Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 2010)

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Neshant
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Neshant »

India's problem is severe over population and very low resource per capita for just about everything.

Very difficult for a poor country to become rich without uninterrupted access to cheap and abundant resources.

However building up a savings (as opposed to debt) based consumer market can itself be a resource even if it takes some time.

The key is to keep wall street style banking & financial scamming out of the picture where wealth gets robbed from society and migrates to crooks shuffling paper at the top.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Singha »

so much for VC's driving new startups creating new jobs....Neshant on the dot that no next-big-thing is known at the moment.

WSJ

Venture Capital Could Shrivel Away

By JOHN JANNARONE

The only way to break some habits is to hit rock bottom.

Such might be the solution for venture-capital firms, which make equity investments in early-stage growth companies. The industry rode high up to and during the dot-com boom but has suffered a vicious cycle of losses since the bubble burst. U.S. venture-capital funds raised each year from 1999 to 2007 have posted median annualized returns ranging from a 0.3% gain to a 7.7% loss, says research firm Preqin.

Not surprisingly, fund raising has now come to a near halt. Thomson Reuters estimates U.S. venture-capital funds raised just $1.9 billion in the second quarter. By comparison, in the same period of 2000, the peak year, funds raised $33 billion. In 2009, just 170 funds raised new money, compared with 749 in 2000.
[VENTUREHERD]

It isn't just investors who are walking away. Many venture-capital money managers who joined the game after the '90s have never had a big payday. A decade without performance fees is no incentive to keep digging for deals.

Counterintuitively, this shrinkage could offer a glimmer of hope for venture capitalists, as it should mean less money is chasing deals. Yet hurdles remain. One key to success during the technology boom was the chance to take early-stage companies public. In 2000, some 263 venture-backed companies had initial public offerings, Thomson Reuters says. Even in 2007's bull market, only 86 such firms had IPOs, and just 26 have gone public so far in 2010.

This drought isn't likely to end soon. The market for small-cap stocks has become less liquid as many regional investment banks that specialized in fledgling companies have shuttered. Sarbanes-Oxley reporting requirements have also added several million dollars to the annual cost of being listed, significant for firms on the cusp of profitability.

As a result, venture-backed firms now have one main exit route: selling to strategic buyers. The likes of Cisco Systems and Google have tens of billions of dollars in cash. International Business Machines has recently made a string of software-company acquisitions and remains on the hunt. But such sophisticated buyers are choosy and unlikely to pay IPO-like prices that might boost venture-capital returns.

Of course, the 1980s proved that venture-capital funds can hit home runs without IPO fever. But much of that success was driven by then-emerging technologies linked to PCs and the Internet. Without another big technological shift, innovation opportunities will likely be harder to find.

Venture capital mightn't see another golden age unless a new sector with true growth prospects emerges. Barring that, investors who once allocated fixed amounts to venture capital will become a thing of the past. The sector could shrivel to a handful of funds, losing its status as an asset class alongside private equity.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Hari Seldon »

Anyone recall sri ss_roy's bold proclamation back in oct'08 that western banks will soon start to look like desi public sector banks only?

Well, the bankers staved that off pretty well for pretty long, eh?

What with gubmint in their pocket, and armed with FASB 157 and then 100s of billions in bailout monies and high freq trading computers with outsized prop trading profits and free (0% interest) money borrowed from the Fed was re-lent to the taxpayer (bond yields are >0%) to pocket the differential risk-free only etc etc "whew".

Well, here's Jesse's plainspeak on the subjectof what ought to be done re western TBTF banks and why...
America must decide what type of country it wishes to be, and then conform public and foreign policy to those ends, and not the other way around. Politicians have no right to subjugate the constitutional process of government to any foreign organization.

Secrecy, except in very select military matters, is repugnant to the health of a democratic government, and is almost always a means to conceal a fraud. Corporations are not people, and do not have the rights of individuals as such.

Banks are utilities for the rational allocation of capital created by savings, and as utilities deserve special protections. All else is speculation and gambling. In banking, simpler and more stable is better. Low cost rules, as excessive financialisation is a pernicious tax on the real economy.
The bolded part is == nationalization of banks and making gubmint depts outta them only. Indira's gyan dawned a generation+ too late on the mighty west, seems like.

More Jesse:
Financial speculation, as opposed to entrepreneurial investment, creates little value, serving largely to transfer wealth from the many to the few, often by exploiting the weak, and corrupting the law. It does serve to identify and correct market inefficiencies, but this benefit is vastly overrated, because those are quickly eliminated. {hear! Hear!}As such it should be allowed, but tightly regulated and highly taxed as a form of gambling.

When the oligarchy's enablers, hired help is the politer word, and assorted useful idiots ask, "But how then will we do this or that?" ask them back, "How did we do it twenty years ago?" Before the financial revolution and the descent into a bubble economy and a secretive and largely corrupted government with a GDP whose primary product is fraud.


Then the rationalization for the almost-inevitable - a trade war and protectionism as joblessness continues its relentless march.
Other nations, such as China, are surely acting for their own interests, and in many cases the interests of their people, much more diligently and effectively than the kleptocrats who are in power in Washington and New York these days. How then could we possibly subvert the Constitution and the welfare of the people to unelected foreign organizations? If this requires a greater reliance on self-sufficiency, then so be it. America is large enough to see to its own, as the others see to theirs.
...
Efficient markets hypothesis is almost as great a hoax as the benefits of globalization and 'free trade' have been to the American people as a whole. These things are promoted by the few, at the expense of the gullible many, for their own personal benefit.
The job loss crisis:
What are 308,367,109 Americans supposed to do?
First of all, despite clamping down on immigration, our population grew by 2.6M people last year. Unfortunately, not only did we not create jobs for those 2.6M new people but we lost about 4M jobs so what are these new people going to do? Not only that, but nobody is talking about the another major job issue: People aren’t retiring! They can’t afford to because the economy is bad – that means there are even less job openings… The pimply faced kid can’t get a job delivering pizza because his grandpa’s doing it.

There are some brilliant pundits who believe cutting retirement benefits will fix our economy. How will that work exactly? Pay old people less money, don’t cover their medical care and what happens? Then they need money. If they need money, they need to work and if they need to work they increase the supply of labor, which reduces wages and leaves all 308,367,109 of us with less money. Oh sorry, not ALL 308,367,109 – just 308,337,109 – the top 30,000 (0.01%) own the business the other 308,337,109 work at and they will be raking it in because labor is roughly 1/3 of the cost of doing business in America and our great and powerful capitalists have already cut their manufacturing costs by shipping all those jobs overseas, where they pay as little as $1 a day for a human life so now, in order to increase their profits (because profits MUST be increased) they have now turned inward to see what they can shave off in America.
Warns abt the risks of seeking solace from a man on a horse....
Hatred, mean spiritedness, and resentment of the weak, the old, the different, is a trick played on the masses by oligarchs and would be dictators from time immemorial.

{Now juxtapose the cost of the so-called auterity measures on precisely these sections of the populace whereas not a single penny of the loot by financial elites has been disgorged yet.... Social support systems are under serious and systematic threat everywhere in the emerged world. There's a real chance that poverty - that gut wrenching turd-world variety might actually show up again the first world in the next few yrs. Soical support is needed now more than ever as ever larger numbers retire into zero savings and penury}

They play to the darker side of the crowd. It is a trap, and the means to the demise of freedom. And these tricksters play it well, because deceit is their specialty, their stock in trade.{Amen}
Jesse's unvarnished admiration for economix and economystics remains resolute, however:
Economics will not provide any answers in and of itself. Economics without an a priori policy and morality, without a guiding principle like the Constitution, is a heartless monster easily manipulated to say whatever one wishes it to say, if they are willing to pay enough economists to say it. Its reputation as a science is greatly exaggerated.
Bravo for saying it like it is.

Jesse then tops it off with a well-known quote from Des onlee...
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mohandas K. Gandhi
Jai ho.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Singha »

many old peple would already be struggling financially...its just that they do not bear arms, blog or otherwise raise a visible racket.

if healthcare and living costs continue to rise, the last resort of old people people would be living way out in rural areas and cutting
things to the bare bones. there - unloved, forgotten and uncared by their ingrate political and financial overlords, they shall breathe their last in a country they helped substantially to make a superpower.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Nayak »

I see only one solution in the far horizon, war. Only the mil-ind cabal of massa can pull them out of this morass.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by SwamyG »

I first saw Elizabeth Warren on Jon Stewart's show; and she was a hit in my opinion. I am (or was) an Obama supporter, but he has been a big let down. He has not done enough to punish the financial criminals. I keep preaching, how Democrats and Republicans are cut from the same fabric and are really the same animal; the System is such that Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich will never lead the country.

Neshant: India's population problem can be solved to an extent, by GoI assisting outward migration to other countries - Canada, Australia, Africa and S.E.Asia (possibly even CAR) This policy is not bereft of takleef; but from a long term perspective - say 50-100 years, India needs to think on these lines. I agree that the Western style of scamming should be kept at an arm's length (it is not as if we don't have home-grown ones). But we are in an age, when India can assert its own view of economy and how to run it.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by SwamyG »

derkonig wrote: Brazil & most of SAmer may have the right demographics, but their leftist idealogy, "revolutionary" spirit & blind hate of US will ensure that they stay behind. Russia is dying out.
I am more buoyant about Brazil than Russia, though. For some reason, I would bet on sub-tropical and tropical countries than a tundra-taiga based countries :-). If Russia has to survive, it can extend hearty hospitality to Indians to settle; it is a win-win situation for Russia and India. India gets more and more people out of poverty, Russia gets more hard-working labor who will save and bring prosperity (to any country).
In the longer run leftist or rightist ideologies don't matter. If the wealthy nations stop meddling around in the internal affairs of poorer countries & stop supplying arms and ammunition things will become less "revolutionary". How moral are these Western countries chiefly Russia, France & USA who keep arming the entire World and causing more misery. Pull the funds plug, the people killing each other will have just knives, stones, machetes, axes, country made "stuff" to kill each other.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by SwamyG »

Hari Seldon wrote: Jesse's unvarnished admiration for economix and economystics remains resolute, however:
Economics will not provide any answers in and of itself. Economics without an a priori policy and morality, without a guiding principle like the Constitution, is a heartless monster easily manipulated to say whatever one wishes it to say, if they are willing to pay enough economists to say it. Its reputation as a science is greatly exaggerated.
Bravo for saying it like it is.

Jesse then tops it off with a well-known quote from Des onlee...
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mohandas K. Gandhi
Jai ho.
Hari: Jesse's wisdom mimics our own Purushartha. Artha (wealth) and Kama (happiness) have to be earned under the umbrella of Dharma (sustainability) leading to Moksha (liberation from worries). The West keeps arguing about regulation and deregulation; the experts argue taking positions at the extreme; but the truth (sustainable living) is a balance between the two extremes.

The only difference between our ancient Indic wisdom and the current Western learning is that the Indic wisdom was not expressed in French, Latin, Chinese or English but in Indic languages.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Neshant »

SwamyG wrote:Neshant: India's population problem can be solved to an extent, by GoI assisting outward migration to other countries - Canada, Australia, Africa and S.E.Asia
The population of India is growing at a phenomenal rate and outward migration is just a tiny fraction of it (< 0.01%). Other countries don't want to take in a hoard of poor people either. The vast majority cannot leave and continue contributing to over-population. Its a serious problem and I don't see anyone in government addressing the issue.

Unless the population growth is brought under control, India will turn into a dump yard unable to provide even basic ameneties like clean water, sanitation, disease prevention, hygene, shelter..etc.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by aqkhan »

Neshant wrote: The population of India is growing at a phenomenal rate.
Wrong. http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb- ... l=en&dl=en

India's population growth has slown significantly ever since the economy headed in the right direction.
Neshant wrote: and outward migration is just a tiny fraction of it (< 0.01%). Other countries don't want to take in a hoard of poor people either.
Other countries are not taking in hordes of poor. They are taking in people who are capable of sustaining growth in their country. US is a prime example.
Neshant wrote: The vast majority cannot leave and continue contributing to over-population. Its a serious problem and I don't see anyone in government addressing the issue.
The population kept India's growth stable even when the world was going through a huge recession. Population can be an asset. Government can not dictate draconian one child policies like China. And frankly, I don't think India needs dictation. With prosperity, population will control itself. You can see the graph I posted on top as proof.

As a matter of fact, check out why China's aging population is a threat to themselves.
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb- ... =Y&tlen=48

India's population growth is relatively stable, China's population growth is meagre leading to an ageing population and Pakistan's growth rate is alarmingly exponential.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by abhischekcc »

One of the elephants in the room, something not being mentioned, is the western standards of living have to fall drastically if humanity is to survive the multiple crises facing it.

Whether it is the financial crisis, or the energy crisis, or the much larger environmental crisis - none of them can be solved without a reduction of resource destruction consumption in the west.

All related political problems will be solved - whether it is the genocidal politics in Africa, or the Kashmir problem, or the continuous LIC in South America. Pick any conflict in the world - and it will have western economic interest as its root cause.

We the citizens of the world should demand an end to this economic apartheid.

[[Added the word consumption instead of destruction - although they both mean the same, aqkhan, it should read better now]]
Last edited by abhischekcc on 19 Jul 2010 23:48, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by SwamyG »

Neshant: Agreed, that is why I say the population needs to be spread across the globe. A high density in a limited space (however large) will become a burden on any government. Since India is democratic, one cannot place "dragonian" measures :-). Isn't there a popular quip about the earth having enough resources to satisfy our needs but not our wants?

Added: abhischek, you point out some very important factors in play.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by aqkhan »

abhischekcc wrote:One of the elephants in the room, something not being mentioned, is the western standards of living have to fall drastically if humanity is to survive the multiple crises facing it.
LOL. Western standards will come down automatically if there is serious sustained competition from countries like BRIC. You cannot 'demand' the west not to live lavishly. Tomorrow, if Africa 'demands' everyone to live like it, will India do it?
abhischekcc wrote: Western standards of living is
Whether it is the financial crisis, or the energy crisis, or the much larger environmental crisis - none of them can be solved without a reduction of resource destruction in the west.
???
abhischekcc wrote: All related political problems will be solved - whether it is the genocidal politics in Africa, or the Kashmir problem, or the continuous LIC in South America. Pick any conflict in the world - and it will have western economic interest as its root cause.

We the citizens of the world should demand an end to this economic apartheid.
I think the locals are to blame as much as the west for being either too stupid to play the western game or for the people in power to play it deliberately. To avoid it, the people will have to take charge.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by vera_k »

India's population problem is real, and it impacts ordinary people's quality of life by undermining government's ability to deliver services. A glaring example is despite all around growth in the generation of electricity since 1947, today there is only one state that is anywhere close to having a power surplus.

The rationale that economic growth will lead to population control is an excuse for an underperforming government because of other variable like education and healthcare that are not perfectly correlated with growth. With half the per capita income of India, Bangladesh has managed to get to lower population growth than India.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by aqkhan »

vera_k wrote:India's population problem is real, and it impacts ordinary people's quality of life by undermining government's ability to deliver services. A glaring example is despite all around growth in the generation of electricity since 1947, today there is only one state that is anywhere close to having a power surplus.
The government's inability to deliver services is because of increasing migration from rural to urban areas and inadequate planning. As I pointed out earlier, the growth rate of the country is sustainable in the short run, assuming it slows down only a little in the future due to economic prosperity. The population migration from rural to urban areas in both tier 1 and tier 2 cities is causing havoc due to inadequate planning and reactive development rather than proactive development by the government. Electricity is also a prime example of reactive development from the government at all levels in India. The increase in manufacturing industry of India caused an increasing load on the electricity generation and rather than giving out contracts to private enterprises and only formulating regulations to increase electricity production, the government focussed on increasing its own footprint and insisted on being the only major player in electricity generation with limited contribution from Tata and Reliance power. In India, the government can seriously open up the arena with giving subsidies to solar power providers, which can power a lot of homes during the day, which can make power cuts non-existent. Solar power in India is feasible, unlike United States and China, because India has over 300 sunny days during the year which can relieve much of the electricity production deficit if the funds are utilized properly. Just because the government is stupid, doesn't mean current population level cannot be sustained.
vera_k wrote: The rationale that economic growth will lead to population control is an excuse for an underperforming government because of other variable like education and healthcare that are not perfectly correlated with growth. With half the per capita income of India, Bangladesh has managed to get to lower population growth than India.
The population of India is not an excuse of an underperforming government. The population at current levels of growth is viable, provided there is an increasing participation by the government and the people to solve the real problems and crisis facing the country. Also, you cannot deny the fact that with increasing economic prosperity, population growth controls on its own. The whole developed world is an example and India and China in the last 2 decades are an example. Statistics don't lie.India's primary roadblock is uneducated ministers, bureaucratic barrier and corruption at various levels of administration. Unless those issues are solved, we will only limp towards progress and not roar full-speed ahead.
Last edited by aqkhan on 20 Jul 2010 02:43, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by SwamyG »

A hit piece, i.e. the author hits at the West and Japan.
Not all have suffered the same fate. Although there are plenty of worries about the ongoing pace of China's economic expansion, Asian economies have rebounded with considerable ease over the past year or so. The same is broadly true of other emerging nations. How have they managed to pull off a trick which the magicians of Western policy making are still attempting to master? What sleight of hand have policymakers in the emerging world achieved? And why can't the same ploy be replicated in the West?

Let's go back to my cliff analogy. I'm reliably informed by those who go mountaineering that it's easier to climb up a rock face with a light, rather than a heavy, backpack. The emerging nations have learnt that lesson the hard way. In the 1980s and 1990s, over-burdened with debt, they would all-too-frequently lose their grip, weighed down by their profligacy. More recently, however, they have mostly behaved in conservative fashion, refusing to carry the debts of old. Like others, they succumbed to the global economic crisis. Unlike others, they were able to climb back up the cliff with relative ease. They didn't have to carry the burden of earlier excesses with them. Western nations are in a less fortunate position. Their backpacks are weighed down with both pre-crisis and now post-crisis debts. True, additional government borrowing prevented economies from completely falling onto the rocks of a Great Depression Mark II. Yet the costs have been substantial. Household and financial sector debt is still high but we now have to cope with excessive government debt too. These debts may be preventing a normal recovery from materialising.
Western equities are in the tenth year of a bear market. The US housing market is in decline again, emulating the falls in Japanese land prices. Long-term interest rates on government debt are extraordinarily low, even though government borrowing is seemingly out of control. They're low because no one else is keen to borrow in a world suffering from the uncertainties associated with excessive debts. In the majority of Western nations, inflation is absent, threatening a repeat of Japan's deflationary despair. And money-supply growth has collapsed, even though central banks have pursued all manner of unconventional policies to kick-start the credit system
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by SwamyG »

We want perspective, here is perspective from S. Gurumurthy in a two part article.

Choice nuggets....
There is no dispute about the fact that subprime housing-consumer credit expansion, which averaged $800 billion a year between 2000 and 2008, had invited the crisis.
Two lessons from the Great Depression later became part of the western economic theology to prevent recessions from degenerating into depressions. During the Great Depression, the tight money policies of US Fed starved illiquid banks to bankruptcy.

So, the first lesson was: when there is a credit spasm, make more credit available. With this in mind, when the crisis hit the US financial system in end-2008, the Fed flooded the banks with credit. The monetary base of the Fed — the money supply from the Fed to the banking system — jumped from $800 billion, where it stood for decades, to $2.2 trillion in just one quarter, the last of 2008.

The second lesson was: when private spending slows or stops, government should step in to spend, to keep the economy moving. The credit expansion and government spend combine took the stimulus amount to $4.7 trillion, of which the Troubled Assets Relief Programme (TARP) sum accounted for $3.7 trillion.
This shift of gear generated a fast, and false sense of, growth and wealth that mocked at the slow-growing real wealth. See how this shift in the relationship between the stock market and the real economy occurred from 1999 to 2007.

In 1996, the global GDP was $30.3 trillion and the global market cap was $19.6 trillion, with the former leading the latter by 100 to 65.

Between 1996 and 1999 global market cap rose by almost 80 per cent to $35.08 trillion; but the GDP, the index of the real economy, was almost unmoved, staying at $30.1 trillion.


Despite the global market cap leading the global GDP by 117.5 to 100 in 1999, the latter was uninfluenced by the dotcom bubble in the stock markets.

After the dotcom bluff was called, by 2002, the global market cap fell by 35 per cent from $35.08 trillion to $22.83 trillion, but the global GDP improved by 10 per cent, to $33.1 trillion, clearly indicating that the real economy stood on its own legs, insulated from the financial, and leading the latter by 100 to 69.
From 2003, the financial economy begins to overawe and lead the real economy. During the period from 2003 to 2007, the global stock market cap rose almost three-fold to $60.84 trillion. Between 2003 and 2008, the GDP rose by almost 85 per cent, to $61.1 trillion by 2008 — a growth propelled by paper money.

But the following year, 2009, after the meltdown, the market cap crashed from $60.87 trillion in 2007 to $32.85 trillion in 2008, before moving up to touch $47.78 trillion in 2009, thanks to the financial stimulus artificially energising the markets again.
But how did the shift of the financial economy leading the real occur from 2003? This occurred because what had made the stock market crazy also made the GDP rise.

Mindless credit creation through banks and derivatives was the reason for this high growth of the financial economy and the growth of the financial economy was the reason for the growth of the real economy in this period. {this is what i call growth induced in a "state of high" akin to the ones induced by alcohol or drugs}

From 1990 to 2002, the growth in global money supply was equal to the growth in global GDP, meaning that the financial system created only the credit needed for real growth. But during the period from 2003 to 2008, the growth in money supply was twice — yes twice — the growth in GDP.

This excess liquidity produced false growth and wealth. During this period the outstanding derivatives of banks, seen as “financial weapons of mass destruction” by Warren Buffet, vaulted from $142 trillion to $684 trillion.
A parting remark that I like
It is money by book entries creating more money by book entries, just a statistical growth. While this is the exuberant story of the ‘US revival', no one disputes that Europe is in ICU. Consequently, the dollar, which was on ventilator, is now on escalator, because the euro is on ventilator.

The fall of Europe is making the US a hero again. Yet, all — Mr Geithner and Mr Manmohan Singh included {a person so enamored of the West} — exult over stories of US and global growth and revival. If this were not irrational exuberance, what is?
Spending 9 dollars to earn 1
Irrational exuberance at work


ps: sorry to give link to Chindu, what to do onlee.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Hari Seldon »

TAE tweets
https://twitter.com/AutomaticEarth
China is now the biggest user of energy in the world. Consumes 2.2bn tons of oil equivalent http://bit.ly/dCnTJ4 Wow!
wow indeed.
How long before unkil and the rest of paschi in general is forced into doctrinal 'counterforce' measures to contain the emerging challenge/threat now?
If aam sdre aadmi also doesn't buy the 'harmonious rise' slogan of the dlagon, no way paschimi policy wonks buy it IMHO.
Bundesbank Says Deficit Countries Are Source of Danger for EMU http://bit.ly/cHsb20 “grave” erosion of competitiveness
LOL. Eurozoners == eurogoners only. First it was tragedy. Now it is farce. Only.
Analysis: Shift to U.S. dollar shorts not a sell signal http://bit.ly/axvcL0 Signal for a dollar rally? ;)
In deflationary conditions, cash is king. USD is well placed to ride the 'one eyed man in blind kingdom' wave for a while now.
Italian Doctors Strike Against planned Cuts; 40,000 Surgeries Delayed http://bit.ly/ad4UZ6
More euro tragi-comedy. Will spur medical tourism, hopefully to Yindia among other 3rd world countries.
Stress-testing Europe's banks won't stave off a deflationary vortex http://bit.ly/aukiqq M3 money supply contracting at a 10pc rate

Markets braced for turmoil after IMF and EU withdraw £17bn Hungary financing deal http://bit.ly/cwP9of
Etc.
Official: Seep found near #BP's blown out #oil well http://bit.ly/998bc0
uh-oh. Lez hope they plug that well....for good.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Neshant »

aqkhan wrote:
Neshant wrote: The population of India is growing at a phenomenal rate.
Wrong.
I don't think you understand that in absolute terms 1.34% growth rate is roughly 15 million additional people added ever year. In just 18 months, India adds the equivalent of an Australia (pop : 22 million) to its population. In a little over 2 years, it adds the equivalent of a Canada (pop : 34 million).

Its an insane number if one thinks of it.

I'm afraid pretending the problem does not exist will not make it go away. Anyone who goes to India is shocked by the sheer mass of humans moving around.

I've read somewhere that the population is projected to grow to 1.7 billion. That number is just mind boggling and I hope its wrong otherwise people will have to stand on top of each other's heads literally. And man the sanitation situation will be out of this world.

We may need Sanjay Gandhi 5 point population control program if we are to preserve a basic minimum quality of life for all. I forget what the 5 points are but one of the points is about compulsory sterilization for anyone with 2 kids.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by vera_k »

I think the problem is that democratic big government procedures like those prevalent in India can only sustain a certain level of population growth before the number of new people overwhelms any type of planning.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Suraj »

The best form of population control is rapid economic development and urbanization, with the attendant nuclearization of families. It's not a panacea though, and will bring about its own share of 'western' issues to India.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by svinayak »

Housing 'Mess' explained by simple charts/graphs!

The $4 Trillion Dollar Question


"....For many years, total mortgage debt consistently and reliably equalled 0.4 times the value of the US housing stock. Intuitively, this average of 0.4 makes perfect sense as every property usually has a mortgage ranging from 0 to 0.9 times its value. So in 1990, $6 trillion of housing collateral could support $2.5 trillion of mortgages, and by 2006, $23 trillion of housing collateral could support $10 trillion of mortgages. But since then, the US housing stock’s value has slumped to $16 trillion which means the amount of mortgage lending supportable by the collateral has plunged to $6 trillion. However, actual mortgage debt has remained at $10 trillion – $4 trillion too high....


"...With household formation running at just 0.9 million while the US is still building 0.6 million new homes annually, only 0.3 million of the oversupply will be absorbed per year. As there are currently 4 million too many homes, it may take years to mop up the huge oversupply of houses..."



More@
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/07/th ... uestion-2/
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by abhischekcc »

Suraj wrote:The best form of population control is rapid economic development and urbanization, with the attendant nuclearization of families. It's not a panacea though, and will bring about its own share of 'western' issues to India.
Not really. Middle east has a lot of money and also a high fertility rate.

What would work is if women have something else to do, and have access to contraception (and also, that the social mores allow use of such methods without condemning it as sin).

These things are missing in ME.

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

However, one must also add that the nuclear households with working women have a heavier environmental impact than nuclear households with stay-at-home wives/women. And these have a still higher impact than joint families.

This extends to the use of number of houses.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Suraj »

The Middle East counter example is a good one, but a specialized case - their 'development' is primarily oil money, and they suffer from the resource curse. In particular, being dependent on a volatile commodity like oil makes it hard for them to budget efficiently, which in turns leads to boomtime misallocation and subsequent stringent cuts during busts. In India's case, we've no claim to any resource in extraordinary measure - even items like iron ore come with their own problems (low grade, mining issues). The trend towards DINK/DISK families in an urban setting is a natural contraceptive, so to speak. Absolutely, it has its negatives, the increased environmental impect being one of them. But then, so do extra people.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Neshant »

hopefully India won't fall for these con artists that produce nothing other than paper scams.

can't believe the idiots allowed them a 10% stake in the national stock exchange. may as well put up a sign saying 'ROB ME'.

---------

Europe freezes out Goldman Sachs

European governments are turning their backs on Goldman Sachs, the all-conquering investment bank that has suffered a series of blows to its reputation, capped by the biggest ever fine imposed on a Wall Street firm.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010 ... bond-sales
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by abhischekcc »

>>The trend towards DINK/DISK families in an urban setting is a natural contraceptive, so to speak. Absolutely, it has its negatives, the increased environmental impect being one of them. But then, so do extra people.

Yup. What I was saying is that simply by controlling population in numbers will not, by itself, lead to sustainable development. What we also need is a change in consumption patterns.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by ramana »

Can we take population control talk out of this thread please? Thanks, ramana
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by SwamyG »

The East is telling the West: "Boss, been there done that; so pay heed to us"

Monetary Theory From a Chinese Historical Perspective
While many commentators focus on China’s future, this column draws economic theory insights from its past. It argues that Chinese monetary theory preceded Western thought and influenced the likes of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Moreover, it says the Eastern emphasis on the pursuit of wisdom, as opposed to knowledge, has a role to play in today’s economic debate.{BRFites have been saying similar things for ages now}
In the West, science has as its goal identification of objective truth; progress means moving ever closer to the frontier of knowledge. Eastern philosophy, by contrast, argues that there is only “knowledge”, which is embodied in deep thoughts of old and new texts. Old texts are held in particular reverence because they have passed the test of time.
This traditional distinction between “Western pursuit of knowledge” and “Eastern pursuit of wisdom” marks difference that pervade far more than East-West differences on economic thought. Delving into the wisdom of the past from an Asian traditional perspective as a way of moving forward in decision making on today’s problems thus seems a sensible way for Asians to proceed.
Economics remains, as Joan Robinson characterised it, a pseudoscience. It is more in the tradition of Durkheim’s emphasis on development of chains of deductive logic to aid policymakers in reaching decisions on social action. In this sense, the Eastern approach is not so different when it comes to economics. When considering how to proceed in the modern discipline of economics, we would argue that old and new knowledge should perhaps to be given equal weight.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by paramu »

SwamyG wrote:The East is telling the West: "Boss, been there done that; so pay heed to us"

Monetary Theory From a Chinese Historical Perspective
While many commentators focus on China’s future, this column draws economic theory insights from its past. It argues that Chinese monetary theory preceded Western thought and influenced the likes of Adam Smith and Karl Marx.
Chinese are making jokers out of themselves. Why do they need western communist ideology to govern them?
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Singha »

one plan is I see unfolding is - a vast crowd of hangers-on type think tankers/media types in EU/USA are feeling the pinch of reduced patronage by the paschimi capitals and corporates. there is not enough meat to keep all the dogs and peacocks fed and happily barking the tunes they are given.

china is flush with cash and rapidly climbing the power pole. to smooth its passage and establish itself as a incumbent it needs the support of these writers/historians/flag wavers to burnish their history, weed out unpalateable stuff, market the china brand as a force for prosperity and stability, .....

many of these guys are going to be paid in renminbi going forward and will work for their new paymaster.

most of the world media is for sale to the highest bidder anyway - they will write for whoever pays them.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Hari Seldon »

Treasury Bids Rise 18% as Investors Surpass Dealers (bloomberg)
For the first time since the government started collecting the data, central banks, mutual funds and U.S. banks are buying more government securities at Treasury auctions than Wall Street’s bond dealers.

Foreign and domestic investors bidding directly at note and bond auctions bought 57 percent of the $1.26 trillion in Treasuries sold by the government this year, up from 45 percent during the same period in 2009 and as little as 32 percent for all of 2008, according to government data compiled by Bloomberg. Bids compared with the amount of debt sold, the bid-to-cover ratio, rose 18 percent from last year’s 14-year high, according to data that Treasury started collecting in 1994.
...
Primary dealers, which are required to bid in government auctions and act as the trading partner to the New York Fed, have won the lowest proportion of Treasuries in auctions since the government began releasing the data in 2003.
If this isn't USD bullish, dunno what would be. Despite trillions upon trillions in deficits projected into the future, bond yields are down, way below historical averages (just revisit the 70s and Volcker therapy for a comparison).

Increasingly lends credence to sri JK Galbraith's wisdom that (paraphrasing) "Deficits never matter". They're just an accounting artifact that depict resource allocation in an economy.
Even bond-market bears such as primary dealer Morgan Stanley have trimmed forecasts for U.S. yields to rise in the second half of the year, with slow growth likely to keep the Federal Reserve from increasing record low borrowing rates into 2011. The target for overnight loans between banks has been zero to 0.25 percent since December 2008.

Morgan Stanley of New York has lowered its estimate for the 10-year yield at the end of the 2010 to 3.5 percent from 5.5 percent at the start the year. :lol: The median projection of 55 forecasts in a Bloomberg survey is 3.36 percent, down from 3.80 percent in June.
Far from my own expectations that a bond mkt dislocation would catapult us all into a new dark age, seems like a debt-deleveraging-deflationary spiral would replace bond mkt dislocations as the catapult now.

And no, don;tgetme wrong, things won;t be as visually dramatic as they were in the 30s - soup kitchen lines, hoovervilles etc. It'll instead be a slow drift downwards into stagnation and de-prosperity.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Neshant »

If Galbraith is right, we are all like a school of fish trapped in a net swimming round and round trying to preserve our dwindling wealth with no escape hatch. I don't know whether gold will go up or down in the short and mid term but I'll be damned if I resign my entire fate to paper printing morons at the top.

Something has to give and I'm increasingly beginning to think that something is western living standards. Deflation will be 'balanced' off with paper printing thereby robbing gains that fiat holders who should otherwise be seeing huge gains in the value of their fiat in deflation. In the end, what will remain is a sh&tty economy, mass unemployment, a ton of debt, reduced wages and reduced purchasing power - basically a reduced standard of living.

----------

Peter Schiff vs James Galbraith CNBC 27 Apr 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZrWoZiB9HY
Last edited by Neshant on 21 Jul 2010 12:13, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Hari Seldon »

San Jose councilman calls for pension reform

So it begins. The assault on what is probably the last holdout for a reasonable middle class existence for a large section of amrikhans. The intellectual, media, social, economic and political tools for the assault are being quietly readied onlee, for any who wish to see. Public sector unions have been too greedy, grasping and inefficient on their part to really merit sympathy or goodwill from the larger taxpaying public, in any case. Some public pensions are downright ridiculuous, besides.
With dozens of California cities and counties seeking to reform soaring employee retirement costs, San Jose Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio on Monday called for voters to decide whether they want to continue paying millions into the city's pension system.

Oliverio wants to change the city charter — which requires a public vote — to remove language that spells out at what age employees can retire and how much the city must pay into their pensions. Instead, he wants the council to have the flexibility to determine those numbers.

While union officials assailed the proposal, Oliverio called the city's pension costs "out of control." Even as it lays off workers, the cash-strapped city will pay nearly $200 million this year to cover its pension obligations; next year, that's projected to swell as high as $250 million.

"If you're a resident and if you've ever said, 'Why is my street not paved? Why is my library not open? Why aren't there enough police officers?', it's because the pension system has grown to such a large proportion," said Oliverio.

In San Jose, officials say employee costs have risen three times faster than revenues in the last decade, driving a nine-year run of red ink that's projected to continue.
What can't be paid won't be. That's not terribly original anyway.

But how this plays out will be interesting to watch. Yup, lofty paschimi stds of living were way too energy intensive and polluting to sustain very long anyway. Unless we figure out how to do controlled fusion on the earth - recreate a second sun, effectively. Jai ITER!
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Neshant »

good old fashion stock market rigging by the federal reserve.

Graham Summers – I Thought Quantitative Easing Ended?

http://economicedge.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... ative.html
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by Hari Seldon »

https://twitter.com/AutomaticEarth
The high-stakes battle over Elizabeth Warren http://bit.ly/bJsvjt Tim Geithner is trying to block her appointment.
Heh heh. You ain't sen nothing yet. The treachery+fraud combo hates the competence+integrity ones like the paki hates the yindoo.:D
US financial system support up $700 bln in past year-watchdog. Total support upto $3.7 Trillion http://bit.ly/aqIU1a (Must be a lot more)
Bah, a mere straw in the (broken) wind. You ain't seen nothing yet, IMHO.
1 million Ontario workers face wage freeze http://bit.ly/cmCvf1 This is a province as broke as California, if not worse.
Recently was revealed ki texas is in as bad a shape as calif. Imagine that-Texas. bhalai ka zamana nahi rahaa. Sala, nothing is as it used to seem anymore. All the disguises are falling apart as the emperor's fancy B'day suit gets ever more undeniable. Sab maya hai, as a former cowherd had once famously said in the land of Bhaarataa...
Double dip in the Baltic (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard) BDI has fallen from 4,200 to 1,720 since the end of May http://bit.ly/bD5Rqe
AEP's alarmism was noticeably lukewarm today. Thats an alarming sign, IMHO.
UK: Public sector net borrowing hit £14.5bn in June, above the £13bn consensus among economists. UK on course to miss targets.
Churchillum's words can serve as an inspi-rations in these foreboding times, eh?

chalo, ye thi khabrein aaj tak.

/Have a nice day, all.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by aqkhan »

Double dip looks doubly certain

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/double ... 2010-07-20

A surprisingly large number of economists now agree that then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan made a tragic mistake. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Greenspan opened the monetary floodgates.

Specifically, Greenspan allowed the "monetary base" to increase 22% from June 2000 through June 2003. The monetary base, also called "high-powered money," is the base upon which bank loans are pyramided, expanding the total amount of money held by the public.

During the same three-year period, Greenspan cut the federal funds rate -- the interest rate commercial banks charge each other for overnight loans -- from 6.5% down to 1%, the lowest federal funds rate in more than 40 years.

The rationale for Greenspan's easy-credit policy was to provide a "soft landing" for the economy in the wake of the dot-com crash and Sept. 11 attacks. And for a while, it seemed he had succeeded. People marveled that housing prices continued to rise, even amidst the recession of 2001. Indeed, people referred to Greenspan as "the Maestro."

In retrospect, economists across the political spectrum recognize the role Greenspan's Fed played in fueling the housing bubble. The more cynical analysts argue that Greenspan's policies weren't "easy" at all and merely postponed the inevitable day of reckoning for the economy. Rather than gritting its teeth and suffering through the necessary adjustments in the early 2000s, the nation got an injection of artificial credit that masked the underlying problems with a euphoric boom.

The housing market eventually collapsed, as all bubbles do. At this point, Ben Bernanke was at the helm of the Fed. Unfortunately, he got his policies out of Greenspan's playbook, except Bernanke doubled down.

Rather than pushing short-term interest rates down to 1% as Greenspan did, Bernanke has pushed them down to almost zero percent. And in contrast to Greenspan's 22% increase in the monetary base during a three-year period, Bernanke increased it by 94% in one year.


The unprecedented monetary stimulus from the Fed, in conjunction with the massive deficits of the federal government, did succeed in partially re-flating the stock market and stabilizing home prices. Time magazine named Bernanke its 2009 Person of the Year, and Obama administration officials are taking credit for nipping the Great Recession in the bud. Yet the parallels with the Greenspan episode are clear.

It makes no sense to "rescue" the economy by having politicians borrow and spend trillions of dollars. It also makes no sense to fix the horrible mistakes of the housing-bubble years by having the Fed create electronic money out of thin air to buy "toxic assets" from investment banks that would otherwise be insolvent.

The alleged economic recovery is unfortunately just as illusory as the prosperity of the housing-bubble years. It is disturbing to consider that if this is the calm before the storm, then the pending crash will be painful indeed. In the current debate on the direction of the economy, those predicting a "double dip" have the stronger -- if more depressing -- case.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by shyamd »

^^ Something that strategicwalla's have been aware about for ages. This is just inevitable. The coming dip is going to be devastating.

What we are seeing now is a systematic pullout by well connected individuals and re-organising their investments.
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by ramana »

shyamd wrote:^^ Something that strategicwalla's have been aware about for ages. This is just inevitable. The coming dip is going to be devastating.

What we are seeing now is a systematic pullout by well connected individuals and re-organising their investments.

Shyamd< What measures?
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Re: Perspectives on the global economic meltdown (Jan 26 201

Post by shyamd »

Ramanaji, Are you asking "What measures are being taken?"

I'll refer you to my post on May 10th:
I have also noted a systematic pullout of investments in UKstan and US by some investors. I think Buffett's visit to India and investments in China is a point in that direction. Al Waleed has removed most of his investments from the US and brought it back to KSA and spent more in China and India. Faber says he is pulling out of the market expecting a long decline, so is Jim Rogers. Al Fayed sold Harrods to Qatar govt entity (Sovereign Wealth funds are usually the last ones to get caught up when trouble starts). This from the guy said he would never sell Harrods. Apparently China started investing in US equities - a tell tale sign that things are looking bad if you ask me.

-----------------
Ramanaji I just feel no one is saying this openly but they are hinting at it with their investment moves, but I have deduced this by listening to interviews of many of these individuals.

All this cozying upto India in Europe/Middle East/US is getting ready for the next chapter of economic growth.
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