not, since this boomlet has been credit-fuelled.

His view: housing is woeful, emerging markets look as though they may be topping-out, the Ted Spread is signalling insolvency fears, the 10-year bond rate augurs slowing growth; so cash is king.

Little boxes, revisited

I've previously suggested that you don't need to be too technical, as long as you focus on the reward systems (the cui bono?). Here, Michael Panzner quotes and discusses an article by Nat Worden on the failure of ratings agencies in the subprime debacle.

I think it's in "Jane Eyre": a teacher who wishes to instil piety into a little boy, asks him whether he'd rather have a biscuit or a blessing. When he answers, a blessing, he gets two biscuits.

When recession empties the the biscuit barrel, maybe we'll get authentic leadership.

UPDATE

My beloved recalled it better, and so I've found the quote on the Net:

...I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six Psalms by heart; and when you ask him which he would rather have, a ginger-bread nut to eat, or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: "Oh, the verse of a Psalm! Angels sing Psalms," says he. "I wish to be an angel here below." He then gets two nuts in recompense for his infant piety.’

We need recession, to avert total disaster

In a sock-to-the-jaw article that I think everyone should read, Nadeem Walayat shows the political-economic forces tides beating against our cliffs and undermining our liberty and prosperity. Like me, he sees sovereign wealth funds as part of this process.

It seems that we must wish our own countries a spell of hard times, in order to stimulate the changes that will defend us from permanent ruin.

Ta-ta industrial wages, hello Mcjobs

India's leading car-maker Tata seems likeliest to take over Jaguar and Land Rover. The fiddle plays, Rome burns.

Mirror, mirror

A few days ago, I said, "This is where I thought we were in 1999. Thanks to criminally reckless credit expansion in the interim, we're still there, only the results may be worse than I feared then." Now, Tom Madell draws comparisons between 2000 and 2007.

Few are brave enough to come out and declare the start of a bear market; but the watchword is "proceed with caution".

Consequences

Michael Panzner turns his attention to the human implications of recession, as I have been doing for some time, most recently here, here and here. At least America is a democracy and so politicians must have some incentive to clean the Augean stables; I don't know about the UK.

Bad news: we depend on the banks

The long-experienced team at Contrary Investor thinks the credit market needs watching, not the equity market. Outlook: oh, dear.

When things turn vengeful, let's take a careful look at the banks, and those who give them their orders. Not for the first time, they've lifted us up, and are making ready to drop us from a great height.

As the song from Mary Poppins has it:

If you invest your tuppence
Wisely in the bank
Safe and sound
Soon that tuppence,
Safely invested in the bank,
Will compound

And you'll achieve that sense of conquest
As your affluence expands
In the hands of the directors
Who invest as propriety demands

[...]

You can purchase first and second trust deeds
Think of the foreclosures!Bonds! Chattels! Dividends! Shares!
Bankruptcies! Debtor sales!

... for the whole lyric see here.

The scene ends, happily enough, with a run on the bank as young Michael loudly demands the return of his twopence.