The $1.3 Trillion Dollar Black Hole In The Economy

The answers can be found in the red and yellow bars above, representing Federal government spending and state and local government spending.  Federal spending rose by $700 billion, and state and local government spending rose by $300 billion.  (With the state and local spending being funded by Federal government  transfers that have been netted out, so it is really almost all growth in Federal spending.)  The private economy plummeted by $1.3 trillion while the government economy soared by $1 trillion, and we were left with what looks like a much more manageable $300 billion shrinkage, the kind of economic change that might be associated with a 9.8% official unemployment rate.  In other words, a little over 75% of the collapse in the private economy was (and is) being covered by increased government spending. – Hiding A Depression, How The US Government Does It

Want to tell me how that economic recovery is working out? Does it feel like the US and the rest of the world are recovering or does it feel like we are in a slow motion slide across some damn slippery ice?  Not quite breaking through the ice and plunging into the abyss yet not coming to a full stop, and stuck watching your future and your childrens’ futures flash before your eyes?   Does it feel like you are treading water and slowly but surely getting more and more tired while waiting for somebody, anybody, to throw a life preserver of some sort?  Have you spent the last few years hunkering down, holding onto what little cash you have, and waiting for this economic winter to pass?  Starting to think it isn’t going to?

Want to know why?

There appears to be a $1.3 trillion dollar hole in our economy that our government and the Federal Reserve mafia are papering over with trillions of dollars of fiat electronic money in hopes that we don’t fall into the black hole of economic collapse.  Is Anybody Surprised as we watch the entire fiat monetary/government spending ponzi scheme unwind right before our eyes? It’s happening and on some level, you know it.

If one adds together three separate forms of gauging unemployment, we come up with about 30%, and when one adds in the $1.3 trillion dollar shrinkage of the private sector – well, you should know what that means…we’ve been talking about it here (and planning for it) for well over a year; the ‘D’ word.

Let me remind everyone that in the world of economics a 10% economic contraction is the formal definition of economic Depression; ergo, we have been in one for the last two years and are today! – Karl Denninger, MarketTicker, Bernanke Is Getting Scared…., 4.27.2010

I urge all my readers to follow the link below and read the entire story (with accompanying graphs) to understand how economically traumatic the situation is. It will help you understand why it feels like we are stuck in the mud and nobody is coming to help us.  Re-read the opening quote of this post and then decide how we are going to help ourselves.  This economy will not grow again until we stop sending all our money overseas and start manufacturing goods here in the US.

Hiding A Depression: How The US Government Does It

Submitted by Daniel R Amerman CFA on Wed, 29 Dec 2010

Overview

The real US unemployment rate is not 9.8% but between 25% and 30%.  That is a depression level of job losses – so why doesn’t it look like a depression for many people?  How can so large of a statistical discrepancy exist, and how is it that holiday shopping malls are so crowded in a depression?

The true devastation is hidden by essentially placing the job losses inside three different “boxes”:  the official unemployment box, the true full unemployment box, and most importantly, the staggering and persistent private sector job loss box that has been temporarily covered over by a fantastic level of governmental deficit spending.  The “recovering and out of the recession” cover story is only plausible when nobody connects the dots and adds all the boxes together.

We will add together the three boxes herein – using US government statistics for all three – and convincingly show that the US economy is in far worse condition than what is presented by the government or by the mainstream media.  No, we have not emerged from “recession” and there will be no “double dip” – because the first “dip” was straight down to a depression-level economy in 2008/2009, and we haven’t come back up.

Creating artificial “free money” on a massive scale that artificially boosts short-term employment is how you segment depression level unemployment into the separate boxes and hide what is really happening.  It is this radical strategy that most distinguishes the current downturn from the 1970s and 1930s.  The ultimate source of most of the current “free money” that hides the depression is the government risking the impoverishment of US savers and investors for potentially decades to come, with the worst of the damage concentrated on retirees and Boomers.

To have a chance of defending your hoped-for future lifestyle, there is simply no substitute for seeing the truth clearly.  For it is only when we see through the lies with clarity that we can distinguish the false opportunity of manipulated markets from the real opportunities that can be found in unexpected places.

:snip:

The Third Box:  Artificial Employment

What happens if we add the real, full U6 unemployment rate of 17% to the hole in the private economy that is currently being covered by the government’s spending money it doesn’t have? The simplest approach is to say that 9% of the US economy is manufactured money that’s funding government deficits, and if we didn’t create artificial money to fund artificial jobs, then that 9% of the economy implodes.  If 9% of the economy abruptly disappears, there goes 9% of the jobs as well, so the unemployment rate would immediately jump by another 9%.  There are a staggering number of simplifications involved in this approach, but it’s not a bad approximation for illustration and discussion purposes within a short article.

Add 17% and 9%, from two different US government sources, and we have 26% real unemployment right there. That is, if the Federal Reserve were not manufacturing money out of the nothingness to fund government spending without limits – at grave peril to all savers and investors – then it would be fair to say that the US would be at a 26% unemployment rate.  This is slightly higher than the peak 25% unemployment rate in 1933, during the worst part of the US Great Depression.

Unfortunately, it is likely worse than even that. There is a multiplier effect when it comes to employment, and if we drop 9% of the economy, the support jobs that are created to serve the people who make up that 9% go away as well. We also need to allow for more government manipulation of inflation statistics, which creates a little greater economic loss picture, and in total, arguably, if we look at the real private sector right now, and we set aside jobs funded by monetization, we’re at a real unemployment rate of over 30%. And if we were to end the deficits and the assault on the value of the US dollar, and the US government only spends what it could take in – we would be at that 30%+ level almost instantaneously.

Now, hit this link and read the entire story as it affects everyone, especially the elderly and the boomers.

If you don’t believe it, read this from MarketTicker:

Year-End Debt-Stravaganza

To The Incoming Senators and Congresspeople:  YOU ARE ON NOTICE.

• No mewling about the National Debt and deficit. The below charts cannot be argued with.  They are what they are.
• No promises to “do something about it tomorrow.” We’ve heard about that now for three years.  The time for political stunts and showmanship is over.  This is a real issue, it is a real national crisis, and if you don’t do something about it you’ll be lucky to get through 2011 before it blows up.
• YOU WILL NOT GET THROUGH 2012. I know what you’re thinking already.  Remember that George W. Bush thought the same thing in 2007 and early 2008.  So did Bernanke.  So did Paulson.  They were wrong.

If you do not act on this, it will detonate before the elections next year.

Not might.

Will.

This is the truth through 12/31/2010.  We closed the year at $1.714 trillion dollars in deficits for the year.  That’s a record, more than $100 billion higher than the $1.612 trillion last year.

The deficit for the last calendar year was 11.64% of GDP.  This is right up there with the nations that have blown up – Iceland, Greece and Ireland – and this is the third year running you’ve put up numbers over 10% (10.23, 11.41 and now 11.64, respectively.)

You will not get away with this into the indefinite future.  You may think you can get away with it for two more years, but I assure you – that is not going to happen.

Further, the true GDP rate for the last 12 months is in fact -7.31%.  We now have a cumulative decline in GDP built into the economy of approximately 30% that must be absorbed.  If you attempt to continue this path much further, it won’t be a decline that we will be dealing with, it will be an all-on collapse.

I know 30% sounds outrageously large – and beyond the nation’s ability to absorb.  It cannot be absorbed without severe pain.  But if we do not take that pain, force the bad debt into the open that is causing this and clear it – irrespective of whether we want to or not, the result will be political and economic collapse.

This is as certain as night follows day, and day follows night.  It is as certain as January 1st follows December 31st.