Raising up dead horses

Joe Bageant isn't happy as he surveys the detritus of what was the American dream. This guy is a downer. And unfortunately Peacenik saw Peacenik's self in Joe's article "you got your common man living on hope, lottery tickets, or the dogs and ponies." Yes Peacenik buys lottery tickets. Peacenik feels modestly anxious that Peacenik hasn't bought a 649 ticket for Saturday night.

But Peacenik said it before, Peacenik would rather trust the future to lottery tickets than to Stephen Harper or the rest of our oleaginous leaders or the corrupt and crooked stock exchanges. The DOW and TSX are in the red and only 4 hours to go till the closing bell. Does it matter? Do you have your lottery tickets?

By Joe Bageant



When Barack Obama took office it seemed to some of us that his first job was to get the national silverware out of the pawn shop. Or at least maintain the world's confidence that it was possible for us to get out of debt. America is dead broke, the easy credit, phantom "growth" economy has been exposed for what it was. A credit scam. Even Hillary Clinton and Obama's best efforts have not coaxed much more dough out of foreign friends. But at least we again have a few friends abroad.

So now we must jackleg ourselves back into something resembling a productive activity. No matter how you cut it, things will not be as much fun as shopping and speculative "investing" were.

The fiesta is over, the economy as we knew it is dead.

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Financial Crisis Called Off

Peacenik was a peripheral guest at an extravagant wedding on Sunday. It gave Peacenik a chance to see how the barons of Wall St. and Bay St. actually spend their money. Peacenik thinks they waste it, but I guess stimulating the flower shops in the Bay of Quinte helps some folks out. Just like buying a beer at the pub, but on a slightly different scale. Maybe the recession is over. Hell Peacenik had lobster and salmon for dinner and the steaks were 3 inches think. Is the recession over? Kunstler in this piece below doesn't think so. And neither does Peacenik. Walking to the wedding alter on a rose petal path may feel good, but you can't eat rose petals.



by Jim Kunstler

Whew, what a relief! Everybody from Ben Bernanke and a Who's Who of banking poobahs schmoozing it up in the heady vapors of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to the dull scribes at The New York Times, toiling in their MC Escher hall of mirrors, to poor dim James Surowiecki over at The New Yorker, to - wonder of wonders! - the Green Shoots claque at the cable networks, to the assorted quants, grinds, nerds, pimps, factotums, catamites, and cretins in every office from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to the International Monetary Fund - every man-Jack and woman-Jill around the levers of power and opinion weighed in last week with glad tidings that the world's capital finance system survived what turned out to be a mere protracted bout of heartburn and has been reborn as the Miracle Bull economy. Our worries over. If you believe their bullshit. Which I don't.

All this goes to show is how completely the people in charge of things in the USA have lost their minds. They seem to think this mass exercise in pretend will resurrect the great march to the WalMarts, to the new car showrooms, and the cul-de-sac model houses, reignite another round of furious sprawl-building, salad-shooter importing, and no-doc liar-lending, not to mention the pawning off of innovative, securitized stinking-carp debt paper onto credulous pension funds in foreign lands where due diligence has never been heard of, renew the leveraged buying-out of zippy-looking businesses by smoothies who have no idea how to run them (and no real intention of doing it, anyway), resuscitate the construction of additional strip malls, new office park "capacity" and Big Box "power centers," restart the trade in granite countertops and home theaters, and pack the turnstiles of Walt Disney world - all this while turning Afghanistan into a neighborhood that Beaver Cleaver would be proud to call home.

By the way - and please pardon the rather sharp digression - but does anybody know if they buried Michael Jackson yet? It's only been a couple of months. And, if not, is that the stench now wafting across the purple mountains' majesty from sea-to-shining sea? Isn't it a little indecent to keep the poor fellow waiting? Or is a really surprising comeback secretly planned, with product tie-ins and all?

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Statistical Deceptions

punditman says...While Peacenik grows increasingly uneasy about the safety of a swine flu vaccine, punditman turns his gaze to the supposed "economic recovery" with equal skepticism. As always, Paul Craig Roberts sorts through the haze.

How Fake is the "Recovery"?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Last week on NPR a professor in the Sloan School of Management at MIT explained that what is really at stake in the health care bill is the US government’s ability to borrow. In other words, the bill is about cutting health care costs, not about providing hard-pressed Americans with health care.

The professor said that if we didn’t get health care costs under control, in 30 years the US government would not be able to sell Treasury bonds.

It is not at all clear that the Treasury will be able to sell its debt instruments in 30 months, and it has nothing to do with health care costs. The Treasury debt marketing problem has to do with two back-to-back US fiscal year budgets, each with a $2 trillion deficit. The size of the US deficit exceeds in these troubled times the supply of world savings available to fund the US government’s wars, bailouts and stimulus plans. If the Federal Reserve has to monetize the Treasury’s new borrowings by creating demand deposits for the Treasury (printing money), America’s foreign creditors might flee the dollar.

The professor didn’t seem to know anything about this and gave Washington 30 more years before the proverbial hits the fan.

One looks in vain to the US financial media for accurate economic information. Currently, Wall Street, the White House, and the media are hyping a new sign of economic recovery--”surging” June home sales. John Williams at shadowstats.com predicted this latest reporting deception.

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"Recession's Over, Recovery Underway": What's Missing in Action

Peacenik has been consistent in Peacenik's belief that the economy is still in big trouble. But the TV pundocracy has been unrelenting in declaring all is well. This article by Charles Hugh Smith is a nice summary of why all the good news may just be a smokescreen. But a smokescreen for what? A smokescreen for whom? Peacenik sees through the smokescreen. Peacenik sees the biggest transfer in history of wealth from the taxpayer to the corporate elite continuing unabated. Aided and abetted by our political and financial leaders.


U.S. economy

by Charles Hugh Smith

The mainstream media is gleefully hyping "the recession is over, the recovery is underway." Nice, except for everything that's missing in action.

"The recession is over, the recovery is underway." Exactly what will be driving this fabulous "recovery"? Let's check in on the usual forces which have powered previous recoveries:

1. Autos/vehicles: missing in action (MIA). Annual sales have plummeted from 17 million vehicles a year to about 9 million a year, and the U.S. probably contains about 30 million surplus/lightly used vehicles ( a number snagged from economist David Rosenberg's latest report). Modern vehicles can easily last 15-20 year, so the "need" to replace vehicles is rather low. Actual "necessary" replacement might require as few as 5 million vehicles a year.

With unemployment at 16%, assets down by $10 trillion and the FIRE economy (finance, real estate and insurance) in disarray, where does anyone think the consumer borrowing firepower will come from to finance an extra 8 million vehicles a year?

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MillerCoors sees beer sales up despite downturn

Tue Jun 2, 2009 5:50pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - MillerCoors, the second-largest brewer in the United States, sees beer sales growth slowing less rapidly in the downturn than wine and spirits and as the beermaker focuses on premium light and craft beers.

The brewer of Miller Lite and Coors Light expects the U.S. annual beer market growth to slow to 0.6 percent in 2009-2012 from 0.9 percent in 2004-2008, compared with a steeper fall in spirits growth to 1.1 percent from 2.7 percent.

MillerCoors President and Chief Commercial Officer Tom Long told a seminar in London on Tuesday the group's premium light beers Miller Lite, Coors Light and Miller Genuine Draft 64 had grown market share by 1 percent point over the last nine months, and its Blue Moon beer was now the leading craft beer in the U.S. market.

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Some people say Peacenik only posts about doom and disaster. Here is some good news. Maybe Cramer is right. Maybe things have turned around. Cheers.