Friday, June 12, 2009

Obama's Good Ship America

Obama has been the captain of the good ship America for a good six months now. Most critically, he has done nothing to arrest the collapse in household worth and fair to say, he will do nothing to arrest the collapse in household worth. I could say that he is incompetent, but it is just as clear that all the others at the table share the same fault. Otherwise, they would resign in disgust.

The US consumer is losing a large portion of his net worth and creditworthiness through no fault of his own. And who do you think the average American housewife is going to be blaming for this attack on their home? They are already beginning to wonder who the hell they elected. And somehow, a paean to socialist policies rings pretty hollow when one checks the size of your monthly unemployment payout.

The democrats now face the reality that they elected this man by visibly cocooning the candidate and thoroughly gaming the electoral process in a way to avoid any hard questions ever been answered. If they fail to pull the economy together or infinitely worse, manage to stifle all signs of recovery by allowing the worst aspects of the present foreclosure system to run its course, then they will find themselves blamed for the results.

We have finally done something through the housing business that is able to bring on a real economic depression. To be sure that happens, we merely need only do nothing whatsoever. The housing market has a bottom, but is a bottom with the value of underlying land reduced to zero. There will be ample cash around to buy houses at a fair depreciated replacement cost anywhere.

My son has seen the wisdom of this and has discovered a market in which no appreciation has taken place whatsoever. He is able to purchase modest properties, extract his capital outlay immediately and have enough high quality rental income to pay all finance and carrying costs and leave a couple of hundred bucks in his jeans.

Look around your neighborhood and do the numbers. When that happens there, I assure you, that the housing market has found a bottom. Then ask yourself what will your net worth be? This party is so over.

The global economy is swiftly learning to work with the sharp reduction in US purchasing power and fair to say, they are not expecting or planning for a quick recovery. We can expect the global ecoomy to establish a renewed growth rate somewhat less than formerly but still positive.

There is one other deadly problem brewing up, because of our complete failure to turn around the housing market in its early stages as suggested in my earlier postings on the restructuring of the foreclosure laws. State and Municipal finance is in free fall and will recover at a much lower level of activity. California was hopelessly over exposed thanks to a history of financial imprudence that remained untamed and was likely untamable. At least that is what pundits are saying. This likely means one of the worst results coming over the next three years. Arnie will likely be free of all this just in time and it certainly was not his fault.

This means massive amounts of borrowing at locked in low rates by all government agencies over the next three years until government finance is stabilized and recovering.

The depression spawned incredibly low interest rates on government finance and we are on the way to doing it all over again. In Canada, we even had a 3% perpetual bond that most certainly was the highest rate at the time. I believe some of it is still extant although the only real buyer became the Bank of Canada.

Government finance cannot expand fast enough to make up for the catastrophic loss of household income and wealth. And that sort of finance only provides poverty anyway.

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