Recently by Bill Bonner: Where To Wait Out the GreatCorrection
Dow up 45 points on Friday. The 10-year T-note right on the 2% yield mark.
Almost all the news is good. It looks like recovery is finally here.
Or, are we just getting used to a punky economy where even a little improvement looks like a boom?
As far as we know, the US economy is still in a Great Correction with plenty more correction ahead.
But people get used to correction and used to the feds pumping in cash and credit to keep things from getting too rough. It is not exactly normal for a central bank to lend money below the rate of consumer price inflation. And it is not exactly normal for the government to run a deficit equal to 8% of GDP or for it to spend $1.50 for every dollar it gets in tax revenues.
A lot of things arent normal. But if you do them for long enough, people get used to them. Even giving away money begins to seem normal.
The feds didnt invent their EZ money theories. John Maynard Keynes came up with the goofy program many years ago. He met with Franklin Roosevelt and explained the idea. Roosevelt later confessed that he had no idea what Keynes was talking about. But he liked Keynes palaver. Because it gave him a theoretical justification for taking control of the economy.
Keynes basic idea was stolen from the Old Testament. Pharaoh stored up grain during the years when harvests were good. Then, he gave out the grain when they were bad. He looked like a genius. FDR probably wanted to look like a genius too.
But governments found it a lot easier to spend during the lean years than to save during the fat ones. In practice, they didnt save at all. And then, when trouble came, they had no real resources with which to do any good.
Instead, they could only borrow money or print it.
The real problem now is that the private sector has debt to settle. But you cant settle debt with more debt.
No, dear reader, you cant borrow your way out of debt. But you can sure in-debt your way out of borrowing. That is, you can run up so much debt that no one wants to lend you any more money. And when that happens youre like Greece.
But the USA isnt Greece except in the important ways. Both nations spend more than they can afford, depending on debt to make up the difference. And it works sometimes for longer than you might imagine.
And while its working, everybody is pretty happy.
Investors seem to think our problems are behind us. But are they? We turn our heads to look back. Yes, we see a few problems back there. Households have reduced their debt-to-GDP ratio by 15%. Unfortunately, theyve got a long way to go. At least another 15%. Maybe another 50%.
And as long as theyre working on it there cant be a genuine recovery.
All the feds are doing is setting us up for more, worse trouble. Government debt is rising fast.
So how does this eventually resolve itself? Badly is our guess
But wait.
You probably think the feds are smart people. If theyre running up big debts, it must be for a good reason, right? And they must know what theyre doing, right?
And if things start to go bad, theyll see the error of their ways and change direction, right? Hey, thats whats nice about modern democratic government! The people control it. Theyll always do whats best for themselves, right? And whats best for the people is best for the country.
On the other hand, nobody wants the country to go broke, do they? So, it wont happen, will it? Isnt that the way things work?
No, afraid not. Often things happen that no one wants to happen. Who wants a $15 trillion US national debt? Who wants 25 million people without jobs? Who wants Mitt Romney or Barack Obama in the White House?
Bill Bonner is the author, with Addison Wiggin, of Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of The 21st Century and The New Empire of Debt: The Rise Of An Epic Financial Crisis and the co-author with Lila Rajiva of Mobs, Messiahs and Markets (Wiley, 2007). His latest book is Dice Have No Memory. Since 1999, Bill has been a daily contributor and the driving force behind The Daily Reckoning.