Econ 2009

[wblipp]

Web sources say these "bonds" were dated 1934, which makes them obviously phony because bonds in these denominations were not issued in 1934 - in fact the entire national debt wasn't that large in 1934. The web sources further say there is an ongoing business of printing these bonds in the Phillipines and using them in scams, usually targetting senior citizens in "914" style scams. The scam usually ages the paper, and these had not been aged yet.

So my guess is that this interrupted the setup phase of a many-victim scam. No one victim was going to see all these bonds, but many victims were going to see one or more of these bonds. Perhaps the scam story is that a bank insider "discovered" these in WWII era lock boxes for which no living claimant can be found, and the fake bonds were on their way to real Swiss safety deposit boxes.

The "Kennedy" bonds must have had a later date - perhaps these were lost by victims of Asian or African genocides.

As to not prosecuting the couriers - perhaps they are too small to bother with, or perhaps they cut a deal, or maybe it's not counterfeiting if the real thing doesn't exist.

Sorry I didn't keep the web sources - it sounded like this explanation would be everywhere by now.

[cheesehead]

"10-quirky-economic-indicators"

http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-bud...d=bb-budgeting

. . .

9. Dry Cleaning

The International Drycleaning and Laundry Institute is hearing gripes from many of its 5,000 members. The poor economy has customers are visiting less frequently and leaving clothes for longer. Weekly customers visit every two weeks, monthly customers visit bi-monthly, and some people delay their pickups even longer to avoid the bill. This has been a staple indicator of hard times before.

. . .

[markr]

134.5 billion? Small fry - try fifteen times that! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1180171.stm from eight years ago in the Philippines, where it seems bond scams are relatively common.

[ewmayer]

Ben Bernanke keeps repeating the "Credit Markets are Healing" propaganda ad nauseam, but Mish Shedlock today features an analysis by Martin Weiss of the Fed`s own quarterly flow-of-funds report to paint a starkly different picture:

In New, Hard Evidence of Continuing Debt Collapse! Martin Weiss Writes ...

While most pundits are still grasping at anecdotal “green shoots” to celebrate the beginning of a “recovery,” the hard data just released by the Federal Reserve reveals a continuing collapse of unprecedented dimensions.

It’s all in the Fed’s Flow of Funds Report for the first quarter of 2009, which I’ve posted on our website with the key numbers in a red box for all those who would like to see the evidence.

First and foremost, the Fed’s numbers demonstrate, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the credit market meltdown, which struck with full force after the Lehman Brothers failure last September, actually got a lot worse in the first quarter of this year.

Open Market Paper: Instead of growing as it had in almost every prior quarter in history, it collapsed at the annual rate of $662.5 billion. (See line 2.)

Banks lending: Credit markets [collapsed] at the astonishing pace of $856.4 billion per year, their biggest cutback of all time (line 7).

Nonbank lending: (line 8) pulled out at the annual rate of $468 billion, also the worst on record.

Mortgage lenders: (line 9) pulled out for a third straight month. (Their worst on record was in the prior quarter.)

Consumers: (line 10) were shoved out of the market for credit at the annual pace of $90.7 billion, the worst on record.

The ONLY major player still borrowing money in big amounts was the United States Treasury Department (line 3), sopping up $1,442.8 billion of the credit available — and leaving LESS than nothing for the private sector as a whole.

Bottom line: The first quarter brought the greatest credit collapse of all time.

[Mish] Think consumers are about to go on a spending spree after a massive $13.87 trillion collapse in net worth? Think banks are going to start lending with this employment picture and household debt? I don't and boomer demographics makes the situation even worse. Don't forget the bleak employment picture. There is no source of jobs.

Those who get hyperinflation out of this picture must be reading the playbook in Bizarro World because it sure is not the playbook here.

My Comment: Greenspan et al helped blow the biggest credit bubble of all time. Why would the ensuing "pop" be any less dramatic? At some point the ugly reality is going to catch up with the delusional green-shoots-smoking party crowd that's been scooping up "bargain priced" shares in the equity markets hand over fist, and the resulting bloody beatdown isn't going to be pretty.

[ewmayer]

Decline of West Seen in Scotland Where Mathewson Rues What Goodwin Wrought: In a white shooting lodge above a Highland stream where salmon return after navigating ocean currents, George Mathewson, the 69-year-old architect of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc’s global expansion, rues the day his handpicked successor, Fred Goodwin, brought down the company, shaking the foundations of capitalism and undermining Scottish independence.

“Any money I’ve earned has all been in RBS stock, enough to make a serious loss,” said Mathewson, who sat arms crossed in his attic office next to a portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson, the Edinburgh-born author of “Treasure Island.” “You are going from a situation where people were really proud to work for RBS -- it was a distinction -- to a situation where RBS is vilified every time you see it.”

Like Citigroup Inc. in the U.S. and UBS AG in Switzerland, RBS expanded on three continents going into the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. The Edinburgh-based bank became Europe’s biggest by assets under Goodwin, securitizing subprime U.S. mortgages in Connecticut, arranging high-risk loans for leveraged takeovers from London to Milan, and collecting customer deposits as far away as Hong Kong.

Then it collapsed, losing 47 billion pounds ($77 billion) of market value from its peak in December 2007 and dashing Mathewson’s hope that a booming Scottish banking industry would help re-establish sovereignty after 302 years.

My Comment: Ask Iceland how well a "booming banking industry" worked for them. Even that bastion of tax-haven-based banking, Switzerland, is having to bail out some of its biggest banks.


Darling Signals Rift With Brown, Saying U.K. Must Curb Deficit: Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, signaling a clash with Prime Minister Gordon Brown over spending, said the U.K. government must make tough decisions to curb the budget deficit.

“We must live within our means,” Darling told bankers at the annual Mansion House dinner in London last night. “There are tough choices ahead. I will continue to do whatever is necessary to ensure sustainable public finances.”

Britain expects the biggest budget shortfall in the Group of Seven nations as the worst recession since World War II curbs tax receipts, forcing the Treasury to raise a record 220 billion pounds ($330 billion) from investors. Darling’s comment is aimed at appeasing Standard & Poor’s, which has threatened to scrap Britain’s top-notch credit rating without clear action on debt.

Brown and his Cabinet ally Ed Balls, the education secretary, are pushing for higher spending as the centerpiece of the election campaign. Brown told the GMB union earlier this week that the ruling Labour Party had to “fight as we’ve never fought before” for well-funded public services.

My Comment: The real test for Darling will be whether he is able to push through major spending cuts or whether he will end up doing the easier thing for most politicians, increasing taxes on some group for whom increased taxes makes for an easy populist sell. Self-styled "budget hawk" bureaucrats do so love to talk about "smaller government" and "reduced spending" but almost never follow through unless an outright fiscal crisis forces their hand.


Parliament Finally Sees Some Beauty in Britain`s Beast of Bolsover: For 40 Years, Irritating Lawmaker Has Been a Scold on Expenses. Now People Listen

LONDON -- Over four decades, the man known as "The Beast of Bolsover" has richly earned his reputation as Parliament`s No. 1 killjoy.

Impolitic and often ill-mannered, Dennis Skinner, a representative of the English town of Bolsover, has made a career of verbally shredding colleagues and ridiculing Parliament`s ancient protocols. His acid tirades -- publicly branding one member of Parliament "a pompous sod" and another "slimy" -- have gotten him ejected from Parliament 10 times. His relentless barrage of attention-grabbing stunts and statements haven`t endeared him to fellow MPs, who often tend to regard him as a loner.

But these days, one habit of Westminster`s resident grouch -- his reflexive need to vote against pay raises and extra allowances for members of Parliament -- has put this antisocial 77-year-old outlier in sync with the mood of both the public and other politicians.

For the past month, Britain has been riveted by an explosive scandal revealing how politicians have used taxpayer money to claim reimbursement for everything from "glitter" toilet seats to payments on mortgages that don`t exist. It has brought nationwide condemnation of politicians and an early end to the careers of more than a dozen.

On Thursday, the redacted copies of more than a million expense claims and receipts from the past four years were put on Parliament`s Web site after a nearly five-year fight between politicians and freedom-of-information campaigners.

As a result, Britain`s leaders are racing to embrace reforms. Repeating language Mr. Skinner has uttered for years, Prime Minister Gordon Brown wants to rein in the self-regulating "gentleman`s club" of Parliament. Cabinet minister Ed Miliband called for an end to much of the pomp and ceremonial garb that make Parliament less of an "open and welcoming place for people."

In this environment, the Beast has been lionized. The Daily Telegraph -- the right-of-center newspaper that broke the expense scandal -- recently declared that the hard-left Mr. Skinner gives U.K. taxpayers more value than all but one other politician. Mr. Skinner himself had the second-lowest expense claims in all of Parliament, and nobody has shown up for more votes than he has.

The only member of Parliament who claimed less in expenses than the Labour Party`s Mr. Skinner was Conservative MP Philip Hollobone, a former paratrooper who is so careful with the public`s pennies that he employs no staff and uses second-class stamps.

My Comment: "Britain`s leaders are racing to embrace reforms" ... pffft, *sure* they are. More likely "Britain`s leaders are racing to make a big public show of embracing reforms in hopes of keeping their jobs." Brown`s job of course being one of the most at-risk, as it deserves to be.

Some of the UK`s "parliamentary traditions" whih Skinner rails against could be taken right our of a Blackadder skit:

In 2001, MPs approved a near 50% increase in living expenses for themselves, one of many such votes since the 1980s, so they wouldn`t have to vote themselves salary increases. Mr. Skinner warned at the time that the measure would one day backfire, telling colleagues it was "a bad day for Parliament." Lately, he has reminded other MPs of those votes.

Mr. Skinner hails from a family of nine children, and followed his father into the coal mines of England`s Derbyshire region. Mr. Skinner says that when he left for his first day of work amid the ornate gothic pinnacles of Parliament, his father joked, " `At least you won`t have to test the roof so it`s safe, like in a mine.` "

Among Mr. Skinner`s targets are the many traditions Parliament has accrued in its 900 years. Coat hangers still have pink ribbons to attach members` swords. The Speaker of the House of Lords sits on a large pillow stuffed with wool, meant to symbolize Britain`s ancient wealth. There is a snuffbox full of snuff that MPs never touch.

Some traditions have already been killed. At one time, MPs had to don a top hat when calling a point of order. Collapsible top hats were kept for the purpose. That was discontinued in 1998. Some aren`t worth the effort of squashing, such as the rule forbidding politicians from wearing a suit of armor in Parliament.

Mr. Skinner`s attacks on tradition have become an institution themselves. Every year, he rants against a ritual involving an official who traditionally dons tights as the "Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod." When Black Rod, the monarch`s representative in the House of Lords, knocks on the door of Commons to invite MPs to listen to the Queen`s annual speech to Parliament, the door is slammed in his face to symbolize the independence of the House of Commons from royalty. When it is opened again, Mr. Skinner pounces.

In 2001, the role was played for the first time by Sir Michael Willcocks, a 5-foot-8-inch former three-star army general. He was unprepared for what Mr. Skinner had planned.

"They`ve shortchanged us! He`s nowt but a midget!" Mr. Skinner shouted as Mr. Willcocks entered on his second day on the job.

My Comment: Sorry, I`m giggling because the whole ludicrous "Black Rod" thing reminds me of Rowan Atkinson as Blackadder showing up up at various court functions in all-black[/url]: [i]clothing and tights and sporting his "extra frightening" huge "Black Russian" codpiece in an effort to frighten (and impress) the ladies.

The sound of hoof beats 'cross the glade,
Good folk, lock up your son and daughter,
Beware the deadly flashing blade,
Unless you want to end up shorter.

Black Adder, Black Adder, he rides a pitch black steed.
Black Adder, Black Adder, he's very bad indeed.

Black: his gloves of finest mole,
Black: his codpiece made of metal,
His horse is blacker than a vole,
His pot is blacker than his kettle.

Black Adder, Black Adder, with many an cunning plan.
Black Adder, Black Adder, you horrid little man.

[AES]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/82091ec2-5...44feabdc0.html

Whether the men are really Japanese, as their passports declare, is unclear but Italian and US secret services working together soon concluded that the bills and accompanying bank documents were most probably counterfeit, the latest handiwork of the Italian Mafia.

Italian prosecutors revealed last month that they had cracked a $1bn bond scam run by the Sicilian Mafia, with the alleged aid of corrupt officials in Venezuela’s central bank. Twenty people were arrested in four countries.

The fake bonds were to have been used as collateral to open credit lines with banks, Reuters news agency reported. The Venezuelan central bank denied the accusations.

[ewmayer]

Thanks for the the update, AES ... sounds like Venezuela is attempting to deploy weapons of mass financial destruction. Ironic that they used forged U.S. bearer bonds, because the chief purveyor of WMfDs over the past decade has been none other than the U.S., with its exporting of fraudulently valued and rated debt securities across the globe.

----------------

I had a lively discussion yesterday with some of the locals at the coffee shop I frequent most weekends, about the state of the economy (real and alleged), the California too-big-to-bail insolvency, the Obama approach to the economy, etc.

One of the debaters tried to argue that with respect to the economy, “perception is reality”. After facetiously suggesting he tell one of the millions of folks who lost their jobs in the past year that, I thought about this on and off for much of the rest of the day. There is some truth to it, in the sense that irrational optimism or pessimism can feed on themselves and create a self-fulfilling prophecy, at least in the short run … as the Greenspan bubble era showed, if one is willing to allow leverage to grow virtually without limit “the short run” can even extend to a decade or more. But in the end reality always asserts itself. It was then that this response to the green-and-shooty crowd occurred to me:

“Perception is reality that has not yet been marked to market.”


US To Trade Gold Reserves For Cash Through Cash4Gold.com | The Onion

My Comment: Funny video, especially for those of us who have to endure the barrage of (real) Cash4Gold.com ads on cable TV. But we know that the U.S. Government would never have to resort to the desperate remedy of doing business with a scam outfit like Cah4Gold because when they need cash, they can raise it the old-fashioned honest way, by ... printing it up in truckloads. (These days they don`t even need genuine old-fashioned printing presses or trucks - a few keystrokes by Ben Bernanke or one of his authorized Representatives at the Federal Reserve suffice.)


Goldman to make record bonus payout

Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm's 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms.

A lack of competition and a surge in revenues from trading foreign currency, bonds and fixed-income products has sent profits at Goldman Sachs soaring, according to insiders at the firm.

Staff in London were briefed last week on the banking and securities company's prospects and told they could look forward to bumper bonuses if, as predicted, it completed its most profitable year ever. Figures next month detailing the firm's second-quarter earnings are expected to show a further jump in profits. Warren Buffett, who bought $5bn of the company's shares in January, has already made a $1bn gain on his investment.

My Comment: Now we know why GS has been working so hard (using their special NYSE "Supplemental Liquid Provider" status and unique ability to move markets via massive computerized trading - ZeroHedge has been documenting this for months) to pump up the markets (most especially their own share price) and pay back the TARP funds, while of course continuing to enjoy the manifold benefits of near-free play money from Uncle Sam and the ability to borrow at below-market rates via the FDIC backdoor-bailout route.

And speaking of all things Goldman "Shadow U.S. Government" Sachs, Mish comments on whether the recent surge in commodity prices points to hyperinflation, and regular Mish commentator Black Swan opines as to whether the powers that be are betting on (or in the case of the Fed, actively trying to bring about) hyperinflation:

...in 2000, when [then-Goldman-Sachs CEO and future Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson first asked for unlimited leverage, he was betting on hyperinflation. In 2004, when he got that unlimited leverage, we had the beginning of hyperinflated prices of CDOs, CLOs and their underlying collateral, real estate and M&A companies.

That hyperinflation could only end in two ways, obscene profits or crashes. For GS guys like Blankfein and Cohn, it ended in $70 million dollar bonuses (obscene, hyperinflated profits), for many of those at Bear Stearns (but not Jimmy Cayne, of course) and Lehman Brothers (but not Richard Fuld, of course) it ended in crash. Paulson, Dimon, Rubin and Mack all made their profits by leveraging hyperinflating assets. If the US Treasury is ever to be made whole on the hyperinflated collateral the Fed is sticking it with, it will have to be done with hyperinflated dollars.

Remember, the Geithner Plan (PPIP) was all about seriously leveraging near worthless paper collateralized by hyperinflated asset values so that Dimon and the Crony Club could make windfall profits if dollars inflated enough to cover asset performance. If this didn't happen, no matter, because they were leveraged without risk. The taxpayer was to be stuck with the losses.

California: The Long Road to Insolvency

Insofar as my home state of California is the national poster child for out-of-control, unsustainable state spending and is now hugely, catastrophically insolvent (and has many other states hard on its heels in the race toward the Day of Financial Reckoning), I plan to make this "how did we get here, exactly?" a quasi-regular series. I`ve been reading Jared Diamond`s bestseller Collapse the past several weekends, and the parallels between societal collapse resulting from environmental recklessness (overexploiting limited natural resources, letting population grow explosively during bumper-harvest years, etc) and that resulting from unsustainable financial policies are striking...

California Pension hike of a decade ago backfires | The Sacramento Bee

A milestone on California's meandering journey toward fiscal insolvency occurred exactly a decade ago when the Legislature enacted a massive increase in state employee pensions on the expedient assumption that it would cost taxpayers nothing.

Although the new pensions would generate almost countless billions of dollars in extra income for retirees in the years ahead, the CalPERS board, dominated by union representatives, told legislators that taxpayers wouldn't have to bear the load because investment income, which was flowing into the pension trust fund from high-tech stocks, would continue indefinitely.

"They (CalPERS) anticipate that the state's contribution to CalPERS will remain below the 1998-99 fiscal year for at least the next decade," said a final Senate analysis of the 1999 legislation that expanded state pensions, allowing Highway Patrol officers, prison guards and other "safety" workers in some cases to get more than 100 percent of their salaries.

Wrong.

Within a few years, the dot-com bubble had burst, CalPERS had suffered major losses and the state's burden for pensions had pushed into the multibillion-dollar range, not counting the heavy impact on local governments that had cavalierly followed the state's lead on boosting pension benefits

[__HRB__]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

One of the debaters tried to argue that with respect to the economy, “perception is reality”. After facetiously suggesting he tell one of the millions of folks who lost their jobs in the past year that, I thought about this on and off for much of the rest of the day. There is some truth to it, in the sense that irrational optimism or pessimism can feed on themselves and create a self-fulfilling prophecy, at least in the short run …

Not even in the short run, because if perception is an illusion it simply isn't real. Also, self-fulfilling prophecies are almost exclusively negative as it is much easier to destroy wealth than to create it.

It's also a misconception that people only have to be 'optimistic about the economy' in order for things to improve (which is probably the motivation for all the 'hope'-hype), as this not only confuses correlation with causation (people tend to be a good mood when business is booming), but also post hoc ergo procter hoc (i.e. Granger-causalty) with actual causality. After all, people have the ability to anticipate economic changes to a certain extent by using information that is practically impossible to measure, like being able to judge likelihoods of doing business in several months with clients, since it takes time to get the details sorted out.

[ewmayer]

Stocks, Commodities Fall as World Bank Sees 2.9% Contraction; Dollar Gains: U.S. and European stocks tumbled, extending losses from the first weekly decline for global equities in more than a month, as the World Bank said the recession will be deeper than previously forecast. Treasuries rose, while oil fell below $67 a barrel and metals slumped.

“The worries are still out there,” said John Wilson, who helps oversee $120 billion as chief market technician at Morgan Keegan & Co. in Memphis, Tennessee. “Nobody is ready to get the trumpets out and herald the end of the recession.”

My Comment: Mr. Wilson apparently hasn`t heard any of the legions of economists, pundits, government officials and pump monkeys on CNBC who have been ceaselessly banging the "bottom is in!"/"worst is over!!"/"recovery in 2nd half of 2009!!!" drum for the past several months, as the major U.S. stock indices shot up nearly 40%. Oh wait, those were drums they were beating, and he *did* specifically say "trumpets". My bad...

But, my, that wasn`t very green-and-shooty of those naughty doomsayers at the World Bank. They must have not have gotten any of those "confidence inspiring" motivational memos from the aforementioned sources.

I heard some cynics comment that this might be an orchestrated "market scare" ploy on the part of the U.S. Treasury to scare investors into buying some of the the unprecedented flood of debt that coming up for issue, but that sounds a bit fanciful.


Nobel Economist Phelps Says Americans May Take 15 Years to Restore Wealth: U.S. households may take as long as 15 years to rebuild wealth lost in the recession, said Columbia University professor Edmund Phelps, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics in 2006.

“The only way we’re going to get a healthy, full recovery is over a long period of time, involving households rebuilding their balance sheets and companies in trouble rebalancing their balance sheets,” Phelps said in an interview today with Bloomberg Television. “There’s no silver bullet that’s going to get us into good shape quickly.”

U.S. household wealth fell by $1.3 trillion in the first quarter of this year, with net worth for households and non- profit groups falling to its lowest level since 2004, according to a Federal Reserve report released June 11. Wealth dropped by a record $4.9 trillion in the last quarter of 2008.

Phelps said that economic recovery will be unlikely until producers exhaust their existing inventories.

“When that happens there will be a sigh of relief that we’ve hit bottom,” he said in the interview from Paris. “Then we’ll see a little bounce in consumption demand” and “people won’t be bracing themselves at the prospect of losing their jobs,” he said.

Phelps predicted that unemployment will stabilize at 7 percent for the next three to five years. The jobless rate reached a 25-year high of 9.4 percent in May.

My Comment: It seems to me that subheading would read more accurately as

"U.S. households may take as long as 15 years to rebuild real wealth equivalent to the fictitious paper 'wealth' (i.e. inflated valuation of homes and equities fueled by credit expansion) created during the Greenspan bubble era."

We also need a suitably pithy name for a person who thought they had achieved a measure of wealth based on said fictitious valuations ... "Baby Boom-and-Bust-er"? Or perhaps "Bubble-onian"?

[AES]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/23/democrats-strike-deal-massive-climate/

The breakthrough came hours after President Obama at a news conference called on the House to pass the legislation, and a new EPA analysis showed that it would raise household energy costs on average only an extra $80 to $111 a year.

EPA analysis? Shouldn’t the department of err, um, energy or commerce or something analyze it and release the results?

[Fusion_power]

Is greed the real driver for a person to become CEO of a company?


Most CEO's get a basic salary and then 'incentives' such as stock options, bonuses, and perks such as a corporate jet to travel in. I question some of these things because they have become such a waste of money for cash strapped companies. Here is a case in point for Nortel.



Nortel has laid off about 5000 employees in the last 6 months. Since Nortel declared bankruptcy, this means they were terminated with no severance of any kind. Nortel finances were then sufficient to show a reasonable profit for the first quarter of the year at which point employee bonuses were paid. The reason given for the bonuses was to 'retain' crucial employees. Now I may not have the best motives in the world and I like a bonus as much as anyone else, but you would think they would at least try to find a way to do something for the people who were terminated.

If a person is hired to work for his salary, that salary is supposed to be the motive for staying on the job, not the bonus. The excuse the executives give is that they 'need' the bonus to stay on the job. Something is backward about this!

Maybe it is time we said to the executives that just doing their job is not a reason for a bonus and if they do not like that, then go for it, see if you can find a job elsewhere.

DarJones