Saturday, May 31, 2014

Obama thinks that changing the mouthpiece will change the public's view of him and government.

Jay Carney is leaving the coveted position as White House Press Secretary.  This position is normally highly sought after because it is a gateway job.  In other words, after you leave in good graces, doors open up for you.  Highly lucrative doors.  Just ask Dana Perino, the bumble headed blond bimbo beauty queen Press Secretary of the Bush Administration.  To be fair to ms Perino, she is a good deal smarter than her performances during the Bush years would leave one to believe.  She appeared to be a complete idiot at times mainly because the script which she was handed to recite was ridiculous.  But she muddled through and is now worth a cool $4 million.

The circumstances of Mr Carney's departure assures that he will not be afforded such opportunity.  He is reportedly leaving because of the strain that the position has put on his family.  Well this is an old story.  Any time you hear about someone leaving a good job "for family reasons" or "to spend more time with family" you can be sure they are taking the fall, whether deserved or not, for how things are going for the powers that control them at the present time.  Carney is out not for doing a poor job but simply because the social mood is headed south and the administration thinks that a change in marketing strategy of their scam will help.  They think they can bolster confidence by rolling a few public heads.  They are badly mistaken about this.  Confidence is shot and in a con game that is everything.  Confidence will continue to break down making the final 2 years of the Obama disaster the worst years any president ever spent in office.

All of this is right in line with my main theme which is that peak credit has occurred and that the herd is now turning away from stupid money-driven optimism and political correctness.  Unfortunately, the herd will not just revert to the mean.  We have over shot to the high side by a record amount and now there will be a long period - years in fact - of overshooting to the down side.  It will affect everything.   You don't get an 100 year pump (the federal reserve was created in 1913) without a significant dump.  You can't have an exponential Ponzi without a corresponding collapse.  This is the problem I have written about many times that is enabled by fiat currency and especially fractional reserve lending.  Those who are part of the pump essentially steal some of the prosperity of the later generations.  After credit has peaked it can only go down which means less money in the money supply for those who follow.  That means less opportunity even for the best and brightest to come.  And it certainly means a smaller middle class and a wider gap between the haves and the have nots.  This schism will lead to civil unrest and yes, violence on a significant scale.

Here are a few more articles worth your time:
On returning to the gold standard.

Social and market impacts (scroll all the way down to this section if you are short on time):
"Social and Stock Market Impacts

Peak credit has been surpassed, but a substantial portion of the rise in credit is in the form of student loans that cannot and will not be paid back.

Importantly, millennial attitudes towards cars and other material goods is not the same as their parents. Moreover, student debt and a dearth of high-paying jobs ensures that housing formation will stay depressed, even if attitudes did not change.

As boomers retire, they will need to draw down on both their stock market portfolios and their savings (assuming they have either). Economic support from relatively low-paid millennials so that boomers can maintain their lifestyles will be massive.

Millennials will assist aging boomers via taxation and by overpaying for Obamacare. Higher taxes coupled with increasing time commitments to help care for aging parents will take a toll. And because boomers live longer than ever, the economic drain and time commitment from millennials will increase every year.

This has downward implications on the economy and the markets, especially in light of millennial-mistrust in stocks and the massive amount of student debt many of them carry.

Wall Street is not prepared for the major attitude and demographic shifts that are now underway. Are you?"

I have written about these same points many times:
  • peak credit
  • boomers retiring means market withdrawals at a time when young people are not putting monty into the system
    • Not stated above but I will add it: the government has been making up for this delta by enabling vast amounts of low cost credit to be used to pump the markets.  They hope that this fake prosperity will trick young people into jumping onto the band wagon for fear of being left behind.  But young people have given up on the government and on the bankers and on the markets.  They now see it as all too expensive to spend what little money they are making on.  And of course, I'm referring to those that have jobs at a time when many are deciding that the green paper they would receive in return for their labor simply isn't worth it anymore.
At some point the federal reserve will have to choose: let the bankers fail and create a massive deflationary depression, or watch the price of milk and gas and clothing climb out of the reach of the dying middle class.  There is no happy median, there is no soft landing.  Both paths lead to huge social problems.  However, the deflationary depression is the honest path whereas the inflationary path can quickly turn into a hyper inflationary destruction of the buying power of money.  If they allow that then the USA could break up just like the EU is about to do.

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