For example, oil ought to be heading lower - or at least not higher - as the U.S. dollar rallies. But news reports out of Iraq this weekend showed that some Iranians had taken control of an Iraqi oil field. It didn't look like anything serious, to be honest. But it shows you what a hair trigger there is for oil.

On a totally domestic note, Bloomberg is reporting that Westpac raised $2 billion selling residential mortgage backed securities last week. It's notable because it's the first time one of the big four has managed to sell a batch of RMBS since the financial model of the world began to fail in 2007. So have things finally turned the corner for funding Aussie mortgage growth through securitization?

It's probably too early to say. The Australian Office of Financial Management continues to support the market for non-bank lenders. Non-bank lenders have to fund new loans via securtisation. Without the AOFM's backing, you have to wonder how many first home buyers would have been able to find housing finance.

Of course, when you take a closer look at the institutions which sold RMBS to the AOFM, you find that some of them are simply off-balance sheet vehicles for the Big Four. These used to be called Special Investment Vehicles before they got a bad name. They allowed backs to make high-risk loans without doing it on the balance sheet of the parent company.

Same day. Different mortgage bubble.

Gold reversed its big slide earlier in the week and closed higher along with the greenback. February gold futures on Comex closed up $4.50 to $1,111.50. That's neither here nor there. But it does tend to confuse the popular press, who like to report that gold rises when the dollar falls and falls when the dollar rises.

That used to be true a few years ago. But since then, gold seems to have "decoupled" from the dollar on the downside. That is, there are enough different sources of gold demand that it doesn't automatically fall when the dollar rises. Not that it matters too much, mind you. The dollar IS generally going to get weaker, and gold stronger. Lots of noise in the interim though.

The wires are reporting that 60 U.S. Senators have now lined up behind a health care bill. It's not the same bill that passed the house. Those two bills have to be "reconciled" in a conference between both bodies before final legislation can be voted on by each house and sent to President Obama for approval.

In other words, there's a long way to go yet. But it will be worth watching to see how the market reacts. The U.S. government is adding to its long-term liabilities just when it ought to be reducing them. And absurdly, Obama is presenting the health care plan as a way to reduce the country's long-term deficits.

How you reduce deficits by adding more coverage, which will push up costs, is beyond us. It's beyond most people, in fact. That's why the healthcare bill is polling badly lately. But what will the market think of the Feds making more promises which must be kept by borrowing more money?

Stay tuned!

We quoted comments from Chinese central banker Zhu Min last week about how the current situation isn't stable. Zhu was at it again this week. "The United States cannot force foreign governments to increase their holdings of Treasuries," Zhu said, according to the Shanghai Daily.

U.S. officials are hoping they can keep piling up the bills and selling debt to foreign governments and bond buyers who will simply increase their holdings of US debt. Zhu says not! "Double the holdings? It is definitely impossible."

"The US current account deficit is falling as residents' savings increase, so its trade turnover is falling, which means the US is supplying fewer dollars to the rest of the world... The world does not have so much money to buy more US Treasuries."

The Fed can always make more money. But the secret is out on this little trick of quantitative easing. The thing is, central banks in the Western world (including Japan) may have to resort to even more QE to pay the bills in the coming years. This will provoke what we've been talking about: a sovereign debt crisis.

But you wouldn't guess any of that from the Christmas spirit here at the airport. Paper money from all over the world is changing hands like it's actually worth something. And it is. It's just less and less by the moment. We'll report back from sunny Colorado when we get there in about 18 hours. Until then!

Dan Denning
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• A National Mortgage Bubble
• Negative Equity Becoming the Norm in U.S.A.
• RBA Buys $780 Million in Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities
• Consumer Economy Not Going to Return to Robust Growth Anytime Soon
• Mortgage Backed Securities Put Our Financial System at Risk

The term, "unintended consequences" was probably invented to describe such tools. Give the feds a saw and they will cut off their fingers. Give them a pistol and they will blow off their toes. Give them a chainsaw...please!

The private sector debt crisis of 2008-2009 will almost certainly lead to a public sector debt crisis sometime between now and eternity, if not sooner. In the standard narrative, governments must stimulate their economies out of the slump. Leading economists propose it, then defend it...and then, when it doesn't work, they call for more of it.

Now those economists are claiming victory and many are calling on the Fed to withdraw its monetary stimulus before it shows up as consumer price inflation. They're hoping the Fed can head it off by sopping up the surplus liquidity before it is too late.

Optimists expect mild inflation in a decent recovery. Pessimists fear the feds may have waited too long; they think they see higher rates of inflation coming. Here on the back page we see no recovery...nor any inflation. At least, not yet. Instead, we are blind. We see nothing. But as for what is coming...a slow motion depression wouldn't surprise us. Neither would the collapse of the public debt market.

There is always a wide gap between the feds' reach into the economy and their grasp of what they are really doing. When the Fed increased reserves in the banking system, the idea was simple enough. More reserves would allow the banks to lend more. In turn, more credit would allow consumers to spend more. Ergo, the recession would soon be over.

But the more reserves the Fed pumped into the banking system, the more reserves the bankers didn't lend out. In 24 months, excess reserves (beyond what was needed for loans) expanded 500 times from the level they had been for the previous 30 years. If the banks chose to lend these reserves they could multiply them into another $10 trillion to add to the money supply. Instead, in the third quarter, the US suffered a record contraction of bank lending, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Lending to households and business is in a steep decline. Nothing like it has happened since WWII. Total credit outstanding is falling too. The banks are barely even lending to the US government from which they got the money in the first place.

"Banks, in aggregate, just absorbed the additional reserves by allowing their ratio of reserves to deposits to balloon," reports Charles Goodhart in The Financial Times, "...so the multiplier collapsed to zero... Why?"

Quantitative easing had "unintended consequences." Bankers competed for yield with the deepest pockets in the monetary universe - the central bank itself. When the feds bought Treasury bills they drove yields down to such skimpy levels that the incentive for risky private loans was nearly lost all together. Better to leave the money on deposit at the Fed.

No loans, no multiplier. No multiplier, no recovery. Instead, the feds take a dollar's worth of supposedly "idle" resources out of the private economy (actually, savings that people hoped to spend or invest later); squander it on bribes, bailouts or boondoggles; and get 90 cents worth of 'recovery.' Then, when a real recovery doesn't come, they spend two dollars.

Where this will end up? With the multiplier out of action, consumer price inflation - and a recovery - seem far away. And the feds are helpless. What? What about more government spending? Or dropping hundred-dollar bills from airplanes? But those tools have self- mutilating effects too. They jeopardize governments' access to deficit financing.

"Britain risks becoming the first country in the G10 bloc of major economies to risk capital flight and a full-blown debt crisis over coming months," said an article in Tuesday's Daily Telegraph.

Sooner or later, lenders will worry about inflation and the risk of default. They'll demand higher interest rates. Treasury bond yields will rise, in real terms, even in a deflationary world. These higher rates affect public finances like a cold draft on a pneumonia patient. As governments pay more to borrow, their condition deteriorates. The odds of default increase. Some, like Dubai World, will be forced to postpone payments. Others just shake and shiver. The slow motion depression continues. If we are lucky...and nothing goes wrong.

Regards,

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• We Expect No Recovery from the Economy
• In Europe, Banks Borrow Money and Lend it Back to the Government
• Is Inflation Necessary for Recovery and Growth in the United States?
• US Economy Still on Runway as Recovery Won’t Fly
• Major Premise That Government Economists Can Improve Workings of a Free Economy

U.S. investors are on edge because another employment report is due out tomorrow. You can't really have a recovery if an economy isn't producing jobs. And so far this recovery - which is what some people are calling it - isn't producing any jobs. No jobs, no recovery. No recovery, no justification for higher stock valuations.

But who needs justification when you have speculation? That's what low interest rates encourage. And that's the market we have. You can trade it. Just be prepared for some turbulence next year. Reality will drag stock prices back down like gravity. But central bankers will try and push them up with more money and governments will chip in with more stimulus.

For example, in today's Australian, Michael Sainsbury reports that the Australian economy will, "ride a second wave of China stimulation." He writes that, "The Australian economy is set for another free kick as the Chinese government is expected to sign off on a second stimulus package after its annual Central Economic Work Conference to be held in Beijing at the weekend."

Chinese bank lending and credit growth is already through the roof. Last year's $685 billion stimulus program sent fixed asset investment in China much higher. It was, by most accounts, hugely supportive of resource prices, and thus most welcome in Australian resource circles.

But frankly another dose of stimulus from China sounds like madness. There is already growing anecdotal evidence that China has overinvested in production and accumulated large commodity inventories. Bloomberg reports that warehouses at the London Metals Exchange hold enough aluminium to produce 69,000 Boeing 747s.

Clearly that amount of stockpiling is not matched by current demand. And if it's anticipating a booming recovery, it will be some recovery. So you have to consider what else this sort of information might mean.

When we think about it for a second, it might mean that investors and institutions are again thinking that commodities are the best refuge in an inflationary world. It could be dollar carry traders. Or speculators. But it's most likely investor's expressing a preference for real assets.

This is a big warning sign, though. The biggest mistake made by natural resource investors in 2008 - your editor included - was believing that resource stocks would be a good defence against the collapse of the credit bubble in the financial economy. This turned out to be painfully wrong. Resource stocks, along with commodity prices, fell as the deleveraging of the household sector began.

Since then, of course, stocks have rallied as policy makers try to engineer a "re-leveraging" (and backdoor recapitalisation of the banking sector). Households continue to wind down debt growth and increase savings. But governments are taking on more debt than ever and spending at a furious pace.

This means that the first half of next year could see stock prices float higher on this monetary and fiscal stimulus. It won't be grounded in any fundamental relationship to earnings growth. But you probably wouldn't complain too much if it helped you repair some of the damage to your portfolio from the last two years.

That said, our approach for 2010 would be to sell into rallies and gradually reduce the allocation to shares. The use of trailing-stops will help you take the emotion out of your selling decisions and lock in profits. Of course if you believe we are in a long-term bull market, you will deride the use of trailing stops because it forces you out of positions that may cost you more to re-enter at a later date.

But it comes down to what you want from the market and what it's realistic to expect next year. We reckon it will be range-bound, as Dr. Marc Faber suggests in his latest Gloom, Boom, and Doom Report. You'll need to be a good market timer if you want to buy low and sell high. If you're a buy and holder, well, there could be quite a few restless nights.

And the biggest risk by far is that China is entering big bubble territory. That would be especially hard on Australia. Harder, even, than a commercial real estate route or another decline in U.S. housing prices related to wave of Option-ARMS set to recast next year. Pick your poison.

At some point, you'd expect quantitative easing policies to either be curtailed (because they devalue a currency, which sooner or later a population notices in decreased purchasing power) or interest rates to move higher. This would trigger another mad scramble in the markets. Even if central banks like the Fed succeed in manipulating rates lower for awhile, the market is already responding by bidding up gold (an asset that is no one else's liability).

In the meantime the great charade goes on. The big benefit to you is that a rising stock market is the perfect cover for you to make a serious evaluation of your investment strategy and asset allocation and make changes by choice, not by necessity. In a falling market with forced liquidation, you have a lot fewer choices.

While your editor is away next week in South Africa, you'll hear from three guest editors. All of them are in charge of various investment beats, which means rather than writing about the market each day (as we do) they are beating the bushes for the best investment ideas for next year. They'll share them with you next week. Be sure to give them a piece of your mind!

Dan Denning
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• U.S. Trying to Auction Off $162 Billion in Debt
• The Dark Underbelly of Australia’s Resource Boom: Chinese Resource Demand
• Financial World Has Every Reason to Encourage Government Stimulus
• Economy of China to Decelerate?
• Trickle of Chinese Money into Australian Housing and Equities Small Compared to Growth in Bank Lending

But then everything is up this year, at least since the markets started buzzing in March. The S&P 500 is up over 64% from its March 6th low. That's an exceptional bounce even by dead cat standards. With negative real interest rates in the States, owning cash is losing money. Hence the rise in stocks.

Yes, rising U.S. stock prices could have something to do with a fictitious recovery. But with labour markets weak and housing getting worse (rising foreclosures) we're not counting on it. So we'll stick with the credit-fuelled stock rally.

It's gotten so surreal on markets that yields on some three-month Treasury bills briefly dipped below zero in trading action. As it is, the yields on Treasury bills are hovering just above zero. Bloomberg reports that, "For the first time in seven decades, Treasury bills are paying no interest while stocks continue to appreciate."

Why would investors lend their money to the American government for nothing? And why would they continue buying stocks at the same time? Ponder....and discuss.

We think the answer is that the Fed's policy has forced global investor into an either/or situation. You either get out of cash and into equities to beat inflation. Or, you are so terrified of buying equities divorced from normal valuations that you prefer capital preservation in the form of Treasuries, even if you're losing out to inflation there as well. At least you get your money back at a non-inflation adjusted par value three months later.

Or, you could buy assets like gold, oil, silver, and copper.

Why the sudden move in markets yesterday? It could be that Federal Reserve of St. Louis President James Bullard told markets the Fed should keep buying mortgage-backed securities after its self-imposed March deadline for exiting the market expires.

The Fed's plan to purchase $1.25 trillion mortgage debt and agency securities has effectively kept U.S. interest rates from creeping up. It's also kept the housing market afloat, although even at these levels you are not exactly seeing refinancing boom. But it's the prospect of more quantitative easing by the Fed that must have markets spooked about inflation.

Bullard said, that, "If the economy came in very weak, let's say, in 2010, weaker than expected, we would have the option of doing further quantitative easing." The Fed would do this through additional asset purchases, presumably with more, uh, "money" it created.

Bullard also said that, "If the economy came in stronger than expected and inflation expectations started to ratchet up a little bit we could maybe sell off some of these assets and remove some of the accommodation from our quantitative easing program."

The market must not have heard that second part. Or maybe it didn't believe it. Maybe it concluded that the Fed loading itself up with mortgage-backed securities is not a healthy expansion of the central bank's balance sheet. Maybe that's why the dollar fell and gold rose.

Hey it turns out that we were wrong and man-made global warming is real after all. A bunch of scientists have colluded to invent it by suppressing evidence that the earth is actually cooling. It turns out that empirical data do not support the agenda to expand government power and control over nearly aspect of our everyday lives.

How inconvenient!

You won't find the story of the leaked IPCC e-mails in too many main-stream press outlets. Most of the media is in collusion with governments to cram some sort of climate change carbon law down our throats. Publishing evidence that suggests there is still real scientific debate doesn't suit that agenda.

Before you send us e-mails condemning us to hell for hating the earth and clean air, let us make a small point. Of course the climate is changing. But - as these leaked e-mails show - the scientific community is not nearly as unanimous in its "interpretation" of what the climate data are showing as the political community would like you to believe.

Be sceptical. It works with investing. It works with politics. Any time a group of people tries to shout you down and make major changes to the law, you should be very concerned. The debate about how we inhabit our ecosystem is an important one. But it's obvious the science has been politicised.

And please don't write in saying that doing nothing is not an option. Doing nothing IS doing something. It means NOT doing something stupid until you have a fuller picture of what's going on. And there are still many in the scientific community who are modest enough to admit that the earth's climate is too complex a system to determine whether releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is actually causing temperatures to rise today.

If you were even more sceptical, you might conclude that promoting global warming (or climate change) has become a lucrative industry for both scientists and failed U.S. presidential candidates with massive carbon foot prints. Both have a strong desire to tell other people how to live.

In any event, climate science is not our beat here. But the behaviour of hysterical crowds and how to survive it IS our beat. So have a look at the ClimateGate story in your spare time and let us know what you think. And in the mean time, keep an eye on your wallet and your mind on guard.

Dan Denning
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• An Old Friend With a New Idea on Global Warming
• What Assets are Going to Beat Inflation in the Coming Ten Years?
• Quantitative Easing Explained
• 1 Out of 10 American Mortgages Are Owned by Other Countries
• Homebuilding Goes Down While Economy Gathers Strength

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

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

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

There are some pretty big issues we left hanging with yesterday's DR. Are the Western Welfare States (the U.S., Japan, and EU nations) really going bankrupt? Things were headed that way before the credit crisis began. If Rogoff and Ferguson are right and the GFC is becoming a sovereign debt crisis, it will worsen an already bad situation.

How bad? We'll show you three of the charts we showed the folks in Canberra on Sunday. This is the condensed version of a forty-five minute presentation. So we'll have to leave out the colour commentary. And we're pleased to offer another contribution from Dr. Steve Kates on how government policy is destroying public wealth.

But first, check out the chart below from the 2008 annual budget audit by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It shows that the U.S. government must roll over $3.4 trillion in debt over the next four years. This $3.4 trillion does not include any additional borrowing that may be required for other government programs (wars, healthcare, wars, school lunches).

What's the big deal? $3.4 trillion is a small number by today's standards, isn't it? Not exactly.

The chart shows how incredibly interest-rate sensitive U.S. government borrowing now is. Not only is it a big ask to ask the world's creditors to continue funding such large deficits (there are only so many savings available to borrow, after all), but the interest expense on that debt is likely to go up as the fiscal position of America deteriorates.

And if America can't find anyone willing to finance its deficits, what then? Well, the luxury of issuing debts in the currency you also print is that you can print money to pay for them. Technically, you can never become insolvent when you enjoy this privilege. The Fed, for example, can create new money to buy debt issued by the Treasury, funding deficits ad infinitum.

But this monetisation of the debt is another way of saying that international creditors are no longer willing to pick up America's spending tab. They will be betting against the American economy, not on it. Even if the Fed takes the unusual step of moving out further along on the yield curve to set interest rates (and keep the bond vigilantes from sending yields to the moon) this is a clear signal to owners of dollar-denominated assets and holders of dollar currency reserves to get out.

Another scenario to watch for is when creditors begin asking the U.S. to issue debts in currencies other than its own (Yuan, Euros). That would be something. In the meantime, they will look to lessen their dollar reserves.

That may not be such an orderly process. And the urgency to get out of the greenback and into something better will only pick up pace as it becomes clear the politicians in America (along with the Fed) are not likely to suddenly rediscover fiscal prudence.

You never know. The Fed may assert its independence and baulk at more quantitative easing. But we wouldn't count on it. And we reckon tangible assets and possibly emerging market equities would be the biggest beneficiaries of capital flows out of the dollar...and into anything else.

The next chart is for you, Paul Krugman. Krugman, among others, continues to insist that larger public sector deficits are necessary if the Western world is to avoid a Japanese-style deflationary "Lost Decade." He claims the government must increase spending as households and businesses deleverage and reduce debts.

Advocates of this idea claim that public sector deficits, as a percentage of GDP, have no real limits. And the example they cite is Japan. As you can see from the chart below, Japan's debt to GDP ratio is nearing 200%. America's isn't even half of that yet (it's about 98%, or $13 trillion). If Japan can finance a deficit at 200% of GDP, then why are we worried that U.S. deficits half that size would threaten interest rates or the dollar?

First off, it's worth pointing out that high public sector-debt-to GDP ratios haven't worked in Japan, if by work you mean pave the way to a stable recovery. Advocates might say-as advocates of the stimulus here in Australia often say-that the public spending made things less worse. But the opposite is true. It's made things more bad!

Or just worse, if you prefer. We mean that the public spending has done two things, neither of which is productive, and both of which, in fact, waste capital and resources. First, public sector spending to prop up financial firms with dodgy assets prevents the needed reckoning in asset prices that would produce market clearing prices for commercial and residential real estate. You get zombie banks and a zombie economy and zombie house prices.

Secondly, there's no indication that all the infrastructure spending in Japan has produced any kind of lasting growth for the economy. It may have built some great roads and bridges. But we wonder if it solved any of the underlying problems? What' more, the capital and resources that went into those projects was directed by political considerations and not available for the private sector, which could have put them to some use at least designed to produce a return on the capital.

The underlying problem which deficit spending does not solve is compounded by demographics. Japan's government is hoping that continued borrowing can be financed at low rates by pensioners who will be cashing out of their pensions but seeking safety. However, we suspect that Japanese pensioners will begin to consume their savings as they downsize their lives into their twilight years (which tend to last much longer in Japan, as the number of Japanese centenarians shows).

That means interest on Japanese bonds-which already one fifth of the Japanese budget-will consume even more of the nation's resources, if the older population clams up with its money. And like in the U.S., you'll see the government borrowing more and more of every new yen spent, with more of that borrowed yen going to pay a previous creditor. That's bordering on Ponzidom.

Japan has been able to run a higher-than-average public debt-to-GDP ratio because it has had such a high personal savings rates. This kept borrowing costs low for the government. But we'd expect that to change soon. A debt-to-GDP ratio of 200% will be very difficult to finance in the world as it is-much less in a world where those rates begin to rise and when Japanese savers begin to consume their savings.

Finally, what about Europe? Our argument here is simple: Europe's monetary union is going to come unstuck. Why? Europe has one interest rate for twelve different economies. That does not leave national governments with the flexibility to print money and inflate away political problems. This will be intolerable, the monetary union will break up.

The sign to watch for is a spike in the yields on euro-denominated debt. As the chart below (from Stratfor) shows, earlier this year bond yields did in fact begin to widen. Germany Bunds have the most stable rates, as Germany has traditionally the most stable fiscal and monetary policies in Europe (they did not go hog wild for stimulus).

But for Spain, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Italy and Austria (whose banks lent large for real estate in Eastern Europe), another round of falling asset values really would show that the GFC has become a sovereign debt crisis. And will Germany bail out these nations? Can it afford to?

We don't know the answer to those questions. But it is worth pointing out that by assuming or guaranteeing the liabilities of the financial sector, national governments have also assumed the risk. And the bond markets will be left to decide how to price this risk.

How it ends is anyone's guess. But our take is that the Super Cycle in fiat money is at its peak. And as it unwinds, it's going to take national governments and their financing model with it. They will be forced to adopt a new model and take a new form to survive.

This means a great deal of political and economic upheaval. It's no coincidence that the last time the world faced such monetary upheaval was when it went off the gold standard and straight into essentially thirty two years of military and economic conflict (1913-1945). If the world is about to become that disordered again, you'll need a plan to deal with it.

Dan Denning
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• Japan and its Economy Did Not Have Secret to Everlasting Success
• Only Thing Rising Faster than Demand for Government Debt is Supply of It
• Investing in Japan…
• Government Debt
• U.S. Treasury Auctioning Off $81 Billion in New Debt

Another national emergency! Terrorism...the banking crisis...now Swine Flu.

Why it is an emergency, we don't know. Our sister, living in Virginia tells us that several of her grandchildren have come down with the Swine Flu. It doesn't seem to bother them anymore than any other flu.

But every emergency is an opportunity. The feds don't want to waste it. Instead, they swing into operation with a rescue plan. It will end up costing billions...hundreds of billions...or maybe even trillions. We don't know what they've got in mind. But we know what will come of it. It will end up extending the power and influence of the government. So far, the feds are the only real winners from any of these crises. Federal outlays, as a percentage of GDP have shot up from less than 20% of GDP in 2000 to more than 26% in 2009.

Will it do any good? Public health is not central banking. And it's not economic planning. Force everyone to wear a surgical mask and maybe lives would be spared. Or, maybe not. Without the immunity of occasional bouts of flu, who knows? Maybe people would be more susceptible to the next disease. The American Indians were almost wiped out...because they had no immunity to European diseases.

Interesting...

Ain't nature amazing? Disease works like an economic correction. It winnows out the weak...and it toughens up survivors. Allowing people to get sick is a little like allowing them to go broke. It keeps the whole system from softening up...from becoming more vulnerable. It protects people from moral and biological hazard. In other words, it's the correction that really provides protection...the disease itself, not the cure. Or, to put it another way, it's the crash that is beneficial, not the rescue.

David Einhorn, one of the few people to make money in the crash of sub-prime debt:

"The financial reform on the table is analogous to our response to airline terrorism by frisking grandma and taking away everyone's shampoo. It gives the appearance of 'doing something' and adds to our bureaucracy without really making anything safer."

The Wall Street Journal reports that even bankruptcy can be a good thing. "Household Debt Can Hasten Recovery...when it goes unpaid," says a headline.

The whole idea of a correction is to wash out mistakes. If people can pay their debts down, the mistakes are corrected. The system is strengthened. If they can't, the process of correction can happen faster. Bad debts are written off quickly. Then, a real recovery can begin. Either way, the system comes back in better shape.

Too bad the feds are getting in the way!

A decent correction should carry off those who made the biggest mistakes - in the present case, the firms on Wall Street that wagered billions on a bigger and bigger bubble. But instead of letting them go broke, the feds rewarded them.

Wall Street profits are a 'gift' from the state, says George Soros.

But wait, what kind of gift is this? If you give $100 to your neighbor, that's a gift. But what if you tax your neighbor on the left $100 in order to give the money to your neighbor on the right? That's a gift too...but of a special kind. You're 'redistributing the wealth,' you might say.

And what if you do a quantitative easing? You know, you print up a $100 bill and give it to your neighbor? That's a gift too.

Yeah, thanks a lot.

Meanwhile, the recession is said to have come to an end in the US. GDP growth is positive, say the papers. But if this is a recovery, let's hope it comes to an end soon.

Existing house prices continued to fall in September.

Unemployment continued to worsen. "Signs of recovery don't extend to jobs," says the WSJ.

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• Naturally the Feds Want to Raise as Much Money as They Can
• The Fed Cut Rates – But How Low Will They Go?
• Feds Buy Houses
• AIG to Receive $85 Billion Loan from Fed
• Fed Made More Money than Goldman Sachs

But a warning about what? Sure, stocks, oil, and gold were all down yesterday and the U.S. dollar was up. But is it really the end of the dollar carry trade? And if it is, what happens next?

More cow bell!

We should back up a second. What is the dollar carry trade? It's the engine of bank profit growth this year. It's what's given the illusion that the financial system has recovered from its brush with death last year.

But as you'll learn today, the bankers, the Fed, the media...the whole lot of them...have learned nothing from last year. The hangover was just beginning to set in, so everyone began drinking again heavily. And now the party is wild and out of control. Even the cops are drunk.

Incidentally, this complete abandonment of monetary sobriety and fiscal prudence shows up every day in real life, where the declining value of money is paralleled by a general decline in public behaviour. For example, on Sunday morning we were tucking into a breakfast of banana caramel pancakes (with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the top) when three incredibly drunk but fairly well dressed middle aged men had a seat next to us at the cafe.

They wanted to chat about the John Birmingham book on the table. They wanted to smoke. They wanted to laugh, and did so loudly to the point where they began upsetting the various dogs assembled in the sun. They ordered a pitcher of beer. They were served. It was 9am and they hadn't been to sleep.

Our cow bell tells us that the financial party thrown by Ben Bernanke may soon be ending. The dollar carry trade, by the way, is where financial firms and speculators borrow cheap money in the U.S. and use it to buy higher yielding assets elsewhere (like the Aussie dollar).

The carry trade is a bubble enabler and balance sheet stabiliser in the short-term. The Fed keeps rates low, the banks borrow and then buy U.S. bonds (which helps the U.S. fund its deficit), buy stocks, and buy commodities. The dollar carry has fuelled the world-wide rally more so than any phantom recovery in the real economy, where employment hasn't recovered and wage growth is hard to find.

What the carry trade has not done is fundamentally improved the balance sheets of the very financial firms that were at risk of insolvency last year. Why not? First, the earnings rebound in the first three months of the year was not driven by better business conditions. Speaking to the Financial Times earlier this week, George Soros said, "Those earnings are not the achievement of risk-takers...These are gifts, hidden gifts, from the government."

The banks booked profits from trading stocks and bonds. And because the Fed, through quantitative easing, was supporting bond prices directly, it was as close to free money/a rigged market as you can get. With enough leverage, even small gains in bond prices were bankable.

But now there is an enormous, gut busting irony to the position the banks find themselves in. Remember that the original idea to repair bank balance sheets and restore their capital positions to healthier levels was to replace toxic mortgage-backed debt with safe, sound, and liquid U.S. Treasuries. Snort. Guffaw.

The irony is that those same Treasuries could be the next big blow up, wiping out the banks thin equity capital sliver all over again, and plunging the financial sector into a second wracking round of forced deleveraging and asset sales. Round two of the recession, morphing into a Depression as the public sector ramps up deficit spending to make up for the collapse in household and business spending.

We all know how much serious the cycle of deleveraging and asset sales was last time around, so it's not a claim we'd make lightly, or without some evidence. So let's get to the evidence. First is an article from Gillian Tett, also in yesterday's FT, titled "Rally fuelled by cheap money brings a sense of foreboding."

"Earlier this month," she begins, "I received a sobering e-mail from a senior, recently-retired banker. This particular man, a veteran of the credit world, had just chatted with ex-colleagues who are still in the markets - and was feeling deeply shocked."

" 'Forget about the events of the past 12 months ... the punters are back punting as aggressively as ever,' he wrote. 'Highly leveraged short-term trades are back in vogue as players ... jostle to load up on everything from Reits [real estate investment trusts] and commercial property, commodities, emerging markets and regular stocks and bonds.'"

" 'Oh, I am sure the banks' public relations people will talk about the subdued atmosphere in banking, but don't you believe it,' he continued bitterly, noting that when money is virtually free - or, at least, at 0.5 per cent - traders feel stupid if they don't leverage up.

" 'Any sense of control is being chucked out of the window. After the dotcom boom and bust it took a good few years for the market to get its collective mojo back [but] this time it has taken just a few months,' he added. He finished with a despairing question: 'Was October 2008 just a dress rehearsal for the crash when this latest bubble bursts?'"

This 'latest bubble' is in evidence across all asset markets-bonds, stocks, commodities, property, and cash. Free money does not discriminate on the basis of asset class. But nowhere has the bubble been more generous than in the U.S. Treasury bond market. Short-term U.S. bond yields are vanishingly low. The Fed just purchased $14 billion more in mortgage-backed securities last week and now holds $776 billion in MBS and $773 billion in Treasuries. All up, the Fed's balance sheet is at $2.1 trillion.

But here is the thing: the Fed says it's ready to end its program of buying Treasuries and MBS. It realises it will have its hands full funding big U.S. deficits. But if the Fed withdraws its support for bond prices...you can expect bond prices to fall and yields to rise. This may happen even if the Fed keeps buying bonds...but creditors like the Chinese and Japanese stop (as they have done with agency securities.)

All sorts of interesting things begin to happen now, if by interesting you mean terrible but fascinating. Falling bond prices and rising yields would make perfect sense in a U.S. dollar rally. And a U.S. dollar rally makes perfect sense if the carry trade ends and the dollar shorts cover. Speculators take profits in oil, gold, stocks and jump back into cash and the greenback. This is roughly what happened last time the wheel's came off the financial system.

Where does that leave banks and their massive new hoards of U.S. Treasury bonds? An article called "Bank Insolvency Is Not A Dead Issue" by Daniel Aaronson and Lee Markowitz shows that banks have dramatically increased their holdings of U.S. Treasury securities. When you add their existing exposure to U.S. real estate (facing an Option-ARM crisis over the next twelve months) you have a huge swathe of bank collateral that could face another massive write down.

What do you think that might do the global economy? Aside from putting a few more banks out of business, it would again cut off the flow of credit to small businesses and the rest of the economy. It might again cut off the flow of bank credit from international lenders to the Big Four here in Australia. And this time, what kind of aid can the Feds really offer when their last attempt at help (exchanging Treasuries for RMBS) set the banks up for precisely the implosion they were trying to avoid?

As you can see from the chart above, banks have grown assets again with the Fed's borrowed money. You know have a freshly steaming pile of recovering asset prices supported by a thin wafer of equity capital. It's a fraud with a cherry on top. As the charts below, U.S. banks own nearly $1.5 trillion in government securities. And they are gobbling them up like there is no tomorrow.

There is always a tomorrow. But corporations and institutions live and die just like species. Only the earth abideth forever.

We reckon that the entire financial industry is still dangerously close to a species-destroying event. It's leveraged model of asset growth and debt accumulation imploded last year. But the Fed has brought it back, and like a Zombie/Frankenstein mash-up, it's here to torment us all again.

Soros told the FT this sequence of events is causing a lack of confidence in governments. "There is a general lack of confidence in currencies and a move away from currencies into real assets," he told the FT. "There is a push in gold, there's strength in oil and that is a flight from currencies."

So in the short-term, don't be surprised to see a stronger rally in the USD, which would take some of the starch out of oil and gold prices. As the dollar carry trade unwinds a bit, stock markets will fall and so will other asset classes that have zoomed up on the speculation.

But the bigger story playing out is this: the entire method by which the fiscal welfare state funds itself is blowing up. More on how this will happen and what it means tomorrow. Until then, we hope you heard the cow bell.

Dan Denning
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• Rally in Stocks and Rise in Aussie Dollar is a Result of the Carry Trade
• Greek Banks Playing the Carry Trade and Investing in Government Bonds
• Fed Announced it Would Buy up to $300 Billion in Treasury Bonds
• Price of Gold Communicates U.S. Monetary and Fiscal Policy is Lousy
• The US Dollar Showing Signs of Life

On the latter, here's what Addison had to say:

"'Deflation now, inflation later' is a mantra we've adopted at The Daily Reckoning. The Federal Reserve, through it's program of quantitative easing, is busting the seams of its own balance sheet in order to fight a deflationary trend in the West. At some point, the tide will shift. Mr. Bernanke assures the world he's watching inflationary indicators like a hawk. We have our doubts whether those indicators will do him any good. As Paul Volcker, the great inflation slayer of the early 1980s, said when we interviewed him for I.O.U.S.A. 'Once inflation gets started, it's very hard to stop. And there's a strong flavor of that at the moment.'

To read Addison's full interview, see here.

"Global trade rose at its fastest rate in more than five years in July," The Financial Times reports, "suggesting the economic recovery is feeding through into commerce."

"I've been worried about the effects of protectionism in shutting off different markets and making a weak economy even worse off," says colleague Chris Mayer. "Commodity markets especially need open markets to function well. The EU, for example, just put a 40% tariff on Chinese made steel pipe. That's not good for steel pipe demand and hence, the steel makers and the commodities that go into steel. If we see widespread adoption of such measures, we'd have to re-think some things.

"But so far, it looks like we've got a recovery of some kind in global trade. When I look at the global economy, many of the bright spots stem from surging trade along old trade routes (such as China and Arab world)."

Racehorse prices are in freefall, says a report out yesterday. But collectible cars are still doing well.

Yesterday, we saw someone drive by in a huge, gaudy pink Cadillac from the 1960s. It had magnificent fins and enough chrome to stagger a blind man. In it were a middle-aged man and woman, looking very comfortable and proud. They were traveling in style...in a rolling sculpture.

Old cars are not only holding their values, they're still going up. But not all old cars. Detroit's muscle cars have been falling in price for the last three years. Not very green?

Until tomorrow,

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

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• How to Trade Gold Shares
• The Aussie Dollar as a Measure of Global Risk Appetite