Bill Bonner (The Daily Reckoning, UK):

The ‘recession’ did more damage than they think

Claptrap! Nonsense! Balderdash!

Everywhere we look, someone is saying something ridiculous.

Which is good news to us. This Daily Reckoning was getting to be serious work…what with the world facing a total financial meltdown and all.

So, we’re pleased to be able to lighten up by, once again, telling you what an idiot Tom Friedman is. You already knew that? Well, it doesn’t hurt to repeat it…

We hadn’t seen much of the old Tom recently. His recent editorials in the New York Times were no smarter than before, but a bit subdued…as if some chemical trace of good sense had slipped into his system, perhaps from a paper cut. But now, he’s back, big as life and twice as stupid.

We’ll come back to Tom in a moment, but since this is a financial service, we should probably begin with the financial news.

The Financial Times is looking over its shoulder. The recession is over, it says; time to take stock of the damage.

“Beyond the Crisis… With most of the world’s economies officially out of recession, the FT launches a series examining the legacy of worst global economic crisis since the 1930s,” says the FT. But according to the figures below the headline, the crisis wasn’t so bad. The US economy walked backward only 3.5%. Now, it’s making progress again.

The FT editors should keep their eyes on the road. The ‘recession’ did more damage than they think. And it isn’t over… There’s more trouble ahead.

The ‘recession’ in the US has wiped out…

…ten years of stock market progress. Actually, stock prices are no higher than they were in 1998…

…ten years of employment progress. You have to go back to the ’90s to find a time when so few people were working in America…

…ten years of income gains. The typical household had less real, disposable income than it had 10 years ago.

In other words, a whole decade has been lost. Baby boomers are now ten years older, and less prepared for retirement than any previous generation in US history.

In Florida, joblessness has reached 11.2%. The jobless picture gets even grimmer when you consider the effect of long-term unemployment on the unemployed.

“It’s a killer disease,” says Thomas Cottle of Boston University. “People are going to be damaged and may not recover in their lifetimes.”

The FT elaborates: “The longer people are out of work the more their skills decline and the less appealing they become to employers.”

That puts the boomers in a bad spot. If they lose their jobs now they may never work again. Which means, they will face retirement with very little money…and a keen interest in making sure the feds keep the money flowing their way. They may not recover in their lifetimes…

Housing starts are at a 10-month low. Mortgage applications are at a 12-year low. As far as we can tell, both housing and employment figures are getting worse.

In short, the ‘recession’ is far from over, even if the feds are able to jive up the GDP figures from time to time.

Click here for the rest of Mr. Bonner’s insightful analysis at The Daily Reckoning, UK edition.

Oil prices have more than doubled since hitting lows near $30 a barrel at the height of the global economic crisis, but the market has come under pressure since touching a year high of $75 a barrel almost a month ago.

“There will be little or no sustained upward pressure on oil prices until global economic recovery is firmly established and reviving oil demand begins to draw down bulging oil inventories,” analysts at the Centre for Global Energy Studies said in their monthly oil market report on Monday.

“Even next year prices are unlikely to rise much unless clear signals emerge that the world is pulling out of recession in a sustainable fashion.”

U.S. crude for October delivery fell $2.43 to $69.61 a barrel by 1550 GMT, having earlier hit a low of $69.10. London Brent crude fell $2.61 to $68.71 a barrel.

Oil stockpiles have risen around the world as the global economic crisis has cut sharply into energy demand.

The International Energy Agency said on Monday world electricity output was likely to drop this year for the first time since 1945, while Sinopec <0386HK.>, Asia’s top oil refiner, said demand for industrial fuels remains depressed in China, the world’s second largest oil consumer.

“Global oil demand is only slowly picking up and as of right now not at a fast enough pace to move overstocked inventories into a destocking pattern that will push inventories down to more normal levels,” said Dominick Chirichella, senior partner at Energy Management Institute.

Other markets also weighed on oil on Monday, with investors turning cautious ahead of a Federal Reserve meeting and Group of 20 summit this week. Equities were lower across the globe due to uncertainty about the economic outlook.

Oil prices have followed moves in equity markets in recent months as traders try to gauge the timing of a pick-up in global energy demand expected to coincide with the world’s emergence from the biggest economic slowdown since the 1930s.

Lower risk appetite also helped the dollar extend a rebound from a one-year low hit against the euro last week. A stronger dollar tends to pressure commodities priced in the U.S. currency as they become more expensive for holders of other currencies.

Separately, money managers boosted net long positions in the New York Mercantile Exchange crude oil market last week in a bet prices would rise, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said in a report on Friday.

Sept 21 (Reuters)

This phenomenon will push price inflation much higher, giving you an opportunity to profit on the “reflation trade” that will play out over the next decade.

U.S. crude futures traded down $1.01 to $63.04 a barrel by 1:13 p.m. EDT (1713 GMT) as investors sought safer havens. London Brent crude fell 74 cents to $63.31 a barrel.

“The worries are that the pace of the economic recovery hasn’t materialized the way that people who plunged into the commodity markets thought, and now they are running for the exits,” said Gene McGillian, an analyst at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Connecticut. “The question is how far they will run.”

Safe-haven currencies such as the dollar gained on the concerns about a potential turnaround to the global economic crisis, while U.S. stocks fell.

Crude prices have dropped from $73 a barrel in late June on worries a rebound in global fuel demand may be far off, after economic optimism helped lift prices from lows under $33 struck in December.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration raised its outlook for global oil demand by 170,000 barrels per day (bpd) in a report released on Tuesday.

“There has been stronger economic activity in Asia than was previously anticipated, and the current forecast reflects higher expected oil consumption in that region,” the EIA said.

Surging demand from China and other developing economies launched oil and other commodities on a six-year rally that sent crude to a record high near $150 a barrel last year, before the economic crisis hit demand.

Weekly U.S. inventory data is expected to show a fall in crude oil stockpiles and a build in gasoline and distillate stocks in the week to July 3, the build up to the long U.S. Independence Day holiday weekend when summer gasoline demand typically peaks.

Data from the American Petroleum Institute is scheduled to be released later Tuesday, with the EIA’s weekly inventory report due out on Wednesday.

Crude has found limited support from OPEC member Nigeria, where militants have launched at least four attacks against oil installations in the past 10 days, helping to underpin prices on Tuesday.

NEW YORK, July 7 (Reuters)

But that’s okay; while the Suits are wondering if they can back-date their stock options far enough if the economy doesn’t recover, we are poised to profit whether it does or doesn’t.

Personally, I think the U.S. economy has decayed from dead-man-walking status to that of a zombie in the grave. The jury is still out on whether or not the zombie will rise and stumble on for another year or two. That introduces a lot of uncertainty into the markets now, with everyone unsure of what will happen next.

The reality is, beneath all the bravado, that no one is ever sure of what will happen next. And the fools who proclaim certainty should be treated kindly, not left unsupervised around sharp objects, and never trusted with money.

But there is one thing we’re very confident of: if the zombie rises, it won’t be real life we see.

In other words, there is no credible scenario in which the efforts of the U.S. and other world governments to cure the global economic crisis will succeed, not before the mistakes from the past are liquidated. With increasing doses of the same bad medicine that caused the illness in the first place, how could it? You can’t make bad medicine work better by prescribing more – but if you believe the patient just needs a stronger dose, you’ll keep trying. And there can only be one result: dead zombie.

Before the zombie gives up the ghost, however, it may show signs of rosy life – but it will just be lipstick, not the healthy flow of living blood. Though an imitation of a thriving economy is all it will be, it could be a very impressive likeness.

Abandoning my gruesome metaphor, I’d say we are approaching a fork in the economic road. Both paths before us lead to continued liquidation of decades of bad economic decision-making, differing only in how long it takes to get there. The short path drops sharply downward from here, with the decline perhaps triggered by another round of depressing economic news. This is what happens if the various stimulus and rescue plans simply don’t work, deflating the Obama Rally.

The longer path takes us through a reflationary boom for the record books. In this scenario, the stimuli “work,” a last hurrah for the old economic order. And in the end, the artificially simulated (not stimulated) good times will have created an even more gargantuan level of ill-advised consumption, unnecessary construction, and massive misallocation of capital – all charged to an already maxed-out MasterCard.

What Happens Next?

The near term is the hardest to predict, but there are good reasons to assign additional weight to the probability of an imminent correction.

If the U.S. and global economies take the short path, another market meltdown will hammer everything again, even assets that “should” do well in that context, like gold. Any correction in gold would be temporary and create spectacular buying opportunities.

If it’s the long path, a delayed Shopping Season may set in (normally, it’s “Sell in May and go away”), and with the market so jittery, it could be a vicious one this year. With a lot of money still on the sidelines that “wants” to be reinvested, and people desperate to believe things will get better, the Obama Rally could go on for another month or so, but it seems likely to us that it won’t last much more than that, even if the resulting correction is followed by the longer path’s reflationary boom.

Long path or short path, either seems to lead downward in the near term (if only for a few months, initially, in the case of the longer path). Yet, no one can say that precious metals won’t be surging higher as you read this, or next Monday, or next week… I have no crystal ball with which to read the future – but barring an immediate and major breakout in gold, I’m inclined to expect a short-term weakness in the junior mining sector, followed by continued recovery and growth among the quality companies with solid fundamentals.

Why should anyone continue to own these volatile shares if a short-term correction seems likely? Aside from possibly missing a sudden and decisive jump in gold (and silver) prices, consider that most companies’ assets are selling cheaper.

Take a look at this chart showing the spot price of gold and the dollars per ounce in the ground the market has been willing to pay among junior miners and explorers.

Note that the left and right axes are scaled differently. This magnifies the effect, to better show the widening gap between the two over the last two years, but it’s real.

Here’s the same divergence for silver:

This silver chart supports our bullish call on silver last month. The per-ounce price of gold in the ground has not kept up with spot gold, but it is close to being back to its level before the credit crisis started heating up in 2007. Silver in the ground, on the other hand, is still close to the bottom hit last fall.
Short version: whether or not there’s a correction just ahead, a jittery market has both gold and silver in the ground on sale, and that’s an opportunity.

Owning physical gold and silver is a must in these uncertain times. But the real money-makers are select, high-quality junior mining stocks with sound fundamentals, enough cash on hand, and high-grade deposits that can propel the share price to the moon when the company hits paydirt. We call them “Toronto’s Secret Gold Investments”… click here to take a look.

The broader S&P 500 bled more, ending the day down just over 3%. The tech-centric Nasdaq was worse off still, losing 3.35%.

And today, the bloodletting spilled over into Asian measures. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng (-2.9%), Japan’s Nikkei 225 (-2.8%), Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 ( -3.1%) and South Korea’s Kospi Composite ( -2.8%) were among the worst hit.

“Asian investors are connecting the dots – with the World Bank’s help – that the U.S. economy is nowhere near turning around,” Tony Sagami, editor of Asia Stock Alert, told the Wall Street Journal’s Asian Edition. “Any Asian companies that depend on Americans for a big chunk of their sales need to prepare for lots of red ink.”

But it’s not just Asian markets.

Russia “officially” entered a bear market after yesterday’s 0.6% selloff pushed the Micex index down 20% from its last peak. Indeed, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index ended the session down 10% from its 2009 high. What do you call that? Half a bear market?

“After the World Bank report yesterday we see more concern about the return of negative growth dynamics,” Commerzbank AG’s Michael Ganske, told Bloomberg. “Investors realize that all the discussions of a sharp, V-shaped recovery are not going to materialize.”

NOW they realize, eh? We wonder how long it will be before they’ll forget that the word depression doesn’t end with a “V”. It ends with a lower case “n” or, as Bill Bonner is fond of saying, “a corrective force equal and opposite to the deception and delusion that preceded it.”

And there’s still plenty more deception and delusion to come, folks. For starters, the FOMC meets tomorrow, no doubt armed with a sack full of optical illusions and prestidigitations for the investing public. History shows, however, that we humans prefer a blissful illusion to a decaying reality…even if the shoots are turning brown before our noses.

or a closer look at what’s going on around town, we decided to ask the Rude readership for some boots-on-ground analysis. As usual, you obliged with emails from Sweden to Singapore and Atlanta to Alabama. In today’s column, we present the second and final installment of our green shoots vs. premature celebration mailbag. Please enjoy…

From Anytown, U.S.A., a reader reports…

Regardless of what the official figures are on inflation, prices are going up. Here are a few examples.

· Grape juice, Walmart store brand, up 17%

· Corn chips, up 27% [price unchanged, but the bag went from 28 oz. to 22 oz.]

· Gasoline, up 84% since January.

· Commodity Futures data provider, up 50% [he apologized, but said the exchange fees are up sharply.]

· Homeowners insurance, down 5%. I guess the cost to replace a house isn’t what it used to be.

I could go on, but you get the point. Meanwhile, I am retired, with a pension that is supposed to include an annual COLA [cost of living adjustment], but because the government declared that there was no inflation last year, I will not receive a COLA come July 1.

My IRA/401(K) accounts are heavily overweighted toward oil, natural gas, gold, etc., in an effort to keep my purchasing power at least even with inflation, and I just hope that it works. Now if we can just sell our house [which we own free and clear] my wife and I are looking to move to Latin America.

A lot of our friends think we are crazy, that the government will never let things “get too bad” here. I think that they are crazy to have that much faith in the government, and I would rather live where people actively distrust their government, but I guess that it is differences of opinion that make a market.

From Texas, a reader reports…

In the Hill Country of Central Texas, life continues at what passes for normal in these parts. The Texas economy overall has been able to withstand the credit crisis quite well. Foreclosures are almost non-existent out here in the sticks since the mortgage loans were never any of the alphabet soup variety and the lending banks keep their own paper. Real estate seems to be selling but at the normally slow pace that is historic for our area. Real estate prices never got overheated here so the market has remained slow and stable. Even the local Chrysler dealership is still in business (must have made a large-enough contribution to the Democrats’ campaign). I own an industrial building and my tenant tells me his business has slowed somewhat but he is still doing a good volume. One note of economic concern is tourism. Friends own a Bed & Breakfast on the lake and they tell me their guest-count has dropped dramatically.

Out on the West Coast, we just bought a second home in San Clemente, CA. It’s a gorgeous ocean-view home that was foreclosed and then we bought it on a short-sale from the bank. I calculated we got a 60% discount overall. From what I see in Southern California, they’re in a world of hurt.

From Oakland, California, a reader reports…

Well, I’ve got some doom and gloom. My IRA is still down over 40% from its high. At the beginning of the year I could not find work for 4 months and finally swallowed my pride and went on unemployment. My house is under water. Bank of America says that I do qualify for a loan adjustment but they won’t do it “right now” because I’m not over 2 months late on my payments.

On the flip side I have started getting work lately and I’m still making money with the short report. Puts and gold seem to be where it is at right now.

From Florida, a reader reports…

I know it is politically au courant to blame all spending on Obama, but that ignores the truths that the Congress is doing a helluva good job in that field as well AND that Eisenhower started building the Interstate highways with money we didn’t have and that every congress and every administration since then has spent more than it has taken in. Our two ruling parties are equally fiscally irresponsible.

As for Kudrin’s “white lies” about US currency, I remember while being trained for intelligence work a lengthy discussion of information, misinformation, disinformation, propaganda and outright lies. And while there are differences in them, it seems these days everything we hear from governments and most media stinks of one or another kind of spin. I read Agora financial info every day to try to get unadulterated information without the spin. Keep up the good work. And keep entertaining us with the fashion reports on the emperor’s new clothes.

From north of the border, a reader reports…

I live in Peterborough, a city of about 75,000 which is 90 miles NE of Toronto.

Things here are slow, but not extremely so, even though we depend on the auto industry and tourism. We have a high retired population and people are very price conscious. Housing sales died during the winter but have come back a little since. Prices are off 10 to 15% on average and houses over 350k usually sit a long time and are then marked down. Some businesses are running ads suggesting people “just think positive”. Since everyone is still looking for the bottom, I’d say we still have a ways to go. I expect this winter to be really ugly.

And finally, an unpaid international correspondent reports from Singapore…

1) Unemployment; graduates are finding it difficult to find jobs, other than the “odd jobs” that don’t fit the qualification; most of which have vacancies because the cheaper foreign workers that were brought in during the boom phase were repatriated back to their countries…Its déjà vu for people who graduated in the 70s; they are repeating the mantra from then – “Graduation = Unemployment”.

2) Retail sales are down pretty big, but those shopping malls continue to pop up all over the place and many of them are continuing their work-in-progress. The government is supportive of these projects… again, uncertainty over the economic climate is putting a gloom over these things.

3) Property prices fell approximately 30%, but have since rebounded about 15% with the stock market rally. The same companies that are building those shopping malls continue with these condominium projects.

5) Consumer credit still seems pretty okay; those stupid banks continue to pull out all the stops to get people signed up for their credit cards.

6) Healthcare costs continue to rise regardless of economic conditions and there is quite a bit of public outrage at the moment; no worries, just let the government handle everything… we’re a nanny state. (That disgusts me btw and I’m pretty close to swearing never to work for the government… having said that, I might choose the porridge over my ideals).

Source: For Better or Worse, Part II

They continue to update their data from time to time, the link to their work is at http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3421. I have not previously heard of www.voxeu.org, but it is a collection of the work of well regarded international economists that seems quite interesting for those who enjoy readings in the dismal science.

This week’s OTB will print long, but it is primarily charts. Please note that I have re-arranged some of the new charts to cut down on space because of some duplications. Word count is not all that much and it reads well. I will be referring to their work in future letters as well. Have a great week!

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

A Tale of Two Depressions

New findings:

• World industrial production continues to track closely the 1930s fall, with no clear signs of ‘green shoots’.
• World stock markets have rebounded a bit since March, and world trade has stabilized, but these are still following paths far below the ones they followed in the Great Depression.
• There are new charts for individual nations’ industrial output. The big-4 EU nations divide north-south; today’s German and British industrial output are closely tracking their rate of fall in the 1930s, while Italy and France are doing much worse.
• The North Americans (US & Canada) continue to see their industrial output fall approximately in line with what happened in the 1929 crisis, with no clear signs of a turn around.
• Japan’s industrial output in February was 25 percentage points lower than at the equivalent stage in the Great Depression. There was however a sharp rebound in March.

The parallels between the Great Depression of the 1930s and our current Great Recession have been widely remarked upon. Paul Krugman has compared the fall in US industrial production from its mid-1929 and late-2007 peaks, showing that it has been milder this time. On this basis he refers to the current situation, with characteristic black humour, as only “half a Great Depression.” The “Four Bad Bears” graph comparing the Dow in 1929-30 and S&P 500 in 2008-9 has similarly had wide circulation (Short 2009). It shows the US stock market since late 2007 falling just about as fast as in 1929-30.

Comparing the Great Depression to now for the world, not just the US

This and most other commentary contrasting the two episodes compares America then and now. This, however, is a misleading picture. The Great Depression was a global phenomenon. Even if it originated, in some sense, in the US, it was transmitted internationally by trade flows, capital flows and commodity prices. That said, different countries were affected differently. The US is not representative of their experiences.

Our Great Recession is every bit as global, earlier hopes for decoupling in Asia and Europe notwithstanding. Increasingly there is awareness that events have taken an even uglier turn outside the US, with even larger falls in manufacturing production, exports and equity prices.

In fact, when we look globally, as in Figure 1, the decline in industrial production in the last nine months has been at least as severe as in the nine months following the 1929 peak. (All graphs in this column track behaviour after the peaks in world industrial production, which occurred in June 1929 and April 2008.) Here, then, is a first illustration of how the global picture provides a very different and, indeed, more disturbing perspective than the US case considered by Krugman, which as noted earlier shows a smaller decline in manufacturing production now than then.

Updated Figure 1. World Industrial Output, Now vs Then (updated)

Source: Eichengreen and O’Rourke (2009) and IMF.

Similarly, while the fall in US stock market has tracked 1929, global stock markets are falling even faster now than in the Great Depression (Figure 2). Again this is contrary to the impression left by those who, basing their comparison on the US market alone, suggest that the current crash is no more serious than that of 1929-30.

Updated Figure 2. World Stock Markets, Now vs Then (updated)

Another area where we are “surpassing” our forbearers is in destroying trade. World trade is falling much faster now than in 1929-30 (Figure 3). This is highly alarming given the prominence attached in the historical literature to trade destruction as a factor compounding the Great Depression.

Updated Figure 3. The Volume of World Trade, Now vs Then (updated)

Sources: League of Nations Monthly Bulletin of Statistics,http://www.cpb.nl/eng/research/sector2/data/trademonitor.html

It’s a Depression alright

To sum up, globally we are tracking or doing even worse than the Great Depression, whether the metric is industrial production, exports or equity valuations. Focusing on the US causes one to minimise this alarming fact. The “Great Recession” label may turn out to be too optimistic. This is a Depression-sized event.

That said, we are only one year into the current crisis, whereas after 1929 the world economy continued to shrink for three successive years. What matters now is that policy makers arrest the decline. We therefore turn to the policy response.

Policy responses: Then and now

Figure 4 shows a GDP-weighted average of central bank discount rates for 7 countries. As can be seen, in both crises there was a lag of five or six months before discount rates responded to the passing of the peak, although in the present crisis rates have been cut more rapidly and from a lower level. There is more at work here than simply the difference between George Harrison and Ben Bernanke. The central bank response has differed globally.

Updated Figure 4. Central Bank Discount Rates, Now vs Then (7 country average)

Source: Bernanke and Mihov (2000); Bank of England, ECB, Bank of Japan, St. Louis Fed, National Bank of Poland, Sveriges Riksbank.

Figure 5 shows money supply for a GDP-weighted average of 19 countries accounting for more than half of world GDP in 2004. Clearly, monetary expansion was more rapid in the run-up to the 2008 crisis than during 1925-29, which is a reminder that the stage-setting events were not the same in the two cases. Moreover, the global money supply continued to grow rapidly in 2008, unlike in 1929 when it levelled off and then underwent a catastrophic decline.

Figure 5. Money Supplies, 19 Countries, Now vs Then

Source: Bordo et al. (2001), IMF International Financial Statistics, OECD Monthly Economic Indicators.

Figure 6 is the analogous picture for fiscal policy, in this case for 24 countries. The interwar measure is the fiscal surplus as a percentage of GDP. The current data include the IMF’s World Economic Outlook Update forecasts for 2009 and 2010. As can be seen, fiscal deficits expanded after 1929 but only modestly. Clearly, willingness to run deficits today is considerably greater.

Figure 6. Government Budget Surpluses, Now vs Then

Source: Bordo et al. (2001), IMF World Economic Outlook, January 2009.

[They added some country data in their revision that I put here, hence the two figure 5's, but they are labeled as such on the website and I did not change their labellling – JFM]

New Figure 5. Industrial output, four big Europeans, then and now

New Figure 6. Industrial output, four Non-Europeans, then and now.

The facts for Chile, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Sweden are displayed below;

New Figure 7: Industrial output, four small Europeans, then and now.

Conclusion

To summarise: the world is currently undergoing an economic shock every bit as big as the Great Depression shock of 1929-30. Looking just at the US leads one to overlook how alarming the current situation is even in comparison with 1929-30.

The good news, of course, is that the policy response is very different. The question now is whether that policy response will work. For the answer, stay tuned for our next column.

Source: A Tale of Two Depressions

We are in the middle of a global economic crisis and commodities are on sale. Buy commodities now while they are still cheap. When we finally emerge from this global economic crisis — prices will explode higher. I’m talking about another long-term bull market in commodities. Let me explain…

Inflation Will Push Commodities Prices Higher

Our Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is an inflationist, which is an advocate of the policy of deliberate inflation achieved by increasing the supply of available currency and credit. They call him helicopter Ben because he once quoted a statement made by Milton Friedman, about using a “helicopter drop” of money into the economy to fight deflation.

Bernanke is a student of the causes of the Great Depression, and he has written extensively on this subject. Bernanke knows that deflation is quite negative for an economy and should be avoided at all costs. We have recently seen deflation as prices for real estate and commodities dropped during this recession. But, Ben Bernanke’s Fed and other central banks around the world have fired up the printing presses to combat deflation. They have been dumping new currency into the economy to reverse deflation and stimulate the economy. It’s working! One measure of inflation- the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has recently turned positive. Deflation is out—Inflation is starting.

The problem is, inflation could really skyrocket, especially when we finally emerge from this recession. Inflation eats away at your purchasing power and takes away your wealth.

One of the best ways to protect against inflation is to invest in commodities.

In the 1970s, when inflation in the U.S. was high and the economy was in a deep recession, commodity prices soared.

You want to own tangible assets like metals, energy, agriculture, and livestock as these commodities hold their value in inflationary times.

Exploding Population and Living Standards will Push Commodity Prices Higher

We have already seen a surge in demand for commodities from developing countries, like India and China. Plus, global commodity supplies are low; the inventories for food are the lowest they have been in 50 years. Rising income levels in emerging countries and the spread of western ideologies are having an effect on food consumption. We are seeing greater consumer demand for certain foods like meat and poultry.

The Earth’s population is estimated to be about 6.77 billion, and the world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion by the year 2040. The world’s masses are already demanding more vegetables, fruits, meats and dairy products. Imagine what the demand for agricultural products will be in 10 to 20 years.

Growing global demand from population growth and a rising standard of living will push commodity prices much higher.

Some Good Commodity Picks

The fundamentals make commodities an extremely attractive investment.

Plus, adding commodities to your portfolio gives you added diversification.

Here are some good ways to invest in commodities right in your normal brokerage account:

GLD - This gold tracking Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) mirrors the price of gold.

SLV - This silver tracking ETF mirrors the price of silver.

DBA – This ETF tracks widely traded agricultural commodities like corn, wheat, soy beans and sugar. As agricultural prices rise the price of this ETF goes up.

MOO – This ETF comprises a basket of companies engaged in various sectors of agribusiness like agricultural chemicals, livestock operations, agricultural equipment and ethanol/biodiesel.

PCL – One of the best timber producer stocks. Historically, timber prices have done exceptionally well under inflationary circumstances.

FCX - Freeport is one of the world’s largest copper producers and this copper stock goes up when copper prices go up.

XOM - Exxon Mobil Corporation, a great way to invest in oil.

Take a close look at investing in commodities. We are at the beginning of an unprecedented bull market in the commodity sector.

Source: Commodities Are The Best Place To Be For The Next Decade

He may well be right; more interesting is what this tells us about the U.S. banking system going forward.

“The institutions are insolvent,” Roubini said in a Bloomberg Radio interview. “You have to take them over and you have to split them up into three or four national banks, rather than having a humongous monster that is too big to fail.”

But that may be impractical. Citigroup Inc. (C), for example, can sell and is selling peripheral parts of its empire such as Japanese broker Nikko Securities. However, so much of its business involves an international nexus of connections – including its large U.S. operations – that splitting them may be both impractical and excessively value destroying.

However, Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) showed Thursday what could be achieved by simplicity. It gave investors a preview of its first quarter results, in which it will make record earnings of about $3 billion, or 55 cents a share, after paying preferred stock dividends of $372 million on its $25 billion of preference shares from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).

Both the old Wells Fargo and Wachovia Bank, which it acquired last year, are showing good results, with $3.3 billion in loan-loss charge-offs for the combined group – down from $6.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008. As a result, bank stocks were up sharply Thursday, continuing their healthy rally over the last six weeks.

Wells Fargo is one of six U.S. banks – Citigroup, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), and Morgan Stanley (MS), Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) – with assets of more than $1 trillion. They are so large they form a separate “top tier” of banks, since the next largest bank, PNC Financial Services (PNC), has assets of only $295 billion.

However, Wells Fargo’s first-quarter success does not mean that all the top-tier banks will do well. Both Wells Fargo and Wachovia were heavily oriented to conventional retail and commercial banking, with massive branch networks all over the United States. The combined Wells Fargo was thus much less reliant on the slumbering investment banking business than other top-tier banks. It was also far less involved in high-risk capital-markets game playing, which got so many other banks in trouble. For example, while Wachovia got $500 million of dubious payouts from American International Group Inc.’s (AIG) dodgy credit default swaps, Wells got nothing, and therefore presumably had no net exposure.

Wells Fargo, in short, is becoming a model of what a nation should require of its behemoths under the “too big to fail” doctrine. It does mostly conventional retail and corporate banking, and provides economically useful services to its nationwide network of clients. It takes few huge risks, and is emerging from 2008’s disaster in pretty good shape. Without the Wachovia acquisition, Wells Fargo could probably have avoided the need for TARP capital.

In my February report on the top 12 U.S. banks, I showed how many of the top banks were in pretty good shape and offered investors good value, which would be demonstrated by higher first quarter earnings going forward. The Financial Select Sector SPDR fund (XLF) is up about 39% since then, so that was a pretty pleasing call.

Of course, what I didn’t get right was that the dogs are up even more in percentage terms than the solid citizens. Citigroup, the biggest bow-wow of them all, has more than doubled. Going forward, I would expect quality to assert itself. While some of the weaker banks should survive, they will be able to take much less advantage of currently juicy lending opportunities than their stronger brethren.

Sorting Out the Winners and Losers

Over the long term, the road forward is clear. Roubini’s suggestion to break up the largest banks – say those with assets of more than $500 billion – may be impracticable. It is also unnecessary. They should simply be tightly restricted, allowed to undertake only “vanilla” banking businesses, without a presence in investment banking, or in high-risk trading.

The market would then sort matters out. Some banks, like Wells Fargo, would probably prefer to remain gigantic, but simple and low-risk – earning a reasonable return, paying their top executives moderately, and having their stock serve as a fine investment for risk-average investors seeking dividend income. Bank of America and JPMorgan might wish to divest their investment banking businesses and move toward this model. The cultural clash between Merrill Lynch and the old Bank of America has been huge, suggesting that their merger has huge negative synergy and that the two institutions would be worth more separated.

The top six’s two investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, would have no interest in commercial banking, in which they have little history, so would have to downsize dramatically. One possibility is splitting them three ways – an advisory business, a medium-sized institution with a magnificent client base, and a more or less unregulated hedge fund that could be allowed to bankrupt itself in the shadows. They would not be permitted to retain their current huge positions in “principal trading,” an activity of little economic purpose beyond exploiting the firm’s insider information.

As for Citigroup, it seems likely that its troubles are too great and its culture too aggressive for any Wells Fargo-type solution to be possible. Over time, it should almost certainly be liquidated.

Below the top tier, the U.S. regional banks should mostly be in good shape, with a few exceptions that were based in particularly troubled regions or who had been excessively aggressive. In any case, they would not be “too big to fail” and would be allowed to engage modestly in investment banking if they thought it profitable.

Since they would be allowed higher leverage than the behemoths, they would be more profitable. And over time, the banking business might fragment further, which could only be good for competition.

As the world has seen over the past year, the arguments for creating financial services behemoths were spurious. They were too large to manage, and they survived only because their host country taxpayers gave them an implicit guarantee.

Source:  U.S. Banks: Why Only the Simplest Will Succeed

In England, the yahoos attacked poor Sir Fred Goodwin’s house. Fred ran the Royal Bank of Scotland into the ground; you’d think the rabble would be delighted.

In America, meanwhile, they organize bus tours to gawk at AIG executives’ houses…and howl for blood. Apologize, resign…or commit suicide, suggested Senator Grassley.

“The corporate security business is booming,” says the International Herald Tribune.

Until now, the whole bonus/executive pay/bailout spectacle was just an amusing diversion – diverting the public’s attention with a trifling few million dollars, while the feds picked their pickets for trillions. But now, it’s turning ugly.

Our guess is that the blood will flow…but later. It’s still fairly early in the correction. Investors have lost money – lots of it. Homeowners have lost their homes. Working stiffs and Wall Street sharpies have both lost their jobs. But the violence-prone yahoos still expect something for nothing. The bailout plans will work, they believe. The government will step in and save them. They haven’t figured out that the government’s bailouts are just making their situation worse.

Today’s International Herald Tribune tells that “shanty-towns” are beginning to appear throughout the United States. People are setting up tent communities…shacks…and Rio-style favelas – in America. The paper shows a photo of a group of tents under a California freeway. It’s not hard to understand why. Many families live paycheck to paycheck…just one week ahead of the rent payments. If the paychecks stop – even for a short time – they’re in trouble.

When credit is expanding, jobs are plentiful and credit is willing. Lose a job and you can always get another. And you can fill in the gap in your budget with credit cards. But that was then…this is now. Advertise a job opening now and you’re likely to get hundreds of applicants. And not only is it harder to get a job…it’s harder to get a line of credit too. And even people who still have credit are more reluctant to use it. They know where that leads; many would prefer to live under a highway than to run up more debt.

A big change in attitude has taken place. People used to think that whatever they needed, they could get it ‘just in time.’ That’s why we have 24-7 liquor stores, all-night convenience shops and cash machines on every street corner. But something has gone wrong with the ‘just in time’ system. The cash machines aren’t as yielding as they used to be. Neither is the housing market. Or the job market. Sometimes, they just say no.

Now, people want a little cash in their pocket…just in case.

But what do we know? We missed the whole credit cycle. When we were young and in need of credit, the banks were still smart enough not to lend to us. When we got older, we were smart enough not to borrow.

But pity people about 20 years younger than we are. They were just starting out…having children…buying houses…at a time when the banks had lost their minds. Credit was as easy to get as a social disease. Now, the debt is even harder to get rid of. Old people…and young people…tend to have little debt. It’s the people in between who are hurting.

But enough rambling…

Everyone’s looking for the recovery. The commentators think they see signs of it everywhere. Commodities are rising. Stocks are going up. Even houses are said to be selling better than they were a few weeks ago.

“Risk appetite grows on hope US is near bottom,” says the FT today.

The Dow rose 174 points yesterday. Oil, the dollar, and gold moved little.

Maybe you should stop reading here…before we get to the ‘rest of the story’…

But first, we turn to Ian in Baltimore for more news:

“On the housing front, we see a ray of hope,” writes Ian in today’s issue of The 5 Min. Forecast.

“According to this chart, the precipitous fall in home prices might start to ease up soon:

“The current crisis has finally wiped out the bubble in home prices,” continues Ian. “Adjusted for inflation, the price of median single family home has plunged 33% from its 2005 high. Now at pre-mania levels, an average of $165,000, home prices have a reason to at least slow down their rapid decay.

“Ouch…sorry if you bought your home during the height of the housing boom in the 1979. The median, inflation adjusted return over the last 30 years is negative 1.6%.”

Each weekday, Ian and Addison bring readers the The 5 Min Forecast, an executive series e-letter that provides a quick and dirty analysis of daily economic and financial developments – in five minutes or less.

And now, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story:

GM says 7,500 hourly workers have left the company. Jobless claims sent another record – the 9th one in a row. There are now more people getting benefits than any time since 1967.

And what’s going on in the bond market?

“Weak demand at Treasury auction gives Wall Street pause,” says an article at the New York Times.

And in England, an auction of government bonds “failed” – buyers didn’t show up.

If the government can’t finance its debt, how will it pay for its bailouts? Oh, never mind…we forgot; the Fed will lend the government the money. Where will the Fed get the money? Oh, never mind…

Meanwhile, the corporate bond market is still expecting a Great Depression…

“Investment grade corporate bond indices are [still] priced for default rates of 38% in Europe; 40% in the US; and 51% in the UK – all worse than the Depression,” writes John Authers in today’s Financial Times. Bank lending is the target of all these recent operations, he points out.

Stocks are going up. But corporate debt is still priced “on the assumption of absolute disaster,” says Authers. Someone’s got to be wrong: either stock market investors…or the bond market. “Either the credit market is so illiquid that these numbers bear no relation to the outcomes that investors expect; or we are in for a re-run of the Depression.”

Naturally, we don’t know which it is. We are incurable optimists here at The Daily Reckoning. Let the markets work…they’ll straighten things out. In the meantime, we keep our Crash Alert flags unfurled…just in case.

And finally, Alan Greenspan is in the news today. He has a major work of obfuscation in today’s Financial Times, the gist of which is the same as his previous pieces. “It’s not my fault,” is the message.

In a sense, he is right. The free markets are full of boom and bust, sturm and drang, yin and yang. Free markets also create prosperity, he points out. And if bubbles are the price we pay, well…it’s worth it.

“I do not recall bubbles emerging in the former Soviet Union,” he says.

Yes, bubbles will always be with us, dear reader. But that is no excuse for a Federal Reserve chairman who pumped extra air into the already bubbling economy.

Poor Dr. Greenspan. The more he tries to defend himself…the more guilty he appears. And now he must shuffle out the end of his days…an empty coat upon a stick…with the curse of the biggest financial crisis in history upon his wrinkly, old head.

Source:  Still Searching for a Recovery