Mitchell’s laws: The more budgets are cut and taxes inceased, the weaker an economy becomes. To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive trade balance. Austerity = poverty and leads to civil disorder. Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
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In economics, self-deception seems to be the rule. That thing called “debt” really isn’t the same “debt” you and I know — at least not for Monetarily Sovereign countries. And “unsustainable” doesn’t exactly mean something that can’t be sustained. And while taxpayers pay taxes with “taxpayers’ money,” the federal government doesn’t pay its bills with “taxpayers’ money,” as the media claim.

Now comes monetarily non-sovereign Greece, with its own package of self-delusion.

Yahoo Finance
Greece secures biggest debt cut in history
Greece secures high participation in critical bond swap, staving off imminent bankruptcy
By Elena Becatoros, Associated Press | Associated Press

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece has cleared a major hurdle in its race to avoid bankruptcy by persuading the vast majority of its private creditors to sign up to the biggest national debt writedown in history, paving the way for a second massive bailout.

If you and I were to declare bankruptcy, we would write off our debts. Greece avoids bankruptcy by writing down its debts. See the difference?

Following weeks of intense discussions, the Greek government said Friday that 83.5 percent of private investors holding its government bonds were participating in a bond swap. Of the investors holding the euro177 billion ($234 billion) in bonds governed by Greek law, 85.8 percent joined.

“We have achieved an exceptional success … and I believe everyone will soon realize that this is the only way to keep the country on its feet and give it a second historic chance that it needs,” Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos told Parliament.

“A window of opportunity is opening” with the success of the deal to reduce the country’s euro368 billion debt by euro105 billion, or about 50 percentage points of gross domestic product, he said.

The public sector screws the private sector out of 105 billion euros ($138 billion), and this is considered an “exceptional success” and a “window of opportunity.”

The bond swap is a radical attempt to pull Greece out of its debt spiral and put its shrinking economy back on the path to recovery. The hope is that by slashing debt, the country can gradually return to growth and eventually repay the remaining money it owes.

How will eliminating past debt create future growth? The underlying problem remains. To survive long term, all monetarily non-sovereign nations require money coming in from outside their borders. This is an absolute rule.

But Greece runs trade deficits. Money flows out, not in.

If, in the future, Greece continues to suffer trade deficits, euros will continue to cross its borders in the wrong direction, further impoverishing the Greek people. What will change this longstanding problem? Certainly not future defaults, bankruptcies and loans.

The investors will exchange their bonds with new ones worth 53.5 percent less in face value and easier repayment terms for Greece. A total of euro206 billion ($273 billion) of Greece’s debt is in private hands. The swap will effectively shift the bulk of the remaining debt into public hands — mainly eurozone countries contributing to Greece’s bailouts.

If the exchange had failed, Greece would have risked defaulting on its debts in two weeks, when it faced a large bond redemption.

Got it? Greece didn’t “default.” It exchanged bonds. Remember that, so you can tell your bank you would like to exchange your $100K mortgage for a $50K mortgage — to prevent default on the $100K mortgage.

A successful bond swap is also a key condition for Greece to receive a euro130 billion ($172 billion) package of rescue loans from other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund.

Lending to borrowers, who have bad credit, caused the most recent recession — and the banks (rightly) were criticized for it. Now the IMF and EU do it, and everyone dances in self-congratulatory glee.

Service of loans from other euro nations will require sending euros out of Greece. Where will Greece find those euros to send across its borders?

Word picture: You’re in the middle of the desert. You have no water. Someone gives you a sip of water and says, “One hour from now, give me back the water, plus extra as interest.” But you’re still in the middle of the desert. Problem solved??

“After quite a rollercoaster ride, it looks like Greece has finally done it … allowing Europe to avoid what could have been a disorderly default in which the costs do not bear thinking about,” said Simon Furlong, a trader at Spreadex.

Rather than a disorderly default, we had an orderly default. Now, it’s time to start thinking about the costs.

IMF head Christine Lagarde also welcomed the debt writedown agreement. “This is an important step that will dramatically reduce Greece’s medium-term financing needs and contribute to debt sustainability,” she said.

On the streets of Athens, however, many remained skeptical about the deal and pessimistic about the future. Panayiotis Theodoropoulos said the writedown was good “for them.”
“For us? Nothing. Everyone looks out for themselves. In a while the people will be living on the streets,” he said.

Mr. Theodoropoulos is far wiser than Ms. Lagarde. He’s right; she’s wrong. My heart goes out to the people of Greece, who are mere pawns in a chess game between the foolish and the greedy.

The debt crisis, sparked by years of overspending and waste, has left Greece relying on funds from international bailout loans since May 2010. Austerity measures including repeated salary and pension cuts and tax hikes imposed in return have led to record unemployment with more than 1 million people out of work, a fifth of the labor force.

The debt crises was caused by Greece’s unforgivably bad decision to surrender the single most valuable asset any nation has: Monetary Sovereignty. Austerity measures, by simple mathematics, always must cause unemployment and economic misery.

The bond swap accomplishes two things:

1. It delays the time of recovery, extending the austerity and suffering of the Greek people
2. It sets a precedent for other monetarily non-sovereign nations to screw the private sector and extend the misery if their citizens.

And this is the EU’s and the IMF’s “exceptional success.”

I said it in 2005; I say it today. “The economies of the European nations are doomed by the euro” (and by the world’s financial leaders).

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

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No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia. Two key equations in economics:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption + Net exports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Mitchell’s laws: The more budgets are cut and taxes inceased, the weaker an economy becomes. To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments. Austerity = poverty and leads to civil disorder. Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
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Yahoo Finance
US trade deficit hits $52.6 billion in January
US trade deficit widens to three-year high of $52.6 billion in January as imports hit record
By Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer | Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. trade deficit surged to the widest imbalance in more than three years in January as imports hit an all-time high, reflecting big demand for foreign-made cars, computers and food products.

U.S. exports to Europe fell, raising concerns that the debt crisis in that region could dampen U.S. economic growth.

Economists are looking for the deficit this year to widen from last year’s $560 billion imbalance, reflecting in part the economic woes in Europe, which represents about 20 percent of America’s export market. A wider deficit can depress economic growth because it usually means fewer export-related jobs.

In January, the politically sensitive deficit with China rose 12.5 percent to $26 billion. Last year, the deficit with China hit a record $295.5 billion, the highest deficit ever recorded with a single country.

At a time of high unemployment in the United States, political pressure is growing to impose economic sanctions on what critics see as China’s unfair trade practices such as a currency regime that keeps the yuan undervalued against the dollar, making Chinese goods cheaper in U.S. markets and American products more expensive in China.

So there you have it. Our problems are not of our own making. It’s all China’s fault.

Now let’s get real. Why does a trade deficit negatively affect unemployment and economic growth? The answer is quite simple: Money supply. A trade deficit removes dollars from the U.S. economy.

Remove dollars, and consumers have fewer dollars to spend, which means less sales volume for businesses, which means less profits, which means job cuts. In short, unemployment is not caused by “shipping jobs overseas,” as so often is claimed. We’re shipping dollars overseas, and this dollar loss reduces consumer spending. When consumers don’t spend, we have unemployment. Period.

Now, you rightly may ask, how is it possible for a nation — a Monetarily Sovereign nation having the unlimited ability to create dollars — how is it possible for that nation to run short of dollars?

Answer: It isn’t possible, except for one small detail: Economic ignorance. Congress doesn’t know the U.S. is Monetarily Sovereign, so it restricts dollar creation. Then it blames the resultant job loss on China (and President Obama, if you’re a Republican).

No, Congress. No, Republicans. The job loss is not China’s fault; it’s yours. Those dollars, you easily can create, are flowing to China, and you’re not replacing them fast enough.

So here’s the plan — no, not developed enough to be called a “plan” — call it a “concept.” Every quarter, the federal government should replace the trade deficit. It should send the amount of the trade deficit to the American consumers, dollar for dollar.

It could be in the form of mailed checks — something resembling the very first stimulus attempt in 2008. The result: Consumers would continue to have spending money, businesses would continue to thrive and hire employees, and at long last, Congress could stop blaming China for its own mistakes.

Now is that so hard?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

==========================================================================================================================================
No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia. Two key equations in economics:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption + Net exports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Mitchell’s laws: The more budgets are cut and taxes inceased, the weaker an economy becomes. To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments. Austerity = poverty and leads to civil disorder. Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
==========================================================================================================================================

One thing I love about economics: Every time you think you’ve heard every argument, a new one emerges. Though many (most?) of these new arguments are specious, I enjoy reading and even printing them, because they help to visualize the facts of Monetary Sovereignty.

There’s an old saying, “The best way to learn a subject is to teach it.” For the past 15 years I’ve been teaching economics, and the effort has taught me more than if I had spend that same time continuing in formal classes. Why? Much more variety. Classrooms teach the professor’s beliefs.

Recently, I heard from someone named “Pete,” who seems to be an ardent environmentalist. To argue with Pete is like arguing with a religious fundamentalist. Truth blends with fiction, outrageous claims and exaggerations pop up and need to be addressed.

The whole thing turns into a whac-a-mole argument, leading to even more outrageous exaggerations and outright denials of fact, drifting further and further from point. (At one point he doubted people live longer today than in the distant past, and demanded I supply data.)

Nevertheless, I participate in such arguments (and admittedly, instigate them) because I learn from the nuggets of truth hidden in the hyperbole. Unlike debt-hawks, Pete seems to agree that Monetary Sovereignty — the government’s unlimited ability to pay for anything — does in fact lead to economic growth. This takes him orders of magnitude beyond popular ignorance.

But, Pete’s argument is that growth itself is bad, so even though Monetary Sovereignty, more specifically, federal deficit spending, begets technology, which begets economic growth, he feels this is a bad thing, not a good thing.

He provides a long list of bad results, mostly involving chemicals in our environment, to prove that humans have put way too many chemicals into the air, water and food, and killed too many animals. I agree.

But what is the trade-off? A dreamy return to a mythical, idyllic lifestyle, living naked in the forest, eating berries? Yes, some chemicals are bad; but some are good. Some medicines fail; some succeed. Some inventions bless us; some curse us.

How do we differentiate unless we progress? Can we learn in advance every side effect, and if so, how? Will we cope with the future? When the next big meteor or pandemic or ice age hits, will humans survive it — or even prevent it?

I grow impatient with people who feel progress must be linear — no bad experiments, no bad results, no bad surprises. I grow impatient with people who would junk democracy because there are crooked politicians, or blame business because some businessmen care more about profits than consumer safety.

One often hears the question, “How is man unique?” I suggest the answer is, “Man progresses.” Lions, tigers and bears do not progress. They are what they were and always will be. Nature may have changed them, and may change them in the future, but they will not change themselves. They are victims of what is. They settle for darkness; humans invent light bulbs.

To progress is to be human, as is to err. To learn from history, and to act on your learning, is to be human. To overcome intuition is to be human. To discover by (as Newton said) “standing on the shoulders of giants” is to be human.

Humans reach for the hills, for the mountains, for the stars. That reaching, reaching, failing, then reaching more is progress. Without it, we are no more than the lions, tigers and bears.

Animals eat eggs. Humans eat omelettes, and to the dismay of many environmental extremists, omelettes require egg breaking. Two steps forward; one step back. That is the reality of our growth.

The hope for humankind is not a reversion to nature or mean austerity or an end to economic growth. We must seek solutions to the problems that face us, some of which we have caused ourselves.

The Pete’s of the world disagree. They come from a culture where pessimism is oh, so much cooler than optimism. But, I believe in us. I believe we will find solutions to disease and pain and global warming, and poverty and hunger and the extinction of our species. I believe in human progress.

But progress demands money. I know of no other path. Those who deny Monetary Sovereignty — those who deny the absolute need for growth in federal deficits, i.e. money creation — they deny us the money we need for progress.

For the sake of a pessimistic present, they deny us an optimistic future. In essence, they deny us what makes us human.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

==========================================================================================================================================
No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia. Two key equations in economics:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption + Net exports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Mitchell’s laws: The more budgets are cut and taxes inceased, the weaker an economy becomes. To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments. Austerity = poverty and leads to civil disorder. Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
==========================================================================================================================================

For years I’ve said the euro nations have two, and only two, solutions to their economic problems:

1. Federalism (The U.S. system): The European Central Bank give (not lend) euros to euro nations
or
2. Monetary Sovereignty: Each nation return to its sovereign currency.

There is widespread feeling these two solutions would be too chaotic compared with austerity and loan “modification” (aka default).

Yahoo News
Analysis: Greek default may be gift to other euro strugglers
By Mike Dolan | Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) – Greece’s tortuous debt restructuring and threat of retroactive laws to compel reluctant creditors heaps regulatory risk onto investors but may make voluntary sovereign debt revamps more attractive and likely for other cash-strapped euro sovereigns and their creditors.

Thursday could mark a climax of the Greek debt workout with private creditors due to respond to an offer that would see them effectively write off more than 70 percent of the face value of their bonds in return for new debt with a series of sweeteners.

With Greek government bonds currently trading at less than 20 cents in the euro and the risk of a total wipeout if Greece decided to unilaterally refuse all payments, a majority will likely go for it. Legally-binding majorities are another matter.

Athens said this week it aims for 90 percent acceptance but if the takeup is at least 75 percent then it would consider triggering so-called “collective action clauses” retroactively inserted into the bonds issued under Greek law — about 85 percent of the 200 billion euros being restructured.

Those clauses in practice force all affected creditors to comply.

But it’s this distinction between debt issued under domestic laws and that sold under internationally-accepted English law that some say has consequences for other troubled euro nations eyeing Greece’s so-called Private Sector Involvement, or PSI.

In essence, English-law Greek bonds, as is the case for many emerging market sovereigns, trade as if they were senior to local-law debt — at almost twice the price in fact right now. That’s because the terms of foreign-law bonds cannot be altered by an Athens parliament, and agreement for debt swaps is needed bond-by-bond, unlike local laws that aggregate majorities across all debtors and make blocking minorities more difficult to muster.

A paper released this week by Jeromin Zettelmeyer, deputy chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and Duke University Professor Mitu Gulati reckons this legal gulf could well encourage other debt-hobbled euro zone countries and their creditors into mutually acceptable and beneficial debt restructurings.

This would involve an agreed switch in the legal status of the debt in return for relatively modest haircuts.

“Holders of local-law governed bonds in other euro zone countries that are perceived to be at risk might want to make a trade for English-law governed bonds,” the economists wrote. The sovereign gets a chance to reduce a crippling debt burden while bondholders get greater contractual protection in any future restructuring.

Given that the Greek precedent of retroactive legislation vastly increases the allure of foreign-law bonds, which credit rating firm Moody’s says now make up less than 10 percent of all euro zone government bonds, a window of opportunity may open up.

“Effectively, this is a large gift from the Greeks to the parts of the euro zone that face debt crises. By conducting its debt exchange in the way it did, Greece has in effect resurrected the plausibility of purely voluntary debt-reduction operations in Europe.”

Even the 10-year debt of fellow bailout recipient Ireland, which many investors reckon has the underlying economic capacity to go back to the markets next year, is still trading at less than 90 cents in the euro and many doubt its imminent market return.

“We expect that Ireland will need a second financing package beyond 2013,” economists at Citi said on Monday. What’s more, if Europe’s new fiscal pact is rejected by voters in a planned referendum there in the coming months, Ireland would lose access to the financial backstop of the European Stability Mechanism and likely unnerve many investors.

Yet voluntary debt swaps with some debt relief stemming from more modest haircuts than Greece may well be the best way to ensure these two countries avoid outright default and return to private financing in a reasonable amount of time.

And if such exchanges were wholly voluntary, it would also mean credit default swap insurance would not pay out. One danger is that the prospect of countries opting for such a swap may scare creditors in larger countries like Italy and Spain where currently no bond haircut is expected by the market, thanks in large part to the ECB’s liquidity injections.

And the upshot for many economists is that there will be a longer-term price to pay for governments for tinkering with the rules of the game, as many investors view it, via the likes of retroactive bond legislation and obfuscation of CDS markets.

“Investors will expect a premium for bearing this regulatory risk,” Morgan Stanley’s Manoj Pradhan told clients in a note, adding that only central bank liquidity floods were now obscuring the resultant higher financing costs and there would be a dangerous blurring of lines between macro and market risks.

That’s the answer? To protect monetarily non-sovereign nations, screw the private sector — the bond holders. And this convoluted, byzantine Whac-a-mole is less chaotic for the euro nations, their people and their lenders than adopting federalism or becoming Monetarily Sovereign?

Translation for all of the above: “Lenders: If you voluntarily accept a screwing now, we promise not to screw you as much next time. Otherwise, we’ll screw you worse now and even worse yet, later. What’s your voluntary choice?”

Unless the euro nations find solutions #1 or #2 (above), you can be sure that 10, 20, 50 years from now, these nations will have continued with their borrow/default/austerity convulsions. Of course, I’m dreaming when I say, “10, 20, 50 years.” There is no possibility the EU will continue to exist with its current rules. The people will wise up and revolt.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

==========================================================================================================================================
No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia. Two key equations in economics:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption + Net exports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY