U.S. Debt
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U.S. Economy to Get Jolt from 1.2 Million Homebuilding Jobs
An accelerating rebound in new home construction over the next two years should finally give the U.S. economy the jump-start it needs to progress toward a truly robust recovery.
New home construction continues to bounce back from the lows of 2009, after the housing bubble burst, but still has a long way to go.
With housing one of the prime drivers of the U.S. economy - historically construction accounts for 5% of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) and related economic activity another 13% - a spike of activity in this area could drive the growth that's long been lacking from the recovery.
"A revival in new home construction will have a huge stimulative effect on the larger economy," Brad Hunter, chief economist for housing research firm Metrostudy, told Bloomberg News. "When home construction goes up, so does demand for furniture, tile, lumber, concrete, draperies, paint and appliances of all sorts."
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The Trillion Dollar Trick
The birth, and the apparent death, of the trillion dollar platinum coin idea may one day be recalled as a mere footnote in the current debt crisis drama. The ultimate rejection of the idea (which was to use a loophole in commemorative coinage law to mint a platinum coin of any denomination) by both the President and the Federal Reserve seems to offer some relief that our economic policy is not being run by out-of-touch academics and irresponsible congressmen. In reality, our government has been creating more than one trillion dollars out of thin air every year for the past five. The only difference is that the blatant dishonesty of a trillion-dollar platinum coin is so easy to understand that the public simply couldn't be expected to swallow it. The American people are more than willing to be fooled, but they won't tolerate so simple a ruse.
People have a long and intimate history with coins. Some of us collected them as kids, and we all touch and see them every day. Unlike currency bills, we know intuitively that a coin's value is supposed to come from its metal content. That's why quarters are bigger than dimes.As a result, most people have viscerally rejected the platinum coin idea. To assign an arbitrary, sky high, valuation to a small piece of metal strikes most people as a deceitful, desperate act. They are right.
However, the same people have no problem with images of thousands of crisp paper notes flying off the printing presses. The acceptance is not impacted by how many zeroes the bills contain. People simply believe that paper money derives value from the numbers, not the paper. This was not always so. Paper money originally entered the public awareness as promissory notes to pay different amounts of gold. Once people got used to the paper, few really cared when the gold backing was finally removed. As a result, the public would likely have been much more accepting of the Fed printing a trillion dollar bill than the government minting a trillion dollar coin. But there was no legal pathway for the Fed to simply give that money to the government.
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The government, not the Fed, mints coins, so they did not have to rely on the Fed to create value out of thin air. That is why the platinum coin idea was so seductive, if ultimately unsellable.
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Will Gold be Paulson's Next "Greatest Trade Ever"?
When famed hedge-fund manager John Paulson speaks, people listen.
And it's no wonder.
Paulson made his way into the financial history books thanks to what many now call the "greatest trade ever".
Paulson & Co. shorted the subprime mortgage market before the collapse banking a $15 billion gain.
So when Paulson went big again by buying gold in 2009 and 2010, investors took notice.
At the time he said, "As an investor, I became very concerned about having my assets denominated in U.S. dollars," Paulson told his audience. "So I looked for another currency in which to denominate my assets in. I feel that gold is the best currency."
In fact, Paulson's holdings in the SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD) make his firm the biggest stakeholder in this ETF, with a position currently valued at $2.9 billion.
So that begs the question....
Is Paulson still a gold bull?
In a recent letter to investors he wrote, "By the time inflation becomes evident, gold will probably have moved, which implies that now is the time to build a position in gold."
And he's not alone.
Recent filings showed that another legendary hedge-fund investor, George Soros, has nearly doubled his stake in GLD to 85,450 shares.
But "Bond King" Bill Gross's latest words and actions may well be the most significant of all.
To continue reading, please click here.... -
Paul Krugman is Dead Wrong: Debt Matters
Paul Krugman, the Princeton University economics professor, Nobel Prize winner, and regular New York Times op-ed contributor says, "Debt matters, but not that much."
Not only is he off the reservation on this one, but he's completely fallen off his high horse.
In the real world, debt actually matters a lot.
In a Houston Chronicle opinion piece last week, Krugman, riding his horse - whose name might as well be Liberal Conscience - trampled conservatives under the guise of an economics lesson that derided "deficit-worriers" for wrongly seeing "America as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage, and will have a hard time making the monthly payments."
According to Krugman, that's a bad analogy and "the way our politicians think about debt is all wrong, and exaggerates the problem's size."
Decide for yourself. Either debt matters a lot, or not that much...
The World According to Paul Krugman
Professor Krugman calls all the conversation in Washington about debt and deficits a "misplaced focus" and says all of the economic experts "on whom much of Congress relies have been repeatedly wrong about the short-run effects of budget deficits."
He derides the fears that deficits will cause interest rates to soar by pointing out that they haven't moved.
What he doesn't say is that they haven't moved because they're not free to move.
The fact is that the U.S. Federal Reserve has corralled the free market in interest rates by knocking short-term rates to almost zero through successive open market operations and extraordinary quantitative easing measures.
Mr. Krugman mocks those waiting for rates to rise and notes that while they wait "rates have dropped to historical lows."
Maybe what he doesn't realize is that the Fed's actions themselves have been nothing short of historical.
The crux of Mr. Krugman's supposition that debt doesn't matter much is based on his bashing of the popular analogy comparing America's debt problems to those of a mortgaged homeowner.
All of which Krugman claims is "a really bad analogy in at least two ways."
He says, "First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don't - all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base."
"Second," he says, "an over-borrowed family owes the money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe ourselves."
He goes on to say that the debt from World War II was never repaid and didn't make postwar America poorer.
In fact, the Professor points out, "the debt didn't prevent the postwar generation from experiencing the biggest rise in incomes and living standards in our nation's history."
Krugman is Flat Out Wrong
First off, the homeowner analogy is excellent--not irrelevant.
Mr. Krugman is wrong when he says that homeowners have to pay back their debt. The truth is they don't have to.
To continue reading, please click here...
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Why America Hates Congress
Everybody knows that screwing up a critical assignment at work will almost surely get you fired.
That is, unless you work as a member of the U.S. Congress.
After more than two months of bickering, the six Republicans and six Democrats on the "super committee" tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion debt reduction savings over the next decade have thrown in the towel.
They have no debt reduction plan.
Analysts agree that despite the urgency of addressing America's fiscal issues, both sides are more interested in scoring political points than solving problems.
Meanwhile, the federal debt continues to grow. It eclipsed $15 trillion last week.
With representatives pocketing salaries of $174,000 a year despite their failures, it's no wonder U.S. citizens are down on Congress. A recent New York Times/CBS poll showed Congressional approval sinking to just 9%.
Even some members of Congress admit it.
"The politicians care more about their parties and getting reelected than they do the very real problem," Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, said Sunday on C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program. "[The super committee] was Washington's answer to kicking the can down the road."
According to the law passed as part of the debt ceiling deal over the summer, failure of the super committee to come up with a debt reduction plan is supposed to result in $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts, known as "sequestration."
Half of those cuts, $600 billion, are to come from defense spending, with the other half coming from such areas as education, the environment, transportation, housing assistance and veterans' healthcare.
But just because that's what the law says doesn't mean it will happen. Congress, don't forget, can undo any laws it creates. Ideological opposites Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, among others, are already working on this.
It's just more evidence of a disingenuous Congress.
Pointing Fingers
Instead of developing a deficit reduction solution, lawmakers have tried to convince the American people that the super committee's failure is the other party's fault.
Democrats had called for a "balanced" approach of some higher taxes, mostly on the wealthy, and spending cuts. Republicans eschewed any increase in taxes, preferring instead to reach debt reduction goals entirely through spending cuts.
"The wealthiest of Americans, those who earn more than $1 million every year, have to share, too. And that line in the sand, we haven't seen any Republicans willing to cross yet," super committee co-chair Sen. Patty Murray, D-WA, said on CNN's"State of the Union."
"I don't understand the economics that says that if we raise taxes on my employer, or my boss, somehow they're going to go out and hire my unemployed brother-in-law," Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, another committee co-chair, countered on "Fox News Sunday."
Why so much rhetoric and no action?
The main reason is that the automatic cuts don't kick in until January 2013 - after the key 2012 elections. Both sides hope to pin the blame on the other side to secure election victories next November that will empower them to solve the debt problem their way.
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Washington's Debt-Ceiling Debate – A Political Sham
I have to tell you that - as a former international merchant banker - I want to laugh out loud when I hear the dire predictions of how the United States will have to default if Congress doesn't raise the nation's debt ceiling.
With a little Wall Street-style creative financing - even when the government's outstanding debt level reaches the official limit of $14.3 trillion sometime around the end of March - there's no reason why the country can't go on borrowing as if nothing has changed.
The debt-ceiling debate is something you're going to hear a lot about in the days and weeks to come. The Obama administration just yesterday (Monday) introduced its fiscal 2012 budget proposal - a spending plan that's certain to ignite a firestorm of debate between Democrats and Republicans. And those arguments about next year's spending plan will absolutely feed into a heated showdown over the federal debt ceiling.
But the two sides are arguing about the wrong thing: It's the country's debt load - not the debt ceiling - that has to be addressed. And I can prove it to you.
Like a consumer who's in over his head, Uncle Sam has several alternatives available before his creditors arrive to repossess his vehicles and cut up his credit card. By highlighting some of the "debt dodges" that are available, I will show you that the dire near-term predictions aren't anything to fear. Long-term, however, this country really does need to slash its debt-load. But that requires a real commitment, not political maneuvering.
To see through this "political theater," please read on...
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2011 U.S. Debt Forecast: Five Simple Ways to End America's Spiraling National Debt
By 2020, U.S. debt could reach 90% of the United States' annual economic output. That's more than $20 trillion in national debt, which would mean Americans are on the hook for more than $65,000 per person. Just by paying the interest on that much debt, the United States could become incapable of repairing its own [...]
