Housing Will Make or Break US Economy

Az becomes the second state in recent years to adopt gold and silver coin as legal tender. Utah was first. And over the years several successful experiments have occurred wherein a city or county issued its own currency. This should come as no surprise to sophisticated investors. while there is considerable historical support for leaning on gold and other precious metals to protect one’s wealth and liquidity, we should always be cognizant of the fact that precious metals are only precious if they perceived that way.

The U.S. dollar has been propped up using artificial means employed by the Federal Reserve and market makers. There is little doubt that the dollar has been under intense pressure arising out of decades of foolhardy economic policies.

By substituting debt for wages, the appearance of a healthy economy has been maintained. But a quick look at the underlying fundamentals by anyone capable of arithmetic reveals an economy in trouble and a society in turmoil.

This is the result of two factors: (1) we lost our manufacturing base to third world countries and (2) we are in a state of self delusion. We fail to account for many economic events and transactions when we compute our Gross Domestic Product. And the latest trend is to replace real economic activity with trading activity from the financial services industry.

The trigger for what is now seen as the coming devaluation of the dollar has been the essential housing component. The administration and congress, and now state legislatures are setting the stage for a crash that does not have any bottom. In 1983 the financial services industry contributed about 16% of U.S. GDP. This was a fair representation of actual productivity in the country arising out of tangible goods and services created by banks and insurance companies. Now the figure is around 48% of GDP.

The tell-tale sign is that financial service “revenues” and “profits are going up while median come and household wealth has been declining. The extra 32% of GDP does not come from traditional bank intermediation as a payment service, with hedging and other tools to mimicked risk on the purchase of goods and services. It isn’t fees that have increased the apparent increase of the illusion of economic activity from Wall Street and insurance companies. It is proprietary trading profits claimed by the banks and insurance premiums that are artificially inflated by insertion of both banks and insurance companies into economic activity (such as medical care) into commerce that is essentially utility in nature.

The proprietary profits claimed by the banks were predicted here in 2007-2008 and resulted in a projection of a stock market crash and a prediction of the freezing of the credit markets around the world. It was clear then just as it is clear now that Money was being synthesized by the private sector which only means that banks and insurance companies were in essence printing their own money. The dangers of this predicament were apparent and written about by economists whose credentials far exceed my own.

In plain English the banks were stealing money from the marketplace in off balance sheet transactions. And both the banks and insurance companies have been feeding at the public trough for decades. Thus the sole purpose for the existence of investment banks was turned on its head. They were supposed to create active markets in which liquidity (access to capital) was enhanced; instead they surreptitiously siphoned out the liquidity to off-shore accounts and let the markets collapse when investors stopped buying bogus mortgage bonds issued by non-existent trusts. Like any PONZI scheme the entire marketplace collapsed when investor stopped buying the mortgage backed bonds. The correlation is unmistakable and irrefutable.

The insurance companies have been inserting themselves into markets whey contribute no value like medical services and pharmaceutical products.

The end result is that one-third of our entire economy has been eliminated. Taking into account certain productive activities that are not counted (but should be) the real GDP of the U.S. is around $9 trillion but reported at $14 trillion. Using the same logic I pinpointed in 2007, the DOW is actually worth around 8,000, which is where it will go regardless of any remedial policies put in place.

Throughout the world, which is now heavily if not exclusively monetized, obvious steps are being taken to get out of the dollar and into other currencies or assets. The hyper inflation everyone was worried about a few years back was only delayed. And the economic argument of using the dollar as the world’s reserve currency has not been weaker in recent memory.

Accumulation of gold and fixed assets has been responsible in part for propping up our currency. But for our military strength there would be no basis to refer to the U.S. as a world leader. The remedy is obvious — use the reversal of the PONZI scheme to finance new business, expansion of existing business and job training. If that was adopted as policy we would not face an immediate hit to our GDP, equity indexes, and pentup consumer demand together with actual capacity to consume goods and services without plunging into debt would enable us to create fundamental economic activity that would be the envy of the world.

The banking oligarchy currently running our country has a goal that is the anti thesis of the role of government. The oligarchy has profit and wealth accumulation as its goal. The government is required to assure that the referees stay on the playing field and nobody gets an unfair advantage. Just as separation of church and state protects citizens basic rights under natural, constitutional and statutory law, so too should the separation of the banking industry from the government should be well-guarded, lest the power sought by leaders of church, banking and even military and medical services result in the relinquishment of both our freedoms and our prospects.