Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Ireland Caves in to Trichet; Backs of Irish Taxpayers Will be Broken
Government Shutdown Battle to Be Followed by Bigger Fight; GOP wants $4 Trillion in Cuts Over Next Decade; Is that Enough?
Avatar Support Comparison: Facebook, Gmail, OpenID, Yahoo!, AOL, Linked In
Ron Paul on Legal Tender Laws, Coin Shortages, Interest Rates, Municipal Bonds, the Gold Standard

Ireland Caves in to Trichet; Backs of Irish Taxpayers Will be Broken

Posted: 03 Apr 2011 07:29 PM PDT

Costs to bail out bondholders of Irish banks has now soared to $142 billion. Worse yet, the new Irish government completely caved in to the EU and ECB and will attempt to balance the entire amount on the backs of taxpayers.

Please consider Ireland Bows to Trichet on Bondholders as Bank Rescue Reaches $142 Billion

Ireland yielded to the European Central Bank to protect bondholders even as its bailout bill for the region's worst banking crisis moved to as much as 100 billion euros ($142 billion) after stress tests.

The ECB in Frankfurt was "solidly opposed" to imposing losses on investors in senior bank debt, Finance Minister Michael Noonan told broadcaster RTE today. The ECB agreed to provide "ongoing" funding for the banks, he said.

Ireland agreed yesterday to inject as much as 24 billion euros into four banks, while leaving bondholders untouched. The government already funneled 46.3 billion euros into the financial system and set up an agency that paid more than 30 billion euros to assume risky property loans. The total equates to about two-thirds the size of the Irish economy.

During an election campaign last month, Eamon Gilmore, now deputy prime minister, dismissed ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet as a "civil servant" who would answer to politicians. As recently as March 28, Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney said the government planned to impose losses on senior bondholders in the banks to cut the costs of its bailout.

"Taking all of the losses of the banking system and putting them on the balance sheet of the government doesn't make sense," Nouriel Roubini, co-founder of Roubini Global Economics LLC, said today in an interview from Cernobbio, Italy, with Maryam Nemazee on Bloomberg Television's "The Pulse." "Eventually, the back of the government will be broken."

"Rather than go after over 20 billion euros in unguaranteed bonds, the government is making ordinary citizens bear the burden of this debt," Gerry Adams, leader of nationalist party Sinn Fein, said in statement today. "Rather than act in the interests of the Irish people they are acting in the interest of the banks."

Backs of Irish Taxpayers Will be Broken

What is the point of throwing the bums out in a massive repudiation of government policy if the new bums have the identical policies as those they replace?

The Euro reacted positively to this turn of events and also to expected interest rate hikes by Trichet. Those hikes with further exacerbate the problems of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain.

I am sticking to my long-held position "what can't be paid back, won't." The timing is uncertain, and Roubini phrased it well: "Eventually, the back of the government will be broken."

I might add, so will the backs of taxpayers. The pertinent question is how long the taxpayers put up with another set of politicians who cave in bankers.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Government Shutdown Battle to Be Followed by Bigger Fight; GOP wants $4 Trillion in Cuts Over Next Decade; Is that Enough?

Posted: 03 Apr 2011 12:57 PM PDT

When it comes to budget battles, you haven't seen anything yet. Given the cat fight over $30 billion, less than 1% of the budget, it will be interesting to watch the spectacle of GOP attempts to get agreement over proposed $4 trillion in cuts.

Let's pick this story up with a column from yesterday's New York Times: Budget Battle to Be Followed by an Even Bigger Fight

Even as the two parties struggled over the weekend to reach a deal on federal spending for the next six months and avert a government shutdown at the end of the week, House Republicans were completing a budget proposal for next year and beyond. It is likely to spur an ideological showdown over the size of government and the role of entitlement programs like Medicaid and Medicare.

The plan, which is scheduled to be unveiled Tuesday, will be the most ambitious Republican effort since the November elections to put a conservative stamp on economic and domestic policy. It involves far greater stakes for Congress and for President Obama — substantively and politically — than the current fight over spending cuts.

The longer-term budget proposal has been led by Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who is the party's leading voice on budget matters, and will go beyond numbers to provide policy prescriptions.

It will call for deep spending cuts again in 2012, chart a path to reducing the deficit and slowing the growth of the accumulating national debt, and grapple with the politically volatile issue of reining in the cost of entitlement programs, starting with Medicaid, which provides health coverage for the poor.

"We want to get spending and debt under control, and we want to get the economy growing, and we want to address the big drivers of our debt, and that is the entitlement programs," Mr. Ryan, chairman of the Budget Committee, said in an interview. "We have a moral obligation to the country to do this."

The efforts of Mr. Ryan, backed by Mr. Boehner and other Republican leaders, are certain to meet serious resistance from the Democratic-led Senate and from Mr. Obama. In many respects, the nasty fight over financing the government for the next six months has been a warm-up for the longer-term budget battle, which could be further inflamed by a debate over raising the federal debt limit.

"You are going to see major reforms in Medicare and Medicaid; you are going to see a change in the deficit trajectory that is pretty dramatic," said Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican who is on the Budget Committee.

"Ryan isn't touching the third rail," Mr. Cole said, employing the expression used to suggest that messing with Social Security and Medicare can be politically fatal. "He is wrapping both hands around it."

While Mr. Ryan and top Republican aides would not discuss specifics, there are strong indications that the proposal will draw on deficit reduction plans that Mr. Ryan laid out in his 2010 "roadmap plan" and a second proposal he wrote with Alice M. Rivlin, a director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration.

In that plan, Ms. Rivlin and Mr. Ryan proposed that Medicaid financing be converted into a block grant program, with states given a set allotment of money and new discretion to shape health coverage programs for the poor. Their Medicare proposal would allow those nearing eligibility to remain with the current system, and it would create a program that would provide payments to Medicare enrollees to buy private health insurance.

Republican leaders have not previously embraced Mr. Ryan's proposals on Medicare and Social Security, but Mr. Boehner said he had tired of watching Congress avoid difficult decisions on entitlement programs.

"You can't continue to whistle past the graveyard," he said. "We are imprisoning the future for our kids and our grandkids if we do not act, and it's time to act."

Mr. Ryan promised that his blueprint would be a significant departure from the budget issued this year by Mr. Obama, which made no major recommendations on how to address the big entitlement programs. "The president is not leading; we need to," Mr. Ryan said. "Otherwise the country has no vision and no option for getting out of this debt crisis that we are going into."

Obama Not Leading

I did no comment on the story yesterday because there are no specific proposals or specific amounts. However, one thing is for sure, and that is Obama is not leading any budget efforts.

For more on leadership, please see Global Crisis in Leadership Nearly Everywhere You Look

Today we still have no specifics, but we do have an amount.

GOP Plans $4 Trillion in Budget Cuts

Yahoo! News reports GOP 2012 budget to make $4 trillion-plus in cuts

The House Republican chairman who's writing a 2012 budget says the GOP will propose cutting more than $4 trillion over the next decade.

The head of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan, says President Barack Obama is "punting on the budget and not doing a thing to prevent a debt crisis."

Ryan tells "Fox News Sunday" that GOP budget-writers are looking at cutting $4 trillion-plus in spending over the next decade. That's more than even what the president's deficit commission recommended.

Ryan is talking about spending caps and long-term belt-tightening for the Medicare and Medicaid health programs. He wants older people who are wealthy to pay more out of pocket for their health care.

The GOP plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1 is coming out Tuesday.

$4 Trillion is Not Enough

$4 Trillion sounds like a hell of a lot of money. However, spread out over 10 years, the amount is $400 billion per year. The current budget deficit is $1.6 trillion. Thus the GOP proposal only covers one-fourth of what it takes to balance the budget.

Moreover, until the budget is balanced the national debt grows as does interest on the national debt.

Interest on the National Debt Exceeds $400 Billion

Inquiring minds are interested in Interest Expense on the Debt Outstanding as provided by Treasury Direct.

For 2010, interest on the national debt was $413.954 billion. Bear in mind interest rates on treasuries are historically very low, and rising.

I do not know what Ryan figures into his analysis, but I bet the GOP is way too optimistic. Moreover, given the GOP is only addressing one-fourth the amount needed to balance the budget, the rest must come from increased taxes or increased revenues via growth.

Tax Revenue Collection Analysis

Making the rather safe assumption that the GOP will not propose $1.2 trillion per year in tax hikes, I am willing to go out on a very sturdy limb that says tax revenues will not rise enough to cover the difference (not even counting the issue of interest on the national debt).

Thus, as significant as $4 trillion in cuts sounds, it is nowhere close to what needs to happen to balance the budget.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Avatar Support Comparison: Facebook, Gmail, OpenID, Yahoo!, AOL, Linked In

Posted: 03 Apr 2011 11:46 AM PDT

Many people have had trouble getting avatars to display when commenting on this blog. Some may have noticed similar problem on other sites.

The issue is not within Echo or (JS-Kit) per se, but rather what information is provided through a widely used login interface called Janrain. Echo uses that interface.

From my Web guy ....

Hello Mish

I went back and reviewed the provider configuration choices for the different mainstream providers used to manage the Janrain backplane. From that review, here's what's available for Echo to pull over from the provider at login.

It should be no surprise, that Facebook by far makes the most data available. For some, photo (avatar) data is not available at all.

MyOpenID -- only email and formatted name are returned for "Basic" mode -- no photo
is available even with "Extended Profile"
Google -- only family name, given name, and verified email are returned for "Basic" mode; no photo provided even for Plus, Pro or Enterprise
Yahoo! -- lots of info returned: Address, Birthday, Display Name Formatted, Name, Gender, Homepage, Preferred Username, Profile Photo, Time Zone, Verified Email
Facebook -- lots of stuff returned in Basic mode: Address, Birthday, Verified Email, Display Name, Family Name, Formatted Name, Gender, Given Name, Homepage, Preferred Username, Profile Photo, Time Zone
LinkedIn -- lots of stuff returned with Basic mode: Address, Birthday, Display Name, Family Name, Formatted Name, Given Name, Homepage, Phone Number, Preferred Username, Profile Photo
AOL -- a few things are returned but no photo option: Birthday, Email, Gender, Preferred Username

The inconsistency is no doubt due in part to different perceptions of security concerns of both the providers and their customers. For example, Facebook and LinkedIn are **by definition** oriented towards sharing information -- that's why you have an account with those providers in the first place.

For those more focused on email services or potentially anonymous blogging, their APIs aren't as "open" to exposing customized data as the others.

Given this difference in downstream identity provider business goals, this may be an area where Echo may want to consider "smoothing over" those differences by allowing avatar / profile photo stuff to be uploaded / housed within Echo. Otherwise, the visual impact of an Echo-enabled comment page with half of the users showing generic icons instead of normal "avatars" or actual profile photos may appear odd to end-users.

If the community as a whole doesn't produce a solution for this, the alternative would be to simply not render the profile / avatar objects at all by masking their display via CSS.

Other than blocking some login IDs for violations of policy (racial or ethnic slurs, repeated disruptions, etc) , the only information I am interested in is a display name and an Avatar. I do not pass out or even capture other data and would not do so unless required by law for some legitimate reason such as personal threats.

The goals are to ensure that someone is not masquerading as someone else and to be able to lock out those I do not want in.

Some may be concerned to learn what data may be freely made available to third parties, but that issue is one of trust. Don't login to any site you don't trust.

I had to go through some hoops to get access to the Janrain interface, proving I really am "Mike Shedlock" with credit card and phone callback procedures.

With anonymous commenting or "home grown" login procedures, anyone can (and they have), pretend to be me or you or anyone else. Janrain verifies the identity.

Notice that Google does not return a photo or a preferred nickname. I will send this post to the Google team as Gmail (or Blogger) has to be one of the more widely used sign-ins.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Ron Paul on Legal Tender Laws, Coin Shortages, Interest Rates, Municipal Bonds, the Gold Standard

Posted: 03 Apr 2011 12:44 AM PDT

Commodity Online News has an interesting article regarding a new bill introduced by Ron Paul to repeal legal tender laws, an investigation of the coin shortage, and Paul's positions on interest rates and a return to the gold standard.

Please consider Ron Paul to probe US Mint Coin shortage

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, has one question for the U.S. Mint: why is there a coin shortage? He is aiming to get to the bottom of this during a scheduled April 7 hearing of his U.S. House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy to examine the bullion programs at the U.S. Mint.

"We are going to try and find out what the Mint has done so they can give us a better answer as to why there is a shortage. Why can't they keep the supply of coins up?" said the congressman in an exclusive interview with Kitco News.

Part of the problem lies in manufacturing the blanks, said Paul. The blank planchets are not made at the Mint, which hasn't had the production capacity for this stage of the minting process since the budget cuts of 1981.

"Looks like we don't even get (all) blank coins made in the U.S. – there is a contract with a foreign company, which makes no sense at all," said the congressman.

Free Competition in Currency Act of 2011

In March, Paul introduced H.R. 1098, the Free Competition in Currency Act of 2011, which would repeal legal tender laws in order to prohibit taxation on gold, silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium bullion. The bill has been referred to the House Committees on Financial Services, Ways and Means, and Judiciary.

A staunch critic of the Federal Reserve, Paul said that instead of arguing his case for the Fed to close down tomorrow, he's arguing the fact it should not hold a monopoly. "They have a monopoly on a type of money that isn't even constitutional," he said.

"We would use no force, nobody has to use gold and silver coins," said Paul. Rather, he said the Fed does use force. "They are a cartel and they make us use Federal Reserve notes," he said.

Gold Standard

A common assumption is that Paul is calling for a return to a gold standard. He clarified, saying he is not so inflexible. "I wouldn't be overly rigid and say, 'you must have a gold standard, you must go back to what we had.' Our gold standard was imperfect, even though it worked better than the paper standard," he said.

Lawmakers in several states, including Tennessee, Virginia, New Hampshire and South Carolina, have introduced bills to look into minting their own currencies in the event of a complete breakdown of the U.S. Federal Reserve. In Georgia, a bill to make the state only use gold and silver is in committee.

Utah has received the most media attention on this subject as the House and Senate have passed HB317, which would recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender and exempt them from certain state tax liability.

"Governments over the many, many centuries have always demanded monopoly control over money. Even when gold and silver were principally used in the economies, they still wanted monopolies," Paul said.

Hence, he is not confident that any Utah law would be allowed to stand. "Well, they are going to fight it tooth and nail. They are not going to go along with this even though we have the law and Constitution on our side and it should appeal to all Americans to have competition."

Interest Rate Hikes and Municipal Bond Defaults

Regarding U.S. interest rate hikes, Paul said they are going to be gradual and steady but they are indeed coming. "The next big shoe to fall will be interest rates going up on municipal bonds -- that means a lot of these bonds will start defaulting," he said.

There is more in the article including a discussion on another run for president. I hope he does run even though he has little chance of winning.

His issues are important ones and they merit adoption. The first step, however, is more awareness, and his running for president would do just that.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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