James K. Galbraith: The Financial System Must Be Reformed

Although I differ considerably from Mr. Galbraith's conclusion that government must take on a larger role financing the reconstruction through the active allocation of capital, I cannot fault his call for a serious reform of the financial system as the sine qua non for a sustainable recovery. Why substitute one version of financial engineering by corrupt politicians for another?

I am pessimistic that this will happen, yet. Although the pigmen feel that they have 'won the war,' and will continue from outrage to greater outrage, until they provoke a reaction, and the people finally rise in their righteous anger.

It has not happened yet, at least successfully. Washington is under siege by an army of lobbyists with cash in hand.

But it is almost a certainty that the pigmen, who think that they have won the war, will go from outrage to outrage, until the people finally rise in their righteous anger. The pigmen cannot restrain, cannot reform themselves even when it is so obviously in their own interests. Such is the instinct of the predator class to insatiable, seemingly obsessive, self-destruction. Enough is never enough.

"Tombé de l'éternel, Satan veut l'infini. Tombé de l'Être, il veut l'Avoir. Mais le problème est insoluble à tout jamais. Car pour avoir et posséder, il faut être, et il n'est plus. Tout ce qu'il s'annexe, il le détruit. Et certes, il pourra tout avoir, puisqu'il est appelé Prince de ce Monde dans l'Évangile - mais il n'aura que ce monde-ci." Denis de Rougemont

"Having fallen from the eternal, the Evil One's desires are endless, insatiable. Having fallen from pure Being, he is driven by the desire to possess, to fill his emptiness. But the problem is insoluble, always. He is compelled to have and to hold, to possess and consume, and nothing else. All he takes, he destroys. Certainly he rules the material, as he is called the Prince of this World in the gospels - but only of the things of this world." And since material things will have an end, he is condemned to a gnawing hunger, and the wages of his pride, oblivion. The is no greater punishment for pure ego. And the knowledge of this is his torment.

"What to do? To restore the rule of law means first a rigorous audit of the banks and of the Federal Reserve. This means investigations. Representative Marcy Kaptur has proposed adding a thousand FBI agents to this task.

It means criminal referrals from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, from the regulators, from Congress, and from the new management of troubled banks as they clean house. It means indictments, prosecutions, convictions, and imprisonments. The model must be the clean-up of the Savings and Loans, less than 20 years ago, when a thousand industry insiders went to prison. Bankers must be made to feel the power of the law in their bones.

How will this help the economy? The first step toward health is realism. We must first stop pretending that bad assets can be made good, that bad loans will someday be repaid, and that bad people can run good banks. Debt crises are resolved when debts are written down and gotten rid of, when the institutions that peddled bad debts are restructured and reformed, and when the people who ran the great scams have been removed. Only then will private credit start to come back, but even then the result of bank reform is more prudent banks, by definition more conservative than what we've had...

The entire host of neglected priorities of the past 30 years should be on the agenda now. That is the way—and the effective path—toward prosperity."

James K. Galbraith, Tremble Banks Tremble

The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustained recovery.

Bastille Day 14 Juillet 2010

"The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us."

Voltaire

"Behind every great fortune there is a crime."

Honore de Balzac

"Prejudices are what fools use for reason."

Volaire

Remember, remember...

Gold Daily Chart

This setup resembles the rally off the April low.

If the SP 500 falters at overhead resistance gold will likely remain within its trading range.

SP 500 September Futures Daily Chart

Stocks were rallying today on optimism about earnings based on last night's results from Alcoa and CSX.

After hours tonight Intel announced better than expected earnings and raised its forecasts. This caused the futures to gap open when they resumed trading. Here is what they look like now, after hours.

This has been a wicked rally off the lows. It *might* be getting towards a short term top, possibly tomorrow, but I would not want to get in front of it. Wait and see how the rally progresses.

Net Asset Value of Certain Precious Metal Funds and Trusts

Chris Whalen Calls for Reforms, But Gives Crony Capitalism and the Neo-Liberals a Rewrite

I enjoy Chris Whalen of the Institutional Risk Analyst. His outlook and perspective are generally well-informed and well to the point, fresh and practical.

In his most recent essay titled Building a New American Political Economy, excerpted below, he spends quite a few words in taking Paul Krugman and the stimulus crowd to task, or more accurately, out to the woodshed for what we used to call a 'proper thrashing.'

I like his conclusion, which strikes a similar chord to the tag line which I have been promoting since 2002.

"The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustained recovery."

There must be a fundamental restructuring of the US economy, a reconsideration of globalization and its scope and impact on domestic policy, and a significant reform of the role of the financial system before there can be any sustained recovery.

The housing bubble was not only noticeable well in advance of its collapse, but it was predictable in my view, because of what Greenspan's policies had been coupled with the fiscal irresponsibility of the government.

What I do not like, at all, is the revisionism that imputes the problems facing the US today to 'the Keynesians,' seemingly alone.

Deficits Don't Matter, Until They Do

Who was it who proved, according to Dick Cheney, that 'deficits don't matter?' Not some wild eyed liberal, but Ronald Reagan. And if Reagan was a Keynesian, then Tim Geithner is Leonardo da Vinci.

The greatest deficit growth in the US came from a belief that cutting taxes for the wealthy, without cutting spending, and even increasing spending by enormous amounts on military projects, even in peacetime, in the pursuit of empire and the New American Century, was viable because this would stimulate growth from the top down, trickle down as it were, and negate the deficits.

It was from the anti-government Republicans and faux Democrat elites like Bill Clinton and his economic advisor Robert Rubin, and the billionaire boys club's think tanks, that the 'efficient markets hypothesis' was spawned, and the crony capitalism, globalization, and deregulation was unleashed. Wall Street led a decade long hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying effort under Sandy Weill to overturn Glass-Steagall, and unleash the bubble economy.

The F Word (Fraud)

Were these men who brought the US economy to financial collapse after a series of increasingly devastating asset bubbles primarily socially minded Keynesians? No, not at all, not in the least. They were white collar criminals at worst, and greedy men who had lost their perspective at best, who engaged in a steady campaign to co-opt the regulators and politicians, and swindle the public, reaping personal fortunes for themselves.

And in our planning for the future we need to understand and remember that the depravity that would turn even the best system to its own eventual destruction is hard wired into some of the participants, and so the system can never be self-regulating.

So let's get on with the reform, but not conveniently rewrite history along the way, and ignore the essential that was played by crony capitalism, ideology, and a steady drumbeat in selling the mass of people on the most ridiculous of economic canards.

"In yesterday's edition, Krugman takes Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to task for not doing more to combat deflation. Krugman, who is a leading apologist for deficit spending under the tattered rubric of neo-Keynesian economics, thinks that the Fed should do more. And what should the Fed do according to Paul Krugman? Print more money. More quantitative easing via purchases of private debt is the urgent recommendation of this leading American economist...

A political position, like one's view of the economy or the orbiting planets, is very much a matter of perspective. One of the things that troubles us about where the U.S. economy is headed is that opinion leaders such as Krugman cannot seem to accept, much less articulate, the fact that the global economic equation has changed and that U.S. economic assumptions must also be adjusted in response.

We talk about a double dip in the economy, for instance, as though we all are going to miraculously return to "normal" after the latest economic slowdown is past. But these promises of a return to normalcy seem out of line with the economic reality that every American can see before them. As the COO of one of the largest hedge funds in the world asked recently: "Are we in a typical business cycle or does the crisis of 2008 represent a reset for the global economy?" We believe it is the latter. [And obviously so do I, since I have been saying this for at least five years now, that reform and restructuring are the sine qua non for setting the US economy on a sustainable course - Jesse]

To us, the first step on the road to recovery is for Americans to admit that we have serious, long-term problems, issues that are going to prevent the U.S. from regaining economic vitality -- at least so long as we pretend that they do not exist. The U.S. cannot make any real progress toward a stable environment for creating jobs and growing private business so long as leading members of the economics profession such as Paul Krugman continue to pretend that the old model of borrow and spend is sustainable. [Chris singles out Krugman here, but for my money the neo-liberals, who dug the hole we are now in with their fraudulent views on free markets, and who are now preaching austerity for the middle and lower classes and more tax cuts for the wealthy, meaning stealing what they have left in the hands of the many, are repulsive beyond all reason. - Jesse]

Instead of talking about ways to boost national income and create real employment, Krugman and his ilk simply call upon the Fed to print more money to boost short-term demand for goods, many of which are imported. By encouraging consumption without regard to the source of the goods, Krugman and his peers in the world's second oldest profession remain locked into the same mental framework and vocabulary that has governed the mainstream of American fiscal and monetary policy since WWII. This is unacceptable. [I think Chris misses a very key point, the sea change in supply side economics and the rise of the efficient markets hypothesis in the 1980's. One might remind him that as late as 1995 the American economy looked to be getting back on the right track, until the presidency of W. Bush put it back into a nose dive. - Jesse]

Economists such as Krugman do not seem to appreciate that all of the Fed's extraordinary efforts over the past two years to inject liquidity into the U.S. economy have had little impact outside of the financial sector. [Since this is where the Fed and Treasury targeted the relief, to the creditors, it ought not to surprise anyone, and I am not sure I would blame Krugman for this. Bernanke is surely no Keynesian. - Jesse]

The suggestion by Krugman that the Fed do more of the same really is quite irrelevant to our current national predicament. Until we discard the bankrupt thinking about fiscal and trade deficits that have characterized the careers of people like Larry Summers and Paul Krugman (and a whole lot more of the think tank crawling economists who promoted the efficient markets hoax and deregulation and privatization without planning and oversight - Jesse) for the past four decades, Americans will make no progress toward achieving real economic prosperity.

The lack of alignment between the current economic narrative within the U.S. and the underlying reality facing millions of Americans is not only blocking progress toward a true economic recovery, but is making it impossible for the U.S. to communicate much less cooperate with our allies and trading partners. When President Barrack Obama and Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner wander around the globe preaching a gospel that consists of more debt and inflation, you can understand why they get a chilly reception.

Unlike Paul Krugman and Treasury Secretary Geithner, our trading partners around the world understand that competitiveness and fiscal balance are the real basis for national security. Since they cannot print money at will, the leaders of Germany and the UK are compelled to take the pain of addressing fiscal deficits immediately. But as the nations of Europe work through their problems, they will emerge stronger and more unified, and able to better compete in the global economy. [This sounds like the kind of praise that Mussolini and Herr Hitler obtained from Wall Street and the business media in the 1930's - Jesse]

Americans need to build a new economic narrative, one that is based upon creating real jobs in the real economy and not upon subsidies for foreign exporters and mismanaged Wall Street banks. [Amen - J] We need new economic thinkers who are not hobbled by devotion to the failed economic structures of the post-WWII world [Like the 'trickle down' theory and efficient markets fairy tale of predatory crony capitalism - Jesse].

Regaining control of the U.S. economy must start with a frank discussion with our trading partners and foreign creditors about jobs, the value of the dollar and what it will take to bring America's economy back into balance. [And the real 800 pound gorilla, a serious reappraisal of US military spending, and the 700+ bases it maintains around the globe - Jesse]

The first step in this process is to make it clear that the US must reduce its dependence upon imports and refocus investment on domestic industries that supply domestic jobs. We must allow the value of the dollar to fall and/or impose duties on all imports to generate badly needed exports, jobs and federal revenue.

Once leading trading nations such as China understand that America will no longer import their unemployment, we can then have a fair and reasonable discussion about the global economy in the 21st Century. But do we have any economists with the courage to lead such a discussion? Send us your suggestions.

Gold Daily and Weekly Charts

SP 500 September Futures Daily Chart

Flat on light volumes, jammed into short term overhead resistance, ahead of earnings season which starts in the US today.

There has been little or no mention of the China downgrade of US debt on Bloomberg television today, which has been a cheerleading session for equities. Their overall presentation at least during US trading hours is best described as 'frivilous with a dully pendantic corporate flavor.'

China Ratings Agency Downgrades US Debt From Moody's, S&P's, and Fitch's AAA Rating

Currency wars. Well at least a Phony War for now. See, nothing has happened. All is well. Move along. Nothing to see here. Status quo intact.

The US sovereign debt gets a stiff downgrade, cut down from number one in the world, to a distant thirteenth place by China's Dagong Credit Rating Agency.

Governments like China do not take actions like this randomly, and their quasi-state organizations do not march to the beat of their own drummer. It will be interesting to watch this develop, and calculate the strategy, to figure out the next steps.

From a thematic perspective, coming up, competitive devaluations, and a shift in the reserve currency regime that will resemble a seismic shift, most likely pivoting around the SDR composition discussions later this year.

The US battered the euro and has been sitting on gold and silver ahead of the SDR discussions. And now China has slipped a shiv between the ribs of the almighty Dollar. This is just the overture, the prelude to the dance.

And further down the road, trade wars, well, at least trade wars more overt than the ones which have been ongoing since 1980, in which the US based multinationals thought they were pulling the strings, breaking the back of American labor.

And guess who the arms dealers are in this paper chase, selling to all sides? Who are the untouchables, the TBTF, a strategic asset in the financial arsenal of democracy? When these boys roll into town it's time to hide the women, children, livestock and provender.

The US media will downplay this, dismiss it, say it does not matter because China will not/ dare not/ can not/ do anything to change the status quo. And expect the spin to be laced with plenty of condescension. Oh those sly Chinese, just talking up their book, just like us. But who can take those little rapscallions seriously.

They are wrong, and they know it.

Well maybe not the news readers and the spokesmodels, who only know what they are told. But the strategists, the thought leaders, and the smart money most certainly know it. They just do not wish to share that information with you yet, because real knowledge is power. And show enjoy the show.

Watch how people react to this, and how they spin it to you. This will be an indication of either what they know, or the kind of character they have. Then you will know something about them and the kind of player they are. Remember it.

They think that you do not have a need to know anything about this yet, because you are intended to be cannon fodder, grist for the mill. Along with Europe, which is busy scourging its citizens into submission to more willingly serve the Anglo-American banking cartel.

And of course there is the new dictum, 'Extend and pretend. If it bleeds, bury it...'

And so the fog of war rolls in.

Associated Press
Chinese credit firm says US worse risk than China
By Joe Mcdonald
July 11, 2010

BEIJING (AP) --
A Chinese firm that aims to compete with Western rating agencies declared Washington a worse credit risk than Beijing in its first report on government debt Sunday amid efforts by China to boost its influence in global markets.

Dagong International Credit Rating Co.'s verdict was a break with Moody's, Standard & Poors and Fitch, which say U.S. government debt is the world's safest. Dagong said it rated Washington below China and 11 other countries such as Switzerland and Australia due to high debt and slow growth. It warned the U.S. is among countries that might face rising borrowing costs and risks of default.

The report comes amid complaints by Beijing that Western rating agencies fail to give China full credit for its economic strength, boosting borrowing costs -- a criticism echoed by some foreign analysts. At June's G-20 summit in Toronto, President Hu Jintao called for the creation of a more accurate system.

Dagong, founded in 1994 to rate Chinese corporate debt, says it is privately owned and pledges to make its judgments impartially. But in a sign of official support, its announcement Sunday took place at the headquarters of the Xinhua News Agency, the ruling Communist Party's main propaganda outlet.

Dagong's chairman, Guan Jianzhong, said the current Western-led rating system is to blame for the global crisis and Europe's debt woes. He said it "provides the wrong credit-rating information" and fails to reflect changing conditions.

"Dagong wants to make realistic and fair ratings," he said.

Beijing has more than $900 billion invested in U.S. Treasury debt and has appealed to Washington to avoid hurting the value of the dollar or China's holdings as it spends heavily on its stimulus.

Dagong's report covered 50 governments and gave emerging economies such as Indonesia and Brazil better marks than those given by Western agencies, citing high growth. Along with the United States, some other developed nations such as Britain and France also received lower ratings than those of other agencies.

Dagong rated U.S. government debt AA with a negative outlook, below the firm's top AAA rating. It warned that Washington, along with Britain, France and some other countries, might have trouble raising more money if they allow fiscal risks to get out of control.

"The interest rate on debt instruments will run up rapidly and the default risk of these countries will grow even larger," its report said.

Dagong said it hopes to "break the monopoly" of Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poors and Fitch Ratings. Their reputation suffered after they gave high ratings to mortgage-linked investments that soured when the U.S. housing market collapsed in 2007.

Manoj Kulkarni, head of credit research for SJS Markets in Hong Kong, said that despite the possibility China's government might try to influence Dagong's decisions, there is room in the market for a Chinese agency because Western firms' credibility is badly tarnished.

"As long as there is another opinion and it is backed up, I don't really think a China-based company will have an incentive to rate, say, Indonesia any better than a U.S.-based rating agency," Kulkarni said.

"If it comes to Chinese government-related companies, maybe there might be a conflict of interest, and investors would have to be aware of that fact," he said.

Chinese leaders have appealed repeatedly to Washington to safeguard their country's U.S. holdings and avoid taking steps in response to the global crisis that might weaken the dollar or the value of American assets.

Dagong rated China AA-plus with a stable outlook -- higher than Moody's A1 and S&P's A-plus -- due to rapid growth and relatively low debt.

Ahead of it were seven countries including Switzerland, Australia and Singapore that received the top rating of AAA, the same as those from Western agencies. Canada and the Netherlands also ranked above China...

Bloomberg
China Wins Higher Rating Than U.S. in First Ranking
July 12, 2010

July 12 (Bloomberg) -- A Chinese company gave its own government a higher debt rating than the U.S., U.K. and Japan in the nation’s first sovereign ranking because of widening deficits in the developed world.

Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. rated U.S. government debt AA with a negative outlook, and China AA+ with a stable outlook, the company said in a report covering 50 nations published on its website. The yuan-denominated rating is higher than Japan’s AA- and the same as Germany’s, Beijing-based Dagong said...

Dagong’s rating report gave “markedly” different valuations to 27 countries compared with those of Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings, the statement said. The euro has slumped 12 percent this year on concern that Europe’s fiscal crisis may expand beyond Greece and Spain to Germany and France.

“This marks a new beginning for reforming the irrational international rating system,” Chairman Guan Jianzhong said in a statement. “The essential reason for the global financial crisis and the Greek crisis is that the current international rating system cannot truly reflect repayment ability.”...

China Ratings Agency Press Release

Typical snide reaction from the Financial Times I Heart China Says China Rating Agency

Three Interesting Audio Interviews About Precious Metals and the Economy

King World News is a great alternative source to the mainstream media.

Here are three interviews that all appeared on July 10, and are well worth hearing.

1. Ben Davies of Hinde Capital

2. James Turk of Goldmoney

3. Ted Butler On Gold and Silver

Austrian Economics: True Money Supply, Deflation and Inflation

Here is the Austrian theory of money supply and its measures in a nutshell.

"The True Money Supply (TMS) was formulated by Murray Rothbard and represents the amount of money in the economy that is available for immediate use in exchange. It has been referred to in the past as the Austrian Money Supply, the Rothbard Money Supply and the True Money Supply.

The benefits of TMS over conventional measures calculated by the Federal Reserve are that it counts only immediately available money for exchange and does not double count. MMMF shares are excluded from TMS precisely because they represent equity shares in a portfolio of highly liquid, short-term investments which must be sold in exchange for money before such shares can be redeemed.

For a detailed description and explanation of the TMS aggregate, see Salerno (1987) and Shostak (2000).

The TMS consists of the following: Currency Component of M1, Total Checkable Deposits, Savings Deposits, U.S. Government Demand Deposits and Note Balances, Demand Deposits Due to Foreign Commercial Banks, and Demand Deposits Due to Foreign Official Institutions."

True Money Supply, Ludwig Von Mises Institute

Here is some additional reading on the subject. The Austrian Theory of Money by M. Murray Rothbard

The weakness in TMS is the same as in all of the narrower money supply aggregate measures, in that it is very volatile in the short term because of seasonal demand. Ideally one would perform long term trending to get a better idea of the expansion or contraction of the money supply.



As one can see, the trend in money supply growth has been quite strong, almost parabolic.



Why do I present this? Because I thought it would be a good idea for those who aspire to be Austrian economists to know what the Austrian School thinks about money supply and how to measure it.

So when some point to M3, for example, and see an argument for deflation rampant, they should at least understand that they are not being 'true to their school.'

I should disclose here that although I have sympathy for many of the things that the 'Austrian School' says, I am not an 'Austrian' or a member of any economic school of thought for that matter. I think the Austrian school has been influenced to the point of being hijacked by the neo-liberal economists, due in large part to its marginalization in the study of economics and its lack of vigor.

Returning to what the Austrians think, a fairly recent discussion of this deflation issue was penned by Richard M. Ebeling in The Hubris of Central Bankers and the Ghosts of Deflation Past.

"One fact should be pointed out in terms of the current economic crisis. There has been no monetary deflation -- that is, an absolute decrease in the quantity of money and credit in the economy. Just the opposite. Since 2008, the Federal Reserve has increased the total amount of reserves in the banking system by around $1.5 trillion, mostly by buying up many of those "toxic" mortgages that were guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

This huge expansion in the potential quantity of money and credit that could flood through the financial markets and generate significant price inflation has been held off the market due to the fact that the Federal Reserve has been paying banks interest to hold those sums as unlent reserves. With key market interest rates being kept artificially low at near zero or one percent through activist Fed policy, banks have found it more profitable earn that positive rate of interest at the Federal Reserve.

But unless the Fed finds some way to drain those "excess reserves" out of the banking system, significant inflationary -- not deflationary -- forces may be at work looking to the next few years ahead."

This could help some people understand why the expected effects of monetary deflation have not been appearing as they planned.

There is certainly an undeniable slump in aggregate demand that it putting pressure on prices, and some sectors, like housing, are experiencing the collapse of asset bubble.

Some point to credit contraction as deflation, but as the Austrian school would point out, credit is not money, only a means of money creation. The Fed owns a printing press, and as most recently seen, can expand its Balance Sheet and True Money Supply almost at will.

Some things I have seen recently from 'Austrians' leads me to think that a portion of that camp has been hijacked by the neo-liberal economists. That would indeed be a shame if it is true, and ti becomes a trend. Stranger things have happened. But I see it clearly in the calls for austerity, and liquidationism, and 'free markets' from some who wear those school colors.

Markets are always and everywhere never naturally free. They require diligent effort and serious work to be maintained free of fraud, corruption, and inefficiencies. But some find it easy to believe in or at least promulgate economic theories based on the natural goodness of man, and assorted fairly tales and urban myths, if it suits their ideology or duplicitous agenda. One can usually spot them by the quantity of invective and rhetoric against the quality and detail of their thought.

As for Ben's printing press, baby, you ain't seen nothing yet.