Globalization Transfers a Nation’s 70 Year Depression Cycle to the Entire World

The Great Depression of 1929, more than any of America’s depressions before it, showed that although capitalism is the world’s greatest engine of economic progress with no better alternative, it does contain a great flaw that periodically destabilizes the capitalist economy. As each business cycle progresses, wealth and commercial power concentrates in the hands of a few, limiting competition and consumer demand to the extent that the economy and the money supply collapses through nested debt defaults. When this occurs, the overhanging debt and undervalued assets cause a commercial vacuum that is hard to correct.

After, the Great Depression, America instituted controls intended to limit the flaw of capitalism, attempting to limit the concentration of market power in oligarchies and the concentration of wealth in the capitalists, hoping to create a more sustainable balance in the economy. Over time, America’s politicians were lobbied successfully to remove these limiting regulations so that once again concentration was permitted to flourish. However, different from every other concentration cycle, this time concentration was able to effectively cross international borders through globalization.

Having accumulated a concentration of wealth and commercial power needed to seed expansion into globalization, during the last thirty years American businesses have run headlong into the greatest transfer of wealth and capital across international borders ever known. With globalization, America’s nation state has lost much of her ability to regulate what have become multinational corporations for the good of her people.

The result of this loss of power is that similarly to how capitalism’s flaw allows a periodic transfer of wealth from a nation’s workers to its capitalists, indebting the working class until it no longer can support an increase in the economy while servicing its debt, ultimately resulting in the collapse of the nation state’s money volume into 60 to 80 year cyclic depressions, globalization’s flaw will also ultimately prove similar but on a world wide scale. The expansion of the multinational corporation will allow a periodic transfer of the entire world’s wealth from nation states to corporate states ending in a disproportion of wealth that ultimately will cause a worldwide monetary and fiscal collapse.

Prior to the rise of globalization, corporations existed within the laws, regulations, and taxation of single nation-states. They depended on the customer base of single nations and the stability of their nation’s business environment. They also depended on their host country’s mercantilism and military strengths for their relative worldwide trading power. With a prevalence of dependence on their nation states, they negotiated with their stakeholders from a position of relative weakness.

After the Great Depression through the 1970s, corporations contended with the growth of collective bargaining, socialism, environmental regulations, and antitrust interference in their oligarchic profit strategies. With such a lopsided negotiating power structure, corporations were relegated to lobbying behind the scenes for needed legislative and regulatory support as a means to balance their unequal negotiation positions.

Throughout this period, America’s focus on defeating communism through overwhelming military strength had two unintended effects. First, America’s burgeoning military allowed American businesses to expand unopposed into world markets through the bully pulpit of the U.S. military. Second, with the winning of the cold war, the emergence of Eastern markets, and the opening of China creating such immense business opportunity for American businesses, they could now use their legislative relationships they had developed in earlier years to support their participation in the modern gold rush.

American businesses sprinted to these new profit fields in an effort to gain a stake before foreign competitors. To do so, they needed availability of low cost loans and a commitment to open access of American consumer markets. To gain open access to American markets, businesses needed the support of politicians to sell the argument that open trade was a net benefit to the American consumer and that it was essential to America’s success. Winning this public argument then provided cover for politicians, who were beholden to the multinationals and associated banks for campaign funds, to vote for opening America’s markets to foreign manufacturing facilities. This was the beginning of America’s job emigration. We let the job killing Mongols over the wall.

With (a) the debate about open trade behind them, (b) China eager to accept their hard assets and intellectual capital into her country, and (c) banks having maneuvered financial deregulation to extract American capital from consumers, American multinational businesses were now free to expand their direct foreign investments exponentially. As they did, their corporate structures became ever more multinational and their negotiation position with nation-states strengthened considerably.

China, for one, represented negotiations with corporations as between equals. Initial negotiations were win-win and entrepreneurial because expanding corporations and emerging nations wanted separate assets which they valued differently from each other. Corporations wanted and received low cost inputs to production, low cost educated labor, minimal environmental costs, and loose business regulations. China gained access to hard assets, America’s consumer market, trade deficits, American corporate processes and intellectual capital.

Intellectual capital was most important to China so that she could leap frog American know how by creating entire cities to manufacture single products, and providing America’s intellectual capital and business knowhow to the city so that geographically concentrated Americanized core skills could develop. Yet for American multinationals, they valued China’s market potential much more than their own intellectual capital which they believed china could otherwise reverse engineer. They also discounted China’s ability to compete, and felt they could mitigate giving China their secrets by keeping research in America and innovating more rapidly than China.

Once established across multiple countries, multinational corporations now had strengths they never had before. While nation states were able to impose the same wage restrictions, regulations, and taxation as before, multinationals now had mobility to transfer labor, production, distribution, and profits across national borders. Corporations no longer negotiated labor rules and wages from weakness but could now set world wage rates. Through the likes of tiered corporate structures, offshore subsidiaries, multinational accounting, and transfer pricing, corporations could now dictate effective world tax rates. And through multinational diversification, corporations were no longer constrained in size by the whims of any one country’s antitrust laws but were now free to grow unrestrained.

Through globalization, nation states lost the majority of negotiation power they once had. They could no longer command the supply side. Labor could migrate to the nations with lowest overall cost of production and distribution including taxation. Nation states were also forced into political decisions regarding protection of domestic producers that could not compete with foreign costs. And the politicians that would have to enact laws to make domestic goods more attractive could not risk offending their benefactors, the foreign direct investment owners of foreign factories. Nation states could no longer command the demand side either. Their citizens, having tasted the benefits of low cost consumer goods, would not sit idly while prices were increased through substantial tariffs.

With such strengthened negotiating power, multinational corporations ascended to new ranks in the world economy as virtual corporate states, similar in power to nation states yet without the incumbent obligations to citizens’ social welfare. Having loosened the limiting bonds of national antitrust laws, Multinationals could now increase their size without bounds and, as a result, grew to have “economies” that rose above those of most nation states.

The world has yet to fully understand the power of the corporate states, but emerging nation states are embracing multinationals’ newfound power as a means to gain arbitrage power from industrial states. In doing so, they feed and strengthen corporate state power sending the world toward unsustainable wealth concentration. Industrial states have not reacted by collectively attempting to regain a foothold to create regional political regulations but instead are slowly acquiescing to a concentration of corporate state power as all have been left impotent at the direction of their elected officials.

Yet concern for multinational corporation concentration of power is rising amongst western industrial states as all are affected by the corporate state induced economic crisis. Cries for isolationalism, protectionism, and proactive job creation legislation have surfaced once again amongst labor unions and domestic businesses as unemployment has risen, yet their cries come too late for America, having already lost 40,000 factories, 8 million jobs, and trillions of dollars of intellectual capital, core skills, and future development that will never be as a result of these transfers.

The premise of free trade has proven a fallacy. Yet now that globalization is upon us, no country has the power to reverse it. Without collective action to globally regulate multinational corporations, individual industrial nation states will eventually attempt to thrust kamikaze assaults on the power, finance, and asset transfers that have already reduced the future of industrial countries in favor of emerging ones and emerging countries will abandon old world colonialism in favor of new world corporate subjugation. And we will all live through the first experiment of global concentration of wealth and power that promises eventual world collapse. If national capitalism collapse takes 60 years, how long does globalism collapse take?

Ironically, Trickle Down Economics Trickled Down America’s Future

America is a land of irony. We are filled with capitalists whose intent is to accumulate all the wealth the world has to offer, and at the same time, we also have an altruistic nature that tears at our capitalistic infrastructure. We defend our great society and fund outreach to other nations through our tax dollars. We support our dreams of a united earth through a funding of the United Nations and fund our version of world peace through 1,000 military bases dispersed throughout the world. To grow our middle class, for the past thirty years we have supplied enrichment to our upper class to have it trickle down.

Supply side economics is an irony of political invention as well. Its invention of thought intended to provide extra capital to America’s private sector, the sector that creates taxpaying, productive jobs that extends America’s know how, innovation, skills, and gross domestic product. In our world’s current economic system, when a venture is started, some seed capital that has been accumulated by the world’s elite is then combined with borrowed money created from thin air by banks through the venture’s promise to repay. This devised modern structure of government and banking thus provides the investment needed to fund the venture’s infrastructure and start up expenses, including the financial support for job creation.

The wealthier of our country are those that have traditionally been able to accumulate more money than they need to fund their daily expenses, and thus they have provided the seed capital for ventures through their investments. Instead of the entrepreneurs that risk all to build real wealth and create the jobs, Supply Side economics instead provides tax incentives to the wealthy, ironically giving credit to the capital providers for producing America’s jobs. However, capitalism knows no patriotic allegiance. Investment capital will flow to the highest risk adjusted returns regardless of national borders.

After America’s obsessive military buildup made international investments safer, international business became safer investments in the sixties. Opportunities grew wildly after China opened its borders to investment in 1978, creating a gold rush that attracted loose investment capital from the entire world, building tens of thousands of factories that enriched international investors dearly.

So when Reagan Supply Sider legislators passed tax breaks to the “rich”, their trickledown theory wasn’t wrong, it was just decades late in adjusting to the realities of risk adjusted investment opportunity. Ironically, instead of trickle down, America’s tax policy resulted in pouring out, not a trickle but a fire hose gushing toward foreign shores. Trillions of dollars, created by burdening our middle class with excessive debt, left our economy and were converted into factories and other infrastructure such as roadways, bridges, and cargo ships to enhance China’s economy and to increase their employment base.

It appeared at least temporarily that America profited from our supply side doctrine. An entire industry was born to find ways to collect the extra capital and distribute it to the East. America surely got interim jobs in the financial sector to support this fire hose of foreign directed money flow. Yet, decreasing taxes for the “rich” created much fewer permanent jobs in America than it could have, passing the greater load of jobs to the East. It provided America interim financial and deal flow processing while accomplishing the opposite effect than was hoped for to America’s real economic future.

Ironically, Trickle Down Economics Trickled Down America’s Future…page 2 of 2….Worse, when those permanent jobs left our shores, so did decades of investment in our schools and education that every American has paid for through our contract with America. Each of us has voted to contribute thousands of dollars to our school systems to educate our youth. We do not publicly fund our educational system out of altruism. Americans understand that in educating our youth, they will learn the lessons provided by educated Americans before them. They will carry forward the knowledge that grows in our businesses to learn new theories and methods and to discover new scientific breakthroughs that will extend American technical capabilities. We invest in our children to grow our country’s GDP and to support both those that have come before in their turn at retirement and those that will come after who will raise their families in freedom and who will extend our great country’s experiment in democracy.

Ironically, beyond those trade secrets and innovations that are deemed highly responsible for national security, America does not have a policy about those innovations created in America that have been funded by at least 12 years of public schooling if not more through Pell grants, student loans, state school subsidies and other methods. America has an equity stake in every innovation created by Americans and yet we let them go as freely as we let our commodities be dug up from our patch of earth and be sold out from under us through private, foreign country based businesses operating mines on our public lands today.

However, the greatest irony is yet to come. In letting our capital be funneled to China, in letting our jobs transfer to her, in freely handing over our trade secrets, our innovations, and our scientific breakthroughs, we have transferred decades of core skill and national wealth building capability that will now build in China and not in America. The tax base that would have supported our great society social needs will now support those of China. The extra funds that could have supported our government’s international outreach will now support hers. Our altruistic capability will diminish purely from our trickle down tax policies.

And the great investments that our capitalists hope will provide gold rush returns from the trillions of dollars of investment extracted from the debts of all Americans, turns out they may be the greatest Ponzi of the 20th century. Those trillions of dollars now rest on China’s soil as hard assets. They cannot be dug up from the earth and planted back in America. The financial returns that investors hope for count on China remaining strong to honor her commitments. If China defaults, no one will travel to China and take a piece of the infrastructure back home. There is no international bankruptcy court that can enforce repossessment or repayment.

China’s ability to produce repayments of direct foreign investments depends on America’s ability to stay solvent and to continue buying Chinese goods, yet our solvency rests close to the precipice. If our current economic crisis is thrust off the cliff by short sided, self seeking politicians, America’s default will lead to China’s default and all the profits that our investors dreamed of receiving will disappear in the crash. The underlying assets and intellectual capital that transferred to China in the 20th century gold rush will remain there for China’s eventual rapid recovery while the trickle down and fire hosed out financial capital that left America’s shores will have ironically vanished with our gold strike dreams.

Congress’s Debate Over the Debt Ceiling is a Bright Red Goldfish

Reacting to the announcement yesterday that Dàgōng Guójì Zīxìn Pínggū Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī, the increasingly powerful Chinese credit rating agency, suggested they will downgrade the U.S. regardless of whether the US Congress reaches an agreement on raising its statutory debt limit, I simply replied “Ominous”. Reacting to my simple statement, a fellow social media traveler and investment professional responded stating that, “Dàgōng has about as much credibility as a Greek tax collector and that threats of a downgrade are about as ominous as a goldfish”.

It concerns me that our nation is walking into this debt ceiling debate foggy brained enough to suggest that dire warnings of the world will have no effect on our isolated debt discussions. Nonetheless, China, with the United States, the European Union, and Japan, now comprises 70 percent of the world’s GDP. Among these industrialized giants, Dàgōng has downgraded all but its own sovereignty. With the U.S., EU, and Japan’s currencies up against the ropes, what does saying that Dàgōng’s downgrading of U.S. Credit has the omnipotence of a goldfish really mean?

Prior to one of my many moves for my company, our young family lived in Ledyard, Connecticut in an A-frame home overlooking a dock on a deep, clear lake called Long Lake. Preparing for the move, my wife searched diligently for a new home for my 2 year old daughter’s bright red pet gold fish because we could not take it with us. She even went with my daughter Sarah to the pet store where it had been purchased to see if they would take it back, as my daughter had grown very fond of the little fella and very much wanted to secure a home for it but with no avail.

Finally the day came when Daddy had to do the tough sell. I took my wide eyed little girl down to the dock with her pet goldfish in its bowl. It was a very solemn moment as I spoke to her about why her little fella couldn’t come with us while her mother stood stoically a few feet back on the dock. We both said our goodbyes to the little fishy and peered over the dock as I let the bowl into the clear waters of the lake.

As we watched the little guy slowly get adjusted to the water and tussle its wavy fins and tail slowly out of the bowl, I could see my daughter’s wide eyes fill with a tear. It was something to see this little bitty bright red gold fish slowly and bravely flutter deeper into the water downward toward the watery flora below. A calm came over us knowing that it seemed content in the vast expanse of its new home. Then suddenly from the deep, as quickly as my daughter’s eyes and mine could grow wide in horror, a large mouth bass swooped up from the hidden depths below and engulfed this little fellow within its protuberance agape.

As the bass turned swiftly into the deep below, I quickly grabbed my daughter by the shoulder and turning her to her own dear mother while covering up the shock of my folly, I said, “Aw, how sweet, his mommy came up to meet him!” We didn’t speak again of the little bright red goldfish……………………………

So, perhaps even if the threat of China’s powerful credit rating agency, Dàgōng, downgrading America’s credit rating has really only “about as much credibility as a Greek tax collector”, the signal it sends to the deep, clear lake of our world’s financial system could be as quick and horrific as that ominous gray day on my dock on Long Lake.

Kyoto Protocols Would Have Accelerated China’s Plan to Reverse-Exploit EurAmerica

In 1978, the year China emerged onto the world stage with its four modernizations, China, a country with four times the population of the United States, had a paltry gross domestic product of $216 billion, less than eight percent of the United States. China exposed her strategy of four modernizations to the world as if to say,”Please invest in China and we will ensure that our workforce is educated, and that our business infrastructure is stable for your investment.” Yet, this openly expressed strategy, that may have seemed to the rest of the world as a difficult but noble goal for China to achieve, was only the tip of China’s Grand Plan, and only the part she wanted the world to see.

EurAmerica’s history with China was one of gunboat diplomacy, exploitation, and forced trading. When China opened her borders again in 1979, EurAmerica’s merchants were enthusiastic to exploit an opportunity once again. Yet, China had not forgotten EurAmerica’s role in the Opium War, the Sino-Japanese War, and the Boxer Rebellion. China would never open her border again to be exploited. When she finally opened her border in 1979, it was from a position of power, deep strategy, and long lived planning that suggested EurAmerica was finally ripe for reverse exploitation. China’s grand plan was to emerge as the 21st century world power.

What boldness of purpose China must have felt as she aligned her nation’s efforts to that decade’s long task. Looking back today on her impossible achievements, one must give pause to the monumental economic goal she set for herself in 1978, indeed greater than America’s technical goal of landing on the moon early in 1961. Yet, with such a miniscule $216 billion GDP and few material assets how could China possibly build her empire to surpass that of the United States?

Through a hybrid statist-capitalist political structure, China would create a conduit through which American businesses would willingly draw down the wealth of Europe and America and transfer it to China in order to share in the prosperity of that wealth transfer. Through the centralized imposition of forced savings on its people, China would provide low cost labor to sell goods at low enough prices to cause EurAmerica to look the other way as their neighbors’ jobs went to China. Through low interest loans, China would entice EurAmerican politicians to spend beyond their means to temporarily ease the pain of EurAmerica as China’s sucked away their life force. These were the basis of her strategy.

Similarly to how a business cycle contains early adopters and late stage laggards, China planned a capital extraction cycle for EurAmerica, in which China would extract capital in multiple phases, each phase having an optimal extraction strategy. First extraction would be through the early adopter “gold rush” investors rushing into China to stake a claim. China would also plan for early majority, late majority and laggard’s capital extraction.

In 1978, China assessed America’s assets:
• America’s most valuable assets were intellectual capital that resulted from 200 years of publicly funded primary and publicly subsidized secondary education
• America’s physical assets included business assets, commercial, and residential real estate worth $7 trillion in addition to public assets of land, buildings, and infrastructure
• America produced 26% of the world’s GDP at $2.8 trillion and consumed a quarter of the world’s goods
• America’s debt was as low as it had been since WWII as a percentage of GDP and its 110 million workers were capable of doubling their loans to provide China more capital
• America’s Baby boomers were entering a peak spending phase followed by peak saving
• America’s constitutional republic allowed a relative few capitalists to control the direction of her economy

By 1978, multinational corporations had steadily grown in number and size for two decades. China’s success depended on corralling MNCs through direct foreign investment to create massive inflows of capital quickly monetized as hard assets and infrastructure.

China would entice merchants to invest by offering access to the future potential purchasing power of its people. However, given China’s low household incomes, market penetration would be low to start. Therefore, to entice the early adopters, China would create special economic zones that provided the perfect investment opportunity of cheap educated labor, loose regulation, low taxation, strengthened business law, and enhanced infrastructure and transportation, in which businesses could produce goods at very low arbitrage costs to sell back to their home countries for high margins.

With low cost of goods from special economic zones, early adopter businesses were highly profitable and banks poured investment into China as a result. But, China could not complete her Grand Plan to multiply her GDP 50 times by enticing early adopter investors alone. She had to implement a plan timed to extract maximum dollars from EurAmerica at each phase of her exponential growth.

During the next stage, the early majority stage, China manipulated baby boomers’ peak spending phase:
• China’s low prices secured America’s baby boomers as loyal customers
• Prior to America noticing a substantial loss of jobs, China secured free trade agreements, and mined American businesses for their intellectual capital.
• She reinvested profits back into America’s debt to keep America’s interest rates artificially low in order to spur on higher levels of consumer spending and government borrowing.
• China supported lobbying of America’s mass investment vehicles to fund MNCs. 401Ks and IRAs, created in ‘80and ’81, funneled money through the stock market into MNCs for investment into China.

Then, America was drawn into the late majority stage as America’s baby boomers entered their peak saving years. 401Ks and IRAs artificially fed the stock market frenzy. Baby boomers sensed they knew how to invest in a bubble market that kept rising. With access to low interest rate loans kept low by China’s reinvestment, speculators borrowed money to bet on the rising stock market. America ultimately increased its debt to pump up stock values to build more Chinese factories.

Inevitably, the stock market bubble burst, leaving America’s baby boomers with lower retirement savings. The stock market that seemed destined to go up forever finally reversed rapidly decreasing valuations. However, the debt that had funded its escalation remained.

During the late majority phase:
• More businesses began to invest in China just to remain competitive with businesses that had moved offshore earlier.
• Tens of thousands of businesses transferred factories to China to obtain low cost labor
• Millions of Americans lost jobs
• With a generation of education completed, China now was able to take more advanced jobs as well as factory jobs. America’s bastion of protected, more technically competent jobs was not a bastion after all.
• American retail outlets for Chinese goods grew exponentially
• China continued to loan its excess profits back to the American government to keep interest rates low.
After having lived through the weakness of the stock market, real estate appeared to be the baby boomers’ best retirement savings alternative. In the early stages of the Great Ponsi, housing prices went steadily up. With low interest rates, Americans could now borrow on the value of their homes to continue funding China’s growth. China’s final stages of extraction saw the housing bubble increase beyond what had ever been experienced before.

Even though American jobs were increasingly being driven offshore, the frenzy of increased housing prices allowed additional borrowing from Americans, feeding the China gold rush further. This behavior was not unexpected, following a pattern of historical boom-bust cycles and was part of China’s planning. As a result of the stock bubble and the housing bubble, America’s total debt had risen to over $55 trillion. With such exuberance in the housing market, secondary debt markets participated in credit default swaps to the tune of an additional $42 trillion. China now had extracted close to the maximum of America’s value, leaving America with the corresponding debt.

So China extracted maximum value, first in trade secrets and early adoptive money, then by IRAs and 401Ks, then by stock market and home equity loans, then by 2nd mortgages and housing speculation. China monetized the massive cash flows as quickly as possible, building infrastructure and excess manufacturing capacity, while leaving America holding debt in exchange.

Without any other rising asset values to borrow from, America has tapped out its debt. Having maxed its debt, America can only print money to finance its trade deficits. Without further real debt derived money extraction to give China for infrastructure investment and without a real ability to pay for low cost Chinese goods, America is fast losing her worth to China as an infrastructure vehicle. Recognizing that maximized extraction and rapid monetization of America’s wealth is nearing its end, China is now finalizing the implementation of her strategy, that of pulling out of American debt before other countries that maintain reserve currencies create a run on the dollar.

In thirty short years, China was able to accelerate her GDP from $216 billion to $11 trillion. She amassed reserve capital of $3 trillion. She reversed America’s fortunes from the greatest creditor nation to the greatest debtor nation. She gutted America’s factories while creating the world’s largest manufacturing base in her own country. A measure of output that highly correlates to GDP is energy consumption. In June of this year, 2011, China surpassed the United States as the largest consumer of energy on the planet. While the U.S consumes 19 percent of the world’s energy, China consumes 20.3 percent.

In 1992, the world came together to discuss the impact of climate change resulting from energy consumption. The talks resulted in Kyoto protocols being initially adopted in 1997 that attempted to create a framework for reducing greenhouse emissions. The protocols called for 33 industrialized nations to reduce their greenhouse gases to 1990 levels and then to maintain emissions at those levels. Although it called for emerging countries like China to voluntarily lower levels, it did not require them to be mandated.

Of course, all of the countries who had no requirements to reduce their emissions signed the agreement. The United States, under scrutiny from environmentalists and others did not sign. China did sign. This was an additional strategy perhaps not envisioned in 1978 that nonetheless would have assisted in accelerating America’s slide had we signed.

GDP highly correlates to energy usage. In 1990, America’s real GDP was about $8 trillion as compared to $14 trillion in 2011. Kyoto would have caused America to either:
• Invest billions in the attempt to lower our energy usage per dollar of GDP
• Pay billions to other countries to have them produce less so that we could grow our GDP from $8 to $14 trillion
• Or, maintain our GDP at 8 trillion

In the meantime, China’s GDP in 1990 was $1.3 trillion and has since grown to over $10 trillion. China’s energy use has correspondingly grown as well until the point that this month, she overtook America as the greatest polluter. Kyoto was a grand idea that was doomed from the start because of the flaw that allowed the now greatest polluter to play by different rules. It attempted to cap the economic growth of America while allowing other countries to grow unfettered.

China had a Grand Plan that has been executed with the finesse expected of a centrally planned economy. Kyoto added nicely to that plan. America has been thwarted by China’s plan but now has the ability to reverse course. Given China’s size and growth rate, she will pass us soon if she has not already and her stride will be too great for us to catch her. However, by avoiding traps like Kyoto, and understanding that economic gamesmanship can accomplish a much greater destruction of a nation’s wealth than warfare ever could, perhaps America can once again right its course.

A Triumphant Cake for the Return of China’s Empire

When making a cake for a great celebration, the baker uses the same ingredients as when baking a small 10” diameter cake, he just uses a lot more. When the world first saw China stirring up batter, they thought somehow this poor country surely was beginning to make a little 10 “ diameter cake. Now that they see the size of China’s great celebratory cake, some view it as so great that it could feed all of their cake eaters back home five times over. Surely this cake must be too big and therefore China’s baker must be on the verge of closing shop for having so foolishly made such a big cake. For those that still think China’s cake is too big, they just haven’t yet grasped the size of her guest invitation list.

When China began implementing her modernization plans in 1978, she hadn’t planned a 10” diameter cake. She planned a cake for the size of China. And it wasn’t one of those cheap, store bought cakes that we would have expected her to bake given her finances in 1978. It was one fit for a triumphant party celebrating the Empire’s return. In fact, the cake would be so big and would use so many ingredients that parties back home would have to shrink their party plans. The world’s storehouse would not have enough ingredients to throw elaborate parties for both China’s guests and the world’s.

No matter, if there was one thing China learned over 5,000 years, it was how to plan a celebration. China planned her strategy to ensure that on the day of the big celebration, she would have enough ingredients. This certainly meant she would have to manage party conflicts with those back here at home at some point. However, if parties back home didn’t have cake factories to make their cakes, they wouldn’t be able to compete at the appointed hour of China’s celebration, and if they didn’t have cake factories they surely wouldn’t be competing for ingredients at the appointed hour. China would implement her plan to ensure her guests would have their cake. But, she needed to implement first things first.

Reviewing her strengths, China noted she had plenty of baker’s assistants. They simply needed to be trained. She would definitely need more factory space to make the cake and more roads to get the supplies to the factory. And because she didn’t have all needed ingredients in-house, she would have to make arrangements with cake ingredient suppliers to ensure that she would get the ingredients even if others competed for them. Critical to her success, China needed baker’s secrets to make such a great cake. Most importantly, because China had many more bakers than she needed but not enough money or know-how, she would need to trade her strengths for the others.

With strategies set, China set out to implement her plans. She first told all comers that they could build a cake factory in her special cake factory zones, and that they could bake cakes for all of China’s people. With the announcement of this cake bonanza, Bakers came from all over the world for the chance to make cake for China. When asked how big to make the factories, China said to make them ten times larger than they first imagined. The bakers would need access to money and lots of it.

Oddly, While China had such big plans for cake factories, no one in China could afford to buy such magnificent cakes, and no one in China knew how to make them. So if the baker wanted to make cakes in China, the baker would have to teach Chinese baker assistants the secrets to baking a cake. The baker would also have to go back home for bank funding and for free markets to sell the cakes made in China back at home.

Of course, when presented with such a sweet deal, the banker could not pass it up. Together, the baker and the banker convinced everyone back home of the sweet deal from China. China would sell the cake for half the price of home prices so that everyone would be happy. The baker could get a great factory, at least one in China, and had the hope of selling cake to the Chinese some day. The people back home could get a cake that tasted just as good because the baker used his secrets in China to make the cake. Of course the financier back home was happy. Increasingly, cake factories back home seemed to be having trouble selling cakes at twice the price of Chinese cakes, and with cheaper prices and free markets, China cake factories promised great banking returns. The only people that seemed upset were the baker’s old assistants back home who no longer were employed to bake cakes, but no matter, everyone else was happy.

China was happy that her plan was progressing. She would get a grand cake factory that could be used for the great celebration. China could also begin to build relationships with all the worldwide cake ingredient suppliers. She now needed to spread the icing for the next layer of the plan. The baker assistants back home were the ones buying the cakes made by the cake factories in China. If they didn’t have a way to pay for the cakes, all would be lost.

China knew, when planning for her modernization party, that in order to make a cake big enough for the triumphant celebration, she would need so many factories, roads, ingredients, and educated cake bakers that it would take all the expendable money in Europe and America combined to build them. In fact, it would take much of the world’s stock market value and even the equity in people’s homes if she were to be able to throw a truly triumphant party. She needed the baker assistants back home to borrow from their savings, their homes, and their future earnings if the plan was to succeed.

No worries, China had studied capitalist boom-bust cycles of the past. She knew it was very possible for bankers to create the boom once again, in the exact same manner as Europe and America had fallen prey to many times before, and that during the short boom, she could fund her party. Given the opportunity to fund all the cakes in China, bankers back home repeated their very sins of the past. Their patterns had remained predictable for centuries, reacting in a frenzy every time a cake bonanza presented itself. This time they dropped interest rates, made crazy loans, created IRAs and 401 Ks, and escalated not one but three bubbles to draw out as much money as they could to fund as many cake factories as they could in as short a time as they could.

The feeding frenzy occurs because there is only so much time the batter can rise before it falls. When the bubbles finally popped, China had her cake factories, all the baker assistants back home had borrowed more than they could ever pay back, and all the bankers back home had made enough money to live happily ever after.

Now came the appointed hour of the triumphant party for the return of the Empire. By this time, China had been building ingredient relationships unabated, because the bakers back here at home no longer bought baking ingredients. China had built the world’s fastest, largest most efficient ships to bring all the needed ingredients to her shore. She had built massive highways to transport the ingredients to her impressive, massive, modern cake factories. She had educated all her people to fill the ranks of cake bakers. She had saved historic amounts of money from the cheap baked goods she sold to the baking assistants back home and now could buy all the ingredients she needed.

But wait, what about the party back home? Now that it was time for her great celebration, China bought up all the ingredients that were supposed to be for the party back home. The baker’s assistants back home no longer had money to buy cakes, so the Chinese cake factories now could turn their focus inward on their country to bake for the celebration. But really, Chinese cake factories hadn’t any competition for ingredients. The baker’s assistants back home had long lost their knowledge of cake baking. The cake factories had long fallen into disrepair and could no longer be used to make cake. The roads back home were in disrepair. The cake baking schools back home had fallen behind without local businesses to spur them to excellence. The ingredient suppliers had long ago built relationships with China’s bakers and knew where their bread was buttered.

As the triumphant party was being held in China and the great cake was being presented to her party guests, back home all that anyone could do was watch from afar. The bakers had lost their market for cakes back home. Without demand, they could not make the payments on the bank loans and they defaulted. Without sufficient buyers, they turned over their factories to the Chinese. Without customers back home and without money or credit to pay for new cake factories back home, the bakers now became unemployed themselves. The bankers, now without payments on their loans, well they closed up shop as well.

America’s Future – Building Block #1: U.S. Debt – Do we increase, decrease or default?

One of a few critical building blocks of American policy that will be required to right our ship of state is stabilization of America’s debt. The seeming annual deadline to vote on raising the debt ceiling is set for August 2nd. While the Republicans have threatened to default unless the ceiling increase has corresponding cuts to the budget, and while the world anticipates corrective action, we may only see hollow political chatter without material cuts because it is not yet America’s season for freefall from treasuries default.

However, it should be the season for reason. Some economists tell us that recent fear of historic deficits comes only from those ignorant of economics. They say we can print money at will without retaliation because of our sovereignty and world reserve currency status, that we owe this debt to ourselves, and that we can inflate the debt away. They surmise that we are nowhere near an insurmountable debt maximum. But how can they be so confident that America’s ballooning debt is not an issue?

Learned pontifications have confounded us through continued clamoring of countering arguments since 1990, when the debt ceiling was raised 33% to 4.1 trillion to contain our previous housing bubble, the savings and loan crisis. We have just exceeded our latest federal debt ceiling of $14.29 trillion dollars. Total American obligations of all public and private debtors are over $55 trillion, and including government’s unfunded liabilities, we owe $168 trillion. Even if we could balance the budget today, each working American is already obligated in some form to pay the world one million dollars. Who is right? How much American debt is too much debt?

In placing their faith in the pseudoscience of modern economics, our scholars fail to mention that the majority of currencies in history no longer exist. Hyperinflations do occur with regularity, 21 countries in the last 25 years. Debt levels do collapse governments, small (Zimbabwe) and large (USSR). Unfortunately, by the time societies recognize they have reached the beginnings of hyper-inflation, their currencies are already on a glide path to extinction. How close are we?

Prior to WWII, America paid down its debt between wars but our perception of debt changed in 1945. Backed by 70% of the world’s gold, the dollar was the world’s hope for rebuilding, and hence became its reserve currency. In 1944, the architects of Bretton Woods envisioned the dollar as the lynchpin to a system in which central banks maintained stable exchange rates to support balanced trade between industrialized countries, with minimal international indebtedness. They did not foresee the corrupting power they entrusted to the United States that would later subjugate the emerging world to a devaluing dollar.

Control of the world’s reserve currency proved too powerful an elixir for America. Perhaps we convinced ourselves that exporting inflation was a fair trade for granting Europe and Japan seed capital, and for our supplying our trading partners with military security. Nonetheless, for the past six decades the U.S. taxed the world $15 trillion through devaluation, and borrowed another $14 trillion, diverting substantial growth capital from emerging countries to fund America’s sustenance.

Without a realistic alternative, the world reluctantly accepted losses of their reserve currencies, but devaluation has not been without cost to America. The collapse of Bretton Woods spurred the growth of a $300 trillion FX market that has quickened the demise of the dollar’s reserve currency role. FX arbitrage and speculative volatility also precipitated the Asian crisis, causing the Asian monetary zone to closely align, lessening a need for dollar reserves. Including Europe’s drive to a common currency and China’s rise, all reduced the dollar’s power and made the possibility of an alternate monetary system possible. And America’s choice to drastically export dollar devaluation to provide investment banks buffer for unwinding of credit default swaps has brought the world to the brink.

While largely diminished, the dollar still yet dominates but for how much longer? After $2.6 billion of quantitatively eased dilution, Bernanke has fatefully claimed an end to QE, but only after President Obama announced a decade long expansion of trillion dollar budget deficits, replacing QE in name only. Is there no limit? If a limit is reached and the world fully rejects the dollar, history has shown that its fall will be too rapid to save. We now have imminent signs of that moment’s approach:

• China rejecting the dollar – For eight years, China purchased 20% of the U.S.’s deficit, buying 50% in 2006. However, for the last year, China has been a net seller of U.S. debt, reducing its total holdings 30%, and dropping its treasuries 97%. China has signaled that its risk of holding U.S. debt is greater than its risk of causing U.S. interest rates to rise, which will limit our investment in China, and will cause us to purchase less Chinese goods. Their risk equation has pivoted.

• Fed’s acquisition of treasuries – In 2011, the Fed has been the chief buyer of U.S. treasuries, purchasing over 70%, as opposed to 10 % during the last decade.

• Private investment shies away from the dollar – Investment firm Pimco, managing the largest bond fund in the world, cut its holdings of US government-related paper from $237 billion to zero for the first time in the history of the firm, stating the U.S’s problem is worse than Greece’s.

• Regionalization of reserve currencies – Asian, European, and Middle Eastern trading blocs all are all moving away from dollar denominated trades. As an example, China’s and India’s central banks agreed to direct currency exchange as of 2011.

• Commodity inflation – While the U.S. government quoted core inflation is up a mere 0.4 percent, Americans have felt the results of a real 12% inflation and much higher commodity inflation.

• Debt rating concerns – As of June, 2011, Moody’s has threatened to reduce the U.S.’s debt rating unless imminent progress is made on reducing America’s deficit

• American public losing faith – Most telling is the behavior of the American people. With 28% of home prices lower than the underlying mortgages, record numbers of Americans have chosen strategic foreclosures. 25% of foreclosures are from those that have chosen to walk away from debt obligations even though they still have the wherewithal to pay them. Feeling betrayed by America’s financial institutions’ “contract” with Americans for stable money, stable employment, and stable pricing, Americans increasingly no longer feel compelled to honor their financial contracts. The underpinnings of the dollar are on shaky grounds.

Our political and financial leadership now have choices to make. The Fed has signaled no more QE and the President has signaled a decade of continued historic deficits, but those announcements are political balloons that have been lofted toward their constituents. What should America’s true strategy be for our mounting debt?

We have but limited choices. 1) Debt can continue to increase at historic rates, perhaps preserving our banking system in its zombie state, but risking the loss of world credit, a spike in interest rates, crowding out of government services, and the march toward hyperinflation. 2) The rate of increasing debt can be reduced by either budget cuts or tax increases, but either measure may precipitate a return to America’s recession, increasing unemployment, decreasing GDP, and without substantially austere measures, continuing down a path toward loss of world reserve currency status. Or 3) America can take drastic measures to eliminate the deficit and to begin reducing the debt, most likely causing a rapid downward spiral of GDP which, similar to Greece’s predicament, will create an imploding cycle of further austerity measures and GDP reduction.

Considering that credit agencies have already fired lowered debt rating shots hair-raisingly close to America’s bow, the first option of continuing down our current path of printing money to fund our federal deficit is daring fate to draw us into the abyss. The world is quickly shutting off America’s Fed spigot of money printing. If we continue printing money, we risk paying higher interest on existing debt, crowding out needed government services and shocking America back into recession. The EU’s prescription for Greece has enlightened us that the third option of severe austerity is a prescription for thrusting America into obscurity with little hope of return. Therefore, we must now immediately embark down the second path of significant but directed deficit reduction. Sound choices of which reductions to make is a topic for a near future building block post and would be an interesting response from readers.

While the middle choice of materially lowering the rate of increase in our debt and over time reaching balance is our hope of recovery, it risks sending America into a double dip recession. If we reduce public spending without subsequently increasing private spending, demand will decrease, most certainly causing a downturn. Increasing taxes, without correspondingly increasing earnings of those paying them, will crowd out private spending, also decreasing demand. To successfully navigate our debt hazards, any decrease in government spending must be accompanied by a similar increase in private spending.

To increase private spending, either consumer demand must be increased with corresponding availability to credit, or private business spending must be increased with a corresponding potential for demand for its goods or services and a corresponding availability of credit. To keep this post to a reasonable limit, these issues are items for a future building block post.

Consumer credit is maxed out. Historic consumer debt combined with loss of housing and stock market equity and lowered prospects for employment have dried up any chances of a consumer led recovery. Loosening of credit without a corresponding increased demand for employees is unwarranted and spurring demand for employees is unfortunately another building block topic.

State and local governments are operating outside of constitutional authority in the red, and foreign governments have reduced credit to the federal government. Therefore, deficit reduction must initially be accompanied by increased domestic business spending if we are to avoid a recession. Increased spending must have the potential for successful creation of new profits. Sources of new spending must come from private providers of debt and capital, bank debt in combination with private business equity. America can no longer allow our banks to set the agenda for the path forward. The current prescription of repairing bank balance sheets while limiting credit is no longer feasible. These issues are also a subject for another building block discussion.

Some in Congress suggest we have a fourth option, that of initially maintaining the deficit by cutting taxes to spur growth while reducing government spending accordingly, eventually growing tax revenue through increased growth of the economy. While the idea has much conceptual merit, its implementation in previous Congresses was spurious. Private capital from lowered taxes was siphoned into overseas investments with little if any net benefit to the domestic economy. Much work from Congress, the courts, our executive branch, including trade negotiators and national strategists, business and labor must be done together as a community if we are to establish the real environment that can actually benefit from reduced taxes. (yet another building block discussion)

Initial prescription: Material reductions in government spending with corresponding highly incentivized, private investment that directs spending to domestic projects and increases domestic employment. Ultimately, in a timeframe considered realistic by world markets, the deficit must be eliminated through combination of reduced spending and increased GDP that strategically grows the domestic economy, creates full employment, and retains innovation. (More meat in future building block discussions)

Will EurAmerica Enter a Cold Financial Winter? (Revised)

When China announced to the world that it would open its doors to foreign investment, multinational corporations from both Europe and America rushed to stake a claim to a unique gold rush opportunity of historic proportions. China offered EurAmerican MNCs that agreed to share trade secrets and intellectual capital, that had capital to expand China’s manufacturing infrastructure, and that could open their own countries to China’s goods, the opportunity to participate in China’s newly opened special economic zones, with the hope of marketing to their 1.3 billion people.

Requiring massive investment to capitalize on the opportunity, MNCs sought the support of international investment banks and lobbied home governments to provide looser, deregulated capital markets as well as to submit to opening home markets to “free trade”. MNCs then began a three decade long extraction of wealth, factories, and jobs from EurAmerica to build China’s manufacturing infrastructure and GDP.

At the beginning of China’s historic rise, American politicians freed capital for China investment by reducing taxes of the investment class of Americans; through a reduction of the top tax income rate from 70% to 50%, through reduction of capital gains tax from 28% to 20 %, and through tripling of estate tax exemptions. As more and more capital was needed, America’s baby boomer retirement investments were developed for ease of use in China. In America, 401Ks, started in 1980, and IRAs, made available to all citizens in 1981, siloed middle class investments into the stock market that directed a majority of retirement funds toward China.

Later in China’s growth cycle, EurAmerican banks devised ways to extract even more capital through debt instruments from their citizens. EurAmerican interest rates were set low, creating the credit to extract maximum capital to fund the growth of China’s manufacturing infrastructure through home equity and business development loans. Yet, to meet China’s capital needs in the exponentially growing latter stages of growth, extreme capital extraction through maximum borrowing of a majority of private citizens and public entities was required.

Investment banks created a method of extracting maximum capital from EurAmericans’ main investments, their homes. To accomplish this, Investment banks restructured the banking industry. They first created methods of incentivizing consumers to take as many and as large of loans as possible through risky, low interest, no income verification loans and other, more predatory loans. They also rid commercial banks of their traditional, credit restricting roles by incentivizing them to make as many loans as possible, with minimal risk because they could simply resell the mortgages to the investment banks for a profit. Finally, they developed complex, (and unfortunately faulty) derivatives to buy mortgages from commercial banks and repackage them for profits.

In the process, a majority of consumers that could afford it were lured through ease of access and Ponzified greed into their debt web. Greed played its part with commercial banks as well, as most became willing accomplices of the role that investment banks created in transforming them into maximum credit authorizing, debt creating factories to feed the raw commodities of capital that China needed for her later growth stages. As beneficiary of EurAmerica’s capital, China became a strategic partner to the process by supporting low EurAmerican inflation and interest rates through:

• Accepting free flow of manufacturing infrastructure into her economic development zones
• Funding infrastructure debt payments through sales of low costs goods back to EurAmerica
• Mitigating international demands to revalue the Yuan higher by maintaining historic trade imbalances with EurAmerica and reinvesting Yuan back into EurAmerica
• Keeping internal inflation low through internally enforced savings of wage controls and removing excess Yuan from circulation through funding trading countries deficits
• Managing external commodity inflation through aggressive development of international Greenfield commodity projects to supplement absorption of long term international commodity contracts and relationships that were left unattended by EurAmerica.
• Reinvesting surplus capital into EurAmerica, keeping world interest rates low to extract last vestiges of EurAmerican capital through historic levels of corporate and private debt

When this historic, debt driven, extraction of two great empires’ wealth reached its zenith, like all financial bubbles finally do, public, private and corporate debt had stretched beyond its ability to pay, exceeding $50 trillion dollars in America alone. The financial herd had stretched so thin that it simply required a few debt ridden gazelle to nervously default to start the whole herd stampeding frenzily toward the bank runs that inevitably follow peak excess. This time in history, it was the unraveling of the predatory American home loans that toppled EurAmerica’s financial house of cards. Nonetheless, if not for this gazelle, another would have jumped to take its place, for no exuberant and irrational credit binge ever stands in the longer term.

When this Rube-Goldberg loan scheme supporting the massive capital transfer from EurAmerica to China finally collapsed, investment banks were pushed to the precipice of default. Acting independently of government mandated goals, central banks, with the Federal Reserve out front, stepped in to protect the banking industry by providing liquidity to those investment banks most at risk. They did so claiming that not providing liquidity would have caused domestic businesses and private citizens to default through massive foreclosures, bankruptcies, layoffs, financial and operational restructuring.

Unlike previous historical investment bubbles, in which many investment banks failed, EurAmerican central banks temporarily saved the vast majority of investment banks through simultaneous, massive expansion of the money supply, staving off a rapid disintegration of public, private and corporate debt, recorded as assets on their balance sheets. Recognizing further monetary support was required, the Federal Reserve attempted to mount another widespread EurAmerican expansion of money supply but Europe, intent on preserving its courtship of unification and now dealing with the crisis of PIIGS deficits, did not concur. Without palatable alternatives, the Fed embarked on a Romanesque fait accompli of reserve currency monetary expansion, attempting to reverse the entire world’s contraction of money supply through what they termed Quantitative Easing.

It appears that temporarily at least the Fed’s Quantitative Easing policy have strengthened EurAmerican banks’ balance sheets, transferring some toxic assets to sovereignties, and have girded them to endure the coming double dip recession. However, it failed to accomplish their stated long term debt stabilizing goals. Unemployment is once again increasing, housing prices have reversed and are falling, and while some European countries have begun to institute austerity programs, America is projecting trillion dollar deficits for the remainder of the decade.

Unfortunately, the Fed does not have the magic bullet to repair the only ways to truly provide long term stabilization of massive EurAmerican debt supporting their balance sheets. To do that, EurAmerica must stabilize the underlying ability and desire of their debt holders to make debt payments. This can only be accomplished by:
• Maintaining and growing EurAmerican economies
• Reducing real EurAmerican unemployment
• Increasing the nominal values of EurAmerican Housing or restructuring housing debt
• Eliminating public deficits
• Reducing non-value generating debt
• Maintaining minimum interest on existing debt while incentivizing its reduction and saving

Without immediate and urgent prescriptive measures to meet the above objectives and to mitigate the impact of EurAmerica’s retreat from previous financial investment and consumption patterns, a cold, worldwide economic winter most likely ensue. American direct foreign investment has already begun its inevitable descent. Europe’s protectionism has kept available resources flowing to China but EU will soon follow with fewer investments in China as well. China will react with less support for EurAmerican deficits, severely restricting EurAmerica’s monetary managment options.

If we do not act soon, our political systems will be forced into severe austerity measures. The world will enter a deep and disruptive recessionary cycle from which countries and entire regions will eventually emerge in an entirely new trading pattern; one that is China centric, developed around its newfound industries that were funded by EurAmerica at the turn of the 21st century. China will emerge first, building on its excess modern manufacturing capacity and hegemonic commodities relationships. When at last EurAmerica exits from the long winter of debt riddled recession, it will follow the path to the Asian economies.

Prescriptions to follow…

Is the China Gold Rush Ending?

In 1849, a rancher named John Sutter sent men to the American River to build a saw mill. Instead, they found gold, starting a rush that brought over 300,000 ‘49ers from across the world to eventually prospect another $12 billion in gold from surrounding hills. The discovery created an enormous expansion in America’s money supply, some by the very gold found in nearby streams. However, much more money was created by debt instruments that funded the Gold Rush. Banks funded the passage of thousands prospectors to buy passage to California, to purchase goods to pan for gold, and later to fund companies that organized for that purpose. By 1850, banks from St. Louis, Boston, New York, London and Paris spurred the growth that created the State of California.

The growth of population in California and Oregon fueled railroad expansion to the West. The completion of the Transpacific Railroad in 1869 started a great railroad speculation, funded both by American banks and European investors. In four short years, investment of track doubled to 35,000 miles. America’s investment in rail and encouragement of immigration spurred a revolution of competitive wheat production and American export of low priced wheat to Europe. Europe now found that the capital it had supplied to build America’s railroads, gathered from its previous decade of speculative housing construction, was the very capital that fueled its demise into a depression which lasted from 1871 through 1893.

With the shortfall of hoped for European funding, American banks became overextended as speculation continued unabated. Jay Cooke and Company, the Goldman Sachs of the time that had funded the North during the Civil War and that had funded the successful Transpacific Railroad, tried and failed to corner the gold market to fund its investment in the Northern Pacific Railroad. Instead, it was forced to file bankruptcy in 1873, triggering America’s Long Depression, collapsing major banks, bankrupting 89 of 364 railroad companies, and an additional 18,000 businesses. The extreme speculation and overbuilding in the one industry of railroads triggered a great depression. This massive over speculation was not seen again until the even greater housing industry speculation in America that ended in 2008.

Similar to California, China has become the land of gold rush for EurAmericans. In 1978, China embraced its four modernizations and opened its doors to the West, creating a gold field of capitalist opportunity. Gradually at first and then in a frenzy, tens of thousands of businesses rushed into China, over ten thousand U.S. businesses in the last decade alone. Similarly to America’s gold rush, U.S. and international banking interests made a fortune supplying MNCs with the capital required for their prospecting.

To feed this frenzied opportunity, American banking interests tapped into the immense financial wherewithal of the American people. Through a Great Ponzi Trifecta, banks accumulated debt derived capital from the Savings and Loan Ponzi, the Dot.Com Ponzi, and finally the greatest Ponzi ever known, the EurAmerican housing bubble. Hordes of EurAmericans were convinced to leverage their future earning ability to create debt that could be flipped through derivatives to fund China’s gold rush.

A dollar multiplicative frenzy sped much of America’s future wealth creating potential into China prior to the Ponzi’s ultimate collapse. As housing prices, and subsequently commercial real estate prices, soared beyond the ability of the American economy to cover the underlying debt, the purveyors of this debt mountain continued to assure investors that a new economy had emerged that supported such imbalances. Yet American wages did not keep up with the rise in housing and counterbalancing forces such as a lost industrial base and historic government deficits finally stripped the Ponzi of its legs, and America’s Great Middle Class funding of China’s gold rush subsided.

Just as Europe lost its wherewithal to fund America’s railroads after America undercut European commodity prices in the 1860’s, America lost its ability to fund China’s growth as MNCs gave China the ability to undercut American industry. However, unlike 1873, America’s Federal Reserve softened the impact of international banking excesses, mitigating the collapse of Bear Stearns, protecting the securitization of AIG, and supporting world banks through massive expansion of its money supply. However, the implosion of the securitization market left China with a weakened EurAmerican engine of direct foreign investment.

June, 2011, marks the supposed end of debt driven EurAmerican speculation helping to fuel China’s growth with the pre-announced ending of Quantitative Easing. If Bernanke follows through on his promise, America’s money supply will begin to contract similarly to America’s contractionary policy following the Civil War leading up to our Long Depression of 1873. Our Congress is also debating contracting governmental spending simultaneous to the Feds potential contraction of money.

Recent reports may have quietly forebode America’s double dip recession with the downward reversal of home prices and downward reversal of job creation. Has China enough momentum to continue its meteoric expansion without historical capital infusion from the West and with a contracting EurAmerican market for its goods? Or, will China face the disruptive consequences of the world’s most recent speculative bubble?

Are Tariffs a Strategy for World Peace?

War with China may be inevitable. When EurAmerican multinational corporations (MNCs) were allowed by our governments to trade trade secrets in exchange for opening of Asian markets, they may have sealed the world’s fate. China’s output will soon surpass America’s and her rate of growth continues to far outpace ours. She is implementing strategies that promise to replace America as the World’s empire during the next 15 years.

Every transition in history from one empire to another has been accented by great wars. The transition of the last empire was no exception. Great Britain did not acquiesce to America’s century until after the throws of WWI and WWII. Now the rapid ascent of globalization, made possible by the transfer of capital from international bankers to MNCs, has driven the world to the edge of another conflict in our lifetimes.

During the last transition, Germany, racked with debt from WWI, experienced hyperinflation with an impotent republic led by political extremists. While the rest of the world recovered, Germany’s inability to deal with its financial obligations led to a vacuum that was filled by the Nazis. Without immediate government action, America’s debt will also become unsustainable, crowding out vital services and creating societal instability similar to Weimar Germany. Given that America has the most powerful military the world has known, will America be an exception to 6,000 years of recorded history, or will our society fall prey to the severities that initiated the last world war?

The answer rests with our MNCs. They have historically persuaded our government to use America’s military to meet business objectives. And now for the first time in history, MNCs have the power to determine the path of our “empire’s” transition. If our corporations are unable to mitigate country risks by growing beyond the regulation of most countries (many are not far from that now) they will continue to rely on the might of our military. If our MNCs position themselves to succeed even as America fails, they will decide war is not in their best interests.

If enough MNCs make the leap to disavow an American connection and choose to forego the protection of our military’s gunboat diplomacy, our MNCs will support the gradual dismembering of our military, reducing its capability to strike. Given America’s inability to continue funding our military as our businesses depart, some Americans may choose to rise up similarly to Japan or Germany during the 20th century. How do we mitigate such a potential? A tariff or subsidy program could achieve full employment at sustenance wages, and could deter or delay war.

When citizens of our nation are unemployed, they have several options. For 26 weeks, they have unemployment at a rate much lower than full wages. During this Great Recession, our government extended unemployment to 99 weeks. After 99 weeks, the unemployed join the ranks of the 99ers, who are given few comforts from the American system if they are not disabled or do not have children. Instead, those without family members to rely upon or without black market skills or goods to eke out an alternative living, must join the world of the unseen, those citizens who blend into our peripheral vision not to be looked upon for fear that we too will be drawn to their fate. Our country’s lack of a comprehensive strategy to transition to globalization has condemned millions of vital Americans to this murky existence.

Rather than relegate 99ers to the dark crevices of our society, America must offer a better path. We must choose to overcome partisan maneuvering and compete with the world as best we can. Rather than continue down this political path that will lead ultimately to class warfare and further disintegration of American culture, capabilities, and competitiveness, we must recreate a consortium of capitalists and workers that benefits all Americans.

A cornerstone of that consortium is that both businesses and workers must succeed. Tariffs on foreign goods that cost the American society more than the savings they provide to the American consumer are a method for producing mutual success. Tariffs provide American factories price controls to allow domestic jobs at rates that can replace extended unemployment. During periods of innovative growth and peak business cycles when higher wages are available, those businesses least able to compete will be lost to international competition but during periods of lower innovation or business troughs, Americans will keep jobs and foreign companies providing goods to America will be the first to lose employment.

Some say that tariffs gouge the American consumer, but that does not evaluate our citizens holistically. A consumer is also a tax payer, a worker, a provider, a parent, a partaker of the environment, and a member of a community. If the net holistic benefits to the American citizen are positive for a particular product or service, then that particular product or service should escape protectionism. However, we should determine how to redistribute the gross benefits and costs within our country to equitably share the benefits and social costs.

Others say that tariffs and subsidy protections would cause American businesses to become complacent and to lose their incentive to compete with the rest of the world. We continue to use this reasoning even as our structural unemployment continues to grow. However, for the 40,000 factories that have left our shores, American ingenuity has been unable to keep pace with even no complacency. American businesses will always have an incentive to improve productivity if they wish to compete in world markets regardless of subsidies or tariffs.

Still others say that tariffs perpetuate poor quality and operating practices. America did pass through a moment in time prior to globalization when we did not envision a world of emerging countries competing through quality and innovation. However, we will never return to that moment, except for the nostalgic pining of our elders remembering “better days”. Nonetheless, offsetting wage and regulation cost differentials with tariffs will not protect American businesses from foreign quality and innovative competition. We will forever more be compelled to compete.

Mitigating wage and regulation cost differentials will only slow the rapid drain of jobs, manufacturing, and national security protection of America. Those goods which are most able to provide win-win benefits to both America and her trading partners will be available in our markets at lower costs, others at similar costs. Net benefits to America will be much greater than this wholesale gutting of American value, jobs, and self worth. During times when accelerated American innovation thrusts Americans into higher wage jobs, more foreign products will be available at lower prices.

Tariffs are only one piece of a comprehensive strategy to protect America from a plunge into obscurity. However, given the realities of our politicians’ impotence in dealing with the onslaught of multinational corporations and international bankers, it is a critical first step that should be implemented immediately if we are to provide America time to catch up with China’s immense and effectively operationalized strategies. America’s current path is not healthy for America and ultimately will not be for our economic adversaries either. If war is an inevitable part of transition, then any actions taken to delay or deter war are critical. I deem strategic tariffs a support for jobs, a net benefit to America’s finances, and a mitigation to war.

God Save Us from the Fish Mongers – An Allegory

A small, tropical isle fishing village sits across an inlet from a much larger fishing village to the east. Both villages want for little, spending their days either fishing or taking leisure. The western villagers choose to fish in deep-water, prime fishing grounds where catches are ample and large. They have much leisure, for long ago a western family learned to use the woodlands of their island to produce boats. The eastern villagers, lacking boat building skills, are forced however to cast long hours along their shores for smaller inlet fish. The boat building family enjoys even more leisure than most because their skills provide access to the deep waters so their villagers give them a bit of fish from every catch.

Desiring vessels for their people, eastern village elders approach the boat builders with head gear in hand, explaining that they will provide twice the fish of the western villagers if the boat builders will also supply them with boats. With such an agreeable offer, the boat building family begins to supply boats to the eastern village, and soon eastern villagers can be seen venturing out into the deep for fish.

Flush with fish from the easterners, the boat builders craft an idea. They will trade their excess to westerners in exchange for a return of fish later. To entice their villagers, they will agree to give more fish today than will have to be returned later. Westerners find the offer irresistible because they can enjoy leisure now knowing that some day when they must repay the debt, they will work fewer hours than the hours of leisure they gain today.

Having an abundance of both leisure and fish but now lusting for more, the boat builders unwittingly cast aside their future and that of their island as they craft another idea. They will teach eastern islanders the secrets their forefathers gave them about boat building in exchange for a bit of fish from every catch of the boats the easterners build. Yearning to harvest more of the deep waters, easterners agree to the terms. As the ambitious easterners flood the fishing fields with boats, the western boat building family’s fortunes become titanic.

Mongers now flood the shores with fish from the east, eventually causing a fourth of the western villagers to sit idly by, borrowing from the boat builder’s excesses. Without a need to fish, they slowly lose their knowledge of the seas, and without a need to venture into the deep their boats fall into disrepair. The western village elders, who had survived by taking a bit of fish from every villager as payment for administering the village, now find that with many of their villagers idly living on the fish of the easterners, that they cannot skim enough catch from their villagers to live.

They approach the uberwealthy boat building family for solutions. Lobbying that loans of fish to the idle westerners is good for the westerners because they are receiving more fish today than they will have to repay, the family also quietly agrees to supply ample fish to the elders in exchange for support of continuing eastern trades. Having provided the elders fish that can no longer be obtained from the villagers, the family feels justified in crafting yet another idea. They will give fish to eastern villagers so that they can stop fishing and build even more boats in the east that will return a bit of fish from every catch.

The eastern villagers now control the deep fishing fields and begin to weary of trading fish to the westerners, who must rely on eastern fish, as their boats are no longer sailable. With even more villagers sitting out the long hot days in their huts, western elders grow ever hungrier, so with head gear in hand they travel in weather worn boats to the eastern shore and meet with the eastern village elders by the campfire. Emboldened by their newfound wealth, the eastern elders chide the western elders for their lack of foresight but agree to provide fish in exchange for the promise that the western elders will demand a skim of their villagers’ fish to repay the easterners.

For awhile, this uneasy arrangement continues between the western villagers, their elders, the eastern villagers and the family of boat builders until the eastern village bulges with boats. No longer needing the skills of the boat builders, the eastern village does not desire to give another fish to the westerners but instead demands the western village return the fish they borrowed.

Without the skills or boats to repay their debt, the western villagers look aghast as their elders call them to the camp fire. They no longer can sit by the shore gorging on borrowed fish, nor can they linger leisurely. They must now work long hours catching inlet fish to repay the eastern village. Their previous agreement to pay for earlier leisure with less work hours today was unfortunately sold off by the boat builders. For now, the westerners have no boats to venture into the deep and their labor will be spent casting from the shores. This tranquil village in paradise has unwittingly indentured its future to the easterners.

The family of boat builders, attempting to revive its lost fortunes, now sheepheadishly offers to build boats for the western villagers, but their offer is rebuffed. The easterners are now the preeminent boat builders and one by one, the villagers must meekly travel to the east with head gear in hand, hoping to acquire boats today in exchange for a bit of fish from every catch.

So….Why were the villagers allowed to borrow fish that they could never pay back? Why were the boat builders allowed to give the secrets of the island to the easterners, not only giving away their claims to the island’s boats of survival but the rights to the deep fishing fields that were not theirs to give? Why were elders allowed to borrow from the easterners while so many villagers sat idly? Why did the villagers not see that their elders would yield to the boat builders as a means of their own survival? Why didn’t the western village foresee that letting their skills and boats diminish was unsustainable for their island’s survival? Why didn’t they understand that by borrowing leisure, they would end up fishing for scrub fish along the inlet shore? Why?