"The US Is Bankrupt," Blasts Biderman, "We Now Await The Cramdown" Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/04/2014 21:32 -0400 B+ Bond Budget Deficit Charles Biderman Cramdown ETC Federal Reserve Federal Tax Gross Domestic Product Medicare Moral Hazard Precious Metals Purchasing Power Real estate Reality Tax Revenue TrimTabs White House Z.1 in Share 8 Submitted by Chris Hamilton via Charles Biderman TrimTabs' blog , US is Bankrupt: $89.5 Trillion in US Liabilities vs. $82 Trillion in Household Net Worth The Gap is Growing. We Now Await the Nature of the Cramdown. There are many ways to look at the United States government debt, obligations, and assets. Liabilities include Treasury debt held by the public or more broadly total Treasury debt outstanding. There’s unfunded liabilities like Medicare and Social Security. And then the assets of all the real estate, all the equities, all the bonds, all the deposits…all at today’s valuations. But let’s cut straight to the bottom line and add it all up… $89.5 trillion in liabilities and $82 trillion in assets . There. It’s not a secret anymore…and although these are all government numbers, for some strange reason the government never adds them all together or explains them…but we will. The $89.5 trillion in liabilities include: $20.69 trillion $12.65 trillion public Treasury debt (interest rate sensitive bonds sold to finance government spending) Fyi – $5.35 trillion of “intra-governmental” Treasury debt are not included as they are considered an asset of the particular programs (SS, etc.) and simultaneously a liability of the Treasury $6.54 trillion civilian and Military Pensions and Benefits payable $1.5 trillion in “other” liabilities http://www.fms.treas.gov/finrep13/note_finstmts/fr_notes_fin_stmts_note13.html . $69 trillion (present value terms what should be saved now to make up the present and future anticipated tax shortfalls vs. present and future payouts). $3.7 trillion SMI (Supplemental Medical Insurance) $39.5 trillion Medicare or HI (Hospital Insurance) Part B / D $25.8 trillion Social Security or OASDI (Old Age Survivors Disability Insurance) Fyi – $5+ trillion of additional unfunded state liabilities not included. Source: 2013 OASDI and Medicare Trustees’ Reports. (pg. 183), http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/661234.p These needs can be satisfied only through increased borrowing, higher taxes, reduced program spending, or some combination. But since 1969 Treasury debt has been sold with the intention of paying only the interest (but never repaying the principal) and also in ’69 LBJ instituted the “Unified Budget” putting all social spending into the general budget reaping the gains in the present year absent calculating for the future liabilities. If you don’t know the story of how unfunded liabilities came to be and want to understand how this took place, please stop and read as USA Ponzi explains nicely… http://usaponzi.com/cooking-the-books.html $81.8 trillion in US Household “net worth” According to the Federal’s Z.1 balance sheet http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/z1r-5.pdf , the US has a net worth of $81.8 trillion – significantly up from the ’09 low of $55.5 trillion…a $23 trillion increase in five years. Fascinatingly, “household” liabilities are still $500 billion lower now than the peak in ’08 but asset “valuations” are up $22.5 trillion. All while wages have been declining. A cursory glance at the Federal Reserve’s $4 trillion in balance sheet growth in the same time period shows how the lack of growth in “household” liabilities (currently @ $13.7 trillion) has been co-opted by the Fed. I believe it’s clear when incomes no longer supported credit and debt growth in ’08, consumers tapped out and in stepped the Federal Reserve to bridge the slowdown. But what the Fed may or may not have realized is once they stepped in, there was no stepping out. (Charles, would be great if you could export this chart from FRED to be included…or if you have a better idea to show this relationship, would be great???) http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=GVF How We Got Here – Growth of Debt vs. GDP 45 years of ever increasing debt loads, social safety net growth, corporate welfare. 45 years of Rep’s and Dem’s in the White House and Congress bought by special interests and politicians buying citizens votes with laws enacted absent the revenue to pay for them. We have a Treasury and Federal Reserve willing to “innovate” and wordsmith to avoid the national recognition of the true difficulties and implications of our present situation. 45 years of intentionally avoiding an honest accounting of our national obligations, mislabeling, and misdirecting to pretend these obligations can and will be honored. 45 years of cornice like debt and promise accumulation simply awaiting the avalanche of claimant redemptions and debt repayments. First, an historical snapshot for perspective of the last time US Treasury debt was larger than our economy (debt/GDP in excess of 100% in 1946) and subsequent progress of debt vs. GDP…and why anyone suggesting there is a parallel from post WWII to now is simply ill informed. Post-WWII: ’46-’59 (13yrs) Debt grew 1.06x’s ($269 B to $285 B) GDP grew 2.2x’s ($228 B to $525 B) ’60-’75 (15yrs) Debt grew 2x’s ($285 B to $533 B) GDP grew 3.3x’s ($525 to $1.7 T) Income grew 3.3x’s ($403 B to $1.37 T) ’65 Great Society initiated, ’69 unfunded liabilities begin under a “Unified Budget” Post-Vietnam War: ’76 -’04 (28yrs) Debt grew 15x’s ($533 B à $7.4 T) Unfunded liability 15x’s ($3 T to $45 T) GDP grew 7.3x’s ($1.7 T à $12.4 T) Income grew 7.4x’s ($1.37 T to $10.1 T) ’05 -’14 (9yrs) Debt grew 2.4x’s or 240% ($7.4 T à $17.5 T) Unfunded liability 1.5x’s ($45 T to $69 T) GDP grew 1.4x’s or 140% ($12.4 T à $17 T) Income grew 1.4x’s ($10.1 T to $14.2 T) Z1 Household net worth grew 1.25x’s from $65 T to $82 T… http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/pi/2014/pdf/pi0614_hist.pdf If the trends continue as they have since ’75, Treasury debt will grow 2x’s to 3x’s faster than GDP and income to service it…and the results would look as follows in 10 years: ’15 – ‘24 Treasury debt will grow est. ($17.5 T à $34 T to $44 T) GDP* will grow est. ($17 T à $22 T to $24 T)…income growth likely similar to GDP. * = I won’t even get into the overstatement of economic activity within the GDP #’s…just noting there is an overstatement of activity. So, while the Treasury debt growth rate skyrocketed from ’05 onward and the GDP growth slumped to its lowest since WWII, the unfunded liabilities grew even faster. Drumroll Please – Total Debt/Obligation growth vs. Debt Let’s go back to our ’75-’14 numbers and recalculate based on total Federal Government debt and liabilities: ’75-’14 debt (total government obligations) grew 33x’s 168x’s ($533 B à $17.5 T $89.5 T*) GDP grew 10x’s ($1.7 T to 17 T) Household net worth grew 15x’s ($5.4 to $82 T) while median household income grew 3x’s (est. $17k to $51k) while Real median household income grew 1.13x’s ($45k to $51k) *$89.5 T is the 2012 fiscal year end budget number, the 2013 fiscal year end # is likely to be approx. $5+ T higher, or debt grew 180x’s in 40 years vs. 10x’s for GDP / income….but seriously, does it really matter if debt grew at 10x’s, 16x’s, or 18x’s the pace of the underlying economy…all are uncollectable in taxes and unpayable except for QE or like programs. Why Can’t We Pay Off the Debt or Even Pay it Down? Take 2013 Federal Government tax revenue and spending as an illustration: $16.8 Trillion US economy (gross domestic product) $2.8 Trillion Federal tax revenue (taxes in) $3.5 Trillion Federal budget (spending out) -$680 Billion budget deficit (bridged by sale of Treasury debt spent now and counted as a portion of GDP) = $550 Billion economic growth?!? PLEASE NOTE – The ’13 GDP “growth” is less than the new debt (although the new debt spent is counted as new GDP) and the interest on the debt will need be serviced indefinitely. Why Cutting Benefits or Raising Taxes Lead to the Same Outcome While many try to dismiss these liabilities assuming we will continue to only service the debt rather than repay principal and interest; assuming we turn down the SS benefits via means testing, delaying benefits, reducing benefits; assuming we will bend the curve regarding Medicaid, Medicare, and Welfare benefits; assuming we will avoid further far flung wars and military obligations and stop feeding the military industrial complex; assuming no future economic slowdowns or recessions or worse; assuming a cheap and plentiful energy source is found to transition away from oil. But all these debts and liabilities are someone else’s future income they are now reliant upon; someone’s future addition to GDP. If these debts or obligations are curtailed or cancelled to reduce the debt or future liability, the future GDP slows in kind and tax revenues lag and budget deficits grow. Of course I do advocate these debts and liabilities cannot be maintained, but austerity (real austerity) is painful and would set the stage for a likely depression where the nation (world) proceeds with a bankruptcy determining what and how much of the promises made can be honored until wants, needs, and means are all brought back in alignment. So What’s it All Mean? Let’s get real, austerity is not going to happen and we aren’t going to balance the budget. We’re never going to pay off our debt or even pay it down. We’re rapidly moving from 4 taxpayers for every social program recipient to 2 per recipient. And ultimately, now we aren’t even really paying the interest on the debt…the Federal Reserve is just printing money (QE1, 2, 3) to buy the bonds and push the interest payments ever lower masking the true cost of these programs. Of course, interest rates (Federal Funds Rates) have edged lower since 1980’s 20% to todays 0% to make the massive increases in debt serviceable. Politicians and central bankers have shown they are going to print money to fulfill the obligations despite the declining purchasing power of the money. It’s not so much science as religion. A belief that infinite growth will be reality through unknown technologies, innovations, and solutions that in four decades have gone unsolved but somehow in the next decade will not only be solved but implemented. Because it is credit that is undertaken with a belief that the obligation will ultimately allow for future repayment of principal, interest, and a profit. But without the growth, the debt cannot be repaid nor liabilities honored. Without the ability to repay the principal, the debts just grow and must have ever lower rates to avoid interest Armageddon. This knowledge creates moral hazard that ever more debt will be rewarded with ever lower rates and thus ever greater system leverage. The politicians and central bankers will continue stepping in to avoid over indebted individuals, corporations, crony capitalists, cities, states, federal government from failing. It is a fait accompli that a hyper-monetization has/is/will take place…and now it is simply a matter of time until the globe either becomes saturated with dollars and/or reject the currency (so much to discuss here on likely demotion or replacement of the Petro-dollar and more…) . Because the earthquake (unpayable debt and obligations) has already taken place, now we are simply waiting for the tsunami. Forget debt repayment or debt reduction…forget means testing or “bending cost curves”…we’re approaching the moment where even at historically low rates we will not be able to pay the interest and maintain government spending…without printing currency as this generation of American’s have never seen. Bad governance and bad policy coupled with disinterested citizens will demand it. Epilogue – So Where Do you put your Money? No one can really know what will have value in this politicized crony capitalistic system as the hyper-monetization ramps up…all I can suggest is to hedge your bets with some physical precious metals, some minimal leveraged real estate, but also stocks and bonds and even some cash…because although there are natural forces in favor of the tangible, finite goods…there are also equally determined forces bound to push bond yields down, real estate and particularly stock prices up. Unfortunately, the more you know, the more you know you don’t know…invest and live accordingly. Average: 4.73913 Your rating:None Average:4.7 (23votes)
The Real China Threat: Credit Chaos Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/08/2014 20:08 -0500 China default Equity Markets George Soros Gross Domestic Product Jim Chanos Michael Pettis Real estate Shadow Banking in Share 3 As Michael Pettis , Jim Chanos , Zero Hedge (numerous times) , and now George Soros have explained . Simply put - "There is an unresolved self-contradiction in China’s current policies: restarting the furnaces also reignites exponential debt growth, which cannot be sustained for much longer than a couple of years." The "eerie resemblances" - as Soros previously noted - to the US in 2008 have profound consequences for China and the world - nowhere is that more dangerously exposed (just as in the US) than in the Chinese shadow banking sector as explained below... Submitted by Minxin Pei via The National Interest , The spectacle of a game of financial chicken in the world’s second-largest economy is both entertaining and terrifying. Twice in 2013, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the country’s central bank, tried to demonstrate its resolve to rein in runaway credit growth. In June, it engineered a sudden credit squeeze that sent the interbank lending rates to more than 20 percent and caused a short-lived panic in the Chinese financial markets. Apparently, the financial turmoil was too much for the Chinese government, which quickly ordered the Chinese central bank to reverse course. As a result, the PBOC lost both face and credibility. However, as credit growth continued unabated and activities in the most risky segment of China’s financial sector – the so-called shadow banking system – displayed alarming recklessness, the PBOC was left with no choice but try one more time to send a strong message that it could not be counted on to provide unlimited liquidity to the banking system. It did so in December 2013 with a modified approach that provided liquidity only to the selected large banks but pressured smaller banks (which are the most active participants in the shadow banking system). Although interbank lending rates did not spike to nose-bleeding levels, as they did in June, they doubled quickly. Most Chinese banks held on to their cash and refused to lend to each other. Chinese equity markets fell nearly 10 percent, giving back nearly all the gains since mid-November, when the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) reform plan bolstered market sentiments. Unfortunately for the PBOC, the renewed turbulences in the Chinese banking sector were again viewed as too dangerous by the top leadership of the CCP even though it seemed that the PBOC initially received its support. Consequently, the PBOC had to beat another hasty retreat and inject enough liquidity to force down interbank lending rates. Thus, in the first two rounds of a stand-off between the PBOC and China’s shadow banking system, the latter is widely seen as the winner. The PBOC blinked first each time. For the moment, the conventional wisdom is that, as long as the PBOC maintains sufficient liquidity (translation: permitting credit growth at roughly the same pace as in previous years), China’s financial sector will remain more or less stable. This observation may be reassuring for the short-term, but overlooks the dangerous underlying dynamics in China’s banking system that prompted the PBOC to act in first place. Of these dynamics, two deserve special attention. The first one is the rapid rise in indebtedness (or financial leverage) in the Chinese economy since 2008 . In five years, the country’s total debt-to-GDP ratio (including both public and private debt) rose from 130 percent to 210 percent, an unprecedented increase for a major economy. Historically, such expansion of credit hasrarely failed to inflate a credit bubble and cause a financial crisis. In the Chinese case, what makes the credit explosion even more risky is the low creditworthiness of the major borrowers. Only a quarter of the debt is owed by those with relatively high creditworthiness (consumers and the central government). The remaining 75 percent has gone to state-owned enterprises, private real-estate developers, and local governments, all of which are known to have weak loan repayment capacity (most state-owned enterprises generate low cash profits, private real-estate developers are overleveraged, and local governments have a narrow tax base). Staggering under an unsustainable debt burden of roughly 160 percent of GDP (equivalent to $14 trillion), these borrowers are expected to default on a significant portion of their bank debt in the coming years. The second dynamic, closely related to the first one, is the growth of the shadow-banking sector. Two drivers shape activities in this sector, which operates outside the banking system. To minimize their exposure to risky borrowers, Chinese banks have curtailed their lending. But at the same time, these banks have embraced the shadow banking activities to increase their revenue. Specifically, Chinese banks peddle new “wealth management products” – short-term securities promising high interest rates – to their depositors. The issuers of such securities, which are not protected or insured by the government – are typically high-risk borrowers, such as local governments (and their financing vehicles) and real estate developers. In the meantime, these borrowers are facing rising pressures for loan repayments in an environment of overcapacity and unprofitable investments. Unable to generate cash to service their loans, they have to turn to the shadow-banking sector for credit and avoid default. The result is an explosive growth of the size of the shadow-banking sector (now conservatively estimated to account for 20-30 percent of GDP). Understandably, the PBOC does not look upon the shadow banking sector favorably. Since shadow-banking sector gets its short-term liquidity mainly through interbanking loans, the PBOC thought that it could put a painful squeeze on this sector through reducing liquidity. Apparently, the PBOC underestimated the effects of its measure. Largely because Chinese borrowers tend to cross-guarantee each other’s debt, squeezing even a relatively small number of borrowers could produce a cascade of default. The reaction in the credit market was thus almost instant and frightening. Borrowers facing imminent default are willing to borrow at any rate while banks with money are unwilling to loan it out no matter how attractive the terms are. Should this situation continue, China’s real economy would suffer a nasty shock. Chain default would produce a paralyzing effect on economic activities even though there is no run on the banks. Clearly, this is not a prospect the CCP’s top leadership relishes. So the task for the PBOC in the coming year will remain as difficult as ever. It will have to navigate between gently disciplining the banks and avoiding a financial panic. Its ability to do so is anything but assured. It has already lost the first two rounds of this game of financial chicken. We can only hope that it can do better in the next round. Average: 4.5 Your rating: None Average: 4.5 ( 4 votes)
Home Peter Schiff Asks "Is This The Green Light For Gold?" Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/21/2013 22:04 -0400 China Consumer Prices Creditors Debt Ceiling default Fail Goldman Sachs goldman sachs India Mortgage Backed Securities None Peter Schiff Real estate Reality Recession recovery Reserve Currency Sovereign Debt in Share 0 Submitted by Peter Schiff via Euro Pacific Capital , It is rare that investors are given a road map. It is rarer still that the vast majority of those who get it are unable to understand the clear signs and directions it contains. When this happens the few who can actually read the map find themselves in an enviable position. Such is currently the case with gold and gold-related investments. The common wisdom on Wall Street is that gold has seen the moment of its greatness flicker.This confidence has been fueled by three beliefs: A) the Fed will soon begin trimming its monthly purchases of Treasury and Mortgage Backed Securities (commonly called the "taper"), B) the growing strength of the U.S. economy is creating investment opportunities that will cause people to dump defensive assets like gold, and C) the renewed confidence in the U.S. economy will shore up the dollar and severely diminish gold's allure as a safe haven. All three of these assumptions are false. (Our new edition of the Global Investor Newsletter explores how the attraction never dimmed in India). Recent developments suggest the opposite, that: A) the Fed has no exit strategy and is more likely to expand its QE program than diminish it, B) the U. S. economy is stuck in below-trend growth and possibly headed for another recession C) America's refusal to deal with its fiscal problems will undermine international faith in the dollar. Parallel confusion can be found in Wall Street's reaction to the debt ceiling drama (for more on this see my prior commentary on the Debt Ceiling Delusions ).Many had concluded that the danger was that Congress would fail to raise the ceiling. But the real peril was that it would be raised without any mitigating effort to get in front of our debt problems. Of course, that is just what happened. These errors can be seen most clearly in the gold market. Last week, Goldman Sachs, the 800-pound gorilla of Wall Street, issued a research report that many read as gold's obituary.The report declared that any kind of agreement in Washington that would forestall an immediate debt default, and defuse the crisis, would be a "slam dunk sell" for gold.Given that most people never believed Congress would really force the issue, the Goldman final note to its report initiated a panic selling in gold. Of course, just as I stated on numerous radio and television appearances in the day or so following the Goldman report, the "smartest guys in the room" turned out to be wrong. As soon as Congress agreed to kick the can, gold futures climbed $40 in one day. Experts also warned that the dollar would decline if the debt ceiling was not raised. But when it was raised (actually it was suspended completely until February 2014) the dollar immediately sold off to a 8 ½ month low against the euro. Ironically many feared that failing to raise the debt ceiling would threaten the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency. In reality, it's the continued lifting of that ceiling that is undermining its credibility. The markets were similarly wrong-footed last month when the " The Taper That Wasn't " caught everyone by surprise. The shock stemmed from Wall Street's belief in the Fed's false bravado and the conclusions of mainstream economists that the economy was improving. I countered by saying that the signs of improvement (most notably rising stock and real estate prices) were simply the direct results of the QE itself and that a removal of the QE would stop the "recovery" dead in its tracks.Despite the Fed surprise, most people still believe that it is itching to pull the taper trigger and that it will do so at its earliest opportunity (although many now concede that it may have to wait until this political mess is resolved). In contrast, I believe we are now stuck in a trap of infinite QE (which is the theme of my Newsletter issued last week). The reality is that Washington has now committed itself to a policy of permanent debt increase and QE infinity that can only possibly end in one way: a currency crisis. While the dollar's status as reserve currency, and America's position as both the world's largest economy and its largest debtor, will create a difficult and unpredictable path towards that destination, the ultimate arrival can't be doubted. The fact that few investors are drawing these conclusions has allowed gold, and precious metal mining stocks,to remain close to multi year lows, even while these recent developments should be signaling otherwise. This creates an opportunity. Gold moved from $300 to $1,800 not because investors believed the government would hold the line on debt, but because they believed that the U.S. fiscal position would get progressively worse. That is what happened this week. By deciding to once again kick the can down the road, Washington did not avoid a debt crisis. They simply delayed it. That is why I tried to inform investors that gold should rally if the debt limit were raised.Instead most investors put their faith in Goldman Sachs. Investors should be concluding that America will never deal with its fiscal problems on its own terms.In fact, since we have now redefined the problem as the debt ceiling, rather than the debt itself, all efforts to solve the real problem may be cast aside. It now falls on our nation's creditors to provide the badly needed financial discipline that our own elected leaders lack the courage to face.That discipline will take the form of a dollar crisis, which will morph into a sovereign debt crisis.This would send U.S. consumer prices soaring, push the economy deeper into recession, and exert massive upward pressure on U.S. interest rates.At that point the Fed will have a very difficult decision to make:vastly expand QE to buy up all the bonds that the world is trying to unload (which could crash the dollar), or to allow bonds to fall and interest rates to soar (thereby crashing the economy instead). The hard choices that our leaders have just avoided will have to be made someday under far more burdensome circumstances. It will have to choose which promises to keep and which to break.Much of the government will be shut down, this time for real.If the Fed does the wrong thing and expands QE to keep rates low, the ensuing dollar collapse will be even more damaging to our economy and our creditors.Sure, none of the promises will be technically broken, but they will be rendered meaningless, as the bills will be paid with nearly worthless money. In fact, the Chinese may finally be getting the message. Late last week, as the debt ceiling farce gathered steam in Washington, China's state-run news agency issued perhaps its most dire warning to date on the subject: "it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world." Sometimes maps can be very easy to read. If the dollar is doomed, gold should rise. Average: 5 Your rating: None Average: 5 ( 6 votes) !-- - advertisements - .AR_2 .ob_empty {display: none;} .AR_2 .rec-link {color: #565656;text-decoration: none;font-size: 12px;} .AR_2 .rec-link:hover {color: #565656;text-decoration: underline;font-size: 12px;} .AR_2 {float: left;width:50%} .AR_2 li {list-style: none outside none !important;font-size: 10px;padding-bottom: 10px;line-height: 13px;margin:0;} .AR_2 .ob_org_header {color: #000000;text-decoration:bold; margin-left: 0px; font-size:14px;line-height:35px;} .AR_3 .rec-link {color: #565656;text-decoration: none;font-size: 12px;} .AR_3 .rec-link:hover {color: #565656;text-decoration: underline;font-size: 12px;} .AR_3 .rec-src-link {font-size: 12px;} .AR_3 li {padding-bottom: 10px;list-style: none outside none !important;font-size: 10px;line-height: 13px;margin:0;} .AR_3 .ob_dual_left, .AR_3 .ob_dual_right {float: left;padding-bottom: 0;padding-left: 2%;padding-top: 0;} .AR_3 .ob_org_header {color: #000000; text-decoration:bold; margin-left: 0px; font-size:14px;line-height:35px;} .AR_3 .ob_ads_header {color: #000000; text-decoration:bold; margin-left: 0px; font-size:14px;line-height:35px;} -- - advertisements - Login or register to post comments 3080 reads Printer-friendly version Send to friend Similar Articles You Might Enjoy: Guest Post: Investment Legends - “Dollar Collapse Inevitable” Guest Post: Dangerous Economic Misconceptions 2012 Year In Review - Free Markets, Rule of Law, And Other Urban Legends Guest Post: The Great Global Debt Prison Guest Post: Enron Redux – Have We Learned Anything?
Q3 2013 Earnings\Financials: The Party is Over Submitted by rcwhalen on 09/26/2013 07:01 -0400 Bank of America Bank of America Ben Bernanke Case-Shiller ETC Fannie Mae Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Financial Accounting Standards Board Freddie Mac headlines Housing Market Mortgage Bankers Association Mortgage Loans non-performing loans Real estate recovery in Share 1 "The lesson of history is that you do not get a sustained economic recovery as long as the financial system is in crisis." Benjamin Bernanke It’s once again earnings season and a great deal of attention will be focused on financials. Over the past three months, the equity market values of most of the largest universal banks have traded off as investors have started to appreciate that the party is ending in terms of new mortgage originations driven by refinance transactions. As I noted in the last post, the guidance from all of the big banks is decidedly negative for Q3 because of the prospective decline in revenue and transaction volumes in mortgages. While refinance transactions are falling rapidly, mortgage loan purchases volumes are not growing nearly enough to make up for the drop in overall volumes. The chart below shows the total loan originations, refinance and purchase volumes for all lenders from the Mortgage Bankers Association through Q1 2013: Close your eyes and imagine what this chart will look like next year. Looking at the banking industry as a whole, the mortgage story is likely to dominate the headlines next month during earnings season -- even if the financial media wants to ignore the implication for the “housing recovery.” A lot of analysts want to believe that the relatively modest rise in interest rates since the bottom last summer is the culprit in terms of falling mortgage loan volumes, but my view is that three factors – declining affordability, a stagnant job market and flat to down consumer income – are the structural factors behind the anemic demand for mortgage loans, particularly mortgages for home purchases. While banks are happy to make loans, especially jumbos, to existing customers for refinance transactions, the new Basel III rules and GSE lending standards make it problematic for banks to move down the risk curve, especially if doing so takes us outside the agency bucket patrolled by the New Calvinists at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Loans that are not “qualified mortgages” that can qualify for a federal guarantee are very costly for banks, both in terms of capital costs and charges for liquidity, MSRs, etc. The chart below shows bank mortgage portfolios for first and second liens, and sales and securitization volume, for all FDIC insured banks. As you can see from the chart, the total retained portfolio of real estate loans held by US banks has dropped about 20% since 2007, from ~ $5 trillion to $4 trillion today. The major area of shrinkage has been in 1-4 family loans, while second liens have also been shrinking slowly. Sales and securitization of second liens is very small and was not included in the chart. The series for 1-4 family loan sales and securitizations is also falling, again owing to the secular decline in agency volumes and other factors. As the watering hole shrinks, the GSEs and TBTF banks will consume one another in vicious competition. By the way, has anybody noticed that Freddie Mac is discounting its loan guarantee fees in competition with Fannie Mae? We’ll come back to that soon… Jumbo loans were the only part of the mortgage complex to show growth in 1H 2013, up 17% YOY according to Inside Mortgage Finance. Jumbo originations were about $115 billion in 1H 2013. The sharp inflection point in 2009, of note, is attributable to the new FASB rules regarding off-balance sheet accounting for special purposes entities. While banks still sell most of their origination volumes into the agency market, the portion being retained on balance sheet is slowly shrinking. So given that the Case-Shiller national survey of home prices is up 12% YOY, how does one interpret the decline in bank financing for home purchases over the same period? The easy answer is that about half of the gains reflected in Case-Shiller over the past couple years are attributable to the gradual resolution of bank REO and the disappearance of the spread between distressed home sales and voluntary home sales. About half of all home purchases were cash during 2012. But when you consider that the ex-REO gain in Case-Shiller is about half of that 12% figure YOY and that bank credit underlying the housing market has been shrinking all the while, how does that make you feel about the future prospects for home price appreciation (HPA)? Hold that thought. In terms of industry revenue and earnings, the general is more important than the particular. For example, the increase in Q2 2013 earnings was largely driven by increases in non-interest income and reserve releases. Trading income also spiked. There is not a lot of organic revenue growth in the US banking industry today. Thus as some of the larger players have been guiding down on mortgage lending volumes, they have also warned of potential losses on the mortgage line because there is nothing available to take up the slack. The FDIC’s excellent Quarterly Banking Profile summarizes the situation: “Noninterest income was $6.7 billion (11.1 percent) higher than in second quarter 2012. Income from trading rose by $5.1 billion (238.3 percent) compared with a year ago, when the industry reported a net loss on credit derivatives. Net gains on sales of loans and other assets were $1.9 billion (63.7 percent) above the level of a year earlier. For the third quarter in a row and fourth time in the last five quarters, net interest income posted a year-over-year decline, falling by $1.8 billion (1.7 percent) as interest income from loans and other investments declined faster than interest expense on deposits and other liabilities. Banks set aside $8.6 billion in provisions for loan losses during the quarter, a $5.6 billion (39.6 percent) reduction from a year earlier. This is the lowest quarterly loss provision for the industry since third quarter 2006, when quarterly provisions totaled $7.6 billion. Total noninterest expense was $1.4 billion (1.4 percent) lower than in second quarter 2012, when industry expenses were elevated by restructuring charges.” So the clear message to take away from the Q2 2013 data on the US banking industry is 1) cost cutting in terms of operations, 2) lower loan loss provisions and 3) increased non-interest fees are the key factors in terms of revenue drivers. There is no real visibility in terms of revenue growth. In Q3, however, the sharp drop in mortgage volumes is going to upset the carefully scripted ballet that has kept large bank earnings within an acceptable range for the Sell Side analyst and media communities. Given that mortgage origination and sale has been the dominant revenue line item for many of the largest banks over the past ten years, you would think that the financial media would be all over this story. After all, JPM has actually guided to an operating loss in mortgage in Q3-Q4. But no, instead we talk about pointless government litigation against bank shareholders and the London Whale. Go figure. Keep in mind that Q2 earnings were also helped by a 10% increase in the “fair value” of mortgage servicing right or MSRs, a non-cash adjustment that goes right to income thanks to the idiocy of fair value accounting. Just as the market for non-performing loans was a little fluffy in Q1 of this year, the market for MSRs is also showing a bit of foam right now. The real question is whether these markups will need to be adjusted, again, as and when the excitement subsides. Normally public companies don’t toy with the valuation of intangibles except at year-end. So when we actually start the Q3 earnings cycle for financials, watch for the word “surprise” in a lot of news reports and analyst opinions. Nobody seems to want to take notice of the very public guidance coming from some of the largest names in the banking complex because of what it implies for housing. But just to show you that God has a sense of humor; Bank of America and Citi have actually outperformed their asset peers in the TBTFgroup over the last three months. Hey, that’s what we need, an index comprised of TBTF banks. Be a useful surrogate for the credit quality of the United States. See you at Americatyst 2013 in Austin TX next week. Average: 5
Meanwhile, Big Investors Quietly Slip Out The Back Door On Housing As "Stupid Money" Jumps In Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/29/2013 12:36 -0400 Bruce Rose Colony Capital Deutsche Bank Gambling Goldman Sachs goldman sachs Homeownership Rate Housing Market Institutional Investors New Home Sales Oaktree Och-Ziff POMO POMO Private Equity Real estate Securities and Exchange Commission Last September, one of the original institutional investors in the housing-to-rent strategy, multi-billion hedge fund Och-Ziff called it quits on the landlord business. The reason: "the New York-based hedge fund is looking to sell now because the returns it is generating from rental income are less than expected and it is looking to take advantage of a recent rebound in home prices in northern California." As a reminder, the REO-to-Rental subsidized investment program, which led to an epic surge in demand for multi-family housing, i.e., rental, units was, together with offshore investors parking their cash in the US for safekeeping (taking advantage of the NAR's anti-money laundering check exemptions) and the big banks Foreclosure Stuffing, the key reason for the recent, stimulus-fueled and quite transitory bounce in house prices in assorted markets. Still, OZ's exit of the business did not spook too many of the other remaining investors who simply had no better investment options, and in a world of POMO and FOMO, they saw no choice but to become ever bigger landlords. Today, another one of the original "big boys" has called it curtains: " We just don’t see the returns there that are adequate to incentivize us to continue to invest ", according to the CEO Bruce Rose of Carrington, one of the first investors to use deep institutional pockets (in this case a $450 million investment from OakTree) and BTFHousingD . Rose's assessment of the market? " There’s a lot of -- bluntly -- stupid money that jumped into the trade without any infrastructure, without any real capabilities and a kind of build-it-as-you-go mentality that we think is somewhat irresponsible ." Of course, one can say exactly the same thing about virtually every other market where those gambling with "other people's money" have no choice but to ride the tide and dance as long as the music emanating from the Fed is playing. However, it is rare to see one (technically, another) voluntarily step out even as others are still locked into a market where the returns are no longer worth the effort. One such gambler is Blackstone: Blackstone Group LP (BX), the largest investor in single-family rentals, has spent $4.5 billion to amass more than 26,000 homes and continues to buy, according to Eric Elder, a spokesman for Invitation Homes, the rental housing division of the world’s largest private equity firm. Blackstone’s net yields on its occupied houses are about 6 percent to 6.5 percent, Jonathan Gray, the firm’s global head of real estate, said during a May 3 conference call with investors. That’s before using leverage from a $2.1 billion line of credit the private-equity giant arranged in March from a lending syndicate headed by Deutsche Bank AG. While about 85 percent of Blackstone’s renovated homes were leased, Gray said, “ we’ve got an awful lot of homes to continue renovating .” Blackstone can have its homes: it's a different question if it will have the rental cash flow also needs to make these investments a reasonable investment. According to Carrington at least, the answer is a resounding no. And if people think the bottom will fall out of the market when the Fed pulls the curtain, just wait to see what happens to housing when the day comes that Blackstone announces it is shifting from the net buyer to net seller. Back to Carrington's rationale: Carrington, which started in 2003 as a mortgage investment fund and has managed almost 25,000 rental homes for itself and others, has been joined by hundreds of institutional and international investors buying single-family homes after prices plunged following the housing crash. The firms are building a new institutional real estate asset class from the 14 million leased single-family residences that are worth an estimated $2.8 trillion, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Even as demand for rentals rises amid a falling homeownership rate, yields are declining and companies formed to buy the homes that have gone public haven’t yet been profitable. Funds are buying property now, including homes sold by Carrington, for rents that yield 6 percent to 8 percent a year, before costs such as insurance, taxes and vacancies, according to Rose. Carrington’s model called for mid-single digit net returns on annual rents on an unlevered basis, according to Rose. While returns would vary by market, they would generally be in the mid- to high teens over the duration of the holding period, with the profit from home price appreciation. Others' experience justifies the logic: Colony American Homes Inc., a division of Thomas Barrack Jr.’s Colony Capital LLC, has found tenants for only 51 percent of the 9,931 homes it bought for $1.4 billion , according to a filing yesterday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. American Residential Properties Inc. (ARPI), a Scottsdale, Arizona-based real estate investment trust, and Silver Bay Realty Trust Inc., a New York-based single-family REIT, both reported losses in the quarter ending March 31. Owen Blicksilver, a spokesman for Colony Capital, declined to comment. Silver Bay CEO David Miller was unavailable to comment, according to Tricia Ross, a spokeswoman at Financial Profiles Inc. American Residential CEO Steve Schmitz and President Laurie Hawkes didn’t reply to e-mails seeking comment. If nothing else, everyone now knows where the incremental "bubble" demand for housing has come from: not from the distressed end user of thes properties, for whom as we showed yesterday, the disconnect between real income and new home sales has never been wider: it was all large institutions who invested OPM, and chased any upward moving price with the fervor of a rabid dog. But all things come to an end: “All the people who made money during the gold rush in California, they were selling the buckets and shovels,” Gordon said. “I think there is gold in them there hills, but you’re going to have to dig deep. And hopefully you’re going to need more than one shovel.” Carrington may start buying rental homes again when other large investors decide to sell after learning they can’t make returns that justify the prices they paid, Rose said. “We’ll sit back in the weeds for a while and wait for a couple of blowups,” he said. “There’ll be a point in time when we’ll be happy to get back into the market at levels that make more sense.” If the Chairman is serious about tapering, or even hinting of tightening at some point in the future, those blowups won't take too long. And so will the blowup in the illusion that the housing market is "recovering" on anything more than yet another cheap-money fueled bubble afforded to a select few who now have no choice but to "hot potato" properties amongst each other first on the way up, and soon, going down. Average: 4.5 Your rating: None Average: 4.5 ( 16 votes) Tweet - advertisements - Login or register to post comments 25363 reads Printer-friendly version Send to friend Similar Articles You Might Enjoy: Och-Ziff Calls Top Of "REO-To-Rental", And Distressed Housing Demand, With Exit Of Landlord Business Goldman Sachs Clarifies Its High Frequency Trading Practices Stiglitz Questions Goldman's Size, Potential For Front Running What Is Goldman Alum Eric Mindich's Role As Chair Of The Asset Managers' Committee Of The President's Working Group? And The US Banks Managing The Libyan Sovereign Wealth Fund Were...
Presenting: The Housing Bubble 2.0 Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/29/2013 22:25 -0400 Ben Bernanke Bond Housing Bubble Housing Market Real estate It was just seven short years ago that the prices at the epicenter of the housing bubble, Los Angeles, CA rose by 50% every six months as the nation experienced its first parabolic move higher in home prices courtesy of Alan Greenspan's disastrous policies: a time when everyone knew intuitively the housing market was in an epic bubble, yet which nobody wanted to pop because there was just too much fun to be had chasing the bouncing ball, not to mention money. Well, courtesy of the real-time real estate pricing trackers at Altos Research , we now know that the very worst of the housing bubble is not only back, but it is at levels not seen since the days when a house in the Inland Empire was only a faint glimmer of the prototype for BitCoin. Exhibit A: The red line is the 7 day rolling average of median LA house prices per Altos ( more data here ). It is up 50% since the beginning of the year. One can only stand back and stare. Still not convinced? After all those West Coast folks are known for being a little trigger happy when it comes to "flipping that house." Which is why, from the heartland of the East Coast, we present... Exhibit B : The Gretschbuilding, an old guitar factory turned condo building in Williamsburg, just had a crazy week: Crain’s reports that three units sold in all-cash transactions, each one setting new highs on a per-square-foot basis. The units in questions were two adjacent two-bedrooms on the ninth floor, selling for $1.4 million and $1.5 million, and a larger two-bedroom on the 10th floor selling at $2.5 million — all at an average of $1,150 per square foot. “ It needs to be cash, it needs to be over ask, and (the listing) will never see the light of day,” the broker had told all the buyers.According to Crain’s, Williamsburg condos are currently averaging $794 per square foot, with high-end condos like Northside Piers bringing in closer to $1,050 per foot. The broker who handled the Gretschsales at 60 Broadway can’t seem to believe it herself: “ It’s unbelievable what’s going on out there ,” she told Crain’s. Our question is, can the high sales we’ve been seeing lately be a bubble based on low mortgage rates if the buyers are paying record-setting prices with all cash? 3 Condos Sold in Williamsburg at Record Prices Great job Bernanke Co. You have succeeded at rolling up the housing, credit, bond, tech and equity bubbles all into one. Watching the glorious unwind of all this unprecedented academic-created stupidity will be worth the hyperinflated price of admission alone. h/t @Gloeschi Average:
China's land price inflation for residential homes is expected to quicken this year after picking up in the fourth quarter, the Ministry of Land and Resources said on Tuesday, amid growing expectations that the property market is rebounding. The average price of land for residential homes rose 1.2 percent to 4,620 yuan ($740) per square meter in 105 cities between October and December compared to the third quarter, the ministry said. Prices had risen 0.9 percent in the third quarter. It is good to see housing market rebound which contribute to the recovery of economy in China. On the other hands, a small group of people benefit it far more than the majority. The gap between the poor and the rich widens. Good luck and invest wisely to bridge the gap.
Guest Post: When Quantitative Easing Finally Fails Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/01/2012 16:49 -0400 Bond Census Bureau Central Banks Double Dip European Central Bank Great Depression Gross Domestic Product Guest Post Las Vegas New York Times Purchasing Power Quantitative Easing Real estate Recession recovery Sovereign Debt State Tax Revenues Unemployment United Kingdom Submitted by Gregor MacDonald of Peak Prosperity , While markets await details on the next round of quantitative easing (QE) -- whether refreshed bond buying from the Fed or sovereign debt buying from the European Central Bank (ECB) -- it's important to ask, What can we expect from further heroic attempts to reflate the OECD economies? The 2009 and 2010 QE programs from the Fed, and the 2011 operations from the ECB, were intended as shock treatment to hopefully set economies on a more typical, post-recession, recovery pathway. Here in 2012, QE was supposed to be well behind us. Instead, parts of Southern Europe are in outright depression, the United Kingdom is in double-dip recession, and the US is sweltering through its weakest “recovery” since the Great Depression. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Recently-released data from all these regions now confirm that previous QE, at best, merely bought time against even more grueling outcomes. Spain's unemployment, for example, has just hit a new post-Franco high of 24.6% , and the forecast for this crucially important EU economy remains negative. Recently revised US figures on GDP show that the post-2009 recovery was even weaker than previously estimated, with the first year post-crisis crisis clocking in at 2.5% vs. the expected 3.3%. Plodding, slow growth in the aftermath of a global financial crisis is a recipe for stagnation. The inability of the US economy to work off its surplus of labor appears to have finally stirred OECD policymakers into action. This is, of course, a great and humbling disappointment to the recoverists , who keep mistaking various economic oscillations around a bottom for the start of a typical post-war, V-shaped recovery. Housing, autos, jobs, Internet IPOs, state tax revenues, and train traffic have all been called upon by optimists to sound the clarion call for a broad economic recovery. Yet the US economy still is only able to produce sector-specific or selected regional strength that never adds up to quite enough to restore national growth. When we look at national GDP, at 1.5% in the most recent quarter, it is not clear the US economy has enough forward speed to statistically distinguish between slow growth and no growth. Large states like California, for example, are already seeing the return of declining state revenues. Meanwhile, national poverty -- one of the best measures of aggregate economic health -- continues to soar. There is no doubt that any new round of QE -- especially a double shot from both the Fed and the ECB -- will have psychological impact. For Europe, QE would once again allay systemic risk. And for the US, QE will surely find its way to the stock market; which is not an insignificant outcome as America increasingly relies on the stock market to produce retirement income. However, the question arises, What series of radical measures policy makers will turn to after the next round of QE wears off? Before we answer that question, let’s review the poor economic conditions leading to the next (and final) round of QE. Housing House prices in the US have done an excellent job of adjusting downward over the past 5 years to reflect the stagnation in US wages, the overhang of private debt, structural unemployment, and the rising cost of energy. But there has been a recent media celebration of sorts over this story, as it now appears that housing is bottoming. To be sure, certain housing markets like Miami and Las Vegas continue to recover from completely bombed-out levels. Additionally, construction of new homes, especially multi-family homes, is off the bottom. For now. The problem is that housing is a result, not a cause, of economic expansion. And unless housing is to work in tandem with wage and job growth, housing alone cannot power the US economy. Did the US not already learn that lesson already over the past decade? Let’s take a look at fifteen years of home prices, from the US Census Bureau : The unsustainable peak in 2006, when single-family homes reached a median sales price of $222,000, marked a near-doubling of price over the ten-year period from 1995. But as we now understand, not only were wages (in real terms) not rising during this period, but a new bull market in commodities was getting underway, robbing Americans of discretionary income. The result is that house prices were able to keep up with the loss of purchasing power until slightly past mid-decade. Then they collapsed. Worse, the phase transition in rising energy prices kept going (and continues through today), which had an outsized impact because the topography of US housing, largely dependent on roads and highways, is quite exposed to transportation costs. We can think of housing as facing several key constraints that will be sustained for at least another five years: First, there is the tremendous overhang of personal debt in the US. Much of this is still carried within the mortgage market itself. (Additionally, student loan debt has also emerged as an enormous barrier to home buying.) Second, there is the lack of wage growth and the problem of structural unemployment. The surplus of labor prevents the broad, marginal pressure needed to force national house prices upward. Third, the constraint of oil prices will not ease. This means that urban real estate may do well on a relative basis, but the majority of US homes will continue to adjust downward to reflect the permanent repricing of oil (and hence gasoline). Finally, the notion that real estate prices have bottomed with mortgage rates near all-time lows seems a very risky call. Is it more prudent to presume that a new advance in national real estate prices will be carried on the back of rates going even lower -- or higher? Which is it? The view that real estate has bottomed appears to assert that no matter where interest rates go from here, real estate is going higher. That is the mark of hope and belief; not analysis. It seems very unlikely only five years into such enormous, structural shifts in the US economy that the repricing process is over in housing. At minimum, I expect the median price of single-family existing homes to revert to the 2000 level of $147,000, with the strong possibility of an overshoot to the $125,000 level. This process will take several more years. Jobs As early as 2009, many of us understood that this was not a normal economic decline and therefore would not be followed by a normal economic recovery. Here's the lead paragraph to a New York Times piece, covering the latest GDP data: U.S. Growth Falls to 1.5%; a Recovery Seems Mired The United States economy has lost the momentum it appeared to be building earlier this year, as the latest government statistics showed that it expanded by a mere 1.5 percent annual rate in the second quarter. This is precisely the kind of news flow that the business press can expect to report for years to come. Sure, the stock market may advance from points of low valuation. Certain regions of the country, especially those tied to exports, may thrive for a while. But nationally, a long secular contraction is now in place that will combine stagnant wages, contraction in government payrolls, flat tax revenues, and the shift to a cultural preference for much lower consumption . In addition to the fact that young people will not buy cars, will not buy houses, and in general will not secure high-paying jobs (if they can secure jobs at all), the nature of work in the US has entered a degrading period. Low wages, part-time work, poor benefits, and higher health-care costs all serve to further squeeze consumption. Let’s take a look at the structural shift from full-time to part-time work in the US. At an inflection point in a normal recovery, US workers would quickly be hired back to full-time jobs. But a full-time job with benefits is a cost that US corporations no longer wish to bear. This is partly why US corporate earnings and their accumulation of cash has been so robust. Sited in the US but acquiring labor abroad, US corporations are having their finest hour as they sell products to non-OECD markets that benefit from wave after wave of stimulus from the OECD, while the economy and labor force in their home countries languish. Here in the US, we have effectively stripped out an entire tranche of the full-time US workforce, with no plausible scenario currently in place for adding it back. America used to have nearly five full-time jobs for every part-time job. Now we have four. Meanwhile, Washington, characterized by professional normalcy bias, has finally started figure this out. More importantly, this is why the economy will veer continually towards recession absent some form of stimulus in the years to come. While the jobs market is surely the primary reason why QE 3 will be attempted, it’s also the reason why more radical measures are likely thereafter, as opposed to QE 4. Many of the prognostications for QE’s impact on the labor market, especially from the Fed and Fed-connected economists, simply never came true. That will become even clearer after QE 3 fails. Poverty After leveling off in late 2011 and early 2012, the number of persons taking Food Stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) in the US is starting to push higher again . Given that food prices are set to make their next move higher as well, it’s reasonable to expect SNAP participation to reflect that pressure on household budgets. The annual cost of the program, which rose in the three years 2009-2011 from $50 billion to $64 billion and then to $71 billion, is quickly becoming a significant budget item. For comparison, should SNAP program costs reach $75 billion this current fiscal year, this amount is almost exactly equal to the most recent Department of Transportation Budget , at $74 billion. While SNAP tracks the growth of poverty well, it's not the only measure. And the breadth and scale of US poverty continues to grow. This autumn, the Census Bureau is expected to release its latest figures on the growth in US poverty: Poverty rate nears worst mark since 1965 The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and a fraying government safety net. Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections. The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965. Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. The Diminishing Marginal Utility of Quantitative Easing QE is a poor transmission mechanism for creating jobs. While there has certainly been a recovery of sorts in US jobs since the deep lows of 2009, in which total employment has risen from 139 million to 142 million jobs, this has been insufficient to keep up with population growth. Accordingly, if the US job market cannot aggregate the number of new workers into its system, then it cannot work off the structural labor surplus. Indeed, the rather narrow targets that QE aims for are exactly the reason why the US and the OECD are fated to try more unconventional solutions once the next round of QE fails. In Part II: WhatRadical Measures to Expect in the Post-QE Era , we forecast that policies to revive stagnant Western economies (and the US, in particular) will swing sharply away from central banks towards elective bodies. Such programs will involve various forms of debt jubilee and massive infrastructure programs. More unconventional is that some of these programs may be initiated using new forms of government scrip, equity participation, or other methods that allow the government to “spend” without incurring new debt. Contrary to the deflationist view, which holds that governments will eventually turn to austerity, the examples of such failed efforts in the United Kingdom (which has entered a double dip recession) suggest that austerity will be nothing more than a brief, economic dalliance of Western policy makers -- recall that the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the 1930’s was considered radical in its time. We should expect no less this time around, as governments decide to pursue WPA 2.0. Click here to access Part II of this report (free executive summary; paid enrollment required for full access) . Average: 4.411765 Your rating: None Average: 4.4 ( 17 votes) Tweet Login or register to post comments 9887 reads Printer-friendly version Send to friend Similar Articles You Might Enjoy: The Weaponization of Economic Theory No Jobs: The Result of Wizard of Oz Economics Poverty In America: A Special Report Guest Post: Middle Class? Here's What's Destroying Your Future You've Seen It Before, And Here It Is Again: "The Chart That Tears Apart The Stimulus Package"
标签: Estate经管大学堂：名校名师名课
京公网安备 11010802022788号
论坛法律顾问：王进律师
知识产权保护声明
免责及隐私声明
