Shhhh…It’s Even Worse Than The Great Depression!

• Shhhh…It’s Even Worse Than The Great Depression! 
  by Mark McHugh, http://acrossthestreetnet.wordpress.com/ 
  According to Wikipedia, Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) affects one percent of the population and has little to do with looking at yourself in the mirror.  It has a lot to do with unrealistic fantasies of success, power and intelligence.   Some NPD sufferers become cult leaders or mass murderers, the rest become  economists and policy-makers.   Despite having a highly elevated sense of self-worth,  narcissists have fragile self-esteem and  handle criticism unpredictably, so let’s keep this to ourselves….
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  Velocity of money is the  frequency with which a unit of money is spent on new goods and services.   It is a far better indicator of economic activity than GDP, consumer prices, the stock market, or sales of men’s underwear (which Greenspan was fond of ogling).  In a healthy economy, the same dollar is collected as payment and subsequently spent many times over.  In a depression, the velocity of money goes catatonic.  Velocity of money is calculated by simply dividing GDP by a given money supply.  This VoM chart using monetary base  should end any discussion of what ”this” is and whether or not anybody should be using the word “recovery” with a straight face:

• In just four short years, our “enlightened” policy-makers have slowed money velocity to depths never seen in the Great Depression.  Hard to believe, but the guy who made a career out of Monday-morning quarterbacking the Great Depression has already proven himself a bigger idiot than all of his predecessors (and in less than half the time!!).  During the Great Depression, monetary base was expanded in response to slowing economic activity, in other words it was reactive  (here’s a graph) .  They waited until the forest was ablaze before breaking out the hoses, and for that they’ve been rightly criticized.  Our “proactive”  Fed elected to hose down a forest that wasn’t actually on fire, with gasoline, and the results speak for themselves.  With the IMF recently  lowering its 2012 US GDP growth forecast to 2%, while  the monetary base is expanding at about a 5% clip, know that velocity of money is grinding lower every time you breathe.
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  The Fed’s refusal to recognize the importance of velocity of money quickly goes from idiotic to insidious.  Here’s a question:  If I give you 50¢ and as a result of that transaction, you owe me $1.00, what interest rate have I charged you?  Obviously, I’ve charged you 100% interest and I don’t give a rat’s ass about you or your kids.  I’m pure evil and you’re pure stupid.  But believe it or not, this kind of master-slave  arrangement isn’t enough to satisfy a true narcissist.   The narcissist needs to be exalted for his actions, no matter how unjust.
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  In 2011, every dollar of GDP growth created $2.08 in debt.  In real life, that’s 108% interest plus the nominal rate, and our twisted leaders want  you say, “Thank you sir, may I have another!”
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  2011 wasn’t an anomaly either; it’s the new normal.  Since the Bush deficit increases (to call a spade a spade) went into effect,  the rise in debt has exceeded the rise in GDP 6 of the last 10 years (the four years of positive GDP-minus-Debt can be directly attributed to the housing bubble).  That never happened in the U.S. during Great Depression/WWII era.  One place where it did happen was in the Weimar Republic (which shortly thereafter became known as Nazi Germany) .  No one’s ever done a better job of explaining how quickly things unraveled there than Art Cashin (this is an absolute MUST read):
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  In 1920, a loaf of bread soared to $1.20, and then in 1921 it hit $1.35. By the middle of 1922 it was $3.50. At the start of 1923 it rocketed to $700 a loaf. Five months later a loaf went for $1200. By September it was $2 million. A month later it was $670 million (wide spread rioting broke out). The next month it hit $3 billion. By mid month it was $100 billion. Then it all collapsed.
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  ….In 1913, the total currency of Germany was a grand total of 6 billion marks. In November of 1923 that loaf of bread we just talked about cost 428 billion marks.
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  read more!

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