Our Economy Is Melting Down And There's Nothing We Can Do About It

When I get up in the morning, I go through a list of stories or subjects I might blog on that day. Looking at the list this morning, I realized that no one subject captured the essential quality of what's going on right now—our economy is melting down. I'm sure most Americans are just cruising right along, watching football as they always do, oblivious to the danger all around them.

But if you're paying attention, you've got to be very, very worried at this juncture. We are being bombarded with bad news everyday. Our economy is being held together with duct tape and Elmer's glue. And the news from Europe and Asia isn't so good either. How long can this go on?

Here are some items on my current list. Although I will write at greater length about these subjects in the coming weeks and months, I'll just provide short summaries today.

1. Housing — "Standard & Poor's analysts believe home prices will drop between 7% and 10% through 2011..." I wonder what people think when they read something like this. House prices drive a positive feedback loop. When prices drop, more homeowners become underwater on their mortgages, which drives more defaults and foreclosures, which increases the inventory of unsold homes on the market, which causes house prices to drop, which causes more homeowners to become underwater... See what I mean? It's a continuing meltdown. When will the Housing Market hit bottom and stabilize? 2013? 2015? Never? Meanwhile, the Fed and the government congratulate themselves on how their prompt action stabilized the Housing Market! Yeah, sure, right. And let's not forget to mention foreclosure fraud.


2. Budget-wise, California is on the ropes. The odds are good they're going down, which means they have only two options: they can seek a federal bail-out, or they can declare bankruptcy (default) and start negotiating with their creditors. Chris Whelan thinks default is the best option because a bail-out would lead to all sorts of interference with their state sovereignty. If California is the first domino to fall—we are talking about the world's 6^th or 8^th or whatever^th largest economy here—can Illinois, New York, and New Jersey be far behind? What will this do to the already-very-shaky muni bond market? And of course there will be massive layoffs of state workers around the country, many of whom have mortgages, which they will default on, etc... (see #1 above).


3. Jobs — The Bureau of Labor Statistics gave us a good October jobs report, but then the evidence started pouring in—it was not a trickle, it was a downpour—that the compilers of our always trustworthy government statistics doctored the numbers beyond all recognition. I was willing to take their October numbers at face value—good months can happen—but consider this:

   Remember last Friday's payrolls numbers — the ones that blew away expectations about the number of jobs created and got everyone talking about recovery again?

   Well, even at the time those payroll numbers were confusing, because the other part of the jobs report — the "household survey" — showed yet another crappy number. But by pointing to the crappy household number and ignoring the payroll number, the bears seemed to be trying to make lemons out of lemonade.

   But it turns out that there was a simple reason why the payroll numbers looked so good — a reason that had nothing to do with underlying strength of the jobs market. What was that reason?

   The government changed the "seasonal adjustment" it made to the payroll numbers — and, in so doing, boosted the number of "jobs" created in October by 100,000.

   Stephanie Pomboy of MacroMavens (via John Mauldin) explains: "The seasonal bar which the payroll data must jump was (inexplicably and dramatically) lowered from prior Octobers. "Thus, in October 2009, the BLS set the bar at 870,000 jobs, similar to the 840,000 it anticipated in October 2008. This year, by contrast, it lowered the bar to 768,000. Mumbo, jumbo, payrolls presented "an upside surprise" of 100,000."

   The jobs market is nowhere close to making even a modest comeback. And I am sick and tired of being lied to by politicians, government bureaucrats, bankers, Warren Buffett and whoever else thinks it's in their best interest to tell a few whoppers. The CPI? It's been a political football for years for now. Who really knows how the BLS calculates the inflation rate? They're not saying.

   I've got news for all you people, you politicians and other miscreants: despite the usual "theory" that boosting "consumer" confidence and reassuring the markets is good policy, it is not good policy if lying flies in the face of reality. Alternatively, you know the economy is melting down and you also know there's not a damn thing you can do about it, so why not cover your ass to the very end? After all, it's the only thing you're good at.

4. Now that we've had the election—wasn't that exciting?—word on the street is that the Republican law breakers lawmakers are quietly moving to kill financial reform (McClatchy Newspapers).
   

   WTF? Don't you have to HAVE financial reform before you can KILL financial reform? Actually, that's the point. Since there's an infinitessimally small chance that regulators will implement a strong Volcker Rule and we'll have a robust Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, newly empowered Republican "legislators" (I use that word loosely) are acting to nip this crisis in the bud. We wouldn't want to live in a country in which Wall Street can't do anything it wants to, would we? How else would phony GDP grow? That growth certainly won't come from new housing (#1), fiscal expenditures by the states (#2), or spending by newly employed citizens (#3).

Our economy is melting down and there's nothing we can do about it. The next big catastrophe, which will likely be a dollar crisis in the global bond markets, may come in one month, it may come in 6 months, or maybe we'll last an entire year. I don't know precisely what's going to happen. If you have an idle moment—you must have, you're reading this—check out the global debt clock.

I do know that all these trends have created many accidents waiting to happen. No Black Swans this time around. Risk? Who cares about risk anymore? There's no escaping it—there is unacceptable risk everywhere you look! Our society is perfectly incapable of healthy, meaningful change, so we will have more of the same corrupt, dysfunctional crap that got us here until we choke on it again.

That said, let me talk to all you "issues" people for a moment. You know who you are.

Maybe you're locavores (promoting locally grown food), or maybe you're peak oil "advocates" or maybe you're against eating meat, or maybe you're Libertarians who want to downsize government, or maybe you're hot for social justice, or maybe you're into political reform, or financial reform, or affordable Universal Health Care, or maybe you want to "save" what's left of the environment, or maybe you want strict controls on CO₂ emissions, or maybe you're concerned about the erosion of our Bill of Rights, or maybe you're against cruelty to animals, or maybe you want to save all those endangered species.

Whatever. There are more just and righteous causes than we can shake a stick at. And there always will be because things are screwed up beyond belief all the time—this is called the Human Condition. But this time around humanity has really screwed the pooch.

For you American activists, here's the Bad News: in a corrupt, dysfunctional society perfectly incapable of healthy, meaningful change, nothing "good" can happen, not now, not next week, not next year, not five years from now, not ever. That's the historical moment we live in. For meaningful change to occur, the entire societal edifice would have to collapse and be rebuilt piece by piece from the ground up, as the founders did in 1787 when they convened to create our (now ignored) Constitution in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, collapse invariably makes things much worse, not better.

As Stephen Colbert would say, that's The Word. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. What you do now is up to you.

Comments

[Mitch]

So are you saying we are going to morph back to local oligarch's rather than multinational/global one's? We have seen what 'legislative' complexity has given us---a rigged system with the most influential/monied interests being able to pull the levers of power and blatantly ignore basic human rights/bill of rights etc. Most of the 'activists' get myopia or fight against other small groups who are axiomatic to their views, even though these other groups don't hold any real power either. Divide and conquer is an amazing strategy apparently--especially when marketing/propoganda is so good at using base limbic reactivity to create new tribalism be it via sports teams, political parties.

So does being more aware of how things really work, just make us voyeurs of economic collapse, guessing amongst ourselves how quickly the Titanic sinks or how long it stays afloat as more and more people drown each day? There is no utopia in the human condition, but Tyranny continues to gain momentum and large segments of the Dem's and Rep's support this in policy, if not in rhetoric. Most people aren't even very good at helping themselves, yet they want to tell everyone else how to live, and use force to do so, strong armed tactics from a distance.

So are there lifeboats available in some manner, or do we have to do a hard reset--while the top dogs don't want systemic change, and no have a military-techno tyranny able to cull the masses in addition to keeping them fearful, dumbed down, and distracted?