patrick.net

epinpb - your post has a lot of merit. What if prices and wages returned to the same level they were in the 70's or 80's, (without price controls or wage controls).

If home prices were in the $20,000 to $60,000 range for the average person, a good three year old car could be had for $1,800 and the cost of living was comparatively low - life would be better for millions of Americans.

BUT the establishment and slimy politicians doesn't want that to happen. In fact they've thrown trillions of dollars around to make sure home prices don't come down.

Lets pray for a flushing out of the establishment come this November.

david1 says

A strong dollar policy discourages investment and consumption. Without investment and consumption, the economy screeches to a halt.

That's pretty much it, with only one correction. It's not the economy, but our financial system. The problem is that practically all money in use has been created as debt with interest. It means you need new money to get into financial system to pay the old interest. Note: just creating (printing) this new money is not enough, someone has to actually borrow it to move it into the economy. Again, because of interest in this financial system there is much more debt than the total money supply. The system needs constant creation of new debt to service the old debt. Very roughly you need to increase the total amount of money in use at the rate of average interest on existing debt.

So, by reducing the cost of living you would cause a collapse of our monetary system. Of course, in theory governments may monetize the debt free of interest. The problem with this is that new debt is all net profit of the banking system. Our banking system would do anything to prevent this (literally anything). Some say some American presidents tried this, notably Lincoln and Kennedy (with well known consequences).

As Elizabeth Warren showed the main costs of living, what most family spend most of their paychecks on, are housing and health insurance. You have to have cheaper houses and health care costs to reduce the cost of living. These are non-discretionary items.

"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots."

The key is to see where the future is headed and pick a career path that is still needed.

Wow, a Simpsons reference going back to 1997. Tip of my hat.

Ruki says

Shrek, you have a problem with Mr. Rogers now?

epinpb says

The solution to our economic problems is to deflate our wages (or increase productivity) to a level that is competitive with the rest of the world WHILE lowering our cost of living at a greater rate. Housing, healthcare, and education can ALL be affordable once again if we focus on increasing the supply of each, rather than increasing the demand.

The reason that most of the 'citizens' can buy the shiny, noisy crap that they are complaining about prices of is because they DON'T pay money for food. The reason they don't pay money for food is because the farmers did exactly what you suggest above. How many farmers are left?
No. Just fucking no. Deflating prices and lower costs of living simply encourage people to waste their labors (and the little money they get for them) on shit they don't need. The debt issue is this: a debt is a promise to burn up resources in the future to pay back a loan (plus interest) for the privilege of wasting money Right Now.
People don't need jobs.
They need food, clothing, shelter, clean air and clean water.
An "economy" is a symptom, a side effect of the activities that people take part in. It is not anything we should be using to guage behaviors or direct behaviors. It is merely the measure of an arbitrary factor (money that is devalued/inflated by bankers and politicians).

Anyone who doesn't believe governments conspire to inflate away their debts, please read about the South Sea Bubble.

The value of a house is not in "schools" or "commute time" except as a down-line evaluation. The actual value of a house lies in whether it puts someone where they NEED to be. The prices of homes in the current market are based on where people WANT to be, which is related to the way houses are marketed, not to any rational thought about the usefulness of their lives to their own future (or their offspring...see "evolution").
Whether you have money, want money, or use a lot of money...when TSHTF on this System of systems (resource extraction), you will not survive unless you find a place to live where the people are accustomed to living without money.
Economists make their livings telling everyone how to build the straightest road to hell. That's called "efficiency".
Efficiency is a vacuum cleaner that sucks the life out of the soil, the people, and their futures and the bag gets emptied into an offshore account or spent on landfills full of plastic and petro products.
Knowing this, you can invest accordingly, to whether you believe in capitalism (the worship of money will continue forever) or evolution (the majority dies off and the fringe repopulates a new niche in a changing environment).
You don't have to be a sheep to be adapted to the current niche. The majority follows a leader, who may be a visionary of the market trends. But the market is built on certain stabilities and resources which depend on having the sheep around them and being able to feed the sheep.

We've based our economic model on reducing the cost of living while coming up with things people don't need to fill their buying desires. Fully 95% of the economy is crap. Total crap. 2% of the people feed the other 98%, and probably a similar number provide the shelter and clothing needed. The rest of the "economy" is just the process of extracting oil and other resources and dumping them into the air or landfills and selling people the idea that they have a purpose in life: to get a job to make money to buy a car to drive to a job.
We don't need health insurance. We need good health.
We don't need "to exercise": we need to do useful work.
We don't need "houses": we need to be where we are useful to our own futures....location, location, location.
Making money is not a "useful" habit.
"Manufacturing" does not need to "come back" to the U.S. if the crap we are going to make to "create jobs" is just going to get thrown in a landfill.
The "cost of living" is actually quite low already. The "cost of being a consumer" on the other hand, is always more than we can afford. It's the same system of marketing that got farmers to buy more and more and more equipment with more and more and more debt: the Next Big Thing will always Improve Your Life, but it only improves the life until it isn't the Next Big Thing anymore, and you have to sell your soul to the neighbor, who has just a little more money and so is "more efficient" and now you work for him until he buys the Next Big Thing that eliminates your job.
The trick is getting people to Believe Hard in The Next Big Thing, rather than teaching them to be satisfied and happy with the little things they can control and improve themselves.

Auntiegrav says

The "cost of being a consumer" on the other hand, is always more than we can afford.

Auntie, you sure got that right.

bgamall4 says

Cost of living is based on many factors, a main one being speculation. Speculation is an investment bank tax on the rest of us. That is why it is ok for them to tax us with high cost of living while diminishing our wages in a global economy.

I disagree with this entirely.

You may be thinking of so called "moral hazard," where banks take risks and if they lose they are bailed out by the taxpayer. This is a problem, and a big factor in why our economy is broken now. But it is the result of deregulation, and allowing banks to be investment banks. Speculation existed long before this and is not an intrinsic cause of inflation or recession.

Deregulation was a general causal factor in the housing bubble. Low down payments and unregulated exotic derviatives ( CDS and CDO ), a securitized mortgage market of bogus securities (given fraudulaent ratings) whcih created a demand for mortgages regardless of risk (ie the risky mortgages were were hidden in convoluted "securities"). This market caused a monstrous demand for mortgages, which generate fees, and there were a lot of idiots and dirt bags willing to write morgages that they knew could easily default if RE didn't continue it's bubbleiscious double digit/year rise.

This is all separate from generalizations about speculation. In healthier times, when banks were separate from investment houses and appropriate regulations existed speculation was not a problem and was not the cause of major inflation that occurred during these times. Although connected people with a lot of money certainly speculated profitably during these times.

It might be easy though to confuse cause and effect. Because changes in currency values and commodity values are of course going to be accompanied by speculation, as long as we are in a free market capitalist economy. But that doesn't make speculation evil.

The causes of changes in standard of living are complex. I know that even if I had a degree in economics, I would still have a hard time wrapping my mind around all the variables. But here are a couple a simple causes.

We advocate global capitalism, and gobal markets which makes sense. There is a natural evolution going on. But low wages in other countries,
puts an obvious damper on wage growth and job growth domestically.
There are forces at work which are causing their standard of living to increase, while ours decreases. Movement in the direction of equilibrium is no big surprise.

The purchasing power of our incomes wasn't helped any by women going to work en masse (a good thing), because then people could afford to pay more for rent and living in general. Everything is a market right ? Supply and demand. If people can afford to pay more, even if because of an additional income, this gradually affects prices.

There has been huge inflation over the last century, but SOMETIMES wages were going up as much as prices so standard of living isn't always decreasing with inflation. OF course if by random luck you bought too much house in the 1968, overextending with a bigger mortgage than you should have, you would have been well rewarded with the ensuing inflation and wife going to work. Timing is everything.

In any case this kind of thing is absurd:

Honest Abe says

If home prices were in the $20,000 to $60,000 range for the average person, a good three year old car could be had for $1,800 and the cost of living was comparatively low - life would be better for millions of Americans.

Yes, and if we could all be 27 forever that would be really nifty too. So ?

Nobody has the power to instantly change the value of money. Believe me, if they could they would (well maybe not), the money of all those millionaires and billionaires would be worth more too. Money represents value - you can't just instantly increase the amount of value out there !

Besides, it would simultaneously increase the value of all debt too.

It's crazy talk. Totally absurd. OBviously if the value of money is going to change with our well entrenched system, it will be in the direction of becoming worth less.

But we are at an unusual juncture where it doesn't seem likely that wages can go up a commensurate amount if and when inflation does occur, and hence the scariness of these times for anyone who really thinks it through.

bgamall4 says

Cost of living is based on many factors, a main one being speculation. Speculation is an investment bank tax on the rest of us. That is why it is ok for them to tax us with high cost of living while diminishing our wages in a global economy.

the only wide spread speculation i and many have seen, documented by Robert shiller is Home Price speculation by the public at large.. claiming 10-50% appreciation annually over the long term.

banks had very little to do with it.. govt turned the blind eye and encouraged it.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/d__GPqOVNbE&playnext=1&list=PLE56D69691F1F2C13&feature=results_video

bgamall4 says

Also asset inflation is even more hurtful to main street than wage and asset inflation.

I guess we aren't entirely disagreeing. I agree the economy and markets are broken, but I believe that even most of the bankers strongly wish we could go back to more regulation and to when things weren't completely broken (eg our bond market where prices are propped up buy the US buying our own bonds, while
the real interest rate is basically negative)

bgamall4 says

Banks set it up. They set up the speculation. I cannot believe how difficult it is for you to grasp the truth. Lack of government regulation was fostered bythe banks as well.

Lack of Govt regulation even with required disclose didnt prevent the stock bubble in later half of 90s. We still saw the public at large speculating on internet stock as they did before in the 20s, yet the SEC act of 1933 and 34 were still on the books.

The housing bubble was equally created by the public at large with talk of "buy now" mania. Shiller provided all the proof needed, and yet today much of what he has proved is still ignored by the public when it comes to financial valuations.

bgamall4 says

If your assumptions are wrong, like all real estate cannot tank at the same time, the risk number is wrong too.

All RE in many metros did thank long before the repeal of Glass Steagall back in the late 80s and early 90s. Again, the RE mania corrected accordingly, without the need for regulations.

bgamall4 says

The S and L bubble was also a scam and Greenspan was behind that one as well.

Keep dreaming... Home Prices over the long run appreciate at about the rate of inflation. Prices became unfordable for many .. reaching 10x incomes. We had back then the same crazy public mania over RE (but not as bad as more recent.)...

There is no amount of regulation which will change the publics attitude over speculation on some crazy nonsense.

All bubbles are ultimately created by the public. Different bubbles may have different contexts and catalysts buy in the end it is all down to crowd behavior.

bgamall4 says

How do you not know this after as long as you have been studying this?

oh yes, blame it on this or that... get over it! RE prices dont appreciate as the public wrongly believed regardless of Basel 2,3,4.. or 10 in the future.. The public lost their mind and their wallet!

bgamall4 says

No, all bubbles are created by the banks. It has been that way from the beginning of time because they control the supply of money and they control the markets.

Invest in a Beanie Baby lately! How about a couple of Lotto tickets! Any baseball cards you collect for big bucks! Banks have little control over the emotions of the pubic.

Thomas, surely you are right.

Like when someone like Eliot Spitzer got entrapped, well, he made the choice.

I think s/he meant the Bubbles are enabled by banking.

Peter P says

Different bubbles may have different contexts and catalysts buy in the end it is all down to crowd behavior.

Okay. But take away the catalyst of sub-prime loans, liar loans, etc, which were TOTALLY tied to deregulation and what is really large scale fraud, and we have no idea of how much smaller the boom would have been.

Would it have existed at all, under old fashioned mortgage lending practices ? How can we say it would have, considering that virtually all homes bought for residence are bought with a mortgage. Investment buying and "flipping" is gone without the upward trajectory, and when rents don't cover the mortgage payments.

thomaswong.1986 says

Banks have little control over the emotions of the pubic.

But they happen to finance virtually ALL home purchases.

Would it have existed at all, under old fashioned mortgage lending practices?

Actually, TPTB have been reducing the cost of living for some time. Look at the Core CPI: inflation at 2% or less, thanks to careful government/Fed marshaling of the economy. (Of course, this figure is reached by excluding "volatile" items such as food and gasoline.) Just look at how much cheaper housing has become in places like Lancaster, CA, or Homer, GA. Factor that in and, metaphorically, we are almost as well off as the 1%.

As I understand it, the BLS includes food & energy in its calculation of the CPI, but doesn't take into account product shrinkage (or package amplification). Get less, pay more, but the CPI is blessedly stable. There's a whole field called "Hedonics" which assures us that a person who is used to eating steak will, when confronted with higher beef prices, switch to chicken or tofu or fish sticks, so, BONUS! his grocery budget actually comes out ahead. I am not sure where you go when fish sticks become too expensive; I'm thinking the plan would involve trapping neighborhood pets and possum for protein, and this activity would show up in the CPI as "FREE MEAT ALLOWS UNGRATEFUL CITIZENS THE CHANCE TO SPLURGE ON MAC-N-CHEESE!"

Note also that the cost of coveted "toys" are parsed and prettified by experts who point out that your new TV or laptop is so much bigger or faster than what was available last year that it counts as an upgrade, even if it's the most stripped-down entry model and costs more than last year's equivalent. In my own household, we find that hand-me-down clothes and the box of leftovers from the neighbor's garage sale gives us a more extensive wardrobe than we could ever afford by shopping at Walmart. The scarecrow look and Shabby Chic are so popular now.

As you now can see, the CPI--against which wage adjustments or retiree's benefits are calculated-- has de facto reduced the cost of living! They calculate that there's no inflation, so you don't need a cost of living increase. You just need to recalibrate your personal hedonics.

marcus says

Okay. But take away the catalyst of sub-prime loans, liar loans, etc, which were TOTALLY tied to deregulation and what is really large scale fraud, and we have no idea of how much smaller the boom would have been.

Hmm... what about the South Sea Bubble and the Tulip Bubble?

bgamall4 says

Cautious1 says

has de facto reduced the cost of living!

No, the reduction is in the means to pay for the cost of living which is still elevated by speculation. But I get your point, that wage inflation is not to be feared. Still commodity inflation is pure stealing if you don't get a better wage!

Gary Anderson strategicdefaultbooks.com

How oil speculators jacked up oil price, which affects other basics like food.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/25/114759/wikileaks-saudis-often-warned.html

bgamall4 says

You need easy credit for oil and housing bubbles and the banks supply that.

There was no expansion of credit when it came to stock bubbles..that was all based on disposable incomes/savings.

Peter P says

Hmm... what about the South Sea Bubble and the Tulip Bubble?

Brain fart ?

I wasn't making a generalization about all bubbles.

And I don't know how familiar you are with logic, but the fact that public mania can cause a bubble in tulips or whatever without bank involvement is nothing like a proof that it is the only factor in all bubbles.

It's a chicken and egg question. It doesn't take a lot of capital to get the price trend going strong enough in something like tulips to then generate some crowd behavior buying mania.

But in the real estate boom, there were financing practices, which weren't necessarily a conspiracy, that allowed the buying to occur for several years with people bidding prices up up up, leading to more people doing the same, again often buying and bidding up prices when a huge percentage of these bidders/buyers would not have been able to even participate with lending practices of 30 years ago.

marcus says

Would it have existed at all, under old fashioned mortgage lending practices?

not that long ago... I, like many put down 20% with a fixed loan during more sober times. You will find more than 50% of homeowners today did the same.

Listen to Wrongwong's video of Schiller.

He talks about people in Los Angeles in 2006 on average thinking that RE was going to go up 23% per year.

Yes, this is buying mania public crownd behavior at it's finest. But it's based on the increases they saw in the 5 years before that. And that was based on a lot of buying and demand that was financed with liar loans and low down payment loans and a fraudulant mortgage securities market that was begging lenders to write more morgages.

The lenders said, oh, you want us to generate more fees and make more money ? Oh,...alright... I guess we can do that...

bgamall4 says

Tulip bubble was based upon a futures market and speculation that was forced to end, if Angry Bear has it right.

Gary Anderson strategicdefaultbooks.com

An unregulated futures market.

There is a distinction between regulated derivatives regulated by the CFTC and other regulated dervitives versus the so called "shadow banking" markets that trade unregulated derivatives.

bgamall4 says

Who has those, Marcus? :) Most of the damage comes from deregulation wouldn't you agree?

We have had them for a very long time. Futures markets in everything from metals, to oil, livestock, grain. They are well regulated.

There are regulated financial futures in such things stock indexes and treasury securities that have only been in existence about 30 years.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is the one who brought suit against Barclays in the recent Libor scandal, presumably because what was essentially massive insider trading of treasury security futures or euros was creating severe damage to the liquidity of these regulated markets.

marcus says

And that was based on a lot of buying and demand that was financed with liar loans and low down payment loans and a fraudulant mortgage securities market that was begging lenders to write more morgages.

Can you say the same back in 1989 - 92... yet prices went up and eventually fell.
Much was actually with cash.. not loans.

And fast forward to his NYC example.. not made with liar loans! Its all about valuations.

thomaswong.1986 says

Its all about valuations.

Which in turn are all about the market. I'm not making an absolute generalization one way or the other here.

marcus says

Okay. But take away the catalyst of sub-prime loans, liar loans, etc, which were TOTALLY tied to deregulation and what is really large scale fraud, and we have no idea of how much smaller the boom would have been.

Would it have existed at all, under old fashioned mortgage lending practices ? How can we say it would have, considering that virtually all homes bought for residence are bought with a mortgage.

I don't claim that the lending practices accounted for 30 or 40% of the boom, or that is was 80%. Just saying it's an obviously huge factor.

marcus says

There are regulated financial futures in such things stock indexes and treasury securities that have only been in existence about 30 years.

We had the 1933-34 SEC act for some 75 years.. A good set of regulations, but did little to prevent mania in many markets.. including commodities.. since reading the company and industry wide MDA would provide transparency to those markets.

marcus says

I don't claim that the lending practices accounted for 30 or 40% of the boom, or that is was 80%. Just saying it's an obviously huge factor.

bgamall4 says

Wrong, the amount of folks in those markets recently have gone berserk. The numbers are making the contracts scarce.

This makes no sense, and no offense but it's obvious you know very little about these markets. "the number of people in these markets ?"

Increasing the participants just increases liquidity and lowers the profit potential it doesn't cause the market to be priced wrong.

As for what caused the crazy prices of 2008, I don't know. If it was speculators, believe me, many of them got burned. For all we know it was the Saudis. What they say or what their spokesman says doesn't impress me.

I read about it back them. Whenever there is craziness in markets, traders and speculators are blamed. I don't buy it. PRicing of finite resources is tricky. Who knows, maybe prices of oil are being held artificially low now and really should be much higher. A good argument certainly could be made for that case.

B.A.C.A.H. says

Auntiegrav says

The "cost of being a consumer" on the other hand, is always more than we can afford.

Auntie, you sure got that right.

Thanks. Sometimes I get lucky when I spew out a thought that seems clear and logical, but it gets flamed by the Defenders of Right; that is the Right that Might made Right.

bgamall4 says

Peter P says

All bubbles are ultimately created by the public.

No, all bubbles are created by the banks. It has been that way from the beginning of time because they control the supply of money and they control the markets.

Gary Anderson strategicdefaultbooks.com

Bubbles are not "created". To be created implies something done intentionally. Bubbles are "allowed" and incidental in the process of seeking maximum economic harvests (whether they be profits or debt write-offs by government through weak dollar policies). The active process is the economic extraction process and the bust is a symptom of growth-based thinking (as opposed to utility-based thinking). Whether it is 'the' solution or not, a government should be basing its policy actions on the utility of its people's activities to the future of the nation, and nations should work toward the future of the world. This, however, is anathema to the concept of God-given rights, Might is Right, and Humanism (it would require humans to become subservient to their own future selves, rather than enslaving themselves with instant gratification debts). This would be called "leadership".
I know, I know,...an anachronistic idea in a world of Cash-based Deities.

david1 says

The fractional reserve argument is bogus, raindoctor. Investment is not lending. This liquidity trap is exactly waht is happening RIGHT NOW in our current fractional reserve banking system. The M2 & M3 multipliers have fallen greater than M0 has increased through quantitative easing. Hence QE hasn't spurred economic growth. Monetarists all over the world are scratching their heads while Keynesians know exectly what the problem is...

Liquidity trap doesn't explain. In fact, mainstream economists and Mish like austrians are wrong about how modern fiat money system works. I was disabused by Randall Wray's Modern Money Primer.

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/p/modern-monetary-theory-primer.html

Here, Bill Mitchell of MMT (modern monetary theory) trashed Krugman's Liquidity CRAP!

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=6617

BTW, I was wrong about reserve requirements. Capital requirements are different from reserve requirements. What constrains lending is capital requirements.

bgamall4 says

It has been my thought that liquidity is not the problem, but rather, how the liquidity is used, to enable the TBTF banks to buy treasuries and to speculate in commodities and stocks.

Therefore, QE could only work if there were strict rules against speculation by these middlemen in oil and food, etc. That money has to somehow be filtered into the real economy. What do you think about that raindoctor?

bgamall4, we have swallowed many misconceptions sold by both Austrians (like mish) and mainstream economists about what money is, how it is created, how it flows, etc.

Banks can lend without any reserves (here, you need to study horizontal and vertical transactions). Banks are not lending not because of two reasons.

1. They are not finding creditworthy folks and firms. For instance, Google, Apple, etc, don't need any frigging money from banks to lend. And banks don't wanna take risk by lending out to Raindoctor, Inc, which wanna sell weight loss drugs in Oakland and East Palo Alto. If you read the evolution of Private Equity and/or LBO, it is a child of junkbonds (remember our Mitt Romney raised money through Junk bonds with help from Mike Milken). Junk bonds came into the picture because banks don't wanna lend to risky firms; however, healthy firms don't need banks since they can raise money in the market or since they can use their earnings to grow (in fact, 40 percent of firms expansion is funded by earning--thats the recent statistics). Venture Capital is for new firms; private equity for junk companies and for raiders.

2. They don't wanna take risk. They can risk by lending $5M to my company and ideas. They can even charge me 10 percent. But the problem is the chance of making profit is very slim: in fact, they will end up writing off the loan they give me. So, in this scenario, their capitals get depleted.

When banks lends you $100K, two things happen: (a) they add $100K to their assets; (b) they add $100K to their liabilities. +100K-100K = 0. They don't need any reserves. In fact, I heard, Canadian banks dont have any reserve requirements. Banks need to keep some capital for asset losses (like when they write off loans: here they use dirty tricks).

Read these:

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=332
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=352
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=381
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=20536

The other myth sold is: govt needs to sell bonds to finance its deficits. It is empirically false. I was fooled by mainstream economists (both left and right) and by Austrians like mish shedlock.

Read those four posts and this one as well
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/scott-fullwiler-krugmans-flashing-neon-sign.html