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.

The Housing Crisis “Who Done It?”

As I listen to discussions about who or what was responsible for our current housing crisis, they seem to invariably disintegrate into arguments about which political party was responsible for the mess we are in. Commenters point to one or more specific milestones as the very reason. I am somewhat as simplistic in that I suggest the overwhelming pull of globalization and the capitalistic opportunity to invest in China that created too much of a temptation for investment banks. As a result, they worked for thirty years to drain America of its capital through any way possible including the housing ponzi. My points include:
•Prior to the Great Depression, mortgage securitizations created excessive speculation
• Laws were passed to attempt to separate loan originations and investments
• China’s opportunity created great capital demand starting in 1978
• Investment banks began extracting capital from America including using mortgage activities
• Investment banks made commercial banks willing accomplices by purchasing liar loans, eliminating commercial bank risks, creating the final capacity for the Great Housing Ponzi

However, trying to point to any one milestone as the culprit is just too simplistic. Trying to deny the culpability of any milestone is just as simplistic. How much blame for the housing crisis should be placed on pooled Ginnie Mae mortgages in 1970? What was the influence of Freddie Mac’s REMICs in 1983? How did banking law amendments in 1982 that encouraged private banking securitization impact the future Ponzi, or the Secondary Mortgage Market Enhancement Act of 1984, that put private banks on equal footing with Fannie and Freddie with securitization, affect the crisis?

We know that the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975, which outlawed redlining, was a factor in influencing subprime loans and that CRA 1977, which added affirmative action to subprime loans, influenced later lending practices. Yet, are we to say they had no influence in the later scandal?

Some analysts deny the existence of President Clinton’s National Home ownership strategy which, with changes to CRA, set up soft quotas in lending to underserved communities, yet his efforts led to an 80 percent increase in subprime mortgages. Did the addition of this new demand have any influence on the housing Ponzi?

In 1994, Blathe Mathers of J.P. Morgan invented the credit default swap to pass the risk of the Valdez oil spill to EBRD. This instrument, invented to subdue a perceived liability of Exxon was shortly after applied to the mortgage industry. In fact Clinton’s subsequently supported legislation that allowed subprime loans to be securitized in 1995 provided banks with much needed cover to remove these loans from their balance sheets into the investment banks arena. Did either of these milestones not have an impact?

Certainly CRA forced commercial banks to take on risky loans that would never have otherwise been taken. However, with the introduction of resale, securitization, and CDSs, these subprime loans became great money makers for all, so much so that in the three years after 1995, the number of banks in subprime lending increased from 10 to 50.

Did the dot com bubble of the late nineties contribute to an overall wealth effect that caused excessive loans including mortgage refinancing? Seems evident. Did GLBA have an impact on accelerating the globalization of securities and swaps? The data supports that. Did the Fed’s actions of dropping interest rates from over 6 percent to 1 percent in the years 2000 to 2003 contribute to the run up? Um yeah. And what about all the buyers of these securities, they seemed inordinately good deals yet organizations as large as AIG did not seem to understand the complex risks they were taking. Could they have slowed the Ponzi’s pinnacle if only their financial experts understood what risks they were taking? Of course.

When I hear the myopic and tinny ringing of political extremists pointing to one side of the aisle or the other as scapegoats for a debacle decades in the making that included one contribution after another, I sense a slight superiority when I settle back on my simplistic answer of “the investment bankers done it.”

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…

Did China Learn from Japan? You Bet!

In 1853, Commodore Perry, demonstrated United States military force on behalf of U.S. business interests. Perry intimidated Japan into a one sided treaty with threat of vanquishing Japan’s much less industrialized military. Having been subjected to America’s use of colonial might, Japan embarked on the Meiji revolution, a modernization frenzy for 60 years, much as has been occurring in China since the 1978 Four Modernizations.

Just as America colonized through WWII for economic dominance, rationalized with a mistaken belief of cultural superiority, Japan colonized through imperial treaties and war for decades through the 1930s. During this time, similarly to China today, Japan’s leadership inspired a deep devotion to Japan’s destiny through education, media, military and other institutions.

Similarly to China’s concerns today, Japan was unable to limit its urbanization and required rapid GDP growth through the 1920s. When Japan’s economy was devastated by the Crash, instead of leaning socialist like America, Japan’s submitting culture turned militaristic, assassinating its elected Prime Ministers in favor of military leadership.

Japan’s military miscalculated its securing of oil from U.S. controlled colonies and eventually lost the war. After the war, the world, retreating from its wounds, was unable to contain decolonization. However, friendly autocratic governments mostly replaced colonies with terms favorable to business interests. The U.S. policy of world military dominance secured these relationships for a time.

In this environment, Japan thrived applying its discipline and tightly controlled banking and industry to a growth miracle. The miracle ended with bubble inflation caused by non secured raw material inputs, loose monetary policy, and a large rise in the valuation of the yen. Japan’s economy, like the United States, also succumbed to globalization.

Did China learn from these events as it prepared to reenter the world stage? You bet.

Of course, Chinese people are not evil and Chinese have long endured too much racism in America. But, no-one should be deceived by the Chinese government’s strategy to secure enough raw materials during this relatively peaceful period as possible for the future inward growth of their nation before such hegemonic relationships are hindered. China learned from Japan’s pre-war mistakes and will not repeat them.

Yes, the Chinese government is manipulating the value of its currency to give it an advantage in the international market. The idea that it is somehow unfair is a bit weird to me. If China wants to accept fewer dollars for its labor, why is it not entitled to do so? The world’s insistence on revaluing currency higher is just a system like any other. China is only copying a technique well implemented by Japan earlier.

Its U.S. strategy has limits, and China is coming to the end of those limits. China has fed off of the United States as much as it can. As a potential fatal flaw, it may have sucked too much life from its host. China must now somehow realize these saved dollars before Bernanke has a chance to take them back through QE2 and Qex’s.

Will the Chinese government collapse any time soon similarly to the end of the Japanese miracle? Heck no.

The Wisconsin Battalion Fired the Loudest Shots in the Battle of the Bulging Government

Our country will soon be jolted by successive economic shockwaves that will ratchet down consumer confidence as our states and local governments are constitutionally forced to remedy historic revenue short falls.  With public opposition rapidly mounting against tax increases, most governments will be faced with the monumental task of slashing budgets.  The state of Wisconsin fired one of the first nationally heard shots across the bow of this newest American crisis.

In the state of Wisconsin, senators are attempting to bring to the floor a bill to give maximum flexibility for crafting a workable budget.  One line item of the bill caused half the senate to walk out, and sparked a teacher rally that filled the senate floor.  Public primary education teachers in Wisconsin make approximately $100,000 compensation, including salary and benefits. They can retire after 25 years service and receive a one time payment of $950,000, plus approximately $100,000 each year for life after that.

The Wisconsin state senate has 19 Republican senators who have vowed to reduce this budget line item.   However senate rules require 20 out of 33 senators to be physically present for a quorum to vote. All Democrat state senators staged a walk out and left the state for Illinois to avoid wounding the state teachers union. However, they must physically step onto the Senate floor to collect their checks. If even one Democrat defects, a vote will occur. Makes interesting politics.

In Sarasota, Florida where I live, the county’s tax revenue will not cover public employee retirement benefits this year. How did Sarasota, Wisconsin, and the rest of the country reach this seemingly overnight crisis?  During the economic bubble decades from 1980 until recently, government spending grossly outpaced our population and grew to spend revenues that had been inflated by economic bubbles and consumer borrowing. 

When the Great Recession hit, state revenues from most sources shrank, including federal transfer, sales, and income taxes.  All these sources had been artificially buoyed by successive bubbles, and now popped simultaneously along with our latest and greatest housing bubble.  With shrinking housing prices, plunging ad valorem revenues just added to the fray.  When tax revenues shrank to fit our sustainable private industry job base, decades of excessive government spending left an overwhelming shortfall that exposed both our governments’ lack of understanding of bubble risks, and their willingness over thirty years to spend increasing tax windfalls rather than reduce tax rates.

As an example, our local and state governments escalated public employee ranks and pay scales to match escalating revenues; increases that well outpaced our population increase.  During the last three decades, the U.S. population increased 37 percent, but our local government employment increased 56 percent, and state government employment increased 68 percent. 

State and local budget line items increased well beyond our population growth as well.  As an example, while an increasingly older and poorer population could partially explain a 100 percent increase in health/welfare spending in real dollars, the vast majority was spent to increas staffing, compensation, and programs.  Also, educational spending increased 50 percent in real terms when the school age population only increased 11 percent. In the last five years of the great housing bubble, total state spending increased 30 percent in an attempt to keep pace with accelerating home prices. 

Because of 30 years of escalating state and local government spending during the boom years, we now face yet more waves of economic crises, the first of which will be successive slashing of state and local budgets that will cause economic backlash and social unrest as a poorer public is forced to adjust to fewer government services.  Governments will have little choice but to reduce public employee ranks by 20 percent to right size government to our population size.  To balance budgets, remaining public employees will be forced to take 20 percent compensation cuts to match resulting sustainable GDP.  When the suds clear from this latest bubble burst, 4 million public servants will lose their jobs and an additional multiplier of parasitic jobs will be lost as well, exposing America’s latest of its coming destructive waves.

Baby Boomers Force Dramatic Shift in American Social Contract

I was born in the census year of 1960 at the tail end of the baby boomers. A half century later, I frankly submit that our nation was naïve about the consequences of this historic generation’s path through American history. In 1960, as our boomers entered the workforce, they became the focus of capitalists worldwide, and their economic and social decisions shaped what appears in 2011 to be our nation’s retreat from world leadership.

In 1960, America’s bustling population was 179 million. Economic times were good. Even though the number of workers per retiree to support the New Deal social contracts of Medicare and Social Security had dwindled from 42 in 1935 to only 16 in 1960, the purchasing power of the average family had more than doubled in that time. While government spending had increased from 20 percent to 28 percent to support our strategy of world military dominance, solid economic growth still seemed inevitable for generations to come.

America’s social awareness was growing as well. Led by the likes of Kennedy, King, and Johnson, America began to advance government to rectify historical social ills, and to cause capitalists to pay for their social impacts of growth. A decade later, influenced by the seeming senselessness of Viet Nam, in an attempt to ferment President Johnson’s Great Society, boomers began an expansion of government that would grow from 30 percent of GDP in 1970 to over 43 percent today. In that effort, Americans diverted capital into government social programs, slowing economic growth to a level that could not sustain boomers’ retirement years.

In 2011 looking back, it seems that our representative democracy left us unprepared to support the boomers’ last stage of life. Even though the 2010 census swelled to 309 million Americans, our worker to retiree ratio dimmed to 3.2 and is falling still. And while rising wages from 1940 to 1960 lessened the impact of changing demographics, wages during the last forty years stagnated, leaving middle class boomers inadequately funded for retirement, and leaving young people with inadequate income to support them. While these changing demographics knowingly loomed for years, America failed to plan. As a result, a socially divisive wedge has been driven between the boomers and our youth.

This view of our boomer dilemma leaves me with unanswered yet glaring questions such as:  Why did our government levy social impact costs caused by our capitalists but not fulfill their fiduciary responsibility to levy financial impact costs on capitalists’ MNC investments?  Why did our government create only limited regulated retirement investment opportunities to funnel our boomers’ frenzied savings into stock investment bubbles?  Why did we then deregulate debt financing to further funnel now desperate boomers’ savings into mortgage derivatives?  Why did we allow capitalists to siphon these boomer funds into overseas investments without creating sustainable good paying employment in America for the young people who would be called upon to support our boomer retirees?

 Why were American capitalists allowed to lobby for free trade, and transfer boomer wealth overseas without paying forward the retirement impacts of those investments?  Why were our primary educational systems, designed to feed an earlier industrial economy, allowed to fail a third of our future taxpayers as our capitalists instead focused on funding adequate primary educational systems in emerging countries.  Why were our secondary educational systems allowed to inflate the real cost of college education by 150 percent during the last 30 years, beyond the reach of many Americans, when our government’s stated strategy to combat emerging economies was to use innovation of college graduates to create new high paying jobs?  What is the responsibility of our wealthiest Americans to the rest of our society in creating a feasible path through what will most likely be less than golden years for our boomers?

 Answers to these questions need to be transparently debated as we now prepare for the legacy of our extraordinary generation.  The paradigm of entitlement that gave boomers false hopes and that now embolden our youth to vote for change will soon end.  We now are at pivotal moment in American history in which our diminishing demographics will change America’s societal paradigm forever.  In its place will be the painful national discussion that must take place to pave a way forward.

Are Americans Entitled to Extended Unemployment?

Tea Partiers are ignited about the idea of abolishing long ago formed agencies that have been cemented in stone buildings along Constitution Avenue. They believe that good government concepts never really die and eventually become entitlements that stymie original intent.  However, once formed, these ideas take hold in the American consciousness and we begin to believe we are entitled to them as unalienable rights.

Take unemployment insurance for example. Like defense, education, and the rule of law, unemployment compensation has its roots in increasing the efficiency of capitalism.  With a temporary stipend, unemployed workers are free to move from businesses that are sliding past their plateau of usefulness to those that are innovating.  Without the fear of losing their homes and other assets, employees move to healthy businesses even during economic downturns.  Because this idea supported the beliefs of both parties of congress, unemployment insurance passed by an overwhelming majority in 1935 as part of the Social Security Act.

In most downturns, the unemployed are able to find jobs within the insured period of 26 weeks. However, an underlying sickness gutted our sustainable job base during the last thirty years as we borrowed our way through successive economic bubbles.  Only after the credit default swap bubble collapsed our economy did we understand that our jobs were gone.  Not only had our manufacturing blue collar jobs been shipped overseas, but our technically skilled jobs were exported as well. Our average period of unemployment has now swelled to 37 weeks.

It was only natural that Congress quickly adjusted the unemployment period as a stop gap measure when faced with the Great Recession.  They rightly protected our longer term unemployed to keep them from losing all they have gained in contributing to our country.  Now that the ranks of the 99ers, those that have fallen past the safety net of extended unemployment, are swelling, America is debating if unemployment benefits should extend further, and whether the unemployed are entitled to a longer benefit period.  

The debate on entitlements needs a paradigm shift.  Instead of discussing whether unemployed should receive more than two years unemployment compensation, we should be creating a process that allows our citizens to quickly re-enter the workforce and once again contribute to America’s success.  

My voucher plan is a paradigm shift.  Instead of paying unemployed to sit on the sidelines of our economy, America instead invests in our future by getting our people back to work.  Small businesses can hire voucher employees at their unemployment rate. In return, Voucher employees can work twenty five hours per week and receive the same pay they would have received through unemployment. The Federal Government can then reimburse employers the employees’ wages without increasing the unemployment budget.

Tea Party members will be concerned that this voucher plan will become yet another entitlement. They can rest assured that the voucher plan will be a relic of the Great Recession, created to automatically expire as the economy improves. Voucher dollars will decrease as the percent of unemployment decreases, requiring employers to cover more of voucher employees’ wages.  As a result, voucher employees in barely sustainable businesses will transfer to healthier ones.

Some claim that the unemployed feel entitled to remain unemployed, collecting extended payments.  While we can all find a few examples of misuse of American altruism, I have found that most people want meaningful employment.  The entitlement argument stems from the disincentive our unemployment system creates for rejoining the workforce.  It’s not unreasonable to compare available jobs with current unemployment payments. When a worker leaves a job that paid $14 per hour, is getting $8 per hour for unemployment, and is faced with a job that pays $9 per hour, their incentive to work is only $1 per hour; substantially less than their former job and only a dollar more than unemployment. Unemployment should not create a re-employment inertia differential.  My job voucher plan creates the largest re-employment incentive because unemployment extension payments end.

Americans might be concerned that my voucher plan would be used to balloon what they believe is already too large a government providing too many entitlements.  They cite previous government programs that raised social benefit costs without creating profit generating, taxable products or services. My job voucher plan, however, grows jobs only in private sector small businesses, and can be supported by existing government agencies without expanding their budgets. 

Others claim that my voucher plan is just an entitlement to small business, creating an inefficient makeshift set of jobs for the unemployed.  While I agree that my plan can rapidly employ all Americans, and as such may create some early, inefficient placement of workers, it nonetheless will also create a micro-venture capitalist function for millions of small businesses.  Some of these ventures will successfully create taxable revenue, and some will be incredibly successful, paying back America’s investment through future taxes on corporate profits and employee compensation.

Finally, concerns have been raised that any program such as this may create an entitlement mindset that all Americans must work.  Government work programs have been abused by some to collect compensation while performing work at subpar levels.  This problem is self correcting in my voucher plan.  Employees would still be governed by private sector principles.  If the job is not a good fit, employees will not find safe harbor in this program. For the program to be successful, government intervention will have to be restricted to current EEO and ADA requirements.  But, in the end, one entitlement should fly true.  America will find it is entitled to renew its future.

Is the Federal Reserve Harming Job Growth?

The Fed originated from a private agreement of the world’s richest bankers in 1910. Reacting to clamors to regulate the “money trust”, leaders of the world’s banking systems came together to create the plan for the Fed, that Congress enacted in 1913.

The plan did not completely turn over the power of the world’s banking system to Congress. It instead created a “partnership” intended to retain power while sharing oversight with Congress. The President recommends and Congress confirms 7 board members to the Fed from banks, and the banks appoint 5 other members from regional Fed banks that are in turn owned by private banks to the FOMC that makes Fed actionable decisions.

The Fed is subject to oversight by Congress. Yet oversight means that the Fed reports a summary of its actions after the fact. Congress cannot dictate to the Fed, and can only change its charter by statute, which has been politically unachievable, even though a bill to end the Fed has 55 congressional signatures. Members of congress cannot attend Fed meetings and cannot audit the Fed. Thus, the Fed has authorization by our government to manage the banking system free from political controls.

Even so, congress has little incentive to place restrictions on the Fed. For every dollar that Congress spends, Congress borrows 40 cents from the Fed, who essentially just has it printed. And Congress needs the banks to get re-elected. 94% of congress persons with the most election funds win their elections. 90% of election funds are given by wealthy individuals, large corporations and the banks.

It is claimed by some “conspiratorialists” that through complex stock ownership in five U.S. banks, the original stockholders of the Fed still maintain control of Fed actions. Whether or not this is true, the actions of the Fed have resulted in great wealth transfer to bank shareholders through Fed actions including engineering inflation. In the 300 years before the Fed, inflation was minimal except for the absorption of wars. In the 97 years since the Fed, inflation has increased 1,900 percent.

When banking investments soured in 2008, many claimed that the Fed acted in the best interests of its shareholder banks over those of the United States. With the great recession, the Fed entered into unprecedented activities. In March 2008, the New York Fed advanced funds for JPMorgan Chase Bank to buy investment bank Bear Stearns. Also, in September of 2008, the Fed gave an $85 billion loan to AIG for a nearly 80% stake in the mega-insurer. In October, 2008, the Fed acquired the ability to pay interest to its member banks on the reserves the banks maintain at the Fed. And quantitative easing has the potential to inflate the U.S. out of losing housing portfolios.

In essence The Fed’s actions have protected the wealth of international investors at the expense of small investors that are nearing retirement with life savings in fixed incomes.  By preserving this wealth, the Fed is also enabling the funding of third world multinational corporation direct foreign investment without consequence.

Will America’s lack of a Multinational Corporation Policy Bring a Resurgence of War? (Part 2)

America must cull the artificial bubble economy effects from our analysis and reassess the effect of American trade policy on our country’s wealth over the last thirty years.  To ensure we correctly right size our military, we must account all costs and benefits of having achieved world military dominance.

Through our military support of world stability, did we better America’s future?

 America’s military budget exceeds $600 billion.  For the last 60 years, we have spent more than all other countries combined to export freedom, including the stabilizing effect of more than 700 overseas military bases.   Some argue that the relative world peace our citizens have enjoyed is more than offset by the negative consequences of our military on our country’s historic debt.

 However, our military has been paid for by the world.  America controls much of the world’s reserve currency.  Through currency manipulation, we have “taxed” the world for the peaceful trade benefits they have gained.  With over $15 trillion reserve currency held by foreign governments, inflating dollars by just 4 percent each year pays our military budget.  America’s waning percentage of world trade would have caused the U.S. dollar to cease as the world’s reserve currency decades ago were it not for the perception our military created that the dollar was the best alternative for wealth storage stability.  So, at least for now, reserve currency benefits have been supported by and have paid for our military.  

 However, if other economic factors caused by our military dominance strategy are included, the net resulting benefit to America becomes less clear.  Our military dominance reduced the risks of direct foreign investments, resulting in an explosion of MNC growth.  Trade skeptics claim that MNCs are directly responsible for trade deficits of $800 billion and job losses of over 14 million, enough to re-employ all able Americans. Cumulative trade deficits, financed through government and private borrowing, have crowded out entitlements and infrastructure, and have diminished American standards of living.  In addition, our military strategy has led American wealth to be reassured of safe returns off-shore, limiting access to capital and credit for domestic businesses.  Investors transferred $6 trillion abroad to direct foreign investments, and an additional $10 trillion to offshore banks shielded from taxation.

Unfortunately, trade deficits have led the world to nearsightedly consider replacing the dollar with a world denominated reserve currency, threatening our ability to sustain our military.  As we pull our military back from the world stage, the security gap will be filled from competing sources, creating military instability that will threaten the peace the world has enjoyed for the last 40 years.  As a result, the MNC investments that precipitated these changes will be at risk of default and trillions of dollars of hard assets already invested in emerging countries, could be at risk of nationalization.   As emerging nations continue to expand, commodity exporters may be unable meet world demand.  Recognizing the threat to national security, with the world’s warring history as a guide, armed conflict could ensue.  Ironically, MNCs gutted our country of essential, strategic, manufacturing capability to mount a credible and sustainable war for commodities.

 These possibilities argue for a comprehensive review of our trade, economic, and taxation policies regarding multinational corporations.  What are your thoughts?

A Math Example Clarifies The Debate About Free Trade

Sharpen your pencils, get a cup of coffee, and grind through this simplified math example that clarifies why jobs are being lost to places like China and India through free trade.  Hopefully the exercise will be enlightening.  It also explains mathematically why America must innovate to make up for lost jobs and to keep wages from being depressed.  If you have any questions while going through the exercise, leave it in the comment section and I will promptly answer it for you.

The Debt Ponzi Collapse Exposed the Real Crisis: A Transfer of Investment and Jobs

Notwithstanding that the current economic crisis was initiated by a debt ponzi scheme that collapsed inflated home prices, creating credit and capital illiquidity, the real crisis is what the collapse finally exposed.  Over the last 25 years, a series of bubbles and bursts have masked the underlying long term transfer of investment and jobs from America to other countries.  The following is an extremely simplified but useful example of how this occurred and why debate continues to surround free trade.

Assume:

• 2 countries X, Y
• 10 people per countries X and Y
• 1 International banker / multinational company (Banker)
• 10 products each requiring 1 person /year of work
• Products expire in 6 years requiring replacement
• Capital has infinite life, interest rate is 0%, material and transportation costs are free

 

Country X

• Banker lends to multinational who creates 10 factories
• 10 Factories each hire 1 person to create a total of 10 products per year
• Workers are paid 1 dollar for each unit of work and products are priced at 1.2 dollars
•  At the end of each year, each person borrows .2 dollars and buys 1 product
• After 6 years, all people have earned labor wages to pay back loans and own 5 products
• After 6 years, 60 units are produced and 50 are consumed
• In 6 years, Banker nets 10 units, zero dollars (60 dollars revenue less 60 dollars) labor, and creates  2.4 dollars value per factory
• With excess units, Banker seek more consumers
• Some products are already reaching obsolesence so cycle must repeat

 

Country Y

• For first 6 years country Y is agrarian but educates its people preparing for industry
• With high unemployment, workers are willing to work for .2 dollars
• Country Y government collects .2 dollars for multinational privilege to invest in country Y
• After first 6 years, Banker builds a factory to produce 1 product (a)
• Banker hires 1 person and loans person 1 dollar to buy product (a)
• During next 5 years, factory produces 5 units and 1 is consumed by country Y, 4 units of product (a) are sold to Country X
• Banker nets 3 dollars, selling 5 units for 5 dollars, labor costing 1 dollar, country Y collecting 1 dollar
• Banker benefits .6 dollars by moving factory to country Y
• As capital is returned, Banker reinvests in country Y
• Country Y invests dollars gained by multinationals in securing future benefits for its people

 

Country X responds

• Because prices are lower, workers in country X buy 4 units of product (a) from country Y
• Plant producing product (a) reduces output to 1 unit during next 5 years
• Worker from factory (a) is laid off and replaced by part time worker
• Small company with innovative idea generates product requiring loan and worker
• Banker loans small company to build factory to produce product
• Small company hires worker that was producing product (a) so that employment is maintained

 

Over Time

• Banker corporation continues to invest in country Y
• Country X must continue to innovate to create new products to replace jobs taken by country Y
• The rate at which country X cannot keep up with the transition of jobs to country Y correlates to the rate at which jobs are lost and wages are depressed in country X

 

Benefits and costs of free trade to residents of Country X

• Workers who have jobs benefit .8 dollars over 5 years from buying lower cost product
• If innovation keeps pace with the transfer of jobs overseas, creating high paying jobs within country x, residents of country x receive more goods and are wealthier
• However, if the following occur, residents of country x is poorer, and country X borrows 2.5 dollars over 5 years from banker to pay unemployment benefits to laid off worker:

o   If innovation does not keep pace

o   If investment wealth is limited and bank receives higher rate of return for funding multinational transfer of jobs than on innovation investment

o   If multinationals purchase innovation and transfer innovation to country y

o   If economic shock creates illiquidity and halts investment in innovation

 

Benefits and costs of free trade to Banker / multinational

• Under scenarios listed above, the banker / multinational continues to benefit

o   With innovation, banker has additional investment options

o   Without innovation, wealth of the working class is transferred through multinational transfer of jobs to the banker

• However, if free trade and excessive investment in country Y cause jobs to shift too quickly, then:

                o   Country X deficit increases to unsustainable level

o   High unemployment in country X causes widespread default on consumer loans

o   Banker / multinational is at risk of negative return