Zero Hedge Offers A Different View Of The Global Economy

Where Are We Now? – A World View

 

 

 

” Wondering why the money world got its knickers in a twist last week? The answer is simple: the global economy is breaking apart and its constituent major players are doing face-plants on the downhill slope of a no-longer-cheap-oil way of life.  Let’s look at them case by case.

     The USA slogs deeper into paralysis and decay in a collective mental fog of disbelief that its own exceptionalism can’t overcome the laws of thermodynamics. This general malaise precipitates into a range of specific quandaries. The so-called economy depends on financialization, since it is no longer based on manufacturing things of value. The financialization depends on housing, that is, a particular kind of housing: suburban sprawl housing (and its commercial accessories, the strip malls, the box stores, the burger shacks, etc.). Gasoline is now too expensive to run the suburban living arrangement. It will remain marginally unaffordable. Even if the price of oil goes down, it will be because citizens of the USA will not have enough money to buy it. Lesson: the suburban project is over, along with the economy it drove in on.

     But so is the mega-city project, the giant metroplex of skyscrapers. So, don’t suppose that we can transform the production house-building industry into an apartment-building industry. The end of cheap oil also means we can’t run cities at the 20^th century scale. That includes the scale of the buildings as well as the aggregate scale of the whole urban organism. Nobody gets this. For one thing, there will be far fewer jobs in anything connected to financialization because that “industry” is imploding. The recent action around the Federal Reserve illustrates this. When chairman Bernanke’s lips quivered last week, the financial markets had a grand mal seizure. He floated the notion that his organization might “taper” their purchases of US government issued debt and mortgage-backed securities — the latter being mostly bundled debt originated by government-sponsored entities and agencies. That’s the “money” that supports the suburban sprawl industry.”

 

 

 

Read the whole sobering article … if you dare .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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More Discouraging Economic News From Zero Hedge

 

US Macro Data Plunges Most In 10 Months

 

 

 

 

” The last two weeks have not been pretty for the ‘it’s different this time’ crowd. Day after day has brough miss after miss in macro-economic data for the US; from PMIs to NFPs, no matter how hard you try, there is not even enough for an ‘anecdotal’ strategist to pin his BTFD thesis on. Quantitatively, the US macro surprise index has seen its biggest 10-day drop in 10 months, completely reversing all the ‘seasonally-adjusted’ difference from the 2011 ‘Deja-Vu’ market and macro behavior.”

Related articles

• FSN: US Macro Data Plunges Most In 10 Months (silveristhenew.com)
• US Macro Data Plunges Most In 10 Months (financialsurvivalnetwork.com)
• Gold (and Silver): Where From Here? (safehaven.com)
• Introduction to Macro-economics: Nature and Scope. (cashflo4u2.wordpress.com)
• Olivier Blanchard: Five Lessons for Economists From the Financial Crisis (delong.typepad.com)

 

 

 

 

 

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Yes You !

Hey You

 

 

 

Submitted by Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform, Hey you, out there on the road always doing what you’re told,Can you help me? Hey you, out there beyond the wall, Breaking bottles in the hall, Can you help me? Hey you, don’t tell me there’s no hope at all Together we stand, divided we fall. Pink Floyd – Hey You

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World

The world makes less sense every day. Little children are randomly slaughtered in their schoolrooms. Predator drones roam the skies over foreign countries exterminating bad guys, along with innocent women and children (collateral damage when it occurs in a foreign country). Drugged up mentally ill kids with no hope and no future live lives of secluded quiet desperation until they snap. Ignorant, government educated, welfare dependent drones with no self respect or respect for others, assault, kill and rob within their government created urban jungles. Sociopathic criminals who committed the largest financial crime in world history walk free and continue to occupy executive suites in luxury office towers in downtown NYC, collecting millions in bonuses as compensation for crushing the American middle class.  

Academics, whose theories have been thoroughly disproven, continue to steer our economy into an iceberg while accelerating the money printing and debt issuance that will sink our ship of state. Corrupt, bought off politicians pander to the lowest common denominator as their votes are only dependent upon who contributed the most to their election campaigns, which never end. Delusional, materialistic, egocentric, math challenged consumers (formerly known as citizens) live for today, enslave themselves in debt, vote themselves more entitlements, and care not for future generations.

The alienation and isolation created by our sprawling, automobile dependent, technology obsessed, government controlled, debt financed society has spread like a cancerous tumor, slowly killing our country.

Pink Floyd released The Wall 33 years ago. It was a concept rock opera album that explored the issues of abandonment, isolation, alienation, authoritarianism, the brutality of war, a tyrannical conformist educational system, and the walls individuals and society build to protect themselves from having to confront reality and deal with the consequences of their actions. ”

 

 

Related articles

• Hey You – Are you just another brick in the wall? (thedailysheeple.com)
• Should we EVER trust government? (mercuryreliance.wordpress.com)
• PBS Special Follows the ‘Rise of the Drones’ (usnews.com)
• Guest Post: HEY YOU (blacklistednews.com)
• “HEY YOU”: Orwellian Government Oppression and Never Ending Wars (webabuser.blogspot.com)

Worst President And Worst Recovery In Only Four Years , Imagine Where We’ll Be In Eight

It’s Official: Worst. Recovery. EVER

” If there was any debate whether the Fed’s policies have helped the economy or just the market (and specifically the Bernanke-targeted Russell 2000), the following two charts will end any and all debate. As the following chart from the St Louis Fed shows, as of the just completed quarter, US GDP “growth” since the “recovery” is now the worst in US history, having just dipped below the heretofore lowest on record. “

Related articles

• Thanks Barack… US Suffering Through Worst. Recovery. Ever. (thegatewaypundit.com)
• Bernanke Seen Pressing On With Stimulus Amid Debate on QE – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
• This Is What 1,230 Days (And Counting) Of Explicit Market Support By The Federal Reserve Looks Like (zerohedge.com)
• Are We Witnessing a Tectonic Shift in Which Central Bank Policy Dominates Asset Prices and Risk Premiums? (minyanville.com)
• Bernanke speech highlights issues with tight lending (lexingtonlaw.com)
• Watch Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke Take Questions (blogs.wsj.com)

Uh Oh !

The Scariest Chart Of The Quarter: Student Debt Bubble Officially Pops As 90+ Day Delinquency Rate Goes Parabolic

Read The Whole Thing 

Scary Is The Word

” We have already discussed the student loan bubble, and its popping previously, most extensively in this article. Today, we get the Q3 consumer credit breakdown update courtesy of the NY Fed’s quarterly credit breakdown. And it is quite ghastly. As of September 30, Federal (not total, just Federal) rose to a gargantuan $956 billion, an increase of $42 billion in the quarter – the biggest quarterly update since 2006. “

Related articles

• Student Loan Debt Rising, and Often Not Being Paid Back (economix.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Student loans taking a toll on consumers’ credit ratings (creditrepair.com)
• Student Loan Problems On The Rise, Delinquencies Hit New High (forbes.com)
• U.S. Consumer Credit Up $18.1 Billion in August (nytimes.com)