Spring Cleaning

Spring is definitely here.  Nature is doing its part to remind us that it's a great gift to be alive and experiencing what is.  Our consciences can take it from there - what we ought to do to honor life.  


And so, to that end, a good ritual, getting the crud out.  De-hibernating, sweeping the den.  Pretty straightforward to do in our little private lives.  Vexingly difficult at the level of the human hive.  Where to begin?


Almost everyone I talk with is sick of spin-world, scams and corrupt crony capitalism.   Let me humbly suggest a spring cleaning to refresh our reeling society.


1) Put an end to career politics.  No career politics = no escalating networks of corruption.  Everyone should serve in public office - ONCE.  And then, no more.  Whatever you did, you did it.  For a year, or maybe two. Then get out.  Next.  It's service, remember?  Not institutionalized theft by criminal dynasties.


2) Rein in and shrink unelected government bureaucracy.  When elected political careers go away, unelected Mandarins can hold sway.  But not if we get serious about sunsetting and privatizing government.  There is no reason to unthinkingly spawn and grow government agencies that have proven they have no fiduciary duty to their taxpayer funders.  How about that TSA?


3) Move from a secrecy-driven and manipulated fiat money system to hard money.  This is virtually impossible to even consider until we do #1 and #2.  No pun intended.  100 years of the Federal Reserve controlling the supply of US money has diminished the value of the Dollar by 95%.  Good thing no one lives long enough to see ALL their savings decimated.  Just most of them.  Government can spend and spend and increase debt for a long time, counting on the fact that the debt will be greatly devalued.  The only losers are savers and fixed-incomers... are there any savers left or am I the only idiot?


We all have our own closets, basements and attics to clean in the Spring.  Collectively, we've just put it off for way too long.  We owe it to our kids, grandkids and beyond.  

Oh those Happy Europeans

Is Wolfgang Schaeuble about to be smacked by Mme. LaGarde?  Don't you just love that French determination?


The guy in the chair in the background is obviously enjoying it.  Hey, it's big theater.  The Greek Tragedy continues to unfold while the Eurozone keeps rearranging the deck chairs on their sinking fiscal and monetary union ship.  Don't worry, China will save us all.


Adele's breakup anthem "Because of You" really is the perfect song for the times.


Not that things are really so much better here in Norte Mexico.  The unrelenting move to convert the country into a two-class bipolar kleptocracy continues apace with the Fed eating everything in the world financial without regard for future indigestion, the executive branch quietly sweeping the whole FraudClosureGate Robosigning fiasco under the rug (made with pure 1% wool), and the sickcare system pauperizing the middle class while comping those below the line.  Oh, and how about the rushed bipartisan show of public servitude by our federal elected officials to eschew trading on stocks based on information acquired in the course of their official duties?   Loophole sandwiches, anyone?


Now carry on.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Worse - GOVERNMENT Statistics

Today's tasty treat courtesy of the BUreau of LLabor SHITandards.


Amazing! Rocket Science!  More jobs and a lower labor participation rate magically drops the stated unemployment rate to 8.2%.  We're SAVED!


Woops - Charles Biederman, who runs TrimTabs, who bases their observations on withholding data, and, says: "actual jobs, not seasonally adjusted, are down 2.9 million over the past two months. It is only after seasonal adjustments – made at the sole discretion of the Bureau of Labor Statistics economists – that 2.9 million fewer jobs gets translated into 446,000 new seasonally adjusted jobs." A 3.3 million "adjustment" solely at the discretion of the BLS? "


I think I just saw something floating in the punchbowl.  

The Day the Tulips Wilted

Tulips are beautiful.  So beautiful they became objects of greed and envy.  Nowhere moreso than in 17th century Holland.  Tulip bulbs became a frenzied market, and eventually the most expensive commodity in the world.  Until February 3, 1637.  


This little chart shows how the tulip market wilted, rather quickly.  Fortunes that had been made vanished.  Happy 375th anniversary of the end of Tulipomania.

A Tale of Quail and Cottontail

My family was blessed to lived in a veritable garden of Eden for twenty years.  When we first moved there, the three-acre lot was almost bare save three oak trees and some sagebrush.  My wife is a Green Thumb.  In a few short years we had hundreds of trees, many of them fruiting, exotic flowering plants and a vegetable garden that fed many more than us.

Our first cohabitants were ants and spiders - they were the tough survivors from a lengthy drought. Over time as the edible greenery flourished, new species on foot and wing appeared steadily.  

Quail were one of the first waves of immigrants to the new promised land.  Quail are diligent and smart.  They quickly identify and appropriate all their desired food sources, set up nests under lush shrubs, and make a lot of chicks.  The Quail were so successful that their broods came to number almost twenty.  Imagine yourself as a parent with twenty newborns!

The Quail's success was also their sadness.  You see, we had five cats patrolling the property when not lounging on a favorite couch.  Some of the cats were very hip to the increase in number of chicks per adult Quail.  They would patiently wait in a blind near a frequented Quail Trail and happily pick off a straggling chick every now and again, until the brood had been reduced to a number the parents could defend.  Why  recall this?  The European Union is the Quail Family!  Mama France and Daddy Deutschland simply have too many wandering chicks to guard.  The evil Bond Vigilante Cats will never stop stalking the weakest and pouncing; it's simply too rewarding.  The Book of Quail suggests that the European Union may survive, but as a much smaller family.

The B Side o Nature's Record "Will It Go Round in Cycles?" is a short story about Rabbits.  For the first ten or so years in the Garden, there were very pesty ground squirrels but no rabbits.  The ground squirrels were the mammalian equivalent of the ants and spiders - tough, resilient drought survivors.  After the Garden developed to a truly lush state, we spotted a Cottontail once in awhile.  Then a few more.  Then a LOT more.  They took to our welcoming environment with true gusto.  For years, their numbers increased and increased.  Bunnies everywhere!  Then, in just a couple short years, the population essentially vanished.

Exponential or parabolic growth in anything historically ends with a crash thud.  Tulips, Stocks, Real Estate and Cottontail populations.  Today, global debt appears to be a terminal stage of exponential increase. The Bank of International Settlements' most-recent report showed global debt rising from $600 Trillion to more than $700 Trillion - in just six months!  Our wealth of at least the last twenty, no, thirty years has been based on a growing global debt bubble.  Of course, this bubble won't end like the Cottontail population.  Our politicians, economists and bankers are way too smart for that.  Silly Wabbits.

Top of Your Reading List! Federal Reserve Bank of New York Website!

The Federal Reserve used to be a pretty quiet club for the most powerful.  The players are still the most powerful but it's not so quiet anymore.  OWS camped out in front of Fed Banks.  Ron Paul says, "End the Fed!"  Investigators like www.zerohedge.com follow and report on the Fed intensively.

The Fed is so much at the root of what's happening in the world economically it makes sense to follow what they're saying and doing.  The New York Fed, the central power station of the powerful institution, is a methodical publisher and chronicler.  Maybe not a late night action novel romp, but plenty to wonder at, be scared by and even laugh at here: http://www.newyorkfed.org/index.html.

Item 1 - History of the Primary Dealers

How about the history of the membership of the elite "Primary Dealers" group - the too-big-to-fail bank/investment bank/brokerage hydra, the Fed's financial tennis partners, who make a cut on every transaction (thanks taxpayers!).   You might expect that this group's roster would be pretty darn stable... but NO!  The Fed provides a blow-by-blow timeline of all the membership changes, here: 

http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/pridealers_current.html  - click on the tab labeled ch-ch-ch-Chay-ayn-gezz and be amazed.  They come and go like cocktail party guests.

Item 2 - The Reverse Repo Posse

If you're looking for a really scary story, read up on how the New York Fed is assembling and testing a bigger financial firefighting posse because it doesn't think the vaunted Primary Dealers can handle a three-alarm debt-fueled blaze alone.  It's right here:  http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/rrp_counterparties.html .  How many Americans know what Reverse Repos even are?  I didn't!  When you read through the material, it's clear that this is about strengthening the Fed's "wet work" crew - when the SHTF bigtime, the Fed will be working Reverse Repos overtime - essentially buying and moving toxic debt securities from and between bank counterparties, so that drowning banks can "rebalance" with fresh cash on their books, which will help them meet capital reserve ratios.  Reading about the Fed's Reverse Repo project is like watching a neighbor who works top-secret at DoD building a bunker in his back yard.  Shouldn't we be on alert?

Item 3- Bank Supervision

Yes, there is even comedy at the NY Fed site!  Just check out the knee-slapper on "a new era of bank supervision" -- http://www.newyorkfed.org/newsevents/speeches/2011/dahlgren111111.html.   Huh? What about the FDIC, the SEC...  ?   Before mirth and merriment overcome you, it might be well to consider that the Fed, central pillar of financial stability, now has a balance sheet of more than $1.5 Trillion, resting on capital reserves of $50 Billion... that's  50:1 leverage - a 2% loss on balance sheet assets would wipe out the reserve capital.  Is that the new math of the new era of bank supervision?  

Bureau of Public Debt - A Top Place to Work in the US Government

You just can't make this up.   Did you know...

The US Bureau of the Public Debt is rated the sixth best place to work from among 224 government agencies (aka Agency Subcomponents)?

Whoopee!  I would guess that job security probably gets pretty high marks.

If you visit their website http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/  be sure to visit the up-to-the-minute US federal government public debt counter - http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np  that is now flashing a cool $15Trillion!

On the homepage, the BPD features an solemn quote attributed to Alexander Hamilton, "The United States debt, foreign and domestic, was the price of liberty."   Anyone besides me think that the debt today represents something altogether different?