One Last Binge

A little deep in the weeds here, but via Yves Smith we learn that the reduction of consumer debt since the Great Recession started isn't because of people paying off their bills...it's because they are getting cut off and going bankrupt instead.

The sharp decline in U.S. household debt over the past couple years has conjured up images of people across the country tightening their belts in order to pay down their mortgages and credit-card balances. A closer look, though, suggests a different picture: Some are defaulting, while the rest aren’t making much of a dent in their debts at all.

First, consider household debt. Over the two years ending June 2010, the total value of home-mortgage debt and consumer credit outstanding has fallen by about $610 billion, to $12.6 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. That’s an annualized decline of about 2.3%, which is pretty impressive given the fact that such debts grew at an annualized rate in excess of 10% over the previous decade.

There are two ways, though, that the debts can decline: People can pay off existing loans, or they can renege on the loans, forcing the lender to charge them off. As it happens, the latter accounted for almost all the decline. Over the two years ending June 2010, banks and other lenders charged off a total of about $588 billion in mortgage and consumer loans, according to data from the Fed and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

That means consumers managed to shave off only $22 billion in debt through the kind of belt-tightening we typically envision. In other words, in the absence of defaults, they would have achieved an annualized decline of only 0.08%.

Bottom line: nearly all the decrease in consumer debt is banks writing off bad loans that didn't get paid back.  Millions of Americans are having to burn out every last dime on their credit cards to make ends meet with declining wages and an increase in basic cost of living.  What we're seeing now is the "snapback" effect:  banks are writing off these loans, consumers are taking massive credit score hits, and they're out of the game.

As more and more Americans lose their credit due to banks tightening up, there will be a massive drop in consumption and soon...in fact it's already under way.  The consumer engine that drives our economy is locking up.  The results?  Nasty.

The only thing keeping our economy going right now is ramping up debt.  When that breaks down, the whole thing is going to go.  And when it does, it's going to take our standard of living with it.

Oil's Well That Doesn't End Well For This Oil Well, The End

The Deepwater Horizon oil well is officially sealed and dead, five months to the day after the entire mess began.

BP's blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico has finally been killed once and for all, five months after an explosion sank a drilling rig and led to the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the federal government's point man on the disaster, said Sunday BP's well "is effectively dead."

Sure, except for the tens of millions of gallons of oil still in the Gulf that it will take years if not decades for the ecosystem to recover from.

We'll be fine until the next oil accident happens. After five months have we learned anything?

We've learned just how easily the energy industry controls the GOP, and how easily the Obama administration slips into Bushian lies in order to cover up the true extent of the damage.

We've learned how truly rotten BP is as a corporation. It is just one of several energy giants who are soulless monsters.

Most of all we've learned how impossible it is to ever get climate legislation passed through Congress, and that our grandchildren will probably never forgive us for what we will continue to do to their planet right up to the point where we collapse the environment so badly that we wreck the place for good.

Oil's well that ends well, indeed.

They're The Bad Guys

Christine O'Donnell is taking Contempt For The Village lessons from Sarah Palin, absolutely.  She's blown off two Sunday show appearances, presumably because they might ask her real questions instead of FOX...except one of the appearances was on FOX News Sunday.

Tea party favorite Christine O'Donnell, whose Republican primary upset in Delaware's Senate race shocked the GOP, canceled appearances Sunday on two national news shows.


O'Donnell had been set to appear on "Face the Nation" on CBS and "Fox News Sunday."

Campaign spokeswoman Diana Banister cited scheduling conflicts and said O'Donnell needed to return to Delaware for commitments to church events and afternoon picnic with Republicans in a key county where she has solid backing.

"Tomorrow the priorities are back in Delaware," Banister said. "Those are people who supported her, who were very helpful to her in the campaign, and she feels obligated to be there and thank them."

Banister said she was unaware of the previous commitments when she booked O'Donnell for the shows. She said she canceled with Fox News late Friday and with CBS early Saturday.

"We felt really bad," she said, adding the campaign apologized profusely for canceling at the last minute.

Banister said O'Donnell would be pleased to appear on any Sunday news shows in the future.

Yeah, sure she will.  The woman's not anywhere close to being ready for prime-time.  She's not even close to being ready for FOX News softball interviews at this point.  She's a raving lunatic, and she has zero defense for her whackjob statements over the last several years as an anti-masturbation, anti-feminist, Christian Dominionist nutcase.

The less national exposure she gets, the less chance of saying something completely stupid that will ensure Chris Coons buries her even in this climate toxic to Democrats.

Make no mistake, she's going back to the drawing board to get her message straight.  She only has six weeks to try to deny she said any of the crazy stuff she said over the last ten years.

Happy International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

You scurvy bilge rat!

Moose Tracks Of Clay, Part 2

I'm thinking if Sarah Palin really is serious about running in 2012, treating Iowa like a particularly amusing book tour stop and playing "will she, won't she" with reporters isn't going to help her very much.

Republicans in Iowa, as in many places these days, believe they are on the cusp of resurgence. The party is hoping to take back the governor’s office, which 12 years ago Democrats won for the first time in a generation.

It is the season when candidates — and their events — are everywhere, but Ms. Palin spent little of her time with them. She did not appear at a rally, impromptu campaign stop or closed-door one-on-one meetings with party activists. The few Republicans who did get a moment of private time with her had to wait in a photo line at a small reception.

When politicians accept speech invitations at party occasions, particularly outings like the annual Ronald Reagan Dinner, they often do a host of behind-the-scenes events. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement. But Ms. Palin declined to do any additional appearances. Instead, she went for a run.

The reception Ms. Palin received on Friday evening from a crowd of 1,500 people was enthusiastic and polite. She was greeted and sent on her way with standing ovations. But she did not carry the crowd with her through the entire 33-minute speech. When she talked about the beauty of the Tea Party movement, the party activists in the room barely responded.

There are few more sophisticated or demanding political audiences than in Iowa or New Hampshire, where the road to the White House traditionally begins. It is often not the speeches that are most remembered, but rather the face-to-face time where a voter can shake a visiting candidate’s hand, ask a question and get a gut-level feeling about whether he — or she — would make a good president.

This is why many Republicans are not at all convinced that Ms. Palin is running. Whether she should is a subject many Iowans politely declined to discuss, but there was widespread agreement that should she decide to, she would have to do it the Iowa way. 

The problem is that Sarah Palin wants to do things her way, and is insisting that the rest of the Republican Party plays catch up to where she's going.  This "too cool for school" attitude and rock star "famous for being famous" stuff may play to the FOX News crowd, but Iowans aren't stupid.  They expect, if not demand, a certain amount of respect for their role in picking Presidential nominees.  Ask Barack Obama, for instance, what paying attention to Iowa can do for your run to the White House.

Sarah Palin, for all her talk that she's all for "Real America" and that liberals treat Iowa like "flyover country" that doesn't matter, well, blowing off the state's GOP apparatus to go jogging will be quite memorable in a bad way.

She's beginning to believe her own FOX News press.  That's a mistake.

Well, She Could Probably Take Edward In A Fight

This made me giggle for ten minutes.

Full version of the video:




Brilliant stuff.

Quitters Never Win, Winners Never Quit

Unless you're Sarah Palin, then all bets are off.

Sarah Palin may be edging closer to a 2012 presidential run, telling Fox News "I would give it a shot" if the American people think she's "the one."

The former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee was in Des Moines, Iowa, Friday for the Reagan Dinner, a big GOP fundraiser in the heart of water-testing country for presidential candidates. 

Palin has remained coy about her ambitions, but she elaborated a bit in an interview with Fox News, attaching several conditions to the possibility of a 2012 presidential run.

"If the American people were to be ready for someone who is willing to shake it up, and willing to get back to time-tested truths, and help lead our country towards a more prosperous and safe future and if they happen to think I was the one, if it were best for my family and for our country, of course I would give it a shot," she said.

"But I'm not saying that it's me. I know I can certainly make a difference without having a title. I'm having a good time doing exactly that right now."

Raise your hand if you think Snowmobile Snooki here isn't running for 2012.  Yeah, right.  Didn't think so.

She has been since November 2008, folks.  It's going to be fun for the whole family.

This Week's Busted Banks

We've hit the 125 mark on the way to eclipsing last year's 140 as more and more community banks are collapsing across the country.

Banks in Georgia, New Jersey, Ohio and Wisconsin were closed by regulators, according to statements posted yesterday on the website of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which was named receiver. This week’s failures cost the agency’s deposit- insurance fund $347.6 million.

“Deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC, so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship in order to retain their deposit insurance coverage,” the FDIC said in each of the statements.

Banks are failing at a faster pace than last year, which saw the most failures since 1992, as real estate values remain depressed and economic recovery stays sluggish. Regulators closed 140 banks last year. The FDIC’s list of “problem” banks climbed to 829 lenders with $403 billion in assets at the end of the second quarter, a 7 percent increase from the 775 on the list in the first quarter, the FDIC said last month. 

We've seen 280 banks fail during this Great Recession.  Odds are pretty good we'll see 300 soon, possibly 350 before the end of the year.  There will be more bank failures in 2011 as commercial real estate continues to collapse, office space remains unsold, and business loans are defaulted upon.  The era of the local, commercial bank is ending right before our eyes, replaced by Too Big To Fail.

That's a damn shame.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Afghans head to the polls today despite the threat of Taliban attacks on polling places.
• A new poll shows that only one in 5 Americans favors military action against Iran, the rest favoring sanctions.
• An environmental watchdog group is suing the Obama administration claiming officials are hiding documents on the Gulf oil spill from the public.
• With shareholders approving their merger, United and Continental Airlines will soon be sharing ticket kiosks.
• Apple may be looking to launch an updated iPad with a camera in time for the holidays.

Last Call

What is it with self-proclaimed feminists proclaiming the world for female (Tea Party) candidates, women who honestly believe that women should submit their minds, bodies, and reproductive organs to men?

Can someone please explain this to me?  I sure as hell wouldn't vote for an African-American candidate who said "You know, we really should sit in the back of the bus."

Somebody please explain this to me.

Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Arctic Cold, Part 2

Sen. Lisa Murkowski is indeed kicking off her write-in candidacy tonight in Alaska.  Hotline On-Call:

Murkowski's decision will set up a 3-way battle between the incumbent, Miller and Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams (D), potentially turning the race on its head. Private 3-way polling has shown Miller leading, but by a narrow margin.

Murkowski will make the formal announcement tonight in Anchorage. She has been mulling her options after losing to attorney Joe Miller (R) by 1.8% -- or about 2K votes out of 110K cast.

Miller won with the backing of the Tea Party Express and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R). The Tea Party Express spent hundreds of thousands of dollars criticizing Murkowski's legislative accomplishments, and Palin campaigned against her rival in the race's closing days.

She has not formally said she will run, but her campaign is inviting reporters to call in. Murkowski spokespeople were not immediately available for comment Friday afternoon.

All I gotta say is "called this back in August".  Let the party begin.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Latest Fed numbers are that America's net worth has dropped from $65.8 trillion to $53.5 trillion, a loss of $12.3 trillion dollars, since 2007's peak.  That's how much this recession has cost us.

We tried to fix it with an $800 million stimulus package, less than ten percent of that amount.

Here endeth the lesson.

Hangin' In the Clubhouse

The GOP '12 crowd is hanging out at the Values Voters Summit in DC today, where the Republican hopefuls get to kiss the ring of the Dominionist right.  This year's VVS is no exception.

All the big boys from the moral side of things are here: Bill Bennett, Gary Bauer, Liberty University Law Dean Mat Staver (perhaps best known for telling Newsweek just after the 2008 election that President Obama is not the anti-Christ, but he "can see how others might" think he is), Sean Hannity, Phyllis Schlafly, anti-abortion heartthrob Lila Rose, the xenophobic Bryan Fischer and many, many more are scheduled to speak. Of course the star is FRC's president Tony Perkins, the man who keeps hope alive for the moral warriors of the right, batting down any chance that the GOP will shift too far away from it's traditional, religious-moral core.

And despite the tea party's public arm's-length distance from social issues out on the campaign trail, virtually all of it' political stars will be glimmering from the podium, including the newest and brightest star of the week, Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell. She'll be joined by tea party heavyweights Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) and wannabe tea party heavyweight Newt Gingrich. Other political contenders scheduled to appear include Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. 

And that's the important part of all this.  This event is to show the Tea Party that they need the Dominionists, and the Dominionists need to show the Tea Party faithful that they are behind them as well.  It's full and complete integration of The Crazy into the Republican Party here, and it will all be on display this weekend.

Should be as depressing as it is hysterical.

Less Than Zero

The new inflation numbers for the month are very interesting.

Consumer prices posted a small rise in August, but outside of a big jump in volatile gasoline prices, inflation was essentially flat.

Consumer prices edged up 0.3 percent in August, matching the July increase, the Labor Department said Friday. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, showed no increase in August.

So, consumer prices are going up due to commodities speculation.  Investors are putting money into basics like corn, wheat, sugar, rice and pork and that is raising the price on food.  At the same time, oil continues to hover between $70 and $80 a barrel so gas prices are still holding around the $2.80-$3 mark,  making things expensive despite the plentiful over-supply of oil products in the pipelines right now.  The flocking to commodities and continued high oil prices are providing inflationary pressures at the basic consumer level.

At the same time, core inflation excluding food and energy is basically in deflation right now due to the housing market's continuing massive depression.  Big ticket items like cars, washers and dryers, new PCs, all of those items are facing steep price pressures and discounting.  That's causing significant deflationary pressures.

Right now, those two forces are in balance, resulting in the near-zero inflationary rate figures for the year.  Economists call this "bi-flation".  It's not a good thing, because one of the two will have to crack and soon, leading to a painfully bad amount of the other.

All evidence points to that cracking being a flight out of the dollar to commodities, which will lead to big time inflation if not hyper-inflation.  The question is when.  In the meantime, there's plenty of opportunity to get trapped in an Ireland-style deflationary spiral, especially if the supports are cut by the Austerity Hysterics.

Neither one is going to be much fun to go through.  I think we're headed for a whipsaw ride from one to the other, and soon.

Irish Eyes Are Crying, Part 2

The whole world cries with you.  Lot of nice, pretty green to be burned here as the Greek Fire spreads to the Emerald Isles. Tyler D has the goods:

And the euro seemed so happy after its recent surge, that it completely forgot it is backed by an insolvent continent. Luckily, here's Ireland to remind us stuff is much, much worse than expected. According to the Irish Independent the Labour Party, Eamon Gilmore, came very close to suggesting that Ireland is considering defaulting on its debts "when he talked about the Government "negotiating'' with bondholders in Anglo Irish Bank." Additionally, the same newspaper also reported that Ireland is on the verge of calling in the IMF for a bailout, citing "a report from Barclays, one of Europe's largest banks, said Ireland may yet need financial help from the IMF or the EU if conditions got any worse. But a spokesman for Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said last night: "The Government's strategy for dealing with the economic and financial challenges has been commended by the EU Commission, the European Central Bank and many other international experts." In other words, domino #2 has at most a few more days. Net result of all this: Irish-Bund spread explode, and gold hits a new all time high of $1,282.

So, odds are very good that within the week, and very possibly over the weekend, that Ireland will be waving the white flag instead of the green, white, and orange one.

Remember folks, it was Ireland's steep austerity plan that was supposed to prevent any need for a bailout, It was held up as a plan that the Austerity Hysterics here said we needed to follow immediately or that we would drown in a Keynesian catastrophe.  Spending cuts now!

But as I've been saying for months now, Ireland's austerity plan has failed miserably.  They are now trapped in a deflationary spiral along with plummeting real estate values, and the spending cuts have all but locked up the economy like an engine with no oil.  They've been at it for two years now, and it's gotten to the point where they need a major infusion of spending or the Irish economy is going to have a fatal heart attack.

Ireland now is where we would be without the Obama stimulus:  on the verge of needing a major IMF bailout that will dwarf Greece's hundreds of billions of Euros.  Our mistake was we went with half a tank of gas instead of no gas like Ireland and we're coasting on fumes again.  Ireland on the other hand is about to come to a complete halt.

Keep a careful eye on Ireland for the rest of the month.  The bailout is coming, and it's not going to be pretty.

On the other hand, all bets are off on the Irish bailout should Portugal need a bailout first...