February 01, 2012

The Emperor Has No Clothes.  Economics 101

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Last Friday (January 27) the US Bureau of Economic Analysis announced its advance estimate that in the last quarter of 2011 the economy grew at an annual rate of 2.8% in real inflation-adjusted terms, an increase from the annual rate of growth in the third quarter.

Good news, right?

Wrong.  If you want to know what is really happening, you must turn to John Williams at shadowstats.com.

What the presstitute media did not tell us is that almost the entire gain In GDP growth was due to “involuntary inventory build-up,” that is, more goods were produced than were sold.

Net of the unsold goods, the annualized real growth rate was eight-tenths of one percent.

And even that tiny growth rate is an exaggeration, because it is deflated with a measure of inflation that understates inflation. The US government’s measure of inflation no longer measures a constant standard of living.  Instead, the government’s inflation measure relies on substitution of cheaper goods for those that rise in price. In other words, the government holds the measure of inflation down by measuring a declining standard of living. This permits our rulers to divert cost-of-living-adjustments that should be paid to Social Security recipients to wars of aggression, police state, and banker bailouts.

When the methodology that measures a constant standard of living is used to deflate nominal GDP, the result is a shrinking US economy. It becomes clear that the US economy has had no recovery and has now been in deep recession for four years despite the proclamation by the National Bureau of Economic Research of a recovery based on the rigged official numbers.

A government can always produce the illusion of economic growth by underestimating the rate of inflation. There is no question that a substitution-based measure of inflation understates the inflation that people experience. More proof that there has been no economic recovery is available from those data series that are unaffected by inflation. If the economy were in fact recovering, these date series would be picking up. Instead, they are flat or declining, as John Williams demonstrates.

For example, according to the government’s own data, payroll employment in December 2011 is less than in 2001. Meanwhile, there has been a decade of population growth. The presstitute media calls the alleged economic recovery a “jobless recovery,” which is a contradiction in terms. There can be no recovery without a growth in employment and consumer income.

Real average weekly earnings (deflated by the government’s CPI-W) have never recovered their 1973 peak. Real median household income (deflated by the government’s CPI-U) has not recovered its 2001 peak and is below the 1969 level. If earnings were deflated by the original methodology instead of by the new substitution-based methodology, the picture would be bleaker.

Consumer confidence shows no recovery and is far below the level of a decade ago.

How does an economy recover without a recovery in consumer confidence?

Housing starts have remained flat since 2009 and are  below their previous peak.

Retail sales are  below the index level of January 2000.

Industrial production remains  below the index level of January 2000.

To repeat, the only indicator of economic recovery is the GDP deflated with an understated measure of inflation.

The US economy cannot recover, because the US economy depends on consumer expenditures for more than 70% of its activity. The offshoring of middle class jobs has stopped the rise in middle class income and caused a drop in consumer spending power.

The Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan compensated for the absence of US consumer income growth with a policy of easy credit and a policy of driving up home prices with low interest rates. This policy allowed people to refinance their homes and to spend the inflated equity in their homes that Greenspan’s policy created.

In other words, an increase in consumer indebtedness and dissavings drove the economy in the place of the missing growth in consumer incomes.

Today, consumers are too indebted to borrow, and banks are too insolvent to lend. Therefore, there is no possibility of further debt expansion as a substitute for real income growth. An offshored economy is a dead and exhausted economy.

The consequences of a dead economy when the government is wasting trillions of dollars in wars of naked aggression and in bailouts of fraudulent financial institutions is a government budget that can only be financed by printing money.

The consequence of printing money when jobs have been moved offshore is an inflationary depression. This catastrophe could begin to unfold this year or in 2013. If Europe’s problems worsen, flight into dollars could delay sharp rises in US inflation until 2014.

The emperor has no clothes, and sooner or later this will be recognized.

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.  His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached through his website

How I buy groceries without cash – Video – Personal Finance.

I think we are, so now it comes down to deciding the best strategies for enabling the necessary massive power shift.

A recent article by George Lakey provides some food for thought. It tells the inspiring story about  How Swedes and Norwegians broke the power of the ‘1 percent’

Here’s the bottom line:

Although Norwegians may not tell you about this the first time you meet them, the fact remains that their society’s high level of freedom and broadly-shared prosperity began when workers and farmers, along with middle class allies, waged a nonviolent struggle that empowered the people to govern for the common good.

Now read the rest of the story: How Swedes and Norwegians broke the power of the ‘1 percent’.

It may not be desirable or even possible for us to apply the precise tactics of 20th century Scandinavian, but the basic approach remains valid: non-violence, social solidarity, and organization in pursuit of the common good.

And this article by Patrick Martin helps us to read between the lines of Obama’s speech and understand the dismal state of American government. It is clear that whomever occupies the White House next term, and whichever party controls Congress, WE THE PEOPLE will get no help from Washington. In fact, as David Stockman told us about a year ago, the federal government has become “a fountain of harm.” It is up to WE THE PEOPLE to rebuild American democracy and take back control over our lives, working from our communities on up.–t.h.g.

Obama’s State of the Union address: War and wage-cutting

By Patrick Martin, 25 January 2012

The State of the Union Speech delivered by Barack Obama Tuesday night was memorable only as a further milestone in the decay of American democracy.

While billed in advance by the White House and media pundits as a “populist appeal” by the Democratic president, effectively kicking off his reelection campaign, there was virtually nothing in the speech that even acknowledged the acute social crisis in America, let alone offering any solution.

The annual presidential addresses to a joint session of Congress have taken on an increasingly empty and ritualistic character—the same empty phrases, the same perfunctory ovations, the same gimmick of individuals placed in the First Lady’s box to serve as cameos, the laundry list of proposals, either insignificant or overtly reactionary, the sickening appeals to national unity and militarism.

Four years after the official onset of recession, three years after the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression, the US economy remains mired in slump and the world economy is rapidly approaching a new cataclysm. Yet neither Obama nor his Republican opponents can acknowledge the overriding fact being experienced by hundreds of millions of working people: the desperate crisis of the capitalist system.

The Wall Street crash of 2008 plunged the country into a social crisis: mass unemployment, increasing poverty, the collapse of local and state government budgets, the shutdown of public services, the spread of hunger and homelessness. Yet for both Obama and the Republicans, the only solution proposed is to increase the profits of American corporations at the expense of the working class. Every so-called “job-creation” measure proposed by Obama was, in reality, a tax break or government subsidy for corporate America.

Obama’s speech not only glossed over the causes and consequences of the 2008 collapse, but entirely avoided any mention of the mushrooming financial crisis in Europe, which threatens to break up the euro zone, with incalculable consequences for the US and world economy.

The axis of Obama’s speech was his invocation of the auto bailout as the greatest vindication of his economic policies. “This blueprint begins with American manufacturing,” he said. “On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse… In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We got workers and automakers to settle their differences.”

By “responsibility” Obama was referring to the White House demand that auto workers take a 50 percent pay cut, along with the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs, major cuts in pension and health benefits for retired workers, and a ban on strike action, cementing the role of the United Auto Workers union as the company police force inside the plants.

While auto workers paid the price, the auto bosses reaped the profits. “Today, General Motors is back on top as the world’s number one automaker,” Obama boasted, “the American auto industry is back.”

He continued with the following extraordinary words: “What’s happening in Detroit can happen in other industries. It can happen in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Raleigh.” This statement should be taken as a threat to the jobs, living standards and democratic rights of every worker in the United States.

While Obama invokes the success of “Detroit,” the city is bankrupt, with poverty and unemployment over 50 percent, widespread foreclosures and utility shutoffs, and a city government committed to scrapping entire neighborhoods and returning large sections of the former manufacturing capital of America to farmland.

The state government is contemplating the installation of an emergency manager who would suspend local government, rip up union contracts and rule by decree. Detroit has become a synonym, not only in America but worldwide, for urban collapse and social misery. This is what Obama offers to workers in “Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Raleigh.”

Besides these remarks, there was much political boilerplate and ballast. The section of the speech described as “populist” in the corporate-controlled media amounted to a few paragraphs out of an address of more than one hour. Obama declared, “We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

He made a brief reference to the 2008 financial crash, admitting that the banks were to blame, mainly for the purpose of excusing himself and his administration of responsibility. The president then announced that he had just ordered the attorney general—four years after the fact—to “expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis.” This election-year stunt will likely send no Wall Street CEOs to jail. It will fool only those who want to be fooled.

Obama emphasized that his social policies on education and health care were based firmly on the capitalist market and reiterated his commitment to further drastic cuts in social spending. He cited the deal he reached last summer with House Speaker John Boehner to slash funding for Medicare and Social Security in return for slightly higher taxes on the wealthy, which was derailed by opposition from the House Republican caucus.

Equally ominous and reactionary were the brief opening and longer closing sections of the State of the Union speech devoted to foreign policy. Obama began and ended the speech by invoking what he clearly regards as his trump card, the assassination of Osama bin Laden by a team of US Navy Seals.

Obama hailed “the courage, selflessness, and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces.” He continued: “At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations… They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example.”

The president repeatedly beat the drums for economic nationalism, focusing particularly on China as an alleged practitioner of predatory trade practices.

In the course of a long paean to American military strength and foreign policy “successes” like the overthrow and murder of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi, Obama cited “the enduring power of our moral example.” Actually, under Obama even more than Bush, America is identified with a policy of global thuggery and murder, carried out by drones, death squads and hired assassins.

In his conclusion, Obama returned to his vision of a society run along military lines when he again invoked the raid that killed bin Laden. For Barack Obama, the cohesion of a team of trained assassins is the highest form of human solidarity.

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It seems we are now entering the chrysalis stage of societal metamorphosis, which means that familiar structures on which we’ve been dependent are breaking down. This runs the gamut from money and banking to health care, food and energy systems, education, government and law, and even religion.

As we undertake the necessary community based restructuring, it is essential that we find ways to make sure that everyone’s basic needs are taken care of and that positive developmental projects get the support they need. Alongside the deployment of moneyless and bankless systems of reciprocal exchange, it is essential that we also enhance the structures of the gift economy. More than giving to the usual charities, this means doing what we can to satisfy the needs that we see all around us. Give or share what you have, it need not be money. Most of us have more stuff than we use, and much more than we need.

But wise use of our monetary resources is still important. I recently discovered a new website called givv.org that allows you to designate a fixed amount to donate every month, and to distribute it amongst any number of recipients that you name. You can thus give small amounts and avoid getting on mailing lists that inundate you with appeals for further donations. You can watch a three-minute video here.

If you missed it, you can consult my list of Financing Alternatives, which also includes some other creative ways of giving.

And be sure to read the story about Mali’s Gift Economy in Yes! magazine.

The important thing to remember is that there is no leader who can remedy the situation for us. It’s up to you and me. Find your own way to help make this a happier, more peaceful world.–t.h.g.

Well, how about the Governor of the Bank of England?

“There is no reason products and services could not be swapped directly by consumers and producers through a system of direct exchange – essentially a massive barter economy. All it requires is some commonly used unit of account and adequate computing power to make sure all transactions could be settled immediately. People would pay each other electronically, without the payment being routed through anything that we would currently recognize as a bank. Central banks in their present form would no longer exist – nor would money.”

– Mervyn King – Governor of the Bank of England

You see, even the insiders can see the writing on the wall.

Another observer who has been in the thick of cashless trading developments for decades is Bob Meyer, publisher and editor of Barter News. A while back, Bob wrote an article that gives some pertinent history of the “barter” industry and sketches his vision of how “Simple One-to-One Exchanges Will Give Way to Organized, Computerized, Multi-Lateral Barter.” I strongly recommend that people read it: THE ORIGINAL MEANING OF TRADE MEETS THE FUTURE IN BARTER

This is not merely an opportunity to increase profitability, but an opportunity to provide a much-needed service that is becoming more urgent every day. As conventional money and banking continue to malfunction, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) find it increasingly difficult to provide the goods and services that their customers value and need. The inadequate liquidity provided to this sector of the economy by the government and banking establishment, and the misallocation of money to bank bailouts and wars, has caused the current economic depression.

Just like the WIR Economic Circle Cooperative during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the modern trade and barter exchanges are well positioned to ameliorate liquidity problems by providing, as they do, direct allocation of members’ credit to one another. But if they are to improve the value of their services, and if they are to have any significant impact on the economy as a whole, the trade exchange membership base must be greatly expanded. How to achieve that without taking inordinate risks or cutting into exchange revenues has been the knotty question that has blocked progress in that direction.

But now, entrepreneur and experienced trade exchange member, Sergio Lub, has come up with a great idea that provides a suitable answer for expanding the scale and scope of cashless trading, but trade exchange operators must be willing to embrace it. Just days ago, Sergio posted this idea on his blog under the title, Empowering Barter Members to Recruit Their Suppliers. You can click the link to read it there, but I’m including the full article below. Please read it, spread it far and wide, and invite discussion. Mutual credit clearing, the primary service that trade exchanges provide, is the highest level in the evolution of reciprocal exchange, one that makes conventional money obsolete. The world needs it now, and the modern trade and barter movement is best able to provide it.—t.h.g.

Empowering Barter Members to Recruit Their Suppliers

Sergio Lub, Saturday, December 17, 2011

Barter is older than money and is now experiencing a Renascence thanks to two factors: One is the increasing scarcity of money due to the global recession, the other is new software that increasingly allows people to earn and spend their barter credits as easily as they use PayPal. Our shopping carts at SergioLub.com and WearCopper.com, for example, accept barter as well as credit and debit cards for the payment of online orders.

Barter will grow even larger if it were to overcome the persistent problem members have when most of their suppliers do not belong to the same barter group as they do. Understandably, suppliers do not want to incur the time and expense of joining another system, while barter administrators need filled applications to check references, and the application fees to pay commissions to their recruiters.

This old Catch 22 problem will disappear once barter administrators allow their trusted members to make barter payment to their suppliers, even when they do not yet belong to the system.

We users will enter the needed data as we process the online transaction, so there is no typing work for the barter office. The new account does not need extensive credit checking since it is known and recommended by a trusted member. It also does not need an initial credit line since it starts by earning barter credits and therefore with a positive balance.

A common objection from new potential barter members is: “What if I cannot find where to use my Barter Credits?” I suggest to address this problem by allowing the inviting member to reassure the supplier somehow, for example by offering a “One Year Money Back Guarantee.”

So, instead of paying my printer cash at 30 days (and then asking for more time a month later because others are not paying me), my printer will be able to spend the trade credits right away. If my printer cannot find anywhere to spend them, then I will buy those credits with cash after a year. Even in the rare case that this happens I still would still enjoy extra free financing and my supplier gets a chance to play barter with no costs or risk.

An extra benefit of having members sponsor their suppliers is that our new members will deliver goods and services that we normally consume, thus reducing the present disproportion of luxury items and this should also help with the problem of having members “on reserve” because they cannot find where to spend their earned credits.

One last objection may come from the barter’s Road Reps that recruit new members for a fee, since for them, for barter administrators to allow members giving memberships for free, could be considered unfair competition.

The barter administrator should explain that the free memberships are gift certificates that members have traded for or have earned, for example one per year of membership. Furthermore, the barter administrator can gradually switch compensation for road reps to a percentage of the transaction fees, so their earnings become proportional to the volume of transactions their customer’s make. Doing this will give road reps the incentive to visit existing clients and help them become more knowledgeable and efficient in the barter economy.

As more businesses accept Barter Credits it does not take long to see a future in which we could choose to issue Barter Credits to all our vendors, to be used on a trial basis, during the time it takes for their bills to become due.

In the era of networking, tapping into our established relationships is the viral and sustainable way to go. Imagine what will happen when my suppliers will in turn earn the right to invite their suppliers, eventually closing my trading loops and making the use of money increasingly optional.

Writing this in December, with the spirit of the Holidays all around, it is quite easy to visualize barter group administrators acknowledging their senior members with free memberships to gift to their suppliers, and with a little effort I can see a few innovators empowering their barter members to recruit their suppliers year-round, thus helping unleash the huge potential of barter.

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Co-op Power: A Model for Local Investment, New Business Development and Job Creation

Webinar Speaker:

Lynn Benander of Co-op Power and Northeast Biodiesel

Date and Time: Tuesday, January 10 at 10am PT, (11am MT / 12pm CT / 1pm ET)

Coop Power

About the topic:

Maybe you know that cooperatives use their shared ownership structure and member fees to fund the cooperative itself. Join BALLE to learn how Co-op Power – a consumer-owned energy cooperative serving southern New England and eastern New York – is stretching the bounds of the cooperative structure and yielding amazing community capital returns in the process.

Co-op Power’s Local Organizing Councils have:

Raised more than $300,000 in member equity, $600,000 in member loans, and $850,000 in local investment to support the development of community-scale clean energy projects.

Worked together to support a growing number of new living economy enterprises, like a 3-million gallon biodiesel processing plant.

Created more than 100 jobs over just five years.

Focused on working with communities of color and limited resource communities to build a multi-class, multi-racial movement for a sustainable and just energy future.

Explore this cutting-edge use of cooperative structure for going beyond member equity to finance local businesses and create new jobs – and how you can put the cooperative model to work in your community.

Learn more about our speaker and her organizations here.

How to use BALLE’s Accelerating Community Capital Webinar Series

Gather with others from your area to participate in a “viewing party” for each Accelerating Community Capital webinar.

Hold a discussion group afterward to investigate how your community can apply what you learn.

Groups can participate using just one member’s registration!

Hear firsthand about the best models working right now that you can replicate where you live.

Ask the presenters the questions you need to build local investing in your area.

Space is limited; register now!