Stagflation or something more?

World War I ended in 1918. Of course they didn't call it that back then. It was simply known as "The Great War." To call it World War I would carry the ominous connotation that there would be more world wars. Then World War II occurred, and the formerly Great War was deemed to be not so great in comparison, so the name had to be changed.

Similarly, the economic upheaval that began in 1929 was named the Great Depression, a name that has lasted to this day. So far. But given the fiscal and monetary policies of the past few months, I am beginning to wonder. We could be on the road to what may be called "The Greater Depression."

At first the economists said the current economic downturn would be V-shaped. A brief spike downward, followed quickly by a recovery. Then they said it would be U-shaped. It looks like it might stay down for a while before it recovers. Now some are saying it could be L-shaped. it goes down and stays down, for a long, long time. They mention Japan, 1989 as an example. The 1990's were Japan's lost decade, a recession that lasted more than ten years. To put this in perspective, in 1989 the Nikkei average topped out at almost 39,000. Last week the Nikkei closed below 8,000. If you bought Japan at the top, you've lost 80% of your money, and nineteen years is a long time to be on the wrong side of a trade.

The real problem is that America's current situation isn't as good as Japan was in 1989, or America in 1929. Those countries were creditor nations, and we are a debtor now. Our manufacturing base is mostly gone, outsourced to countries where the labor is cheaper. The problem is that we have overspent, we have no savings to invest, and we are loaded with debt. So our government's solution is to spend more to keep the economy going.

There is a certain logic that getting drunk is a way to fight a hangover, but in the long run that doesn't work. But it hasn't stopped our government from committing $8.5 trillion (again, so far) that it doesn't have in bailouts and rescues. I used to think we were going down the road to 1970's style stagflation, a nasty mix of unemployment with high inflation. Now I am beginning to wonder is something more sinister is lurking. The dreaded hyperinflation, as practiced in Weimar Germany, and several years ago in Argentina.

A case in point is Zimbabwe, whose annual inflation rate is now more than 200 million per cent. The latest sign of the coming Apocalypse is that The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe just commended the world's central bankers (including the US and UK) on their policies. This is the text:

Here in Zimbabwe we had our near-bank failures a few years ago and we responded by providing the affected Banks with the Troubled Bank Fund (TBF) for which we were heavily criticized even by some multi-lateral institutions who today are silent when the Central Banks of UK and USA are going the same way and doing the same thing under very similar circumstances thereby continuing the unfortunate hypocrisy that what’s good for goose is not good for the gander....As Monetary Authorities, we commend those of our peers, the world over, who have now seen the light on the need for the adoption of flexible and practical interventions and support to key sectors of the economy when faced with unusual circumstances.

So, if it's working this well in Zimbabwe, the rest of the world may as well try it. Hyperinflation - it's not just for banana republic any more!

So long, Plax

I think Plaxico Burress will be playing football again next year, but it won't be for the New York Giants. As I expected, the team severed relations with him, suspending him for four games (i.e. the rest of the season) and placing him on the non-football-injury list. The latter is critical, because that means they can go after his money.

As cold blooded as that seems, let me emphasize that the Giants have been more than fair with Burress. They are one of the league's flagship franchises, and their front office is respected around the NFL. They have a record of success, winning Super Bowls in the 80's, 90's and 2000's. What they don't do is place individuals ahead of the team, no matter how talented they are.

The Giants believe in giving athletes second chances. They draft players that no one else would touch. Last year they drafted Ahmad Bradshaw, even though he had been arrested a couple of times and expelled from college. They explained the situation to him, kept him on a short leash, and he contributed to their playoff run last year. This year they drafted Mario Manningham, who wasn't even off some teams' draft boards due to his off the field problems.

But they've already given Burress second, third, fourth, and fifth chances. If he had been a straight arrow (like Antonio Pierce) they would have sent him flowers in the hospital, and told him to rest up for the playoffs. But Burress has been nothing but trouble this year, and his production has been down as well. They think they can win without him, and maybe they can.

The simple fact is that Burress has always been an accident waiting to happen, and the Giants knew that when they gave him a $35 million contract just before the season started. The contract is heavy with incentives, as in a $100,000 bonus just for being active for a game. He doesn't actually have to play, just suit up. So with all of the incentive pay gone, the contract won't cost the Giants much, and it is salary cap-friendly for next year as well.

I expect the lawyers will find a way for Burress to avoid jail time. More problematical is the NFL stance toward him. I think other teams will want Burress, I'm just not sure when the NFL will let him play. Goodell is fed up with football players making headlines for the wrong reasons, and that should cost Burress at least part of next season, at best.

In the strange but true department, the NFL Players Association is appealing Burress' suspension. I should have expected that. I was a union representative, and it seemed like most of my job was to represent people who should have been fired. One day at work a supervisor told me something to the effect that it occurred to him that I always had to deal with the same bad people as he did. I told him it's worse than that: at least you get to punish them, I have to defend them. But like any good union, the NFLPA stands up for its members, claiming the team violated his rights. That was the same reason we always defended bad people, too. We didn't want to establish a precedent they could later use to punish good people. If I had been an attorney, I would have wanted to be a prosecutor, not a defense attorney. It doesn't pay nearly as well, but it would have been a lot more satisfying.

Knucklehead

Knucklehead - I don't know what else to call Plaxico Burress. What else CAN you call someone who had it all, and threw it away out of sheer stupidity. For those who have not followed this year's soap opera, he plays wide receiver for the New York Giants, and he is one of the best in the game.

Last year, he beat the Green Bay Packers almost single-handed, catching 11 passes against a Pro Bowl cornerback in frigid weather. It must have seemed even colder to Al Harris that day, because Burress undressed him. At one point, Burress turned to the Packers bench and yelled "he can't cover me!" Two weeks later he caught the winning touchdown pass in the final minute of the Super Bowl.

In the offseason the Giants rewarded him with a mega-million dollar contract, $11 million of it guaranteed. This year, Burress responded by causing one problem after another, and I won't list the number of fines he's received. He was suspended for two games, but that was nothing compared his latest escapade. Burress was inactive for today's game with the Redskins due to a hamstring injury. Having had all sorts of injuries in my life, I can tell you that the best way to heal these things is to rest. I'm not a doctor, and I have no medical background, but I'm quite certain that of all the ways you can help to heal a hamstring injury, going to a club and shooting yourself in the thigh is nowhere near the top of the list.

Think about how stupid this is. First you have to go out to a club while you're injured. And you have to bring along a gun. Then you have to fire the gun. Last, but not least, you have to shoot yourself. And for maximum effect, don't do this in Arizona or Texas or one of those right-to-carry states. Blast yourself in a jurisdiction where carrying a concealed weapon is a felony that carries a mandatory 3 1/2-year prison sentence.

The only silver lining in this episode is that somehow Burress was not seriously injured. The bullet missed his vital spots, and he was released from the hospital. He has spent the past two days lawyering up, and will turn himself in tomorrow. Let me be quite clear: Plaxico Burress does not belong in prison. He isn't a danger to anyone but himself. But for all of his prodigious football talent, he doesn't seem to have the common sense he was born with.

Last year he played through all kinds of injuries and helped the Giants win a Super Bowl. Opposing defenses are so concerned with him that he draws double coverage most of the game. As a result, the Giants are the best rushing team in the league, having already run for more than 200 yards in five games this year. But we are finding out week after week that the Giants are resilient enough to win without Burress. He didn't play against Seattle and they scored 44 points. Against Arizona, they scored 37. Today they beat Washington 23-7.

The Giants won the Super Bowl last year without Tiki Barber and Jeremy Shockey. This year, without Michael Strahan and Osi Umenyiora, they are 11-1. And even without Burress, they still have depth at wide receiver. The Redskins tried to stack 8 or 9 men on the line of scrimmage today, and Manning threw for 300 yards in the first three quarters.

Good luck, Plaxico, and I sincerely mean that. Somehow, those clever lawyers will find a loophole around a felony conviction. I hope you're back in the NFL someday, although I don't think it will be with the Giants.

Schadenfreude

I just learned a new word. I can't spell it, so I won't try to write it again, but it's the title of this entry. It's the shameful pleasure of enjoying someone else's misfortune. I normally don't go in for a lot of that, but in Richard Fuld's case it was well deserved. Fuld was the president of Lehman Brothers, who ran his company into the ground. He screwed up so badly that Lehman was the only bank that didn't get bailed out. Think how hard it is to accomplish that these days.

After wrecking a 158-year old company that had survived world wars, panics, and the depression, Fuld blamed everyone but himself. He went to the company gym to work out, and one of his employees punched him out. Yay! There is some justice after all.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2099592/posts

As I see it, President-elect Obama has a huge mess to clean up, which is ironic considering that private industry is supposed to be more efficient than the government. Was Lehman efficient? Was Citigroup efficient? AIG? Wachovia? Washington Mutual? IndyMac? Merrill? GM, Ford, and Chrysler? It looks to me like a lot of efficient private companies have come to the government, hat in hand, looking for help. But I really have to hand it to the auto companies. Unlike the banks which messed up by overleveraging and gambling, the carmakers bankrupted themselves working in the industry they knew best. And then the Big Three CEO's flew to Washington in their corporate jets (separately of course) to ask for a $25 billion dollar handout. Which they will use to design and build cars that no one will want to buy.

That's why I like that big S-word feeling, when bad things happen to bad people. Those who are smarter than me added up the tab for the taxpayers, and so far it comes to $7.76 trillion. That is the amount now pledged by the federal government. To print that much money, Ben Bernanke would have to chop down every tree in America, and then go up north and chop down every tree in Canada.

But I have vented enough. The price of gold was trapped in the low-700's for weeks, until the November options expiration last Thursday. Every time gold climbed to $750, it was pushed back. On Thursday the options expired worthless, and the next day gold soared to $800. By now anyone with half a brain can see that this game is rigged, but that one-day move indicates to me that the game is almost over. Herr Paulson is using duct tape to try to hold the economy together until January 20, so Bush can leave town in time for Obama to take the fall.

Of course the silver market is worse. Silver is worth $10 in New York and London, and $14 everywhere else. I think I saw that once on the Twilight Zone, or maybe it was the Outer Limits. When all of this breaks down (i.e. next year) important people will be going to prison, and the average person will be wondering where his job or his pension went. This was not an unforseeable economic upheaval, like some kind of 100-year flood. Bernanke, Greenspan, and every economic planner in the Bush administration could have predicted this, if it had been in their interest to do so. Next year, let the finger-pointing begin.

Inflation ahead

The best news for the stock market (at least resource stocks) came from an unlikely source: 60 Minutes. Last night, they interviewed President-Elect Obama. BTW, effective January 20, I will be referring to him as "our president" not just President Obama. It's just a reminder of how the wingnuts always referred to Bush 43 as "our president" something they never did for Clinton. As Obama said, there aren't blue states and red states any more.

Once again I've gotten way off track. Back to matters at hand: Obama said he will do whatever it takes to get the economy moving again, and he's not concerned with what the budget deficit will be in the coming year OR the year after that. It sounds to me like Ben Bernanke can start revving up the helicopters right now.

Clearly Obama is correct, because if we take our medicine now the economy would spiral down into a 1930's-style deflationary depression, which must be avoided at all costs. His alternative will mean inflation; i.e. lots of inflation, but there are various ways he can fight that later. Of course you would never know this with silver trading below $10, gold below $750, and oil below $60. But that just demonstrates how rigged the commodity futures markets are.

What these low prices will accomplish is to ensure shortages in the months and years ahead by choking off exploration and even production. Mining projects are being delayed or canceled, which further reduces supply. The oil market is truly bizarre. Even OPEc can't make a profit with oil at $55, so they aren't going to give oil away at these prices. The big oil companies need at least $70 oil, and the Canadian oil sands are not economic below $85. All of the marginal projects will be shut down, and even T. Boone Pickens has delayed his wind farm project due to low natural gas prices. Unless our government finds a way to repeal the law of supply and demand, no one will produce oil and gas at a loss.

Of course the manipulation of the commodity markets has not gone unnoticed. The Saudis recently purchased $3.5 Billion worth of gold. The real kind, not the paper stuff they trade in New York and London. China now has nearly $2 trillion of foreign exchange, mostly invested in U.S. Treasury bonds. Since they need $546 billion to finance their own economic stimulus package, what better time to liquidate dollars that are as overvalued as they can get?

And one more thing: Our government denies that it has ever sold or lent out any of its gold, but it has now been confirmed that gold bars that have been traced to Fort Knox have surfaced in Dubai. What we are seeing is an enormous transfer of wealth from West to East. We are selling our assets to Asia and the Middle East at giveaway prices, while a few bullion banks (notably JP Morgan Chase) make obscene profits by manipulating the futures markets. I don't know whether it was Marx, Lenin and/or Stalin who said this, but here is the quote:

"We will hang the capitlaists, and they will sell us the rope to do it."

Monday Night Football

I had eagerly awaited tonight's football game, and not because I thought it would be a competitive game. I expected Arizona to defeat the Niners handily. What I was REALLY looking forward to was the next installment of Mike Singletary Theater, and on national television, no less.

This was their first game since Singletary threw his tight end (Vernon Davis) off the field, and also at halftime down 20-3, dropped his pants in the locker room and pointed to his butt to tell his team what he thought of their first-half performance. Mike Singletary is not subtle. Two weeks have passed, Singletary and Davis have made up, and the young player finally has his head on straight.

Tonight's game was a lot closer than expected, and late in the game the Niners had two chances to win. But each time their ineptitude on offense did them in, their last drive dying in the shadow of Arizona's goalposts as time ran out. The Niners are not a good team, or at least they aren't playing like one yet. But the game had its comic moments. There was an animated discussion on the sidelines between Singletary and Mike Martz when it was 4th-and-1. Martz wanted to go for it (surprise, surprise) and Singletary had to yell for the field goal team to go in.

But the most theatrical moment came when (of all people) Vernon Davis made a great catch for a touchdown, and then removed his helmet in celebration, earning a 15-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. You could almost sense an explosion about to go off. Davis went over to Singletary and tried to give him a hug, and Singletary pushed him away. But after a brief expression of tough love, Singletary congratulated him on the touchdown.

This is why I don't need to watch soap operas. The Niners may not be very good, but their subplots sure are entertaining. If they keep this up, I could even drop the NFL Sunday Ticket package next year and just watch the Niners. Actually, with the Giants finally looking like a perennial contender, I think DIRECTV and I will be joined at the hip for years to come.

Before I forget, in financial news it now appears that the "bailout" of Bear Stearns, which we all know was really a bailout of Morgan Chase (since Bear is out of business) had another purpose. Bear was the huge silver short on the COMEX, and had no hope of ever covering that short position. So Morgan Chase assumed it when Bear when out of business. They can't cover the short either, so it's going to explode sooner or later. They managed to keep a lid on it with huge additional short sales this summer, but the price of physical silver has stubbornly retained a large premium over the COMEX price. The pot continues to boil, and soon it will have to vent.

The nightmare is over

At 6:30 Pacific Time, they called Ohio for Obama, and that's all I need to see. There's no way McCain can get to 269 electoral votes, so I am calling the election for Obama.

When I look back at the last eight years, I find it hard to believe our country could have declined as it has. This didn't happen because we didn't work hard enough. It happened because we have had piss-poor leadership. Our banks were run by idiots. Our auto companies were run by idiots. Our airlines have been run by idiots. And most of all, our country has been run by an idiot for the past eight years.

Case in point is Elizabeth Dole. She was appointed to one important job after another, and never accomplished anything. Whether she ran the Red Cross, or she was Secretary of Transportation, she didn't know her elbow from her asshole. She even ran for president (briefly) and then dropped out, whining that she didn't have enough money. Somehow she got elected to the Senate, but then people in North Carolina used to elect Jesse Helms, too. Tonight, she was beaten badly by Kay Hagan, but not before her last desperate ploy of accusing Hagan of "godlessness." Senator Dole, good riddance. You won't be a senator much longer.

Our society promotes incompetent people to positions of authority in corporations and in government. How can bankers be stupid enough to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in worthless securities? Why is it that Toyota can make a profit by building cars in America, but our own auto industry needs another $25 billion bailout to avoid bankruptcy? Most ot all, how could 50+ million people have been stupid enough to vote for Bush, not just once, but twice?

I just went to see the Oliver Stone movie, W. The review said it presented a sympathetic view of him. I still can't understand what I was supposed to be sympathetic about. He was a drunken frat boy who quit or botched every job his father set up for him. When he was arrested for DUI, his father fixed it. When he got a girl pregnant, his father fixed that, too. Only Republicans can get away with that crap. As long as they say they're in favor of family values, it doesn't seem to matter what they've actually done.

Now we will finally have a president who earned his position in life based on merit. Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, didn't start life with every advantage possible. And while I'm on that subject, let me point out that Clinton started with nothing, came from a broken home, and made it all the way to the White House. He turned around a bankrupt economy, created 23 million jobs, and left a growing surplus in a country that was respected around the world. He would have gone down in history as a great president if he had kept his pants zipped.

It's Obama's turn now. I think of him as the Jackie Robinson of politics. It wasn't enough for Jackie Robinson to be a great player; he also had to have the temperament to let all of the insults and abuse roll off him. Obama is the same way; he has to be perfect. In the debates, McCain could snarl and glare all he wanted, and Obama just had to stand there and smile. Well, tonight Obama is going to be doing a lot of smiling.

On the one hand, Obama has a very small pair of shoes to fill, but on the other hand, Bush has left him an incredible mess to clean up. The budget deficit will be near $500 billion, and with the government spending needed to make up for the shortfalls in consumer spending and corporate investment, the following year's budget will be close to $1 trillion. The legacy of our foreign policy is Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, as well as two wars that Bush screwed up royally.

Fixing the economy is going to take a long time. The variable-rate mortgage resets will go on through at least 2011, so the housing market will be under pressure from foreclosures for some time to come. We will continue to see large budget deficits for several years to come, and the recent strength in the US dollar will be reversed. Now that the election is over, I expect the widespread government interference in the equity and commodity markets will be reduced, and resource stocks will resume their secular bull market.