EMERGING MARKETS -Currencies Getting Clobbered

How Emerging Market Currencies Have Been Clobbered Since The Start Of May 08-21-13 BI

Here's a useful chart real quick from SocGen, which accomplishes two things.

One it shows the various performance numbers for emerging market currencies (the worst of which is the Brazilian Real) since the start of May.

It also establishes that not only are emerging market currencies weak, developed market ones are strong.

The Swiss Franc, the pound, and the euro have all strengthened against the US dollar during this timeframe.

EMERGING MARKETS -Surging Interest Rates

This Chart Of Surging Interest Rates Is Everything 08-22-13 BI

From SocGen, this chart might just be everything.

It shows the increase in US interest rates (orange line) vs. an index of the US dollar vs. emerging market currencies (dark blue line). With virtually perfect alignment, we're seeing rates rise in the US, and the US dollar surge against emerging markets, which have been getting crushed.

There are lots of stories and potential stories embedded in this chart, including the notion that a tightening in the US could be contributing to a rise in interest rates that's sucking money away from emerging markets, and clobbering their currencies. Or the story is that the economic pendulum is swinging from the emerging world back to the US (and Europe for that matter) and that that's consistent with a rise in rates, and a strengthening of the US dollar.

Either way, this is the dominant story in markets these days, and the world is watching both lines, the rise in US rates and the collapse of emerging market currencies quite closely.

EMERGING MARKETS -Why Asian Markets Are Collapsing

Why Asian Markets Are Collapsing In 3 Simple Charts 08-22-13 Morgan Stanley via ZH

A steady rise in leverage in recent years means Corporate Asia now has the most leveraged balance sheets globally. As Morgan Stanley's Viktor Hjort notes, with Fed liquidity anticipated to slow, now the cycle turns more adverse. Asian corporate balance sheets face a combination of slower growth and higher funding costs. Slower economic growth is putting downward pressure on earnings growth and rising real rates is putting upward pressures on funding costs turning bad macro into even tougher micro. Asian banks are tightening lending standards in their procyclical way but Asian credit markets are facing a fundamental environment that for many corporate borrowers will feel like a recession.

Excerpted from Morgan Stanley's Viktor Hjort,

Asian Risks Now Skewed To The Downside

The Backdrop: After Three Years of Rising Leverage Now the Credit Cycle Likely Turns Adverse

By the end of 2012, corporate leverage in Asia exceeded its 2008 peak, and at 2.67x for the broad corporate universe of large-cap corporates

That’s left Asia with the most leveraged balance sheets in the world today

Asia’s not alone in having releveraged since the global downturn, but the build-up has been more material than in other regions.

The rise of corporate animal spirits is often inversely related to the distance to the most recent downturn: fresh memories of a recession or crisis is a great moderator on balance sheet aggression (the eurozone today), but once those fade into distance (Asia’s last homegrown recession ended twelve years ago), credit risk starts to build.

Credit, as an asset class, tends to perform best just coming out of a downturn when a growth recovery, coupled with balance sheet discipline, drives significant improvements in credit profiles.

It can still do well in the middle parts of a cycle provided growth is stable and funding conditions benign, although carry is a more important return driver and idiosyncratic risks pick up as balance sheet trends become more mixed. However, the downside skews begin to emerge in the later stages of a cycle when leverage has already increased and the cycle turns more adverse, and that may be what is happening in Asia right now...

The Credit Environment Is Deteriorating Due to Both Slower Growth and Weaker Funding Conditions

The challenge to Asia’s credit cycle comes from both ends. An increasingly sluggish growth outlook creates downward pressures on earnings and internal cash generation. The slowdown is fairly widespread.

In addition, the cost of funding is on the rise. The rise in the cost of funding is ‘real’ – higher rates are no longer balanced by high inflation – and the rise now means that the gap between real GDP growth and real rates is the narrowest since the downturns in 2008/09 and before that 2001/02...

This macro environment – challenging operating as well as funding conditions – is particularly difficult for credit and unsurprisingly it has been associated with both rising corporate default rates and non-performing loans among banks in the past...

A good reason for capital - not just on liquidity withdrawal - to fundamentally withdraw from the world's most-levered region. As Hjort concludes, at this point, downside risks are more material in Asia and they are rising.

Critically - as we noted here - the same reasoning applies to US markets where, though leverage has not risen as much, remains just as prone to the impact of higher costs of capital piled on to a re-leveraged balance sheet.

FISCAL - Government Shutdown Looms

Congress Divided as Federal Government Shutdown Looms 08-20-13 Bloomberg Brief

It is that time, yet again, for an autumn fiscal showdown. Congress faces a hard deadline which, over the past couple of years, has been the impetus for impor- tant fiscal policy decisions to be made. The House and Senate currently stand in recess until Sept. 9 leaving only nine scheduled legislative working days in the House to come to an agreement on funding the federal government beyond Sept. 30 when the current Continuing resolution (CR) expires. In addition, sometime in October or early November the Treasury is e xpected to run out of options for keeping the nation under the legal debt ceiling.

One factor that may help to ease the tension in the upcoming debate is the sharp turn-around in the nation’s budget deficit situation since the last major fiscal policy debate in January. As of July, federal revenues were up 13.9 percent from last year’s levels thanks, in part, to higher payroll tax rates that went into effect in January combined with reimbursement payments received from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. In addition, the across- the-board spending cuts, known as sequestration, went into effect beginning in March which has reduced outlays by 2.9 percent since F y 2012. These combined effects have resulted in the federal budget deficit as of June falling to 4.2 percent of g DP from last year’s 7.2 percent. With the rapid pace of decline in the federal deficit, there may be a little more room for negotiations around the magnitude of future budget cuts.

Our current expectation is that another CR will be passed that funds the government and raises the debt ceiling for a short time — likely six months or less.

However, this process is not likely to take place in one step, it could involve a one or two month CR that keeps the government funded while a longer-term budget and debt ceiling deal is reached. If, as is typical, this fiscal year’s funding levels are carried over in a short-term resolution, the established funding level would exceed the 2014 budget sequestration limit, which could reduce the slated budget cuts for FY 2014. The economic impact of budget sequestration next year would be less severe under a CR that maintains last year’s funding levels, even temporarily.

Potential Effects of Fiscal Policy on Economic Growth

Just as we observed in prior periods of extreme fiscal policy uncertainty, there is the potential for disruptions to economic growth in the second half of the year. In the most extreme case where Con- gress fails to pass a budget resulting in a government shutdown on Oct. 1st, there would likely be a more significant drag to GDP growth than currently reflected in our GDP forecast. The severity of the impact on GDP would depend on the duration of the shutdown. At the very least, the contentious debate has the potential to shift focus from currently improving economic fundamentals to the possibility of a federal government debt downgrade.

TAPER - Taper Begins September With $15 Billion Trim; QE Ends June 2014

The Primary Dealers Have Spoken: Taper Begins September With $15 Billion Trim; QE Ends June 2014 08-22-13 Zero Hedge

Back on July 17, the New York Fed, which as always operates based on the decisions and inputs of its Primary Dealer superiors, asked the Dealer community for their thoughts on the Taper, specifically when and how much. The survey has come back and the PD community has spoken. The answer: Taper is announced, and begins, September with the first reduction in monthly purchases of $15 billion ($10Bn cut in TSY purchases, $5BN cut in MBS), eventually tapering to nothing in June 2014 when the Dealers believe QE formally ends.

The breakdown of the forecasts by percentile:

And their provided commentary for the assumptions used:

While several dealers noted that recent FOMC communications have influenced their expected path of asset purchases, several others highlighted that economic data will continue to determine the timing of reductions in purchase pace. Several dealers noted their expectation that pace reductions would occur at meetings followed by press conferences and the release of quarterly projections. Several dealers noted future reductions in the pace of each Treasury and MBS purchases are likely to be evenly split between both asset classes. Several dealers noted the possibility of reducing Treasury purchases at a faster pace than MBS purchases to provide support for the housing market, while several others suggested MBS purchases would see relatively larger declines due to possible market functioning issues in the MBS market.

Source: NYFED

JAPAN - ABE-nomics About Lowering Real Interest Rates

This Chart Debunks The Biggest Myth About Abenomics 08-19-13 BI

A popular conception about Abenomics — Japan's new drive for economic recovery — is that it's all about weakening the yen and boosting exporters.

But this really isn't the play at all. The real idea is to reduce real interest rates, so as to stimulate domestic demand, unlocking dormant investment and consumption spending. Remember, in deflation, it makes sense to horde cash, because prices will be lower tomorrow, potentially leading to a deflationary/recessionary spiral. Abenomics seeks to break this, stoking inflation, and creating an encouragement to spend and invest today.

A quick look at the Japanese trade picture shows that improving the economy via exports is not the play.

Japan's trade deficit just came in surprisingly high.

From Nomura:

Japan's nominal exports in July rose 12.2% y-y and nominal imports were up 19.6%. Market consensus forecasts (Bloomberg survey medians) had called for 12.8% growth in nominal exports and 16.0% growth in nominal imports. The trade deficit came to ¥1,024.0bn, larger than the consensus forecast of ¥773.5bn. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the deficit was ¥994.0bn, again wider than the consensus forecast of ¥741.3bn and also larger than the June deficit of ¥663.2bn. There had been signs from the beginning of 2013 that the trade deficit would stop expanding and start contracting, but the data have continued to fluctuate and we have yet to see any clear trend of contraction.

BOND SCARE - The Bearish Bond Trend Has Resumed

"The Bearish Bond Trend Has Resumed" 08-18-13 chief technical strategist MacNeill Curry, BoAML via ZH

From BofA:

After 5 weeks of range trading, US Treasury yields have resumed their bear trend. US 10yr yields target 2.951%/3.045% before greater signs of top emerge. Bulls need a break of 2.730% to invalidate the bearish potential.

While the above is nothing more than a few squiggly lines and their extrapolations, in the New fundamental-less Normal self-fulfilling prophecies (i.e., technicals) have a way of, well, self-fulfilling. The only problem with a blow out in yields to north of 3% is that not only does it kill any mythical housing recovery, it outright obliterates any hopes of a continuing GDP tail wind from the housing market, even from investors, speculators and flippers. We are confident we are not the only ones to notice that the APR on the 30 Year Fixed FHA from Wells just soared to over 6% - a level that has no place in an economy that is "growing" at 1.5%.

But before we lament the end of the great 30 Year bond market, we will simply recall that what is happening now is a carbon copy of what happened two years ago, when all it took for yields to plunge over 100 bps was a 20% drop in equities following the Great Debt Ceiling fight and the US downgrade.

Because there is nothing easier for Bernanke to do (in 15 minutes or less) than to enact a wholesale scramble out of stocks and right back into bonds, when he needs it.

Then only question is "when"?

BOND SCARE - Bonds (TLT) Break Important Support

Bonds (TLT) Break Important Support 08-16-13 Carl Swenlin, Decision Point

e use the 20+ Year T-Bonds ETF (TLT) as the surrogate for long bond timing. As of 5/20/2013 TLT is on a Trend Model NEUTRAL signal, which means that the model has been out of bonds but not short. The LT Trend Model, which informs our long-term outlook, is on a SELL signal as of 5/29/2013, so our long-term posture is bearish.

The weekly chart shows a support zone between 105 and 106, and TLT has violated that zone in a move that is becoming decisive. Note also that the PMO (Price Momentum Oscillator), which is used to estimate when prices have become overbought or oversold, has dropped below the bottom of the five-year PMO range. That range was established during a long-term rising price trend, and it will become irrelevant as the long-term trend turns down. In fact, if a down trend persists, over the next five years or more, the PMO range will shift downward from +7 to -1 to something like +1 to -5.

For the time being we are ignoring the possibility of a large head and shoulders pattern forming (the right shoulder being the only element remaining to complete the pattern); however, an extended bounce is not out of the question once the bears are fully committed.

CORPORATE SPENDING - Shrinking CAPEX, Expanding Buybacks and Dividends

What Corporations Spend Their Cash On 08-17-13 Zero Hedge

While bullish talking heads are quick to point out that corporate earnings have never been higher, they tend to get very quiet the second corporate cash flow generation is mentioned. The reason is simple: where non-GAAP earnings, much of which are vaporware such as exclusions and other adjustment involving addbacks for "non-recurring" events such as Cisco's now annual mass termination announcement are indeed at nosebleed levels, actual corporate cash generation is a shadow if its former self which peaked in 2007 and has never been retraced. We showed this a month ago.

The problem is that since corporations generate less cash, they also spend less cash. As the following chart confirms, corporate capital use which peaked at a little over $1.8 trillion in 2007 has yet to be surpassed.

But perhaps what is more interesting is what corporations spend their money on. As we have pointed out in the past (usually when lamenting the lack of CapEx spending), there are five things corporations spend money on: CapEx, R&D, Acquisitions, all of which fall into the "growth category", and Dividends and Buybacks, which are the opposite, and represent shareholder-friendly actions which take from a company's growth potential and distribute dividend, literally, here and now.

Here is the same chart as above, shown on a percentage of total basis.

There are two key observations here, both of which go the heart of what is ailing the US economy.

First, just like in 2006 and 2007, when activist shareholders and overeager management teams were scrambling to engage in buybacks and artificially boost earnings per share, so now the last bastion of corporate "growth" is using cash, usually in conjunction with leverage, to buy back one's own stock. Naturally, as can be seen on the chart above, shortly after peaking at 34% of total in 2007, buyback activity crashed following the Lehman bankruptcy as cash hoarding became the norm. Is there a causal link between buybacks, and especially levered buybacks, and systemic instability? Unclear, however the more leverage companies utilize to pretend they are growing, and the more cash is used for shareholder friendly activities, the less real growh potential there is.

Second, and a point we have belabored since early 2012: capex spending is plunging. According to Goldman estimates, in 2014, CapEx will only account for 33% of total cash use: the lowest proportion since Lehman, and represents an unmistakably declining trendline. Furthermore, declining CapEx spend tells us two things: corporations, who know their business better than most, are spending less on growing their business in an organic fashion because they realize there is simply not enough demand they need to satisfy. Which is why they prefer to spend corporate cash on M&A and other fast-IRR generating shareholder activities, such as buybacks and dividends.

Putting all this together confirms that the bleak picture of a second consecutive quarter of declining revenues will continue. Without a boost in capital spending, there can be no organic growth for the S&P500 and instead any and all "growth" will come at the expense of balance sheet fudging, as had been the case for the past 5 years. However, now that interest rates are once again rising, corporations will be far less willing to spend cash on levered buybacks since the interest of such activities will soon be prohibitive if not already. Which ironically leaves CapEx investment as the best option for CFOs. However, absent true economic growth and a pick up in end demand for corporate products and services, this cash will not be spent and corporate contraction will continue.

The biggest irony in all this, which goes without saying, is that all of this capital misallocation is the direct result of the Fed's actions: something we observed in April of last year, and which only now is starting to filter through the mainstream media. The paradox is that as long as the Fed is there, insuring there is no "capital market" risk, corporations will opt to grow on the back of the Fed's balance sheet instead of actually risking capital and venturing to grow organically. And with this behavior continuing for year after year, very soon the entire premise of top line and cash growth becomes meaningless.

Which leads us to the point #1: if the Fed is truly looking for the culprit of why the economy is not growing, why the consumer's disposable income is at multi-year lowers, why corporations are stuck in space and corporate revenues are in a "recession", it should look in the mirror. Because the biggest culprit why the Fed's actions are having the opposite effect of that disclosed, at least for popular consumption is, well, the Fed.

ENTITLEMENTS - Underfunded and Unsustainable

Charting Insolvency - Social Security And Wages 08-20-13 Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog

We as a nation need to prioritize the Social Security retirement of those with no other pension incomes.

David P. of Market Daily Briefing kindly sent two charts illustrating the problem with Social Security. Yesterday I discussed The Trends Few Dare Discuss: Social Security and the Decline in Full-Time Employment (August 19, 2021); David's charts graphically demonstrate the untenable trend in the ratio of full-time employees (FTE) to Social Security beneficiaries:

The rapid decline in the ratio of workers to beneficiaries in the 1970s reflected both a stagflationary economy that was not conducive to job creation and an increase in SSA (Social Security Administration) beneficiaries of nearly 10 million in the decade.

The ratio recovered as the economy added nearly 30 million more full-time jobs from 1980 to 2000, and the number of beneficiaries added to Social Security rolls declined to roughly half the rate of the 1970s--roughly 5 million additional beneficiaries were added per decade between 1980 and 2000.

The freefall in the ratio since 2000 reflects an extraordinary number of new beneficiaries and a structural decline in full-time employment. These trends are not temporary; as the Baby Boom ages, the number of beneficiaries is set to rise from 57 million to 90 million.

Fantasy and denial aside, there is no evidence that the forces eroding full-time employment will magically vanish in the coming decades.

David's second chart displays the cost of Social Security benefits to private-sector wages. Government sector employees are typically covered by military/Federal pensions or state/agency pensions, and so the key metric here is private-sector wages.

The official projections of the SSA Trustees state future SSA costs as a percentage of GDP, but since GDP is constantly being gamed, that is an untrustworthy metric of the system's viability. Since Social Security is paid for by payroll taxes, the only metric that counts is payrolls.

As explained in yesterday's entry, SSA is designed to favor lower-income workers; those earning $10,000 a year or less (38 million workers) contribute relatively modest payroll taxes in comparison to the benefits they qualify for. (These numbers are drawn directly from Social Security Administration payroll data.

The system's solvency is thus dependent on higher-income wage earners. If wages exposed to SSA payroll taxes don't expand at the same rate as the costs of benefits, the system is on a one-way trip to insolvency.

Let's say the Social Security system starts running large ($100+ billion) deficits. What does this mean? It simply means the U.S. Treasury needs to borrow more money by selling more Treasury bonds, and/or the Federal government has to cut spending on other programs to divert the $100+ billion annually to SSA.

Borrowing another $100 billion annually on top of the $1 trillion the Federal government has been borrowing annually is not a problem as long as the yields on Treasury debt is near-zero. But if interest rates rise (for whatever reason), the government's ability to borrow trillions of dollars is crimped as the cost of the interest on the rapidly rising debt starts chewing into the funding for programs.

As crazy as it sounds, eventually the government could be spending more on interest than on Social Security ($800 billion a year and rising fast). That would require the Treasury to borrow even more just to pay the skyrocketing interest.

That self-reinforcing debt/interest feedback loop has one and only one end state: implosion.

There are only two ways to fix "pay as you go" systems like Social Security: cut benefits and/or raise payroll taxes. Many people favor eliminating the limit on Social Security payroll taxes, currently $113,700 annually. Since less than 5% of wage earners make more than $113,700 annually, eliminating the limit would raise taxes on about 7.5 million workers and their employers (each pays 7.65% in SSA and Medicare payroll taxes).

Since the top slice of earners take home roughly 40% of total wages, eliminating the limit on SSA payroll taxes would raise a substantial sum. But since the top 10 percent of income earners paid 71 percent of all federal income taxes in 2009 though they earned 43 percent of all income, such a move to eliminate the income limit on SSA payroll taxes would encourage high earners and their employers to shift pay to non-payroll compensation such as stock options.

As a result, linear projections will likely fail to predict reality; the sums raised will likely be considerably less than projected, as many high-earners are small business owners and professionals who can change the mix of compensation (the same is true of global corporations, of course).

Another alternative is to raise the payroll tax and the income limit in a series of steps.

The second option is to change the social contract so that Social Security explicitly secures the retirement of lower-income workers rather than adding to the income of workers with substantial non-SSA pensions/income. Those collecting pensions from other sources would receive less Social Security. Those with no other pension income would receive 100% of their Social Security retirement benefit, while those collecting pensions from other sources would receive less on a sliding scale. Perhaps those with pension incomes above 3 times the median wage $26,500 X 3 = $79,500 or $6,660/month) would receive no Social Security.

Do those collecting three times the median wage really need the same SSA benefits as those with no other retirement income?

The conventional answer is that any means testing of Social Security would destroy its political popularity, but in reality such means-testing would likely affect only the top (higher-income) 10% of the populace.

"We wuz promised" does not apply to "pay as you go" systems, which are extraordinarily exposed to current trends and realities. It's time for America to examine the social contract/Social Security in an era of declining full-time employment and widening income inequality. We as a nation need to prioritize the Social Security retirement income of those with no other pension incomes.

For more on this topic:

The Trick to Suppressing Revolution: Keeping Debt/Tax Serfdom Bearable (May 16, 2021)

FACTS - The Economy Has Tanked Under Obama

33 Shocking Facts Which Show How Badly The Economy Has Tanked Under Obama 08-21-13 Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,via ZH

Barack Obama has been running around the country taking credit for an "economic recovery", but the truth is that things have not gotten better under Obama.  Compared to when he first took office, a smaller percentage of the working age population is employed, the quality of our jobs has declined substantially and the middle class has been absolutely shredded.  If we are really in the middle of an "economic recovery", why is the homeownership rate the lowest that it has been in 18 years?  Why has the number of Americans on food stamps increased by nearly 50 percent while Obama has been in the White House?  Why has the national debt gotten more than 6 trillion dollars larger during the Obama era?  Obama should not be "taking credit" for anything when it comes to the economy.  In fact, he should be deeply apologizing to the American people.

And of course Obama is being delusional if he thinks that he is actually "running the economy".  The Federal Reserve has far more power over the U.S. economy and the U.S. financial system than he does.  But the mainstream media loves to fixate on the presidency, so presidents always get far too much credit or far too much blame for economic conditions.

But if you do want to focus on "the change" that has taken place since Barack Obama entered the White House, there is no way in the world that you can claim that things have actually gotten better during that time frame.  The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the U.S. economy has been steadily declining for over a decade, and this decline has continued while Obama has been living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

It is getting very tiring listening to Obama supporters try to claim that Obama has improved the economy.  That is a false claim that is not even remotely close to reality.  The following are 33 shocking facts which show how badly the U.S. economy has tanked since Obama became president...

#1 When Barack Obama entered the White House, 60.6 percent of working age Americans had a job.  Today, only 58.7 percent of working age Americans have a job.

#2 Since Obama has been president, seven out of every eight jobs that have been "created" in the U.S. economy have been part-time jobs.

#3 The number of full-time workers in the United States is still nearly 6 million below the old record that was set back in 2007.

#4 It is hard to believe, but an astounding 53 percent of all American workers now make less than $30,000 a year.

#5 40 percent of all workers in the United States actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968.

#6 When the Obama era began, the average duration of unemployment in this country was 19.8 weeks.  Today, it is 36.6 weeks.

#7 During the first four years of Obama, the number of Americans "not in the labor force" soared by an astounding 8,332,000.  That far exceeds any previous four year total.

#8 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.

#9 When Obama was elected, the homeownership rate in the United States was 67.5 percent.  Today, it is 65.0 percent.  That is the lowest that it has been in 18 years.

#10 When Obama entered the White House, the mortgage delinquency rate was 7.85 percent.  Today, it is 9.72 percent.

#11 In 2008, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 268 billion dollars.  Last year, it was 315 billion dollars.

#12 When Obama first became president, 12.5 million Americans had manufacturing jobs.  Today, only 11.9 million Americans have manufacturing jobs.

#13 Median household income in America has fallen for four consecutive years.  Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.

#14 The poverty rate has shot up to 16.1 percent.  That is actually higher than when the War on Poverty began in 1965.

#15 During Obama's first term, the number of Americans on food stamps increased by an average of about 11,000 per day.

#16 When Barack Obama entered the White House, there were about 32 million Americans on food stamps.  Today, there are more than 47 million Americans on food stamps.

#17 At this point, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless.  This is the first time that has ever happened in our history.  That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.

#18 When Barack Obama took office, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $1.85.  Today, it is $3.53.

#19 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

#20 Health insurance costs have risen by 29 percent since Barack Obama became president, and Obamacare is going to make things far worse.

#21 The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.

#22 According to economist Tim Kane, the following is how the number of startup jobs per 1000 Americans breaks down by presidential administration...

Bush Sr.: 11.3

Clinton: 11.2

Bush Jr.: 10.8

Obama: 7.8

#23 In 2008, that total amount of student loan debt in this country was 440 billion dollars.  At this point, it has shot up to about a trillion dollars.

#24 According to one recent survey, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

#25 During Obama's first term, the number of Americans collecting federal disability insurance rose by more than 18 percent.

#26 The total amount of money that the federal government gives directly to the American people has grown by 32 percent since Barack Obama became president.

#27 According to the Survey of Income and Program Participation conducted by the U.S. Census, well over 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government.

#28 As I wrote about the other day, American households are now receiving more money directly from the federal government than they are paying to the government in taxes.

#29 Under Barack Obama, the velocity of money (a very important indicator of economic health) has plunged to a post-World War II low.

#30 At the end of 2008, the Federal Reserve held $475.9 billion worth of U.S. Treasury bonds.  Today, Fed holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds have skyrocketed past the 2 trillion dollar mark.

#31 When Barack Obama was first elected, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent.  Today, it is up to 101 percent.

#32 During Obama's first term, the federal government accumulated more new debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined.

#33 When you break it down, the amount of new debt accumulated by the U.S. government during Obama's first term comes to approximately $50,521 for every single household in the United States.  Are you able to pay your share

WHY A LOOMING US RECESSION MAY BE NEAR

THE FED IS IN A BOX

1. The US Economy is hinging on a Recession (GordonTLong.com videos: LONGWave on a US Recession, Is the US in a Recession, Dohmen - China Slowdown Crippling Asia ) so it needs to be adding stimulus (according to Keynesian Economic Theory).
2. The Improving US Trade deficit is squeezing Global Liquidity via the Triffin Paradox at exactly the wrong time after a 7 quarter EU Recession.
3. Additionally, several recent regulatory proposals will increase the pressure on banks to reduce assets that carry low risk weights. Repurchase agreements are a large source of banks’ low-risk assets, and it is expected that banks will reduce their matched book operations in response to these proposals. We are already seeing Treasury fails.

HOWEVER

There are serious credit issues that are forcing the Fed to "TAPER"

1. Excess Speculation as witnessed by:
   • PAYMENT IN KIND (PIK) NOTES
   • COVENANT-LITE LOANS
   • DIVI RECAPS
   • LBO LEVERAGE
2. Fracturing occurring in US Term Structures
3. Shortage of High Value Collateral due to the Fed almost completely dominating the risk free US Treasury Market. This is causing serious credit problems in the Collateral Transformation trade and a reduction in Repo balances.

THE REQUIRED 'COVER' OR NO CHOICE?

The Fed may be forced to let the US enter a recession hoping it will give it the cover to insert massive more liquidity into the system which is needed as deleveraging from NPL continues unabated globally.

ECONOMIC CYCLE

CAPEX & INVESTMENT

BUYBACKS & DIVIDENDS

JOBS - Part Time and Full Time Don't Supply a Working Wage

WORKING WAGE: The primary issue running through the economy today is that most Americans lack a sufficient wage capable of boosting spending and getting the economy operating at a desirable pace.

Real consumer spending is clinging to the critical 2 percent pace over the last 12 months. A sub-2 percent pace is typically associated with recession

CRIPPLED MIDDLE CLASS: We have a 'crippled' middle class in a 70% consumption economy.

SENTIMENT - Real Disposable Income

For the first time in 2013, UMich consumer confidence missed expectations dropping from a cyclical high 85.2 to a 'mere' 80.0. However, the miss from an expectation of 85.0 is the big news - this is the biggest miss since records began in 1999. The US Consumer (so in the news this week on the back of the retail earnings) appears have finally woken up to soaring mortgage rates, rising gas prices, and only part-time job growth. We warned this might happen - just as it has happened in the previous two cycles... Both the current and future conditions indices collapsed to their lowest in 4 months.

The biggest miss on record and first miss in 2013...

HOUSING FORMATIONS

A recent Pew Research study finds, a record 21 million young adults are now living at home with their parents.

Since 2007, young adults have grown increasingly likely to live at home. This is a new trend with a stunning 45-year high 36% (21 million) of 18-31 year-olds back with mom-and-pop.

SURPRISES AHEAD

.... for more detail, watch:

US RECESSION - Minimally in the Back Stretch of the Recovery

Cramer's Miss On The Corporate/Economic Relationship 08-19-13 Lance Roberts of Street Talk Live blog, via ZH

TAPER - The Fed Cannot Possibly "Exit" Without The Market Crumbling

The Fed Cannot Possibly "Exit" Without The Market Crumbling 08-21-13 Phoenix Capital Research via ZH

The single dominant belief for investors since 2008 has been that the world’s Central banks will not permit the markets to fall to pieces.

There are primary two primary reasons for this:

1)   The Fed and other Central Banks managed to hold the system together in 2008-2009.

2)   Central Banks have stepped in time and again to prop up the markets every time they staged a significant correction since 2008.

The most obvious culprit here is the Fed, which has stepped in following every market correction in the last four year, either with the promise of a new round of QE or outright announcement of a new round of QE.

Other Central Banks have mirrored these moves. Indeed, since 2007, Central Banks have cut interest rates over 512 times. They’ve also expanded their collective balance sheets by over $10 trillion.

The problem with this is that all of these strategies were not fully thought through.

Consider the following. The Fed has only $50 billion or so in capital. With the Fed now owning over 30% of the ten-year market, every time bonds drop and yields rise, the Fed will erase ALL of this capital. Indeed, Mark Hussman of Hussman Funds notes that even a 100 basis point increase in yields will wipe out the Fed’s capital six times over.

And therein lies the core problem: by expanding its balance sheet so dramatically, the Fed has in effect spread the financial crisis from a private banking level to a public/ sovereign level. Put another way, when the next Crisis hits, it will not be Wall Street banks that go bust but the Fed itself.

Anyone who believes the Fed can “exit” this position is delusional. The single biggest trade for the last four years has been frontrunning the Fed’s asset purchases. When the Fed reverses course and begins selling assets, everyone will dump Treasuries in anticipation.

Indeed, we are already witnessing this with foreign nations selling Treasuries in record amounts in June when the Fed first hinted at tapering its QE programs. Japan and China alone dumped $40 billion that month (of a total $66 billion sold by foreigners that month).

By the way, this was the single largest Treasury dump by foreigners since August 2007. We all remember what followed that (the first round of this Crisis).

STATISM - Governments Continue to Increase Repression of Civil Liberties

UK Government "Pulverizes" Guardian Hard Drives In Snowden Retaliation, Says "There's No Need To Write Any More" 08-20-13 Zero Hedge

While the much publicized Sunday morning detention of Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda at Heathrow on his way back to Brazil, in a stunning move that as we subsequently learned had been telegraphed apriori to the US, could potentially be explained away as a desperate attempt at personal intimidation by a scared, and truly evil empire in its last death throes, it is what happened a month earlier at the basement of the Guardian newspaper that leaves one truly speechless at how far the "democratic" fascist regimes have fallen and  fondly reminiscing of the times when dictatorial, tyrannical regimes did not pretend to be anything but.

For the fully story, we go to Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger who, in a long editorial focusing on the tribulations of Greenwald, his partner, modern journalism and free speech and press in a time of near-ubiquitous tyranny when the status quo is questioned, happened to let his readers know that a month ago, after the newspaper had published several stories based on Snowden's material, a British official advised him: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back."

It gets better: after further talks with the British government, Rusbirdger says that two "security experts" from Government Communications Headquarters, the British NSA equivalent, visited the Guardian's London offices and in the building's basement, government officials watched as computers which contained material provided by Snowden were physically pulverized. One of the officials jokes: "We can call off the black helicopters."

Reuters adds that according to a source familiar with the event said Guardian employees destroyed the computers as government security experts looked on.

What is shocking is that as Rusbridger explained to the gentlemen from Whitehall, they had no jurisdiction over the forced destruction of Guardian property as it has offices in New York, that Greenwald himself was in Brazil, and that future reporting on the NSA did not even have to take place in London. That did not stop the UK government's punitive measures, and obviously neither did pleas, before the computers were destroyed, that the Guardian could not do its journalistic duty if it gave in to the government's requests.

In response, he wrote, a government official told him that the newspaper had already achieved the aim of sparking a debate on government surveillance. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more," the unnamed official was quoted as saying.

What is most shocking is that the UK government was apparently dumb enough to think that by forcing the Guardian to destroy its own hardware it would actually destroy some of the underlying data. It is this unprecedented idiocy that is most disturbing, because when interacting in a game theoretical fashion with an opponent one assumes rationality. In this case, what one got instead, was brute force and sheer, jawdropping stupidity.

Yet that is precisely what happened, and is why the stakes have suddenly been drastically higher: because the opponent now suddenly finds himself hurt, bleeding, ready to lash out at anything and everything without regard for the retaliation, and just happens to be dumb as a bag of hammers.

The full must read excerpt from Rusbridger:

Miranda, a Brazilian citizen in transit from Berlin to Brazil, said he was released without charge after nine hours of questioning but minus his laptop, cellphone and memory sticks.

The detention of Miranda has rightly caused international dismay because it feeds into a perception that the US and UK governments – while claiming to welcome the debate around state surveillance started by Snowden – are also intent on stemming the tide of leaks and on pursuing the whistleblower with a vengeance. That perception is right. Here follows a little background on the considerable obstacles being placed in the way of informing the public about what the intelligence agencies, governments and corporations are up to.

A little over two months ago I was contacted by a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister. There followed two meetings in which he demanded the return or destruction of all the material we were working on. The tone was steely, if cordial, but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favoured a far more draconian approach.

The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more."

During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks – the thumb drive and the first amendment – had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

Whitehall was satisfied, but it felt like a peculiarly pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age. We will continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won't do it in London. The seizure of Miranda's laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald's work.

The state that is building such a formidable apparatus of surveillance will do its best to prevent journalists from reporting on it. Most journalists can see that. But I wonder how many have truly understood the absolute threat to journalism implicit in the idea of total surveillance, when or if it comes – and, increasingly, it looks like "when".

We are not there yet, but it may not be long before it will be impossible for journalists to have confidential sources. Most reporting – indeed, most human life in 2013 – leaves too much of a digital fingerprint. Those colleagues who denigrate Snowden or say reporters should trust the state to know best (many of them in the UK, oddly, on the right) may one day have a cruel awakening. One day it will be their reporting, their cause, under attack. But at least reporters now know to stay away from Heathrow transit lounges.

Needless to say both Hitler and Stalin are spinning in their graves.

Below is a photographer's rendering of what it would look like if the UK government were the Nazis and Macbook Pros were books.

STANDARD OF LIVING - The Destruction Of America's Middle Class

The Destruction Of America's Middle Class (In Under Seven Minutes) via ZH

While hardly news to frequent visitors, especially those who recall the following list, anyone who needs a 7 minute refresher into why the US middle class is on collision course with extinction is urged to watch the following brief video which highlights all the salient facts such as:

• 76% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck
• 27% of American have no savings at all
• 46% of Americans have less than $800 in savings
• The conversion of America into a part-time working society and the country's second largest employer - a temp agency.
• The college trap and the student loan bubble
• And of course, foodstamps, foodstamps, foodstamps and the nearly 50 million poverty-level Americans who need them to survive

Why seven minutes? Because everyone knows that just like you can't get "six minute abs", so it is impossible to recap the doom of America's middle class in only six minutes (or, gasp, less).