Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Debate Fact Check: Debate Filled With Half-Truths, Distortions, Outright Lies
Debate II: Did Obama Right a Sinking Ship? Call It a "Spirited" Tie
Canada Household Debt Approaches US Bubble Levels; Inane Housing Comments From Canadian Economist
Greece Troika Talks Abruptly End Over Civil Servant Pay Structure Dispute; Greek Political and Economic Corruption Continues Virtually Unchecked; Question of the Day
Does Mitt Romney Know What It Takes To Create Jobs? Did He Ever Create Any?

Debate Fact Check: Debate Filled With Half-Truths, Distortions, Outright Lies

Posted: 17 Oct 2012 12:36 AM PDT

If you did not particularly care for what the President and Mitt Romney had to say in the debate, perhaps it's because the entire debate was filled with half-truths, distortions, and outright lies.

Then again, perhaps you liked what your candidate had to say for the precise reason that it was filled with half-truths, distortions, and outright lies.

Regardless, Bloomberg offers this Political Fact-Finding Reality Check. What follows is my summation of the Bloomberg article.

Romney misstated his position on auto bailouts.
Both candidates made "partially correct" statements on Libya.
Romney made misleading statements on contraceptives. Obama stated Romney's position accurately.
Obama understated a tax savings proposal of Romney.
Romney says his tax math adds up. Obama says it doesn't. The fact of the matter is no one knows because Romney has not provided any details.
Romney cited some energy figures correctly (but those were for 2010 and 2011). He exaggerated the decline in permits and ignored the fact total oil production on federal lands and offshore has increased 12 percent during Obama's term.
On defense spending Obama said Romney "wants to spend $2 trillion on additional military programs, even though the military's not asking for them." The problem is the military did not weigh in.
Romney claimed to support Pell grants while backing the Ryan Budget that makes it harder to qualify for them.
Romney claimed "I'm going to get us to a balanced budget", arguably the biggest lie in the entire debate. Ryan's budget will not balance until 2040 by CBO estimates, and never by Mish estimates. Rand Paul offered a reasonable way to balance the budget in 5 years but it received a total of 7 votes in the senate.
On coal jobs, Romney and Obama were each half-right.
On payroll tax cuts, Obama made the second biggest lie of the debate, claiming to continue $3,600 in middle-class tax cuts. After the debate, a White House spokesman confirmed the president has not yet said if he supports continuing those tax cuts.
Romney made misleading statements on job creation.
Obama overstated findings of a report on Romney's international corporate tax proposal.

Question of the Day

Still feeling good about what your candidate had to say? I am sticking with my position stated earlier in Debate II: Did Obama Right a Sinking Ship? Call It a "Spirited" Tie

Over half the time I did not particularly care for statements made by either candidate.

Both candidates scored some points and it is likely that supporters of each candidate thought their candidate won. On some points I agreed with the president, on others I agreed with Romney.

However, my view is not what is important. What the average undecided voter wanted to hear in the debate does matter. Yet, I do not know what that is, or whether the voters heard what they wanted.

Even if voters did hear what they wanted, they now need to ask "Was it accurate?"

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

Debate II: Did Obama Right a Sinking Ship? Call It a "Spirited" Tie

Posted: 16 Oct 2012 08:53 PM PDT

I watched the debate once again and I thought it was a very spirited tie although an instant poll had Obama winning.

The debate was certainly unlike any we have seen before, with heated discussion and interruptions from both candidates who freely wandered around on the stage, often moving close to each other.

Politico offers a Debate Transcript.

One thing is certain, Obama did much better in this debate than the first. He also delivered a solid close in contrast to a miserable flop last time. Romney did OK but not as good as last time.

The instant poll of undecided voters had Obama winning 37% to 33% with 33% calling it a tie.

Both candidates scored some points and it is likely that supporters of each candidate thought their candidate won. On some points I agreed with the president, on others I agreed with Romney.

Questions were from an audience of supposedly undecided voters. I wonder how many of them really were.

A "gotcha" question on Libya (from someone I believe is a closet Romney voter) turned out to be anything but "gotcha". Obama handled himself well, and the commentators after the debate noted that Republican strategists were likely to drop Libya as a talking point.

Similarly, there were cream-puff questions on women's issues that seemed like they were from closet Obama supporters.

I thought Romney generally did better on energy, but it was by no means a knockout.

On jobs, people will probably believe what they want to believe.

Neither candidate really made any specific job proposals. Romney kept repeating he knows what it takes to create jobs, but it must be a secret because he never offered any substantive details. Obama clearly doesn't have much of a plan either, but at least he did not keep pretending that he does.

Both candidates are in favor of Pell Grants but I think they should be scrapped.

Romney repeated his statement made at least twice previously, that he would label China a currency manipulator on day one. That is seriously wrong policy.

For a detailed discussion, please see Fair Trade is Unfair; In Praise of Cheap Labor; Are Bad Jobs at Bad Wages Better than No Jobs at All? Are Paul Krugman and Mitt Romney On the Same Page?

Over half the time I did not particularly care for statements made by either candidate.

The instant survey showed Romney would be better for the economy, but Obama better for the middle class. If the election comes down to that distinction, my view is Obama will likely win.

However, my view is not what is important. What the average undecided voter wanted to hear in the debate does matter. Yet, I do not know what that is, or whether the voters heard what they wanted.

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

"Wine Country" Economic Conference Hosted By Mish
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Canada Household Debt Approaches US Bubble Levels; Inane Housing Comments From Canadian Economist

Posted: 16 Oct 2012 12:50 PM PDT

Shortly after the peak in the US housing bubble, Americans' household debt-to-income ratio reached 170 per cent.

For comparison purposes, Canadian household debt-to-income is now at 163 per cent, according to Statistics Canada.

Canadians' debt-to-income ratio has soared to 163 per cent, much higher than previously believed, according to revised Statistics Canada figures.

The household debt level has increased 1.8 per cent in the second quarter, bringing it to a similar level seen in the United States before the housing bust and the 2008 financial crisis.

Statistics Canada said the new figures are the result of a revised method used to measure household net worth, which is more in line with international accounting standards. Non-profit institutions have been removed from the household category to get a better representation of family finances.

While the latest figures are troubling, RBC Chief Economist Craig Wright says they shouldn't necessarily trigger alarm bells.

The Canadian household debt "doesn't strictly compare with the U.S.," he told CTV's Power Play Monday.

About 70 per cent of household credit is mortgage-related, Wright said, but new data suggests housing markets across Canada, except in Vancouver, are cooling off.

The Canadian Real Estate Association said Monday that sales of existing homes fell 15.1 per cent in September from a year ago, although last month's numbers were slightly higher than in August.

"So as we move forward we hope (the debt) ratio will stabilize," Wright said.

Inane Housing Comments From Wright

Those comments from Wright are quite amazing. The more leverage one has in housing, the more susceptible personal finances and the economy will be to a sustained downturn in that area.

What really takes the cake however, is Wright's "hope (the debt) ratio will stabilize" in spite of falling home prices.

Good grief.

In a recession (and one is on the way if not started), layoffs will increase and income will drop. Housing prices and the stock market will both take a hit as well. Thus, debt-to-income ratios will rise and net worth will plunge. Canadians should expect a double whammy.

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

Greece Troika Talks Abruptly End Over Civil Servant Pay Structure Dispute; Greek Political and Economic Corruption Continues Virtually Unchecked; Question of the Day

Posted: 16 Oct 2012 09:35 AM PDT

According to the Greek website Kathimerini, Troika talks break down.

A second meeting between troika officials in Athens and Greece's Labor Minister Yiannis Vroutsis broke down on Tuesday, after the two sides hit a deadlock for the second time in the same day.

Skai reported that the two sides disagreed over the country's civil servants' pay structure. Talks were expected to resume later in the day, Skai reported.

About That Resumption in Talks

From the Guardian Eurozone Crisis Running Blog ...

15:27 Back in Greece, there are reports that the latest meeting between the government and the troika of creditors has broken down.

The discussions were halted earlier amid discord between the two sides about various issues, including the length of the working week and salary payments. They resumed this afternoon but now Athens News Agency is apparently reporting they have unexpectedly ended.

15:34 (ANA-MPA) -- A second meeting between the heads of the EU-IMF troika mission in Athens and Greek Labour Minister Yiannis Vroutsis on Tuesday afternoon ended abruptly a few minutes ago, after the two sides hit deadlock for the second time in the same day.

Sources in the labour ministry cited "complete disagreement" between the two sides on the issue of three-year wage maturation periods. They said that the labour ministry had been prepared to continue the talks but the representatives of Greece's creditors had departed.

Greek Political and Economic Corruption Continues Virtually Unchecked

Spiegel Online reports Corruption Continues Virtually Unchecked in Greece

While Athens waits for more aid from the European Union, the country continues to be administered in the same old careless manner. Corrupt politicians and the rich continue to help themselves to Greece's funds, and little is being done about it.

How can someone who has declared an annual income of €25,000 ($32,400) transfer €52 million abroad? What kind of supplementary income must an individual have who, according to his tax returns, earned €5,588 in 2010, yet still managed to move €19.8 million abroad? And how can it be that a Greek citizen sequesters €9.7 million abroad although he supposedly earned exactly zero euros?

These are the questions that tax fraud investigators will have to ask of a number of individuals whose identity has so far only been made public in the form of initials. For instance, a "G. D." stands at the top of a list with the names of 54,000 Greek citizens who relocated major assets abroad between 2009 and 2011. The list stems from the Greek central bank and is now in the hands of the Finance Ministry.

It is the longest of four lists that are currently circulating in Athens. Each contains the names of people whose financial circumstances -- bank balances and real estate holdings -- do not correspond at all with what they claimed on their tax returns. But hardly anything is being done about it. The Greek reality is sometimes paradoxical: While the governing coalition was busy squabbling with international creditors over how many hundreds of euros can still be trimmed from teachers' and nurses' paychecks, and Athens continued slashing employee pensions, wealthy Greeks moved billions abroad with relative impunity.

Allegations Ignored

There is yet another, shorter list, which despite its diminutive size is even more politically charged. Greek tax authorities are currently investigating the assets of some 60 politicians, and the probe apparently extends beyond suspicions of tax evasion alone. The speaker of the Greek Parliament, Evangelos Meimarakis -- a member of the governing conservative Nea Dimokratia, or New Democracy party -- recently stepped down due to corruption allegations, and he is not the only one implicated. A number of high-ranking former ministers are also suspected of involvement in sham transactions and money-laundering schemes.

Corruption allegations still don't necessarily interfere with a political career in Greece, as exemplified by the case of the former prefect of Thessaloniki, Panagiotis Psomiadis. He allegedly personally received nearly €1 million for public works projects that were never built. Psomiadis is also suspected of being connected with a mafia ring of loan sharks. None of this has apparently damaged him. In May, Prime Minister Samaras made him his election campaign organizer for northern Greece.

Question of the Day

Who better than a mafia loan shark kingpin to get out the vote for the prime minister?

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

Does Mitt Romney Know What It Takes To Create Jobs? Did He Ever Create Any?

Posted: 16 Oct 2012 01:03 AM PDT

I have been (and continue to be) critical of both president Obama and Mitt Romney. As stated multiple times previously, I will not vote for either of them.

Obamacare will be a disaster for jobs as noted in Prepping for Obamacare, Olive Garden and Red Lobster Cut Workers' Hours; Are Other Companies Doing the same? Tip Sharing Lowers Minimum Wage; Like One, Like All?.

I still plan a followup on that post. Would Romneycare be any different? If so why?

More importantly, as a businessman, does Romney have any history of creating jobs? If you think so, I invite you to read what Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, has to say about the claims.

Please consider Mitt Romney: The Great Deformer.

Bain Capital is a product of the Great Deformation. It has garnered fabulous winnings through leveraged speculation in financial markets that have been perverted and deformed by decades of money printing and Wall Street coddling by the Fed. So Bain's billions of profits were not rewards for capitalist creation; they were mainly windfalls collected from gambling in markets that were rigged to rise.

The fact that Bain's returns reputedly averaged more than 50 percent annually during this period is purportedly proof of the case—real-world validation that Romney not only was a striking business success but also has been uniquely trained and seasoned for the task of restarting the nation's sputtering engines of capitalism.

Except Mitt Romney was not a businessman; he was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses. He did not build enterprises the old-fashioned way—out of inspiration, perspiration, and a long slog in the free market fostering a new product, service, or process of production. Instead, he spent his 15 years raising debt in prodigious amounts on Wall Street so that Bain could purchase the pots and pans and castoffs of corporate America, leverage them to the hilt, gussy them up as reborn "roll-ups," and then deliver them back to Wall Street for resale—the faster the better.

That is the modus operandi of the leveraged-buyout business, and in an honest free-market economy, there wouldn't be much scope for it because it creates little of economic value. But we have a rigged system—a regime of crony capitalism—where the tax code heavily favors debt and capital gains, and the central bank purposefully enables rampant speculation by propping up the price of financial assets and battering down the cost of leveraged finance.

So the vast outpouring of LBOs in recent decades has been the consequence of bad policy, not the product of capitalist enterprise. I know this from 17 years of experience doing leveraged buyouts at one of the pioneering private-equity houses, Blackstone, and then my own firm. I know the pitfalls of private equity. The whole business was about maximizing debt, extracting cash, cutting head counts, skimping on capital spending, outsourcing production, and dressing up the deal for the earliest, highest-profit exit possible.

No Debate

There is no possible debate on what Stockman said above. He did not write anything above I would not have. However, Stockman has numerous details of exact transactions that I did not have.

For example, Stockman points out Bain's returns on the overwhelming bulk of the deals — 67 out of 77 — were actually lower than what a passive S&P 500 indexer would have earned even without the risk of leverage or paying all the private-equity fees. Based on its average five-year holding period, the annual return would have computed to about 12 percent—well below the 17 percent average return on the S&P in this period.

Loaded with debt, four of Bain's investments ended in bankruptcy. Bain however, got out at the top.

Is any value created in that? There was for Bain and Romney but not for the employees of those companies. Counting bankruptcies, Bain and Romney destroyed jobs.

The article is worth a good look from start to finish.

Stockman concludes ...

The Bain Capital investments here reviewed accounted for $1.4 billion or 60 percent of the fund's profits over 15 years, by my calculations. Four of them ended in bankruptcy; one was an inside job and fast flip; one was essentially a massive M&A brokerage fee; and the seventh and largest gain—the Italian Job—amounted to a veritable freak of financial nature.

In short, this is a record about a dangerous form of leveraged gambling that has been enabled by the failed central banking and taxing policies of the state. That it should be offered as evidence that Mitt Romney is a deeply experienced capitalist entrepreneur and job creator is surely a testament to the financial deformations of our times.

Piranha-Like Asset Stripping

Results at Bain were made possible by fractional reserve lending and leverage to the extreme. As I have stated before, Fed policies are for the benefit of the banks and the already wealthy, in other words, the 1%, not the 99%.

Indeed, close scrutiny of Romney's "job creation" track record shows it is nothing more than piranha-like asset stripping for the benefit of the piranhas. Everyone else involved was likely cleaned to the bones.

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

"Wine Country" Economic Conference Hosted By Mish
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17.10.12

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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