SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - No Resolution Yet

There was no clear breakout or breakdown on stocks.

There is also a strong possibility that we move to a sideways chop from here to the next big market move in May.

Why Has the American Economic System Failed, and What Are We Going To Do About It?

"We always want to keep in mind what the function, the purpose, of the economy is. The purpose of an economy is not producing GDP. It is increasing the welfare of citizens, and it is increasing the welfare of most citizens. And the American economic system has failed, and failed very badly. Most Americans today are worse off, most American households have lower real income adjusted for inflation than they had fifteen years ago."

Joe Stiglitz made an aside about half way through his talk about mercantilism at INET Berlin this month that is worth noting. I like the way he frames the problems and his fresh look on the situation but do not favor many of his suggested cures, especially the notion of something that sounds dangerously like central planning by a financial elite. I think that is something that needs much more work, but that is a discussion too often impeded by denial, misdirection, and diversion.

Although he initially addresses his talk to America, he goes on to include other countries, especially Germany. I would add the UK, among others including China, which is a disaster in the making.

I start the tape of his talk at 13:25, so you can hear the basic question and the simple truth that so many have overlooked. The American economic system has failed the public, and that failure has its roots in the 1990's, accelerating at the turn of the century into the financial collapse. It is a story of deceit, corruption, and betrayal.

And the majority of the people, who have suffered the most from this injustice, are being asked to suffer even more for a system that does not benefit them and actually works against them. And they are asking, 'is it worthy of our support?'

And history indicates that they will provide an answer that may be unpalatable for those who benefit the most from the current unsustainable arrangement, who are enriched by the misery of others.

I cannot say it more simply or more emphatically, that the gaming of the system by the monied interests, marked by but not wholly due to the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the trade agreement with China without a floating exchange rate, and the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy while initiating aggressive war on multiple fronts, have set the American economy on a spiral of demise and eventual self-destruction.

What has institutionalized this demise and made it pernicious is the corruption of American power and distortion of thought by big money, and the short term selfishness and self-interest of the status quo. That is what I call the credibility trap.

The point must be made, that the system did not fail because our economic models were no good, that our financial leaders were simply mistaken, that the political powers were pursuing the right path but that things went wrong in ways that no one could have foreseen, and that even now, the thought leaders and spokesmodels for the monied interests are hard at work concealing and deceiving and misleading, feeding the rotten system that has brought us to where we are today.

It was never a mistake. They knew, but it was easier to go along or do nothing, being either craven or compromised. It was always about easy money, and the fraud.

Giving even more money to the Banks, and asking the people to pay for it, in the hope that it will eventually trickle down to the people from whom it has been stolen is not a policy, and not even a policy failure. It is an obscenity.

I sense we are in the negotiation phase, in which the powerful monied interests want to be let off with a wrist slap, and no admission of guilt.  And of course for change to come slowly, maximizing their returns. 

The powerful think that they are the system, the economy and the government, and that it exists to serve them. And so any change must suit their needs, first and above all. But a prideful greed and will to power can never really contain itself, as it can never be truly satiated. It always craves just a little more.

The existing US dollar trade regime dominated by global corporations and banks, backed by widely deployed military power, is not sustainable. We are entering the next phase of this unfolding crisis, and some countries are already there, in which we will see growing domestic unrest and repression, and regional trade wars and alliances, in the evolution of the ongoing currency war.

Reform will come, one way or the other.   The writing is on the wall.

For in that universal call,
Few bankers will to heaven be mounters;
They'll cry, "Ye shops, upon us fall!
Conceal and cover us, ye counters!

When other hands the scales shall hold,
And they, in men's and angels' sight
Produced with all their bills and gold,
'Weigh'd in the balance and found light!'

Jonathan Swift, The Run on the Bankers

Joseph Stiglitz: Is Mercantilism Doomed to Fail? And With It the US Dollar?

This is Joe Stiglitz' presentation at the INET conference in Berlin last week. He speaks about mercantilism, and I added the tagline about the dollar.

The one point I wish to make emphatically is that only under a fiat currency trade system can these large deficits and surpluses be created, in the same manner as the debt bubbles, and asset bubbles.

This is not a new idea, of the natural balance that hard currencies present in a global trading system. But it has been forgotten, put aside in recent years. My friend Hugo Salinas-Price has written a nice presentation of those ideas in his essay Gold Standard: Protector and Generator of Jobs.

I have written on the topic many times, most recent in The Great Flaw In Free Trade Theory and other Vain Beliefs, Hoaxes, and Follies.

Under a hard currency or asset system of trade, as one country draws down its stock of gold, for example, its gold-backed currency would automatically become devalued since there would be less gold underpinning it.

Conversely, as a country built up a trade surplus, over time so much gold would flow to that country so that its currency would appreciate relative to the currencies of the debtor nations.

These changes in valuation would tend to 'balance' the trade flows naturally, and unilateral mercantilism would fail long before it threatened the stability of the international monetary system.  That is not to say that exploitative trade might not exist, such as under the British Empire.  These took more of a form of colonialism, a kind of mercantilism among master and vassals.  But any trade imbalances between developed nations with their own currencies could only grow large with great difficulty.

A fiat currency regime allows huge imbalances not only to exist, but to grow to dangerous and unsustainable levels that threaten the very system itself.

Some of today's problems are indeed because the US is acting as the 'deficit of last resort' because it owns the world's reserve currency. This is known as Triffin's dilemma.

My thoughts about Triffin's Dilemma and the international trade structure  that as a businessman I was operating within during the 1990's, especially after Bill Clinton allowed China to obtain free trade status after a large currency devaluation and without a floating currency stipulation, was that ultimately the world would be plunged into a currency war that would likely either lead to a unified financial order, possibly a triumvirate of spheres of influence, or the failure of the dollar and a radical restructuring of the global financial power structure.

So far we seem to be on track.

Michael Hudson: Debt: The Politics and Economics of Restructuring

I have been watching the presentations from the New Economic Thinking's (INET) Paradigm Lost Conference in Berlin.

Here is Michael Hudson's talk on Debt and Restructuring from April 13, 2012