US debt-to-GDP, 1940 - onwards

Belatedly, it occurred to me that it could be more useful to see the progress of the debt burden in terms of national earnings. This is from Steve McGourty and is updated as of 21st September.

I'm not sure how much comfort we can take from the fact that the blue line was slightly higher in the mid-1990s, and far higher in the '40s. I suppose it depends on what you think may happen to the GDP part.

US debt outstanding, Fiscal Years 1950 - 2008

Figures are in billions of US dollars.

US debts vs. other expenditure - 2006

Here's the importance of debt, compared to other Federal and local State expenditure.

I've taken the interest on the debt for the fiscal year 2006, plus the amount by which total debt increased in the 12 months ending Dec 29, 2006. That's because the outstanding debt is increasing even faster than the amount of interest being paid.

(Figures are in billions of US dollars.)

By way of comparison, I also give below two figures - the increase in debt plus interest paid for 2006, and then for 2008. In the latter case, the increase in debt is that from 30 Sep 2007 to 12 months later, and the interest is the latest available as per here.

In other words, if America had no such debts, she would have $1.45 trillion more per year to spend on other things.

Interest, plus rolling-up more debt, now equates to some 30% of all non-debt-servicing costs of the States and Federal Government.

Existing debts and the Bailout Bill

Treasury debt information

$431,270,863,309.37

That's America's "Interest on the debt outstanding" for the fiscal year 2008 - not ended.

20 years ago, it was $214,145,028,847.73.

Zgirl's "Better than nothing" blog explains why deflation would cripple the American government, so money has to keep pouring in and we have to hope that foreign creditors (including the equally busted Brits, it seems) continue to buy-in US Treasury securities.

How to come down from this perilous height?

If this is the pitch, the answer is "No".

I've just watched Democrat Senator Harry Reid try to sell the revised bailout bill, live on BBC News 24. He may have unfortunate body language, and until this minute I knew nothing about him; but I wouldn't buy a certified gold bar from him for an obviously forged red cent.

He refers to a major insurance company allegedly under threat, and a hypothetical example of a local Nevada bank safeguarded by increased deposit insurance. And as I've been typing this, I've been hearing Senator Hillary Clinton enunciating, in her hectoring, braying, bored voice, all the good reasons why "I" want this, that and the other and so should you.

Maybe they're just the world's worst salespeople, but I don't buy. Sorry.

Your prediction?

Experts and interested amateurs: please give us your best guess at the value by end 2008 - see sidebar.

So you think the USA has problems?

"European banks are generally more levered than their U.S. counterparts."

Paul Kedrosky (htp: Jesse)

UPDATE: the Daily Telegraph concurs.

The $700 billion is to appease foreign investors?

I said in August that I thought powerful foreign creditors would refuse to be cheated, and now Karl Denninger tells us that the $700 billion bailout is to compensate these parties.

And that probably doesn't mean us Brits, either.

More from iTulip

Eric Janszen gives us his take on the brouhaha:

This iTulip post describes the process whereby the current deflation may suddenly turn into inflation.

This one warns against Bill-bashing for its own sake, which may be cutting off your nose to spite your face - something must be done, he says, because the market does NOT self-correct. I would suggest that it might, if the government and banks hadn't "intervened" long ago to create a fiat currency. Once that's happened, we're playing the game for the benefit of bankers and politicians, and by their rules.

And the solution?

Anyone who saw Brian Cox as Titus Andronicus at the Swan in Stratford in 1987, can never forget it. I remember seeing a girl in the audience with her mouth hanging open, paralysed, as Titus stunned us with his almost gloating description of his suffering. And what a master Shakespeare was, understanding that when emotion is heightened, it is also complex.

TITUS Ha, ha, ha!

MARCUS Why dost thou laugh? It fits not with this hour.

TITUS Why, I have not another tear to shed.

Humour can also unblock the mind to work creatively in a disaster. But there is also the "We're doomed, I tell ye!" John Laurie type who only cheers up when it's as bad as he always said it would be. Watch out for them, because unconsciously, they may steer events to match their temper.

iTulip explains succinctly, below, the problem caused by the house price crash. For me, though, it's a reminder of how wonderful the old cartoons are.

Boing!

Dow and FTSE back up again. Thought so. But unlike 1987, I don't think this will be over by Christmas. Bear market rally, don'tcha know?

Super post by Denninger today, too. He points out, among other things, that the Dow started falling yesterday when everyone (himself included) expected the Bill to pass. And as he says, Bernanke upped the money in the system by vast amounts anyway, and it still hasn't fixed the problem. Just how much petrol do you need to throw onto a fire to put it out?

The BBC perspective

After yesterday's "No!" in Congress, BBC "business editor" Robert Peston refers to a "breakdown in the US political system."

To me, it's the very opposite: it's a prewar Lagonda that has spent years with its axles on bricks, and it's just had a new set of tyres put on; after long disuse, the engine has finally turned over. Maybe it will seize up again, but for now there is a hint of democratic accountability.

For example, is it not interesting that more Democrats voted against the Bill, than Republicans for (both as a percentage and in absolute numbers)?

I watched Peston on TV last night and said to my wife, "I should be in front of that microphone." I heard him on the radio this morning and still want his job.

The MSM: one despairs.

Horton heard a Who

Congress just heard from the voters. Let's hope Horton listens closely.

Now what?

Maybe I'm not that good at body language, though I've spent years with unstable children; and maybe it's having to speak to a semicircular audience of journalists outside the White House, and he hasn't learned the actor's trick of seeming to direct his attention steadily to one indeterminable member of the audience; but Hank Paulson's statement made just now (c. 21.45 British Summer Time), with the left-middle-right upanddown movement of his head, and the earnestness of his mouth and lips, makes him look panicky.

But maybe the worst players in the banking market should be allowed to burn out anyway, as Marc Faber has said for a long time.

How many of the crucial 10 swing votes in the House were down to the polemical fax-fomenting of Mish, Denninger at al?

And will the Establishment force them to vote again and again until they get it right? Nancy Pelosi and her "bipartisan" mantra (3 or 4 times in one statement) seemed to hint at this.

Under New Management

If I understand him, Nouriel Roubini (htp: City Unslicker) is saying don't buy the rotten apples, become the greengrocer's senior partner.

My plan: a $15 trillion dollar bailout.

US nonfinancial debt (second quarter 2008) is $32.4 trillion dollars. This pie chart gives a breakdown of the debt by type. US GDP in 2006 (est.) was $13.13 trillion - let's guess it's $14 trillion now. Thus debt as a proportion of GDP is about 230%.

This graph shows that the 50-year mean ratio of such debt to GDP is 120.1%. So to get back to a long-term average, DEBT MUST HALVE. As I said in a reply to a comment today, it's like a game of musical chairs, but taking away half the chairs in one go.

In fact, an almost perfect fit would be to cancel all the mortgage debt in the USA - just to get back to the level of debt averaged over the last 50 years.

And Marc Faber is saying the bailout will need 5 trillion, not $700 billion.

Hmmm....

Why don't we get really bold: $32.4 tn debt x 46% in the form of mortgages = $14.9 trillion. Give everybody their houses free of debt, make future loans on domestic property illegal. Yes, there'll be inflation, but the liberated houseowners will be able to afford it.

Will the banks be ruined? They're ruined now. Will the government have to nationalise them? They're doing it now.

These are revolutionary times. We may not be able to scourge the moneylenders from the temple, but at least we can chase them out of our houses.

Yes, the result's a house price crash, if you can't pump up the price with phoney-baloney money. But no debt, so so what?

The banker has inflated everything so you have to borrow to have anything. He's made himself indispensable, like a pusher of addictive drugs standing outside the school gates, giving away samples to get you hooked. He's your "friend", your "main man", who'll make you "well".

Bankers and their pet traders have become insanely rich by making you poor. Your assets are big on the outside and hollowed-out by debt on the inside; it's why they call it a bubble.

Do you know your enemy?

Bank lending - can somebody please help?

In the edited-out part of my recent letter to the Spectator, I pointed out that since 1963, average RPI has been c. 6.5% and the long-term real growth of GDP is said to be 2.5% p.a., so let's say nominal GDP growth has increased by 9% - my maths is up to that.

But over the same period, Bank of England stats show an annualised average increase in M4 bank lending of c. 13.5%, which suggests that lending grows at 4.5% p.a. above GDP. If that's right, UK bank lending as a proportion of GDP doubles every 16 years.

Can that be right? And what about the ratio of credit to the total of all national assets? Is that increasing, too? Because it looks as though eventually, the banks must own everything.

I reproduce below a graph from a mid-August post on Marc Fleury's blog. This shows the long-term ratio of total credit to GDP in the United States, and the current level of indebtedness seems to be way, way above the Great Crash situation in 1929.

Somebody please put me right and/or direct me to authorities and information sources.

My mind keeps saying, "This cannot be right, surely everything is sort of normal, really, we'll muddle through." I find myself discounting even McCain's Churchill quotation ("This isn't the beginning of the end of this crisis. This is the end of the beginning") and the politicians' use of the word "meltdown" to bounce Congress into accepting the bailout package proposals. I have spent years warning about a possible crash, but I've never, I think, allowed myself to get apocalyptic. I prefer my disaster movies to stay safely in the cinema.

So, how bad is it really, and does the banking system really have a tendency to acquire everything?

Faber says $5 trillion, not $700 bn

Dr Faber thinks the real cost will be seven times greater than the proposed bailout.

... and here are his thoughts on where to be invested - and the current advantages and future perils of holding cash:

The revolution is personal

"Financial Crisis: The next decade could be our very own Great Depression" says the economics editor of the Daily Telegraph.

Towards the end of the 90s, I was expecting a major crash. Then, I was in a laughable and condescended-to minority, it seems. And I'm certainly not important enough for anyone in the City of London to give me a minute of their heavily-overremunerated time. Even last year, warning on Cafe Hayek that America could become dirt-poor financially, I was mocked for my ignorance of "purchasing power parity".

I was unfamiliar with the phrase at that time, but I still think my instincts were right. I don't know what ordinary people are going to live on, in the US and the UK, when everything we used to make can be made cheaper elsewhere and the world's average income (in Purchasing Power Parity terms) is $5,000 a year.

Being right is no use at all, except on a personal level: I re-entered the despised public sector at the end of 1999 so that I would have something to live on when the financial world unravelled. Now, you need to make your own survival plans - it shouldn't (I earnestly hope) be guns and dried food, but what line of work will you be doing and how much can you sell to get rid of debt?

It's not too late. The Equitable Life mess took a long time to reach its endpoint, and there was quite a window of opportunity to get out of their with-profits fund with a reasonable amount of your savings intact. Similarly, houses have dipped in price, but (in my view) nowhere near hit bottom; nor do I expect them to return to current levels for a generation (in real terms; if the government permits hyperinflation, they may return in nominal terms, but that'll be no comfort when a loaf of bread costs £10).

When the government runs nearly everything, as it seems determined to do, maybe "if you can't beat them, join them". Here in the UK, the next administration will have very limited freedom of action, as the present one expects (perhaps wrongly) to lose the coming General Election and so has adopted a "Götterdämmerung" strategy - selling our nuclear power firm to the French, undermining the Monarchy, and generally assaulting anything that will hold us together politically, culturally and financially. In a way, I hope Labour wins again; but then again, it would be no punishment - they'd continue to eat and drink well while perfecting our destruction.

My newsagent told me this morning that he works 90 hours a week. He referred to a Daily Express front page story from yesterday, which said that it was indeed better to live on benefits. I'm not surprised. In ancient times, it was understood that if you wanted a good job doing, you employed a freedman, since slaves were complacent and lazy. Democracy has become a process whereby slaves appoint masters who will feed, clothe and house them.

In case you imagine I am politically biased, please note that I hold no brief for the pack of smoothies that is the current Tory Party, any more than for the Fifth Columnists who have spent 11 years destroying the country from the top. Both seem to see their future as part of the Euro-elite and think the common people depend on their bull****, as koalas depend on eucalyptus leaves.

Abandon all belief in these charlatans and concentrate on your personal life plan.