U.S. Banks, Economy Continue Up in Smoke

economic fire sale

Even though this website hasn’t been dwelling on bank closures lately, the number of bank closures is definitely on the increase. In anticipation of the holiday weekend, seven U.S. banks have been closed, bringing the total of banks closed this year to 52.

What has made the closures this week unique is that many of the banks have been financially interlinked, which has exposed them to closure because of CDOs and loan losses. Local banks, not too large to fail, have been hit especially hard during the economic crisis, as a drop in home values has devalued mortgage-backed assets. The rising unemployment numbers have also impacted the banks, as more consumers are defaulting on their loans.

What really highlights the current economic crisis to me was a visit to a large retailer yesterday. I spent an hour in the store and as I shopped, I heard all manner of phone conversations and scuttlebutt between employees about the economy, economic failure, job losses and financial family crises. This snapshot in time on a Thursday afternoon would seem to indicate that the nation is enduring some uncommon suffering as you read this commentary. While I was shopping, I wasn’t looking for what I discovered. The conversations, many of them quite loud, were impossible to ignore. ~ E. Manning

No Excuses for Bernie Madoff

What has been described as a contrite Bernie Madoff appeared in court with an apology to his victims. Madoff expressed that he believed that he would be able to work his way of his financial scheme, but was never able. Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison, according to the judge, symbolic for a crime of “extraordinary evil.” Madoff was perceived as a powerful financial advisor because he was able to create double digit returns for his clients in all financial weather.  For more than a decade, even the SEC overlooked the fact that he was running a ponzi scheme, using new investors to pay off old ones as he lived the high life.

American Employment Continues to Plunge

America continues labor freefall

It appears that the labor market in America is at an stupendous low, with 59.7% of Americans projected to be employed using traditional government statistics. As we have discussed on this website, the plight is actually much worse.

Jobs and Inflation: Bernanke Kisses Up

“…the Federal Reserve aims for maximum employment and price stability. To achieve those goals, we must formulate policy based on our best assessment of where the economy is heading. Clearly, the timeliness and reliability of your labor market and price reports are critical to us. Besides those monthly indicators, our analysis and forecasting of inflation and real activity require a number of BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics)  inputs. We need to understand productivity because it is a key element in determining how fast the economy can expand without generating inflation. And we need to factor in trends in wages and benefits, in consumer spending, and in how U.S. wage, price, and productivity trends compare with those abroad. Indeed, the analysis, research, and forecasting that forms the foundation for our policymaking must be grounded in solid economic information, such as the BLS provides.” ~ Chairman Ben S. Bernanke at the Bureau of Labor Statistics 125th Anniversary Celebration in Washington, D.C.

The Free Lunch: Digital Economy Creates Expectations

As savvy users storm the internet and costs for running the internet drop, the business world is discovering that the traditional business model may be on its ear. Internet businesses like Amazon also find themselves in a commanding position to make money in a diminishing market at the expense of traditional business. This has actually been in evidence for quite some time as the downward pressure on prices online continues, and along with it, the opportunity to make a buck. This has been evident in the world of freelance, as the global digital economy takes prices, including levels of fraud and piracy to new unheard of levels. Making a buck online is no longer an assumption as old internet models fail to produce the desired result: profits. Computer users expect to use services and acquire goods for free, without cost to themselves. Already, many services online are free. Business is being forced to comply in order to compete since online customers refuse to pick up the tab. Free has evolved from a marketing gimmick to an expectation. Naturally, business continues to resist the drive of the consumer. Now internet services are being used with the hope of baiting consumers, but this isn’t working as the average user becomes more cynical and savvy. The old maxim “keep your money in your pocket” continues to prevail as the world of business wonders how to keep the business world strictly business.

Federal Reserve Discovers Deviancy

About 16 years ago, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan offered a striking view of the degradation of standards in society. He observed that deviancy was measured as increases in crime, broken homes, and mental illness. These reached levels never seen by earlier generations in the U.S. As a means of coping with the onslaught, society often sought to define the problem away. The definition of customary behavior was expanded. Actions once considered deviant from acceptable standards became, almost immaculately, within bounds. In the case of the authority by the Federal Reserve, deviancy has been all but ignored.

After opening up with a classic comparison of standards in society, Kevin Warsh has other observations about the Federal Reserve that would lead one to wonder if central bankers are really lost, but couching this misdirection as a new philosophy of public exploration of purpose and policy. No such luck fellow Americans and globalists.

Warsh asks: “Will deviancy be defined down with the understanding that a rare crisis is the price for dynamic, robust economic growth?” The Federal Reserve is exploring new philosophy of social and monetary control, but is still thinking within the same old box of capitalism and economic growth via Wall Street and bankers instead of the real economy where the mainstream actually live and grow their lives.

Even Warsh recognizes that over the last few decades that America has not lived in a golden age. He says that periodic, cyclical weakness occur. There were lessons to be learned. Did we learn lessons at any point along the way? Now Kevin Warsh is asking bankers and economic pundits what they want in a new ‘touchy-feely’ approach of philosophy to the recent banking crisis. That’s right…this was a banking crisis, not just another recession. If bankers had not become economic and social deviants, the U.S. and the world would not be in this recession.

Still, Warsh is asking his friends and banking associates whether they choose stability or performance. What do you think bankers will say? The Fed is not really talking change, just more of the same boilerplate economic policies, unchanged for decades and augmented with more control measures and power for central bankers. The Fed doesn’t seek to reform anything, but has plenty to say that supports the status quo. The U.S. and the Fed, through the brotherhood of central bankers, has misused a position of trust. Now the Fed is printing vast sums of money (credit) that will ultimately tumble the dollar and create a larger crisis. ~ E. Manning

Recovery: New Technology and Financial Literacy With a Glimmer of Hope

There are signs that the rapid decline in economic activity of the past few quarters is slowing. Per the observation by the Federal Reserve, stabilization or improvement will begin from very low levels compared with those the levels of previous recoveries. This recovery is likely to be painfully slow and “the economy unusually vulnerable to new shocks. The news remains bad in two areas of direct importance to American families: Unemployment continues to rise and housing prices continue to decline.”

“Government-provided liquidity and guarantees remain as necessary supports in many areas. Because the collapse of these same markets set off the present crisis and the serious recession that has followed, the case for far-reaching reform appears a strong one.”

The Federal Reserve admits the fact that banks are highly leveraged, presumably due to the fractional reserve backlash in this crisis and compounded by creative banking instruments that have brought the system to its’ knees. Many bankers have been highly creative in protecting themselves from public or government scrutiny on an ongoing basis.

The Fed readily admits:

“that a malfunction in the financial industry can immediately and profoundly harm the entire economy…As we have seen to our dismay in the last year, even where such support is forthcoming, the resulting damage inflicted on the real economy by the financial sector can still be extensive, and the potential costs to taxpayers can still be high.”

For some time, the Federal Reserve has heralded the idea of financial literacy as if it were some ‘new technology’. Now the Fed has realized its’ own training regarding the need for a new financial literacy. The Fed now admits “that systemic risk was very much built into our financial system,” spotlighting the too-big-to-fail phenomenon as one of the most problematic systemic risks in the financial system.

Many members of the Fed now admit that we much apply ‘new technology’ to financial literacy and systemic risk in an effort to overcome the greed syndrome that has wracked U.S. and global banking for the last several decades. The problem remains that central bankers, like the Federal Reserve, are now in charge of implementing policy that can pad and perpetuate their own bottom line and purpose for existence since all central bankers are, in reality, a closed brotherhood or society devoted to their own corporate and global power in the financial system as they tap profits from their own system to benefit the global system and the shareholders of the global corporate central banking system. ~ E. Manning

Financial Racketeering: Send Corrupt Bankers to Prison

Buy your own t-shirt and tell the world you want justice!

As a protective corporate reaction to the economic and fiscal banking crisis that corrupt bankers have brought upon the nation and the world, bankers have sought to hide the true nature and scope of the toxic assets that they hold. The government has been frustrated in its attempts to truly grasp or know the true situation because of corporate trickery and subterfuge on the part of many banking institutions as bankers often continue to operate their own protection racket. Yet, once bankers have been bailed out by the federal government for their short-sided thinking and the development of corrupt speculative banking instruments, some have sought to pay the debt back with the hopes of continuing the banking gravy train for themselves including unsupervised and virtually unlimited pay perks. From the reaction of the Federal Reserve, accounting standards appear to be lacking as bankers continue the attempt to operate their own private corporate racketeering.

With the expectation of countermanding this continued rebellion by bankers, the Federal Reserve has issued new accounting rules which will have a material effect on banking organizations’ accounting for off-balance sheet vehicles. The legislation will take hold in 2010 to address weaknesses in accounting and disclosure standards for off-balance banking instruments.

The Fed is also reviewing regulatory capital standards for bankers based on their experience in the banking bailout which they expect to apply to banking institutions, further cramping the style of many bankers. As a result of the review of new banking capital standards for bankers, the U.S. government is not eager to immediately accept paybacks of bailout money. The U.S. government apparently believes that the bailout has functioned as a fairly reasonable control lever in temporarily reigning in the ongoing greed within the banking community. ~ E. Manning

Economy: Good Prospects Beyond White Collar Jobs

Voices of reason have long proclaimed that the only key to a decent future is a college education as we trumpet excess, luxury and credit for all. The halls of academia do not suit every temperament, nor can the world operate only through the league of white collar employment and office jobs. Who will take care of the national infrastructure, manufacturing and all those green jobs that the nation has been promised? A sedentary, artery-clogging, boss-centered lifestyle is not a requirement to exist in America. Yet, hundreds of thousands of American youth have been or continue to buy into massive college loans if credit is available. Nearly half of students who start college will drop out before graduating. Our country has been facing major workforce shortages for years, which have been taken up by illegals in many cases. They are the latest attempt by big business and government to create a new subclass of American worker in which to found a new nation.

Without question, the nation has been suffering where jobs are concerned, brought about by nothing less than white collar crime. You can’t really talk about careers since corporates nip millions of so-called careers in the bud every year due to their own self-interest. That reality existed before the recession stripped the nation of what millions of Americans see as their only self-respect: the job.

America has been convinced working a corporate job is the only way to live. The white collar job has been sold as the American stock and trade. The federal government has been very happy with this campaign as corporations and big business are highly complicit with federal law and the collection of taxes. As a result of this nearsighted approach, the American labor force has been selling itself short and has allowed itself to be deluded about the future and personal potential for the future.

We are being told that only by following rules and leadership of big business, the corporate and the academic world, can Americans possibly prosper. Has this proclaimed fact proved to be true? Are you truly being prospered now? Has the nation prospered? Think for yourself. You are your own best friend and are fully capable of supporting yourself if you are willing to think outside the box that the government, big business and corporates have made for you. There is hope. Great personal success can exist outside the cubicle. You are not a slave…at least not per the founding documents of America. ~ E. Manning

Joblessness and Government Economists

Send a card to your favorite unemployed American.

If important economists say it, it must be true.