Rolfe Winkler

How a new jobless era will transform America (Peck, Atlantic)

Bernanke testimony (Fed) Key line: “Also, before long, we expect to consider a modest increase in the spread between the discount rate and the target federal funds rate.” That’s not the same as raising the Fed Funds rate or the rate paid on excess reserves, but it’s the first time Bernanke has indicated policy may be tightened. Also, the balance sheet will be allowed to shrink on its own as mortgagees prepay.

For $110, godless will adopt pets of blessed after Judgment Day (DiPaolo, Bloomberg) Great story. And a great way to clear $10 grand! One of many money quotes: “With the economic downturn we’re in, I’m trying to figure out how to cash in on this hysteria to supplement my income … Given the intellectual capacity of believers this could be a gold mine!”

Chinese military officers urge economic punch at U.S. (Buckley, Reuters) Their economic nuclear option….

Eurozone holds intensive talks about Greek rescue (Sobolewski/Maltezou, Reuters) Some combination of #1 and #2 is indeed the way Europe and Greece appear to be attacking this problem. Here is an update of sovereign CDS:

How Brussels is trying to prevent a collapse of the Euro (Der Spiegel)

Google tweaks Gmail to challenge Facebook, Twitter (Oreskovic, Reuters) Should Zuckerberg fear Larry Page and Sergey Brin? Or will Buzz impact Facebook as weakly as Docs impacted Microsoft Office?

Mervyn King leaves his options open (Brereton/Hannon, WSJ) The head of the Bank of England won’t rule out more money printing to buy assets (“quantitative easing”). Not that this shouldn’t be expected.

Blast off (imgur)

Slow motion lightning….more here

Funny how the market is just waking up to the Euro debt problem. Many have argued that debt levels are unsustainable, yet the IMF has adopted the neo-Keynesian line that governments can spend with impunity so long as unemployment is high. If there are unemployed workers in the economy, then conventional wage-push inflation — i.e. workers negotiating higher wages, which in turn drives up consumer prices — can’t happen. Or so the argument goes.

But this ignores bond market realities. The PIIGS on Europe’s periphery — Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain — have huge budget deficits as a percent of GDP, but don’t have the power to print money to pay it back. So bond markets are bidding up the cost to insure their debt:

Readers should offer their own view, but seems to me there are three options here, two bad and one nuclear.

1) The PIIGS cut their budgets to pay back debt. Such austerity programs are typically very difficult to get done in democracies. Deficit spending stays high long past the point that it’s possible to work off debt over any reasonable period. To successfully dig out of the hole requires cuts so deep, voters never agree to them.

2) Europe bails them out, which is the easiest solution in the short-run. Richer European countries certainly have the wherewithal to bail out a small country like Greece or Portugal. But it’s a dangerous precedent to set. What about Spain? It’s 14% of the Euro economy compared to 6% for Portugal/Ireland/Greece combined. If economies keep spending with an eye towards a bailout from the ECB, eventually you get #3.

3) The monetary union breaks apart. The customary way out of a debt crisis is to devalue one’s currency, see Argentina in 2001. It couldn’t maintain it’s dollar peg and still service its debt, so it devalued its currency and defaulted on debt. But this locked the country out of the international capital markets and drove them into a deep, though brief, Depression. For Greece to devalue, it would have to pull out of the Euro, pass a law that it’s debts are payable in new local currency and then devalue.

Some combination of #2 and #1 is probably the only sustainable solution. And that’s what the market appears to expect, what with Greek 5-yr CDS falling back to $389,000 from $425,000 yesterday.

But any help must come with tough conditions. Cuts must be deep enough that further rounds of bailouts won’t be needed.

UPDATE: Nick Gogerty points out that the IMF is another potential source of rescue funds. But whether bailout cash originates from the Germans or the IMF doesn’t change the fundamental problem, which is that Greek state is living well beyond its means…

Euro debt fears roil global markets (Shah, WSJ) The U.S. is less worse than Euro economies, so Euro trouble causes flight to the dollar. Funny that we’re viewed as quality: When you factor in the debt of state and local governments, we’re in similar trouble….never mind unfunded liabilities for Medicare and SS.

Moody’s warns about U.S. credit rating (FT) These warnings have been fairly frequent.

Bernanke’s exit strategy: tighter reserve requirements (Kessler, WSJ) A good op-ed from yesterday. Another way of sequestering excess reserves, besides paying banks not to lend them out, is to just require them not to.

Unemployment rate falls despite declining payrolls (Mutikani, Reuters) The hard data, for those interested, is here.

How banks can win despite being second (Eavis, WSJ) Modifying the first mortgage frees up homeowner income to service their home equity lines of credit and other second lien mortgages…

Why we keep getting poorer: housing costs rising as % of income (Charles Hugh Smith)

Biggest bubble in history is growing every day (Pesak, Bloomberg) He’s referring to China’s reserves.

13-year-old QB commits to USC (Carrosquillo, FoxNY)

Toyota… (imgur)

New ski warnings (CollegeHumor)

Global air traffic volume (note how it varies with the sun)…

Substantial bank losses needed to fix housing (Bloomberg) To avoid foreclosures, principal has to be written down. That implies hefty losses, especially for banks that hold lots of home equity loans on their balance sheet. Such loans get wiped out before first mortgages lose a penny. Complicating matters, many big banks service both the first and the second mortgage, which means they are highly conflicted. They don’t want to eat a loss on the second mortgage, even if writing it down would make the first perform much better…

Greece defies Europe as crisis grows deadly serious (Evans Pritchard, Telegraph) Provocative idea: To relieve its debt burden, Ambrose says Greece should devalue its currency. That’s not easy since they use the Euro. He recommends Greece ditch the Euro, “restore its currency, devalue, pass a law switching internal euro debt into drachmas, and “restructure” foreign contracts. This is the ‘kitchen-sink’ option. Such action would allow Greece to break out of its death loop.” Call it the nuclear option… (ht Implode-o-Meter)

Whole Foods Republicans (Petrilli, WSJ) The Republican party is missing an opportunity to reach independent college-educated voters…

Cuts come to New York: Two subway lines may get eliminated, along with subsidized fares for students. In the meantime, Gov. Paterson announced that he will withhold payments to schools and local governments.

Monsanto seed biz role revealed (Leonard, AP) Abusing quasi-monopoly power.

For America’s Santas, it’s hard to be jolly (Woo, WSJ)

The other Lamborghini (Wikipedia)

VIDEO: “I was hot as a pistol” (Google) Oldie but a goodie….autistic high school basketballer scores 20 points in 4 minutes.

View atop the Tower of Babel Burj Dubai…