A survey showed that only 1 in 10 workers say his income is going up. This is the lowest reading since 1946.

Meanwhile, the news two days ago was that homebuilding took a dive in October. Work began on 11% fewer houses than the month before. On multi-family dwellings, the figures were worse - down 35%.

Why would homebuilding go down when the economy is supposedly gathering strength? Well, builders were wondering what would happen when they finished the houses. The new house tax credit was due to expire; they weren't sure the politicians would be witless enough to renew it.

They need not have worried. Give the politicos a chance to do something stupid and they will come through every time. Since the end of October, Congress passed and President Obama signed an extension of the housing credit. Until next April, at least, first time buyers will get an $8,000 credit.

You'd think that would have revived animal spirits a bit in the residential construction industry. But today's news tells us that mortgage applications are falling - even with lower interest rates.

How come interest rates are falling? Well, here again, we see the heavy hand of the feds. The "quantitative easing" has come to a halt...that is, the Fed is no longer buying US Treasury debt (it doesn't need to). But its buying of mortgage backed securities continues. That program will last until March of next year.

Still...housing is not cooperating.

This news hasn't had much impact on Wall Street. All that can be said is that investors have seemed to hesitate for the last couple of days.

Stocks fell softly yesterday, with the Dow down only 11 points. Oil stayed at $79. Gold rose to $1,141. And the euro remained at $1.49.

Investors must still believe in what The Washington Post calls a "lukewarm recovery." It is like finding a body on the street. You feel for a pulse and discover that it has not quite reached room temperature. It is tepid... Not quite alive. Not quite dead.

Too close to the quick to bury...too close to the grave to boogaloo.

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• Housing and Unemployment Are Weaknesses in the U.S. Economy
• Most People Still Think – “You Can’t Go Wrong in Property”
• Economy Free to Recover?
• Aussie Housing Market Actually Leads the U.S. by Three Years
• Take Away Stimulus Spending and You’ve Got an Economy Entering Depression

Gold didn't move yesterday. It remained at $1,139.

Mortgage delinquencies hit a new record in the third quarter. And producer prices came in lower than expected. These are both indications of a weakening, deflation-prone economy.

Perhaps this is what prompted Mr. Ben Bernanke to tell the world that he may keep rates lower, for longer, than he thought...and perhaps forever.

"Bernanke signals 'extended' low-rate period may become longer," reports Bloomberg.

Today, we discover that "1 in 6 hungry in America last year." That is the headline in the USA Today. If you believe the report, 49 million people went hungry at some point in 2008, the highest number since the government began keeping track in 1995.

Meanwhile, we learn - in the same paper - that "Rising obesity will cost the USA $344 billion." That's what fat people cost the nation annually, equal to 21% of health-care spending.

The two problems should cancel each other out, shouldn't they?

Oddly, the states with the greatest girths are also the poorest. Mississippi is number one in fat. It's also the poorest state. Could it be that fat people are going hungry? Is this a good thing; or a bad thing?

Until tomorrow,

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• Lending Rates Will Go Up With Inflation
• Things That Matter in the Economy are Going in the Wrong Direction
• Consumers are Suffering Because European Governments Boosted Spending
• IMF Deems Gold An Idle Asset
• Eurozone Drops GDP Bombs

'We didn't ask you to stock up all those dollars,' as Obama might have put it. 'It's not our fault if the dollar goes down and you lose money.'

Perhaps Mr. Obama should have quoted the immortal words of a former US Secretary of the Treasury, John Connolly. "It may be our dollar, but it's your problem."

Over at USA Today, the editors are more concerned about human rights. The paper must imagine itself back in the days of Woodrow Wilson or George W. Bush, when the US nobly embarked on a mission to raise all of mankind out of sin and error. In effect, Mr. Obama said that all people have 'universal rights,' including the right to a free press. China figured this was just the sort of opinion that its people didn't need to hear. So, it killed the story in its own press. The American president might as well have been talking to himself.

China is today's big story. Throughout the world's media there is much buzz and blather about the "romance"...the "historic relationship"...between the two titans. Some reporters see love. Some see jealousy. Some see rivalry.

Here at The Daily Reckoning we are suckers for romance. Give us some "a cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces...an airline ticket to romantic places..." and we are moonstruck. But we don't see much romance in the US and China hook up. What we see is the sort of things that delight psychologists and bore everyone else - perversion, co- dependency, and enabling.

On the surface, the two giants bicker over money like any other couple. The US accuses China of being a tightwad...holding its currency down and saving too much. China accuses the US of being a spendthrift, destroying its own purchasing power by wanton and reckless expenditures.

"US president's currency call breaks with script," says a headline in The Financial Times today. US economists think China should raise the value of the yuan. This would immediately lower the value, domestically, of the trillion(s?) worth of US-dollar assets China holds as reserves. It would also make Chinese products less competitive on the world market.

Mr. Obama wasn't supposed to say anything about it on his trip. It would be like bringing up your husband's drinking problem on your wedding anniversary; it would spoil the occasion.

Apparently, Obama couldn't help himself. Or maybe he just thought the folks back home would like to hear him give the Chinese a piece of his mind.

But how does the American president know what price to put on the yuan? A sinking dollar is good for the goose over in the US. Why isn't it okay for the gander in the Middle Kingdom?

A strong yuan would help the world economy "rebalance," say economists who think they know what they are talking about. In a nutshell, the Chinese produce too much; Americans consume too much. A higher yuan would come down on the high side of the scale - giving the Chinese more purchasing power (thus increasing consumption in the Peoples' Republic)...and making Chinese exports more expensive (thus decreasing consumption across the Pacific). With a stronger yuan, the Anglo-Saxon economies would be able to produce and sell more things to the Chinese...thus tilting the US economy more towards capital formation and production.

Chinese authorities are no dopes. They know they have a "floating" population of some 150,000 million people who are looking for work. They know that if they don't find some way to keep these people occupied they are likely to cause trouble. Trouble is the thing China's leaders most don't want.

"You think you've got trouble," Premier Hu Jintao might have replied to Mr. Obama. "Did you know that there are something like 200 million Chinese who still get by on as little as a dollar a day? Let's face facts. You're sitting there in Washington, comfortably talking about how much free health care and unemployment benefits to give the American people. We don't have the time...or the money for those kinds of things. Too many Chinese people. They don't earn enough to afford the kind of cradle-to-grave bribes you give your people. We have to keep them working; there's no other way.

"Besides, we don't quite see why we should pay for your mistakes. It wasn't our economy that blew up. It wasn't our financial industry that sold houses to people who couldn't afford them. It wasn't our consumers who spent more than they had and went too deeply into debt.

"It's the debtor who's supposed to pay, not the lender. We're the lender!"

Behind all the superficial arguing, accusing and kvetching, however, is a sick relationship. It has give and take. But the US is all take. China is all give. And now, on both sides, public authorities make the same mistake. In the US, they try desperately to prod Americans to take more...to continue doing what they were doing wrong. They offer incentives of every sort to lure consumers to consume even more. And their solution to the debt overhang is to hang on even more debt.

In China, meanwhile, the authorities desperately prod their people to give more...to produce more. Or, at least to build more plant and equipment with which to turn out more goods.

In the US, consumer spending is about 70% of the economy. In China, fixed capital formation is estimated to have made up 70% of China's growth in 2008 and as much as 90% in the first half of this year.

Is this a formula for a happy marriage? Over the last two years, this co-dependent relationship has broken down. Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times that we've seen "the greatest collapse in world trade in history."

But neither side has learned a thing. The taker now proposes to take more. The giver now proposes to give more.

They don't need counseling. They need a divorce.

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• Chinese Yuan Marches Towards World Domination
• Admonishment from China and the Decline of U.S. Credibility
• US Has Highest Unemployment Rate of All Major Economies
• Chinese Consumers Are Getting Shiny New Credit Cards
• Geithner Reassures China that America Takes Financial Obligations Seriously

Throughout history, no empire has managed to rule forever. Instead, empires rise to power, they prosper and spread their influence. Thereafter, they over-extend themselves and then break down in some fashion. In fact, all the glorious empires of history had one thing in common - a spectacular collapse.

Now, there can be no doubt that America ruled the economic world for the better part of the previous century. However, this powerful nation has now entered a terminal decline. The recent credit crisis and the failure of some of the largest American financial corporations is compelling evidence that the world's largest economy is well past its prime.

Today, America finds itself heavily in debt and to make matters worse, its demographics are also worsening. Unfortunately, the American leaders are attempting to postpone the day of reckoning by taking on even more debt! It is noteworthy that over the past year alone, America's federal debt increased by approximately US$2.1 trillion and its projected budget deficit over the next decade is now slated to be almost US$9 trillion! If this does not shock you, then consider the chart below which shows the total obligations of the US government.

As you can see, over the past six years, American unfunded obligations increased by almost 50% from US$79 trillion to US$114.7 trillion! Alarmingly, over the same period, American government revenue rose by only 12%! Now, you do not have to be a genius to realize that no entity can continue to increase its liabilities by more than four times the rate of its revenue. If this spending frenzy continues, commonsense dictates that at some point in the future, the solvency of the American government will come into question. When that happens, foreign capital will flee America, interest-rates will skyrocket and we will witness an epic currency crisis.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that apart from the American government, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is also in serious trouble. In an ironic twist of fate, the FDIC's Deposit Insurance Fund has spent so much money covering bank failures over the past three months that it has completely run out of money! This implies that there is no capital available now to insure bank deposits held at American banks.

Given the horrendous deficits and ugly debt obligations, the American government is now left with the following options:

a. Raise taxes (not sufficient to meet obligations)
b. Cut back on spending (highly unlikely)
c. Default (unimaginable)
d. Print money (only viable option)

Remember, America is the largest debtor nation the world has ever seen and the only way it can repay its obligations is through a process known as quantitative easing (euphemism for printing money). In fact, this stealth confiscation of savings is already well underway. A recent report published by the Federal Reserve revealed that the American central bank purchased half of the newly issued US Treasuries in the second quarter of this year. Needless to say, the Federal Reserve financed these purchases by creating dollars out of thin air - a short- term fix but a long-term disaster.

Let us put it bluntly; the days of American hegemony are drawing to a close and within the next two decades, China will become the world's most dominant economy.

If you are sceptical about our claim, you may want to note that twenty years ago, China's economy was worth only US$342 billion and as of last year, its GDP had grown to US$4.4 trillion; representing an annual growth rate of 13.6%. Now, if China succeeds in growing its economy by roughly 8% per annum over the next two decades, its GDP will grow to US$20.5 trillion by 2029. At that point, China may well replace America as the world's largest economy.

It is worth keeping in mind that whereas American households are up to their eyeballs in debt, their Chinese counterparts have a savings rate of almost 40%! Furthermore, at a time when America and other nations in the West are struggling to stay afloat, China's foreign exchange reserves have surged to US$2.3 trillion!

Now, we are aware that many commentators are criticising China for the sheer size of the stimulus unleashed by its leaders. In our view, this ridicule is baseless because instead of spending printed or borrowed money, at least the Chinese are spending their savings.

In any event, the stimulus applied by the Chinese policymakers seems to be working. Over the past seven months, money-supply growth in China has risen by 26% and loans have surged by 32%. In turn, this inflationary orgy is creating a residential construction boom. All this economic activity is in stark contrast to America, where despite all the policy-actions, private-sector credit is contracting.

Look. The Chinese economy is roaring along...and you can be pretty certain that the country's rapid growth will cause domestic consumption to explode. Already, roughly 900,000 cars are sold each month in China and by the end of this year, the Asian powerhouse will replace America as the world's largest market for automobiles. Interestingly, similar trends of rising consumption can be observed in various household items such as refrigerators, motorbikes, mobile phones and so forth.

So it seems to us that in this low-growth world, investors would do well to take a good hard look at high-growth opportunities like China.

Regards,

Puru Saxena
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• Geithner Reassures China that America Takes Financial Obligations Seriously
• China is a Key Driving Force in the Gold Market
• Teach Your Children Chinese Because China is the Next Great Country
• American Family’s Share of Government Debt Now Over Half a Million Dollars
• The Chinese Stimulus Plan to Save the World

As for inflation, the lowest inflation rate among the world's larger economies is in - you guess it - Japan. After 20 years of on-again, off-again deflation, it's on again in Japan...with inflation at NEGATIVE 2.2%. But inflation is negative in the US too - at minus 1.3%.

Both Japan and the US claim positive GDP growth, compared to Europe, which is still in recession. But throughout the world - except perhaps for the BRIC nations - growth is weak and hesitant.

The US and the UK are both consumption economies. No consumption; no growth. But how do you get people who've consumed too much to consume even more? They know they can't afford to keep spending. And they know that going further into debt just makes the situation worse. What can you do?

You bribe them!

You give them more money, say, in unemployment assistance. Or, you give them a tax credit when they buy a new house. Or, you give companies a big tax break. In the most recent stimulus bill, for example, the feds do all three - including giving Pulte Homes a $450 million tax refund.

Here at The Daily Reckoning we never met a tax cut we didn't like. But with the deficit at 13% of GDP, we might make an exception. One way or another, someone's going to have to pay for the feds' big spending stimulus efforts. Taxpayers. Bondholders. Dollar holders. All of the above.

President Obama told the crowd in Singapore this weekend that he would make sure Ben Bernanke stayed away from his helicopters. The Chinese are the biggest holder of US bonds in the world. The Japanese are next. Between the two of them they fund a big part of America's current spending. Naturally, America's president is eager to keep the cash coming his way. So he has had to reassure the nation's largest creditor that their loans to the US will be repaid in good order...and good currency.

China alone has $2.3 trillion in reserves...most of it in dollars. Of course, the Chinese want to diversify out of greenbacks. But they're caught in a trap of their own making. If they turn away from the dollar, they undermine its value...and the value of their own reserves. What's more, America is still China's number one customer. They need to sell to America. And for that they need to keep their own currency from rising too much against the greenback. A higher yuan makes their products relatively more expensive compared to other exporters.

So, the infernal system continues...America creates dollars. The foreigners take them as though they had value. And they will have value...as long as they take them.

In the '90s and '00s the newspapers were full of stories about what a great place America was. Its economy was so dynamic...its entrepreneurs were so clever...its financial system was so highly evolved and flexible. What could go wrong?

Everything!

And now we're going to read a lot of claptrap about what an awful place it is.

"The American dream needs repair," is forerunner of the genre. In today's Financial Times, it focuses on the rigidities of the US system. The time was when a young American could start at the bottom and work his way up. Luck and pluck was all that it took. But now, according to scholars at the Brookings Institution, people stay put. If you're born poor in America you're more likely to stay poor than if you had been born poor in Britain, Denmark, Sweden or dozens of other countries.

What happened? The authors do not say. So we will. Success breeds failure. As a society becomes rich, more and more people find ways to game the system. The elite get tax credits, tariffs, and protective regulations. Every layer of bureaucracy makes it harder for new competitors to get ahead. And every new tax on income makes it harder for upstarts to join the ranks of the rich. The poor get their parasitic benefits too. Welfare, unemployment compensation, child tax credits, medicare, food stamps, social security - all of these programs give the poor an incentive to stay poor.

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• US Economists Think China Should Raise the Value of Yuan
• Obama Plans to Do Away With Ireland’s Tax Advantage
• U.S. Government Hiding True Unemployment Rate in Statistics
• Harding the Last American President to Deal Honestly With a Major Financial Crisis
• Baby Boomers Face Early Retirement With No Money Saved

What we've been thinking is that the dollar is dead meat in the long run. But in the short run, it might have enough life in it to bite investors on the derriere.

The US stock market rose 73 points on Friday, to bring the Dow just 30 points south of the 10,300 mark. Why is this level important? It's not really. But it reminds us that this is still just in "bounce range." Big drops in stock prices are followed by bounces - always. A bounce of 50% of what was lost is not unusual. That's what happened after the Crash of '29, for example. So, there's nothing exceptional about what we're seeing on Wall Street.

Our comrades over at The 5-Minute Forecast provided this sobering chart:

But here at The Daily Reckoning we're not smart enough or fast enough to play the countertrends. We want investment positions that we can ignore for years... We want to be able to go on a long trip...say, down the Inca Road or over the Hindu Kush. And when we come back, we want to find that we have at least as much money as when we left.

If stock market buyers - in the US - have more money a year from now than they have now, we'll be surprised. The private sector is still more than 2/3rds of the economy. And the private sector has begun de- leveraging. Nothing that has happened in the last 8 months makes us think that that trend is going to reverse any time soon. There are 70 million baby boomers who need money for retirement. They've got to save. That means cutting back on spending. And that means less income for business. Are stock prices really going to go up when business income is going down? No.

We leave our "Crash Alert" flag flying, here at the worldwide headquarters. We don't know when...or IF...stock prices will crash. But the downside risk is not worth the possible upside. Daily Reckoning readers should be out of all US stocks, except those they wouldn't mind holding through a 50% correction.

The other thing we mistrust - aside from politicians, stock promoters and tap water - is the dollar. But here the story is more complicated. Because the next downswing in stocks could push the dollar up! Everyone is betting against the dollar. And most think it is a one-way gamble. But it's not like Mr. Market to grant investors a one-way bet. He's got something up his sleeve.

Last week, The Financial Times reported that a group of IMF economists had made a "Plea to reduce demand for dollar reserves."

That is another way of saying: find something else to put in your vaults rather than dollars!

Why? Because a world money system that uses dollars as a reserve currency is fragile and vulnerable. It makes the whole world hostage to America's financial problems.

"The US, at the center of the system, was under pressure to run large current account deficits in order to supply the world with the dollar assets it wants, they said, while there was no effective discipline on either the US or countries such as China that have big external surpluses to adjust their policies."

This move by IMF economists is only the most recent effort to reduce the world's reliance on the dollar. Everyone can see the dollar is weak. And everyone with any sense wants to protect himself from it.

On Friday, the price of gold moved up to $1,116. Gold is the obvious choice for those who wish to protect themselves from the dollar. But readers are cautioned: that doesn't mean the price of gold is going up.

Over the long run, sure. All paper currencies eventually go to their intrinsic value, which is zero. And gold always goes to its traditional value too - at a level where a man can take an ounce of it and get himself a suit of clothes, about 30 bottles of good whisky...one horse...or a trip across the Atlantic in economy class.

But things that ought to happen do not always happen when you think they should. It could take many years - of long, drawn-out recession...a la Japan - before the Bernanke Fed gets its helicopters revved up. In the meantime, all those hot shots who borrowed dollars from the Fed in order to bet against the greenback are going to be in trouble. They'll have to unwind their carry trade positions at a loss...and pay back more expensive dollars. The process could take years.

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• Big Difference Between Stark News in Job Market and Behaviour of Stock Market
• Household Debt Represents Spending Taken From the Future
• Stranded on a Crusoe’s Island With One Stock
• Shanghai Index Still Falling As Other Markets Rise
• The Interest Only Mortgage Option

"Much of the world is going through a downswing of the credit cycle. Argentina doesn't have and didn't have much credit. So it will be spared the big problems. But it sells farm produce to the rest of the world. It has to expect a period of sluggish sales and soft prices.

"I don't know if I would advise foreigners to bring their money to Argentina. But I would advise everyone to diversify beyond their home country - especially if they are American or British. Generally speaking, it appears that the go-go finance-based economies of the Anglo-Saxon world have peaked out. They lived on credit. Now, they die on credit. And they will find it very hard to shift their economies from credit-fueled consumption to investment-driven production and export. The competition is too stiff. America is a high cost producer. It can't compete easily with the developing and emerging economies. So, it will just have to get used to a lower standard of living. That means lower asset prices too. Which is why an investor - broadly speaking - can anticipate a higher rate of return from his investments in India, Brazil and even Argentina, over the next 20 years, than he can from the US."

But isn't Argentina full of crooks, booty-shaking tango dancers, escaped Nazis and Norteamericanos on the lam?

A friend of ours thought so. She was having lunch at a nice restaurant in La Recoleta, one of the nicest parts of town, when someone stole her purse. Poor thing, we were afraid her trip was ruined. But then, she got this email:

"Hi good afternoon, my name is Emiliano, is that i work doing maintenance of parks and squares in the area of palermo, and in one of the trash bins encontre a series of documentation to its name and among other things i could detect this mail.

"That is why i warn that i have the papers mentioned, licenses, passports, credit cards, etc. without more and in anticipation of any response on their side and wishing you are with their belongings, i leave my mobile Phone in order to combine a meeting so that you can restore their belongings, but more, i dismissal of you carefully."

She writes: "This 'Santo Emiliano' is now and always will be the patron saint of Buenos Aires. He has restored my faith in humanity by going beyond his job tidying up the beautiful local parks and helping a total stranger to once again see the real beauty of his city. He explained that he enlisted the help of many friends to compose the email above. I get teary-eyed thinking about it. I can't wait to meet him and try to explain to him in my broken 'castellano' that he is working in the wrong municipal department and should be promoted to the head of the department of tourism!

"Ah, the world is once again a nice place to live."

And lastly...

"I must say," Elizabeth began, after hanging up the phone. "Being married into your family is an enriching experience."

Elizabeth comes from a good New York family. Her ancestors were ambassadors, officers in Washington's army, heiresses and socialites. She went to private schools and then to an Ivy League university. Poor thing. She had never had much contact with Irish riff-raff, tobacco road farmers, and lowlife financial publishers. She can thank your editor for introducing her.

She had just been talking with one of our cousins. Well, the wife of a cousin who died suddenly last week. He was only in his 50s and seemed like a nice enough fellow. But he was no Harvard-trained go-getter.

"I felt so sorry for her [the widow]," Elizabeth continued. "Your cousin hadn't worked in years. He was on disability. I'm not sure what that is. Some sort of welfare, I guess. He didn't look disabled when we met him two years ago. He was such a big, strong man.

"But when he died, he left his wife with no source of income at all. She's applying for disability too. She has no income at all. I don't think they have any savings either. And her disability status hasn't been approved yet. It hasn't come through. I wanted to tell her that we'd help her but I felt a little awkward. I've only met them a few times. You should do something...

"There is a whole world out there that I didn't know anything about...that lives and thinks in a much different way than we did. They're very nice. I like all your family. But they have very different attitudes and habits than what I'm used to. I wonder what caused it. Maybe they probably worked hard when the steel mills were operating. But then, when the mills shut down, maybe they got in the habit of getting paid not to work. I don't know...but it's very strange."

"What do you mean," was our reply. "Your family didn't work for generations. They inherited wealth and spent it. They spent money they didn't earn. My family did the same thing. They just spent wealth from other families...and didn't get as much of it."

Until next time,

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• Kirchners Lose Election in Argentina
• A Chilly Trip to Argentina
• Cattle Prices Have Risen Only 1% This Year
• Our Cattle in Argentina
• Painting the Shutters With the Family

"Think about it. We haven't yet hit bottom on employment but that will happen at some point. Employment is not going to zero, of that we can assure you. But when we do start to see the economic clouds part in a more decisive fashion, what are employers likely to do first? Well, naturally they will begin to boost the workweek and just getting back to pre-recession levels would be the same as hiring more than two million people. Then there are the record number of people who got furloughed into part-time work and again, they total over nine million, and these folks are not counted as unemployed even if they are working considerably fewer days than they were before the credit crunch began.

"So the business sector has a vast pool of resources to draw from before they start tapping into the ranks of the unemployed or the typical 100,000-125,000 new entrants into the labour force when the economy turns the corner. Hence the unemployment rate is going to very likely be making new highs long after the recession is over - perhaps even years."

Like we keep saying...get ready for a long, Japan-like slump.

But here's a headline that offers hope for a brighter future:

"Unions prod Obama to fix ailing airline industry"

On the surface of it, the idea is absurd. What does Obama know about airplanes? Who would want to fly in an airplane with Obama in the pilot seat? But the headline reveals today's most popular delusion - that the government can fix everything.

In fact, there is no evidence that government can fix anything other than the problems it has caused itself. And then only in rare, accidental moments of lucidity.

But that doesn't stop people from hallucinating. They think Obama can fix the auto industry, by paying people to buy a new car. And they think he can fix the housing industry too - by extending the new buyer tax credit.

It doesn't occur to them that the problems in the housing industry are almost exclusively the fault of the federal government in the first place. The feds subsidized mortgages, encouraged mortgage lending to people who should have been renting, and lowered interest rates. These fixes created a bubble in the housing sector. No bubble expands forever. Eventually, they all blow up...which is what happened.

But let's go back to flying machines. The gist of the AP article is that unions want more regulation. The deregulation that began in the Carter Administration produced lower fares, they admit. But it also increased capacity. And now that the economy is in a slump, the extra capacity is a heavy burden to the entire industry.

"Airlines are offering the fewest seats to passengers, measured by available seats and distance traveled, in more than a decade. They have shed more than 158,000 full-time jobs since employment peaked in 2001 and lost an estimated $33 billion over the past decade. Thirteen airlines have filed for bankruptcy in the past two years."

Airlines are cutting back and laying off workers. Someone - O! Bama! - should put a stop to it!

Seems to us that the fly-boys are doing what they ought to do. Any interference by the feds will, once again, only make things worse.

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• Trading Airline Stocks in an Energy Bull Market
• Economy Has to Grow at 1% to Stay Even With Population Growth
• Obama Has Business Plan for the Car Industry
• Tips from an Obama Insider on the Next Two Years
• No Spike in Oil Price Following IEA “Third Oil Shock” Announcement

Yes, dear reader, even our heroine, Angela Merkel, is joining the fools' parade. In a front-page feature in yesterday's International Herald Tribune we learn that Ms. Merkel is bringing Germany in line with the rest of the world - by increasing the public deficit to over 6% of GDP.

"Germany chooses growth over paying debt," says the misleading headline.

But 6% is only half the US level...and the UK is nearing 15%!

The raw news: the Dow fell 93 points yesterday. Gold held above $1,100. There's no sign of panic. But we keep our Crash Alert flag flying anyway; you never know.

We're in Rome...actually in the airport...on our way back to London. Alitalia offered the best deal to Buenos Aires. But the plane was a disappointment. The food was good; the hostesses were pretty; but the seats in business class didn't fully recline. After the first 10 hours, we were very uncomfortable. And pity the poor folks in economy!

But if you want to be an "international man," as our friend Doug Casey termed it, you have put up with some inconvenience. Why would you want to be an "international man?" As another old friend, Marc Faber, observes, it pays to travel. You get a broader perspective. And you realize that many things your compatriots take for granted others take for absurd. "The more you look, the more you see," is our dictum.

One thing Americans take for granted is that they will always be the richest, most successful people on earth. They think that because that is what they have always known. The US economy became the biggest in the world before 1900. Americans had just what it took to become the richest people on the planet. They worked hard. They saved their money. They had little government interference. They had the industrial revolution at their backs...and nothing in their way. And they had a dollar that was 'as good as gold.' By the time the baby boomers were born the US had such a big lead over the rest of the world, it seemed like nothing could stop it. Free enterprise guaranteed new innovations and new wealth. Democracy guaranteed a political system that would adapt to the needs of the evolving economy.

But nothing lasts forever. As it matured, the US economy and its political system became more and more rigid and more and more costly, with handouts and bailouts...at every level. Large companies are protected. Millions of people are encouraged not to work. The whole financial industry is dipped in honey. And the whole population is urged not to save, but to spend. Why bother to save for retirement; there's Social Security. Why bother to save for health care emergencies; there's the government's new overhaul of the medical system! Why bother to save at all; the government has fixed short-term rates so low you get nothing for your trouble.

On our travels what we notice is that there are a lot of smart people in the world. And they're all sweating, striving, and angling to get ahead. You never know who will win the race, but you can be sure that no one will stay in the lead forever.

"US Wages Out of Balance," says The New York Times. It is pointing out the obvious. Americans are paid too much, compared to other people in the world who work just as hard and who now - thanks largely to the feds - have as much or more capital than we do.

Wages in the US will come down - probably thanks to unemployment and inflation. So will US living standards compared to the rest of the world.

Meanwhile...back to Angela...

Generations of German central bankers learned their lesson. They saw what happened when hyperinflation ran wild in the '20s. The middle class was wiped out in a matter of days. People lost faith, not only in the Deutsche Mark, but in Germany itself...and in all the old values. The next thing they knew, the Chancellor was wearing a silly uniform and they were on the road to Hell.

More recently, the last generation of German central bankers worried about the euro. They had no doubt about themselves. They had the backbone to protect their new currency. But what about the Italians? And the Greeks? And the Irish?

Well, they can fret no more. Now, the German deficit is higher than the Italian deficit.

Why would they do such a thing? They have the usual poppycock explanations - countercyclical spending, the need to maintain social services as tax revenues fall, the need to bailout the East, (see below) etc. But the real reason is that the old German economists are dead. One of the last of them was our colleague Kurt Richebächer.

Every time we saw him, Kurt would complain about American and English economists.

"Ya...you Anglo-Saxon economists are ruining the world," he would say. Kurt had no truck with Keynesianism. Or monetarism. Or any other of the fads in economics. Besides, he had lived through Germany's hyperinflation, the rise of National Socialism, WWII, partition, and finally, reunion. He knew that there were no free lunches...no easy fixes...and no panaceas. He knew too that people who promised miracles were dangerous frauds. Wealth is created by work...saving...innovation...investment...and perseverance. There are no miracles. No short cuts.

While wealth is created by work and saving, it is destroyed by consumption and debt. When you borrow money, you have to pay it back. Then, you must draw down your wealth...reduce your living standard...and cut into the capital you laid away in years past. You can try to squirm and dodge...but you just make the situation worse.

Kurt was right.

But now Kurt is dead. A new generation of economists has taken over. Born after the war, they know hard times only from movies and history books. They haven't forgotten the old truths; they never learned them. Instead, they probably did their training at Harvard or Chicago...and studied nonsense...such as the Efficient Market Hypothesis and Modern Portfolio Theory.

They think the key to prosperity is spending. Consumers spend until they can't go on. Then it's up to the government. That's why the Germans are running such a high deficit. The think they need to keep up spending - at all costs - in order to boost the economy. As Kurt used to point out, it makes no sense theoretically...and there's no evidence that it works in practice either. Every time governments have intervened with large dollops of countercyclical spending they have made a mess of things...either by stimulating the private sector to further acts of reckless insolvency...or by blocking the process of correction.

It's all claptrap. Angela, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

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We did some thinking yesterday, on our trip to Uruguay. Why Uruguay? We thought we should have a look around. Montevideo is a cheap place to live. It's on the sea, with beaches near the downtown area. It is an old town, with many fine buildings. It is clean. It is safe. It has history too. When the English invaded Buenos Aires, the Spaniards launched a counterattack from the fortress at Montevideo and got it back.

"It looks like a nice place," we said to our local contact. "But it seems a little like a resort town out of season; it's very quiet."

We were having dinner in the best restaurant in town, next to the opera house. The restaurant was large and well fitted out. But it was almost empty. A French group sat at one table. An American group sat at another. The only other diners were sitting with your editor. Outside on the street, it was as if everyone else had been warned of an approaching tsunami; there was no one.

"Well, it's out of season all year round," our host replied. "It's a nice place to live. But it's not very lively.

"Montevideo used to be a lot richer. You can tell that just by looking at the public buildings. They're very grand. We couldn't build those places today. We don't have the money. But during the war years, Uruguay was booming. We were leading exporters of beef and grains. We're still leading exporters...but the margins are no longer there. You can make money in farming, but not enough to get rich."

We wonder what people are going to be saying a century from now.

"Yeah, Manhattan used to have the richest real estate in America...back in the financial boom. Wall Street was the center of the financial industry. People made fortunes from high-margin financial products. But then, the financial industry went into decline...and new financial centers in Shanghai and Singapore took the business."

Could New York have already passed its peak? Perhaps not quite. The papers are reporting record bonuses on Wall Street. But the story has an undertone of desperation about it...like the wild parties in Berlin in 1945, just before the Soviet Army arrived. Maybe that's why the bonuses are so high. Get it while you can! This could be the last hurrah for the US financial industry.

Private sector credit is still contracting. In fact, it's shrinking faster than at any time in the last 35 years. And this trend is not likely to change. As we keep saying - you're probably getting tired of hearing it - the private sector has 7 to 15 years of de-leveraging to do. The financial industry will be forced to downsize, along with the economy.

Wall Street's leveraged debt bombs are still blowing up. Banks are going under. As we reported yesterday, the 'second wave' of residential mortgage defaults may be just beginning. Commercial real estate debt isn't far behind...with no Fannie Mae to help the wounded or pick up the dead.

And how about all those private equity deals Wall Street financed? Of the top 10 deals from the bubble years, 6 are in trouble...and 4 have already defaulted.

The idea of private equity was that the hotshots were so smart they could take over a company, re-organize it, restructure it, and sell it back to the public market at a higher price. What they actually did was merely to load up the company with debt - using the money to pay themselves lavish fees.

And as we know...and maybe we alone know it...debt hurts. Run up enough debt and sooner or later bad things will happen. But not necessarily to the borrower!

Right now, the dollar is at a 15-month low. The speculators borrow dollars. Then, it doesn't matter what they do with them. Everything is going up against the greenback.

But that's why our Crash Alert flag is flying. Mr. Market doesn't like it when morons make money. We wouldn't be at all surprised to see these carry trades go bad in a big, big way. All of a sudden, stocks...bonds...emerging markets...commodities...and even gold...could go down against the dollar. Watch out!

The Dow rose another 20 points yesterday. It is now only 54 points below the 50% retracement level...where the bounce of 1930 peaked out.

Gold, meanwhile, held above $1,100.

As we were saying...once in a while, we think. The last few days have been so busy, we didn't have any time to think. But, now things are settling down, so we've had a chance to put our thinking cap on.

What are we thinking about?

Well, of course, we're trying to understand the basics... George Soros had the right idea: Find the story whose premise is false...and bet against it. What premise is false?

The major premise that almost everyone believes is that government economists can improve the workings of an otherwise free economy. That leads people to believe that the feds have pulled off a save...they've now got the economy well along on the road to recovery...the recovery is getting stronger as time goes by...and soon, the feds will begin to exit from their stimulus efforts.

The big question in most investors' minds is this: how quickly will the feds exit? As long as they keep up their stimulus efforts, investors expect rising prices for everything but the dollar.

Those who think the feds will be able to exit quickly believe growth will come without too much inflation. Those who think the exit will come slowly expect higher rates of inflation.

Well, guess what? The whole premise is false. From top to bottom. From beginning to end. Even the air it breathes is tainted with the smell of fraud and self-delusion.

The theory behind the recovery concept is that government spending and stimulus from the Fed has a "multiplier" effect. That is, the feds spend...the money goes into the economy...and then, the private economy multiplies the spending by growth in consumption and investment of its own. If there were no multiplier effect the whole exercise would be a waste of time, because we know that government spending in itself is a cost to an economy, not a source of real wealth. Government spending, generally, is a drag on prosperity. The Soviet Union proved that. The question remains however, can extra government spending at critical moments "prime the pump" so that it is multiplied by the private sector?

Answer: no.

"Our new research," writes economist Robert Barro in The Wall Street Journal, "shows no evidence of a Keynesian 'multiplier' effect...the available empirical evidence does not support the idea that spending multipliers typically exceed one, and thus spending stimulus programs will likely raise the GDP by less than the increase in government spending."

Now, we turn to the current situation. Is there any evidence of growth beyond the government's own stimulus efforts? From what we can see so far, again, the answer is 'no.'

The premise of recovery/multipliers/growth/and exit is false. We want to bet against it. Tomorrow we'll talk about how.

Real economists know that there are no secrets. You work hard. You invest carefully. You save your money. That's the best you can do. There are no multipliers. There are no miracle cures. There are no easy exits from trouble.

That's why the world has little use for honest economists; they tell you what you don't want to hear. So, people turn to the phonies...the charlatans...the imposter economists who say "yes we can!"

Trouble is, they can't.

Until tomorrow,

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

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