Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

War on Terror: Drones Target 41 but Kill 1,147 Mostly Innocent men, Women, and Children
Fed "Mystified" Why Millennials Still Live at Home; My Answer May Surprise You (It Isn't Jobs, Student Debt, or Housing)
Juncker's €315bn EU Slush Fund is €299bn Sleight of Hand Magic

War on Terror: Drones Target 41 but Kill 1,147 Mostly Innocent men, Women, and Children

Posted: 24 Nov 2014 10:19 PM PST

The US calls it a war on terror. In reality it's a war of terror. And for every innocent person killed, hundreds of friends and family members hold it against the US.

The Guardian reports 41 Men Targeted but 1,147 People Killed in US Drone Strikes.

New analysis of data conducted by human rights group Reprieve shared with the Guardian, raises questions about accuracy of intelligence guiding 'precise' strikes.

The drones came for Ayman Zawahiri on 13 January 2006, hovering over a village in Pakistan called Damadola. Ten months later, they came again for the man who would become al-Qaida's leader, this time in Bajaur.

Eight years later, Zawahiri is still alive. Seventy-six children and 29 adults, according to reports after the two strikes, are not.

However many Americans know who Zawahiri is, far fewer are familiar with Qari Hussain. Drones first came for Hussain years before, on 29 January 2008. Then they came on 23 June 2009, 15 January 2010, 2 October 2010 and 7 October 2010. Finally, on 15 October 2010, Hellfire missiles fired from a Predator or Reaper drone killed Hussain, the Pakistani Taliban later confirmed. For the death of a man whom practically no American can name, the US killed 128 people, 13 of them children, none of whom it meant to harm.

The human-rights group Reprieve, indicates that even when operators target specific individuals – the most focused effort of what Barack Obama calls "targeted killing" – they kill vastly more people than their targets, often needing to strike multiple times. Attempts to kill 41 men resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,147 people, as of 24 November.

Some 24 men specifically targeted in Pakistan resulted in the death of 874 people. All were reported in the press as "killed" on multiple occasions, meaning that numerous strikes were aimed at each of them. The vast majority of those strikes were unsuccessful. An estimated 142 children were killed in the course of pursuing those 24 men, only six of whom died in the course of drone strikes that killed their intended targets.

There is nothing precise about intelligence that results in the deaths of 28 unknown people, including women and children, for every 'bad guy' the US goes after," said Reprieve's Jennifer Gibson, who spearheaded the group's study.

In Yemen, 17 named men were targeted multiple times. Strikes on them killed 273 people, at least seven of them children. At least four of the targets are still alive.

Available data for the 41 men targeted for drone strikes across both countries indicate that each of them was reported killed multiple times.

An analytically conservative Council on Foreign Relations tally assesses that 500 drone strikes outside of Iraq and Afghanistan have killed 3,674 people.

We don't just fire a drone at somebody and think they're a terrorist," the secretary of state, John Kerry, said at a BBC forum in 2013.

"President Obama needs to be straight with the American people about the human cost of this programme. If even his government doesn't know who is filling the body bags every time a strike goes wrong, his claims that this is a precise programme look like nonsense, and the risk that it is in fact making us less safe looks all too real," Gibson said.

Why Do You Kill My Family?

Does US Drone Policy Make Any Sense?

We have not killed the 41 we are after, but we have made thousands, if not tens-of-thousands of new enemies in the process.

Does this make any sense?

You know the unfortunate answer. For those who want perpetual war, the policy is a blazing success.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Fed "Mystified" Why Millennials Still Live at Home; My Answer May Surprise You (It Isn't Jobs, Student Debt, or Housing)

Posted: 24 Nov 2014 12:03 PM PST

A New York Fed research paper wonders What's Keeping Millennials at Home? Is it Debt, Jobs, or Housing?

The paper says "it's a mystery" why the housing recovery did not have a bigger impact on millennials living at home.

The research paper, written by Zachary Bleemer, Meta Brown, Donghoon Lee, and Wilbert van der Klaauw notes correlations to debt, jobs and housing.

Yet, "student debt only explains about 10% of the increase in parental coresidence since 2004, with another 10% being explained by house prices during the mid-2000s".

I have the answer below, but first a few charts and notes on the charts.

Notes:

CCP is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Equifax-Sourced Consumer Credit Panel
CPS is the Current Population Survey, a joint effort between the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau

Coresidence 25-30 Year-Olds 1999-2013

Coresidence 25 Year-Olds 1999-2013 Census Corrected

Coresidence 30 Year-Olds 1999-2013 Census Corrected

Residence Arrangements 1999-2013

Student Debt Prevalence

Residence Choices and Economic Conditions

Fed Mystified, Puzzled

Trends towards increasing coresidence started well before the housing boom, and well before the great recession. Most student loan debt has been in the past few years, after the recovery began.

Student debt only explains 10% of the shift with another 10% attributable to housing prices. Here are a few paragraphs from the study that shows the puzzlement. Emphasis Mine.

Homeownership in the CCP declines from 2005 forward for 25 year olds, and from 2007 forward for 30 year olds, following steady or modestly increasing youth homeownership rates during the housing boom. Unlike the aggregate parental coresidence series, these homeownership trends suggest that early homeownership responded strongly to the events of the Great Recession. From this perspective, the decision to stay home with parents appears to be more closely tied to the student borrowing phenomenon, while housing choices (when not living with parents) appear to be more closely tied to economic conditions. The failure of young homeownership to track the housing market recovery, however, remains a puzzle.

The upward trend in coresidence with parents appears steady, and suggests little direct relationship to broad economic indicators such as unemployment measures and the house price index. This would seem to suggest that the decision to stay home with parents, or to move back in, relates more closely to the recent changes in the debt burden of higher education than to swings in youth labor markets and the cost of housing.

However, the analysis presented in Figure 7 is unsophisticated, and, as such, poses more questions than it resolves. In terms of the aggregate trends, the steady increase in coresidence with parents may reflect not a failure to respond to aggregate conditions, but offsetting effects of, for example, job and housing markets on residence decisions among the young. The failure of all youth residence decisions to reflect the recent recovery in employment and house prices remains a mystery.

What Did the Study Include?

I had to laugh when I saw pages of text and discussion that looked like this.

X_ilt represents a vector of individual i , location l , period t characteristics the levels which may influence the residence choice of individual i at t+1. ... The vector Z_c(i)l represents characteristics of individual i's cohort, c(i), and location l that do not vary by t ... The vector of state fixed effects is denoted σ_s(l). Idiosyncratic error ε_ilt is clustered at the state level. ...

I cannot understand that, nor can anyone but 0.1% of true mathematical geeks. But I am quite certain the formula is mathematically sound.

Yet, at the same time, it is complete nonsense. The results actually speak for themselves. Such formulas only explain 20-40% of what is happening.

The model is clearly broken. Why?

Attitudes

The Fed believes all they have to do is push a button, and people will respond the way they want. The Fed got housing prices up, but only 10% of the response they expected.

Attitudes explain why. The Fed can and did make money available, but it cannot dictate where people spend it, or even if people spend it.

Here is a link to all the articles where I mentioned Attitudes. There are pages of references. It would behoove the Fed to read a few of them.

Clash of Generations

Unlike boomers and gen-Xers whose primary focus was on money and "getting ahead" lifestyles, millennials have more of a depression-era survival mentality coupled with a completely different set of values.

I have been writing about the implications of changing attitudes since at least 2008.

I wrote about the Clash of Generations in May 2014 in Boomers vs. Millennials: Attitude Change Will Disrupt Wall Street and Corporate America.

Major Attitude Shift

Flashback June 25, 2008: This is what I said about attitude changes in Peak Credit

Secular Attitude Change Underway

There is a secular attitude change happening right now. Boomers close to retirement are now (finally) scared to death as the equity in their houses has been vaporized. School age children are seeing homes foreclosed, and families destroyed over debt. The American consumer, who nearly everyone thinks will be back as soon as the economy picks up are mistaken.

Secular shifts like these come once in a lifetime. Sadly it's too late for many cash strapped boomers counting on equity in their houses for retirement.

Lessons Of The Great Depression Forgotten

The lessons of their great grandfathers who lived in the great depression era were forgotten. Over time, everyone learned to ignore the dangers of debt, risk, and leverage. Belief in the Fed and the government to bail out any problem are ingrained. Bank failures are distant memories.

Anyone and everyone who wanted credit got it, and on the easiest of terms: subprime, pay option arms, reckless leverage, and covenant lite debt and toggle bonds that allowed debt to be paid back with more debt. That's what it takes to hit a peak.

Peak Credit

Peak credit has been reached. That final wave of consumer recklessness created the exact conditions required for its own destruction. The housing bubble orgy was the last hurrah. It is not coming back and there will be no bigger bubble to replace it. Consumers and banks have both been burnt, and attitudes have changed.

It took nearly 80 years for people to get as reckless as they did in 1929. 80 years! Few are still alive that went through the great depression. No one listened to them. That is the nature of the game. The odds of a significant bout of inflation now are about the same as they were in 1929. Next to none.

Children whose parents are being destroyed by debt now, will keep those memories for a long time.

Social and Stock Market Impacts

I was wrong about peak credit but everything else I stated was pretty much spot on, including price inflation.

Although peak credit has been surpassed, a substantial portion of the rise in credit is in the form of student loans that cannot and will not be paid back without bailouts.

Importantly, millennial attitudes towards cars and other material goods is not the same as their parents.

As boomers retire, they will need to draw down on both their stock market portfolios and their savings (assuming they have either).

Millennials will assist aging boomers via taxation and by overpaying for Obamacare. Higher taxes coupled with increasing time commitments to help care for aging parents will take a toll. And because boomers live longer than ever, the economic drain and time commitment from millennials will increase every year.

This has downward implications on the economy and the markets, especially in light of millennial-mistrust in stocks and the massive amount of student debt many of them carry.

What Did the Study Include vs. What it Didn't

The study looked at debt, jobs, and housing.

"Student debt only explains about 10% of the increase in parental coresidence since 2004, with another 10% being explained by house prices during the mid-2000s".

The Study missed changing social attitudes and the demographics of aging parents! Attitudes and demographics explains the 80% miss.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Juncker's €315bn EU Slush Fund is €299bn Sleight of Hand Magic

Posted: 24 Nov 2014 09:19 AM PST

Last week France asked for a "New Deal" with "Real Money" not fake EU promises.

France was a bit wary (and rightly so) over sleight of hand math from Jean-Claude Juncker, the new head of the European Commission.

Today we have the facts.

Juncker's €315bn EU Slush Fund looks like this.

95% Leveraged Magic, 5% Fund

€16bn from the EU budget
€5bn in guarantees from the European Investment Bank (EIB)
€299bn is magic.

Supposedly, private money will come up with €299bn based on €5bn in guarantees.

Of course someone has to administer this action plan. So Juncker unveiled a new "investment advisory hub" run by "financial professionals" with direction from the European Commission and EIB.

After padding their own pockets, the group will decide which projects to undertake, no doubt based on kickbacks, bribes, and political favoritism to friends.

To make the deal even sweeter for their political cronies, the EU will offer a "first-loss" guarantee, where the EU money would absorb any initial investment losses in an effort to "crowd in" private investors looking for more secure upside.

Given that it's all funny money anyway, I have a question: Why not provide €50bn in guarantees raising €2.99 trillion in the process?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

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