Proof of U.S. Greater Depression

Proof of U.S. Greater Depression

Courtesy of Jeff Nielson

It has become increasingly difficult to engage in credible economic analysis, especially with respect to the U.S. economy. The problem: ever more limited sources of uncorrupted data, while the farcical “official statistics” have long since been totally divorced from the real world.

Fortunately we have been presented with some raw, uncorrupted data which demonstrates in conclusive terms that the U.S. economy is literally shriveling before our eyes: a 21^st century economy with plummeting energy consumption, and even a declining use of electricity.

As I was sifting through all of Bloomberg’s propaganda on the latest U.S. trade numbers (and trying to latch onto a few facts), I came across one very peculiar passage:

…American companies also bought more consumer household items, automobiles and parts, and crude oil from overseas.

Exports increased 0.7 percent to $178.8 billion, boosted by record sales of petroleum to buyers overseas. That caused the trade gap excluding petroleum to widen even more than the deficit overall…

The great U.S. economy, the largest oil-glutton in the history of humanity (by several multiples) is now a “net energy exporter”. How can this be possible? The U.S. economy has contracted so severely (already) that the only way that U.S. refineries can sell all the petroleum products they produce is to sell them to the growing economies of “emerging market” nations.

Reflecting the broad-based collapse of the U.S. economy, these refineries are now exporting all categories of petroleum products: diesel, jet fuel, and even gasoline are now being exported in large quantities, month-after-month by U.S. refineries. Recall that it was only four, short years ago that many American politicians were alarmed by the crisis of the “lack of U.S. refining capacity”. No new refineries have been constructed in the U.S. in more than 30 years, and at that time those refineries were straining to meet the demand of solely the U.S. domestic market. With that domestic market collapsing, these refineries are now straining to find enough foreign buyers to unload all of their inventories.

Given these facts alone, it is utterly absurd for the U.S. government to pretend that the U.S. economy is growing. Note that the government claims that most of this growth is occurring in agriculture and manufacturing – both very energy-intensive industries. There’s no doubt that the energy-intensive agriculture sector is thriving, a result of a growing global “appetite” and Wall Street-induced shortages in most commodities. So with the large U.S. agriculture sector gobbling up more energy than ever, what does that say about the rest of the (decaying) U.S. economy?

Let us not forget that the U.S. population continues to grow. More people using much, much, less energy; and this is called a “growing economy”? Absurd. Even more absurd, this steadily growing population has been using much less electricity, going back to around 2007.

Mark Lundeen provided a very detailed analysis of the consumption of U.S. electricity in a recent commentary. It shows U.S. electrical consumption peaking in approximately 2006, and then beginning a distinct decline starting in 2007. Yes, power demand has “bounced back” somewhat from the worst of the collapse – but at levels still more than 3% lower than in 2007. Put another way, the supposed “U.S. economic recovery” has only resulted in roughly half of that lost demand being restored.

 

 

 

This minimal boost in electrical demand reflects nothing more than pent-up demand from the increase in population which has taken place since 2007, and in no way is suggestive of any economic growth. And we must keep in mind that this is taking place in a climate of ultra-insane monetary policy: interest rates permanently frozen at 0%. Even with this maximum stimulus, the dying U.S. economy is unable to come close to maintaining its level of demand for electricity.

We must also never forget that all of this decline in energy and electricity consumption comes after the largest/most reckless fiscal stimulus as well. The U.S., with by far the world’s largest national deficit (even using the absurd, official number), has not yet begun the fiscal tightening being attempted in most other Western nations (with the notable exception of Canada).

What happens when this dying economy actually turns off the taps with all of this “easy money” from the government (which the U.S. government obviously cannot afford)? If the most insane/extreme fiscal and monetary stimulus in the history of the global economy has produced nothing but further economic decay, what happens when this unsustainable stimulus ceases to be sustained?

The obvious answer to that question is a Soviet Union-like economic implosion, assuming that reckless money-printing doesn’t produce the nightmare of hyperinflation first.

How sick is the U.S. economy? Bloomberg was recently trumpeting the news that construction of “multi-family units” in the U.S. housing market (the low end of the market) was rising to the same level as in 2008. Yes, and everyone can remember what a wonderful year that 2008 was for U.S. housing. And this is the good news?

Actually it is. Construction of single-family units remain at all-time lows since they first began gathering such data on the U.S. housing market. Thus we are to believe that the U.S. economy is growing and producing new, net jobs each month with plummeting energy consumption, declining usage of electricity, and with the propagandists cheering the housing market because things are now only as bad as they were in 2008.

Again, what happens when the unsustainable stimulus can no longer be sustained?

This is a dying economy in the midst of a Greater Depression. Even with B.S. Bernanke’s permanent 0% interest rates (something which would have been totally unthinkable just four years earlier), this monetary defibrillator cannot continue to feign “life” in this economic corpse. The moment that fiscal tightening inevitably begins, the full brunt of the U.S.’s Greater Depression will bludgeon the American people – and hopefully (finally) awaken then from their terminal apathy.

Any further pretensions of economic growth and job-creation can now only be regarded as absurd and transparent fiction. The world’s great energy glutton is claiming a robust “economic recovery”without using any energy. The statistical charlatans at work for the U.S. government can pretend there is positive GDP growth. They can pretend there is positive jobs growth. But they cannot pretend to consume energy.

There was never any “economic reckoning” for the U.S. economy following the economic collapse which began (in earnest) in 2007. Reckless money-printing (the most reckless in history); reckless fiscal spending (the most reckless in history); and absurd statistical lies (the largest in history) have merely provided a coat of whitewash over top of this economic train-wreck…and now the paint is beginning to peel.

Rubber shortage increasing tire prices

Updated: 4:15 am

Published: 4:13 am

courtesy of Fox.xom

 

LITTLE ROCK, AR – A combination of supply shortage and raw material price increases means drivers are paying more for tires.  At All About Tire and Brake, Michael Wylie says it seems every 45 days the price of tires goes up. He says while he’s tried to eat as much of the cost increase as possible, to stay in business, he has to pass some of the price on to his customers. “Because of a lot of natural disasters in Indonesia, South America, and Asia, the production of rubber crop has been severely damaged. The tsunami in Japan had a huge impact.  “Customers are now trying to prolong the life of their tires and put off replacing them. For example, a set of average price tires on a medium size sedan has gone from an average of about $50 each, to now costing close to $70.With summer heat the number one enemy of tires, and summer being a travel season, drivers like Helen Crossfield can’t put off purchasing tires any longer. The higher cost does mean she’ll have to spend less money elsewhere. “It’s a little bit painful. I’m just glad I had enough to afford it.”

Investing in new tires now could save money later down the road, because letting tires wear too thin is dangerous.

Michael Wylie at All About Tire and Brake says worn out tires are a huge safety concern. “Tires are the only thing between you and the road.”

With so many sizes and varieties, Michael Wylie only stocks the most popular tires at All About Tire and Brake. He says with accurate tire pressure, not only will tires last longer, but drivers can get better fuel economy.

Prices of oil and steel have also driven steadily upward and show little signs of coming down. That means transport costs are also more expensive.

Why Job Growth Isn’t Happening

By Peter Morici

Published July 08, 2011 | FOXBusiness

Reuters

The economy added only 18,000 jobs in June, after posting a lackluster 25,000 gain in May.  Jobs creation remains moribund and inadequate to appreciably dent unemployment, because the economic recovery is simply not gaining steam.

These weak jobs data indicate the economic recovery remains in low gear, and policies other than big deficits and printing money are needed to get Americans back to work.

Health care, retail, and manufacturing posted modest gains.

Construction, especially hurt by the weak housing market and tight state and local budgets, lost 9,000 jobs.

Temporary employment is falling, indicating growing business pessimism.

Government employment fell by 39,000, and private sector jobs growth was 57,000.

Unemployment rose to 9.2 percent, as jobs creation continues to lag labor force growth. Moreover, unemployment would be higher but for the fact that many adults have become discouraged and quit looking for work altogether. 

Factoring in those discouraged workers, and others working part time but would prefer full time employment, the unemployment rate is 16 percent.  Adding college graduates in low skill positions, like counterwork at Starbucks, and the unemployment rate is closer to 20 percent.

Link to Full Article

Turmoil in Middle East spells trouble for your budget

By John W. Schoen Senior producer

msnbc.com msnbc.com

updated 2/25/2011 10:53:50 AM ET 2011-02-25T15:53:50

Oil is nothing less than the life blood of the U.S. economy.

While it’s impossible to know the full impact of Arab uprisings on the long-term price of oil, one thing is clear. Every extra dollar consumers and businesses have to spend on oil takes another little bite out of economic growth.

“Higher oil prices take purchasing power away from the consumer,” said Mohamed El-Erian, co-chief investment officer at money manager PIMCO. “They transfer income to the rest of the world and they increase import prices. Put all that together and it means lower growth and higher inflation.”

The shockwaves reverberating through the global oil supply chain this week come just as the U.S. economy is finally getting back up to speed after the deepest recession in 70 years.

Link to Full Article

Economic Recovery: The View From Bernanke’s Helicopter

Joel Bowman, reporting from Buenos Aires, Argentina…

This week, the world caught a glimpse of what Henry Hazlitt might have called the “seen” – the primary, most conspicuous consequence of a preposterous economic policy. Of course, it is the “unseen,” what comes next, that we ought to be worried about.

We are referring here to the dawning of the QE2 era. In the shadow of the midterm elections, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben “full steam ahead” Bernanke announced the second round of quantitative easing, or, for us non econo-scholars, “money printing.”

In a nutshell, Bernanke committed the Fed to purchase $600 billion in Treasuries over the next 8 months. In addition, those nasty mortgage securities the Fed gobbled up during operation QE1 will continue to be rolled over into Treasuries. All in, the total price tag comes to $875 billion brand spankin’ new dollars…with the option to open the spigots further should inflation (the CPI version) come in under what the Fed deems as “healthy.”

Markets rejoiced over the news, sending the major indexes up 2…3…4%. Gold rallied to within $3 of the $1,400 per ounce mark yesterday. Silver leapt out of the gates too…as did just about everything else priced in dollars. Oil made a charge towards $90 per barrel and the “ags,” already on a blistering run this year, continued to soar.

Behind the scenes, the dollar took it firmly on the chin. Our mates over at The 5 provided the following chart, showing the once-mighty greenback’s response to Bernanke’s systematic currency debasement:

The dollar is now more or less at parity with the Canadian loonie, the Aussie dollar and the Swiss franc.

But not everyone was pleased with the Fed’s magic monetary potion.

Brazil’s central bank president, Henrique Meirelles, said “excess liquidity” in the US economy is creating “risks for everyone.” The Chinese, who hold an uncomfortably large quantity of ever-depreciating dollars, were equally miffed. Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said, “many countries are worried about the impact of the policy on their economies.” Tiankai went on to say that the US “owes us some explanation on their decision on quantitative easing.”

Bernanke defended his position to a group of college students in Jacksonville, Florida, on Friday. “Our first objective, the first goal that we have, is to meet our mandate to get price stability and maximum employment in the United States,” he said. “A strong US economy, a recovering economy, is critical not just for Americans but it’s also critical for the global recovery.”

Has Bernanke stumbled upon the ultimate formula for wealth everlasting? Has the man who once said he would drop money from helicopters if the need arose cracked the code to eternal, effortless prosperity? Just print money and be happy?

“If this were true,” ventured Bill Bonner earlier this week, “it was a giant step forward for humanity, at least equal to discovering fire, creating Facebook or blowing up Nagasaki. Jesus Christ multiplied loaves and fishes. But He had something to work with. The Federal Reserve multiplies zeros…creating money – out of nothing at all. If it can really do the trick, we are saved. The legislature can go home. It no longer needs to worry about raising taxes or allocating public resources. Government can now buy all the loaves and fishes it wants. And give every voter a quart of whiskey on Election Day.”

Readers may feel a healthy welling of skepticism here. To be sure, a strong economy, a recovering economy, is important…but debasing the nation’s currency won’t get you there. If a country could grow rich and prosperous by simply allocating printed money to troubled sectors of its economy, Zimbabwe would be the jewel of the African continent and there would be a statue of Gideon Gono, her former central banker, in Harare’s town square. If the Weimar Republic had been able to make WWI reparations in 50 billion mark notes, the world may have avoided the unmitigated catastrophe of WWII. And, to belabor the point, if the Romans were allowed to finance their foreign escapades by simply handing out I.O.U.s, Edward Gibbon’s classic, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, might seem a little odd on the bookshelf of history.

For the moment, the markets have awarded Bernanke’s stimulus plans a vote of confidence. That is the immediate, seen, effect. Like an athlete on steroids, they are looking to break records, to rewrite their own history books. The Fed has them off to a flying start, but pretty soon the effect of the drug will wear off. Reality will kick in. It is then that the “unseen” effects of trying to cheat the system will come into plane view. The global economy, built on the back of a strong, stable world currency, will once again come to realize that history makes no excuses and does no man any favors.

Regards,

Joel Bowman
for The Daily Reckoning

Higher Oil Prices, the “New Normal”

Eric Fry, reporting from Laguna Beach, California…

Contrary to popular mythology, we Californians do not live merely on love, sunshine and granola.

I mean, sure, we’ve all got our yoga mats, our quartz crystals and our “life coaches” (who doesn’t?), but life is just so much more than “namastes” and positive energy. Life is also about building enough windmills (somewhere else) and installing enough solar panels (somewhere else) to keep our yoga studios air-conditioned.

And, yeah, I guess we need SOME crude oil, cause our Priuses cannot ALWAYS run on electricity. So I guess its fine to use crude oil if we have to, as long as we can obtain the oil in an ecologically friendly way…like getting it from somewhere else. (OMG, remember the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969? That was a SERIOUS bummer!)

So, yes, we Californians certainly understand that we cannot break our dependence on crude oil overnight. At least not until some “next generation” process comes along that can convert text messages into jet fuel. And even if we Californians use less crude oil, someone else is bound to use more of it…like all those reckless industrialists in the Developing World. Don’t they know how bad crude oil is for the environment?

But I guess there’s just no reasoning with these people. So I guess we’ll just have to keep finding and pumping crude oil for a long time to come.

Hmmm… I’m not sure how easy that’s going to be. When I was out recycling newspapers the other day, I saw an old headline that said crude oil is becoming much harder to find…and that oil production is falling off rapidly at many of the world’s largest fields.

So I did a little research and – would you believe – it’s true. Crude oil is becoming much harder to find and much more expensive to produce.

In today’s edition of The Daily Reckoning, our friends over at the US Global Investors Global Resources Fund shed a bit more light on this frightening truth.

But first, let’s hear what Dan Denning, our correspondent in Melbourne, Australia, has to say about yesterday’s surprising disclosure that India snapped up $6 billion worth of gold from the International Monetary Fund:

Well how about that! India pipped China at the post to walk away with 200 tonnes of IMF gold. Granted, India had to pay US$6.8 billion for the yellow metal. But with China steadily accumulating gold as a reserve asset (at the household AND central bank level), everyone thought China has this one in the bag. Not so!

Something more than meets the eye is going on here. The IMF sale was part of a plan to unload 403.3 tonnes of gold. It’s halfway there, and will use the proceeds to fund itself and loans to the developing world (or perhaps Britain and America when they go broke). But what else is going on?

In the past, large sales of gold – mostly by European central banks – swamped the gold price and kept it in check. Why did they sell?

The central bankers believed they had too much gold on their balance sheets doing too little work. In other words, these thoroughly modern bankers would explain, “Gold pays no interest.” So they thought it “prudent” to exchange their gold reserves for interest-bearing assets like Treasury bonds. So far, that’s been a horrible trade…and it is becoming an even more horrible trade as gold advances from record high to record high.

Nevertheless, the central bankers of the West continue to unload their gold reserves to the central bankers of the East….

India’s central bank is now the proud owner of 557 tonnes of gold. That gives it the tenth largest gold holdings among central banks. But it probably isn’t finished. Gold makes up just six percent of India’s foreign exchange reserves. There’s plenty of room for that to grow.

But don’t forget China. China has $2.3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves. But 70% of those – or $1.6 trillion – are in US dollars. It owns over just 1,000 tonnes of gold. That makes up less than 2% of China’s reserves and makes China the seventh largest holder of above ground gold. In fact the gold exchange traded fund (NYSE:GLD) owns more gold than China. France, Italy, the IMF, Germany and the United States round out the top five (from fifth to first).

What this tells you is that China could double (and then double again) its gold reserves and gold would still make up less than 10% of its total forex reserves. Compare that to 66% in Italy, 69% in Germany, 70% in France, and 77% in the US, according to official numbers. So what’s the big deal?

There will always be a threat that European Central Banks release gold supply on to the market. In fact, European central banks just renewed a five-year agreement (including the IMF) to sell down a maximum of 400 tonnes of gold per year from their holdings. They’ve agreed to this to disgorge their gold in an orderly fashion.

But it would not surprise us to see the Europeans fail to sell the gold they’re allowed to sell under the agreement. Our old desk mate in London, Adrian Ash (now with Bullion Vault) is at the London Bullion Market Association’s annual meeting in Edinburgh. Word from UBS analyst John Reade, also at the meeting, is that European Central Bank official Paul Mercier reckons that official holders of gold will, “no longer be net sellers of gold.”

As we predicted earlier this year, the European central banks would rather hoard their gold than sell it in a rising market. There may be a price at which they do sell it, in order to pay down sovereign debts. But psychologically, the fact that central banks want to own gold and not sell it is pretty important.

Also, it shows you how the balance of economic power in the world has shifted East. True, the European banks can still dump gold on to the market to drown the price. But between the ETFs, central bank buyers in India and China, and the average man on the street in Beijing, Mumbai, and elsewhere, there are more buyers of gold now than sellers.

And if we were right yesterday that the GFC is slowly morphing into a sovereign debt crisis, then the case for gold is that much stronger. This explains why gold futures were up by nearly 3% overnight and Old Yeller hit a new high at US$1,084.90.

The only worry? So many hedge fund managers and pundits are singing the same tune: long gold and short US Treasuries. These feel like “crowded trades.” So as a contrarian, you’ve got good reason to be a little worried about becoming a victim right about now.

Nevertheless, in the long term, the end of the Super Cycle in fiat money results in the re-monetisation of gold. That is what you’re seeing now. And it’s probably what you’ll see for a few more years. It also ought to benefit other precious metals, and of course, precious metals shares.

Peak Oil – The Rewards

By Byron King
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

We should expect a global oil shock by 2012…at the latest. But an oil shock doesn’t have to be completely shocking. Why not beat the rush and get ready for the shock now. You might even make a few dollars in the process.

Our story begins with “Peak Oil” – the belief that conventional production of crude has already peaked, and has already slipped into an irreversible decline. As “Peak Oil” moves from mere theory to indisputable fact, the global economy will face wrenching changes. But the vigilant investor will gain an opportunity to profit along the way.

As I discussed in yesterday’s edition of The Daily Reckoning, oil production seems all-but-certain to decline, despite the huge new discoveries off the coasts of Brazil, Africa and elsewhere. In fact, production is already declining rapidly from some of the world’s largest fields. Mexico’s “Catarell” Field, like a kind of Peak Oil poster child, was producing more than 2 million barrels a day as recently as 2005. But production from this field is plummeting irreversibly toward 500,000 barrels a day, as the chart below illustrates.

The recent discoveries of deep offshore oil will certainly help slow the decline of conventional crude oil production, but theses discoveries will not come on line for many, many years.

But what about alternative energy sources? Won’t they make up for the shortfall of crude oil? No chance. Alternative energies might offset a tiny sliver of falling crude oil production. But solar panels can’t lift a fully loaded Boeing 777 off a runway…nor even lift an empty Piper Cub.

So what about the many sources of “unconventional” oil and gas? Won’t these compensate for declining production from conventional sources? The short answer is no.

Geologist Art Berman, for example, offers a decidedly negative view of the latest “big thing” – obtaining large volumes of natural gas from “tight shales.” In a comprehensive review of production and flow rates from several thousand wells drilled in the past decade in the Barnett Shale of Texas, Mr. Berman presents a gloomy forecast.

Looking at a large sampling of Barnett wells, the overall data reveal that initial gas flows decline rapidly. With some wells, the drop-off is as much as 70% in the first year, with further declines of 20% in the second year.

This hardly dovetails with the happy talk about how “shale gas” will supply US energy requirements for the next several decades, if not a couple of centuries. It appears that most Barnett wells are short-term money losers, with a few prolific wells carrying the bulk of capital expenditure.

According to Mr. Berman, the picture is not much better in other shale plays, such as the Fayetteville and Haynesville shales. And similar gloomy data are just now starting to come in on the embryonic gas play in the giant Marcellus formation of Pennsylvania.

But this bad news does need to be ALL bad. As the world’s mature and aging oil fields slip into an irreversible decline, production from the world’s new offshore discoveries will become increasingly important.

Therefore, forward-looking investors can begin TODAY to make selective investments in those sectors of the oil industry that will flourish during the coming oil shock. I am particularly fond of the “deepwater” sector…and have been urging my subscribers for several months to focus on the companies that facilitate deepwater oil production.

Marcio Mello, the former “explorationist” from Petrobras (PBR: NYSE) and now independent petroleum consultant, electrified the Denver meeting of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO) with his analysis of several high-profile deepwater discoveries.

In a riveting talk that lasted well over an hour, Marcio detailed the immense petroleum potential of offshore Brazil, as well as the Amazon Basin. If Marcio’s estimates are correct, Brazil may be the location of nearly 200 billion barrels of additional petroleum resources. That’s well within the range of current resource estimates for Saudi Arabia.

For good measure, Marcio described the petroleum potential of offshore West Africa – another 130 billion barrels – as well as the Congo region, with 50 billion barrels or more.

Finally, Marcio described the “unknown potential of the US back yard, the Gulf of Mexico (GOM).” Marcio offered remarkable insight into the deep regions of the GOM, 100 miles and more offshore Texas and Louisiana. He showed early work he performed on a number of GOM areas, including the site of BP’s (BP: NYSE) recent billion-plus barrel find at the Tiber site.

If his analyses of the South American, African and GOM petroleum systems are correct, the world has access to much more conventional oil than people previously believed. But accessing and producing this oil will require a trillion-dollar level of offshore, deepwater investment. It’s a 30- to 50-year project.

“Deepwater” will be a BIG business.

Some of the companies that are well-positioned for the deepwater era of crude oil production include Petrobras, Repsol (REP: NYSE), BP (BP: NYSE) and StatoilHydro (STO: NYSE). I am also a fan of subsea equipment builders like Cameron Intl. (CAM: NYSE) and FMC Technologies (FTI: NYSE), plus service companies like Halliburton (HAL: NYSE) and Baker Hughes (BHI: NYSE).

These are a few of my favorite long-term plays for the long-term era of deep-water development.

Regards,

Byron King,
for The Daily Reckoning

The cataclysm awaiting gold is just disclosure

Adrian Douglas: The cataclysm awaiting gold is just disclosure

Submitted by cpowell on 12:33PM ET Saturday, October 24, 2009. Section: Daily Dispatches
By Adrian Douglas
Saturday, October 24, 2009

If I had interviewed New York University economics professor Nouriel Roubini with Index Universe yesterday, (http://www.indexuniverse.com/sections/features/6777-nouriel-roubini-big-…), I would have put this to him.

Let’s not talk about gold for the moment. Let’s talk about pure economics and commodities.

I don’t think you would dispute that it is the imbalance between supply and demand that drives the price of anything, including, of course, the price of any commodity.

Let’s take the situation with oil, which has doubled in price over the last year. On Aug. 14 the International Energy Agency released a report based on a study on the oilfields that make up 75 percent of world supply showing that not only is production declining but it is declining at double the rate of just two years ago, now 6.7 percent per year. The IEA concludes that for the first time in history supply, not demand, is going to drive prices.

In other words, though demand has dropped dramatically due to the economic collapse, the oil industry is struggling to meet even the reduced demand, which is why prices have risen so quickly.

Saudi Arabia sits on 20 percent of the world’s oil reserves and produces 12 percent of the world’s daily oil output. Imagine some sort of cataclysmic event that took out Saudi Arabia’s reserves and producing capacity. Wouldn’t economics tell us that the price of oil would make an astronomical jump, as the world, which needs 86 million barrels each day, somehow would have to manage with just 75 million? Wouldn’t economics tell us that to ration the drastically diminished supply, the price would have to go drastically higher?

It is very difficult if not impossible to imagine a cataclysmic event that would knock out not only Saudi production but its reserves too, but nonetheless it is a good intellectual exercise to contemplate the laws of economics.

I think you would also agree that if such an event happened, the adjustment in the price of oil would be so rapid that changes in the money supply would be irrelevant. In other words, the change in price would not be a monetary phenomenon but one of simple supply and demand imbalance.

Let us return to gold. Let’s forget the discussion of inflation and deflation, because it seems that there can be no consensus on this. Let’s imagine that some cataclysmic event suddenly reduced physical stocks of gold above ground from 210,000 tonnes to only 160,000 tonnes. In other words, 50,000 tonnes of gold just vanished in this cataclysmic event.

In such circumstances what would happen to the price of gold?

This would be equivalent to the imaginary cataclysmic event that we just considered that made 20 percent of world oil reserves suddenly unavailable. It would represent 21 percent of all above-ground gold stocks just disappearing.

Wouldn’t you agree that from an economics standpoint the resulting stampede to redistribute 160,000 tonnes in a market that believed 210,000 tonnes was not only available but had actually been sold would drive the gold price to unimaginable levels?

What sort of cataclysmic event could trigger this?

Revealing the true condition of the gold market could trigger it.

From the most recent work of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee there are strong indications that the London bullion market operates on a fractional-reserve basis. It would appear that at least 64,000 tonnes of gold have been sold via unallocated accounts against a maximum reserve of only 15,000 tonnes.

The cataclysmic event in gold could be triggered by an audit or simply by purchasers asking for delivery of their gold.

Mr. Roubini, I couldn’t expect you to know as much as GATA about the gold market because GATA has spent 10 years researching this opaque market and you have not. But as an economist I am sure that if what GATA says is right, then the future direction and magnitude of the gold price are not in doubt at all.

Further, with this supply-and-demand problem in the gold market, inflation and deflation do not have to enter the discussion, because the adjustment in price could happen so quickly that the fiat money supply could remain totally static.

—–

Adrian Douglas is a member of GATA’s Board of Directors and publisher of the Market Force Analysis newsletter (www.MarketForceAnalysis.com).

Arabian Money: Gold, Sex, Oil, and War

By Addison Wiggin

10/13/09 Dubai, UAE

“The future is what we will make of it.”
– Seen on a t-shirt of a young UAE national in the Souk Al Babar

The 4-lane Sheik Zayed road stretching between Dubai and Abu Dhabi is, at best, a competition for speed; at worst it’s a death trap. Among the UAE’s claim to world’s largest shopping mall, world’s tallest building and world’s longest metro built in “one go”, is this highways claim: to one of the world’s biggest automobile pile-ups.

On March 12, 2008, 25 cars traveling along the route burst into flames after piling into one another as a band of fog rolled in from the Gulf. Nearly 60 cars were in the accident altogether… 347 people were injured in the crash, 6 lost their lives.

“The crash happened because everyone was speeding despite the severe weather conditions,” an Abu Dhabi traffic police officer said at the crash site, as reported by the Gulf News. “Drivers weren’t leaving a safe distance between cars and this resulted in everyone hitting each other after the first crash.”

A documentary short posted on YouTube capturing the 911 calls placed from motorists describes ‘Foggy Tuesday’ as a morning devoid of “human caution.” The film also heralds the obvious bravery of the men who arrived from the Abu Dhabi fire, police and rescue crews to save those who’d become entangled in the brouhaha.

We will not hold you in suspense any longer…the metaphor suggested by this fantastic auto accident is a perfect fit for those studying the Dubai property bust. And like the writer of a Hollywood script, we cannot help by bring it to your attention.

Yesterday, on the recommendation of our new friend Moe, we traveled the same stretch of Sheik Zayed highway where the accident had taken place. Mohammad “Moe” Fathi Al Abrozani a Bahrainian-Qtari whose mother was an Iranian-American. Moe was born in Abu Dhabi, educated in California, lived briefly in New York and Chicago, then spent seven years in Germany. (His German is so fluent our German friends, Andre and Vereena, here in Dubai did not expect him to be Arabic when they first met him in person.)

Moe had returned to the Middle East to take part in the expansive boom attracting so much attention around the globe. He’s now an executive with TwoFour54 Media, a firm set up by the government in Abu Dhabi to woo Western firms into establishing their Middle East operations in the new Media City in the UAE’s capitol city. The rulers of Abu Dhabi had witnessed the efforts, successes and failures of their fellow emirate, Dubai, and have since vowed to create a modern media communications hub greater than anything now in existence.

“Why mess with visas, permits and expatriate contracts down in Dubai?” Moe asked us at dinner the other night, “when you can come to Abu Dhabi and get them all from the government free…?” One foggy morning in the year 2008, the reckless speculation that spurned much of the outrageous development projects in Dubai began to pile up on each other. Now the motionless construction sites lay in wait for assistance. In a scene familiar across the West, Abu Dhabi, the company line suggests, has “come to the rescue” of Dubai; with low cost loans; paper money and the sincerity of an assassin.

When we met up with Moe and Andre at Shakespeare’s a brand-new bar in the all-new Souk Al Bahar, they were quietly puffing from sisha – the traditional water pipes bubbling with aromatic smoke. Our mission in the region was and is simple. We want to establish a presence on the ground from which we can monitor the developments and assess investment opportunities in Dubai, the UAE and across the Middle East unfiltered by the mainstream press. But here we were being asked to consider moving the infrastructure of our publishing business, our families, our lives, half way around the world to the desert. Bloomberg, CNN, Forbes are all moving and or expanding their operations in either Dubai or Abu Dhabi.

Why shouldn’t we? Our friends in Abu Dhabi are apparently ready and willing to help.

Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the two leading Emirates of the UAE are relatively new to the global finance and trade… but they want you to know they have arrived in high style. This weekend, Formula One racing makes its debut in Abu Dhabi. The government had to pull workers from several of its five star seaside resort project to complete the track and facilities on time. Ferrari World, a massive theme park dedicated to the sport sits nearby. Yesterday, the Emirates Palace Hotel – the world’s first seven-star hotel – Demi Moore, Hilary Swank, and last year’s Oscar winner, Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) graced the opening ceremonies of the Middle East Film Festival. The Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund has famously leveraged their way into both of the leading football franchises in the world – FCBarcelona and Manchester United.

Still, our friend Peter Cooper recalls a time in his own family history when Dubai was nothing but a backwater of the British Empire, a port full of smugglers, nomads and thieves. His great uncle had been stationed here during World War II. At the time, the strife caused by the war left the ragtag bunch group of 7,000 residents on the edge of starvation.

Sheik Rashid, the father of modern Dubai, dredged the Creek in the 1950s establishing Dubai as a free trade port. At the time, too, the Creek dredging project was roundly criticized, as it should have been. The project cost nearly 3 times Dubai’s annual GDP. But it also established Dubai as the trading center for goods coming into the Middle East. If you go down by the creek today there are Iranian Dhows – the Middle East’s answer to the Chinese Junk – bringing rice, rugs and refrigerators back and forth across the Persian Gulf. Iran’s ports are about a two-day drift away for these wooden ships. Kuwait and Iraq a day or two more. Bahrain, Qtar, Oman closer still. Without the fantastic success of that initial dredging project, we wouldn’t be writing to you from the desert today.

“Dubai the hot spot…” has been a center of trade, smuggling and the rougher trades ever since. As the back jacket copy on a 1970s novel about gold smugglers in Dubai written by the French Connection author Robin Moore indicates: “Dubai, where adventurers play the world’s most dangerous games…gold, sex, oil and war. Cold- blooded adventurers in a blistering Mideast empire where life is cheap and no price too high for pleasure.” The novel is still banned here because the sheiks don’t like the image it portrays.

The promise of riches, however, is part of the region’s allure and what has attracted those expatriates who chosen to ride out the bust and continue to live here to this day.

The most recent gold rush, the boom in Dubai property, came on the heels of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and the same policy response that spawned a housing and consumption bubble across the United States, London and much of the West. Arabs flush with energy and trading capital brought much of that money home to the Middle East fearing a Western clamp down. At the same time, investors in dirham backed assets – the local currency which has enjoyed a US-dollar peg since November 1997 – benefited from the same era of low interest rates that soccer moms in Montgomery County, Maryland or gamblers in Las Vegas, Nevada did.

And like all booms, the property in Dubai witnessed its excess and its pathos. An article in this week’s Asian edition of Time Magazine laments the manmade island project meant to mimic all the countries on the planet. “The World is one of many architectural fantasies in Dubai that now appear to be shimmering mirages. The emirate boasts the 818m Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest skyscraper; a manmade island shaped like a giant palm; a ski slope in a shopping mall; an 18-hole golf course in the middle of the desert that will slurp down 3.8 million liters of water a day. But the dozens of giant cranes that once littered the skyline are beginning to migrate elsewhere. Dubai today has the feel of a futuristic, five star ghost town blasted by sandstorms.”

“The fools!” we can hear readers of Time Asia chuckle with superiority. Everyone likes to kick a gambler when he’s down.

But the story remains. On our way to Abu Dhabi yesterday we passed by the free zone surrounding the new deepwater global trading port at Jebel Ali. Business Bay near Jebel Ali is the home to many of the Bubble Era development projects, 30-story towers standing side-by-side, dark windowed and tenantless.

We suspect many of these nutty projects – like the City of Arabia, which had boasted an amusement park full of life size animatronic dinosaurs as its calling card during the boom – will never find the funding to finish. More sober projects that are or are nearing completion will likely take years to find tenants. And those “investors” who bet big and large on Dubai property in 2003-08 are no doubt already wishing they never had.

But the free zone near Jebel Ali also the site of Dubai’s real potential; banking and trade. Corporate tax rates in are effectively zero. You name a multinational and Moe can point to their local subsidiary. The Dubai Mall, for example, is reported to need 10,000 shoppers a day to break even but now only sports around 7,000. Why do the world’s most famous brand names all have shops open and spiffy already, we couldn’t help but wonder. It has to be for those fine tax rates, we couldn’t help but conclude.

Among other racy themes we heard this week, Dubai is supposed to now be the world capitol of the flesh trade. And the gold price hit an all-time high early in the week after we arrived sparked by rumors the GCC would back a unified currency with gold and provide oil traders an alternative pricing unit than the US dollar…

We suspect this fantastic wreck in the desert is only one scene in a long, exhilarating drama. We’re not “long” Dubai in any real investment sense. Not now anyway. But, like most onlookers to the spectacle, we struggle to avert our eyes. The story promises more exciting car chases, more steamy sex scenes and political intrigue to come…and we’d be lying if we didn’t admit we’re suckers for a good story. And, who knows, we may open an office of our own there.

Regards,

Addison Wiggin
for The Daily Reckoning

The JP Morgan Effect

by Bill Bonner
London, England

What a marvelous flimflam! So obvious…and yet so effective! It’s a pleasure to watch.

Yesterday, the Dow soared over they 10,000 mark. If it keeps going at this rate – up 144 points yesterday – it will soon equal the post-’29 bounce. All we need is two more days and we’re there.

Oil rose over $75. Gold closed the day at $1,064, after a big move to the upside over the last few days. And the dollar fell – to just $1.49 per euro.

The reason for yesterday’s big move is announced on the front page of almost every financial rag this morning:

“JPMorgan profits lift the Dow.”

JPMorgan, the Wall Street firm that was bailed out by the feds a year ago, reported income of $3.6 billion in the 3rd quarter. With that kind of profit in the financial sector, it won’t be long before the whole economy is running red hot, right?

That’s what the papers seem to think. The International Herald Tribune says the bank’s profits are just another sign that a major recovery is underway. Investors seem to believe it, too. “Earnings optimism,” is behind the buying, says a broker.

But is it true? Is the real economy growing, expanding, and making money? Let’s look:

“Still on the job, at half the pay,” is a headline in The New York Times. It tells the story of an airline pilot whose position has been downgraded and whose pay has been cut in half. The fellow is now earning $30,000 a year rather than $60,000. He is not counted in the unemployment statistics but he has much less spending power than he had a year ago. Practically all his discretionary spending power has been wiped out.

The NYT:

“The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not track pay cuts, but it suggests they are reflected in the steep decline of another statistic: total weekly pay for production workers, pilots among them, representing 80 percent of the work force. That index has fallen for nine consecutive months, an unprecedented string over the 44 years the bureau has calculated weekly pay, capturing the large number of people out of work, those working fewer hours and those whose wages have been cut. The old record was a two-month decline, during the 1981-1982 recession.

“What this means,” said Thomas J. Nardone, an assistant commissioner at the bureau, “is that the amount of money people are paid has taken a big hit; not just those who have lost their jobs, but those who are still employed.”

All over the country incomes are falling. Officially, about 15 million people have no jobs. Many others have given up looking for jobs. And now, for the first time ever, more than half of those who lose their jobs run out of unemployment benefits before they find another one. Many others never get any benefits at all, because their jobs are not eliminated, they are merely cut back…either in the number of hours they can work or in the compensation itself.

Yesterday, we reported that Baby Boomers are actually working longer hours…but earning less. The boomers are in an especially tight spot. They’ve got only a few years to save money for their retirements…and it won’t be easy in this slumpy economy.

And we reported the plight of the callow youths…whom BusinessWeek has called the “Lost Generation.” Their unemployment rate is twice the national average. They’re at the bottom of the labor pool, and unless the economy begins to expand they’ll have a very hard time finding the bottom rung of the ladder.

Take all the people who are unemployed…who are working fewer hours…who have given up looking for work…whose positions have been downgraded…and add the family members who depend on them for their daily bread…and you have nearly a quarter of the population. How can companies expect to increase sales and profits with a quarter of the population forced to cut back severely?

They can’t. The earnings numbers are misleading. Most of the earnings that we’ve seen come from cost cutting, not growing top-line sales. How do businesses cut costs? By trimming employees! In other words, the earnings figures we’re seeing are contributing to the slump…not alleviating it.

You can see how, in the short run this can lead to increased profits. But it can’t go on for long. The more businesses cut costs the more their sales go down, because consumers (who are also their employees) have less money to spend.

And according to a Wall Street Journal report, with too much capacity…and falling sales, businesses “are hesitant to reinvest such profits into their businesses.”

That’s why business investment, as we reported two days ago, is falling even faster than sales. And it’s why people who are looking for a job are going to have a hard time finding one.

But let’s return to JPMorgan…after the news:

“US foreclosures jumped to an all-time high of 937,840 in the third quarter,” writes Ian Mathias in today’s issue of The 5 Min. Forecast. “That’s a 23% rise from the same time last year, says a report from RealtyTrac today. One in every 136 households received a filing – also a record. Once again Nevada takes the cake… An incredible one in every 23 households was in some form of foreclosure last quarter.

“And they tell us the economy is recovering?

“But here’s the kicker – a theme that should be no surprise to 5 Min. loyalists: This isn’t about subprime anymore. The most recent data from the Mortgage Banker’s Association claims subprime mortgages currently account for hardly a third of foreclosure starts, down from 50% last year. Prime loans – the gold standard of the mortgage biz – now take up a 58% share.

“Even the foreclosure scene in terms of home prices has been turned on its head. Check it out:

“About 35% of home foreclosures occur in the bottom third of the housing market, says zillow.com, down from 55% in 2006. In June, the most recent data available, 30% of foreclosures were in the top tier – nearly double the rate from the year before.

“And the icing on this rotten cake: Option ARMs. This pending rate reset crisis – which just about everyone ‘in the know’ saw coming in early 2008 – looks like its really going to happen. 46% of option ARMs are currently 30 days past due, despite the fact that just 12% have reset to higher payments. Resets for the rest of those ARMs are right around the corner.”

And back to the House of Morgan:

How did JPMorgan earn so much money in such a bad economy?

We begin with a bit of skepticism. After all, we know consumers aren’t borrowing. Consumer credit is going down. So they can’t be making money there. And we know businesses aren’t expanding, so they can’t be making money by lending to corporations either.

Wait a minute. JPMorgan is a bank, right? Don’t banks make money by lending money? Yes…that’s what we thought. Then who is JPMorgan lending to?

The only net borrower is the government.

The Financial Times confirms that Morgan’s “US consumer businesses continued to bleed, with its credit card unit losing $700 million in the quarter and its retail bank…barely breaking even.” It wrote off $7 billion in uncollectible consumer loans – more than twice as much as last year.

Its mortgage group lost money too. And it surely didn’t make any money helping US business build new factories and expand payrolls.

So what does that leave? All the components of the business that have to do with the real economy are losing money or barely breaking even. What’s left?

The news reports attribute the huge profits to “trading.” But trading is a broad category. And our guess is that if you look more closely you will find that JPMorgan made its money the old fashioned way – by ripping off the government.

‘You mean, JPMorgan took the feds’ money and now is showing huge profits because it is just lending money back to the people they got it from? ‘

Yes. But not only that. They’re also probably speculating on gold, oil and stocks…along with everyone else. The feds’ money has pushed all these speculative trades into profit.

‘And now, they’re going to pay themselves big bonuses, aren’t they?’

Yes. The papers tell us, “bonuses explode on Wall Street to a new record.”

‘So, then…when the next crisis comes…they won’t have any money in the banks, will they?’

Nope.

‘So they’ll have to get bailed out again.’

Yep.

‘But maybe the next time the feds will wise up and just let them go broke.’

Not a chance. Wall Street has plenty of friends in the highest places in Washington. A report in today’s media tells us that “Geithner Aides Reaped Millions Working for Banks, Hedge Funds.” The aides earn about $150,000 for their government work. On the side, they advise the financial firms they’re supposed to be regulating, and get paid millions.

Such a nice relationship. They make sure Wall Street prospers – even when it does stupid things. Wall Street makes sure they prosper – even when they advise the government to do stupid things. And when their gig is over in Washington they go back to Wall Street where they earn millions more. America’s centers of political and financial power have a cozy little game going. It won’t end any time soon. It’s too profitable for both of them.