On the 10th anniversary of Lehman Bros: “My greatest concern is that we have 247 trillion dollars world debt and counting. We have resolved the great financial crisis by piling on another 100 trillion dollars in debt”
Excellent job Danielle.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
“247 trillion dollars”
What is a thousand trillion? A Squillion? I bet we’re there in less than 15 years.
A quadrillion.
Where does the majority of the $147T in debt reside? Hint: it’s not the US. So, where is all that distressed capital going to go? Yet, you ignore it, again.
When labor can name its price, it’s usually the end of the business cycle. I experienced that in 2000. It was a great feeling to have 3 good job offers in one road trip. All involved significant pay increases. I chose the right offer because the other two took heavy hits as the dot-com implosion unfolded. At this time my advice would be to sit tight unless you work in a toxic environment or sales are declining to the point of layoffs.
Actually both black unemployment and hispanic unemployment inched a little bit higher in the last report.
The whole economic model of USA is based on continually increasing debt levels and now other countries have copied that model that USA has had where own production is stopped and production is offshored while wages are lowered with low wage immigrants and the consumption is kept up with ever increasing levels of debt (offshoring of production and lowering wages through low wage immigrants would lead to a crash in consumption without continued increases in debts so the only thing keeping the offshoring game and bringing in low wage immigrants game going is increases in debt because it is only through increases in debt that companies can keep their demand up while profit margins increase, without debt increases offshoring and importing low wage workers would crash demand)
Another thought in my head is that Mick Mulvaney is to most likely author of the anonymous “resistance” opinion in NYT since Mulvaney told Trump he should accept the previous omnibus spending bill without wall funding and now Mulvaney has told Trump that wall funding should wait until after midterms and the level of wall funding even then is laughably low at 5 billion (25 billion would be needed) and the Kansas Republican Kevin Yoder who engineered this 5 billion at Appropriations committee pushed through at the same time REVERSAL of Trump/sessions asylum tightening (the Price amendment Yoder supported and let pass in a voice vote as committee chair) and Kevin Yoder wants people again get asylum in USA or pass the credible fear review and then disappear and never get to their actual hearing like happened under Obama based on bogus reasons like claims of spousal abuse or claims of gang threats (these are NOT basis for asylum according to international treaties and no other country in the world accepts these as basis for asylum claims other than USA under Obama).
Also Kevin Yoder pushed through in appropriations committee lots of more visas for low wage workers and Yoder also pushed through a shortcut to Indians for Greencards where Indians get greencards easier than other nationalities and Yoder also pushed through more H1B’s to come to lower American IT and STEM wages and cause Americans to be FIRED to make way for Indians which form most of H1B’s.
These are all things Mick Mulvaney also supports.
Ergo Mick Mulvaney is most likely the anonymous “resistance” member inside Whitehouse that wrote to NYT because Mick Mulvaney has been the MOST EFFECTIVE man in Whitehouse stopping Trump’s agenda on immigration and STOPPING wall while Mulvaney has cheered Trump’s Agenda of cutting taxes so Mulvaney has the opportunity and the motive and Mulvaney fits the profile of the anonymous NYT opinion writer because he got what he wanted from Trump (the tax cuts and cuts in regulations) and Mulvaney has been very happy that Mulvaney has been able to STOP the wall and keep illegals flowing for two years while at the same time wanting more migrants to crush wages through legal channels.
Kevin Yoder is most likely also in on the hidden coup against Trump with Mulvaney because Yoder is chair of House Appropriations committee and House Appropriations committee is the place were REVERSAL of Sessions/Trump asylum policies passed and where wall funding was only limited max to 5 billion and Mulvaney wants even this small amount only after mid-terms and Appropriations committee led by Yoder also passed visa programs to bring lots more low wage workers to crush American workers and passed more h1b’s taking away well paying jobs from Americans in IT and STEM and Yoder led Appropriations committee also passed shortcut to Greencards for Indians.
Mick Mulvaney and Kevin Yoder barely hide the fact that they are working against Trump all the time but apparently they managed to get enough others fired from Whitehouse that Mulvaney is alone the last voice Trump hears and that is why NOTHING substantive has happened on Trumps election promises regarding immigration.
“This is a conspiracy. That’s what this is. It’s one big damn conspiracy. And everyone’s in on it.” –Shawshank State Prison Warden Samuel Norton
Trump chose Koch brothers funded Pence to be his Vice-President after Pence sucked up to Trump.
Pence ran the transition and chose most of the staff in Trump Whitehouse leading to Koch Brothers people and NEVER-Trumpers and ex-Bush people being hired to Trump Whitehouse.
Among those staff choices was Koch Brothers funded Mick Mulvaney.
Pence and Mulvaney told Trump to sign the Omnibus earlier this year that had NO WALL in it.
Pence and Mulvaney tell in Trump’s ear how great and smart he is and Trump eats that up and has FORGOTTEN his election promises regarding immigration.
Latest stupidity from Trump is that the wall can wait until AFTER mid-terms and even after mid-terms another Koch Brothers funded Republican from Kansas called Kevin Yoder will only give Trump 5 billion for the wall (out of the 25 billion needed) while flooding USA with more H1B’s to lower American IT and STEM wages and flod USA with H2B’s to lower working class wages and create a shortcut to a Greencard to millions of Indians.
Donald Trump is a Koch Brothers puppet as a president and he is too blinded by Pence and Mulvaney sucking up to him to realize what is happening.
Koch Brothers got their president and it is Trump and Trump will sabotage himself and Republicans just like Koch Brothers want by NOT building a wall and by NOT stopping illegals.
Has anyone considered that China could crash the dollar because they are FORCED to sell off Treasuries? Involuntarily? If the trade war hits them with major debt defaults, could they be forced into a huge dollar sell off?
China can NOT crash the dollar. The crashing of dollar would crash Chinese exports to USA thereby crashing Chinese economy.
When you owe millions the bank owns you and when you owe millions you own the bank.
China will crash totally without exports to USA and China need low yuan so exports to USA flow and the lower the yuan is the less as percentage of their profits do Chinese companies have to pay in wages so more companies are profitable with a lower yuan.
I guess everyone has considered that possibility. Welcome to the club!
For China to sell Treasuries, someone else has to buy them — and probably pay in dollars. We could imagine the dollar value of Treasuries dropping dramatically as the market for Treasury certificates finds its clearing price — but would that necessarily affect the value of the dollar versus other currencies?
And then China would be sitting on a stack of dollar bills instead of Treasuries. That may not have solved China’s problems. And if China starts spending those dollars to buy real goods (such as food, oil, raw materials), that will push up the dollar price of those commodities.
Bottom line — China’s ownership of Treasuries is a challenge for China, not for the Dollar. The analogous situation with Russia may explain why Russia slowly sold off its much smaller stack of Treasuries.
The real problem is not that China owns some US Government debt — the problem is that governments around the world have incurred debts they can never repay, which means that many people’s “assets” are going to turn out to be worthless. And then there are governments’ unfunded liabilities. There is no avoiding it — there will be tears before bedtime.
But I wonder…. suppose the yuan drops too far in a crisis and they are forced to buy yuan with dollars/Treasuries? And exports to the US or not, this might be done as an emergency measure – without regard to maintaining the US economy.
In the 1929 crash, a handful of banks tried buy the market for a few weeks to stop the crash. Efforts failed. Now we have multiple central banks trying to print money out of thin air for 10 years, and the financial system still isn’t strong enough to recover on its own. That should tell you how powerful this coming bear market will be.
The recovery has (and is) always been a sham. It’s largely been based on manipulating statistic and CB driven asset inflation.
Rather a statement of the obvious
Winter is coming!