Lost in fantasy

Following up my Parthian shot about Waldsiedlung in the previous post, I looked up Erich Honecker and discovered that one of his slogans in the 80s was "Vorwärts immer, rückwärts nimmer" ("Always forwards, never backwards").

Perhaps you remember Tony Blair's "Forward not back" in 2005? Or his "the People's Princess" (I thought I heard his throat tightening in a desperate attempt to stop the awful phrase coming out - Diana was an Earl's daughter - but maybe it was only a stage sob). And how about "In the years to come, wherever I am, whatever I do, I'm with you", weirdly echoing Matthew 28.

A schlock PM, turning eclectic sources into a mishmosh of gibberish less meaningful than Queen's Bohemian Fantasy, for the sake of a momentary, meretricious glamour. An extension of the "Spacematic DISCO with LIGHTS!!" of his Oxford student days.

Did he ever understand what he was playing with?

Locking the doors

The dethroning of the US dollar as the international trading currency is under way. New bonds issued by the International Monetary Fund in the form of "Special Drawing Rights" are related to a basket of currencies, thus diluting the dollar element and reducing America's opportunity to cheat the world by devaluation.

The same article describes a Chinese proposal to start issuing bonds denominated in renminbi, so that if the dollar does drop against the Chinese currency, all that will happen is that the dollar cost of the capital debt will increase.

It occurs to me that such extra security for lenders may help interest rates to remain lower than they otherwise would be. So the threat to borrowers is not that interest rates will increase, but that debt outstanding will continue to feel heavy, since inflation won't lighten the burden. In fact, the burden of foreign debt could get worse, if the dollar weakens in this new foreign-currency-mortgage era.

Another factor, which may be a deliberate strategy with an eye to the above, is China's own expansion of credit. If monetary inflation goes global - including in the East - then there's less hope that Western businesses could use relative currency devaluation to increase the demand for their goods and services. Manufacturers here will still be unable to compete and debt will grow. Our creditors will own us - we'll "owe our soul to the company store".

It's time to grasp the nettle - bust the banks who got us into this, have a tremendous clearout of debt from the system, reset wages and prices at lower (more internationally competitive) levels, get the people back to work and shrink the dead weight of government and its dependants.

That, or see what's left of our wealth leak away, and then suffer all the above as well - at even lower levels of per capita assets and income.

Doubtless the politically-favoured option is the latter - "Let it all happen on someone else's watch, after we've made ourselves into the New European Aristocracy and gone to our country estates." This would be a mistake. The palace of Versailles didn't protect Louis XVI, nor Waldsiedlung the East German communist elite.

Belling the cat

Karl Denninger calls again for the fat cats to "eat their own cooking", i.e. accept responsibility for the ruinous debt that will otherwise put a brake on the American economy for a decade. Good luck with that. Now, who's going to make them do it?

This is a test, not of the economy but of democracy.

Signs and portents

Over at Financial Sense University, Jim Willie paints a frightening picture. He claims that the US Federal Reserve has been secretly giving dollars to foreigners to buy US Treasury Certificates, so (temporarily) supporting US bonds and the dollar. Meanwhile, big banks are waiting for smaller banks to suffers losses on commercial loans, at which point they will gobble up their smaller competitors. But the big banks are insolvent, so rather than a healing juncture, it'll be a vampire puncture.

Studying the US Dollar Index, Willie uses a measure that Karl Denninger has previously cited, namely, a comparison of two trends: the 20-week moving average with the 50-week moving average. When the first crosses the second, the second will eventually follow - in this case, downwards.

In my previous post, I referred to signs and portents. This is because when big things are happening, the fog of lies thickens, so we have to look for betraying details and use our intuitions. Art is often the canary in the mine - you hear the coming conflict in the discords of Stravinsky's 1910 "the Rite of Spring". The disturbed children that I teach have recently been exploring zombies. Some also play computer games at home, that involve stabbing opponents in the eyes or genitals. One child's graffiti tag is JABZ.

Doodling, they draw pistols, rifles, knives, swords; but still read Postman Pat and Spongebob Squarepants. Gossiping, they talk of their mother's vibrator, their father's merkin, but (at age 11) don't quite understand and are looking forward to learning the facts about sex next week, which our curriculum now requires me to deliver. They come in shadow-eyed from gaming, but also from (in one case) accompanying their father late at night as he hunts down and savagely beats people who tied up and soaked with petrol an uncle suspected of stealing a motorbike. Where are the police? you may ask; the father is an ex-policeman. The Monarch's writ does not run where our underclass have to live; to have normal social inhibitions would be dangerous in such an environment.

Some may accuse me of moral panic; but I didn't grow up with the currently prevailing sense of moral ambiguity, despair and social collapse. Are we breeding a nation of future child guerrilla-band soldiers? And how tragic, how culpable, that the entertainment industry is playing its part in this; and that the Government hopes to shore up its vote by perpetuating the financial dependence of its claimants.

But it won't happen to us, will it? "Wat geht dat mik an?" as the mediaeval Germans would say: "What's it got to do with me?" Years ago, my Prussian grandmother described Der Flucht, the flight from the Red Army in 1945. They would come to a farm and be very grudgingly permitted to sleep in the haybarn; two days later, the owners would be on the road themselves.

We are in this together; but I cannot see how the present political arrangement can tackle the challenges. There are too many ways for our leadership to be distracted, to be suborned and to escape consequences personally.

Crash, cash, gold stash

Max Keiser is emphatic that there will be another huge banking crisis within the next 6 - 9 months, and says that the Chinese are "aggressively" buying gold in anticipation of a currency collapse. His talk (esp. with regards to Goldman Sachs) is intemperate, as his French co-guest diplomatically points out, but he may be correct.

I don't know how it is for you in the US, but here the jewellers have recently been fielding TV ads offering to buy your gold. What a favour they are doing for you.

PS

Barry Ritholtz shares in a strange, ecstatic group experience.

This, I suggest, is a sign. Norman Cohn's mediaeval history "The Pursuit of the Millennium" notes that at times of great societal stress, there were mass outbreaks of spontaneous frenzied dancing, singing, visions.

Unconsciously perhaps, Ritholtz connects the two, for just before he describes the happening he says, "The multitudes were slowly moving thru the mass transit walkways like cows being led to slaughter." The people are feeling the fear and reaching for joy.

Prepare

Realistically, growth was far above where it should have been for close to seven years because of the Fed induced lending boom, insane lending standards, and extreme leverage and risk taking everywhere epitomized by "liar loans" and zero-percent down housing. Now is the payback time. We should be expecting growth to be below trend for the next seven years, with a few outliers tossed in for good measure to keep everyone excessively optimistic.

- Mish

1 And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river.

2 And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well favored kine and fatfleshed; and they fed in a meadow.

3 And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill favored and leanfleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river.

4 And the ill favored and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven well favored and fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke.

5 And he slept and dreamed the second time: and, behold, seven ears of corn came up upon one stalk, rank and good.

6 And, behold, seven thin ears and blasted with the east wind sprung up after them.

7 And the seven thin ears devoured the seven rank and full ears. And Pharaoh awoke, and, behold, it was a dream.

8 And it came to pass in the morning that his spirit was troubled; and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the wise men thereof: and Pharaoh told them his dream; but there was none that could interpret them unto Pharaoh.

- Genesis, Chapter 41

The East is [in the] Red

Here's an interesting one: the Contrarian Investor reckons a credit bubble could be brewing in China.

For now, a cloud no bigger than your fist on the horizon; but sometime... This is how we ourselves started, back in the 80s.