Thursday, July 3, 2014

Time to Pay the Piper: There's No Free Lunch

The bill is way past due on this five year vacation from reality
Now that the pseudo-recovery is "picking up speed", the Idiocracy has conveniently forgotten the Faustian Bargain they made between long-term jobs and the stock market. There is a price to be paid for all of this mindless mass consumption: $Everything (no refunds)...

Just today, the jobs report informed us that 288,000 new temporary and part-time low paying McJobs were created. The White House sanctioned "unemployment rate" hit a multi-year low of 6.1% and all it took was ignoring millions of people who have given up looking for a job, combined with a doubling in the Federal debt.

Is this as good as it gets?
So now, the question on the table is can all of this late stage pseudo-growth really replace trillions in Fed liqidity, massive deficits, and 0% interest rates? Already this nascent rise in McJobs is causing a jump in inflation for everything EXCEPT wages. So in asking this asinine question, the Idiocracy of course has forgotten that they sold their souls to buy the Dow back to all time highs, while the real and sustainable economy was shipped overseas. Without ongoing and continual wage deflation, low interest rates would have never been possible in the first place. I realize that the narrative du jour is to blame the Fed for keeping interest rates low and encouraging financial speculation and debt accumulation for (another) five years straight, however, the Fed can't create the deflationary forces that made low interest rates possible. That job in the first instance was left to corporate frat boys who were more than happy to oblige by driving corporate profits to all time highs. Therefore believing that these McJobs, which exist solely as a function of Fed dopium, will be retained in the face of higher interest rates, is a fool's errand of the highest order. As it was in 2007, a fake "economy" consisting of part-time, temporary McJobs will be obliterated by higher interest rates and a "normalization" of Fiscal/Monetary stimulus. The economic heroin junky can't live without fiscal/monetary heroin. 

This just in: Part-time jobs jump by 800,000 in June and a totally ludicrous 523,000 decline in full time employees:



We've seen this movie before, we know how it ends
All of the Bush McJobs were obliterated in a matter of a few months. The entire Bush "recovery" was a total fucking illusion. Sounds familiar...

Non-Farm payrolls



Jobs or Stocks? Pick One
Wilshire Total Market Index with Total U.S. Jobs divided by total U.S. population

The Faustian Bargain in one chart - it didn't work for Bush (middle section), but I am sure it will work for the Obamanation:



Welcome to the Hotel Californication
If the economy continues to "improve", interest rates will rise and those millions of jobless consumers who have been feasting upon 0% interest rates compliments of Third World wage slaves, will be obliterated. Either way, the Almighty Dow is in sudden death double overtime in the knockout stage of the World Cup of economic stupidity. Stocks don't do higher interest rates, especially with profit margins at all time highs and now being squeezed lower between inflation and self-imploding revenues. 

Shock Doctrine Unwinding: Corporate profits will return to "normal":



The Age of the Multinational Mega-Corporation is Collapsing
The good news is that the age of mega-corporations buying in one locale and selling in another is ending. The mega-corporations cannibalized their own end markets leaving nothing behind but an economically sterile strip mined pseudo-economy now in late stage decline. The final collapse in consumer credit will be the death knell for Walmart & Company, which will ultimately be replaced by small local-sourced businesses. The transition to a local economy will be difficult for everyone, to say the least, however, the planet can no longer sustain the consumption-oriented status quo. Nor can the wage slaves who make "this" economic Disneyland possible.