This sure doesn’t sound good, and I’m sure the heath care bill only makes the chances of collapse more likely.

In a report entitled “Worst-case debt scenario”, the bank’s asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems.

Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether public or private. It must be reduced by the hard slog of “deleveraging”, for years.

via Société Générale tells clients how to prepare for ‘global collapse’ – Telegraph.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning, Republican reps Jeb Hensarling and Pau Ryan layout why economic expectations are so low.

Why all the pessimism? The source appears to be a growing fear that the federal government is retreating from the free-market economic principles of the last half-century, and in particular the strong growth policies that began under Ronald Reagan. A review of the economic policies instituted by President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress lends credibility to this concern.

Exhibit A is the economic stimulus package signed into law by President Barack Obama in February. Even among previous stimulus efforts, the 2009 stimulus stands out for its ineffective targeting and sheer size. With interest, it is $1.1 trillion, double the size of Roosevelt’s New Deal spending as a percentage of GDP.

Exhibit B is tax policy going forward. It is a near certainty that Democratic-controlled Congress will allow most of the tax cuts of 2001-2003 to expire on Dec. 31, 2010.

Exhibit C is the administration’s intervention in the GM and Chrysler reorganizations. Upsetting decades of accepted bankruptcy law, the administration leveraged TARP funds to place unsecured and lower priority creditors like the United Auto Workers union in front of secured and higher priority creditors.

Health care, the administration’s signature issue, is Exhibit D. Disregarding its impact on quality and access, its plan will surely cost well over $1 trillion over the next decade. The House-passed version includes an 8% “pay or play” payroll tax and a half-trillion dollar surtax on incomes over $500,000, much of which will strike small business. Both taxes will tend to depress investment and the creation of new jobs.

If one substitutes the Blue Chip Economic Forecast’s interest-rate forecast for that of the administration, deficits will increase by an additional $1.2 trillion over the administration’s projected deficits. If the next decade’s interest rates climb to match those of the 1980s, then the deficit would increase another $5.3 trillion. If higher interest rates then slow economic growth, the impact on the deficit would be much worse.

via Jeb Hensarling and Paul Ryan: Why No One Expects a Strong Recovery – WSJ.com.

While I agree with all these, I think the reps believes that government is the solution, and the problem is their solution is not being implemented. This is what happens when you believe the government is the solution to our problems. Whoever lies the best and gets control of the government sets the policies. I’d love to see these guys calling for the government to quit tinkering with the economy.

The free market works, and will handle slow downs much better than politics. This recession would have hit us fast and moved on already without the tinkering. Can you imagine a doctor giving you a shot and saying I don’t want to inflict the pain, so let me put the needle in slowly? When you get a shot, you want it fast and quick. You know it’s going to hurt. Just get it over with. The economy is the same way. If we are going to go through some economic pain, take the brunt of it and get it over with. Instead we have these idiots trying to avoid any pain, and all they do is prolong it. The Fed caused the damn pain, and then says their role is minimize the pain and prevent it going forward. Really? Good job jackasses. Maybe we should try to control the weather so we don’t have any natural disasters.

If you want expectations to pick up, go back to the constitution. Quit tinkering. Tinkering only causes people to speculate on what the tinkering will be, and because our current tinkerers are bigger socialists than the previous tinkerers, they don’t feel good about the tinkering. Remove the tinkering ,and you remove the speculation and the negative expectations.

In case you missed it, yesterday, housing starts fell by 10.6%. Of course all the articles about it had some excuse, and how government was addressing it.

The U.S. housing market is sputtering again, adding to doubts about the vigor of the economic recovery.

Just a few months after housing showed signs of leveling off, bad weather and uncertainty over the extension of a home-buyer tax credit sent new-home starts in October tumbling 10.6% from the previous month. They fell to the lowest level since April, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Starts of single-family houses fell 6.8%.

Earlier this month, Congress expanded the tax credit and extended it through April, so building should improve. Still, the latest data portend poorly for the economy overall, and for fourth-quarter …

via Fear of Double Dip in Housing – WSJ.com.

Is this idiotic or what? We created a bubble by pushing so called affordable housing with government policies and “free money” via the Fed. “Everyone should be a homeowner” was the slogan of the day. So, as the bubble is deflating, instead of letting it deflate naturally so we can quickly get past it, we are prolonging it. We don’t want the quick fast pain of a bursting bubble, so we spend money, which only prolongs and delays the bursting and leaves us further in debt as a nation.

The government is creating speculation by people making their decisions based on if and when the government is going to extent a tax credit. This is why you have speculators. The government is giving them something to speculate about. This blurb even says that now that the tax credit passed, building should improve. OK, so what happens when it expires? Do people stop building? Do we pass another tax credit? We just keep going further in debt as a country trying to minimize the pain of our past mistakes all the while making new mistakes.

Think about this on a personal level. While tax credits and policy seems very impersonal, what is taking place is government is taking by force our money in order to give it to people they want buying a home. Is this moral? Why shouldn’t you be able to keep your own money and decide what you want to do with it. Maybe you’d decide to buy a home if you had more money.

Well, the scam is up, and the Democrats know it. TARP and stimulus have had no effect on creating jobs. So if government didn’t work the first time, I guess they just didn’t do enough.

The House of Representatives is pushing a bill aimed at boosting employment, a potentially risky move that underscores Democrats’ fears about the economy and jobs — including their own as they head into an election year.

Elements of such a bill could run the gamut from infrastructure spending to small-business lending to extra aid for states and the unemployed, lawmakers said. Democratic leaders haven’t determined any specifics — including the politically dicey question of how to pay for it.

The beauty of the free market is you don’t have to pay for it. Get the government the hell out of the economy, and jobs will be created. Oh, and we won’ t have to pay for it. This one line underscores the idiocy of the government. Infrastructure spending is not going to create long term jobs. It also does nothing but reduce wealth, just as all central planning of the economy does. Ask Russia. Lending to small business isn’t going to create jobs either. If the economy is a disaster thanks to government, why would small businesses borrow money. Who are they producing for? Of course the government’s solution to this disasterous credit bubble is to offer more credit. Lastly, what the hell is extra aid to states going to do for jobs. There was extra aid to states with the last stimulus bill. It did absolutely nothing. It’s just moving money from the Federal government to the state government, both of which are out of control.

Among ideas floated Tuesday by Democratic leaders were using bailout money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program and a tax on Wall Street firms’ financial transactions, such as derivatives trades.

“Hey, trust me.” says the government. We only lied to you about needing the $750 billion by the weekend to bailout Wall Street. Low and behold we have tons of the money still sitting around waiting for us to play God with.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who runs the House Democrats’ campaign effort, said lawmakers were aiming for a six-year infrastructure bill that also could include energy-related investment.

Energy related investment? You mean a GE payoff? Energy companies will invest themselves if it makes economic sense. If it doesn’t make economic sense, and the government decides to do it, that means we’ve basically had our standard of living reduced. If solar power, for example, doesn’t produce a good ROI, it doesn’t matter who is paying for it. No matter what it’s not a good ROI and in this case, the tax payer is funding this bad investment.

Mr. Van Hollen, a member of the Ways and Means Committee, said lawmakers also might consider a payroll-tax holiday — a short-term break on Social Security and Medicare taxes to boost private-sector hiring. He said that might be an alternative to an employer tax credit for new hires, an idea that critics say is fraught with enforcement problems.

Hahaha. So the solution to creating jobs is a payroll-tax holiday? Social security and medicare are both bankrupt, but taking money from them is a good idea. If it’s such a good idea, and this is what is hampering the job market, let’s ditch it for good. This is just stupid. While I would love to see these taxes go, a temporary holiday isn’t going to trick an intelligent business person into hiring. If that reduction in cost is temporary, so is the position.

The White House didn’t comment on the developments. President Barack Obama announced a jobs summit for early December and the administration is likely to weigh in with its own recommendations.

Please President Obama. Give us your wise recommendations. They have benefited us so much so far.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) said he hoped to bring the bill to the House floor by mid-December, giving rank-and-file lawmakers a chance to vote just before the start of the 2010 election season, when control of Congress will be up for grabs.

“Clearly, 10.2% unemployment is unacceptable and is causing great pain to literally millions of people around the country,” Mr. Hoyer said.

This is so important that we need to wait till the political season begins, so politicians can take complete advantage of the politics of it.

House lawmakers hope the Senate also will act before the end of the year. Senate leaders said late Tuesday, they planned to tackle the issue only after completing the health-care overhaul. Sparring over the jobs legislation could last for many weeks beyond that.

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka put pressure on Congress to act Tuesday when he rolled out a proposal putting heavy emphasis on government spending on infrastructure, including schools, as well as a new round of aid to states and local governments to forestall layoffs.

Let’s have a guy who never started a business and only loots business owners tell us how to create jobs. The only form of job creation the AFL-CIO knows is pummeling private businesses into the ground until they aren’t competitive, and then costing many jobs.

Rep. John Larson (D., Conn.), the House Democratic caucus chairman, said he believed House Democrats would have to offset the bill’s cost, at least in part, to answer concerns about the soaring federal budget deficit. The government is expected to run a $1.4 trillion deficit in fiscal 2010, which began on Oct. 1. Democrats are likely to delay the effective date of new taxes until the recession is over.

Another possible revenue source is taxes on Internet gaming.

Mr. Larson, who as the House Democratic caucus chairman pays close attention to rank-and-file members’ attitudes, said there was growing momentum for a tax on some Wall Street trading.

There you go. Tax Wall Street trading. That should boost the economy. Let’s tax capital that is used to fund business expansion and creation.

Leading Democrats in both chambers, including Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, have expressed reservations about a tax on financial transactions, out of concern it could drive trading offshore.

Wow, I actually can’t believe Barney Frank said this. So, he understands that this could drive trading offshore, and thus cost the government capital gains taxes, but for some reason he doesn’t see how massive business taxes and regulation drive businesses offshore.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) said he would support legislation that would further extend the jobless benefits program and boost infrastructure spending, including roads and bridges. The senator said such spending would not only create jobs but boost the efficiency of the U.S. economy. “We need to do much more, ” he said.

Hahaha, the government is going to boost the efficiency of the economy. Did I read that correctly? Also, extending jobless benefits even more. Now there is motivation to get off you butt and start working.

Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R., Va.), said any bill that added to the deficit wouldn’t work. “They tried that approach once and failed,” Mr. Dayspring said.

Among the ideas for unused TARP funds are direct lending to small businesses, and funding of an infrastructure bank that would provide seed money for projects.

via House Leaders Push for Jobs Bill – WSJ.com.

I guess ultimately we get what we deserve. We elect these moronic bums to represent us, so we have no one to blame but ourselves. Who cares if their ideas don’t make sense. Who cares if your family is struggling financially, you wouldn’t believe spending more and borrowing more is the fix. This is the government. It’s different.

Bob Murphy had a great post,  Free Advice: “The Money That Is Sold Abroad Is You!”, that reiterates my post on selling our kids into slavery. This video is a lot more dramatic though. I’m jealous.

Fannie Mae announced a new “deed for lease” program, where they will take your deed and rent your house back to  you if you don’t qualify for a loan modification and can prove you can’t pay your mortgage. They will sign a one year lease with the current owners. They are hoping they can then sell off the houses a year from now, when they assume the housing market will be better and the value of the homes will be higher. This is some pretty optimistic thinking from a now government owned institution.

What would make them think the housing market is going to pick up that much over the next year. So far, unemployment continues to rise. The Fed has been busy at the printing press, and the government is taking debt levels into unknown waters. More than likely if the economy begins to pick backup, we are going to have massive inflation. That will lead to two scenarios. Either we’ll have hyperinflation that makes the 70s look like child’s play, or we’ll have a Fed induced recession to bring inflation under control. Neither scenario paints a pretty picture for a booming housing market.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Freddie is already doing something similar) are only delaying the inevitable. The market is much smarter than the government is. It will take into account that these government institutions have a ton of inventory being hidden from the market, what analyst call “shadow” inventory. If the housing market begins to pick up, it will be driven back down with this excess inventory. Instead, Fannie should take the short term pain and end it quick.

Because of Fannie’s mistakes it is asking the government (me and you) for another $15 billion after a quarterly loss of $18.9 billion. In total, it’s estimated that we will have wasted $200 billion on both Fannie and Freddie by the time this mess is over. Then again, we know how reliable government estimates are. So far we have handed over $61 billion to Fannie, and estimates are that Fannie is sitting on inventory around 65,000 homes.

Instead of becoming landlords, why doesn’t Fannie and Freddie sell of packages of houses as investment bundles. This would get the houses off their books, and it would bring them back into the free market where they can begin to stabilize the market. Investors will buy theses homes, and guess what they’ll have to do? They have to pay taxes on their profits, which ultimately will help with the government losses that will occur with the sale. With the investors holding properties, they will want to drive prices up. They’ll either rent them out, which investors are better at than the government, or they will fix up the homes and put them back on the market. Investors will not shoot themselves in the foot by flooding the market. They will slowly bring the houses onto the market to maximize sale prices and make the most profit. Whether renting or selling, the investor will be paying taxes on his capital gains.

The government should just take the short term pain of selling them off now? This may hurt the housing market, but it will be over and stabilization can begin. Instead, the government is prolonging this crisis and making it worse, and who’s going to eat this mess? We are.

In the International Business Times’ article on the coming inflation, they talk about government debt being at record levels. This is true, and I’ve already talked about how we are enslaving our children with with ever increasing debt. The paragraphs below also mentions how much we are already robbing ourselves. In 2008, the government paid $451 billion in interest on the debt. How much production was eaten up by that $451 billion? How much would that have stimulated our economy? This was before the massive almost $2 trillion deficit Obama is running in 2009. Instead of benefiting from our production, we will be paying for yesterday’s waste. We’ll be robbing ourselves to pay for the bailouts of yesteryear. The bailouts that benefited none of us. They only benefited Geithner and Paulson’s buddies at Goldman Sachs. Couldn’t this classify as modern day enslavement by the rich and politically connected?

2: GOVERNMENT DEBT IS AT RECORD LEVELS

Canada’s budget surplus has turned into a multi-billion dollar deficit as a result of the credit crisis. But Canada’s problems pale in comparison to those of its neighbour to the south. The richest country in the world is drowning in debt.

Let’s examine for a moment the sorry state of US indebtedness. Due to ongoing bailouts and stimulus packages, the US will experience a record $1.75 trillion deficit in 2009. US debt (accumulated deficits), as tracked by the famous US National Debt Clock in Manhattan, stands at a staggering $11.8 trillion and counting. In 2008 alone, the government paid a staggering $451 billion in interest, according to the government’s own website, TreasuryDirect.gov. And that number is expected to rise substantially in 2009.

That figure – $11.8 trillion – is a mindboggling amount of money. But it represents only a part of America’s total liabilities. If Social Security and Medicare obligations are included (which they should be), obligations rise to over $106 trillion dollars, according to the US Treasury.

None of this money has been set aside, but has instead been borrowed by the government for its own use. When combined with the debt of nearly $11.8 trillion, total debt soars to an astonishing $118.6 trillion, or nearly ten times total GDP, or $300,000 per person.

via The Next Crisis: Spiralling Inflation – Part 1 – International Business Times -.

Just to be clear to populist liberals, government will not solve this. The government is the means of the enslavement, so they cannot be expected to set us free.

The International Business Times has a great article on the coming inflation. They highlight below how the government has distorted the true inflation we have experienced since 1983. If the government doesn’t like something, they just redefine it to get the results they want. All Americans know though how much food, energy and housing have increased despite governments claim of low inflation.

3: THE CPI INFLATION INDEX DOES NOT REFLECT TRUE INFLATION

In both Canada and the US, inflation is hurting our pocketbooks, but you wouldn’t know it from the Consumer Price Index (CPI). That’s because the CPI is understated by as much as 7 percent per year according to economist John Williams, who has been tracking US CPI for many years (see Figure 2). In addition, North American investors and consumers seldom hear the “headline” inflation number. Instead, the financial media usually report only the “core” inflation number, which excludes food and energy. This was done, ostensibly, to remove volatility from the CPI. But food and energy account for about 23 percent of consumer spending, so how can they be ignored? Governments have a major incentive to understate CPI because trillions of dollars’ worth of pension funds, health benefits and wage increases for public sector employees are indexed to it.

Today’s CPI is substantially understated because it is calculated using a complex re-weighting formula that is riddled with substitutions, exclusions, hedonic adjustments and geometric weighting. If we were to recreate the CPI using the original 1983 formula, we would discover that even though we have experienced asset depreciation following the credit crisis, price inflation for goods and services has not gone away. And if the monetary authorities had decided to factor home prices into the CPI, the bubble would have been far more obvious from the beginning.

via The Next Crisis: Spiralling Inflation – Part 1 – International Business Times -.

Last night, Ron Paul was on Larry King after Michael Moore. Ron Paul, who seems to be the only congressman who understands economics, rightfully explains that Michael Moore doesn’t seem to know what the free market is. He’s mixing corporatism with capitalism. As I’ve always said, if you listen to liberals talk about capitalism, they are never talking about capitalism. They are talking about whatever they put before capitalism. How many times have you heard crony capitalism, corporate capitalism, greedy capitalism, etc? Their complaint is not about capitalism. Their complaint is with cronyism, corporatism, and greed. None of them are synonymous with capitalism. They are more closely synonymous with government, the very solution that they then propose. Anyway, here’s Ron Paul.

http://www.dailypaul.com/node/112628

For some reason, Americans have been sold on what I’ll now term “the free ride theory”, in which we think we can live our collective lives like we’ve lived our lives over the past decade by racking up our collective debt for today’s keep up with the Jones. Under the Bush administration we racked up debt for a prescription drug program, pork projects and wars. Not to be shown up, Obama has increased our yearly deficits four fold. Is there any end in sight?

No, of course not.

Why stop spending when you can buy votes with so called free goodies. We need to nationalize health care, because we don’t want to pay Wal-Mart for our $4 prescriptions. We need to bail out banks, because supposedly we’ll all lose our jobs if we don’t. We have to take over GM, so that a company, which none of us wants their products, can stay in business. We have to bribe granny with a $250 check, because we don’t want to lose her vote. We have to spend billions to create so called “Green Jobs” because there is no market for them. We’re talking about bailing out newspapers; although most of us get news on the internet. We pay farmers to destroy crops, because we think prices need to be high enough for them to keep producing. With all this frivilous spending, how do you think it is going to be paid for? It is going to be paid by the enslavement of your children, my children and our grandchildren.

This is not just colorful language. It is grounded in the reality we will soon bare witness to.

What is debt? Debt is you promising tomorrows labor for today’s expenditures. When you buy that new car with a loan, you are saying I am going to work X number of hours in the future to get you the money for this plus interest, so that you can give me the car now. If you don’t work those hours, you don’t make the money. If you don’t make the money and pay them, they take the car back. Personal debt is bad enough, but at least you are only enslaving yourself.

What is the most dispicable aspect of what we (yes that includes me) are doing is we are not just enslaving ourselves. We are not saying, I will pay for this. We are building up so much debt that my two year old daughter, my nine year old son, your children, our children’s children and who knows how many generations to come will be enslaved. We are not pledging our future labor for today’s useless expenditures. We are pledging ours and future generations. We aren’t even giving them the chance to say NO. We are saying, “Sorry future Americans, but we want ‘free health car’. We don’t want any job losses (they haven’t stopped have they). We want bridges to nowhere. We want research how to manage the smell of manure! And we want you to pay for it.”

Now, economists would argue that deficits cancel themselves out. They explain this by saying that while we borrow the money, the future generation will hold the Treasury Bonds (an asset) and receive the interest plus principle of those bonds. This basically negates the theory that debt robs one generation by the previous. While this may be true, I emailed the economist that had this in his book. I asked “that may be true if all the debt was held by Americans, but what if China is holding a large portion of that debt. Would that not mean, that A) China is holding the Treasury bond as an asset, and B) won’t they be receiving the interest.?” He responded Yes, that is correct. The book would only apply if future generations means all people regardless of borders. So, not only are we enslaving our future generations, we are enslaving them to China, Japan and other nations. We are saying we want all this stuff, and we are willing to make the next generation work for it in order to transfer the value of their production out of the country. Does this sound like a recipe for a brighter future for our children? While our children are working, the rewards of their work is not bettering their lives. It’s being transferred out to better the lives of foreign nations.

Does this sound like it’s just theory? As of right this  second (it goes up constantly), each citizen owes $343,785. If you have a family of four as I do, multiply that by four, and you get your household debt. Just this week, Moody’s rating agency said the US is a few years away from losing our AAA credit rating. This has never happened. It would be catastrophic to our country and economy. It would mean higher interest on the debt, which would mean even more future labor pledged to today’s expenses.

What does it say that our Secretary of State is begging China to buy more of our debt? We are begging our children’s masters to enslave them. How moral are we?

The financial crisis, we are still in the midst of, undoubtedly woke a lot of people up to the evils of excessive debt. Unfortunately, it has not awoken our politicians. While many families have cut back spending to bring their lives under control, they have at the same time asked the government to continue and even ramp up the very actions that caused them harm in the first place.

While this post is a little depressing, hopefully it will serve as a call to action. A call to stop asking for free handouts from the government that your children will be enslaved for. Stop electing politicians who promise the world and buy votes with pork. Vote for politicians who are going to address the debt problem and speak the truth. With every government policy you hear about ask “How is that going to lower the debt?” Lastly, realize that nothing from the government is free. Everything you ask for from the government comes at the lost liberty of you and your children.