But they may be struggling in vain.

Since 1945, the party that has controlled the White House has lost an average of 16 House seats in the president’s first midterm election, according to the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan publication in Washington. However, losses for the Democrats could be far steeper next year if they fail to put unemployed Americans back to work.

Then-U.S. President Bill Clinton and the Democrats lost 52 House seats in 1994.

“Unemployment is the leading economic indicator when it comes to politics,” Democratic pollster Peter Hart told The Wall Street Journal. “Anytime unemployment hits double digits, it’s hard to see the party in control having a good election year.”

Right now, polls are showing that the majority of Americans list jobs as their top concern. And rightfully so.

The economy unexpectedly shed 263,000 jobs last month as the jobless rate soared to a 26-year high of 9.8%.  And many economists expect the unemployment rate will reach 10% by the end of the year and peak at about 10.5% next summer.

Lawmakers are scrambling to staunch the bleeding, but that process has been made difficult by an escalating budget deficit.

The government ended its 2009 fiscal year in September with a total deficit of $1.4 trillion, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said. That equates to 9.9% of gross domestic product and is the largest deficit since 1945.

Government spending rose by 18% in the year, with the bailout of the financial industry, which alone required $245 billion. The spending increases and tax cuts included in the economic stimulus package approved in February added almost $200 billion to the 2009 deficit, the CBO said.

The Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus plan, which was touted as a catalyst for job creation, has been criticized for its slow progress and ineffectiveness.

Only about a quarter of Obama’s stimulus, or $164 billion, has been paid out. About half, nearly $400 billion, will be paid out over the next 12 months in the build-up to mid-term elections, and the remainder will be disbursed in 2011.

In January, the administration claimed the stimulus package would keep unemployment below 8% and push it below 7% by the end of 2010 – a fact that has already been seized on by Republican opposition.

“We’ll continue to remind Democrats of their failed promises that led to what is now, at best, a jobless recovery,” said National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) spokesman Paul Lindsay told The Journal.

President Obama said in his Saturday radio address that he would “explore additional options to promote job creation.”

But with a growing perception that the stimulus has failed and a deepening concern about the nation’s snowballing deficit, the White House has bristled at talk of a second stimulus package.

“This is not a discussion of second fiscal stimulus,” Jen Psaki, the senior White House economic spokeswoman told the Financial Times. “The president and his economic team have continued to look at a wide number of policy options to create new jobs and ease the burden of those who cannot find employment but any notion that we are any farther along than preliminary discussions about new proposals is wildly inaccurate.”

In particular, the administration is hoping to extend such stimulus measures as the $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers.

When it expires on Dec. 1, the homebuyers credit will be responsible for nearly 400,000 sales of new and existing homes, out of total sales of 1.4 million, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, told The New York Times. That’s roughly in line with estimates from the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

Zandi, who formerly advised Senator John McCain, recommends extending the credit through August 2010. Legislators are also considering extending the credit to current homeowners.

The administration may also consider expanding the federal transportation funding program, which comes up for renewal every six years. That 2003 program expired on Sept. 30 and is currently operating under a 30-day extension period.

Obama is also expected to push for an extension of the “Making Work Pay” middle class tax cut that accounted for about a third of the February stimulus.

Extending these programs could cost the government tens of billions of dollars in tax revenue.

For example, congressional analysts estimate the cost of the current homebuyer credit at about $1 billion a month. Expanding the credit through next August could cost as much as $30 billion, according to Moody’s Zandi.

That, in turn, could lead to another large run-up in the budget deficit, which in the last year was exacerbated by dwindling tax revenue. Individual income taxes, the biggest source of tax receipts, fell by 20%, and corporate income taxes dropped by 54%, the CBO said.

“There may not be anything we can do,” a Democratic Congressional leadership aide conceded to The Times. “Under any circumstances, it’s going to take a while for jobs to recover.”

Source: Can Democrats Anchor Unemployment Without Doing More Damage to the Deficit?

Investors must be pondering the future.

What will the future look like? No one knows. But investors thought they saw things they liked.

For one thing, there was the Federal Reserve governor from New York, who told the world that there was no risk of a rate hike anytime soon. Bill Dudley knows which way the wind is blowing. He said the Fed would hold money policy loose “indefinitely.”

Indefinitely is otherwise known as “as long as it takes.”

But as long as it takes for what? Ah…as long as it takes until the economy appears strong again.

How long will that be? Ah…maybe longer than anyone realizes.

Yesterday, we were calculating how long it would take to get the jobless number back down to ’90s levels…that is, around 5%. There are now about 131 million jobs in the United States…and about 15 million people who would like a job but can’t find one. Meanwhile, population growth adds about 1.5 million new workers every year. That means the economy has to grow at 1% (in real terms) just to stay even with population growth. Currently, the economy is going in the wrong direction – backwards. It’s losing jobs…maybe 3 million this year…and maybe another 2 million or so before it finally stabilizes (who knows?)…for a total of 20 million jobs down (about 13% unemployment) by the time unemployment bottoms out.

Let’s suppose, by some miracle, the economy turns around…and begins growing at 3% per year. That should be about 3 million new jobs per year. Half of those, remember, are just to keep up with population growth. So the other half – 1.5 million – gradually reduce unemployment. Now, let’s get out the calculator…20 million divided by 1.5 million equals a little more than 13. By these numbers you can expect full employment again in 2022!

But what if the economy doesn’t grow at 3% per year? Ooooh…that’s the problem, isn’t it? All the feds – and practically all other economists too – are projecting a return to normal. They expect a ‘recovery.’ But what if there never is a recovery?

Heck, yesterday, the central bank of Australia said it was so sure that everything was going well it raised its key lending rate by 25 basis points.

“Canberra says risk of serious retraction over,” The Financial Times reports.

But they get a lot of sunshine down under. Possibly, the heads of the Reserve Bank of Australia got a little too much of it yesterday. Australia is also a supplier of natural resources to China; possibly, the sun burnt bankers failed to notice that China is a bubble.

Or maybe they failed to notice that China’s biggest customer is broke.

Right under The Financial Times’ article about Australia is the following headline:

“No sign of credit revival for US households.”

“The latest data from the Federal Reserve show consumer credit declined at an annual rate of 10.4% in July – the fastest rate since the crisis began two years ago.”

Yes, dear reader, Americans are shedding debt. They are cutting back. They are saving.

Another headline in The Financial Times tells us, “Holiday sales [are] set to fall.”

Hold on. Who makes all that junk that Americans buy for Christmas? And how can China buy more raw materials from Australia when it is selling fewer finished products to Americans?

Perhaps China is focusing more sales on the domestic market; we don’t doubt it. But you don’t refocus the world’s second or third largest economy in 12 months. It takes years. And you don’t get this kind of rebirth without some kind of suffering. The big, old oak tree has to fall down before the sapling can take its place. And when the oak falls – it makes one helluva mess.

Meanwhile, President Obama is adding more gin to the party punch. He says he’s considering ways to create more jobs without a new stimulus program. Among the schemes under consideration is a $3,000 new job tax credit.

Hey, why not! They had such great success with the Clunker tax credit…and with the first time house buyer tax credit. Of course, when you pay people to do things, you can’t be too surprised that they do them. And then, you can’t be too surprised when they stop doing them after you stop paying them. Thus, when the Clunkers program conked out in August car buyers stopped buying. And when the new house purchase tax credit expires in November, don’t be surprised if house sales collapse too. So, if the feds are going to pay people to hire other people, they better be prepared to do it for a long time.

Which brings us back to our calculations. How long will it be before this economy can walk without the feds clutching both arms? A few months ago, we wondered how long it would take consumers to put their finances back in order. Five years? Ten years? There are so many assumptions required that the numbers barely make sense. Still, if you think the total debt burden is headed back to under 200% of GDP, where it was for most of the last century, that would require the elimination of debt equal to about 160% of GDP…or more than $20 trillion worth. How do you eliminate debt? Well, some of it simply disappears…through defaults, foreclosures and bankruptcies. The rest is paid off. How? By saving. Now, imagine that the United States could put an amount equal to 15% of GDP to work paying down its debts. That’s savings and capital formation of all types – corporate as well as individual. It ignores government, which is going in the other direction. At 15% of GDP per year, paying America’s private debt down to under 2 times annual output is still about a 7-year project.

So, prepare for a long dry spell. In the best of cases, the American public has to stay on the frugality wagon for 7 to 13 years.

And in the worst of cases? Oh, well…that’s a different matter. The aforementioned US government is desperate to short-circuit the process of balance sheet repair. It is propping up the old tree every way it can. Thus, the whole period of adjustment may take much, much longer than it should. Instead of coming down with a crash, the limbs fall off one at a time. At this rate, the whole process could take nearly forever.

As the private sector eliminates debt, for example, the feds add it. The deficits are scheduled – by the Congressional Budget Office – to be monstrous, but controllable. Cash for clunkers, cash for houses, cash for jobs – it adds up. But the CBO projections are based on very optimistic assumptions, in which the economy ‘recovers’ quickly and grows strongly. They do not take into account the real nature of the slump. It is not a pause…it is a permanent change. The Obama administration cannot, ultimately, prevent change. But it can slow down the process so much that the depression begins to seem eternal.

Until tomorrow,

Bill Bonner

Source: The Eternal Depression

On one hand, the $130 billion he spent on acquisitions – FleetBoston Financial Corp., MBNA Corp., LaSalle Bank Corp., Countrywide Financial Corp., Charles Schwab Corp.’s (Nasdaq: SCHW) U.S. Trust private banking unit and Merrill Lynch – that more than tripled the size of Bank of America, making it the largest U.S. lender both by assets and deposits.

On the other, his open-wallet policy and the example it set forth almost perfectly encapsulates the boom, bust and nascent rebound of the U.S. housing and banking crisis – which later became the financial plague that devastated markets all over the world.

In the second half of 2007, the extent of the U.S. housing crisis began to crystallize when Countrywide’s freewheeling subprime-lending policy irreversibly sank the nation’s largest home lender. Lewis moved in and acquired the troubled lender for $4 billion the following January, and in doing so, he put Bank of America on the hook for Countrywide $1.5 trillion loan portfolio.

In the second half of 2008, the extent of the how much havoc the destruction of investment banks and brokerage firms would wreak upon the world became clear. The vortex of it was Sept. 15, the day the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (OTC: LEHMQ) declared bankruptcy and Bank of America agreed to pay $29 billion for world’s largest brokerage firm, Merrill Lynch, which probably would have failed had it not found a partner.

Lewis’ spending got Bank of America into this mess. The question now is whether continued  spending – using the $45 billion bailout courtesy of the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) – will get BofA out of it.

And Lewis seems to acknowledge both in the news release announcing his voluntary departure.

“Bank of America is well positioned to meet the continuing challenges of the economy and markets,” Lewis said. “We are in position to begin to repay the federal government’s TARP investments. For these reasons, I decided now is the time to begin to transition to the next generation of leadership at Bank of America.”

Lewis naturally defends his actions just as much as critics chide him for them.

“Their loan portfolio is horrible looking and it’s not going to be easy for them,” Mike Williams, research director at Gradient Analytics in Scottsdale, Arizona, said in a Bloomberg News interview before Lewis announced his departure. “They would have been better off without the Merrill and Countrywide acquisitions over the next few years.”

Money Morning Contributing Editor Martin Hutchinson, a leading banking expert, says that Bank of America has a very difficult journey ahead of it.

“Lewis followed [predecessor CEO Hugh] McColl’s strategy of expanding BofA by acquisition,” he said. “The trouble is that his last 2 deals were both lousy. Countrywide was at the epicenter of all that was bad about housing finance, and that was obvious in January 2008, when he bought it. Just a terrible deal.”

In fact, Hutchinson believes there’s only one viable option for Bank of America.

“BofA will have to be broken up, but may need to be sorted out by a liquidator/ the government,” he said.

Spinning Merrill

The Merrill merger was perhaps the defining moment in Lewis’ tenure, and he Lewis has played the victim and hero of the saga.

Lewis testified that U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. “Hank” Paulson Jr. pressured him not only to move ahead with a merger with Merrill Lynch despite reservations, but also to stay quiet about the mounting losses at the crumbling investment bank.

And in a note to employees announcing his departure, he took credit for the fact that Merrill has contributed 24% to the Bank of America’s first-half profit, boosted trading and investment-banking revenue, Bloomberg reported.

“I am gratified that even some of the critics of our acquisition of Merrill Lynch have come to acknowledge how well the deal is working out for our clients,” Lewis wrote. “This journey has been a rocky one and not for the faint of heart, but perseverance is paying off.”

But to the rest of the world, Lewis was most often seen sitting under the hot light of probes by Congress, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and New York’s attorney general all trying to determine if Lewis misled investors about Merrill’s losses and bonuses.

And even if shareholders agreed with Lewis’ decisions, they didn’t prefer him to be the company’s face. In April, shareholders voted 50.34% in favor of stripping Lewis of his chairman title.

Changing of the Guard

When Lewis steps down from his post Dec. 31, he joins the ranks of fellow financial firm executives – James Cayne of The Bear Stearns Cos., Charles Prince of Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), Stanley O’Neal of Merrill, Kennedy Thompson of Wachovia and Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers, John Thain of  Merrill Lynch – that resigned, many in disgrace, either during or in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

Among the survivors, Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), and Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM).

Bank of America said it will find a replacement by Lewis’ last day, and media outlets have already began making lists of possible successors.

Among the names frequently mentioned:

• Brian Moynihan, head of Bank of America’s consumer and small business banking unit.
• Sallie Krawcheck, former Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) CFO and president of Bank of America’s global wealth and investment management unit.
• Tom Montag, former Merrill executive and head of Bank of America’s corporate and investment banking unit.

An outsider might well be the best choice, says Money Morning’s Hutchinson.

Lewis is “leaving a company that no human being could manage, with vast problems, and far too broad a franchise,” Hutchinson said. “North Carolina retail bankers haven’t a clue how to run a top international investment bank like Merrill and vice versa. There’s nobody available to succeed him that can do the job.”

Source: Boom, Bust and Rebuild: Bank of America and the Kenneth Lewis Legacy

Good day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you… Instead of a “turn around Tuesday”, we’re seeing a whiplash Wednesday! And for once in a month of Sundays, the Big Dog, euro didn’t lead the other little dogs (currencies) off the porch to chase the dollar down the street!

No… This time it was the currencies of Australia and New Zealand that led the charge VS the dollar… The euro has taken up the charge since opening the doors to a new day of trading in Europe, so… It looks like it’s a “take the dollar to the woodshed day”…

OK… Let’s start first with the goings on yesterday and then build to a big crescendo! Yeah, right, like I can do that! HA! Any way…

As a reminder, yesterday we had the Russian rate cut, and the Japanese Fin Min giving the dollar a boost… We then saw some data that at first glance seemed to be good, but a quick look under the hood told the markets otherwise… Home Prices fell in July VS June, but are still down 13.3% VS last year… And Consumer Confidence surprised everyone by falling this month. It was expected to gain. So… As the day went on, it just didn’t look like the U.S. data would be strong enough to cause dollar selling…

But then, overnight, we had a strong Retail Sales report in Australia, and a strong Business Confidence report in New Zealand, and the “global recovery thoughts” were back on! Game on, as Wayne and Garth would say! Yesterday morning, the Russian rate cut said “step back on the thoughts for a global recovery”… And then overnight, the reports from Australia and New Zealand said, “step forward on the thoughts for a global recovery”!

And so it is… We end the month, and quarter with the dollar on the losing end VS many currencies… This marks the second consecutive quarter of dollar losses… Does that sound like a trend to anyone? To me, I do not consider this to be a “new trend”, but instead, simply a return to the underlying weak dollar trend, that went dormant for 6 months while the world sorted out the financial meltdown.

This is where, when I go out on the road and speak to people, I say that trends are not One Way Streets… There can be volatility within the trend. And thus this explains the 6 months from August of 2008 trough Feb of 2009… For most people that got into diversification using currencies and precious metals, they saw it for what it was, and simply battened down the hatches, and looked for deep discounts to add to their diversification… For some people, who got in for all the wrong reasons, and never thought about diversification, then they panicked and sold out at losses… For those that battened down the hatches, they were rewarded with this latest 6-month move… And that’s all I’m going to say about that!

The boys and girls over at the IMF are trying really hard to keep the currencies in check and not let this become another rout on the dollar. The IMF issued a statement saying that there are still risks in the global recovery… Unfortunately, for the IMF, nobody is listening to them, judging from the dollar selling I’ve seen since I came in this morning!

Hey! I don’t give the French much credit for anything… But I did see last night that they are cutting taxes on business! WOW! What a novel idea! And one that I think would behoove the current U.S. administration to follow… This is really a great way to get real traction in the economy… Give Businesses more room to breathe, and they will hire people, expand capital purchases, etc. Good show!

Yesterday, I was interviewed by Reuters for a story on dollar / yen… I was then quoted in a story that ran later in the day. I had said when I hung up the phone, that it would have been easier if the writer had just read the Pfennig that day! All I did was tell them what I had already told you in the Pfennig much earlier in the day! But… It was great to see my name in a national story anyway, eh?

OK… Getting back to Aussie and Kiwi… The Aussie Retail Sales report for August climbed .9%, erasing the -.9% loss in July! This report plays well with the recovery story and the thoughts that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will raise rates before year-end…

New Zealand saw their Employment Confidence Index climb to 103 last quarter, from 96.1, the previous 3 months… The report showed that 32.2% of companies surveyed, expected sales and profits to rise over the next 12 months… I know that doesn’t sound like a resounding vote of confidence, but the previous number was 26%… So that’s quite a jump!

Of these two, I expect The RBA to lead with the rate hikes, while the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) will drag its feet… They don’t need the kiwi to start rising aggressively, as exporters in New Zealand are having a tough time now, with kiwi as strong as it is now!

Whenever the Commodity Currencies of Australia and New Zealand have good performances VS the dollar, the other Commodity Currencies get to play along… So that means the performances VS the dollar of Canada, South Africa, Norway, and Brazil have been good.

There is some risk in the currency markets today though… First, we have some data due, and second we have Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn, and European Central Bank (ECB) President, Trichet, due to speak today… Could this be more Central Bank parlance for propping up the dollar, that is seen as being on the skids again this morning? I think it just might… Especially, if Kohn doesn’t mention that the Fed is going to keep rates at near zero for some time to come. If we don’t hear that… Then I think the “con” is on to prop up the dollar…

But don’t let that bother you too much… These guys can only affect the currencies for short periods of time with their verbal jawboning… After that, they need to walk the walk with coordinated intervention, if they’re going to talk the talk!

Speaking of the data… We’ll see the color of the 2nd QTR GDP, and the wild and wacky ADP Employment Change reports… The Chicago PMI (manufacturing for that region) will also show its colors… All of these are expected to show improvement in the U.S. economy… And, if the trading pattern remains in place… Any signs of improvement in the U.S. economy normally results in more dollar weakness!

So… In the end, the data inducing dollar weakness, might be offset by the Central Bank jawboning… In which case, we’ll spend the day in a tight trading range for sure! But what happens if Kohn and Trichet, don’t support the dollar in their speeches? Then it will all be up to the data!

This morning, Canada will print their latest GDP report… The forecasts are for a very weak report… I’m going to go out on a limb, yes it will be a big fat one to support me, and say that I expect Canada’s GDP to surprise on the up-side… If so, the loonie would look to add to gains it already has booked this morning VS the dollar.

With the Commodity Currencies on the rise this morning, Gold has returned to $1,000! Gold remained below $1,000 for about 5 days, in which there were ample opportunities to buy the dips below $1,000…

And… As we close out the month and quarter, the Russian rate cut is all but forgotten about, which is exactly how I told you it would play out… The global recovery theme is back with a vengeance!

OK… I’m going to step up on the soap box now, so if you do not care to listen to another Chuck soap box rant, then skip ahead two paragraphs!

You know… We wouldn’t be having these discussions about dollar weakness every day, if the Budget Deficits weren’t piling up on top of other deficits… Hey! Remember when I used to take the previous administration to the woodshed for piling up $450 Billion dollar Budget Deficits? Well, that certainly seems to be but a drop in the bucket of the nearly $2 Trillion Budget Deficit that will post this year, and the forecast for $9 Trillion more in the next 9 years…

That all leads me to this… We need to express to our representatives in Washington D.C. that is very important, and the they should focus their attention on this first and foremost! I doubt that we’ll ever get there again, but, wouldn’t that be nice for our grand kids? I just don’t understand why we go around spending money on this that and the other things, and don’t ever stop to think about the immoral things we are doing to our future generations… I guess I mean to say that the “we” I’m talking about is not you and me! It’s the knuckleheads in D.C… That is, other than Ron Paul, who seems to be the only person in D.C. that understands all this deficit spending…

Ok, down from the soap box now… You’re free to move about the Pfennig!

To recap… Aussie and kiwi lead the currencies higher VS the dollar overnight, after each respective country printed a strong economic report, thus putting the global recovery thoughts back on track. We have data, and Central Bank speeches to navigate through today. The non-dollar currencies close a second consecutive quarter of gains VS the dollar, and Gold has returned to $1,000….

Currencies today 9/30/09: A$ .8835, kiwi .7220, C$ .9330, euro 1.4665, sterling 1.61, Swiss .9725, rand 7.4240, krone 5.7675, SEK 6.96, forint 183.90, zloty 2.88, koruna 17.1570, RUB 30, yen 89.50, sing 1.41, HKD 7.75, INR 48.11, China 6.8264, pesos 13.48, BRL 1.7870, dollar index 76.56, Oil $67.78, 10-year 3.31%, Silver $16.48, and Gold… $1,003.45

That’s it for today…Be sure to make today a Wonderful Wednesday!

Chuck Butler

Source: Whiplash Wednesday!

So with that in mind, let’s check in on one “ultimate indicator” of the depression’s end.

5 Min. loyalists might remember that we first checked out this chart in late May, when Robert Gordon — one of the NBER economists responsible for calling the end of recessions — suggested that the peak in initial claims had marked the approximate end of this historic downturn. As you can see, that same thesis has worked pretty well in the past, so why not?

Yesterday, the Labor Department said 530,000 Americans filed for jobless benefits last week. That may be a slight improvement from the week before, but we note that since peaking this spring, jobless claims haven’t plummeted back to a historic norm, as in recessions past. Instead, they’re just hanging around, just 15% below the peak, almost 30% higher than this time last year and way above typical post-recession levels… actually higher than the peaks of yesteryear.

We realize that just by uttering these words we’re likely going to be wrong: But could it be different this time around? If the bread line is no longer at its worst, but still wrapped around the block, is it really fair for the Fed to say the recession is “technically” over?

And housing isn’t looking too pretty this week either. Yesterday saw a “surprise” fall in existing home sales. This morning, the Commerce Department says the median price of new homes in August fell 9.5%. That’s the biggest month-to-month decline in recorded history. The median price is now $195,000, down almost 12% from last year. Sales rose a statistically insignificant 0.7%.

The shred of good news from today’s report: New home inventory is down 36% over the last year, to a 7.3-month supply — the lowest level since January 2007. Still, on average, a newly completed home sits on the market for a record 12.9 months before it’s sold.

Source: Is it Really Over?

We began having doubts about the ‘feds inflate… gold soars’ hypothesis last year. It was too easy… too obvious. And if it were that easy to inflate a nation’s currency, how come the Japanese couldn’t get the hang of it in the ‘90s?

So, we moved towards a contrarian position – inflation, yes… but not for a while. And gold? Well, we are in it for the long run. In the short run, anything could happen.

To clarify our view on gold, the Daily Reckoning is not bearish on the metal. It is not bullish on the metal either. It is buggish. We are gold bugs. In the long run, gold will retain its value. Since that’s all we ask of it, we are always satisfied. Even if it is down in the short run – and it went through an 18-year down cycle from 1980 to 1998 – it will come back in the long run.

Gold is not a speculation for us; it is a means of saving money. As Richard Russell says, a man should count his wealth neither in dollars nor in euros; he should count it in ounces.

Our views on gold are still contrarian. But our views on the gold market have become commonplace. Now… everyone’s a contrarian. As we read the opinions and the blogs, it has become common to forecast a dip in the gold price… followed by a new, big bull market after inflation has found its footing.

And so what does gold do? It goes up!

Yesterday, gold rose $11 – still comfortably above the $1,000 mark. Is gold going up because people fear inflation? Apparently not. If they were afraid of inflation we’d see it in the bond market. But instead of selling off – which is what Treasuries should do if there were any hint of inflation – bonds are going up.

Is gold going up because people are afraid of the dollar going down? Well, maybe. But that is like saying that the dollar is going down because people are afraid the price of gold is going up. Where’s the chicken? Where’s the egg? Which is the cause? Which is the effect?

The dollar is still going down… as gold rises. Yesterday, it closed just below $1.48 per euro. It is so low now that Americans’ cost of living is among the lowest in the world. The average house sells for just $160,000. That’s just over 100,000 euros. Even out in the country… you would have to do some serious searching for a nice house anywhere in Europe that you could buy for $100,000 euros.

And what about the economy? Our contrarian position has remained unchanged. As we put it last week, there are few problems that enlightened central banking can solve; a credit contraction is not one of them. All the bankers can do is to make it worse – by delaying it, disguising it or diverting it in another direction (such as converting deflation into hyperinflation).

Yesterday, the Dow rose again – up 51 points. As far as we can tell, the rally is still on. And now, the news media and the statisticians are in full support.

House prices rose 0.3% in July. Hooray! Of course, the government is giving huge tax credits to new house buyers. Since that program began in January an estimated 350,000 houses have been bought thanks to the program.

Household net worth also is going up – at least, that’s what the papers say. For the first time in 2 years. Of course, what do you expect? The feds are pushing up asset prices – giving them the biggest push in the history of man. But remember, the market is also doing its usual post-crash bounce. When the bounce ends… so does the temporary wealth effect…

Is this still a contrarian view? Seems to us that it’s becoming more contrarian every day. The longer the rally goes on, the more people think it is the real McCoy.

If we are right, the massive effort by the feds will make things massively worse. That is the position taken by Arthur Laffer in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, by the way:

“The damage caused by high taxation during the Great Depression is the real lesson we should learn. A government simply cannot tax a country into prosperity. If there were one warning I’d give to all who will listen, it is that U.S. federal and state tax policies are on an economic crash trajectory today just as they were in the 1930s.

“The Smoot-Hawley tariff of June 1930 was the catalyst that got the whole process going. It was the largest single increase in taxes on trade during peacetime and precipitated massive retaliation by foreign governments on U.S. products… beginning in 1932 the lowest personal income tax rate was raised to 4% from less than one-half of 1% while the highest rate was raised to 63% from 25%. (That’s not a misprint!)… By the end of January 1934 the price of gold, most of which had been confiscated by the government, was raised to $35 per ounce. In other words, in less than one year the government confiscated as much gold as it could at $20.67 an ounce and then devalued the dollar in terms of gold by almost 60%. That’s one helluva tax….

“Inflation can and did occur during a depression, and that inflation was strictly a monetary phenomenon…”

“The 1933-34 devaluation of the dollar caused the money supply to grow by over 60% from April 1933 to March 1937, and over that same period the monetary base grew by over 35% and adjusted reserves grew by about 100%. Monetary policy was about as easy as it could get. The consumer price index from early 1933 through mid-1937 rose by about 15% in spite of double-digit unemployment. And that’s the story.”

We had no doubt that inflation can occur during a depression; hey, we read the papers. Anyone who has followed the Zimbabwe story knows that you can have a deadly depression… and dizzying levels of inflation at the same time.

But there’s always more to the story. Devaluing the dollar in terms of gold had the immediate effect of increasing the money supply – it was like adding zeros to the currency.

In our wallet is a Ten Trillion dollar Zimbabwean bill, with a picture of stones on it. Those words – ‘ten trillion’ – did not get printed on that bill by accident. We assume they got printed on there by a printer in the employ of a government that figured that the cost of printing a ten trillion dollar bill was less than the cost of not printing it.

That is, by a desperate government that had so fouled-up the economy that a period of hyperinflation might seem like an improvement. Besides, hyperinflation might have a therapeutic, purgative effect.

But let us not get sidetracked by hyperinflation. It is nowhere in sight. Nor is its more civilized cousin – normal, polite inflation. The money supply in America – as measured by M2 – is contracting. The banks get money from the feds, but they don’t pass it along. The chain of reflation is broken – or at least temporarily stretched. Currently, it takes a long time for money to get from one end to the other. The cash tends to get waylaid –either by the bankers… or by consumers themselves. It stays in bank vaults… or in bank accounts. Money is not being multiplied by the speed by which it changes hands. Instead, it is divided by immobility. It sits. It shrinks. It waits for a real boom.

Until tomorrow,

Bill Bonner

Source: Waiting for a Real Boom

The first time around, the three-headed federal serpent – the Bush administration, the Treasury Department and the U.S. Federal Reserve – used Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) to “legitimize” trillions of dollars worth of toxic financial waste known as subprime mortgages.

The result was the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression – a mess that was global in nature.

And we’re now headed for a repeat performance.

Some of the players may have changed since the first subprime-mortgage crisis, but the game apparently remains the same. With banks currently unwilling to lend, the new federal triumvirate of the Obama administration, the Treasury and the Fed are trying to inflate the moribund U.S. housing market. This time around, however, the FHA is the weapon of choice.

Obama & Co. are making an all-or-nothing bet that the U.S. economy will recover and bail out the housing market before the final bill for this ill-advised gambit comes due.

When this bubble bursts – and it will – U.S. taxpayers will be on the hook for more than $1 trillion in government-guaranteed debt.

Ginnie Mae: Fannie and Freddie’s Once-Quiet Cousin

As a direct result of the real-estate meltdown, U.S. banks have become reluctant lenders. And they’ve raised their loan standards considerably. Federal officials knew they had to keep the mortgage spigot open, especially to suspect borrowers, so they turned to their new “secret weapon” – the FHA.

The FHA has been cranking out new government-insured subprime loans, which it packages into government guaranteed securities for sale to banks. This frightening reflation of the subprime bubble is being engineered for two key reasons:

• To put a floor under falling house prices.
• And to let banks swap toxic Fannie and Freddie securities for new toxic debt that is 100% guaranteed by U.S. taxpayers.

The almost inevitable insolvency of the FHA could rapidly undermine the fragile recovery of the U.S. economy. And it could plunge stock prices and bank viability to new lows.

Why the FHA?

That’s simple. In an era of increasingly stringent lending standards, the FHA’s standards are laughably lax.

Created by the National Housing Act of 1934, the FHA insures private mortgage lenders against borrower default on residential real estate loans. But its current allure is that it opens the door to prospective homebuyers who almost certainly wouldn’t qualify for a conventional home mortgage. These are buyers with no credit history, a history of credit problems, or not enough cash to cover the down payment and closing costs.

The FHA has quadrupled its insurance guarantees on mortgages in just the last three years, with the bulk of that growth coming in the past two years. Currently, the FHA insures $560 billion of mortgages.

Loans that are FHA-insured are pooled and packaged into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) by the Government National Mortgage Association, more commonly known as Ginnie Mae. Ginnie Mae insures the actual MBS pools composed of FHA loans. Ginnie Mae securities are the only mortgage-backed securities backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.

Two weeks ago, Ginnie Mae proudly announced that it had issued a monthly record $43 billion in FHA mortgage-backed securities, and through the end of July held guaranteed securities with a value of $680 billion. It is on track to exceed $1 trillion worth of guaranteed securities by the end of calendar year 2010.

Ginnie Mae is a cousin of its better-known siblings Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Those two mortgage giants are technically insolvent, and were forced into government conservatorship at the height of the financial crisis – ostensibly due to concerns that foreign central banks in China, Japan, Europe, the Middle East and Russia might stop buying our bonds. As “government-sponsored enterprises,” or GSEs, Fannie and Freddie were only supposed to have the “implicit” backing of the U.S. government. But recent events have shown these to be fully backed by taxpayers.

The implosion of Fannie and Freddie severely threatened the mortgage market. It essentially shut down the two giant repositories that bought the loans banks and mortgage originators didn’t want to hold as assets on their own balance sheets.

The FHA and its mortgage-backed securities “factory” – Ginnie Mae – have taken up where Fannie and Freddie left off, and are now the dumping ground for toxic mortgages. Using the FHA is the core strategy in the administration’s misguided effort to prop up mortgage origination and modifications, real estate prices and insolvent banks.

Warning Signals?

Administration officials might want to take heed of some eerie parallels between the current situation and the one involving Fannie and Freddie. They could serve as an early warning system.

First and foremost, the FHA has already started to acknowledge systemic fraud in its business. In the earlier subprime crisis, similar circumstances led to the revelation of massive fraud in the issuance, packaging, ratings and sale of subprime toxic mortgage-backed securities.

On Aug. 4, the FHA suspended Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp., one of its largest approved independent mortgage originators, from making anymore FHA-backed loans. The suspension came one day after federal investigators raided Taylor Bean’s Ocala, Fla., headquarters.

Since 2007, the value of FHA-backed loan originations underwritten by Taylor, Bean had soared 117%. By contrast, the origination of conventional loans by the firm dropped 34% over the same period. Taylor, Bean subsequently filed for bankruptcy.

Earlier this summer, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which oversees the FHA, raised concerns about FHA practices. On June 18, HUD released an internal inspector general’s report that revealed that the FHA’s default rate exceeded 7% and that more than 13% of its insured loans were delinquent by more than 30 days.

In a “Review and Outlook” piece, The Wall Street Journal reported that the FHA’s reserve fund dropped from 6.4% in 2007 to about 3% today, putting it dangerously close to its mandated 2% minimum. That translates to a “33-to-one leverage ratio, which is into Bear Stearns territory,” the newspaper report stated, referring to the now-failed investment bank that had been a central player in the original subprime mortgage crisis.

Bear Stearns is now owned by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM).

The HUD inspector general’s report stated that the agency’s growth makes it “vulnerable to exploitation by fraud schemes” and that it may need “Congressional appropriation intervention.”

In a recent article – “FHA Disputes Whispers of Capital Reserve Problems” – on the Mortgage News Daily Web site, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said in June that “there’s a better than even chance that we will stay above the two percent reserve threshold. That suggests, not just for the 2010 business, but overall for the portfolio, that we’ll more than likely to stay out of a broader need for any taxpayer funding.”

It may be more than a little disheartening to know that in a very uncertain economic environment, precisely due to fraud in mortgage lending and increasing borrower defaults, that our government is stretching a 50/50 wager on the backs of taxpayers.

That’s only part I of the FHA dilemma story.

Part II is even more frightening.

A Look Ahead

Banks are dumping Fannie and Freddie-backed securities onto the Fed’s balance sheet and replacing them on their own balance sheets with FHA-insured loans packaged into government-insured securities issued by Ginnie Mae. Banks aren’t reducing their net assets, they are aggressively swapping acknowledged toxic securities that no-one wants for a new variety that no one will want in the future. Why?

It’s not just that Ginnie Maes are fully backed by the U.S. taxpayers and Fannie and Freddie’s securities are only implicitly backed. All of them will be covered by taxpayers.

The devil is in the details.

Because Fannie and Freddie securities are only implicitly guaranteed, banks that hold these securities as assets on their balance sheets must “haircut,” or set aside reserves, based on a 20% risk-weighting assigned to the value of those holdings.

Because Ginnie Maes are explicitly 100% guaranteed, they are considered “risk free,” and on par with U.S. Treasury bonds, notes and bills. There is no reserve requirement, or haircut, on Ginnie Mae securities.

By replacing their asset mix and holding Ginnie Maes, banks don’t have to set aside reserves. They can use the money they otherwise would have to set aside to actually leverage-up their balance sheets. And guess what they’re buying?

More Ginnie Maes, naturally.

The effect of the asset swap – basically one toxic pool for a replacement that’s not much better – creates the illusion that banks have healthier balance sheets and that they are meeting their reserve requirements. It’s such a good deal for the banks and actively promoted by the Fed and Treasury, that banks are using Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) money to buy Ginnie Maes.

But it’s all a façade.

Capital ratios are being manipulated and insolvent banks are being propped up.

The danger of relying on the FHA to prop up the shaky housing market by facilitating mortgage origination, modifications and refinancing to less-than-stellar borrowers will only result in more subprime loans being stockpiled on the Federal Reserve balance sheet.

Eventually, defaults will overwhelm the FHA. And the hoped-for floor in residential real estate pricing will be pulled out from under us all. The next down-round in real-estate values will expose bank balance sheets for what they really are: Over-leveraged and over-stuffed with junk. Already on the ropes, banks will lose capital and will have to tighten the credit screws on consumer borrowers even more.

We may be headed for another bruising round of real-estate and MBS-related depreciation. Even a mild financial-markets setback could put the economy and the stock market onto the canvas for a 10-count. Further pummelling of shaky consumer confidence accompanied by a couple of major bank failures could easily send the U.S. market down for the financial-system equivalent of a TKO.

Taxpayers, always the lowly cornermen holding the spit buckets, are already in place with the safety nets. We will catch the FHA loans because we insure private lenders against subprime borrowers with no skin in the game. We then will have to catch the buyers of Ginnie Maes, because we guarantee those MBS securities. And we will be forced to catch the falling banks, because we already insure depositors through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC).

Perhaps our ultimate fate is that of the permanently punchdrunk veteran boxer, who rues his decision to stay in the game, realizing that he fought “one bout too many.” If that’s the case, that “one bout too many” could be Subprime Crisis II, arranged by the very market referees whose job it was to protect us from such beatings.

Source: How the Government is Setting Us Up for a Second Subprime Crisis

Commercial property values in the U.S. have plummeted 36% since peaking in 2007, and the commercial real estate market is unlikely to recover before 2012, according to the quarterly PricewaterhouseCoopers Korpacz Real Estate Investor Survey, released yesterday (Tuesday).

Office rents in New York and San Francisco may drop 20% through next year, the survey found.

“The biggest problem is that commercial real estate lags what happens in the economy,” Susan Smith, who is the director of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ real estate advisory practice and editor-in-chief of the survey, told Bloomberg News. “Companies are looking for ways to cut costs, many are continuing to reduce workers and are continuing to reduce their space needs.”

That means many of the banks that made commercial real estate have only realized a fraction of their losses. And as those losses continue to mount, we’re likely to see more and more bank failures.

Roughly $530 billion in mortgage-backed securities are due for refinancing between now and 2011, according to property researcher Foresight Analytics LLC. Foresight estimates that the U.S. banking sector could incur as much as $250 billion in commercial real estate losses, enough to cause a as many as 700 banks to fail, in that time.

The FDIC’s “problem list,” or banks that run a higher risk of failure, grew to 416 in the second quarter, up from 305 in the first quarter. That’s the highest number since the second quarter of 1994, when there were 434 banks on the list.

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) has the largest share of the $3.1 trillion commercial debt market with 16.5% of its $821 billion loan portfolio invested. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) is a distant second with 5.4% of its portfolio invested in commercial loans, followed by Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) with 3.4%.

However, smaller banks – 92 of which have already folded this year compared to 25 last year – are even more at risk because they will likely have a harder time accessing the crucial capital to offset rising defaults, according to the TARP-inspired Congressional Oversight Panel’s August Oversight Report.

“Unlike large banks that can sustain a certain number of defaults, even of large commercial loans, smaller banks may have far more difficulty in absorbing more than a few large loan losses,” the panel said. “The FDIC’s statement that ‘banks have been able to raise capital without having to sell bad assets through the LLP’ may not reflect the reality for these banks.”

Indeed, the number of smaller banks expected to seized by the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) is forecast to accelerate by economists. More than 150 publicly traded U.S. banks have nonperforming loans that account for 5% of their assets, according to the report.

The panel said rising commercial real estate loan defaults may prompt the need for $12 billion to $14 billion more in TARP funds as well as well as stress tests for smaller banks.

The early 1990s saw a devastating crash of the real estate market, but this coming time around the result could be far worse. The $3.1 trillion that makes up the commercial real estate debt market is three times the size it was during the early 1990s – meaning the potential for losses is steeper than ever before.

In 1993, less than 2% of U.S. banks and thrifts had an exposure to commercial real estate that was more than five times their Tier I capital. By the end of last year, that ratio had spiked to 12%, involving about 800 banks and thrifts.

And this time around – compared to the early 1990s – banks left themselves no margin of safety in the form of “Tier I Capital” – a measure of how well a lender can navigate serious levels of losses. The higher the ratio, the less likely a lender will be able to work its way through a stretch when loans start going bad.

Source: Bank Failures Could Surge as Commercial Real Estate Losses Continue to Mount

Fortunately for us, we foresaw this scenario a while ago. On April 20, I recommended that investors diversify their portfolios by adding the SPDR Gold Trust ETF (NYSE: GLD).  The fund is up about 14% since that recommendation, but it’s not yet time to sell, as there are still a number of factors working in gold’s favor.

For starters, there is more and more talk of the U.S. dollar losing some of its luster as a reserve currency.  But this debate is moot for the moment.  The reality is that it will take a long time to reduce the preeminent role of the dollar as the store of value of choice for central banks around the world.

Earlier in March and later in June, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China made a pitch for the creation of an international global currency delinked from sovereign currencies.  This increased speculation about the probability of China deemphasizing the dollar within their extraordinary high foreign reserves of almost $2 trillion.

Some 64% of global reserves are in U.S. dollars, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). So if China and other holders of U.S. debt were to reduce their holdings, it would have a substantial impact on the greenback’s value, as well as on U.S. interest rates, given that those countries would be selling U.S. Treasuries.

Zhou suggested the use of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) as an alternative. The SDR is a currency linked to a basket of four major international currencies in the following approximate weightings: U.S. dollar (44%), euro (34%), Japanese yen (11%) and British pound (11%).

But the reality is that this would be highly impractical. To begin with, there are almost no instruments denominated in SDRs that China and other countries could invest their reserves.  And if the IMF issues the instruments, then it would be taking the other side of the trade, which means it would have to start lending in SDRs, too.  This is very unlikely.

Furthermore, no other currency on the planet is large enough to serve as the world’s main reserve currency.  The sole exception, in terms of having a comparable size of the economy, is the euro.  The euro serves 16 members countries of the European Union (EU) and a few others peg their currency to it.  But the problem with the euro is that even though the entire EU is comparable in size to the United States, it is comprised of many countries with very different fundamental strengths and weaknesses.

Therefore, each of these countries issues bonds and each of these, by themselves, are too small and offer too little liquidity for central banks to accumulate as reserves.

But right now – given the large size of the current and projected U.S. deficits and the easy monetary policy – the incentives for holding dollars have diminished.  The risk that inflationary pressures will build up next year, and in turn lead to higher interest rates, are not negligible, even though the U.S. Federal Reserve keeps assuring the markets that it will stifle these pressures before they materialize.

Last Friday, John Taylor, a renowned economist and an expert in monetary policy, opined that the Fed would need to start raising interest rates in early 2010 in order to stem price pressures.

In the meantime, emerging markets such as China and Russia complain about the vulnerabilities of the U.S. dollar.  But these visible complaints have to be construed merely as verbal intervention.  These countries are acting in their own self-interest, because they have very large holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds.  They are trying to “encourage” both the Fed and the U.S. government to act very prudently and conservatively with monetary and fiscal policy.

The United States has offered plenty of assurances to China that it will remain vigilant about inflation. But the trick is being able to identify these inflationary pressures and to take action way before the actual inflationary pressures become entrenched in the economy.  And the Fed will need to rely on its projections to do that.

In this uncertain environment, making economic projections is much easier said than done.  And one would rather err on the side of being a bit late in raising interest rates and reducing quantitative easing. If the Fed is slower than needed, and some inflationary pressures build, it they can resort to raising rates a bit faster and resolve the problem. But if the central bank raises rates – and reduces the quantitative easing policy too soon – it could send the economy into another recession.

This could be problematic since it would increase the risk of the U.S. economy falling into a deflationary spiral and put additional pressure on the U.S. financial system.  Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that the Fed has greater incentive to err on the lenient side than on the hawkish side.

Remember that we are not out of the woods by any means.  Unemployment, which is a lagging indicator, is still increasing and there are many other large problems to resolve in the economy. Without even considering the impact that healthcare reform will have on the U.S. budget deficit, we see the following important headwinds:

• Consumers are very weak.  It’s not just the jobless that have been affected.  The uncertainty about continued employment for those who still have jobs led to an increase savings rates as would be consumers postpone spending.
• The huge drop in home prices has put about one in four homes in an “upside down” mortgage situation. That means consumers cannot sell their houses without taking a loss, and cannot borrow against their homes to make other expenditures.
• The drop in home values has had another effect:  It has increased the need for consumers to save.  This need has been reinforced by the large hit to 401(k) savings and other retirement plans.  As a result, savings rates have zoomed to 7% of personal income. The savings rate could even hit 10% as consumers strive to rebuild their nest eggs.  Additionally, the “Baby Boom” generation has saved too little and retirement is just around the corner.  Consumers make some two thirds of the U.S. economy, so this new predisposition to saving will be a drag on consumption for a long time.
• Capacity utilization is still low, which greatly reduces producer pricing power.  This, along with very high unemployment, gives the Fed time for now.  Low capacity utilization also keeps investments in factory expansion low.
• Recent banking data revealed that many smaller U.S. banks will be closing their doors, taxing the already overstretched resources of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), which will have to be recapitalized, adding to the U.S. fiscal deficit.
• We have not yet seen the fallout from the commercial real estate drop, which Money Morning has warned will be severe.  Since the U.S. consumer is not buying as much, many properties will not be able to keep up with their payments and will default on their loans.  Commercial real estate generally follows the trends in residential real estate with one or two years of lag.
• Last, but not least, we are going to see an economic acceleration in the United States in the third quarter, but that acceleration might be driven to a large extent by inventory rebuilding.  The U.S. economy will probably surprise to the upside in the third quarter with growth.  Among other things, the government’s Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), popularly known as “Cash for Clunkers,” should show up positively in the numbers.  But once the levels of inventories are brought up to their necessary levels, that extra growth will not be present in the following quarter.  And the demand from Cash for Clunkers will cease to be a factor.

All of these reasons warrant caution for the Fed.  Some economists, including Nobel Prize winner and former World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz, have highlighted the risk of a “W-shaped” recession/recovery scenario, and have even suggested the need for another stimulus package.  While that might do more harm than good, this position highlights the dovish bias that the Fed is likely to maintain.

What About the Rest of the World?

China enjoys many degrees of freedom to move its economy forward and has had resounding success in doing so.  It has no debt and more than $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves.  Its banking system is small in relation to the size of its economy, which gives the country a lot of room to expand credit, and the savings rate of its consumers is sky-high.  This leaves China with the capital resources to deploy growth strategies.  Since the largest companies are all government-owned, when the government decides to deploy capital, it gets done swiftly and powerfully throughout the economy, with great effect on growth.

As a result, China’s economy grew at the breakneck annualized pace of 14% in the second quarter.

Other emerging markets, like Brazil and India, are in similar, though not as potent, positions to move their economies forward. And they are doing so aggressively. India is expected to post on average 7% plus of annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth.

Emerging economies – those that did not splurge the bonanza of the prior five years of strong growth in commodity prices and other exports — are now in the position of stimulating their economies with easy monetary and fiscal policies.

Massive stimulus packages, the scorching demand growth from capital investments, and reborn consumers in emerging Asia, have combined to rekindle global growth.

Resurgent Growth in Europe

Both Europe and Japan are emerging from their recessions – even though Japan may post a negative growth number in the fourth quarter – and Britain and Italy are lagging behind in the recovery.  But the most important European economies, led by Germany and France, are pulling ahead.

It is understandable that European Central Bank (ECB) President Jean Claude Trichet, recently mentioned that the recovery was uneven in Europe.  Most market pundits took this as a sign that Europe would not be raising rates as fast as previously anticipated.

However, keeping interest rates low is much harder to do than it is to say.  Unlike the Fed, which has symmetric objectives – promoting economic growth and controlling inflation – the ECB’s only mandate is to control inflation.  The reason for this notable difference in objectives is that the European economy is much less flexible than the American economy, mainly due to its very rigid labor laws and other regulations.

Thus, the Europeans start running into inflationary problems when their economy grows above 2.5%.

The ECB just raised its own growth forecasts.  Similarly, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which comprises the 30 most influential free-market representative democracies, indicated that the global recession is coming to an end much faster then they previously thought, but said that the recovery will rely on massive spending and low interest rates for some time.  The OECD cited the strong rebound in Asian economies as having jumpstarted this global reacceleration.

Because the Federal Reserve will have to err on the cautious side, and because of the institutions’ differing mandates, the ECB will probably tighten monetary policy before the U.S. central bank does. That means the euro and emerging market currencies will keep appreciating against the U.S. dollar and the price of gold will soar.

The protests that will come from time to time from Chin and Russia will be just that: verbal intervention.  They will not resort to sudden changes in the composition of their foreign reserves, at the risk of doing further damage to the dollar.

In fact, China and other countries generate some 90% of their large current account surpluses in U.S. dollars.  But their holdings of dollar-denominated assets are only about 64% of their total reserves.  That means they already consistently sell the difference, and this selling so far has not decimated the dollar.

So do not expect a sudden devaluation of the greenback, nor fear China currency reallocations.

But we can and do expect a gradual weakening of the U.S. dollar to occur next year.

And as much as we all hate it, we will be able to take comfort in the fact that we avoided a much worse evil: Deflation.

So we are going to remain playing it with gold.  Also, this “currency” play gives us added diversification to the portfolio.

Source: Buy, Sell or Hold: The SPDR Gold Trust ETF (NYSE: GLD) Continues to Offer Investors a Hedge Against Inflation

Good day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! I hope your weekend was grand… I was supposed to be traveling back from Williamsburg today, so this is a bonus day for you all! HA! On Friday morning, I told the early arrivers that the currencies were strong, Gold was strong, it was all good, and we needed to close up shop and go home, because it wasn’t going to get an better than that, and that the rest of the day had nothing but disappointment risk! Boy did I nail that one on the head! Let’s get to the goings on.

The currencies added to their gains during the Friday morning, only to see them give the gains back later in the day, as the “boys” in NY all closed shop and headed to the Hamptons. I checked the markets last night before going to bed, and they were trading very close to Friday’s close as they are still this morning.

The one currency to buck the trend, and remain hot as a fire-cracker, is the Japanese yen… Not that it had any fundamental reason to do so, but that didn’t matter, as yen bulls looked around and found something to hang their hats on.

The news that pushed yen higher came from the U.S. where the Administration announced a tariff on Chinese tires… Passenger and light truck tires to be exact… This really heats up the trade protectionism between the U.S. and China, folks… And… If China and the U.S. are going to be battling it out on the Trade Protectionism front, the Japanese yen would look to be the “better bet” in Asia…

If you all recall, a couple of months ago I told you that protectionism was going to become the “thing to do”… At that time, I really thought that countries would use their currencies as bargaining tools, in trade… But leave it to the U.S. to pull a rabbit out of the protectionism hat…

You know… Back in 2001, the then President Bush, slapped a tariff on Chinese steel… And I remember telling everyone that would listen to me that this would be the Big Shift in the strong dollar trend that existed then… I was credited with calling the secular shift of the dollar to a weak dollar trend. Now, we have this tariff… What do you think this will do to U.S. / China relations? YIKES!

You know… If the U.S. Trade Commission was really concerned about the shipments of tires to the U.S. and what they felt to be a displacing of thousands of jobs, why then didn’t the Trade Commission work with the U.S. tire companies and work out a price adjustment? Ahhh, grasshopper, that would be too difficult to do! It’s far easier to slap tariffs on the one country that has bought your debt year after year, without batting an eye…

OK… So, could this new tariff be the juice that moves the dollar to the next big leg down? It very well could, but it won’t happen overnight, folks… These things need to work themselves through… Just like in 2001, it took several months before the dollar really began a strong downward trend… But, keep this in the memory bank…

Oh… And China, feeling that they had to retaliate… Announced a probe of U.S. auto, and chicken imports… See how this works folks? If you get this going really heated, it could spread throughout the globe, and push all the hard work to get out of the global recession into the dumpster! This is plain stupid! And our Gov’t should have known better!

Well… We had our first bank casualty from the Commercial Real Estate meltdown… Corus Bank in Chicago, is the second largest bank to fail this year, and will cost the government between $1.5 Billion and $2.4 Billion in losses, depending on the performance of the bank’s outstanding loans.

Speaking of Gov’t losses… I saw some math on the Cars for Clunkers program… Don’t believe what the Gov’t tells you that it was a success… Unless of course they are talking about successfully spending Billions!

OK… Lets get off this Gov’t stuff, they give me a big rash anyway!

At this time every year, economists meet in Davos, Switzerland, and normally you can get a few thoughts that remind everyone about “what’s really going on in the world”… And this year was no exception… The Big Boss, Frank Trotter, was kind enough to send a few of those thoughts to me this weekend…

First off, one of my fave economists, Stephen Roach, had this to say… “The American consumer is dead and this is a wake up call for the Chinese & Asian export industry.”

Then we had a guy from China that’s a “think tank” guy… His name is Yu Yongding, and he had this to say… “I have tremendous doubts about US households to finance the budget deficit.” and… “Why are people still so confident in the strength of the dollar? It’s a myth!”

And then there was this… Remember the talks I’ve had with you regarding the IMF wanting to issue their own “global currency”? Well… Zhu Min Bank of China had this to say… “IMF should provide stable reserve currency regardless of format. Very volatile reserve currency is difficult for Asia.”

The Wall Street Journal had a good story regarding the weak dollar this weekend… Let’s check it out… WSJ… “The dollar could continue its weeklong decline this week, especially if data on U.S. retail sales show improvement. The dollar hit a nine-month low last week against the euro and a seven-month low against the yen. Investors are moving into higher-yielding currencies such as the yen as the global economic picture brightens.”

Sounds as if the WSJ writer is a Pfennig reader, eh?

Since the WSJ brought up Retail Sales, we might as well go to the data cupboard to see what’s up this week… The cupboard is empty today… But tomorrow it will yield the stupid PPI report, along with Retail Sales for August, which are expected to be stronger, based on the Cars for Clunkers program which ended in August. We would have normally seen the August Retail Sales report to be stronger anyway, given the “back to school” purchases… The Butler Household Index (BHI) tells me that besides Cars for Clunkers we would see a jump…

On Friday last week, we saw the U. of Michigan Consumer Confidence report jump 5 figures to 70.2, and the Monthly Budget Deficit print at $111.4 Billion, not as bad as forecast, but still, not good in any stretch of the imagination, folks!

The Bank of International Settlements (BIS), issued a report yesterday that said the BIS expects longer-term bond yields to increase on the Swelling Budget Concern…

OK… Let me explain what they are talking about… As the Budget Deficit grows, we have to issue more bonds (our debt) to finance the deficit… The BIS believe, like I have said for some time now that eventually, the buyers of these bonds are going to require the yields to be more attractive… And as yields grow higher, the losses in these bonds grow wider for the holders…

Commodities have sold off since Friday morning, and that hurts the Commodity currencies… Oil, which was up to $72, is back to $68 this morning, as it was reported that “demand was slowing”… Hmmm, not when it comes to filling my gas tank! HA! Especially when I had to turn around and drive 45 minutes home to get Alex’s cleats for his football game Saturday, and get back in time for the game! Sorry, my fat fingers just started typing that and I couldn’t stop them!

That’s about all I can talk about today regarding the currencies and economies… I do have to say before I head to the recap and Big Finish, that thanks to Chris Gaffney, I can now see the TV! We used to have this old TV in the office, and the picture on it had gotten so bad I couldn’t see much… But Chris brought in an extra TV from home, and WOW! It’s amazing! And the best part is now I can see Robin Meade better! HA!

OK, to recap… The Currencies gave back some ground Friday afternoon, but remain at those levels this morning. Japanese yen is stronger on the news of a protectionism war between the U.S. and China, as the U.S. administration slapped a tariff of Chinese tires. The annual meeting in Davos is going on, and Retail Sales tomorrow is important data for this week.

Currencies today 9/14/09: A$.8580, kiwi .6995, C$ .9185, euro 1.4550, sterling 1.6545, Swiss .9615, rand 7.5120, krone 5.97, SEK 7.0550, forint 188.50, zloty 2.90, koruna 17.5375, RUB 30.85, yen 90.60, sing 1.4250, HKD 7.75, INR 48.75, China 6.8290, pesos 13.46, BRL 1.83, dollar index 76.95, Oil $68.53, 10-year 3.35%, Silver $16.42, and Gold… $997

That’s it for today…I hope you have a Marvelous Monday!

Chuck Butler

Source: Protectionism Wars, Here We Come!