Wednesday, July 29, 2009

July 29 2009: Forever Blowing Bubbles

William Henry Jackson Vermeer in the Sun 1890
On the roof of the Ponce de Leon Hotel.St. Augustine, Florida

Ilargi: There are quite a few commentators these days who claim that the next bubble to be sucked out of Mainstreet America and launched into the infinite spaces above lower Manhattan will be the cap and trade "mechanism" that's being refined for maximum monetary output, as we speak, by the fine few who serve government and banks alike and simultaneously.

They may be right. But there's another scheme being "fine-tuned" that would seem to qualify for a shot at the 'next bubble' title.

Now, first off, I have to admit I have completely ignored this scheme, the Obama administration's health care reform plans. I've seen headlines flash by, I watched fake news reports on waiting lines in Canada, that kind of thing. But, to be honest, it doesn't interest me at all. And that has nothing to do with not caring about the lives and welfare of Americans. The reason I’m not interested is that the entire "discussion" has been disingenuous from the start, and is therefore guaranteed to lead to failure.

"Universal" health care plans have been running in many rich western countries for decades, and while there are no perfect systems, and cost pressures build up there as well, the satisfaction level to date is generally high, much higher than in the US. While at the same time the costs of these systems are way lower than anything the US has been able to come up with. So why the extensive talk, why does the US need to re-invent the wheel? Just look around and pick a tried and true system, like Norway, France, Germany. They're all cheaper and they all function better. And if you don't believe that, ask yourself why none of these countries is presently involved in exasperating talks about their systems.

So why does Washington try to invent the wheel? The answer is easy. The difference between US and Western European health care lies exclusively in the political power acquired by corporate industries, in this case -mainly- a combination of drug manufacturers (closely linked to the chemical industry) and insurance companies (which are in turn closely linked to Wall Street banks). The US needs to fabricate its own system because it needs to satisfy the perverted influence industry has on not just health care itself, but also on the political process.

US health care spending is over 15% of GDP, and within 10 years it will be 20% (there's your bubble). That means today’s dollar total is about $2.2 trillion (that's Britain's entire GDP), and we're on our way to $3 trillion. If the US would adopt a Western European system, it might save 50% of these costs. And a few very powerful corporations would lose $1 trillion per year in revenues. That's all you need to know about the reason why there will be no significant reform. Sick people are big business. And big business runs the nation.

The link between drug manufacturing and the chemical industry is obvious. The same chemical giants also have close ties to the military. What is less known are their connections to the food industry. Firms like DuPont, Dow, Syngenta and Monsanto have, under various names and guises, made enormous profits from fertilizers and pesticides ever since the Green Revolution started over half a century ago. In the past two decades, they have moved into the industry of food itself. Genetically modified seeds are taking agriculture by storm, and they're all property of the world's chemical giants, which are now routinely referred to as agribusinesses. A long cry, at first glance, from the Monsanto that for instance infamously supplied the US army with Agent Orange.

The companies have further solidified their control over all aspects of our food by linking up with traditional food conglomerates like Cargill, Tyson and ConAgra, essentially forming a closed circuit of control over world food, a circuit that tightens as time goes by and all seeds are contaminated with GM technologies.

Meanwhile, they are still also what they started out as: chemical giants. As such, they control much of US health care. And therefore have a huge influence in Washington, much like Goldman Sachs and General Electric (which, accidentally, has a large chemical division).

Now, if I were an innocent little simple child, I might conclude from this that all these companies really have to do is make Americans eat the food they control, make sure that food makes them sick, and cash in big again at the other end, in medical care. The corn syrup produced at one end of this "food chain" is in everything these days, and it's a main ingredient in the current obesity epidemic in the US, which brings along large additional medical costs, an estimated $147 billion per year in fact. Obesity habitually leads to diabetes, and you can guess who provides the insulin. A few years ago, the increase in childhood diabetes led one doctor to proclaim that we're raising a generation of blind amputees. The numbers keep on rising exponentially.

One columnist today claimed that obesity doesn't cost money, but it saves billions of dollars, because obese people live on average 7 years shorter than their non-obese neighbors. That sort of cynicism seems to be the leading policy guideline for both industry and government. And that's why there will be no health care reform.

I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles

Treasurys Slump On Poor 5-Year Auction
A second disappointing sale of Treasury notes Wednesday sent prices lower and raised concerns that the government might have to spend more on funds for the economic rescue.
The $39 billion auction of five-year notes - the largest such sale ever - wasn't bid heavily enough to prevent the Treasury from paying a higher rate on its borrowing. The yield on the new 2.625% notes due July 2014 was 2.689%, compared with 2.63% in pre-market trade.

Investors had been braced for a poor performance, following tepid demand for the new two-year notes Tuesday. This second blow, coming just a month after the Treasury pulled off a triumphant, $104 billion round of fundraising, sent prices tumbling early afternoon. Long-dated notes have since recovered, with the 10-year up 6/32 for a 3.67% yield, but the shorter maturities are all lower on the day.

As the auctions get bigger, so does anxiety over their reception. Tuesday's sale of a record $42 billion in two-year notes wasn't bad in historic terms, but it didn't bode well for the remaining $67 billion to come this week. Market watchers are already disconsolate over Thursday's $28 billion seven-year sale. "Today's definitely not-good five-year auction really raises the bar in terms of negative expectations for tomorrow's seven-year auction," noted Miller Tabak & Co. strategist Dan Greenhaus.

Wednesday's statistics certainly weren't as pretty as last month's when the ferocity of bidding took the market by surprise, and seemed to put to rest fears that investors could be souring on U.S. debt. Bids at this auction exceeded the amount on offer by just 1.92 times, the lowest since September last year, and well below the 2.58 seen last month. Indirect bids, a gauge of participation among foreign central banks, came in at 36.7%, nowhere near the 62.8% seen at the June auction.

Rising yields affect not only the government's borrowing costs, but those of consumers and businesses, since the 10-year is commonly used as a pricing benchmark for mortgages and corporate borrowing. But the effect so far shouldn't be overstated. The 10-year yield has jumped from a low of 3.29% early this month, but it's still well below the 2009 peak of 4%. Policymakers have tended to downplay concerns about the recent increases in yields, pointing out that renewed optimism about the economic recovery is also partially to blame, as investors switch from defensive positions in government debt to riskier assets.

But William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was cautious on the economic outlook earlier Wednesday in a speech to the Association for a Better New York. He said unemployment was likely to remain "elevated" and capacity utilization "unusually low" for some time. But the speech focused mainly on quashing fears that the Fed's assistance programs could lead to a glut of credit that ultimately stokes inflation. "Keeping inflation and inflation expectations well anchored around a low level is essential," he said. At the same time, though, the central banker left the door open to extend the Term Asset-Backed Liquidity Facility, which caters to consumer lending, beyond its year-end expiry.

Life Insurers Post Losses
Life insurers Lincoln National Corp. and Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. both reported second-quarter losses on charges and investment losses. Both companies pointed to some positive signs during the quarter. Hartford noted a 2% increase in written premiums for its personal lines insurance, which includes auto and homeowners insurance. Lincoln said net flows into its individual annuity business more than doubled from the first quarter, to $1 billion, though they were still down from the year-ago quarter.

Lincoln's shares dropped 2.5% to $17.60 in after-hours trading, while Hartford's stock jumped 4.6% to $6.03, as Hartford appeared to top Wall Street expectations while Lincoln narrowly missed. The shares for both companies have dropped by at least two-thirds from September. Of the six life insurers cleared to participate in the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program in May, only Hartford and Lincoln elected to access the funds. Hartford received $3.4 billion in funding, while Lincoln took $950 million of the government's approved $2.5 billion while raising about $1.2 billion on its own.

Lincoln reported a loss of $161.4 million, or 62 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $124.7 million, or 48 cents a share. It was the company's third consecutive quarterly loss.
The latest results included a 65-cent-a-share charge related to the sale of its U.K. arm and 84 cents in charges related to investment losses and other items. Lincoln's operating income, which excludes realized investment gains and losses, fell to 81 cents a share from $1.24. The quarter also included a restructuring charge of 7 cents a share. Revenue dropped 22% to $1.95 billion.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected per-share operating earnings of 83 cents on revenue of $2.52 billion. Analyst estimates typically exclude unusual items.

Hartford reported a loss of $15 million, or 6 cents a share, compared with a year-ago profit of $543 million, or $1.73 a share, a year earlier. It was Hartford's fourth consecutive loss. The latest results included a deferred acquisition costs unlock gain of $360 million, or $1.11 a share. Hartford had $649 million in net realized losses, compared with a net loss of $156 million a year earlier. Included in that loss was a $300-million payment it made to investor Allianz SE that was triggered by Hartford's acceptance of the TARP investment.

The executive-compensation restrictions that come along with TARP funds could complicate Hartford's search for a new chairman and chief executive to replace Ramani Ayer, who plans to retire by the end of the year. The operating profit was $1.90 a share, down 22% from $2.22 a share a year earlier. Analysts projected per-share earnings of $1.16. Assets under management fell 15% to $352.1 billion.

Hartford has said it will focus on its U.S. property/casualty and life-insurance operations and consider a sale of its institutional markets businesses. It also stopped writing new business in Japan.
Hartford again cut its 2009 operating earnings target to break-even to 20 cents a share, from its already drastically reduced view of 5 cents to 45 cents. Analysts were looking for a loss of 21 cents.

June durable-goods orders fall 2.5%
Weaker orders for automobiles and airplanes translated into a worse-than-expected 2.5% decrease in durable-goods orders in June, the Commerce Department estimated Wednesday. It was the first decrease in the past three months. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had been forecasting a 0.6% decline, banking on weakness in the auto sector to prevail over modest improvements in other industries.

Orders rose a revised 1.3% in May, down from the prior estimate of a 1.8% increase. Despite the sharp drop in the headline number, the details of the report showed some signs of stabilization in new orders. Excluding a 12.8% fall for transportation equipment, durable orders rose 1.1% in June. Orders for metals, machinery and electrical equipment had large gains.

"The rebound in 'core' orders dovetails with other evidence from the industrial sector suggesting manufacturing conditions have brightened over the past few months," said Anna Piretti, economist at BNP Paribas, in a note to clients. "However, we feel that part of this improvement reflects a normalization from the panic-driven lows reached in the fourth quarter and first quarter rather than the beginning of a sustainable pick-up," Piretti wrote.

Shipments of durable goods fell 0.2% in June, for a record eleventh straight monthly decline. Inventories of durable goods fell 0.9%. Orders plunged 38.5% for civilian aircraft and dipped 1.0% for motor vehicles. The monthly durables report is highly volatile, largely because of swings in demand for civilian aircraft and other extremely expensive items. Orders for the second quarter were not as bad as the severe decline in the first quarter. Consumers regained some appetite for items built to last.

The Commerce Department will release its first estimate for second-quarter gross domestic product on Friday. Today's report "had only a minor positive impact on our second-quarter GDP forecast, which we still see at negative 1.2%, but provides a more positive starting point for some flattening out in business investment in the third quarter after a record collapse over the prior few quarters," said the economic team at Morgan Stanley Research.

Orders for nondefense capital-equipment goods excluding aircraft rose 1.4% in June after a sharp 3.5% decline in May. Such core capital goods orders are considered the best gauge of capital spending by businesses. Shipments of core capital goods -- a figure that feeds directly into calculations of GDP -- fell 0.1% in June. Orders for electronics, excluding semiconductors, fell 2.5% in June. Orders for fabricated metals declined 0.2%. Orders for primary metals rose 8.9%, the biggest gain since July 2004. Orders for electrical equipment rose 0.9%. Orders for defense capital goods tumbled 28.3%. Excluding defense, orders fell 0.7%.

Study Estimates Cost of US Obesity at $140 Billion
A new study has quantified the costs of a growing problem in America - obesity. And experts are trying to develop strategies to reverse the trend. Two-thirds of American adults, and one out of five children are above what doctors consider a healthy weight for their size, and those numbers have been increasing. People who are above their healthy weight are, not surprisingly, not as healthy.

It's no wonder experts talk about an "epidemic" of obesity. "Obesity and with it, diabetes, are the only major health problems that are getting worse in this country, and they're getting worse rapidly," says Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He adds that the rate of obesity has doubled over the past generation.

A new study published this week puts a dollar estimate on that epidemic - $140 billion a year in extra medical costs. Obese people spend on average $1,500 a year more for medical care on average than a person of healthy weight. And of course, says Frieden, the financial burden is only part of the story. "Beyond the economic costs are the disability, the suffering and the early deaths caused by obesity. And this is something that we as a society need to take more action to address."

Obesity is defined based on a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher. For example, if you weigh 100 kilograms and your height is 180 centimeters, your BMI is 31, which is considered obese. A separate category - overweight - applies to people who are above what is considered a healthy BMI, but not so much that it's classified as obese.

The new study on the costs of obesity is published online by the journal Health Affairs. Lead author Erik Finkelstein says those costs have nearly doubled over the past decade. About half of the expense is paid for by government programs like Medicare, which insures older Americans. "Their average expenditures are about $4,700 [per year] if they're normal weight, and if they're obese that number rises to about $6,400," Finkelstein says.

Finkelstein is affiliated with RTI International, a North Carolina research institute. He says much of the higher medical costs of obese older Americans is due to increased use of prescription drugs, as obese people are more likely to have chronic disease requiring medication. "Clearly, obesity is costly. We've shown that to be the case. And in fact, I would argue that the only way to show real savings in health expenditures in the future is through efforts to reduce the prevalence of obesity and related health conditions, specifically improved diet and physical activity."

Finkelstein's research was one of the topics discussed in Washington this week at the CDC's first-ever national Conference on Obesity Control and Prevention. CDC director Thomas Frieden told reporters that the burden of obesity is not shared equally. "The rate of obesity among African-Americans and among Hispanics is significantly higher than the rate among white Americans. In addition, we know that there's a very tight correlation between obesity and poverty, such that those who are living in poverty are much more likely to become obese."

A recent report in a CDC publication outlines a variety of ways to head off the spiraling obesity epidemic. William Dietz, head of the CDC's obesity unit, says the report identifies a number of strategies to help people get the weight off, or keep them from gaining weight in the first place. "Strategies to support choices of healthy food and beverages, strategies to encourage breastfeeding, strategies to encourage physical activity or to limit sedentary behavior, or strategies to create communities that support physical activity," says Dietz.

Some of the recommendations: smaller portion sizes in restaurants, fewer beverages sweetened with sugar, increased physical activities in school, improved access to walking. Eric Finkelstein, the researcher who quantified the financial costs, says Americans have to do something. "So many differentials are involved that the only thing we do know is that in the absence of action, it's unlikely that costs associated with obesity are going to decrease."

And as ingrained as things like eating habits and activity levels might be, CDC Director Thomas Frieden says there's reason for hope. He cites the success of higher taxes in reducing smoking by half among teenagers in New York. "In the case of soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages, evidence from a couple of sources, including industry sources, suggests that higher prices will strongly discourage people from consuming soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages." If the U.S. public health establishment wants to get people to exercise more, eat less and avoid fattening foods, it has a big challenge ahead.

What’s Wrong With a Single-Payer System?
Gail Collins: David, your writing on health care has been incredibly thoughtful, so I’m going to take this opportunity to poke you a little. Then I’ll shut up so you can talk. The other week I said I agreed with you about the critical importance of cost controls. Then I asked — O.K., I sort of demanded — that you denounce the Republican leaders in the Senate who were flinging around proposals to make it illegal to investigate cost controls at all. You basically said that was a stupid thing to do, but that the Republicans weren’t really the problem since they aren’t in charge.

But actually, they are. And so are we. The reason the country can’t solve the health care mess is because the people with the biggest bullhorns don’t speak honestly and clearly about it. Nobody understands the Democratic plan, and that scares the public. The irresponsible Republicans are just waiting to make whatever comes out sound terrible. The responsible Republicans are working to come up with a compromise that’s going to be even more incoherent than the Democratic version.

My version of reality is that:
  • A.) Since something like a third of the cost of health care is in administration, and the problem with reorganizing health care has to do with all the multitudinous plans and policies, a single-payer system would be far and away the most cost effective answer. We don’t talk much about it because it isn’t politically possible. But it isn’t politically possible because we don’t talk about it. The opponents of a public plan are afraid that people would all gradually migrate toward it, causing the insurance industry as we know it to wither away. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?
  • B.) There have to be limits on what doctors can prescribe. The president pretends the only limit will be on useless tests and drugs that have an equally good, cheaper alternative. But useless and equally good are in the eye of the beholder.

There are already limits unless you have a really, really good insurance plan, but a lot of the country either has very good coverage or imagines their coverage is good because they haven’t really tested it. They’re afraid of change. Yelling "rationing" every three seconds totally poisons the discussion. And that is no little matter. I’ve already gone on longer than I promised, so there’s no C.

David Brooks: Gail, as you know, I begin and end my days by reciting Congressional Budget Office reports. I even put on tefillin, just to make it seem holy. So let me begin my reply with the sentence from the latest report. It’s from a section in which the C.B.O. analyzes what the House plan, with the strong public program and all the rest, would do to health care inflation:

The net cost of the coverage provisions would be growing at a rate of more than 8 percent per year in nominal terms between 2017 and 2019; we would anticipate a similar trend in the subsequent decade. This is devastating. The plan was sold as a way to bend the cost curve, to reduce the rate of health care cost growth. Instead, the cost of the plan to the federal budget would rise by 8 percent a year, and there wouldn’t be anything close to offsetting revenues to pay for it.

This is a loud trumpet for all health care reformers. Start over. Get serious about costs. We can either pass this kind of reform and bankrupt the country or we can pass another kind of reform. End of story. Now that I’ve got that out of my system, let me say I admire your get-serious list (though my sixth grade teacher once said that if you have an A and B, you should also have a C).

I’m not crazy about the public plan. I dislike the idea of the government competing in a marketplace it regulates. I think the temptation to subsidize the public entity will be overwhelming. But I’m not vociferously against it either. That’s because:
  • A.) I’m not that thrilled with the insurance companies.
  • B.) I think it will save money, but not that much (the C.B.O. agrees).
  • C.) (!) I think it will produce small administrative efficiencies.

Democratic politicians throw around statistics claiming that Medicare has much, much lower administrative costs than private insurers. I’ve been told by various economists that this claim is three-quarters trickery. It’s a lot cheaper to administer a targeted population that uses a lot of care than it is to administer a large population that uses little care per capita. Plus you can save a lot of administrative costs if you don’t actually regulate treatments that much.

As for your second point, that there should be limits on what doctors can prescribe, I say: "Amen to that." If I had to add a few other items to the list, I’d say putting a serious cap on the tax exemption is the way to measure the seriousness of a reform proposal. Without that, it’s not serious. And finally, I’d say that there have to be cost conscious consumers within a closely regulated market. Unless you get proper incentives for both providers and consumers, I doubt you’re going to get very far. In the current plans, all the emphasis is on the providers.

There’s a group called the Fresh Thinking Project, which has a sensible list of reform ideas. I’d only add in closing that the health care system is as big as the entire British economy. There is no way something that big and complex and dynamic can be run out of Washington. We have to try to set up a dynamic system, not trying to establish a set of rules to be imposed by fiat. The smart reformers at the Office of Management and Budget are aware of this. I’m not sure the congressional staffs are.

Why Americans hate single-payer insurance
by Paul Krugman

Because they don’t know they have it. A commenter points me to this:
"I had to politely explain that, ‘Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government,’ " Inglis recalled. "But he wasn’t having any of it."

One of the truly amazing and depressing things about the health reform debate is the persistence of fear-mongering over "socialized medicine" even though we already have a system in which the government pays substantially more medical bills (47% of the total) than the private insurance industry (35%).

In a way, this is the flip side of the persistent belief that the free market can cure healthcare, even though there are no places where it actually has; people also believe that government-provided insurance can’t work, even though there are many places where it does — and one of those places is the United States of America.

Rates Of Severe Childhood Obesity Have Tripled

The research was published online and will appear in the September print edition. Skelton and colleagues compared data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). They looked at the prevalence of obesity and severe obesity in a study population of 12,384 children, representing approximately 71 million U.S. children ages 2 to 19 years. Severe childhood obesity is a new classification for children and describes those with a body mass index (BMI) that is equal to or greater than the 99th percentile for age and gender.

For example, a 10-year-old child with a BMI of 24 would be considered severely obese, Skelton said, whereas in an adult, that is considered a normal BMI. An expert committee convened by the American Medical Association, the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services proposed the new classification in 2007. The research by Skelton and colleagues is the first of its kind to use the new classification and detail the severity of the problem. They found that the prevalence of severe obesity tripled (from 0.8 percent to 3.8 percent) in the period from 1976-80 to 1999-2004. Based on the data, there are 2.7 million children in the U.S. who are considered severely obese.

Increases in severe obesity were highest among blacks and Mexican-Americans and among those below the poverty level. For example, the percentage of Mexican-American children in the severely obese category was 0.9 percent in 1976-80 and 5.2 percent in 1999-2004. Researchers also looked at the impact of severe obesity and found that a third of children in the severely obese category were classified as having metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors for heart attack, stroke and diabetes. These risk factors include higher-than normal blood pressure, cholesterol and insulin levels.


Obesity Medical Costs Balloon to $147 Billion, Study Finds
Medical spending for obesity is estimated to have reached $147 billion in 2008, an 87 percent increase in the past decade, according to a government-sponsored study. Each obese patient costs health insurers and government programs $1,429, or 42 percent, more a year than a normal-weight individual in 2006, according to the analysis of health expenses released today by the journal Health Affairs. In 1998, the medical costs of obesity were estimated to have reached $78.5 billion.

President Barack Obama has said his administration wants to control the rising cost of health care in part through preventive medicine programs, such as those to help people lose weight or quit smoking. Medicare, the government run program for the elderly and disabled, spent $7 billion on obesity-related prescriptions drugs, such as those to treat diabetes, high cholesterol and blood pressure, the study said.

"Although health reform may be necessary to address health inequities and rein in rising health spending, real savings are more likely to be achieved through reforms that reduce the prevalence of obesity and related risk factors, including poor diet and inactivity," said the study’s authors. "These reforms will require policy and environmental changes that extend far beyond what can be achieved through changes in health care financing and delivery."

The incidence of obesity, a major cause of diabetes, stroke and heart attacks, has more than doubled in the past 30 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 32 percent of American adults are obese, according to data from the CDC’s Web site. A person is obese if their body mass index is greater than 30 or about 186 pounds for a person who is five feet, six inches tall.

Without obesity, spending by the government-funded Medicaid program for the poor would be 8.5 percent less and Medicare would be lowered by 11.8 percent, the study said. Researchers analyzed data between 1998 and 2006 from the government-sponsored Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, which collects information on health services that Americans use, how frequently they use the services and the cost. The study was conducted by researchers at RTI International in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, the CDC in Atlanta, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in Rockville, Maryland.

Obesity does not cost the USA $147 billion a year, it saves us money
Not only does obesity not cost the USA $147 billion a year, it does not account for 10% of all health care spending either. Yes, there has indeed been a report stating that obesity does indeed cost $147 billion a year but it has to be said that just because a paper has been published it does not mean that that paper is in fact true.

It also does not matter that John Stossel is sceptical, nor the LATimes blog not sceptical: while those are usually reasonable indicators of which way an argument is going (Stossel hesitant, LATblog overboard with enthusiasm usually meaning there is no truth in the assertion) for these, while useful indicators, are not infallible.

So, instead of indulging in a he said, she said sort of shouting match, why don't we try to gather together the facts that we have about obesity, health, health care costs and see if we can arrive at a real estimate of what obesity costs us as a nation?

Let us start with that recent paper which has received so much reporting space. It is here, Annual Medical Spending Attributable to Obesity. We are not going to argue with anything they have said, not going to try and disagree, we are going to take their major finding and then point out what they have not in fact included in their calculations. We are, if you prefer, simply pointing to what they have left out and accepting everything that they have said.

Their main finding is this:

Across all payers, per capita medical spending for the obese is $1,429 higher per year, or roughly 42 percent higher, than for someone of normal weight.

From that they then count the number who are obese and thus reach that $147 billion number. We shall accept that as the gross number for health care spending upon the obese. However, we need to keep in mind the stricture of the French economist (for of course this is indeed all about health care economics) Frederic Bastiat and go off and look for what is hidden, not just what is in plain view.

What else do we know about obesity? Anything at all, other than simply the aesthetic point that we don't like seeing it in a bikini? Well, yes, we do in fact. We know that obesity kills people as well. This shouldn't come as all that much of a surprise either. We've got a great big report telling us that health care costs for the obese are higher than they are for those not bloated on calories, health care costs tend to be higher for those who are ill more often and those who are ill more often tend to die younger. So it's not great leap of logic to think that those who are obese are shortening their lifespans.

And indeed they are:

Another study used data on more than 3000 people aged 30 to 49 drawn from the Framingham heart study (Annals of Internal Medicine 2003;138;24-32). According to this prospective cohort study, among 40 year old non-smokers women who were classified as overweight lost 3.3 years of life expectancy compared with normal weight women. The corresponding figure for overweight men was 3.1 years. Among 40 year old non-smokers who were classified as obese, women lost 7.1 years and men lost 5.8 years.

We want just those last two numbers, for the obese, not for the overweight. And? you might say. So what if the obese die younger, serves them right for costing us all more or their health care, doesn't it? Ah, yes, but it also means that we don't have to spend on their health care for those years that they are in their graves rather than desperately searching for that jumbo corn dog. You might think that this is somewhat heartless, looking at peoples' lives in this manner, and you would be correct, it is heartless. It is also correct.

So how much do those years that the obese are not alive save us in cold hard (hearted) cash then? As no one at all is surprised to find out lost years of life tend to come from the end of a lifespan. As average lifespans are now well into the 70s for both men and women and the lost years are 6 or 7 on average, then we can take as a useful proxy what we spend on Medicare. For while there are indeed some who die before they qualify for that health care program, we are using averages all along here (and fairly rough and ready ones as well). If average lifspan is 77 years, you lose 7 of those by being obese then death comes at 70 and yes, you're 5 years into being eligible for Medicare.

As a rough and ready guide how about $8,000 per year per Medicare enrollee?


Eyeballing this chart from 2003 gives us something similar as a guide.

Now we actually have our numbers. Someone who is obese costs (all numbers are averages remember) $1,429 per year more in medical care costs than someone who is not obese. Those people who are obese will die 6.5 years (averaging men and women) younger than someone who is not obese. Those 6.5 years of not life on Medicare save the rest of us $52,000 in health care costs. Or, another way of looking at it, 36 years worth of the higher costs that the obese impose upon us while alive.

Do not forget the usual number of caveats here. Shortened life spans are not in themselves a good thing, they are usually thought of as a loss of human wealth as we lose a human capable of enjoying this fabulous world. Nor is ill health a good thing, for the same reason. But this all started when the medics decided to only look at the cold cash element of obesity and that is exactly what we are doing here, looking only at that cash. Also please remember, these are very rough numbers, close to the truth but used more to illustrate the point than be the last word on the subject.

The gross cost of obesity, the visible gross cost, we have accepted from the original paper as being that $147 billion per annum. The nett cash cost of obesity, after we take off the cash savings on health care because the obese die young looks, well, a great deal smaller, doesn't it?

In fact, let us take the advice of the LATblog:


Let us indeed take a leaf (apologies) from the tobacco book and recall Kip Viscusi's point about those who die young. Not only do we not spend on Medicare for them, they do not collect their Social Security benefits either. People who die young, but after they retire, make a profit for the rest of us taxpayers.

Far from the obese costing the rest of us money it is far more likely that the nett cost of obesity to us, the elegantly thin and sylphlike, is negative. We make a profit on it, not a loss.

Stock Trading Slowdown Is Steepest in Two Decades
Stock trading in the U.S. hasn’t slowed this much midyear in at least two decades, causing some investors to worry that the steepest Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rally since the 1930s will fizzle. [..] 84 percent as many shares changed hands daily on the New York Stock Exchange between May 1 and July 20, compared with the average from Jan. 1 to April 30. That’s the steepest slowdown since at least 1989, according to data compiled by Harrison, New York-based research firm Bespoke Investment Group LLC.

Trading on the NYSE was the slowest of the year on June 12 as the S&P 500 climbed to a seven-month high. The benchmark index for U.S. stocks then dropped 7.1 percent through July 10, when investor optimism on the equity market fell to the lowest level since March, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The S&P 500 is up 44 percent since March 9. "People haven’t really drunk the Kool-Aid yet," said Michael Mullaney, who manages $9 billion for Fiduciary Trust Co. in Boston. "I’m not expecting us to break out of any range anytime during the summer. Before we go gung-ho bullish on the marketplace, we’re going to have to see volumes improve."

U.S. investor confidence, as measured by the Bloomberg Professional Confidence Survey, dropped this month after the World Bank said the recession will be deeper than previously forecast. The nation’s jobless rate reached a 26-year high in June and consumer optimism unexpectedly decreased. Trading usually slows this time of year. Average daily trading from May through July 20 trailed the first four months in 13 out of 21 years examined by Bespoke. In 2008, midyear volume was 85 percent of the pace in the first four months. The S&P 500 plunged 38 percent during the entire year, the most since 1937.

Chinese shares plunge as state intervention rumours sweep market
Chinese shares suffered their biggest fall in eight months today as rumours swept the market that the government was poised to intervene to end its recent rally.

Before today's falls the Shanghai market had risen by 81% this year, staging a strong recovery following its plunge during 2008. This has prompted speculation that China's banks might curtail lending to prevent another unsustainable market bubble. Francis Lun, general manager at Fulbright Securities, said there had been a rush to take profits today before central government acts to cool the markets.

Earlier today there had been frenzied trading in China State Construction Engineering, which made its debut on the Shanghai market and saw its share price promptly double. Four billion shares in the company changed hands - around five times the number traded in FTSE 100 companies in an average session in London. James Liu, Shanghai-based deputy chief investment officer at APS Asset Management, said the runaway success of the flotation showed that there was "too much liquidity" in the market.

Mao Nan, analyst with Orient Securities, agreed that the company's shares had been quickly overvalued. "Hot money is flowing into the share market at the moment. With lots of cash at home and capital flowing in from abroad, the main problem is excessive liquidity," Nan said. China's government imposed a ban on IPOs after the financial crisis sent shares tumbling, but the block was lifted in June.

The first Chinese bull market began in August 2006, when the Shanghai composite was 1623 points. It ended in October 2007, when the index had almost quadrupled to 6124. By this stage millions of people had invested their life savings in shares or borrowed heavily, in an attempt to share in the boom. The index fell to 1678 in November 2008, and after a correction in March this year it has been climbing steadily since.

Where Bailout Money Goes to Die
When CIT Group, a medium-sized lender, faced the threat of bankruptcy recently, it raised an uncomfortable prospect for the officials in Washington managing the bailout of the financial system. CIT got $2.3 billion in bailout funds last year--yet it was still failing. And the government decided not to offer any more help. So if CIT declared bankruptcy, taxpayers would be out their $2.3 billion.

CIT averted bankruptcy, for now, but the brush with insolvency highlighted one of the biggest risks of the entire bailout scheme: that taxpayers won't get their money back. That problem has been overshadowed recently by some good news from firms like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, which have paid back loans they got under the government's Troubled Assets Relief Program. So far, 34 companies have returned about $72 billion in TARP funds to the government, according to a bailout tracker maintained by journalism site ProPublica.

But nearly 700 firms have received bailout money, and many of them are still in rough shape. To gauge how much bailout money may be at risk, U.S. News asked the Ethisphere Institute, a private research group that studies corporate responsibility, to identify who the biggest TARP-jumpers are likely to be. Ethisphere publishes a TARP index, updated weekly, that measures the financial performance of all TARP recipients and calculates the "return" to taxpayers if the bailout funds are treated as an investment in the companies that got them. By that measure, the government has been a poor investor, losing about $148 billion so far--$1,233 per U.S. household. Ethisphere analyzed the same data, including results from the Federal Reserve's recent stress tests, to identify firms most likely to write off their debts to the federal government, either partly or completely.

Bailout architects like Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have argued that the government is likely to get most of the bailout money back, which would make it more like an interest-bearing loan than a giveaway. But since the bailouts began last fall, a number of developments have made it clear that the feds--and the taxpayers--can kiss some of that money goodbye. Ethisphere estimates that the following nine firms could end up costing the government the most when the final bailout accounts are tallied. Together, they account for nearly $220 billion in government bailouts, including TARP money and other funds.

AIG (total bailout received: $85 billion). It's hard to imagine a more complicated bailout than this monstrous money hole. The $85 billion includes $40 billion in TARP infusions and about $45 billion in loans from a government credit line. The Federal Reserve has paid an additional $47 billion for troubled AIG securities, which it hopes to resell at some point in the future. And AIG can still tap another $30 billion in credit lines extended by the government.

All of that money has bought the feds 79.9 percent of the insurance giant—the most it can own without triggering accounting rules that would effectively nationalize the whole company. To pay back the government, AIG has developed a long-term plan to break itself up and sell off various insurance divisions and other assets. But the horrible economy makes it a fire-sale market, with many bids coming in at less than half the asking price. So it could be three to five years before all of AIG's assets have been spun off. The government's exposure should shrink later this year, when the $45 billion credit line drops to about $20 billion. But Ethisphere still predicts that the government will recoup far less than what it has plowed into the sinking firm.

Chrysler ($14.9 billion). The government gave Chrysler $7 billion to stay afloat prior to its bankruptcy filing in March. That money essentially disappeared when the company declared bankruptcy in April. Then the government provided Chrysler an additional $8 billion in financing to help it exit bankruptcy in exchange for an 8 percent ownership stake in the new Chrysler. The idea is that Chrysler will go public at some point, sell shares, and buy out the government's position. But the return to the government will probably be well below face value, since the government holds a relatively small stake in a company that's still endangered. "The government will get back materially less than its $8 billion principal," says analyst Stefan Linssen of Ethisphere.

CIT Group Inc. ($2.3 billion). A string of strapped borrowers and a heavy debt load have nearly sunk CIT, a financial firm that lends money to small and medium-sized businesses. The firm escaped a bankruptcy filing in mid-July when bondholders provided fresh funds to keep the firm operating. But the interest rate is high, and many analysts think a bankruptcy filing is still likely. The Treasury Department, meanwhile, has hinted that it has already written off CIT's $2.3 billion in TARP funds.

Citigroup ($45 billion). The huge bank posted a $4.3 billion profit in the second quarter, but that's only because it spun off its valuable Smith Barney brokerage unit. Otherwise, it would have lost money, and by almost any measure, Citi is a deeply wounded bank. Its market value is just $16 billion--one third of the government's cash investment in the company. For the foreseeable future, Citi is likely to wrestle with mounting losses on credit cards and other consumer loans. In addition to $45 billion in TARP funds, the government has guaranteed a humongous pool of dodgy Citigroup assets worth $301 billion. Citi paid $7 billion for the insurance and must absorb the first $39.5 billion in losses. But after that, the government would bear 90 percent of any write-offs. That gives taxpayers long-term exposure to Citi's troubled balance sheet. Chief Executive Vikram Pandit has insisted his firm is on a path back toward sustained profitability, which will allow it to pay back the government. But Citi hasn't announced any timeline for paybacks.

General Motors ($50.7 billion). That long-forgotten $13.4 billion bailout last December was just a down payment, it turns out. Through bankruptcy funding and other expenditures, the government has nearly quadrupled its investment in GM, in the process gaining 60.8 percent ownership of the new company. For the government to get all of its money back, Ethisphere calculates that GM would have to achieve a market value of $80 billion--which would be 43 percent higher than GM's value in 2000 when the automaker was highly profitable and much larger. With half as many divisions now and falling market share, it's hard to see how GM could ever reclaim its former glory (or profits).

Ethisphere estimates that taxpayers will be lucky if they get back $20 billion, a mere 40 percent of their investment in GM. GM argues that its implied market value, taking into account the prices its bonds are trading at and other factors, will allow a higher repayment, closer to $34 billion. And that could go up, GM insists, if the company does well.

GMAC ($12.5 billion). GM's car-financing arm also writes mortgages, which got it into deep trouble, forcing the lender to take more bailout money than any bank except for Citi, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. Part of GMAC's funding came with the auto bailout, to help ensure that car buyers who want to buy GM or Chrysler vehicles can get loans. But Ethisphere believes that with GMAC's vast exposure to two depressed industries--cars and homes--at least $5 billion of GMAC's TARP funds are a complete write-off. GMAC says otherwise, insisting that it's taking the necessary steps to strengthen its business. "We intend to repay the full TARP investment over time and have been making scheduled dividend payments on the investment," says spokesperson Gina Proia.

Marshall & Ilsley Corp. ($1.7 billion). This bank holding company, parent of M&I Bank, is based in Wisconsin, but it made thousands of housing, construction, and commercial loans in Arizona, one of its target markets during the go-go years. With a huge housing bust in Arizona, many of those loans are now worth far less than their face value. That makes M&I one of the most vulnerable regional banks. Ethisphere believes the government could lose $1.3 billion, more than three quarters of its investment. M&I says it's confident that the government will get all of its money back, plus dividend payments. The bank also argues that it has higher "capital ratios" than many other banks of its size and points out that it recently raised $552 million through an equity offering, "clearly indicative of the market's belief that the [government's] capital will be repaid."

Regions Financial Corp. ($3.5 billion). This Alabama-based bank has been losing a bundle from bad mortgages and other loans, mainly across the South. And its CEO said recently that losses are likely to get worse for the foreseeable future. Ethisphere believes taxpayers will be lucky if they get half their money back. A Regions spokesman says the bank plans to pay back its government loans in full, pointing out that Regions has $6.9 billion more in reserves than the required minimum, and recently raised $2.5 billion in the private markets.

Zions Bank Corp. ($1.4 billion). Utah has fared relatively well during the recession, but this Salt Lake City-based bank hasn't. That's because its core markets include California, Arizona, and Nevada--ground zero for the housing meltdown. Zions has lost nearly $900 million so far this year and remains exposed to housing woes. Ethisphere tallies Zions as another 50 percent writeoff, meaning taxpayers might get back just $700 million. Zions says it has plenty of earnings power and reserves to offset future losses, and points out that it recently raised $511 million in capital from the private markets. "Zions believes the company has the long-term capacity to repay TARP in full at the appropriate time," says spokesman James Abbott.

Hurrying Into the Next Panic?
On vacation in Turkey, I am picked up at the airport by a minibus. It’s past midnight, pitch-black, the driver is speeding around corners. Only one headlight is working. And I have my doubts about the brakes. In my head I’m planning the letter of complaint to the tour company. And then the driver’s cellphone rings, he picks it up and answers it, he has only one hand on the steering wheel. Now I’m mentally compiling the list of songs to be played at my funeral.

That’s rather how I feel when people talk about the latest fashion among investment banks and hedge funds: high-frequency algorithmic trading. On top of an already dangerously influential and morally suspect financial minefield is now being added the unthinking power of the machine.

The idea is straightforward: Computers take information — primarily "real-time" share prices — and try to predict the next twitch in the stock market. Using an algorithmic formula, the computers can buy and sell stocks within fractions of seconds, with the bank or fund making a tiny profit on the blip of price change of each share. There’s nothing new in using all publicly available information to help you trade; what’s novel is the quantity of data available, the lightning speed at which it is analyzed and the short time that positions are held.


So, is trading faster than any human can react truly worrisome? The answers that come back from high-frequency proponents, also rather too quickly, are "No, we are adding liquidity to the market" or "It’s perfectly safe and it speeds up price discovery." In other words, the traders say, the practice makes it easier for stocks to be bought and sold quickly across exchanges, and it more efficiently sets the value of shares.






Such feedback is not necessarily dangerous. Take for example what happens with convertible bonds — bonds that can be converted into stocks at the option of the holder. Here a hedge fund buys the bond and then hedges some market risk by selling the stock itself short. As the price of the stock rises, the relevant formula tells the fund to sell. When the stock falls the formula tells it to buy — the exact opposite of what happens with portfolio insurance. To the outside world — if not necessarily to the hedge fund with the convertible bonds — this mix is usually seen as a good thing.


FED NY's Dudley Dismisses Inflation Fears
FRB NY President William Dudley this morning offered the most detailed explanation yet of why the Fed believes it can control inflation once the economy turns around. In a speech delivered in New York, Dudley argued that the recovery will be so slow that the threat of inflation is still very remote, and that the Fed's ability to pay interest on excess bank reserves will prevent these reserves from acting as fuel for inflation.

Regarding the economic outlook, Dudley repeated the Fed's prediction that the US will 'likely' see moderate growth in the second half of this year. He said recovery in the housing and auto industries, the fiscal stimulus, and the expectation of inventory rebuilding are main factors in this prediction. But Dudley nonetheless said the pace of recovery will be slow, in part because real income is expected to fall as factors such as lower gas prices and reduced withholding taxes disappear, but also because of the effect of the housing collapse on consumer spending and ongoing strains in the financial markets that will constrain credit availability.

'If the recovery does, in fact, turn out to be lackluster, the unemployment rate is likely to remain elevated and capacity utilization rates unusually low for some time to come,' he said. 'This suggests that inflation will be quiescent. For all these reasons, concern about 'when' the Fed will exit from its current accommodative monetary policy is, in my view, very premature.' Even aside from this major factor, Dudley argued that the Fed's large and growing balance sheet is nothing that prevents the Fed from controlling inflation once the economy corrects. 'It is not the case that our expanded balance sheet will inevitably prove inflationary,' he said.

Specifically, Dudley said the Fed's new ability to pay interest on excess reserves is a critical tool it uses to keep banks from lending these reserves and thereby creating new credit and boosting inflation. 'Thus, through the IOER rate (interest on excess reserves), the Federal Reserve can effectively retain control of monetary policy,' he said, noting that the Fed can increase the IOER rate if banks begin to find it more profitable to lend these reserves. In addition, Dudley noted that the Fed can also conduct reverse repo transactions, sell securities, and take other steps to control inflation.

More broadly, Dudley also dismissed concerns that the $700 bln in excess reserves now held by the Fed are 'dry tinder' that will at some point lead to increased lending and higher inflation. He said banks don't need 'dry tinder' to increase lending, since Fed has already committed to supply reserves to keep the fed funds rate at its target. 'In terms of the ability to expand credit rapidly, it makes no difference whether the banks have lots of excess reserves or not,' he said.

Dudley also rejected the idea that the Fed's Treasury purchases are a problem, noting that the Fed's Treasury holdings today are smaller than they were two years ago, before the crisis hit. Dudley said the Fed wanted to buy Treasuries to put downward pressure on these securities in a bid to stimulate the economy when the fed funds rate was already near zero.

Dudley acknowledged that there are some risks inherent in the Fed's strategy, including that it could unhinge inflation expectations, but he said the Fed is monitoring these risks and sees no danger signs yet. He also predicted that the new asset purchase programs mean the Fed's balance sheet will likely grow to $2.5 trillion, 'somewhat above the peak reached last December.'

Subprime mortgage companies warn on U.S. foreclosures
Companies that service risky residential mortgages are warning U.S. officials that a key program to slow foreclosures may push some financing costs higher and derail their efforts, said a leading subprime firm. Companies forming the Independent Mortgage Servicers Coalition, service many of the riskiest mortgages made during the housing boom, making them key players in programs to rein in foreclosures. The group collects and distributes payments on more than $700 billion in loans, according to its leader, Carrington Mortgage Services of Santa Ana, California.

Their concerns about financing payments for defaulted homeowners comes as pressure mounts from Congress, regulators and state legislators for servicers to do more for the plan, which aims to slow foreclosures and modify loans. The U.S. Treasury wants the companies to spend more on its resources, including hiring staff and expanding training programs. At least four servicers from the coalition were among the 25 meeting with the Treasury on Tuesday, where new commitments were forged to increase foreclosure prevention efforts under President Obama's Home Affordable Modification Program.

But manpower isn't the main worry for the independent servicers, which don't include large banks such as Wells Fargo & Co. Implementing the program means giving delinquent homeowners more time fix their loans, which to servicers will the boost costs of extending payments to investors as contractually promised. Matching costs of servicing to public policy is growing increasingly difficult, said Bruce Rose, chief executive officer and general partner of Greenwich, Connecticut-based Carrington Capital Management, LLC, which owns CMS. Rose attended the meeting with Treasury.

"We are in a position where it's a very tough balance act, and that's weighing heavily on us now," said Rose, in an interview on Monday. "This is a classic case of an unfunded government mandate." The costs of borrowing to finance delinquent payments to bond investors far outweigh expected revenue from incentives paid by the government, Rose said. The government will pay servicers $1,000 for every loan modified, and another $1,000 a year for three years if the borrower stays current.

The group since September has approached the Treasury, the Federal Reserve and Congress for help in funding the temporary "advances" that are fully reimbursed when a loan is modified or foreclosed, Rose said. Help offered through the Fed's Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF,) which allows for the pooling of advances for sale to investors, has backfired, and is increasing financing costs, he said.

The coalition -- which has included Ocwen Financial Corp, GMAC-RFC, and Fortress Investment Group's Nationstar Mortgage -- also tried unsuccessfully to arrange liquidity via the Troubled Asset Relief Program in 2008. GMAC-RFC is no longer a member, a spokeswoman said. Standard & Poor's this month delivered a blow to Carrington and other potential issuers of TALF-eligible bonds backed by servicing advances, by sharply discounting the value of the assets that would go into the deals, Rose said. For Carrington, that would mean just 64 cents of every dollar in assets would garner a AAA rating, the blessing required for inclusion in a TALF deal.

That is harsh, Rose said, since advances are first in line for repayment -- ahead of AAA bondholders -- when a bad loan is resolved. There has never been a loss on advances, but S&P told Carrington it will assume 2.0 percent losses and multiply them eight times to reflect high stress scenarios. More discounting is done for interest expense. S&P's assessment may not only hinder TALF funding, but "significantly" boost Carrington's borrowing costs, Rose said. While one Carrington lender saw S&P's assessment as baseless, another has hit the servicer with a margin call.

S&P ratings and bank credit lines give servicers incentives that run counter to public policy, he said. To reduce discounts assessed by rating companies, and to lower borrowing costs from banks, servicers would have to foreclose faster, not more slowly, as would be required under Obama's plan, he said. The funding problem could be resolved if TALF issues would accept implicit ratings, which for advances are AAA, since they are senior to the safest bonds in the security, he said.

Unless independent servicers get new liquidity, "this is going to bring (HAMP) to a screaming halt, in at least our shop," he said. "We are running out of capacity."
Carrington has modified about 45 percent of subprime loans in its servicing portfolio that were made from 2005 to 2007.

Frank Threatens Banks: We Will Make You Stop Foreclosures
A senior House Democrat threatened banks Wednesday that if they don't volunteer to save more homeowners from foreclosure, Congress will make them. In a sternly worded statement, Rep. Barney Frank said Congress will revive legislation that would let bankruptcy judges write down a person's monthly mortgage payment if the number of loan modifications remain low. Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, also said his committee won't consider legislation to help banks lend unless there is a "significant increase" in mortgage modifications.

Frank's statement was aimed at adding momentum to a deal struck Tuesday between Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and more than two dozen mortgage companies. The two sides agreed to set the goal of adjusting 500,000 loans by Nov. 1. But it was far from clear whether that would happen. Loan servicers say they are still trying to play catch up to a deluge of customer requests by hiring and training thousands of new employees. Banks also are trying to sort through which customers face a legitimate financial hardship.

Also, many loans have been bundled and sold to investors as securities, complicating efforts to modify the terms. Congress tried earlier this spring to pass legislation that would give people a chance to keep their homes by filing for bankruptcy. But while President Barack Obama said he supported the measure, he did little to see it through and it was defeated amid an aggressive lobbying effort by banks.

The measure failed in the Senate by a 45-51 vote, falling 15 votes short of the 60 needed to overcome procedural hurdles. "People in the servicing industry and in the broader financial industry must understand that if this last effort to produce significant modifications fails, the argument for reviving the bankruptcy option will be extremely strong, and I think there is a substantial chance that the outcome will be different," Frank said.

Foreclosures Are Often In Lenders' Best Interest
Government initiatives to stem the country's mounting foreclosures are hampered because banks and other lenders in many cases have more financial incentive to let borrowers lose their homes than to work out settlements, some economists have concluded. Policymakers often say it's a good deal for lenders to cut borrowers a break on mortgage payments to keep them in their homes. But, according to researchers and industry experts, foreclosing can be more profitable.


Finally, there are those delinquent borrowers who can somehow, even at great sacrifice, catch up without a modification. Lenders have little financial incentive to help them. These financial calculations on the part of lenders pose a difficult challenge for President Obama's ambitious efforts to address the mortgage crisis, which remains at the heart of the country's economic troubles and continues to upend millions of lives.


"There has been this policy push to use modifications as the tool of choice," said Michael Fratantoni, vice president of single-family-home research at the Mortgage Bankers Association. But "there is going to be this narrow slice of borrowers for which modifications is the right answer." The size of that slice is tough to discern, he said. "The industry and policymakers have been grappling with that."





"It hurt, but it also made sense. The debt was my responsibility," Jones said. But six months later, after catching up on the mortgage, Jones is again feeling pinched after her hours as an office assistant at an architecture firm were cut. This time, she's not sure she can fix the problem herself. "I am going to try, obviously," she said. "But it is getting harder and harder." Like Jones, those who are most determined to meet their obligations are often unlikely candidates for loan modifications.

"These are the people who will get a second job, borrow from their family to keep up," explained Paul S. Willen, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and an author of its report. ". . . From a cold-blooded profit-maximizing standpoint, these are the people the banks will help the least." Lenders also worry that borrowers may re-default even after receiving a loan modification. This only delays foreclosure, which can be costly to the lender because housing prices are falling throughout the country and the home's condition may deteriorate if the owner isn't maintaining it.





Even at that rate, he said, the modification program is more profitable than doing nothing. "The idea that 30 to 40 percent re-default is a failure to a program is false," Brown said. The administration has estimated that its foreclosure-prevention program would help 3 million to 4 million borrowers by 2012. But lenders' reluctance could limit the impact to less than half that, said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Coupled with re-defaults, this would mean that the number of people losing their homes to foreclosure could reach nearly 5 million by 2011, he said.




As Prices Plummet, Condo Sales in Miami Perk Up
Despite a vast oversupply of new condos in downtown Miami, sales have been brisk lately at 1060 Brickell Avenue, a twin-tower development with 570 units in the heart of the upscale Brickell neighborhood. The reason? Prices have been cut in half, to about $200 a square foot. "We reset the prices at a sharp discount, and the units are flying off the shelves," said Gary Barnett, the president of the Extell Development Company, the New York-based developer of 1060 Brickell, which was completed last year. More than 200 units have closed since the discount program began in April, he said.

Mr. Barnett, who has developed several new condominium projects in Manhattan, including 535 West End Avenue and the Rushmore, acknowledged that he and his backers lost their entire investment in 1060 Brickell, which is situated at Southeast First Avenue. He said some, but not all, of the mezzanine financing was also wiped out. But because more than 40 percent of the units sold at full price, Mr. Barnett was able to repay his $153 million first mortgage from TD Bank and iStar, a troubled finance company that bet heavily on the South Florida condo market.

Since 2003, nearly 23,000 new condo units have been added to the downtown skyline, from Brickell Avenue up through the more modest Biscayne Corridor — far more than this city of 400,000 people could absorb. About 9,400 remained unsold at the end of June, according to Peter Zalewski, the owner of Condo Vultures Realty, a local brokerage. But Miami real estate brokers, lawyers and developers say the overbuilt condo market has entered a new phase. "Things are starting to move through the system," said Adam Cappel, the president of, a Miami research service.

Until recently, many real estate professionals expected investment funds seeking opportunities in distressed real estate to swoop down on Miami and buy condo units by the hundreds at wholesale prices and then rent them out until the market recovered.

A few bulk purchases have occurred — in the dozens rather than the hundreds — but most buyers have paid the current market price, not a wholesale price. For example, an investor from Colombia recently bought 31 units at 1060 Brickell for an average of $203 a square foot, according to Mr. Zalewski. Last week, however, a private equity group paid only $63 a square foot for 51 oceanfront condo-hotel units at the Regent Hotel in Miami Beach, he said. Previous units there had sold for $1,100 a square foot. But condo-hotel units are considered riskier and harder to finance than traditional condos.

For the most part, bulk condo sales have yet to catch on. With the steep decline in values, developers of newer buildings are no longer in control of their projects and must defer to their lenders. "The lenders did not want to take the hit that the bulk purchasers were offering," said Martin A. Schwartz, a partner at Bilzin Sumberg, a Miami law firm that represents developers.

Another obstacle is that under Florida law, anyone who buys seven condos in a building with 70 or more units may be assuming all the liabilities of a developer, Mr. Schwartz said. "There is an element of risk," he said. Mr. Barnett, for example, was unable to arrange a bulk sale for 346 units at 1060 Brickell last year at $200 a square foot. Robert Kaplan, a principal of Olympian Capital Group, a Miami mortgage brokerage, said the focus had shifted away from bulk sales to retail sales because lenders were not willing to take $100 to $125 a square foot when they could get $175 or more. "Every condo lender is considering market-rate sales," he said. "They have no choice."

Bargains are being offered for under $200 a square foot at Brickell on the River South, near Southeast Fifth Street. At 500 Brickell, developed by the Related Group of Florida, the industry leader, prices for one-bedroom apartments have dropped to $180,000, from $260,000, said Lucas Lechuga, an agent for Keller Williams Realty in Miami. "The buildings that have slashed their prices are doing pretty well now," he said.

If demand does not keep up, prices will have to adjust, Mr. Kaplan said. "But we’re not seeing that yet," he added. "We’re seeing velocity at the new lower prices," According to Ronald A. Shuffield, the president of Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell, a local brokerage, condo sales in new buildings increased to 82 a month, from an average of 50 a month, since April.

Jack McCabe, the chief executive of McCabe Research and Consulting in Deerfield Beach, Fla., said, however, that he thought prices were likely to drop a lot further because of the high volume of foreclosures. "There are a lot of buildings where 30 to 35 percent of the units are in foreclosure," he said. He predicted that bulk sales at prices as low as $100 a square foot would eventually occur, especially for inland properties. "It’s still early," he said.

In newer buildings with many unsold condos, developers are negotiating uncontested, or "friendly," foreclosures with their lenders, sparing them the expense of a protracted battle. Last month, the Related Group surrendered its 420-unit CityPlace South development in West Palm Beach, Fla., where only 39 sales had been completed, to a group of lenders led by the Bank of Nova Scotia. Related paid an undisclosed sum to cancel its $119 million construction loan and other liabilities and won the right to continue to manage and maintain the project and run the sales operation — all for lucrative fees.

According to recent news reports, Related hopes to work out a similar arrangement within the next couple of months to retire about $1.5 billion in outstanding debt on other South Florida condo projects, including the company’s showpiece, Icon Brickell, where only 31 of 1,646 units have sold. Related executives did not return telephone calls.

Thomas R. Lehman, a Miami lawyer who has been negotiating several friendly foreclosures, said many developers had already quietly turned over the keys to their projects. "The wave has started," said Mr. Lehman, the managing partner at Tew Cardenas. "Public records are catching up to what’s already been negotiated. Lenders are realizing that no one is going to buy their loans and they might as well get their projects back and put them on the market." He said developers often were trying to preserve other assets they might have put up as collateral for their construction loan.

But what has been a catastrophe for developers has been a bonanza for renters. According to a report commissioned by the Miami Downtown Development Authority, a quasi-independent city agency, 62 percent of the already completed new downtown condo units are occupied, split evenly between renters and owners. Monthly rents have declined 15 to 20 percent in Miami, with the median rate at $1.64 a square foot, Mr. Zalewski said.

The Related Group has instituted an unusual rent-to-own program, in which no price is set in advance and all of the rental payments count toward a down payment, if the unit is purchased within a year. Joe Higgins, the owner of Grove Town Properties, a local brokerage, said about one-quarter of his rental clients were University of Miami law students doubling up with roommates, but the rest were professionals working downtown.

With so many new buildings on the market, tenants have become choosy and now demand features like an updated kitchen, Mr. Higgins said. "Renters don’t want the older buildings," he said. "They want the granite; they want the stainless steel."

It's Not a Recession ... Or a Depression
There have been some very interesting diary entries by our beloved Bonddad and Bobswern in the last week, accompanied by some extremely feverish commentary. Is the Great Recession just beginning?  Ending?  At the beginning of the end? I'm going to say, neither.

The problem is, in my view, that we're really not facing either of these scenarios -- neither recession nor depression.  Why would I say that?  Because the use of either term is an implicit agreement that what we're experiencing now is can be measured in the same way we've measured all economic activity since 1929. That this is part of normal, cyclical economic activity that includes periods of expansion and contraction and we just happen to be contracting.

Seems pretty clear to me: This is not something we can "recover" from ... We are not simply experiencing a dip in jobs and GDP, but we're experiencing a fundamental reorganization, domestically and globally, of the economic order.  This change is coming fast and hard.  There is no gently going into that good night here.

Or, rather ... The fundamental change that I am talking about really started decades ago, under Reagan and proceeded at great pace all through the next three presidencies.  Deregulation. Union-busting.  NAFTA.  The great tax shift from the wealthy to the working. The deleterious effects of the economic policies of every government since Reagan have been, as we all well know, disguised by easy lending and the subsequent expansion of consumer debt: Why should the economy pay workers when it can lend it to them instead?

That change started in 1981.  The consequences are coming down fast and hard now because we're only now being asked to suffer for it. (Well, working people are being asked to suffer, while the affluent are being paid to party.) Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote about this fundamental change a couple of weeks ago.  I wrote a bit about it here at that time.  But I think it's worthwhile to quote from him again:



The Germans use a term, Die Wende, to describe the fundamental change to East German society after the collapse of Socialism and the adoption of Capitalism and German unification.
Wende is the German word for change and the term came to describe not just the change in political and economic order, but also the massive social changes that occurred as a consequence. As Robert Reich points out, there is no going back for us.

We cannot re-inflate the credit bubble.
We cannot re-inflate the housing bubble.
We cannot resurrect the prosperity of this country with more credit card debt or bigger, easier and looser mortgage terms.

We have a number of huge challenges ahead of us. The first challenge is to figure out how to replace some of the vanished consumer demand of the past years -- fueled by credit cards, easy borrowing terms, mortgage equity withdrawal and the like -- with demand that is fueled by wages. The second challenge is to realize that consumer demand might be permanently -- or long-term -- impaired.  This means that, for a number of factors of which Globalization is primary, wages will not or cannot rise to fuel the same level of spending that occurred during the boom years.  The consequences of such long-term impairment would be an economy that stagnates or even shrinks for years to come.

The third challenge is the creation of a new political order that is capable of securing the general welfare of Americans in an atmosphere of economic stagnation or decline. Are we up to the challenge? The fundamental change to our society that is occurring right now -- like the German Wende -- has the potential of producing both positive and negative results. At its most positive, we could have a period of national reflection, a great re-assessment of values that results in widespread reform of domestic policies, including the taxation and the social safety net, and policies related to the environment.

At its most negative, we could have Führers Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck elected president in 2012 or 2016, using the growing fury and desperation of the populace -- believe me, it is there -- to take this country to the next level of the Republican plan. Which way will things go? I would like to believe that we, as a society, can harness the forces of this great change and use it as a catalyst for improving the quality of life for the average American.

Right now, our ability to do so is restrained by a couple of factors: Foremost is an astonishingly irresponsible and debased media institution.  If our nation's TV channels and newspapers have any other purpose besides dividing working Americans along regional, racial and class lines -- and then assisting in stripping them of income, wealth and security -- someone please let me know.

Second is the impotence and corruption that have been allowed to penetrate too far into the Democratic Party, the party that claims to represent the interest of working folks, but finds itself now unable to follow up on that claim. If a Democratic president with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate can't reform health care and other critical institutions that are under duress, who can?

'Help Wanted' counting stimulus jobs

"Sometimes some work for an individual is better than no work," said Oregon's Senate president, Peter Courtney. With the economy in tatters and unemployment rising, Oregon's inventive math underscores the urgency for politicians across the country to show that spending programs designed to stimulate the economy are working—even if that means stretching the facts.

At the federal level, President Barack Obama has said the federal stimulus has created 150,000 jobs, a number based on a misused formula and which is so murky it can't be verified. At least 10 other states have launched their own miniature stimulus plans and nine others have proposed one, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many of them, like Oregon, have promised job creation as a result of the public spending.

Ohio, for instance, passed a nearly $1.6 billion stimulus package even before Congress was looking at a federal program. When Gov. Ted Strickland first pitched the idea last year, he estimated the program could create some 80,000 jobs. In North Carolina, a panel authorized hundreds of millions of dollars in new debt to speed up $740 million in government building projects. According to one estimate, the move could hurry the creation of 25,000 jobs.

As the bills for these programs mount, so will the pressure to show results. But, as Oregon illustrates, job estimates can very wildly. "At best you can say it's ambiguous, at worst you can say it's intentional deception," said economist Bruce Blonigen of the University of Oregon. "You have to normalize it into a benchmark that everybody can understand."
Oregon's accounting practices would not be allowed as part of the $787 billion federal stimulus. While the White House has made the unverifiable promise that 3.5 million jobs will be saved or created by the end of next year, when accountants actually begin taking head counts this fall, there are rules intended to guard against exactly what Oregon is doing.

The White House requires states to report numbers in terms of full-time, yearlong jobs. That means a part-time mechanic counts as half a job. A full-time construction worker who has a three-month paving contract counts as one-fourth of a job. Using that method, the AP's analysis of figures in Oregon shows the program so far has created the equivalent of 215 full-time jobs that will last three months. Oregon's House speaker, Dave Hunt, called that measurement unfair, though nearly every other state that has passed a stimulus package already uses or plans to use it.

"This stimulus plan was intentionally designed for short-term projects to pump needed jobs and income into families, businesses and communities struggling to get by," Hunt said in a statement. "No one ever said these would be full-time jobs for months at a time." Still, critics say counting jobs, without any consideration of their duration, isn't good enough. "You can't let them say, 'Well, we never said it was going to be full-time,'" said Steve Buckstein, a policy analyst for the Cascade Policy Institute, a free-market think tank. For the price of Oregon's $176 million, lawmakers could have provided all 3 million state residents with a one-hour job paying about $60, he said.

"By their definition, that's 3 million jobs," Buckstein said. "Is anybody gonna buy that?" Oregon's 12.4 percent unemployment rate surpasses the national average of 9.4 percent. To supplement the federal stimulus, the state sold bonds to pay for everything from replacing light bulbs to installing carpet and finishing construction of a school in the farming community of Tillamook.

The "Go Oregon" program is still new. According to its latest progress report, 8 percent of the money has been spent and hundreds of projects have yet to be completed. More paychecks are bound to be written as construction continues. If Oregon's dollars-to-jobs ratio remains steady, the program will create about 688 full-time, yearlong jobs. So far, it's generated only enough hours to employ 54 people full-time for a year.

Still, contractor Deborah Matthews of Pacificmark Construction, based in Milwaukie, Ore., is happy for any work. Her company picked up three contracts for painting, installing a water filter system and refurbishing a maintenance building. Prior to those contracts, which lasted about six weeks, she had laid off nearly all her construction workers. She brought back three full-time and hired a part-time worker. "It was a little bit," she said, "to just keep us going."

Almost $165 Billion in Commercial Loans Due in '09
Almost $165 billion in U.S. commercial real estate loans will mature this year and need to be sold or refinanced as rents and occupancies fall, according to First American CoreLogic. The U.S. South has the most maturing loans with 60,893 mortgages valued at $96 billion coming due on shops, offices, hotels, apartment buildings and land, Santa Ana, California- based First American said in a report. The West is second with 20,549 mortgages maturing for a value of $35 billion.

Commercial property owners are struggling to pay debt as the recession reduces demand and forces landlords to cut rent. U.S. apartment vacancies reached a 22-year high in the second quarter and office vacancies rose to the highest in four years, real estate data company Reis Inc. said earlier this month. Properties worth more than $108 billion were in default, foreclosure or bankruptcy as of July 8, according to data firm Real Capital Analytics Inc. "As long as prices contract, we expect loan performance will worsen and that will make financing difficult," Sam Khater, senior economist for First American, said in an interview. "Delinquencies and notices of default are rising, and we expect that to continue."

Among real estate investment trusts trying to refinance and pay down debt maturing over the next couple years are shopping- mall owner General Growth Properties Inc., which filed for bankruptcy protection this year; Maguire Properties Inc., the largest office landlord in downtown Los Angeles; and ProLogis, the world’s biggest warehouse owner. Denver-based ProLogis said last week that it’s cut its debt by $2.9 billion since November. REITs will have less trouble with maturing loans held by banks than with debt sold as commercial mortgage-backed securities, said Rich Moore, managing director at RBC Capital Markets in Solon, Ohio.

"If you go to the CMBS market, that’s where the danger comes in, because the CMBS market is a bunch of assets pooled together," Moore said. "It’s much more difficult to extend those loans -- not impossible, but much more difficult." Banks likely will offer extensions to avoid having to manage or sell properties, especially with little buyer demand for commercial real estate during the recession, Moore said. U.S. commercial property prices fell 7.6 percent in May from a month earlier, bringing the total decline to 35 percent since the market’s peak, Moody’s Investors Service said last week. Prices dropped 28.5 percent in May from the year earlier period.

The Orlando, Florida, area led the nation in June with the greatest dollar value due on retail property: $96.9 million. Memphis, Tennessee, followed with $96.2 million and Chicago with $71.3 million, according to First American. The Houston area led in office loans maturing with $463.9 million, followed by Atlanta at $456 million and Phoenix at $172.3 million. Los Angeles topped the list in apartment loans with $194.3 million due in June, followed by Dallas with $121.4 million and Chicago with $118.3 million.

Portland, Oregon and the surrounding area had $986.9 million in mortgages due on industrial properties in June, the most in the U.S. St. Louis followed with almost $765.3 million and San Francisco came in third with $473 million, First American said. Stockton, California led in hotel loans due with $14.9 million, followed by Denver with $13.3 million. The value of hotel properties in default or foreclosure almost doubled to $17.3 billion in the second quarter through June 24 from $9 billion at the end of the first quarter, data compiled by New York-based Real Capital show.

More than 5,000 commercial properties in the 10 biggest U.S. metropolitan areas got at least one default notice in March, marking the first time that’s happened in First American records going back to January 2003. The company compiles data from sources including county record tax rolls and covers 98 percent of U.S. ZIP codes.

How Firms Wooed a U.S. Pension Agency With Billions to Invest



An examination of thousands of pages of e-mail messages and other internal documents obtained by The New York Times shows the other side of the story: the two firms aggressively courted Mr. Millard, so extensively that they may have compromised federal contracting rules or at least violated the spirit of the law, contracting experts said. The records also illustrate the clash between Washington’s by-the-letter rules on contracting and the culture of Wall Street, where deals are often struck over expensive meals.

"Both sides should have known better," said Steven L. Schooner, co-director of the Government Procurement Law Program at the George Washington University, who reviewed some of the material for The Times. "What happened here is wrong, stupid and probably illegal." BlackRock and Goldman, as well as Mr. Millard, all said that nothing improper happened either before the formal competition for the contract started last July, or while the competition, which concluded in October, was under way.

"Among the reasons that Mr. Millard was selected to head the P.B.G.C. is his understanding of the industry, his extensive background and the quality of his professional relationships," said Stanley M. Brand, a lawyer for Mr. Millard. "He correctly separated his personal relationships from his official actions." A review of the documents shows that the third winner, JPMorgan Chase, had contacts with Mr. Millard before and during the competition, but did not display the same intensity as the other two.
Goldman and BlackRock saw Mr. Millard’s selection as a major business opportunity, the records show.

"This is a very big fish on the line," one BlackRock executive wrote to another, discussing the government official. Mr. Millard had at least seven meetings with Goldman executives in the year before the bidding started, and 163 phone contacts, the documents show. BlackRock had less frequent contact — 39 phone calls in that 12-month period. But one BlackRock executive told another that Mr. Millard had assured him in April, four months before the bidding, that he wanted to hire the company to help manage some of the money, company documents show.

"It sounds like we may have a tiger by the tail here," one BlackRock executive wrote in an e-mail message. The agency takes over pension programs when private companies go bankrupt. For years there was talk it might have to be bailed out by the government, and Mr. Millard, like many others, saw shifting from low-yield conservative investments like Treasury bonds to those with higher risks and higher potential returns as a way to solve the problem.

Before coming to Washington Mr. Millard had been a money manager for Prudential Securities and Lehman Brothers, a senior economic development official in New York City while Rudolph W. Giuliani was mayor, a member of the New York City Council and a Republican nominee for Congress. Within weeks of his arrival at the agency, he told Goldman Sachs about his plans to shake up the agency’s portfolio.

"I just became head of the pension benefit guaranty corp in dc appointed by pres bush," he wrote in a June 2007 e-mail message to John S. Weinberg, a vice chairman and a member of the family that has helped run Goldman since the 1930s. Mr. Millard told Mr. Weinberg, a longtime acquaintance, that he wanted to revamp the agency’s investment strategy. "Is there a team at goldman that does this and that would be interested in pursuing this business?" "Yes, absolutely!" Mr. Weinberg wrote back.

Almost immediately, Goldman started to work informally for Mr. Millard by providing one of its top pension analysts at no charge to prepare at least six reports over the coming year, based on internal agency data, detailing possible investment strategies. Goldman also coached Mr. Millard as he sought to sway skeptics in the Bush administration. "Here is the sound bite we discussed in this morning’s meeting," wrote Mark Evans, a Goldman managing director, in a January 2008 e-mail message to Mr. Millard, seven months before the formal competition would begin.

Mr. Millard consulted with other industry experts during this period, but none so much as Goldman. George Koklanaris, Mr. Millard’s chief of staff, said in retrospect that the detailed analytical work Goldman did for Mr. Millard, and the repeated contacts, might have created an appearance that Goldman had a competitive advantage. Even so, he says he believes Mr. Millard did nothing improper.

Mr. Millard’s lawyer and a Goldman spokeswoman disputed that the firm gained any advantage from this work. The spokeswoman, Andrea Raphael, said the firm had no way of knowing that Mr. Millard was giving them more attention than other prospective bidders and that it was the agency’s job to identify potential conflicts. The most important player in BlackRock’s attempt to win the business was David Mullane, who had known Mr. Millard since the two attended the same high school. The friendship continues; they both live in Rye, N.Y., and attend the same church.

In his conversations and e-mail messages with the agency head, Mr. Mullane often mixed family and business, talking about his golf game, his vacations, their children, their church ("Great job at Mass again this week," he wrote in one), invariably shifting into a discussion of his interest in the government work. "Hope to see you at the Beefsteak Dinner tomorrow," he wrote to Mr. Millard, referring to a Friday night gathering at Church of the Resurrection in Rye. "If you’re going perhaps we can catch up business for a few minutes before I thrash you in ping pong again."

After a February meeting, months before the contract competition began, Mr. Mullane wrote his bosses: "Money in motion by February." There were more meetings through the winter and spring of 2008, as Mr. Millard prepared his plans. That April, there was a charity dinner at Chelsea Piers, along the Hudson River. One BlackRock executive wrote to another, "Try to get Larry seated next to Charles Millard," referring to Mr. Fink, the company’s chairman and chief.

After the dinner, Mr. Millard wrote to Mr. Fink, "A pleasure meeting you. No need to respond. I will follow up with you briefly in future re our investment policy and with your team re other specifics." The e-mail messages show that Mr. Mullane, a managing director at BlackRock, understood that the firm needed to move quickly, before the presidential election. "He is a lame duck political appointee as soon as the November election occurs," he wrote to one BlackRock colleague last June, as the bidding was about to start. "When the new man comes in at P.B.G.C., all bets are off for us."

As he prepared to open the competition, Mr. Millard, working with Mr. Mullane, sought to restrict the bidders to the biggest players by stipulating that the winner must have thousands of employees and a global operation, e-mail messages show. That decision cut out many boutique firms hoping to compete and gave BlackRock, Goldman and other large firms an advantage. "Neither the company nor any of its employees did anything improper or illegal," Bobbie Collins, a BlackRock spokeswoman, said.

Mr. Millard, through his lawyer, denied telling BlackRock that he wanted to select the company even before the competition started. Mr. Millard’s lawyer also said he told the agency about his friendship with Mr. Mullane. But Jeffrey Speicher, an agency spokesman, said in a written statement that Mr. Millard "did not disclose his relationship with the BlackRock executive." While the competition was getting started, Mr. Millard began his job hunt.

He started by contacting Mr. Weinberg of Goldman Sachs, sending him his résumé after meeting with him in New York last June. Mr. Millard’s e-mail messages show that, while the bidding was under way last fall, he also spoke with Rick Lazio, a former House Republican who is now a senior executive at JPMorgan Chase, to discuss career options. In both cases, spokesmen for the executives said that while Mr. Millard was at the agency, they did not take actions to help him find a new job.

The e-mail messages show that within two weeks of the selection of the winners, Mr. Millard sought help from Karen Seitz, a Goldman executive involved throughout the process, in getting interviews with prominent industry players. "I spoke with Dennis Kass after our meeting," Ms. Seitz wrote last November, referring to the chief executive of a $60 billion asset management firm, one of half a dozen interviews she arranged. "He would love to meet with you in N.Y."

To date, Mr. Millard remains unemployed. His lawyer noted that Mr. Millard had honored the one-year prohibition in federal law against negotiating a job with a firm that he helped select as a contractor. While still at the agency, his lawyer said, Mr. Millard also paid his own bill whenever he dined out with industry officials, including Ms. Seitz. But Mr. Schooner, the government contracting expert from George Washington University, said even asking for career help from a company he had just picked as a contractor raised serious questions.

"As a federal official you are not supposed to be discussing, bartering or leveraging a new job while you are involved with parties in a procurement," he said. "It is a clear black-and-white rule." Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin, plans to seek legislation to require more intense oversight of the agency by an expanded board. "The whole process was flawed," said Mr. Kohl, the chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, which oversees the agency.

Japan Retail Sales Fall for 10th Month on Job Losses
Japan’s retail sales fell for a 10th month in June, extending the longest losing streak since 2003 as job losses and wage cuts forced households to trim spending. Sales slid 3 percent from a year earlier, the Trade Ministry said today in Tokyo. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News predicted a 2.5 percent drop. The retail slump indicates consumers, whose spending accounts for more than half of the economy, are unlikely to contribute to a recovery as employment prospects worsen. Economists expect a report tomorrow will show that while industrial production climbed for a fourth month in June, output will still be more than 20 percent lower than last year.

"The worst is over but that doesn’t completely wipe out households’ concerns," said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute in Tokyo. "Japan’s recovery will be weak until a pickup in jobs and wages boosts consumer spending." The Topix Retail Trade Index fell 0.3 percent at the lunch break in Tokyo. The broader Topix index was little changed. The yen traded at 94.49 per dollar as of 11:20 a.m. in Tokyo from 94.38 before the report was published.

Sales at large retailers tumbled 6.7 percent from a year earlier, the report showed. Department-store sales fell 8.8 percent in June, capping the worst half-year performance on record, the Japan Department Stores Association said last week. Sales at convenience stores declined for the first time in 14 months in June, according to the Japan Franchise Association. Millennium Retailing Inc. said last week that its Seibu and Sogo department stores will launch a cheaper lineup of house-brand products in September to attract a wider range of customers. "Consumers are becoming very sensitive about prices," Nagatoshi Nii, spokesman at Millennium, said in a telephone interview this week. "We want to satisfy them."

Sales of general goods led last month’s declines, falling 6.6 percent from a year earlier, the ministry said. Car sales slipped 0.5 percent, clothing and fabrics dropped 5.7 percent and fuel declined 5.5 percent. From a month earlier, retail sales unexpectedly fell 0.3 percent, the first decline since March. Economists had expected stimulus measures to help sales climb 0.4 percent on a month- on-month basis.

The government has given at least 12,000 yen ($130) to each resident, subsidies for the purchase of fuel-efficient cars, and incentives for buying environment-friendly air conditioners, washing machines and televisions. The worsening job market is likely to prompt people to cut back even more once the lift from the stimulus measures fades, Norinchukin’s Minami said. The unemployment rate rose to a six- year high of 5.3 percent in June and job openings slumped to the scarcest on record, economists predict reports will show on July 31.

New York City Aids Homeless With One-Way Tickets Home
They are flown to Paris ($6,332), Orlando ($858.40), Johannesburg ($2,550.70), or most frequently, San Juan ($484.20). They are not executives on business trips or couples on honeymoons. Rather, all are families who have ended up homeless, and all the plane tickets are courtesy of the city of New York (one-way).


Many of them are longtime New Yorkers who have come upon hard times, arrive at the shelter’s doorstep and jump at the offer to move at no cost. Others are recent arrivals who are happy to return home after becoming discouraged by the city’s noise, the mazelike subway, the difficult job market or the high cost of housing. "I didn’t expect the city to be the way it is," said Hector Correa, who was in a homeless shelter last week and flew home to Puerto Rico on Tuesday. "I was expecting something different, something better."

Mr. Correa and his companion, Elisabeth Mojica, and their two young sons, both also named Hector, arrived in New York in May to live with his mother. But after they failed to find jobs and the bills began to mount, his mother threatened to kick them out. Out of cash, they checked into the city intake center for homeless families in the Bronx.

"The person I spoke to in the shelter informed me that if I have a person I could stay with in Puerto Rico, that I could get help to go," said Mr. Correa, who worked as a mechanic in Carolina, on the north shore of the island. They will stay with Ms. Mojica’s father. "I feel very happy because I’m going to be able to get back to do the things that I know how to do," he said.

At the intake center, social workers ask families about their housing options in other places. If a family says that they have relatives who might be willing to take them in, and social workers confirm their report, the family could be on a plane, bus or train within hours, although the city will sometimes wait a few days to avoid the expense of last-minute fares. The Correas flew to San Juan for less than $1,000.

The city, which spends $500,000 a year on the program, employs a local travel agency, Austin Travel, to book one-way tickets for domestic trips. Department of Homeless Services employees do all the planning for international travel. City officials said there were no limits on where a family can be sent, and families can reject the offer and stay in city shelters. So far, families have been sent to 24 states and 5 continents, most often to Puerto Rico, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

"We want to divert as many families as we can that need assistance," said Vida Chavez-Downes, the director of the Resource Room, a city office with 11 social workers, two managers and an administrative assistant who help relocate families. "We have paid for visas, we’ve gone down to the consulate, we’ve provided letters, we’ve paid for passports for people to go. Anyone who comes through our door." One family with 10 children accepted an offer to go to Puerto Rico on a nonstop JetBlue flight. An adventurous but ultimately unlucky Michigan couple drove to the city in search of jobs and a new life. They got $400 in gas cards to drive back.

One set of parents agreed to move to France with their three children to be with the mother’s family. The $6,332 travel cost included five plane tickets to Paris and five train tickets to the town of Granville, in the northwest.

In the past, the city contracted with the Salvation Army for a now-defunct program called Homeward Bound, but only for single adults and couples, not families with children. Both versions followed the example of Travelers Aid, a 150-year-old nonprofit organization that provides stranded and homeless people emergency aid so they could return to their homes, and which still exists today. Other cities have experimented with similar programs, but they are largely focused on adults without children. The Hawaii Legislature recently rejected a plan to send homeless people on one-way flights to live with relatives on the mainland, because of the cost.

Once a family leaves New York, homeless services officials say they follow up with a phone call to make sure they arrive safely, then make a few more calls over the next two to three weeks. In rare cases, they will advance the family up to four months’ rent, a one-month security deposit, a furniture allowance and a broker’s fee. City officials said that none of the families that have been relocated have returned to city shelters.

The program fails to address the underlying problems that brought the families here in the first place, said Arnold S. Cohen, the president and chief executive of the Partnership for the Homeless, an advocacy group in New York. "The city is engaged in cosmetics," Mr. Cohen said. "What we’re doing is passing the problem of homelessness to another city. We’re taking people from a shelter bed here to the living room couch of another family. Essentially, this family is still homeless."

Sometimes the journey to and from New York is quick. Justin Little and Eugenia Martin, both 20, owed back rent on their apartment in Fayetteville, N.C., so they came to New York on Saturday with their 5-month-old, Inez. They planned to stay in shelters while they looked for jobs, and went straight to the intake center. Then relatives of Mr. Little, who worked at a telephone center serving insurance customers, scraped up enough money to pay their back rent, and homeless services workers confirmed that his mother would be around to help.

By Monday night, they were waiting outside Gate 73 at the Port Authority Bus Terminal to board their 7:15 p.m. Greyhound to Greensboro. "We were going to come here and then find work, you know, because there’s always work in New York," Ms. Martin said, as Inez bounced on her knee. Mr. Little said, "Once we found out we could keep our apartment, there was no point in staying here, because I can go back to my job in North Carolina."

Wars, plagues and Europe’s rise to riches
In modern economic thinking, peace and prosperity go hand in hand. However, there are good reasons why in pre-modern societies, the opposite relationship held true – war, disease, and urban death spelled high incomes. This column explains why Europe’s rise to riches in the early modern period owed much to exceptionally bellicose international politics, urban overcrowding, and frequent epidemics.



The puzzle: The first divergence in worldwide incomes




Figure 1. Europe versus China urbanisation rates, 1000-1800


The answer: Rising death rates and lower fertility






Figure 3. Share of European population in war zones






Triggering European “exceptionalism”




Figure 4. Equilibria with “Horsemen effect”








Scientists sound Oceania extinction warning
Many scientists believe we are now living in the midst of another big extinction event although this time the cause of the mass die-off is easier to identify - humans. A survey of conservation research in the Oceania region says the area is losing species at least as fast as the rest of the planet - and maybe even faster. Dr Richard Kingsford is lead author on the collaborative review of thousands of research papers on conservation in the Oceania region.

The review has found that from Polynesia and the Pacific Islands to New Zealand and Australia, humans are having a dramatic impact on biodiversity and continue to present large-scale threats to plant and animal species. "The rates are increasing," Dr Kingsford said. "They are certainly a lot higher than the background rates of extinction that you would see in the evolutionary record. "Maybe 1,000 to perhaps 10,000 times that rate and that is occurring right across all organisms.

"From our studies, it is clear that we are actually affecting all of biodiversity. "Whether you look at the land biodiversity, the freshwater biodiversity, or the marine ecosystems, we are in some way having a major impact on all of those." The paper identifies six areas where humans are having the greatest impact: habitat destruction; invasive species; overfishing and hunting; pollution; disease; and climate change.

And despite the region having some of the most diverse and ecologically unique environments, they are proving to be vulnerable to human interaction. "On small islands you get much higher extinction processes because the biodiversity that is there is much more vulnerable to introduced species," Dr Kingsford said. "The Polynesian colonists that went into a lot of the Pacific islands essentially brought with them a lot of introduced mammals, pacific rats, and cats, as well as hunting quite a lot of the indigenous fauna that was there. "So that combination is having a big impact."

The research paper is directed at governments who are dealing with many of the threats across the region but the authors warn efforts need to be better coordinated and human behaviour has to change. "Land clearing, logging, building dams, diverting water out of rivers, bottom trawling in marine areas, over-exploitation of our fisheries are having huge impacts," Dr Kingsford said. "These are the major impacts. So basically we need some policies that encourage sustainable industries."


Pseudo Summary said...

I posted this on the yesterday's list, but right before bed I thought I should see if the new post was up and it is.



* Micheal Lewis, real? Satire or not deserves Guillotine.









• 5 year US Treasury auction is weak.



• Fox News cited in comments; fcuk off Fox News.




Pseudo Summary said...
















institutionalized said...

i agree with what a commenter said a couple of days ago.

label nightly posts with next days date, since they are there the whole day anyways, makes 'em seem fresh

snuffy said...

I really liked this report today...the 3 horseman,"Its not a depression or recession"and the Identification of where the bailout money really went put more in my "think about" box

I can attest to ducklings fragility.I lost 8 as a water trough that was too high to crawl out acted as a very efficient trap.I still have 5,One got too close to some big hungry chickens...which will kill and eat anything they don't identify as their own.I am letting their mama take care......and will sometimes go cannibalistic.Birds in general are not "nice"I have seen many analysis showing them to be whats left of the dinosaurs... lots of reptilian behavior

A previous commenter mentioned something about that you only get a egg a chicken..ask snuffy...

The way it works out is more like 2 eggs per 3 chickens...takes more like 30-35hrs for a chicken to produce a egg[mine are on strike due to the heat]
I totally agree with that comment that those who dream of farming their way to a new lifestyle best start 5 years ago...I have done this stuff for most of my life[gardening,raising chickens ducks,rabbits and geese...and I still make bonehead mistakes..And I like to think I know a bit about this stuff...

Yesterday there was a commenter who made a very succulent evaluation of O-man"legacy"and payback for rolling over on single payer.I am starting to believe with my heart of hearts now,we are doomed.The corporations are killing the goose.A.Huffingtons vid pointed out the fact that all the big players that started this shit are gone now...and now its the financial pigs destroying...looting the countries financial structure ,and putting a big crimp in whatever the "new"economy is..a horrific burden that has been placed on the working class folks...soon to all be the working poor.
The class war is over.They won.

I dont know how long this situation will sit and fester before the pain to the body politic is such that a redress is done.I believe now total collapse is in the we hit unsustainable many, many years ago..and are running on fumes.

That the ceos would testify "yes we kill people...and will continue"chilled my bones.Those executives have forfeted any sympathy from me when the mobs come for them.And they will their summer place in Colorado...or a beach in the Hampton's, there will be no mercy for those who showed no mercy...

Time to dream..


Ian said...

Reminded of the site by yesterday's link, I read this at :

Deregulation occurs
There is a boom
There is a depression deeper than the boom
The rich get wealthier
Regulation follows
The rich lobby
Dergulation occurs
There is a boom
There is a depression deeper than the boom
The rich get wealthier
Regulation follows
The rich lobby …

It was there among the comments that I learned about the book,
"Stuff White People Like" and that "one favorite thing to discuss is public transportation, heralded as a big city luxury worth expanding into the little cities, but stopping short when the word 'bus' enters the conversation":

'... it's best to understand that white people do not recognize public transit as a viable option until a subway line is built that runs directly from their house to their work. Until that time, public transportation is a luxury only for New Yorkers and Europeans, sort of like opera.'

There's a web site too,

One can both kill time and broaden one's reading, perhaps while waiting for new postings to appear here (or for a new Joe Bageant article to appear).

There's a good ExiledOnline article on life in Victorville.

Bukko Boomeranger said...

Another thing to note with the fascist medichemical-industrial complex Ilargi cites -- America just doesn't care about its people. There's your political, not just economic crisis.

I've been immersed as a cog in the American and Australian medical systems. Bless this country for letting me live here, but Australia is NOT all that well organised compared to many things in the U.S. They do things here like they did 20 years ago in America. However, Oz does manage to pull off a high-quality medical system for everyone. Good care, little waste, almost no corruption.

How can a behind-the-curve country like Oz do it? Because the lives of its citizens still mean something to the political power structure and corporate interests. They put up with high taxes, restrictions of prices, and low pay for doctors, because of an ethos that everyone is in it together.

I contrast that with the American attitude of "profits before people." Politicians are more interested in right-wing anti-socialist ideology, and raking in campaign bribes from Big Chemopharma, than taking care of constituents. There's also a nasty generational rift with young Americans saying "let old Americans die. I don't want to pay for keeping grandma alive."

You'd never hear that Down Under. Too nasty. Sadly, that's what America has become. That's one of many reasons my wife and I are not moving back to the land of our birth, even with the Busheviks gone.

mmn said...

So, war, pestilence and famine were the hidden drivers that propelled Europe to the top of the heap.

This is a wrinkle that had not occurred to me - the idea that some sort of population catastrophe could actually leave the survivors in better shape than before - a dieoff dividend.

In a peak everything world where the resource denominator stops growing everything gradually gets more Hobbesian, but if the per capita numerator in the equation falls even faster then those left standing might just thrive.

VK said...

Has anyone seen the movie idiocracy? Smarter ppl refuse to have children or have few of them while less smarter ppl have more children. Hence over time you have declining intelligence throughout society which leads to a stupidopia. It's quite hilarious but is there any evidence that it's true? It wouldn't be unheard of for 'dumb' ppl to have 'smart' kids or vice versa. Also IQ has very little correlation with success in life, far more important are hardwork, social skills and salesmanship of yourself (dependant on culture)

Bukko Boomeranger said...

MMN, have you read "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Prof. Jared Diamond? Western man is on top because he was the most aggressive, scientific and filthy killer of them all.

thethirdcoast said...

@ snuffy:

Class war? I find the phrases "class slaughter" or "class massacre" more accurate in labeling the current pickle. The so-called "lower" classes have yet to lift a finger this time around.

@ Bukko:

Preceding generations have promoted an individualistic, "me-first" culture in America for years. It is not all that surprising many of the young raised in this atmosphere hold a callous attitude towards supporting the elderly.

Mike said...

I would've preferred you continue to ignore the health care issue. What I would like to read more about is the treasury auction results for this week. I have a feeling it is an incredibly important event, but it is too complicated for me to understand with my limited time. Any help from you and Stoneleigh about it would be invaluable, I think.

Hombre said...

Ilargi wrote the following (in quotes) and it says it all. I too have basically ignored the recent hullabaloo and food fight over health care because I am quite sure the big corps are going to manipulate things to their advantage!


Enough said!

Anonymous said...


My octagenarian dad has often remarked "we're breeding at the bottom". Yes, I see it in my family and my community.

Hombre said...

Snuffy - Thanks for the details regarding eggs per chicken.

The way I looked at these huge salary disparities was to point out that any healthy human can only do so much "work" each day. So huge salary disparities were out of balance, even ridiculous.

My reference was to the fixed amount of time it took for a chicken to lay an egg--figured you would know that, being an experienced farmer. I knew it was a day or more because one of my childhood chores was to gather eggs!

Also, you said "I believe now total collapse is in the cards..." which I am not quite, but almost ready to concede. Maybe you will elaborate on that a bit on your next chore break!

Anonymous said...

@ snuffy

"..Birds in general are not "nice", I have seen many analysis showing them to be whats left of the dinosaurs... lots of reptilian behavior."

I think Banksters are also 'whats left of the dinosaurs... lots of reptilian behavior.'

The Kriminal Klass in Ah-Merica are also like 'big hungry chickens...which will kill and eat anything they don't identify as their own.."

There you have it, birds of a feather flock together.

Sorry for the bird pun.

I'm just trying to figure out the logistics of getting enough feathers to go with my ample supply of tar. We're going to need lots of them.

Anonymous said...

An elegant and powerful health -care commentary by Ilargi today. Nothing like the power of real life experienced to refute the fraudulent health -care propaganda espoused by the tools of the insurance industry. Thanks to both Ilargi and Stoneleigh on that account.

It really is painful to watch the healthcare Hindenburg go down in flames, especially when the insurance industry whores of the Democratic party are blowing winds of “concern“ on the fire. As for the everyday right -wing foot soldiers down on Main Street echoing the insurance industry message, your day will come. Soon enough your ranks will be littered with homes lost to medical bankruptcy and those unable to acquire or afford health insurance. When that day comes, perhaps you will find the time to read Thomas Frank’s “ Whatever Happened To Kansas.”

As for the MSM, once again we see their sentiment molded by the forces of commerce--the high priced insurance industry ads on their networks. They have no credibility whatsoever in my eyes. Zilch.

Perhaps at the end of the day something can be salvaged, at least some reform of pre-existing medical condition clauses.

As one who was infected with the spirit of Simon and Garfunkel’s “ El Condor Pasa” so many years ago, it has not been pleasant witnessing the forces of greed, evil and ignorance march under the banner of ‘Free Enterprise’ as they rip the heart and soul out of humanity.

And as one who no longer thinks twenty-five years is a long time, I doubt I will live to see much change for the better.


theonetruemaggot said...

"Cruel windfall: How wars, plagues, and urban disease propelled Europe’s rise to riches"

Odd that this is being presented as if it is a "new" idea. We discussed this in a European Economic History course I took as an "art's elective" a few decades back. I still have some of the required texts so I must dig them up.

I will resist the temptation to say "they" have been planning this all along. I've often thought that popular tv adaptations of paranoia, such as the X-files, have served the interests of "them". The simplistic depiction of the mysterious men in suits in the blue room makes the idea that there really is another class of people behind the scenes controlling our institutions (and minds) laughable to the general public.

Anonymous said...

blow me

this all comes to one big climax
and you'll be blowing bubbles out your ass instead of your mouth.

snuffy said...

CoyOte,things work until they don't.People put up with things...until they dont.I dont know what the trigger is that will be the turning point for violent radicalization of the masses..My buddy, Mark, believes that,as its only the 5%,The thinking part of the population, that will become radicalized,nothing will change,as TPTB can "Deal"with this type of widespread dissent....

I think differently...

I know their is a very sophisticated propaganda machine in existence to ensure the public knows the "right"way to think.I also know that the net is a huge threat to this as information flows like water around censorship.Its the way its designed.I think the groups that already have formed on the net will have a significant effect on the future.One example is FireDoglake,a place I hung during the last election,and before..The folks there are sworn enemies of Joe Lieberman,and very near succeeded in their quest to knock his ass out of the senate.I expect lots more of this type of action .

This is one type of political activation that occurred simply as a result in some real unhappy ,"liberal", folks brought together in a chat blog like this one.And they were effective...there was a huge paper mache' set of dummies...caricatures of bush kissing joe that followed him at all his speaking engagements.[Mean and effective.]This is the start of something...

Add to that that the un-employment....30% will make stresses on this society that will be beyond the experience of those whose job it is to control the public,without increasing the perception of basic unfairness.Remember perception IS reality to the public.

You have many,many,people who ,on a gut level know this financial situation was not caused by them....they have been trying to start the meme that all were responsible...but it hasn't stuck really anywhere except the chattering class.That the greedy wall street types cause this shitstorm has already sunk into the public awareness with the bailout...this sets a knife edge of anger the politicians will regret having ignored.The public feels cheated,ignored,and with healthcare "reform"now looking like a sick joke,the stage is being set for a whole lot of people being radicalized beyond the ability of the soft sweet voice of propaganda to reach.Yes,a lot of the proles will get with whatever program is spun by the government....but you try and tell a guy in a homeless shelter with sick,hungry kids he needs to support that he watched put him there......
I don't think soooo...
Yes,I am a bit smarter that most of my fellow "working class heroes".But I have seen and watched as the anger and awareness has grown in the steel shops and construction sites,and grocery stores and neighbors just talking, all those public places where people are used to speaking their minds,and their hearts.

With the hard times comes awareness,and the awareness anger...the next stage I think will be action....there will a trigger of some sort,then a huge collective "GODDAMNIT NO!!"
Thats when it will be time to go back to the house,lock the gate ,set the goodies up,and keep your head down...cause it wont stop.Ever.
It may be years...or tomorrow.But the actions,and counteractions by TPTB will sweep the faltering "house of cards"that is the usa economy/socio-political structure away.

I dont know when.But as the people have been denied redress for grave grievance,at some point it will come,and all the attempts to stop it are as to try and stop the tide.

time to be productive


Anonymous said...

@ theonetruemaggot


What you describe might fit the description of a Limited hangout -Wikipedia

el gallinazo said...

America - love it or leave it.


And yes, Pseudo Summary, I will bring my 18V Sawzall to Armageddon. If I can cut off the right wing of The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, that would be satisfaction enough before my battery expires.

Max said...


TPTB will be hunted down according to The Shape of Things to Come (2010).

Anonymous said...

I couldn't agree more with your comments on health care. It's called "obvious" but it takes a thought process to see the obvious. I've spent time in Canada for 25 years and have yet to meet a Canadian that would have our system on a bet. I remember a half hour discussion with a Canadian. The comment that stuck with me all these years is "if I have a heart attack tonight, not much happens. If you have one tonight, you lose everything you own."

bluebird said...

ilargi said "US health care spending is over 15% of GDP, and within 10 years it will be 20% (there's your bubble)."

But won't this bubble burst sooner than 10 years, once people have no money nor credit from the financial collapse?

P.S. to the jokesters - not all of us birds are evil, :)

Anonymous said...

Since Summary is gone, and Pseudo Summary is on vacation, perhaps I can help summarize your board as an interim measure.

* Chickens produce an egg every 40 hours or so. It takes 3 hens to produce two eggs. An organic farming socialist with 8 chickens will produce enough eggs, goat milk cheese and bell peppers each week to produce about 2 omelettes.
* While he waits for the eggs to drop, an organic farming socialist will wonder why, even though he is adding effectively the equivalent of a Denny's Grand Slam breakfast to his nation's economy, he makes less than a Wall Street pigman.
* Socialist organic farmers will note the cruel way that their chickens attack their ducks. Accuse ducks of hate crimes. Emplace Anti Social Behaviour Orders on chickens. Decides that in future, both Ducks and Chickens will be referred to as "Avian friends." Chickens--err, Avian Friends-- come home to roost.
* In raging fit of equality, Organic Socialist Farmer realizes that he treats his chickens the same way that the Wall Street Pigmen treat him. Vows that henceforth he will value every hour of "Avian Friend labor" as equal to an hour of his own. Encourages Avian Friends to unionize.
* Fairly intelligent, highly educated posters who pursued liberal arts degrees instead of useful skills and who lack strong work ethic write missives about the unfairness of it all, create solutions to nonexistent problems, and somehow think that their discourse will affect the outcome
* Laughing libertarian pens new "Never Trust Anyone Who Makes Under 30" slogan. Decides to eat an omelette for breakfast.

Anonymous said...

VK, as a public school math teacher, I can't tell you how many times the thought of that movie enters my mond as I stand in front of these vapid children. Unless you've taught in an urban setting, I don't think you can fully comprehend the idiocracy of our future voting citizens. I remember one conversation with a student that recently turned 18 years old as a 10th grader. I laughed out loud when I realized this person could cancel my vote.

As far as the idea of the movie; I was doing some back-yard sitting with my wife and three other couples. There were 15 degrees represented there among the late 20-somethings (with this early 30-something only holding one), and yet not a child or even the thought of a child could be seen.

Anonymous said...

Ok, can the bench warmers and second-rate hacks leave the Summarizing to the original one.

It's getting rather embarrassing--like watching Elvis wannabees at a Karaoke gathering.


grisu said...

Hi everyone
last week I was informed that I had lost in the greencard-lottery.After
reading TAE for almost a year,it feels
like barely missing getting aboard the Titanic.
Some time ago Stoneleigh mentioned
that she expects balkanization would
be the result of this crisis in europe.I would be grateful if you could elaborate on what you think will happen to continental europe and in what way it would differ from
north america.
Thank you

Anonymous said...

"Kucinich: the Federal Reserve is paying banks NOT to make loans to struggling Americans!"

Bigelow said...

“Never again could a single financial institution be allowed to become so big that its failure could bring down entire markets -- that was the central lesson learned from the collapse of Citigroup and AIG. These were institutions that were considered "too big to fail." Today, such concerns are hardly relevant on Wall Street. JP Morgan is considered a healthy company that has its $81 trillion in derivatives under control. According to the business magazine Forbes, "Wall Street learned nothing."

Financial products like collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), treated as ticking time bombs until recently, are in demand once again, and the process of collateralization, frowned upon since the financial crisis erupted, is back. As if nothing had happened, Morgan Stanley is packaging ("securitizing") downgraded CDOs into new securities, some of which are expected to receive the coveted AAA rating from Moody's.

"People say that derivative products are out of fashion. But we are constantly making more of them, with higher profit margins," says Deutsche Bank's Jain, noting that the complex products are doing especially well. Particularly in times of crisis, he says, nervous customers want to hedge again all possible types of currency or interest rate risks.”
THE RETURN OF GREED Banks Reopen Global Casino –Spiegel Online International

Hombre said...

Thanks Snuffy. I have been rather in your friend Mark's camp, but see the awareness of economic/political corruption expanding among those around me as well.
Personally, I think many of the painful, tougher, changes to a more natural livelihood coming are for the betterment of us all. But it's likely to be a unsightly dogfight in the process.

Anonymous said...

10:15 you sound terrible. I would not want someone as cynical and bitter as you teaching my kids. You sound like a failure at life.

jal said...

"... and yet not a child or even the thought of a child could be seen."

I've noticed
There is a growing % of the population of young people who do not want the expense and responsibility of having and raising kids.

There's nothing wrong with that.
Didn't the boomers enjoy a better life than their parents?
Didn't they raise their kids to expect a better life?

Duhh! Well! the 'young ones" want that better life and they have decided that kids do not make for "a better life".

Duh! Let's catch a brezze!

Punxsutawney said...

Regarding medical care; at some point this country (US) needs to decide weather or not everything should be for profit, including life or death. Perhaps it always has been, and just recently it’s becoming more obvious.

“Why should the economy pay workers when it can lend it to them instead?” – Why indeed!, when you can “owe your soul to the company store”.

Anonymous said...

pseudo-socialist-summary @ 10:04

Don't assume that all socialists are politically correct goody-two-shoes. My dad has been an embarrasingly dogmatic near-communist for 60+ years and is as politically incorrect as archie bunker.

Ruben said...

Anon 9:14 is a comment I wish I had never read. has two comment streams, "all" and "best of". Comments can also be suggested as offensive.

While this would be open to abuse, swarming by free-marketers etc. I wonder if an experiment in group editing would be worth trying. Craigslist does it. Maybe a version of Digg, where a comment flagged "bad" gets shunted into the "all" version. Then, anybody who wants to make sure the black helicopters are not running TAE can read every single one. Scepticus could live there, right along with Anon9:14.

VK said...



C is Consumption, I is Investment, G is Government Expenditure, X is eXports and M is iMports.

If China is growing at 8% per annum and exports constitute around 35% of GDP growth and they have contracted by 25%.

0.08 = C+I+G-M(0.65) + X(0.35)
Y = C+I+G-M
Now, X is down by 25%,so

8% = Y(0.65) + (-0.25)(0.35)
8% = 0.65Y - 0.0875
Y = (0.08 + 0.0875)/0.65*100 = 25.7%

So in order to have GDP growth of 8%, the rest of the economy would need to grow at near 26%!! In order to compensate for the loss of exports. GDP can also be fluffed up by a sharp decline in imports. But does anyone really believe that Consumption has gone up that sharply?

The loose monetary policy has gone straight into Investments and Government Expenditure and into speculating in the Shanghai Index.

When this 7.4 trillion yuan bubble bursts it's going to be gigantic.

Michael Pettis writes in the FT today, "Brace for a decade of lower Chinese growth". I wonder when the growth bubble is entirely popped a few decades from now what people will think of us.

Will they see crazed madmen or simple fools who got drunk on cheap fuel and cheap credit?

el gallinazo said...



Kind of like the Jewish "trustees" at Auschwitz Last in the oven.

Unknown said...



In an ideal world (and this is how pathetic my concept of an ideal world has become), they would see themselves, human beings, who are always and forever susceptible to willful blindness in favour of short-term comfort and greed, and they would take it as a very serious warning.

mmn said...

Bukko in Oz,

Yes, I did read "Guns, germs and steel", Jared Diamond's ideas are quite compelling.

European Man brought more than just aggression and science to the table. The best cultivable grain grasses, the best food (and draft) animals, the largest contiguous Mediterranean-climate type area in the world, a temperate continent with enough topographical barriers to promote diversity, conflict and competition all combined to provide an incubator for the pirates and plunderers that our ancestors went on to become.

In "Collapse", Diamond posits further that most societies whither and disappear when they exhaust their economic hinterland and cannot replace or expand it. He also pays some attention to the internal societal sclerosis that occurs when cultures stratify and atrophy. Here, I think, he misses another dimension that makes some societies vulnerable to failure: Complexity.

Tainter's "The collapse of complex societies" argues that successful, dynamic expansive societies continually confront challenges which they overcome by adding additional complexity to their model.

Eventually, the system gets to capacity and perversely is then more susceptible to external shock - like a super streamlined city traffic management system - one broken traffic light will gridlock the whole of downtown.

It seems to me that peak everything is the hinterland resource exhaustion event that will provide the external shock to the BUA growth model. We are witnessing the simultaneous ossification of societies at the centre of the huddle where everyone hides in the warmth of their neighbour, while simultaneous complexity is added at the margins where many are churning frantically through every iteration of alternative lifestyles to find a new model that works.

Well peeps, the problem is not lack of wood, water or food, its always and everywhere too many people. I suspect nature will find a way to redress this imbalance with or without our cooperation. We might not even notice - like Dmitry Orlov said in "Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation"



Unknown said...

Ugh. The Speigel article, "The Return of Greed" is terribly depressing. Trading is now the only profitable game for the investment banks; lending isn't even worth it in this crisis. So the big few remaining investment banks engage in rent-seeking behaviour by virtue of their commanding position and the death of many of their former competitors, while everyone else is left to engage in the risky lending business, which is now no business at all.

How could there possibly be any financial recovery when the power players are relentlessly driving up any trading prices to their maximum possible, thereby sucking up any available remaining capital for themselves?

It's exactly what Stoneleigh predicted. A few well-positioned, completely unscrupulous players, protected and coddled by governments they effectively lead by the nose, make more of a killing off of the disaster they caused then they did during the buildup. Everyone else becomes even more impoverished.

It's enough to make me homicidal.

Bigelow said...


Time for your blood pressure meds. ;)

thethirdcoast said...

Don't look now, but life is already imitating Idocracy:


As for me, I'm going to form a startup in Detroit. I plan to call it "Omni Consumer Products" or OCP for short. I think there are lots of opportunities in the Detroit real estate and law enforcement markets. ;D

Unknown said...

I rarely get angry, and I am very, very angry. These few investment banks are effectively furthering the impoverishment of the world and walking away with the remaining wealth. How much of the coming suffering will result directly from their actions? How many broken lives, how many deaths? How much chaos and violence?

There is no way to describe what they are doing as positive. They are now rent-seeking leeches, sucking out every last drop of bloody wealth, mindless of the sickly, faltering body of humanity that is their host. It's a fucking party for them while the world burns by their matchsticks.

These investment bankers are vile, evil scum, in the true meaning of those words. They are contributing danger and destruction and picking the world's pockets as pay.

I'm really quite upset.

thefalsemaggot said...

"Here, I think, he misses another dimension that makes some societies vulnerable to failure: Complexity"

Has the space shuttle program really stagnated because of lack of funding or because it is pushing the limits of complexity humans can deal with? Isn't the older Russian technology more simple and reliable? Will there be another revolutionary new concept (like double entry bookkeeping) that enables engineers to overcome our current complexity bottleneck?

Becca said...

Hi all,

Are there any links to articles forecasting a stock market plunge in the near future? Stoneleigh has commented on it alot, just wanted to know if others have written analysis indicating that it will occur. Thanks much,


Anonymous said...

A couple of things: Your movie is a rip off of Cyril M. Kornbluth's short story "The Marching Morons" which is brilliant. Incredibly controversial in its time.

Two is a question: If the rich keep killing the economy, and there ends up being nothing left of industry, what will they spend their millions on?

Three is to the guy who kept replying to me yesterday: Yes, I know many doctors who only do their jobs because of the money. They have no emotional investment whatsoever in their jobs, and any good they do is merely incidental. They have stated straight up that if we go to a socialized medicine model they will either a)retire early or b)do something else like become a farrier full time (actual comment). I know many nurses who are paying $400 or more every month in student loan debt. They, both doctors and nurses, have jumped on the bandwagon (and with some justification I might add) that they should be well paid for their trouble. Personally, with the mentality of the average person who comes into our ER, I would jump on that bandwagon myself. There are days when no matter how much I am paid it's not enough to put up with the whiny demanding drug seeking rabble. But then there are the patients that really need your help. And are grateful. And 'get' it. Those ones make the day worthwhile.

And someone mentioned that anyone who knows the American system knows it's not free. Not so. Most of the poor think it IS free and refuse to even pay their copays...can't afford it (even though they smoke a pack a day, have lots of gold jewelry, and have nicer cellphones than I can afford). For God's sake, it's $5! So yes, there is a big disconnect between what's 'owed' to people and who pays for it.


Hombre said...

Rumor - "It's enough to make me homicidal."

Don't let your further and ongoing discovery of corruption in the system ruin your day/week/year... life!

They have been at it for a long, long time. I went through an angry period but it did me little good and them no harm.

Besides, we need your articulate and supportive comments here at TAE!

Anonymous said...

For those wondering, the Treasury auctions are a mess and very bad. In fact, this may have been a "warning shot" across the bow of the US government by some of our creditors.

One thing that hyperinflationists seem to miss is that hyperinflating the dollar destroys the dollar AND destroys the implied power of the dollar. Those people in power don't want to lose it. They'd prefer that others suffer so they can keep their power. And that's yet another reason for a deflationary depression.

Our creditors want us to pay off that debt. We, the debtors, would likely prefer to default on that debt in some form (inflation being one way to default one some portion of the debt). Our creditors may be trying to teach us that they hold the strings, not us. Our civil masters will do what they must to remain civil masters. Last fall's bailout despite email, regular mail, and phone call opposition running 300-1 proved that.

Given the choice between defaulting and losing power versus inflicting pain and suffering on us and retaining power, which do you think they will really choose?

Hombre said...

falsemaggie - "Has the space shuttle program really stagnated because of lack of funding or because it is pushing the limits of complexity humans can deal with?"

No, I would say it has stagnated because repeated launchings of a multi-ton dinosaur/aircraft into space is a ridiculous idea!

1 - There is no place to go to find life within light years so a physical vehicle is preposterous.

2 - Other than it provides some high tech jobs it is a waste of fuel, brainpower, and a variety of precious resources.

3 - One caveat might be to send our spent nuclear fuel to the sun, at least it would accomplish something practical.

Caith said...


Unless it blew up in the atmosphere.

Robert Rubin said...

Well we are going into the fall. Stoneleigh's market crash could be happening any time soon. Do I have this right Stoneleigh? I don't want to misquote.

Bigelow said...


"How many broken lives, how many deaths? How much chaos and violence?"

We like to think we live in a modern culture. I think the Dark Ages were just re-branded. The "Investment" banks are expanding the warrior banker's Crown Corporations model in the way they treated the newly "discovered" Americas, now to the whole world.

I wondered who is behind this? Turns out according to Yahoo 72% of Goldman Sachs shares are held by institutions and mutual funds, 71% for JPMorgan Chase. Though there are three individuals who own over a million share each of either in their own names, most of the culpability is with institutions and mutual funds --just guessing but that would be pension funds and the wealthy.

And that crack about blood pressure was more about my reaction too.

Jimmy Jones said...


A new bubble? Are you kidding me, Ilargi? How do we have a new bubble when you say that the shit will hit the fan in the fall?

Maybe you should read the primers.

Armando Gascón said...

Wary of the speedy incorporation of Iceland into the EU -by a majority of just one vote- the best Spanish Newspaper El País Says "Cuidado con Islandia" Beware of Islandia, and denounces the SAPROPHITES of the European Union: Britain, the Check Republic and now this lot.

They are in for a surprise. People think of the Icelanders as some kind of nice socialist Scandinavians, when in fact they are like the Pirates of the Tortuga Island and worse: a band of brothers descendant of the cannibal Vikings, see what they done to Britain.

Rather the Turks than the Icelanders in the EU.

If Britain, the Checks and Iceland do not have a firm commitment to the aims of the EU they must not belong to it.

el gallinazo said...

My ex-Russian professor emeritus of mathematics and material science buddy makes a tidy living (including STJ villa) figuring out why corporate products deteriorate faster than was predicted. He specializes in material failure disaster. He has been applying the mathematics of general relativity to this project with considerable success. He tries to explain it to me, but as Greenpa has ferreted out, I am really a Religious Studies major specializing in Genesha, so it is hopeless.

Anyway, I bring it up because his contacts in NASA tell him that it would take them years to send a man to the moon again because the knowledge base to do it is lost. The generation that had the knowledge either died or retired and the new guys are to busy playing around with their computers to have the necessary mental rigor to reconstruct it. He is very insistent on that point.

Jimmy Jones said...

Is Stoneleigh really the only person predicting a market crash in the fall?

Robert Rubin said...

Jimmy many analysts are calling for a new bull market or quarters of improvement.

Yeh, I do not get how Ilargi is calling for a healthcare bubble if the economy is literally going to implode. That would seem to preclude the possibility of another bubble. Also, what is going to finance this bubble? The credit bubble is burst. The treasury bubble is peaking. What then?

Gravity said...

When wage is calibrated for a stationary observer, employment at high velocity should be wage-dilated proportionately, necessitated by special relativity's time dilation.

This becomes a measurable factor for astronauts, reducing wages by a few pennies per lifetime, travel at relativistic speeds would theoretically reduce all time-dependent pay considerably.

General theory's gravitational time dilation requires that labor performed at a lower gravitational potential, closer to planet's surface at lower altitude, should also be wage-dilated accordingly.

This becomes a measurable factor for astronauts as well, laboring at high-altitude should thus increase pay with a few pennies per lifetime, almost enough to compensate for the velocity dilation.

In conclusion, two different forms of time-dilation make a standard time-dependent wage rather variable for certain professions.

Jimmy Jones said...


There will be no more bubbles. Ilargi says this on some days. On other days, like today, he suggests that there will be more.

Have a piece of cake, Ilargi, and eat it too.

Caith said...

It's not difficult. Ilargi thinks there's going to be a crash. Ilargi also thinks the banksters and politicos are aiming for more bubbles (carbon trading and health care). These can both be true at the same time. If the prime motivating issue for the governing elite is how to generate bubbles then looking at how you might generate bubbles is valuable in predicting and explaining their behaviour, *even if* it isn't going to work because the crash happens first.

Please, try to read for sense before shouting.

ric said...

Enjoyed Scott McGuire's article
Sustainable Blather

What struck me was what kept him motivated as he burns-out before the cognitive dissonance of CSA meetings:

But I’m burnt out on all the blah-blah. Sometime last spring I stopped going to these kinds of meetings due to the lack of focus and distracting blather that never seems to get grounded in any compounding action (oh, and it was also time to sow seeds, so seeya). One symptom of denial around the immensity of the changes required/pending, is the invisible goo that fills a room causing everyone to think and move as if they were underwater, or in a dream where you can’t run away fast enough or find where you left your backpack… It’s absolutely surreal, the effective slow-motionizing of cognitive dissonance.

Those who work in the CSA community know this blather well, but I don't look forward to the time when the problem of invisible goo becomes the problem of visible fear, rage, and panic. He's been at it for decades and sounds like that with luck he'll be working with communities for decades more.

Scott has more skills and patience than I have. My efforts are those of a silly beginner learning new things. A few months ago I got "fired" as a volunteer on a CSA farm because the manager said I "worked too hard" and "too much" and he's "lost track of what it takes to get things done"--which I took to mean my personality grated on the owner. (RC adviced me to keep my mouth shut while working there and I failed miserably at following his advice, which is par for a beginner.) But I learned enough to gain confidence in further ventures. Yesterday, I worked with a master blacksmith welding together a soil ripper out of scrap for a "found" tractor that we just got running for $100. Last week I welded together a "wheelbarrow" out of barrel hoops, a 50 gallon drum, and other scrap. Farm tool fabrication has been incredibly fun. Also, have been discovering small poultry growers in the area and one has taken me under his wing ;-)

What's changed most for me has been my attitude about social change. For me, at least, the future is about poor, but intelligent experienced people bartering skills as we get through another day--NOT a middle-class agrarian utopia.

Dr J said...

Stop picking on Ilargi.

I appreciated the items on obesity. This is my area of interest. Nobody here, probably for the usual PC reasons, has mentioned that Obama's pick to solve this huge national problem has not been able to solve the problem on a personal level. I point this out, not to castigate her personally, but to illustrate the fact that, if even the most gifted or our leaders in this field cannot make the current prescription work for themselves, perhaps it is time to consider that we have the wrong prescription.

I won't go into the diet aspects of this further here (even though our gentle hosts seem to have opened the door to a diet debate) except to say that Gary Taubes' excellent book, "Good Calories, Bad Calories" lays it all out very clearly.

Another good book, "The End of Food", by Paul Roberts, tells a discouraging story of how agribusiness interests are going thwart even the best efforts to tackle this problem.

Layer onto that the interests of the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries and you can be assured that any meaningful effort to correct this problem will run into stiff, well-connected and well-funded opposition.

Dr J said...

I should add that the reason all these vested interests are such avid cheerleaders for the current approach (eat less and exercise more) is precisely because they know it doesn't work and therefore poses zero threat to their bottom lines.

John Brown said...

Did the bankers not think that this would happen?

How about I&S?

When Debtors Decide to Default

- NYTimes

Bigelow said...



I believe Stoneleigh argues inflation only after the deflation/collapse of bond markets. There is inflationary default and also straight up default.
Global systemic crisis in summer 2009: The cumulative impact of three « rogue waves »

Found my notes from the email GEAB sent around recently:

3 blunt waves: unemployment, serial bankruptcies, dollar crisis. Massive unemployment/bank failures late summer. FED forced to buy Treasuries. Flight from dollar begins late summer ’09. Dollar devalues. Euro, Yuan even Real rise. 30-50% loss in US$. Restructure attempts for debt. New dollar issued. Only T-bills honored. Domestic interest rates 10%+ by 2010.

What if the choice is made for the-powers-that-be by the rest of the world?

Frank said...

@Armando What's up man? I know you never have any good to say about Anglo-Saxons, but 'cannibal vikings' is a bit over the top. You also usually spell things like Czech Republic correctly.

By the way, Iceland is not in the EU yet. Even fast tracked, I've seen estimates of a referendum in Iceland in 2012 and admission in 2013-14.

I wouldn't count on that referendum passing. Iceland's fishing industry is likely the best managed in the world. By 2014 they won't be hurting badly enough to let the EU wreck it (look at the EU fishing industry) just to get onto the Euro.

Or in Ilargi's world, the EU will be hurting nearly as bad as Iceland, rather than Iceland getting better off. Same result.

EBrown said...

El gal,
It would really be kick in the teeth if we make an effort to return to the moon and then either give up before getting there or have some sort of Challenger+ level disaster that causes the program to be furloughed.

Armando Gascón said...

Lapsus calami, Czechs. These languages of the Barbarians of the North, in which one vowel has to sustain four or five consonants!

There are many good things to say about the Anglo-Saxons, and I know it full well, but they know how to beat their own drum, they do it all the time.

Gravity said...

To determine if a bubble exists in healthcare, one should be able to measure the relative valuation of the goods and services contained within that market domain, compared to price levels of other goods and services, thus correlating to differential monetary pressure, with overvaluation indicating a localized curvature in the monetary tensor-field.

The monetary value of health must ultimately be expressible as a function of productivity, namely added potential for labor taxation.
With expectations of structurally high unemployment such an equation would become too restrictive, resulting in health-added value approaching zero, so it would gradually become economically rational to euthanize or exterminate the healthless.

The problem with determining
the relative valuation of health services is a boundary-condition,
closely relating to energy-rational equations for resource inputs, as a completely sick population will produce nothing at all.

Anonymous said...

This is what I love about America:


Dr J said...

Gravity - I think you make a common error in assuming that health services are a determinant of health.

jal said...

From the market ticker. Simple and easy to understand.

"This recession began due to the impossibility of consumers and businesses paying their debt down. Remember - the recession did not start with job losses and a business slowdown - it began with people defaulting on mortgages and credit cards, and businesses defaulting on lines of credit. That in turn led to a business slowdown which then fed back and caused even more defaults."

GDP must contract until equilibrium is restored, (20%)
I guess that would mean the end of the military spending for the "empire", end of a health care for everyone, hiding the truth about the pension savings, etc.
On top the USA will probably end up having the same tax rates as other countries and they will not end up having the benefits of a "socialist system."

Maybe someone can give a few more practical example of what will happen if there is a 20% decline in GDP

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

blow me

this all comes to one big climax


I apologize but I don't get what this means. Anyone care to explain?

Dr J said...

Ilargi - re anon 9:14 and anon 4:13 (probably one and the same), please do us all a service and ban them.

Bigelow said...

“The USTreasury officials and USFed have lied through their teeth about avoiding direct monetization. If the Chinese have half a brain individually, they can see the back-door monetization with collusion of foreign central banks. The Chinese are in town for the next concession. One can only wonder. Well, the Jackass has a good idea of what comes next. It is just a matter of time.

The concept can be described in very simple terms. The vehicle is devastating in its effects and consequences. What are they exactly? The USGovt might soon issue bonds, except not in US$ denomination, but rather in Yuan currency. Out of the gate (with debt signposts), the USGovt must purchase gigantic swaths of Yuan and pay with USDollars. The result is a quantum decline in the US$ exchange rate relative to everything holding the Yuan together. The Chinese decided in 2005 to tie their Yuan currency to a basket of currencies, led by the US$, the Euro, the Yen, the British Pound, and a small additional group. So the direct purchase of Yuan by the Untied States, the newest upcoming member of the Third World, will have numerous profound effects to lift other currencies.

The direct consequences of USGovt Yuan Bonds would be vast, visible, lethal:
 The USDollar exchange rate would fall with each debt issuance
 The loan balance in USGovt debt would rise with a declining USDollar
 The Yuan currency would be further established as a global reserve alternative
 Continued trade settlement in Yuan terms would be enabled
 Rise in entire cost structure to the USEconomy from commodity pricing
 The risk of USTreasury Bond default grows with each passing new issuance

The Chinese want protection and assurance against the falling USDollar and even the growing principal risk of USTreasurys. Higher bond yields mean principal bond loss. Both currency and bond loss mean a powerful combined loss. Beijing wants protection and security in exchange for continued debt support. A Yuan-based bond issuance by the USDept Treasury, sold by the USFed would accomplish this to some degree. In a few years time, if the US$ exchange rate is 15% to 30% lower, the loan balance in Yuan terms would be unchanged. The cost to the USGovt grows by that percentage however. If the yield rises, then protection can be locked by means of making the debt securities of shorter maturity, like two to five years.”
USGovt Yuan Bond Threat

ca said...

Check out Michael Panzner's scathing response to an article written by Tim Bond in the FT:

Gravity said...

@ Dr J,

"I think you make a common error in assuming that health services are a determinant of health."

Interesting point, yet there ought to be some correlation, at least on the preventative side.
Preventative services and sufficient dietary education might have kept people from becoming so massive they dislocate capital moons from orbit.

Certainly, preventing sickness should be vastly more profitable
for society than the (non)treatment of avoidable conditions, though this is really an educational matter.

Robert Rubin said...

jal - he uses 20% as the base figure. He acknowledges that the figure would actually be closer to a 30% decline in GDP. Since this means revenues will be lower, one can only surmise that military expenditures will be lower.

Jim Jones said...

1,200 R.I. businesses face closure over sales tax

Jim Jones said...

But I though I&S had exclusive rights to exposing the this to the world?

Moore's credit crunch film tops bill in Venice

I bet some people here actually think that Michael Moore probably reads this blog, and that is where he got his film idea.

Dr J said...

Gravity said:


Right. My point is that we have been promoting the wrong message and that the result has been the opposite of the stated intention. However, this negative result has been immensely profitable for large and powerful vested interests. Hence the resistance to correcting the message a la Taubes.

Anonymous said...

Received from Martin Weiss today

"It's only fair to acknowledge that the economic depression I foresaw in my book and in my reports is unfolding more slowly than I had expected.
For reasons I'll explain in a moment, the next phase of the crisis we've been warning you about has been delayed, and this change demands a parallel change in our short- and medium-term investment outlook. ..."

Until now his predictions of timings have been the same as I&S's on TAE. Have their ideas of timings changed too?


VK said...

So you're telling me according to that article about European wealth and power, that they got rich because the Chinese and Indians were more peaceful and their cities were cleaner while the rural folk decided to chill with farming?

As for the so called Western domination of science, it was the Chinese that invented gunpowder and the printing press as I recall and the Indians who invented the present number system including zero. The oldest stock exchange might have been in the ancient Turkish city of Aizanoi in the 2nd century AD, while the oldest university was founded in India at Takshashila in 700 BC which may have housed 10,500 students from areas like Babylon, Greece, Syria and China. Things like gravity, surgery and the pythagoras theorem were well known before they were discovered in the West.

There surely is much more at work then merely what is stated in the works of Jared Diamond and the authors of the said article.

Anonymous said...

@VK and various anonymi re: idiocracy

1. IQ is not determined solely by genetics (eg., identical twins can have different IQs)
2. Genetics are not the only thing children inheret from their parents.

So, even if the stupid people are breeding more, I don't think that means we're doomed to a stupidopia future.

Anonymous said...

Oops, forgot to sign my name on the idiocracy comment.


el gallinazo said...


Don't think it's going to happen. When has a major power issued sovereign bonds in a foreign currency? Even the British don't do it. The USD would lose its reserve status overnight.

An alternative is to declare martial law and cut the budget back to the military and servicing the national debt, killing SS and medicare. This would balance the budget and get rid of all of us useless krill to boot.

I see this occurring shortly after the dislocation, and I see a coup removing Obama shortly there after. I wouldn't be surprised if TPTB replaced him with Biden, who truly is a moron of Sarah Palin proportions. A MacBeth without the smarts to make a soliloquy. The Israelis will bomb Iran with US support. Iran cannot be invaded with land forces, only attacked by air. Iran will shut down the Persian gulf with it's missiles, and suddenly all that oil that GS and JPMC are holding in anchored supertankers will be worth $300 a barrel. And the new junta will blame Iran for the crash of the US economy, Ain't life wonderful?

Anonymous said...

I must say that the seeming inconsistency from Ilargi on the issue of a health care bubble or some other bothers me. I don't see how we can have another bubble with the economy smashed, since bubbles by their very makeup create the sense of wealth and economic well being. There is an inconsistency here that Ilargi could choose to address or leave it hanging as a question mark on his analysis.

Anonymous said...

El G said:


Very scary scenario, but I've been expecting the US or Israel to attack Iran for a few years. I remember Michael Ruppert saying in one of his films that if the US is crazy enough to attack Iran we should head for the hills because it might be the beginning of WWIII. We will see how the military-industrial-financial complex work out the endgame.

Yes, attacking Iran will certainly distract the US populace from the collapsing economy and start a new wave of jingoism.

jal said...

In my opinion, War is the last thing in the cards.

Too many people on the web capable of putting up a resistance.

With the GDP tanking, even if it is a modest pace of 5% per year, taking care of "home" will be the priority.

incontinent said...

What's up with the flies buzzing around trying desperately to discredit the proprietors of this site? Are these people bored? Are they sharpening their claws? Are they genuinely offended at some perceived deficient logic?

Could they be financial "professionals" who wish to see suckers herded back into the markets?

Or are they just be desperately clinging to the hope that if enough of us believe everything will be alright we can all wake up from this bad dream? As ridiculous as that sounds, I know many intelligent people, who despite full awareness of the corruption and greed involved, believe if we all say our prayers at bedtime and wish upon a star, it will all be OK.

I can't read this site regularly (I need to "escape" from reality for a few weeks at a time and shut out these issues, so I understand why people can't accept the truth) but the gist of what I have read over the past few months seems to promote staying flexible until we know for sure how bad the storm will be in our locations. How can you go wrong with that advice, even if you are not totally convinced?

Hombre said...

jal - "Maybe someone can give a few more practical example of what will happen if there is a 20% decline in GDP"

Here's some GDP figures from the 1930's.
So, I would say -20% would be-not a crash-but rather an implosion!

1.1930 -8.6%
2.1931 -6.4%
3.1932 -13%

Hombre said...

The Economics of Entropy

John M Greer -"It took an extraordinarily complex series of processes, more time than the human mind has evolved the ability to grasp, and an equally unimaginable amount of energy lost to entropy, to produce the highly concentrated fossil fuels we’ve wasted so profligately over the last three hundred years."

I found this article thoughtful and felt it presented a potent argument against the likelyhood that any, or all, of our green shoot renewable energy projects could even come close to replacing fossil fuels.

Not a new concept, but well done here.

VK said...

@ Coy Ote

Here's some more wonderful oil facts for you,

Each litre of petrol (gas) that we burn is the distilled residue of around 23 tonnes of ancient organisms, mostly marine algae. (efficiency of process 1kg/ 23,000 kg*100 = 0.023%)

The oil products consumed by the entire planet in a single day requires 13 months of continuous photosynthesis to produce and store.

Ilargi gave me the link to a paper that showed the energy consumed in one year requires around 400+ years to manufacture by the earth's natural processes.

:O Yeah, I love V8 Engines ;)

Hombre said...


I drive an S-10 V6 - ;-)

We never really knew that... for example... dragracing in a V8... was such a total waste of a precious universal resources.

I remember as a young man spending days contemplating Ghandi's condemnation of the internal combustion engine. (The autobiography of Mohandas Ghandi)

Slowing down this engine driven world is a task of monumental proportions. But either we will do it, as I'm sure you agree, or the earth will expel us--do it for us!

EconomicDisconnect said...

Checking to say hello Ilargi. Let me know if you have a song request for the weekend thread, though this week it will be on Saturday night.

jal said...

@ Coy Ote
Thanks for the comparison data.

A smart move would be to bring the troops back home, retool the factories and get those windmills up and going. The military would be the first that would need to be off the "net".

GunHillTrain said...

Reports are coming out now that the "Cash for Clunkers" program (officially the Car Allowance Rebate System - CARS) is being suspended; apparently the funds for it, which were expected to last until November, are close to being exhausted after only a week.

A peculiar detail: cars traded in have to be disabled and junked; they cannot go into the used car market.

Is this whole thing just the most bizarre sign of desperation, or what?

VK said...

Hello Ilargi,

It was the paper entitled, "Burning Buried Sunshine: Human consumption of Ancient Solar Energy" by Jeffrey S. Dukes

The fossil fuels burned in 1997 were created from organic matter containing 44 x 10^18g C, which is >400 times the net primary productivity (NPP) of the planet's current biota.

Maybe I've misunderstood what it meant eh?

Ilargi said...



Something seems to be amiss here. You would get 1000 years of energy in just 400.000 years.

I see 2 options:

1) Your timeframe is wrong, for instance maybe it should be 400 years for 1 DAY of energy.

2) The periods in which oil "production" actually takes place are extremely short.

Ilargi said...


I was correcting a mistake, so deleted and reposted. And now we're in reverse order.

But I do think I see what's up: the numbers you quote represent the total planet's entire biota, whereas oil was only formed in particular places, under particular circumstances and during particular periods.

That of course makes it all the more mind-boggling. 400 years of all the photosynthetic activity, all around the world, every single tree and blade of grass, provides one year's worth of fuel.

Bigelow said...

@ el gallinazo


Agreed war on Iran probably a lock, but can always hope we are not that idiotically arrogant.

“The idea of issuing foreign currency-denominated US Treasures is not new. The Jimmy Carter administration, buffeted by the two oil crises of the 1970s, sold "Carter bonds", denominated in German marks and Swiss francs, in 1978 to attract foreign investors into Treasuries.

"The US will be forced to issue foreign currency-denominated US Treasures in its hour of need," said Mizuno. "The US cannot finance its deficit by itself. The US financial system cannot survive without foreign investors. We will see 'Obama Bonds' in the future."”
Japan economists call for 'Obama bonds'

Samuel Adams said...

When do we start tarring and feathering?

Tarp banks award billions in bonuses

Samuel Adams said...

Govt to suspend 'cash for clunkers'

Anonymous said...

I think the comparison is about the concentration of energy contained in fossil fuels.

It takes 400 years of all the carbon-fixing of all the biota - land and oceans to equal the amount of FF burned in one year.

The source of FF's however only represented a small proportion of the carbon fixing at any one time, therefore it took a very long time and perfect conditions to accumulate.


Anonymous said...

I think many here believe Ilargi is saying there will be a bubble. I don't read it that way. What I see Ilargi saying is that those in Washington desire to blow another bubble and health care looks to them like the obvious candidate. If I am mistaken, Ilargi can correct me.

However, the situation, in terms of total debt, now appears to be so dire that I am not sure that another bubble can be blown. I know that those in power will try but I don't think they can succeed.

VK said...


I was wondering where your post went? Almost felt like a Canadian central bank economist in 96 F heat - a bit loopy! :D


It's probably worse now given that the paper was written in 1997. So I'd round it off to a nice 425-450 years lets say?

Dr J said...

In trying to convey the enormity of the concentrated energy in oil, I find it useful to use the numbers which I believe were posted here a while back which related to nuclear power. IIRC, it was that, to replace with nuclear the energy we currently get from oil, over a period of 20 years, we would need to bring a new nuclear reactor on stream every 2.7 days.

Samuel Adams said...

What is 1/10 of 1% of 300,000,000?

If they are the problem, and insist on the status quo, and are looking to build new bubbles, isn't it our duty to stop them?

Seems like an easy task.

Samuel Adams said...

More reasons for tar and feather

Anonymous said...

Great video of Dennis Kucinich exposing the Fed paying banks not to lend.

Somebody PLEASE draft an independent ticket of Kucinich [D] and Paul [R] for 2012.
I would volunteer my time/ donate my money only for that campaign.

timekeepr said...

Next bubble?

Land Prices Drop Sharply in Center of U.S. Farm Belt

Land prices in the heart of the U.S. farm belt showed the steepest quarterly decline in 24 years, the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank said.

The value of good agricultural land in its district on April 1 was 6% lower than it was on Jan. 1, the Chicago Fed said Thursday. The quarterly decline is the sharpest since 1985, when the farm belt was mired in a wrenching debt crisis.

Any drop in land prices has a chilling effect on the agricultural sector because real estate is the largest source of collateral for farmers; their borrowing power is dropping along with the value of their land. The seventh district, which is at the center of America's most productive farmland, includes all or parts of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The report didn't offer actual land prices, but percentage changes. Prices of farmland across the district began dropping late last year on a quarterly basis after climbing higher for a decade. On an annual basis, the price of farmland on April 1 was just 2% higher than the same 2008 date in the Chicago Fed survey. Farmland prices were climbing at double-digit rates across much of the Midwest on an annual basis until last fall, when the gathering recession took at lot of steam out of commodity prices.

Many farmers have less to spend on land because farm incomes are forecast to sink 20% this year from the record levels generated in 2007 and 2008. At the same time, the recession is damping investors' interest in developing farmland on the fringes of cities.

The Chicago Fed's first-quarter agricultural report is based on its survey of 227 bankers across the seventh district. While prices of crops such as corn and soybeans have fallen from the stratospheric levels they hit last summer, they appear to have settled at a plateau that is far higher than what food executives were accustomed during much of this decade and the 1990s. And while about two-thirds of the surveyed bankers said they expect farmland prices to change little during the second quarter, 30% expect to see farmland values drop further.

VK said...

@ Dr J

Yes I was the one who posted that on nuclear. To replace all fossil fuels i.e. coal, oil and natural gas which will all peak, you'd need about 10,000 nuclear power plants. Read it on a Scitizen article by Kurt Cobb I believe.

10,000 one Giga Watt plants I believe.

So assuming infinite supplies of Uranium and Thorium, and a time frame of 50 years and no problems with technical skills, nuclear conflict and waste disposal.

We would need to add about 1 plant every 1.85 days. Ofcourse the world bank states that 3% growth is essential for a stable world economy so if we assume 2% growth in energy requirements annually, then we'd need 27,000 Nuclear power plants in 2059 as otherwise the monetary system would collapse.

So that's about 1 nuclear power plant every 16.5 hours.

We had better start building eh! ;)

Samuel Adams said...


VK said...

As for nuclear power, Goodstein estimates that it would take 10,000 nuclear power plants to replace all the energy we are currently getting from fossil fuels for all purposes. There are now about 400 nuclear generating plants worldwide. A nuclear build-out on this scale would be the biggest infrastructure project ever attempted.

And, it would take decades to complete assuming the public had the will, the money (in the form of subsidies) and the available fossils fuels to complete such a project.

Samuel Adams said...

A 78-year-old Carroll woman says she's so tired of seeing President Barack Obama on the airwaves that she's selling her television sets - two of them.

Dr J said...

VK - yes, better get to work!
BTW - you are sounding like a Canuck.

ogardener said...

Anonymous Anonymous said...
July 30, 2009 10:04 AM

Dave? Dave's not home man.

Anonymous said...

ilargi sez:


I see 2 options:



Well,gee ilargi, I thought you would have picked up a bit about oil and energy during your time at the oil drum?

There is a number three and that is

3) not all oil is good oil and not all oil is oil in fact some of it isn't even good something that isn't oil, and then some of it is just stuff for bog stompers to use to make a dram, revel for a time and then decompose in.

-J Canuck=

Ilargi said...

well J canuck

I know more about it than you do, as you can see. Read before you write!

Ilargi said...

New post up.

Anonymous said...

No man... I'm Dave!