sir isaac newton monetary scientist

The Massive Momentum Of 2009

by Trace Mayer, J.D. on January 25, 2010 · 16 comments

The Massive Momentum Of 2009

Reading time: 8 – 12 minutes

The great monetary scientist Isaac Newton, who served as England’s Master of the Mint for 24 years, also did some ancillary work in physics.  The laws of Newtonian physics are known by nearly everyone and are often used by analogy to apply logical reasoning in other fields.  In this case, a few of these laws are particularly applicable in discussing the impending state of the economy in 2010 based on the massive momentum of 2009.

LAWS OF MOTION

Stated in layman’s terms the three great Newtonian laws of motion are:

1.  A body persists in a state of uniform motion or of rest unless acted upon by an external force.

2.  Force equals mass times acceleration” or “F = ma.

3.  To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

In regards to human action a body seems to stay at rest rather than work unless acted upon by some type of force.  The force can be either internal such as hunger, the desire for self-actualization or anywhere in between on the Maslow hierarchy of needs or external such as a saber-tooth tiger, boss or customer.  To sustain life the human body must consume fuel.

Capital is the means of production and the difference between production and consumption flows into or out of the store of capital.  Out of this dynamic human society has attempted to efficiently allocate capital to produce more and this has resulted in institutions, large and small, where individuals work in the attempt to produce in order to meet their needs and wants.  Of course, the great fiction of government is that everyone can live off someone else’s production.

MASSIVE FAILING INSTITUTIONS

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.  The mass of the economy times its speed in the Information Age has resulted in a tremendous force.  But this mass has largely been built from the atomic level upon something which is inherently unstable and undefinable leading to chronic fingers of instability.  What Is A Dollar?

The problem is debt and because psychology is changing, The Great Credit Contraction has begun and the rate at which the mass of the economy is evaporating is truly scary.  While many attribute the ongoing financial crisis to the subprime mortgage mess, which is surely a contributing factor, the problem is much more systemic than a few defaulted mortgages.

UNEMPLOYMENT

But now the second wave of Option ARMs are getting ready to reset at the same time the Federal Housing Administration is requiring higher down payments.  But where are these renters going to find a job when over 6.1M people have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more?

And what about all the discouraged workers who are not included in the labor force because they have ceased looking for non-existant jobs?  The Detroit News reported:

Despite an official unemployment rate of 27 percent, the real jobs problem in Detroit may be affecting half of the working-age population, thousands of whom either can’t find a job or are working fewer hours than they want …

Mayor Dave Bing recently raised eyebrows when he said what many already suspected:  that the city’s official unemployment rate was as believable as Santa Claus.  In Washington for a jobs forum earlier this month, he estimated it was “closer to 50 percent.”

With so many unemployed almost all of the States, with California being the poster child, are under severe financial pressure.  For example, 40 state unemployment insurance funds are either broke or moving in that direction.  While there are people starving in the chaos of Haiti about 37M Americans are now on welfare state food stamp programs, the rate of acceleration is expanding at about 20,000 per day and 1.4M Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009.  And this is a rosy situation considering the FRN$ is still the world’s reserve currency!

RETIREMENT CHAOS

The Baby Boomer generation has driven trends their entire lives because of their mass and acceleration.  From Gerber baby food to the housing booms and busts caused by costumed government officials gallivanting in genocide which caused serious aberrations in demographics and are now getting increasingly explosive politically as the 2016 election will see 78M Baby Boomers pitted against 112M Millennials.

Social Security and Medicare are out of control kudzu that are strangling the economy.  Additionally, virtually all pension funds in the United States are massively underfunded with epic games being played with the discount rate.  As Forbes reported:

The GAO study found that states’ cumulative unfunded liabilities were $405 billion, while Novy-Marx and Rauh figure $3.2 trillion is a more accurate number.

All those tax eating costumed government officials are going to be extremely happy when they realize their retirements evaporated.  But with unemployment benefits draining the capital of the economy like vampires while the productive members of society are punished via increased taxation and regulation the entrepreneur has either learned how to vanish or been turned to stone by the local Gorgons.

The result has been massive declines in State and local tax revenues.  Even Federal corporate income tax receipts were down 55% for the fiscal year ended 30 September 2009.

KICK THE CAN

So like a classic Ponzi scam the answer has been to attempt to bailout the State and local governments via Federal resources.

For example, a chief bailout recipient Citigroup is accepting California IOUs indefinitely at face value; a surreptitious Federal bailout of California in a preemptive attempt to keep them from seceding monetarily by taking the next step of unconstitutionally decreeing the IOUs legal tender for all debts public and private.  The Euro faces the same type of structural issues.

But if the States unconstitutionally decree FRN$ legal tender then why not their own little colored coupons? With 13% of US GDP a $30B deficit California should have nothing to worry about with a mere $30B+ cash-flow issue.  After all, the California Dollar could have a bear on it; the Florida Dollar an alligator, the Texas Dollar a long-horned bull and the New York Dollar a vampire squid.  They would be such fitting symbols!

And so the adjusted monetary base has exploded.

The FRN$ is destined to evaporate and the increase in debt is only hastening the rate.

CONCLUSION

Despite propagandist cheerleaders on television the economy is in horrible condition.  The Obama administration’s attempt to alter the speed and direction of the economy is textbook action for intentionally exacerbating the greater depression.  Like in the recently released movie Daybreakers soon the starving vampire squids of Wall Street, Washington DC, State and local governments will run out of their productive human livestock and only a few understand their true predicament.  They think they can ’save or create 3M jobs’.  Seriously?

No one knows how this ginormous mess will play out.  But the massive momentum of 2009 has largely shaped the direction for 2010.  While the FRN$ may rise in the short term it is an extremely risky play because of how fast hyperinflation could strike the FRN$.

Of course, among the chief uses of silver and reasons to buy goldplatinum and lead are to keep you and your property safe from the costumed vampire tax eaters who will likely spring Obama’s retirement trap by nationalizing retirement accounts and forcing purchases of US debt to bolster Treasuries.

Using force or intimidation against innocent people or their legitimately acquired property is unfair, immoral and unsustainable.  The current state of the economy and where it is headed is merely the result of cause and effect from economic law.  George Mason, the father of the Bill of Rights, observed this principle hundreds of years ago in his writings contained on page 966 of The Papers Of George Mason:

As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, so they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities.

Please, leave your thoughts on how you think 2010 will play out.

DISCLOSURE:  Long physical gold, silver and platinum with no interest the problematic SLV or GLD ETFs, the platinum ETFs or Treasuries.

The Massive Momentum Of 2009

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Trace Mayer, J.D., author of The Great Credit Contraction holds a degree in Accounting, a law degree from California Western School of Law and studies the Austrian school of economics. He works as an entrepreneur, investor, journalist and monetary scientist. He is a strong advocate of the freedom of speech, a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the San Diego County Bar Association. He has appeared on ABC, NBC, BNN, radio shows and presented at many investment conferences throughout the world. This is merely one article of 197 by Trace Mayer, J.D..

The Great Credit Contraction

16 comments

{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }

1 badd56chevy January 25, 2010 at 8:28 pm

Let me see if I have this right…

I change my name to Mr California, have a contractor build me a Mansion (smallish to start, you know, we’re going to start small here), and pay him with an IOU. The contractor then takes the California IOU to Citigroup and gets FRN$. Citigroup holds onto the California IOU AT FACE VALUE… INDEFINITELY… AT FACE VALUE!

Hmmmm, That tasted pretty good, let’s do it again… and in other States!

So Trace, shall we ramp up the Monetary Base and Debt Spikes and bring all this home to roost in 2010-2011?

2 Trace Mayer, J.D. January 26, 2010 at 12:29 am

Exactly, under FASB 157 they do not have to use fair value for the IOU. Outrageous! Well, I am not sure when this will all come home to roost but what is going on now is just making sure that the inevitable correction will be that much worse.

3 leo January 26, 2010 at 8:45 am

My Question is simple but important when the stock market collapses this year,the flight to safety will cause the same effect as before when the stock market fell the FRN will rise as the market goes down and will not gold and gold stocks go down as people liquidate into the worlds reserve currency.They will be force to sell the good to pay for the bad.I am shorting the stock market (QID) but should I sell my gold stocks and buy back later.

Thanks
Leo

4 Trace Mayer, J.D. January 26, 2010 at 11:06 am

Gold actually performed fairly well in the crisis and its purchasing power increased relative to a wide variety of other assets. This is because of its place in the liquidity pyramid in the flight to safety. I would also be shorting the market but for the QE that is going on. I think we will see the market decline in terms of gold but could actually go up in terms of FRN$. Lately it has just been magically levitating in terms of gold. This is probably due to massive government interference as talked about on BNN on 8 Jan.

This is leading to people liquidating out of the world’s reserve currency. The SDR program just got started in 2009 and about $250B moved out of the FRN$ into SDRs. But really compared to gold all the little colored coupons are ‘dollars’ because it is metal versus little colored coupons. How do you think those factors could influence your trade?

I have no idea on your gold stocks because I do not know which ones you own, etc. and for the most part I do not follow the gold or silver stocks as I find there is easier money to be made in other places.

Thanks for your thoughts Leo.

5 CC January 26, 2010 at 11:48 am

Another good one Trace. And thanks for giving George Mason a few well-deserved props. A goodly percentage of the American-Idiot-Idol masses would know the name or significance of George Mason, from Shinola…

I think I read something yesterday regarding ‘Buying time’… Is not that what has essentially been going on since the first economic shock in 2007?

Look again at that graph showing the national debt. Does anyone realize just how many correlations can be made or drawn from that graph with the cost of living and ‘property values’ of the past 30+ years? There is no coincidence. Debt, debt financing and Deficit spending have brought us to this state.

We ‘wanted it now’, and now we have it.

6 Trace Mayer, J.D. January 26, 2010 at 11:57 am

Well, we have really been buying time since Nixon defaulted on obligations internationally. Since then the FRN$ has lost 96.82% of its value, from $35 to $1100 per ounce. It completely baffles me that anyone thinks it will not lose that remaining 3%. Are they thinking correctly?

Predictably because gold is the center of the financial universe and so all other prices have during this time kept their orbit while the falling little yellow coupon evaporates in the heat of the sun. Trying to support the worthless thing through the gold price suppression scheme is futile and like a small asteroid trying to escape the gravitational pull of a sun. Of course it is no coincidence. Poof!

7 Carl Leweke January 26, 2010 at 1:04 pm

When you said “a surreptitious Federal bailout of California” I hoped you’d get around to opining whether the Fed is likley to buy up these CA-IOUs just as they have acquired piles of derivative dung and hidden it in a hulking trash heap until ultimate collapse. I doubt Citi will need to hang onto these indefinitely…IMO it be turned into debt owed by you and me via the Fed. I fear that the fingers of instability run treacherously throughout the heap of garbage on the Fed’s balance sheets…not sure what the end result will be, except I’ve grown convinced of your evaporation scenario in the coming years. Trace–I’m very appreciative of your ability to see through much of the “daily forest” to point out which trees are rotting!

8 Trace Mayer, J.D. January 26, 2010 at 1:47 pm

Who knows where they will eventually end up but that is definitely possible. Not sure we will ever know as it may be a matter of national security, the records may be put in an Interpol office where they cannot be reached under a FOIA request or any meaningful audit will be obstructed. The the vampires they are; Fed and current system do not like sunlight!

9 Johnny Dangereaux January 26, 2010 at 7:50 pm

Thanks for all your efforts. It is so refreshing to hear some truth every now and then.
I like how all the politicians are now so worried about our national debt and they don’t want to pass it on to our children. I got news for them….the kids aren’t gonna take it!!

10 Jerry R. Olsen January 26, 2010 at 9:25 pm

Marxists and fascists {we have both} never back off from their failed plans and work hard at staying in power. The leftist program will continue to accelerate and the oppression will increase as the plans continue to fail. 1) theft of the 401-IRA plans is high probability in 2010. I think there is about 7 tril available for parasites to steal which could keep them going another 3-5 years 2) The depression will continue until we get some Austrian free-market solutions 3) Social Security will get through by low COLA increases and infalted dollars but the dependent elderly will suffer. 4) Medicare will be cut by rationing resulting in many just abandoned to die. 5) I keep wondering how these criminals are planning to stay in power. They must have a plan but what is it? I am a retired game-theory analysis for the DOD so I try to anticipate possible strategies for the opponents as well as strategies to counter with.

11 Michael Hornbeck, Ph.D. January 27, 2010 at 7:46 am

Very nice article, Trace! I expect an end to the bear market rally in stocks in 2010, just based on the stratospheric P/E ratios of so many S&P 500 stocks. The long-term trend is down. We would have to have hyperinflation this year to bring some of those ratios back under 20 (i.e., fair value), and that won’t happen (yet). I think the Treasury department would not mind to see the rally end violently if it must end, just to get a repeat of the 2008 flight to UST bonds. But as Warren Buffet said, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent, so I won’t be shorting the market.

Gold will, as usual, be a roller coaster. We must stay the course and buy on the dips, no matter what our emotions tell us. At the end of the day (or year 2010, in this case) the bull market will continue due to negative real interest rates. But this will be an above average year for gold, due to the accelerating insanity of US govt. policy. Obama’s pitiful attempt to control the deficit is opposed by even the Republicans in Congress! What chance do we have of getting a sane budget with that being the case? Zilch. Gold gains at least 20% this year, says I. Will be over $1320 by the new year.

12 Trace Mayer, J.D. January 27, 2010 at 10:03 am

Looks like the flight to UST bonds is back on already with 1 month rates turning negative. I agree gold will be a roller coaster. But when I have a gold in my possession I can remain solvent longer than the market can remain irrational with their little colored coupons!

It is almost like a benevolent hand is attempting to remove the consequences of the negative real interest rates. Insanity is a great description. This is not going to be pretty.

13 Robert Happek January 27, 2010 at 5:17 pm

Negative interest rates on a UST bond mean that the total return from purchasing and holding an UST bond until maturity is less that the amount paid when purchasing that security. If true, then this means that the US Dollar is the most desired financial medium to hold – more than any competing currency like the Euro for instance. There can not be any stronger statement of trust into the future of the Dollar than negative interest rates. The other possibility is of course that investors buy these bonds not in order to hold them til maturity. No, they buy these securities because they hope that the interest rates will become even more negative securing them solid capital gains. If that is the case, then the Ponzi mentality in the financial world is really sickening.

14 Trace Mayer, J.D. January 27, 2010 at 5:32 pm

Exactly. That is why the FRN$ is near the bottom of the liquidity pyramid and abuts the metals.

15 Oky1 February 1, 2010 at 8:09 am

Jerry R. Olsen: >> I keep wondering how these criminals are planning to stay in power. They must have a plan but what is it? I am a retired game-theory analysis for the DOD so I try to anticipate possible strategies for the opponents as well as strategies to counter with. <> GMO Corn Linked to Liver, Kidney, Heart Damage
Research Shows Monsanto GMO Causes Organ Damage in Rats

Jan 14, 2010 Victoria Anisman-Reiner
New research suggests that varieties of Monsanto genetically engineered corn cause organ toxicity, raising concerns anew about the safety of genetically modified foods. …………………….

Three different varieties of Monsanto GM corn (NK 603, MON 810 and MON 863) were fed to rats over a 90-day period, alongside a control non-GMO variety. At the end of the study, the GMO-fed rats were found to have extensive organ damage, including “…adverse impacts on kidneys and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, as well as different levels of damages to heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system.” <<

16 Oky1 February 1, 2010 at 8:29 am

>> Hum? system cut out my comments from that last post, that’s odd?

Jerry those Wallst Banks/Insurance execs & DC polecats have no plan to survive this. Those boyz are murdering psychopaths bent on suicide yet they don’t have the guts to pull the trigger themselves.

Don’t worry yourself with it though because, just as you likely are, the military, police fire, etc., they too are eating the corn, drinking their diet coke & breathing the DU in the air. <<

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