The Week in Economic Data: Another Non Farm Payrolls Friday

It appears as though 'trickle down' stimulus is not having its desired effect according to today's Fed Beige Book.

Fed's Beige Book Fails To Stimulate More Lending - Forbes

Jobs Report on Friday.

Fiat Monetary Theory: The Gamblers

'The Gamblers'

"The historical behavior of interest rates and growth rates in U.S. data suggests that the government can, with a high probability, run temporary budget deficits and then roll over the resulting government debt forever.

The purpose of this paper is to document this finding and to examine its implications. Using a standard overlapping-generations model of capital accumulation, we show that whenever a perpetual rollover of debt succeeds, policy can make every generation better off.

This conclusion does not imply that deficits are good policy, for an attempt to roll over debt forever might fail. But the adverse effects of deficits, rather than being inevitable, occur with only a small probability."

Ball, Elmendorf, Mankiw, The Deficit Gamble

As with most Ponzi schemes, modern fiat currencies are a matter of degree, belief, and tipping points.

There are always limitations in any system, and in paper money systems the debt must be balanced by real growth and investment, an organic growth that makes the rolling debt burden, which is really the basis of the money itself, sustainable and productive.    That growth must be broadly based in order to support consumption from within the system itself, and this implies income commensurate with increasing productivity.

The failure of every fiat currency has been tied to the abuse of power, in the non-organic use of created money not to increase the productive growth of the economy, but to establish monopolies, cartels, speculation, and of course, aggressive war, all in pursuit of the outsized enrichment of a relative few who define themselves as an elite.

And human nature being what it is, all paper money systems have failed within a few hundred years.

There is a variation of  Fiat Monetary Theory, also known as fiat money, which seeks to distinguish itself by its name in addition to its penchant for sophistry, called Modern Monetary Theory.

This variant eliminates the debt problem by switching from a debt based currency to a pure fiat currency issued directly by the government. The longer term problem of currency revulsion, or the rejection by the people of the stated value of the currency, is resolved by greater use of government force.

The resort to force is a tell tale marker of all ideological cults which are unable to achieve a natural stability and an informed, willing acceptance.  That force may include psychological persuasion including propaganda and ridicule.

We are seeing something like this today in Europe, with the compulsion to enforce austerity as the technocrats and careerists refuse to admit that, that by its very design, the Eurozone is inherently unstable. 

And the reforms required to avert disaster are unthinkable, because they will diminish their wealth and power.   And so they become increasingly desperate and self-destructive.

Since the leaders are naturally superior, it is the people that have failed them, because they did not believe enough, work hard enough, sacrifice enough. And so they must be punished.

The Market Price of Corruption: Real Rates, the Real Yield Curve, and the GDP Gap

"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country.

When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank...You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out."

Andrew Jackson, Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States (1928) by Stan V. Henkels

What is the market price of policy error, careerism, and corruption?

The charts are simple, but the implications are profound.

seign·ior·age  

/ˈsānyərij/

Noun Profit made by a government by issuing currency A thing claimed by a sovereign or feudal superior as a prerogative.

Hugo Chavez Is Dead

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has died after a two-year battle with cancer, ending the socialist leader's 14-year rule of the South American country, Vice President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised speech on Tuesday.

The flamboyant 58-year-old leader had undergone four operations in Cuba for a cancer that was first detected in his pelvic region in mid-2011. His last surgery was on December 11 and he had not been seen in public since.

"It's a moment of deep pain," Maduro, accompanied by senior ministers, said, his voice choking.

Chavez easily won a new six-year term at an election in October and his death will devastate millions of supporters who adored his charismatic style, anti-U.S. rhetoric and oil-financed policies that brought subsidized food and free health clinics to long-neglected slums.

Detractors, however, saw his one-man style, gleeful nationalizations and often harsh treatment of opponents as traits of an egotistical dictator whose misplaced statist economics wasted a historic bonanza of oil revenues.

Chavez's death opens the way for a new election that will test whether his socialist "revolution" can live on without his dominant personality at the helm...