Saturday, May 14, 2011

Business of America business, busy business, busy, busy...



June 30 looms large on the horizon as 2012 general elections approach

The man who builds a factory, builds a temple. The man who works there worships there. - President Calvin Coolidge

To financiers, the American economy – and all other economies – are a business. There is no room for sentimental attachment because the bottom line is the bottom line.

Yes, that bottom line.

There is no other.

That's why Americans have about another 6 weeks to bask in their unknowing and blissful ignorance before the axe falls and the widespread panic sets in, say the analysts and money changers, the speculators and investment strategists.

Never in peace time – if you can call this a time of peace - have the people of the world seen such a spectacle as awaits them when the Federal Reserve stops buying Treasury bonds and thus stops printing money in June, as scheduled. So they say. It's more than just talk. The University of Texas Endowment Fund recently took physical delivery of $1 billion gold bars. Mexico just purchased 100 tons of gold.

For the past 9 months, the Federal Reserve has been purchasing 70% of all the debt issued by the U.S. Treasury - $600 billion worth. That follows a program of “quantitative easing” that saw the Fed buy up $1.75 trillion of debt between March 2009 and March 2010.

But the Fed has promised to stop buying T-bonds and printing money on June 30, when the economy hits the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling.

Right.

Writ large, a review of the review that has hoarsened the pundits, bored the ignorant, and remained incomprehensible to the uncomprehending:

About half the gross domestic product is spent on taxes and debt service.

A record 70 million people now depend on the U.S. Government for housing, food and medical care.

Government spending federal, state and local now accounts for about 45% of the economy.

When it comes to federal income taxes, 132.5 million people pay no taxes whatsoever.

Only the top 10% of earners, those who make more than $113,000 per year, pay 70% of all income taxes collected.


And the band plays on. You can't keep borrowing, and you can't quit.

As a whole, Americans owe $56 trillion, almost 400% of the gross domestic product, with a resulting debt service of $3.6 trillion a year. Allowing the U.S. Treasury to go into default on its bond obligations would only force Americans to devote more of their national wealth to servicing a debt that spiral higher and higher, according to U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

When Ronald Reagan took office – a time that wasn't all that rosy, to say the least – the entire national debt totaled less than $1 trillion. In 2002, the national debt was $6 trillion.

The administration of President Barack Hussein Obama will borrow about $6 trillion during the first term of his presidency. In four years, Mr. Obama will have doubled the national debt from its pre-financial crisis levels, starting with an inherited $1.2 trillion budget deficit run up during the last year of the Bush presidency.

That's what the Wall street bailout and the Iraq war cost Americans.

It doesn't matter who you blame, or what you call it. It all comes out the same.

The American people are looking at an economic collapse – a panther stalking the halls of finance and lurking at the back doors of counting houses everywhere from Greece and Portugal to D.C., Beijing and beyond.

When the Euro collapses – and it will – the rest of the world's currencies will cascade, and that's the formula for a worldwide depression.

That's what happened last time, the dreaded time we all heard about from our elders, the time when there was simply no money. None. Zip. Zilch. Goose egg. Nada.

No dough.

That is, if the Republican super majority in the House of Representatives refuses to raise the debt ceiling, they say that's what is in the cards.

I think the elephants are at end game with this phase of their never-ending war with the mules.

Hang loose. It's bound to be a spectacular show, to say the least.

Such a drama.

Saith The Legendary: Don't drink the Kool-Aid, y'all. It ain't over until it's over.

And it ain't over. Hell, no.

If 2010 was a knife fight between alley cats that resulted in a blood letting and a hostile takeover by people so far to the right they have to call the back benchers on the left wing long distance on those smart phones they keep glued to their ears, then 2012 will be a full dress bayonet charge.

I have spoken.


So mote it be.

- The Legendary

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