SP Futures Hourly Chart at 1:30

GDP Number Far Worse Than Expected by Most Economists (But Not Here)

The Fourth Quarter GDP number came in at a negative 6.2% versus the original negative 3.8 percent announcement earlier this year.

That is not a big adjustment. It is a HUGE adjustment. That first number was so obviously cooked by a high side inventories estimate and a lowball chain deflator that it was a knee-slapping howler to anyone who is following this economy closely.

This decline did not happen overnight. It is merely being reported that way.

There should be little doubt in most people's minds that Bernanke, Greenspan, Paulson, and many in the Bush Administration were deceiving us about the state of the economy, for years, almost routinely as a matter of course.

That is important to understand. This was no act of God, no hurricane or meteor strike. And a lot of folks on Wall Street and in Washington playing dumb now knew what was coming. You can decide their motives for yourself, but fear and greed should be high on the top of your list.

The economy has been rotten for a long time, since at least 2001 if not before, and as it worsened more and more money was taken off the table by the Bush Administration and their corporate cronies through no bid contracts and welfare for the wealthy. Coats of paint were slapped over the growing imbalances, market manipulation, malinvestment, fraud and corruption.

Remember that. Don't let it go. Because as sure as the sun will rise, these jokers will be back in business given half the chance. They are shameless, greedy beyond all reason, and persistent. The fiscal responsibility being preached now by the Republican minority is repulsive hypocrisy.

That is why it is so disappointing to see what looks like business as usual from the Obama Administration. Larry Summers appears to be a tragic choice as chief economic advisor. And Tim Geithner, while a capable fellow, is not a thinker, but a doer, an implementer, and a disciple of the fellows that caused this mess.

What to do? Let them know now we expect reform. Don't fall for the same old rhetoric from the 'conservative' think thanks and paid pundits who misled you for the past eight years. They are not conservatives. They are jackals who play on your emotions. And let's not accept a new batch of paid pundits and clever deceivers either. But don't give up and pull over a blanket of cynicism.

Typically Americans will give a new president like Obama 100 days to get his bearings and deal with a tidal wave of problems that he did not create. We do not expect him to fix them, but we want to see a decent start in the right direction. We gave Bush far too much allowance, primarily because of 911 which his handlers played for all it was worth.

So far, with some noted exceptions in non-financials, we the people have not seen what we voted for last November.

President Obama recently said that Wall Street reform is coming, but it will take time.

Mr. President, you may not have the leisure to show us that you know what needs to be done. You are riding a high tide of bipartisan support in the people who voted for you. Once you lose them it will be very difficult to get them back.

We must demand action from the Congress and the Administration who we recently put in place through the elections to clean this mess up and then change the system that delivered it.

Contact the White House

Contact Your Senator

We do not want fewer, bigger banks exacting a fee on every commericial transaction in this country.

1. Bring back Glass-Steagall.

2. Clean up the derivatives market, starting with J.P. Morgan and their 90 Trillion dollar positions.

3. Enforce the various anti-trust laws, enacting new ones where necessary, and break up the media and banking conglomerates.

4. Enact aggregate position limits in all commodity markets and transparency with immediate disclosure of all position over 5% in any market.

5. Effective restrictions and enforcement of naked short selling, price manipulation, reinstatement of the 'uptick rule,' the prohibition of regulated banks from engaging in any speculative markets either for themselves or as agents, and usury laws and regulation of all interstate financial transactions at the national level.

And for the sake of the country, establish a vision, a model, of what the system should look like in accord with the Constitution. And then strike out for it, as painful as that may be, and stop this management by crisis.


Bloomberg
U.S. Economy Shrank 6.2% Last Quarter, Most Since ’82
By Timothy R. Homan

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economy shrank in the fourth quarter at a faster pace than previously estimated as consumer spending plunged, companies cut inventories and exports sank.

Gross domestic product contracted at a 6.2 percent annual pace from October through December, more than economists anticipated and the most since 1982, according to revised figures from the Commerce Department today in Washington. Consumer spending, which comprises about 70 percent of the economy, declined at the fastest pace in almost three decades.

The recession is forecast to persist at least through the first half of this year as job losses mount and purchases plummet. The Obama administration’s attempts to break the grip of the worst financial crisis in 70 years are unlikely to bring immediate relief as companies from General Motors Corp. to JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut payrolls.

“There has been no evidence that the pace of decline is slowing at all, there are other shoes waiting to drop,” Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services Inc. in Boston, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “There is a chance that the stimulus package will kick in” in the middle of this year, he said.

Jim Rogers On the Economy and the Obama Administration

It was interesting to see Jimmy's gloom being cast into the relatively mainstream media. BusinessWeek is like Time Magazine for those who have discovered that the money fairy does not fill their wallets each evening.

Pithy excerpts only. Clink the link for the full interview and Maria's questions.


BusinessWeek
Jim Rogers Doesn't Mince Words About the Crisis
By Maria Bartiromo

...It's pretty embarrassing for President Obama, who doesn't seem to have a clue what's going on—which would make sense from his background. And he has hired people who are part of the problem. ...These are people [Geithner and Summers] who think the only solution is to save their friends on Wall Street rather than to save 300 million Americans.

...What would I like to see happen? I'd like to see them let these people go bankrupt, let the bankrupt go bankrupt, stop bailing them out. There are plenty of banks in America that saw this coming, that kept their powder dry and have been waiting for the opportunity to go in and take over the assets of the incompetent. Likewise, many, many homeowners didn't go out and buy five homes with no income. Many homeowners have been waiting for this, and now all of a sudden the government is saying: "Well, too bad for you. We don't care if you did it right or not, we're going to bail out the 100,000 or 200,000 who did it wrong." I mean, this is outrageous economics, and it's terrible morality.

...Well, if Long-Term Capital Management had been allowed to fail, Lehman and the rest of them would've lost a huge amount of money, their capital would've been impaired, and it would've put a terrible crimp on Wall Street. It would've slowed them down for years. Instead of losing capital, losing assets, and losing incompetent people, they hired more incompetent people.

... banks and investment banks and insurance companies have been failing for hundreds of years. Yes, we would've had a terrible two years. But you're dragging out the pain. We had 10 years of the worst credit excesses in world history. You don't wipe out something like that in six months or a year by saying: "Oh, now let's wake up and start over again."

...They [Citigroup and the car companies] should be allowed to go bankrupt. Why should American taxpayers put up billions to save a few car companies? They made the mistakes! We didn't make the mistakes! I'm sure they'll give them the money, but I'm telling you, it's a mistake. It's a horrible mistake.

...They [the Wall Street Banks] all took huge, huge profits. Who was the head of Citigroup? Chuck Prince? I mean, how many hundreds of millions of dollars did Prince take out of the company? How many hundreds of millions of dollars did other Citibank execs take out of the company? Wall Street has paid something like $40 billion or $50 billion in bonuses in the past decade. Who was that guy who was the head of Merrill Lynch (MERR)?

.....Stan O'Neal. He got $150 million for leaving, even though he ruined the company. Look at the guy at Fannie Mae (FNM), Franklin Raines. He did worse accounting than Enron. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (FRE) alone did nothing but pure fraudulent accounting year after year, and yet that guy's walking around with millions of dollars. What the hell kind of system is this?

...We're going to have social unrest in much of the world. America won't be immune.

...Always in the past, when people have printed huge amounts of money or spent money they didn't have, it has led to higher inflation and higher prices. In my view, that's certainly going to happen again this time. Oil prices are down at the moment, but that's temporary. And you're going to see higher prices, especially of commodities, because the fundamentals of commodities are enhanced by what's happening.

... I really think agriculture is going to be the best place to be. Agriculture's been a horrible business for 30 years. For decades the money shufflers, the paper shufflers, have been the captains of the universe. That is now changing. The people who produce real things [will be on top]. You're going to see stockbrokers driving taxis. The smart ones will learn to drive tractors, because they'll be working for the farmers.

It's going to be the 29-year-old farmers who have the Lamborghinis. So you should find yourself a nice farmer and hook up with him or her, because that's where the money's going to be in the next couple of decades.