The quote comes from Ben Franklin. But it was recalled to us neither by America's president, nor Britain's Prime Minister. Instead, the Telegraph in London reported it from the mouth of Cheng Siwei, a "top member of the Communist hierarchy."

What goes around comes around. The Anglo-Saxons have forgotten what makes a successful economy. The Chinese have remembered.

Just look up Warren Harding on Wikipedia. The first entry you will find is not the 29th president of the United States of America, but a rock climber with the same name. But what do you expect? History is nothing but a long list of disasters in chronological order. Historians love calamity. And they reserve their highest accolades for those who cause them. The same is true in financial history. Those who make it big are those who make it worse.

It is safe to assume that no one working at the Federal Reserve or at the White House has a picture of Warren Gamaliel Harding over his desk. Yet, if American presidents were ranked on the basis of how well they faced up to financial disaster, Warren G. Harding might be somebody. His handsome face would be carved on Rushmore. His likeness would grace the $100 bill. Harding was the last American president to deal honestly with a major financial crisis. Every president since has tried to scam his way out of it.

By the time Harding took office in '21 the Panic of 1920 was taking the unemployment rate from 4% to nearly 12%. GDP fell 17%. Then, as now, the president's subordinates urged him to intervene. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover wanted to meddle - as he would 10 years later. But Harding resisted. No bailouts. No stimulus. No monetary policy. No fiscal policy. Harding had a better approach; he cut government spending and went out to play poker:

"We will attempt intelligent and courageous deflation, and strike at government borrowing which enlarges the evil, and we will attack high cost of government with every energy and facility which attend Republican capacity...it will be an example to stimulate thrift and economy in private life.

"Let us call...for a nationwide drive against extravagance and luxury, to a recommittal to simplicity of living, to that prudent and normal plan of life which is the health of the republic."

Within a decade, Harding's views were collectibles. But in 1921, he still saw the economic world as a moral world ordered not by man, but by God. This was not the result of long study or deep reflection on his part. He was probably the dummy everybody said he was. As Keynes pointed out, politicians are always in thrall of some dead economist. At least Harding was in thrall to the good ones.

"No statute enacted by man can repeal the inexorable laws of nature," he announced. "Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government..."

Harding was not the first to see the economy as a 'natural' order...one that you disturbed at your peril. A Taoist named Zhuangzi, who lived about the same time as Alexander, observed: "Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone."

Later, economists of the Scottish enlightenment, notably Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson elaborated. Smith, like Harding, saw the economy ordered by the invisible hand of God. Ferguson saw markets as a 'spontaneous order,' which were the "result of human action, but not the execution of any human design".

The same basic insight led Irving Fisher - the greatest economist of the 1920s - to come up with his debt-deflation theory of depressions. After people had borrowed, they needed to pay back. Busts followed booms; there was no getting around it.

Warren Harding may never have been the brightest bulb on the White House porch, but intuitively he understood that proper macro-economic policies were more the product of virtue than of genius. Debt led to trouble; that's all he needed to know.

Keynes came along a few years later. Keynes was a genius; everybody said so. And he had an answer for everything. Nature? Government could do better. Debt? Don't worry about it, he said. Why not just let capitalism sort itself out? Without government intervention, it will only get worse, said Keynes.

But Harding had already proved him wrong. Harding did the very opposite of what Keynes recommended. Instead of increasing government spending, he reduced it. He cut the budget almost in half. He slashed taxes too...and cut the national debt by a third.

Japan at the time struggled with the same downturn. But it had no Harding at the helm. Instead, its masters prefigured Keynes, trying to stay the correction using price controls and other interventions. The result was a long-drawn-out affair that lasted until 1927 and ended in a bank crisis. In America, meanwhile, by 1922 unemployment was back down to 6.7%. By 1923 it was down further - to 2.4%.

This lesson was entirely lost on the world's economists. When the next crisis hit a decade later, they turned to Keynes. Of course, it turned out to be a moral world after all. They got what they deserved.

Regards,

Bill Bonner,
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• A Brief Lesson in Sarah Palinese
• Barack Obama and His Nobel Peace Prize
• The Percentage of the U.S. Economy Devoted to Consumer Spending Went Up and Up
• Alan Greenspan Bears Blame for Intensity of Financial Crisis
• Politics and Investment Intertwined

Then, word came that even Alan Greenspan thinks a recovery is underway.

"This is what a recovery looks like," said the maestro. That settled the matter as far as we are concerned. Alan Greenspan didn't see history's biggest financial bubble until it exploded in his face. In the following few words we undertake to show that Greenspan is as blind as ever.

"Great time for US consumers, America is on sale," says an item at YahooFinance. The "discounts are unbelievable," adds a blogger known as Frugal Rhode Island Momma. All across the nation, merchants are no longer selling the merits of their products; they're selling price. McDonald's advertises its "dollar meals." Hotels have cut room prices by 20% in the last year. House prices are down about 30% since 2006. Sellers are offering bargains and they want buyers to know it. "Sold for $365,000 in 2006. Now $195,000," says a typical house ad.

Foreigners have noticed too. Colleagues in London say they are thinking of moving to Florida where they will get far more for their money. The dollar falls; foreign purchases go up. Stocks, for example. In the first quarter, foreigners were unloading US shares. Now they're buying more than $100 billion worth per month.

It is a deflationary world, at least that part of the world between the Rio Grande and the 49th parallel. The CPI in the United States is negative and falling faster than at any time in 59 years. Households can only be induced to spend money by cutting prices. "Cash for Clunkers" cut prices on new cars by about 20%. As soon as it ended, so did auto sales. Most new house sales could be traced to a tax credit - which reduced the down payment by at least 20%. That program is scheduled to end in November.

And now, the White House frets about jobs. Unemployment is supposed to be a lagging indicator, but this time it seems to have dropped out of the race all together. Still, Congressional elections are coming up. Unemployed voters are surly and unreliable. So, the Obama administration is considering a $3,000 tax credit to bribe businesses to hire them. If the typical employee costs his firm about $40,000, this effectively reduces the cost of labor by 7.5%.

It's beginning to look more and more like the Roosevelt years. By the end of this year, all the jobs created during the bubble era - 2002- 2007 - will have been eliminated, making it the first decade with no job growth since the '30s. We're expecting a fireside chat any day.

Typically big businesses cut workers in a recession. Then, when the economy recovers, small businesses are quick to take them back. But this is unlike the typical post-war recession. This time, deprived of capital as well as customers, small businesses don't have a chance. Neither does a genuine recovery.

The authorities still do not understand what is going on. They are used to fooling most of the people most of the time. They think they can dupe them again - with bailouts and boondoggles. But real demand has vanished as households try to pay down their debt. That is not going to change anytime soon. Not while the federal government is sabotaging a genuine recovery. It's savings - capital - the US economy needs. A capitalist economy in which the capitalist have no capital won't work. Why is there no capital? Because the feds take it.

Supplying cash-for-this and cash-for-that is an expensive proposition, especially when tax receipts are falling. The money has to come from somewhere. As it turns out, the feds borrow it from the very people who are trying to rebuild their personal balance sheets. Of the $1.6 trillion the US government will borrow this year, the biggest single lender is the private sector, chipping in $700 billion. But instead of being put to use in a way that might stimulate a real recovery - providing credit for small business and consumers - it is taken up by the US government and then frittered away.

The banks are happy to play the government's game too. They can borrow overnight money from the Fed at only one quarter of 1%, annualized. But lending to small business is hard work. And it is risky. Why bother? The US Treasury will pay them 4 % for lending back to the government, long term. This is practically free money to the banks. Both the bankers and politicians end up ahead - with a bigger piece of the economy under their control.

Meanwhile, the real economy staggers. "Drought of credit hampers recovery," summarizes The Wall Street Journal. The United States needs to create a million and a half new jobs each year just to keep up with population growth. Currently there are 15 million people without jobs already...and a couple hundred thousand more unemployed every month. And if this recovery continues long enough there won't be a single person left in America who still has a job.

Even if the economy could be stabilized, it will leave millions without jobs - more or less permanently. Add the people working reduced hours, and those who have been looking for work so long they are no longer counted, and their families, and you have a quarter of the population without money to spend. That's why this slump is not going away any time soon. As in Japan in the '90s, we may have to live with this depression for the rest of our lives.

Until next time,

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• Normally Small Businesses Lead the Economy Out of Recession
• The Business Bankruptcies and the Personal Bankruptcies
• Where, Exactly, is this Economy Headed?
• Feds Can’t Cause a Genuine Recovery Simply by Throwing Money into Economy
• There is No Real Economic Recovery Taking Place

You can explain the model in a few simple sentences: Encourage people to spend. When they run out of money, encourage them to borrow. When they tire of borrowing and spending, lend them more at lower rates.

As a way for people to build wealth, this economic model of the Bubble Period was as ineffective as a bad banker. It was a 'have your cake and eat it too' school of financial success with an obvious flaw. People noticed it when the correction began. They went to their cupboards and found there was nothing there. Homeowners - who had borrowed heavily against their houses - found their equity had disappeared. Capitalists found they had no capital. Workers lost their work.

And this year, governments' tax receipts are collapsing too. In the United States, they're down 14% in the first half of this fiscal year. Expenses, on the other hand, are exploding. This leads to a question: governments must borrow on a Herculean scale - but from whom? The United States is expected to float a record $2 trillion in I.O.Us. for 2009 - about 15% of GDP. If the downturn persists, as it has in Japan, we could see the U.S. national debt rise to Japanese levels - close to 200% of GDP.

In London, the numbers are smaller, but the math is the similar. The government has projected $175 billion deficits over the next two years. But this might be just the beginning. If deficits continue at this rate, Britain too could find itself back in the 1950s' - after two world wars, with public debt at two times GDP.

What justifies such sacrifices? In time of war, citizens collect scrap iron...sell their jewelry...and buy bonds - anything to help pay for bullets and keep the Huns East of the Rhine. But what now? People clamp even bigger balls and longer chains on themselves...and for what? Taking flowers to the recovery room, they look in on the bubble model as though on a weary friend. "He supported us all," says an anxious relative... "We must do all we can to save him."

"Pull the plug," is our advice.

Of course, when he was in his prime the bubble was fun - laughing, singing, spending...a grasshopper on stilts! And there were all those friendly ants in Asia ready to lend him money. At the peak, the U.S.A. had net borrowing of some $2 billion per day (trade deficit/365).

But now, take America's anticipated budget deficit and divide it by 365. You get a figure of nearly $6 billion per day. Even at his peak, the old bug didn't bring in that kind of money. And now, the foreigners are in recession too. They've got their own aches and pains to cure. So, how will the United States finance the biggest deficit of all time? How has Japan done it?

Japan's economy has been locked up for 19 long years. It financed its confinement itself - drawing on the savings of a remarkably long- suffering population. Stimulus packages came and went. On average, they cost about 3% of GDP per year. The biggest came in 1998 - with a price of 6% of GDP. Financing this house arrest was easy - Japan began the period with a savings rate of 14% of GDP.

America, on the other hand, began with a savings rate of zero. More recently, the savings rate has been reported as high as 5% - as middle- aged squirrels desperately hide a few nuts for a long winter retirement. But the gods can add it up. Even if every dollar of U.S. savings is tossed down the public hole, it will still be two thirds empty.

Anticipating the problem, the Fed has already leapt into the hole itself. It offers to buy the government's bonds itself. Of course, the Fed has no real money. It must 'create' money to make the purchase. It's the latest miracle treatment, say the quacks in charge. If the Fed creates enough new money, it will offset the losses caused by the downturn. Then, happy days will be here again. The whole world seems to believe it. Stocks are rising. Ben Bernanke, this week, said the U.S. economy would recover before Christmas. The convalescence may be long, he continued, with his vision apparently restored; but it will be steady.

How the gods must howl! "In the Bubble Epoque people tried to get something for nothing... Imagine, they thought they could get rich by borrowing money and spending it. Have you ever heard of something so ridiculous? Ha ha! Now, they think they can get rich by spending money that doesn't even exist."

"But that's not the half of it," one of them is sure to notice. "They're digging themselves deeper into debt - trying to revive the very oaf who pushed them down in the hole in the first place. Ha ha. Ha ha."

Until next time,

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

• China Was the Maker and the United States Was the Taker
• Saving Money, Not Spending it, is the Key to Getting Wealthier
• The Codependent Relationship Between China and the United States
• Zero Percent Interest Rate Didn’t Work for the Japanese
• Difference Between the Dollar and the Yen

"And now nothing shall be withheld from them which they have desired to do..." I mentioned this quote several weeks ago. It comes from one of the many attempts that foolish men have made to be as God. It also brought about one of the greatest cataclysms in history. You can read the whole thing in Genesis 11.

For us, it applies heavily to the advances of government into the field of business. It only makes sense: the occupants of the White House and the Capitol have done such a good job with their budgets over the years, they just want to help everyone else (over the cliff, that is).

It began, as it always does, with just the camel's nose in the tent. A bit of money here, some bank guarantees there. But then, as the fable tells us, the rest of the camel wanted in.

The government insisted on foisting money on companies that didn't even need it. Washington's excuse? If the only companies taking the money were the ones that needed it, those companies would suffer a "stigma." But if every company took the money, even if they didn't need it, the bad ones couldn't be singled out.

We, of course, would never know the difference between the two. So much for more transparency in government. Now the companies who didn't need the money are lashing back. Having to pay 5% interest on money they didn't need to borrow is only a greater liability to already burdened companies.

But the government's fun still wasn't over. It forced out a CEO at AIG, now one at GM... and it passed a stimulus plan that required contractual bonuses be paid, then issued a 90% tax on them when the public outcry became too great.

Now Chrysler is being pressured to bring green cars to the market by none other than their new "boss," the Obama administration. Of course, they already have a green car, but the "boss" says it's too expensive for the public to afford. So, essentially, he pulled the plug on it. Frankly, I'd like to know why he thinks that Chrysler's greenie is too expensive. It certainly could not cost more than the bailout price tag they have forced each of us to shoulder. Expensive is a relative term.

Make no mistake about it, we are living in times that will likely produce great changes in the world. There is a certain theory that attempts to explain the history of the world through great cataclysmic events.

Some are occurrences in Nature; some are wrought by the folly or the genius of men. Let me say at the outset that I am a subscriber to this philosophy, so have no illusions about what I am saying.

Actually, most people who ever think about such things believe that all of existence began with a great cataclysm. You can call it the "Big Bang" - no matter if you're referring to the "Big Bang" that set the evolutionary process in motion, or the "Big Bang" of God creating the heavens and the Earth.

At some point, life came into existence - a big event in the universal process of all things. Of course, this is the point where the two theories begin to diverge from one another. Evolution has no more "Bangs" left in its bag. It is a slow and relatively even process from there on. Which is, I suppose, why it takes them billions of years to get to the point that God was able to accomplish in six days.

But for the recorded history of men, it has been one cataclysm after another, of varying sizes and types. Famines, floods, pestilence, earthquakes, volcanoes... and other natural disasters take their toll, but seem to always right themselves over time.

The follies of men, however, are a different matter.

The wonderful world of economics is no exception, and has no exemption. As I have said before, economics bears within itself the very principles by which God has made it to be governed. The Law of Supply and Demand is not dependant upon Congress. It was not invented by the whim of elected or appointed regulators. It is not governed by the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund or the European Union.

It brings to mind a letter someone once sent to Congress. Perhaps you've heard about it before. If not, please enjoy:

Senator John W. Bricker

The Senate

Washington, D.C.

Dear Senator Bricker,

In my opinion I would suggest that if the Senate and Congress would abolish that awful law of supply and demand, it would increase production. Stop hoarding for high prices as is now being done by the government and others. Push all products for sale to the markets and start competition. The law of supply and demand is a burden to the Consumer because they foot all of the bills.

I trust you and your fellow senators and congressmen will act promptly.

Gerald V. __________

(Taken from Dear Mr. Congressman, by Juliet Lowell {New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1948}, p. 91.)

I suppose we ought to give Gerald high marks for even knowing the term "supply and demand," since I tend to think you might be hard-pressed to find it in the vocabulary of modern high school students. I have long felt that it would be a good question for Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segment of the Tonight Show.

At any rate, the laws of economics are established by a much Higher Power than we will ever be. And while we are at it, we should also understand that the Power is stronger than we can ever successfully contend with.

This is why, try as we might, we cannot substitute our own economic devices and have them succeed.

So let's put a finer point on all this. The value of a nation's currency is built upon the honesty behind it. Even a currency backed by gold becomes worthless if the government holding the gold cannot be trusted. While in days gone by it was easier for authorities to debase a metal and get away with it, all such obligations now are simply based on a government's willingness to part with its gold. Of course, these days it does not happen.

And while the United States has been an expert in telling other countries how to morally treat their people, we have been robbing them blind! It has gotten so bad that even the Evil Empire and the Red Menace have seen through our chicanery. We may look upon them as people less "evolved" than we are, but the jig is up. Our hypocrisy has been found out.

We have become like the man in the Biblical parable who tried to remove a speck from the eye of his friend, when he himself had a log in his own eye. "First remove the log from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is from your friend's eye." Seems like pretty simple (and common-sense) advice. But in the words of newspaperman Horace Greeley, "Common sense is very uncommon."

I began this by saying that cataclysmic times are upon us. We are seeing the shaping of men and nations. We are setting the groundwork for the impoverishment of generations.

Spain fell in line with the prevailing models of economics by bailing out its first bank in a quarter of a century. And with a broad brush it painted its regional banks as "heavily exposed to property developers struggling during a deep recession."

I have told you often of the difficulties prevalent in Europe. Here is but one more piece of evidence. Authorities are planning to solve this with 2-3 billion euros - but, oddly enough, have promised up to 100 billion euros. Wow! That's a huge disparity. I believe they may think it will take more than just 2 or 3 billion.

On the same topic, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet sees more ongoing deterioration all across the Eurozone. Market forecasts believe Brussels will announce a 50-basis-point rate cut later this week. Germany, which makes up about 25% of the euro economy, is looking for an acceleration in economic deterioration.

This is a cataclysm.

Central Banks are flying blind with an instrument panel that has no configuration for the geography. The fixes they are trying will lead us to Zimbabwe (hyperinflation) or Tokyo (perpetual slump). Pick your poison.

In the meantime, I am forced to look for more overall dollar strength. The United States still possesses the deepest markets and the "deepest pockets" in the world. If other economies continue to fail, fiat currency supply and demand will favor the dollar. And by "deepest pockets," I mean they are committed to inflating their way out - and have more ability to do so than anybody else.

I know looking for dollar strength seems a little backward while they are inflating. But the truth is, ever since the credit crunch, everything has been turned on its ear. If you are new to the currency markets, say within the last couple of years or less, likely most of this action makes very little sense to you. But in these times we must remember this axiom: The market will eventually adjust to actual realities. In the meantime, it will be moved by perceived ones. As long as fear filters through the markets, the currency flows will come back to the dollar. When there are periods of vacillation between fear and risk, the currencies can swing wildly.

Regards,

Bill Jenkins
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

Editor's Note: Bill Jenkins, founder and managing editor of Master FX Options Trader, knows the Forex currency markets inside and out. After 20 years and a string of losses following other people's crack advice, Bill created his own system for cashing in on tiny currency fluctuations between the British pound and the U.S. dollar.

• Dollar’s Demise Has Started a Chain Reaction in Currency and Commodity Markets
• US Dollar As Reserve Currency Not Working Very Well
• A Gold Standard, Without Gold
• Demand for Credit is Growing Less Fast
• The Advice to Never Touch Your 401(k) is Not So Cut-and-Dried

That is not the way it works in modern central banking, though. Today, it's as if Hank Paulson is pointing his "big bazooka" bailout plan at Wall Street and demanding it opens up its wallet so he can fill it with other people's money. The Paulson Gang (or Goldman gang) is lining up for its share of the loot accordingly. But the real robbery is taking place in Washington.

Today's theft is a lot more subtle, mostly because it's taking place right underneath your nose. That is the trouble with the obvious. You become so used to it that you fail to find it unusual. Sadly, it is as business as usual in Washington D.C. this week.

First, the Wall Street Journal reports that the shclubbs in Washington have agreed on the "principles" of the bailout plan. The words "lawmaker" and "principle" probably don't belong in the same sentence. But our job is to investigate the facts, not pass judgment (yet) on the protagonists in our story. So what are the facts?

Surprisingly few! The principals involved all met at the White House and walked out of the room with no real agreement. They did, however, agree to four principles which any future agreement must address. Not exactly Wilson's 14 points. But give them time.

What are the four principles? First, a bailout plan must provide taxpayer protection. Second, it must provide oversight and transparency. Third, it has to preserve home ownership in America (though how it will or even CAN do this is anyone's guess). And fourth, the US$700 billion lump sum sought by the U.S. Treasury will be doled out incrementally, to make sure Hank Paulson doesn't spend it all in one place.

It doesn't sound like much was resolved, does it? Still, stocks appear to be trading exclusively on the idea that a bailout plan will be passed by the Congress and will rescue the banking system from the edge of the abyss. The Dow was up nearly 300 points early in the day. It faltered later, but still closed up almost two percent to 11,022.

While Wall Street tries to save its own neck at taxpayer expense, the sell-off in Australian stocks is making the assets of junior miners even cheaper to the parties that are happy to acquire them at any price.

In fact you could argue, as my colleague Al Robinson has in Diggers and Drillers, that one of the prime results of the market volatility is increased merger and acquisition activity in the juniors. Share prices are down. Yet many quality mining projects clearly have the potential to lead to growing earnings for the firms behind them.

There are two possible complications to Al's bullish scenario, though. One is commodity prices. If the equity market volatility turns into a full-fledged collapse, it's hard to see this being too terribly bullish for commodities. A major recession in the U.S. won't kick start commodity prices from their current doldrums.

But if the bailout plan in Washington is perceived as inflationary, but also just enough to prevent a U.S. recession, well then you may have the conditions necessary for a rebound in certain resource prices. High energy and labour costs have already pinched supply in some key markets. The spring is coiling.

The other complication is capital. With Aussie bank lending plummeting and the share market not an ideal place to raise money right now, how will small companies fund their big projects? Are there enough risk-taking investors to make it happen?

One group of investors that don't seem to care about the credit markets or valuations (perhaps because they find them so stunningly attractive) are the Chinese. Today's Australian reports that, "Chinese- controlled Australian Bulk Minerals has agreed to a reverse takeover of Grange Resources in a deal that secures future iron ore pellet production for China's biggest private steelmaker, Shagang, and will lead to the listing of Tasmania's Savage River mine and pellet plant."

If you keep looking for the action in the big blue chips like Rio and BHP, you will probably miss the flurry of action brewing beneath the surface. And it's definitely brewing. This brew, however, is not toxic like the mess in Washington. THAT brew could still poison us all. But we'll have to wait and see what the Paulson Gang cooks up before we know how much lower stock prices are going to go before we can buy. Until Monday...

Dan Denning
The Daily Reckoning Australia

• Bailout Deal Will Expand China’s Influence in U.S. Economy
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