Dow down 39 yesterday. Gold plus $2. And the noose tightens on Bernanke’s neck.

As of this writing, Wall Street is still in bull mode. Can you make money by joining it? Maybe. Is it worth it? Probably not.

If you do decide to play the game…just be sure you remember what game you’re playing. This is a Great Correction. Over time, prices are going to work their way down until the Dow has dropped below its March 2009 low.

And we’re not alone in this view. Here is Albert Edwards at Société Générale:

My views on the outlook could not be clearer. They may be wrong, but at least they are clear. We still call for sub-2% 10y bond yields and equities below March 2009 lows.

I have for a very long time likened events now unfolding with what we saw in Japan a decade ago. Of course there are some major differences, but one can still draw clear parallels to see how extreme equity overvaluations unwind in a post-credit bubble world.

Edwards then goes on to make an important point. As we keep saying, this is not a recovery. Instead, we’ll have on-again, off-again periods of recession, deflation, growth and apparent prosperity. Some of these movements will be sustained and important. But investors beware: don’t forget; we are in a Great Correction, not a recovery. Edwards:

…there are huge returns to be made in equities from participating in short-lived cyclical rallies like the one we have just seen. The Nikkei regularly used to enjoy 40-50% rallies as policy stimulus drove pronounced cyclical upturns in both GDP and profits. You had to remember however that you were still in a structural bear market and you had to get out when the cycle began to top out. A downturn in the leading indicators proved to be a very useful sell signal for equity investors.

Here’s a contrarian indicator: investors are more bullish than they’ve been in two years. Bloomberg is on the case:

Investors are exiting bearish bets on global equities, pushing bullish wagers on stocks to a two-year high versus short sales, according to Data Explorers.

The firm’s long-short ratio has risen to 9.5, having surged from 5.75 in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s collapse intensified the financial crisis, the London- and New York-based securities-research company said. The reading is the highest of the data that goes as far back as July 2008.

While investors are bullish, consumers are bearish. Small wonder the consumer is feeling blue. Corporate profits are up to a record of about 8% of revenues. But business achieves these numbers not by increasing sales and payrolls, but by cutting costs – usually labor costs. This leaves the poor consumer with less money to spend. This from The New York Times:

…the Conference Board said its index of consumer confidence slipped to 50.4 in July, down from a revised 54.3 in June.

“Despite better-than-expected earnings reports, especially last week, unfortunately the economic data continue to be weaker than expectations,” said Conrad F. DeQuadros, and economist with RDQ Economics. With consumer spending accounting for about 70 percent of the overall economy, analysts closely watch the moods swings of Americans as guideposts to the recovery.

Analysts said that many Americans were worried about the weak labor market. In its survey of 5,000 households, the Conference Board found that the percentage of consumers who said jobs were difficult to obtain increased to 45.8 percent in July, from 43.5 percent in June.

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing. For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.

Yesterday, the rally on Wall Street slowed down a bit. The Dow rose 12 points.

Gold had a bad day – down $25. We had guessed that gold would be going down. But it is still too early to detect a real trend. For the moment, the financial markets and the economy are going in different directions. The stock market is signaling a boom. The economy and gold are signaling a bust. We’ll have to wait and see which direction prevails…

In the meantime, had a seer come to us a couple of years ago with a tale of back-to-back US deficits totaling $3 trillion over two years, his credibility would have been in doubt. Had he also foreseen US Treasury debt at record low yields – at the same time – he would have had no credibility at all.

One of the surest things we thought we thought we knew back then was that the government could not simultaneously run huge deficits and borrow cheaply. It was one or the other; that was all there was to it.

It turns out that Dick Cheney was right all along. Deficits don’t matter. At least, they don’t matter until they do matter.

And they don’t matter right now. Bloomberg:

For all the criticism of record budget deficits, President Barack Obama can take comfort knowing that for the first time in half a century, government bond yields are declining during an economic expansion and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner is selling two-year notes with the lowest interest rates ever.

The combination of record-low yields on two-year notes, 10-year rates below 3 percent and a deficit projected to surpass $1.4 trillion for a second consecutive year is a signal that the bond market is less concerned with government spending than with getting the economy back on track.

The last time yields were this low as the economy expanded was in 1955, when Ray Kroc founded McDonald’s Corp. and Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around The Clock’ topped the music charts. The 10-year note yield averaged 2.65 percent that year, according to monthly data compiled by the Fed, while the economy grew 6.4 percent, consumer prices for the year declined 0.4 percent and the government ran a fourth consecutive budget deficit.

Why have yields fallen so much? Because the economy is not recovering. Investors look for a safe place to put their money. Bloomberg continues:

“Expectations of growth over the next couple of years have indeed come down,” Alan Blinder, former Fed vice chairman, and economics professor at Princeton University, said in a telephone interview. “There is still plenty of fear out there in the world financial markets, which has investors all over the world scurrying into Treasuries, even though they get paid very little.”

We opined – without doing any research on the subject – that Harley Davidson had probably peaked out. Only old men ride Harleys. The young prefer a different style of bike. We guessed that it was time to sell the stock.

Naturally, the company’s earnings have soared since then. But not because of increased sales. Instead, like the rest of corporate America, Harley is learning to earn more money without selling more merchandise.

The New York Times has the story:

Motorcycle sales are falling in 2010, as they have for each of the last three years. The company does not expect a turnaround anytime soon.

But despite that drought, Harley’s profits are rising – soaring, in fact. Last week, Harley reported a $71 million profit in the second quarter, more than triple what it earned a year ago.

This seeming contradiction – falling sales and rising profits – is one reason the mood on Wall Street is so much more buoyant than in households, where pessimism runs deep and joblessness shows few signs of easing.

Many companies are focusing on cost-cutting to keep profits growing, but the benefits are mostly going to shareholders instead of the broader economy, as management conserves cash rather than bolstering hiring and production. Harley, for example, has announced plans to cut 1,400 to 1,600 more jobs by the end of next year. That is on top of 2,000 job cuts last year – more than a fifth of its work force.

Everyone is doing the right thing. Households are reducing spending. Business is reducing its costs. GDP growth is falling and investors are taking shelter in Treasury debt.

So what’s the problem? Well, the feds can’t bear to see people doing the right thing. They want them to do the wrong thing – that is, they want them to spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need. Why? Because it makes the economy look good…and makes them look like they know what they are doing.

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing. For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.

We have to be impressed with the market’s resiliency today after hitting new recovery highs, because weakness thereafter has been very much contained, at least so far. That said, however, I am “concerned” about the “trap-like” pattern that has developed in the hourly Volality Index (VIX). Let’s notice that the VIX made multi-month lows this morning at 22.70, but has since climbed back above 23.20, which so far has “trapped” VIX bears (SPX bulls).

In the event the SPX rolls over into a deeper correction later this afternoon or in overnight trading, and the VIX climbs above 24.70/80, the VIX will have put in a powerful upside reversal immediately after violating a major Double Bottom June-July low. Such a scenario is all the more likely given the glaring downside failure of RSI momentum to confirm the multi-month low in the VIX. Let’s watch this relationship closely in the upcoming hours.

 

Mike Paulenoff is a 26-year veteran of the financial markets and author of MPTrader.com.

There are two major schools of thought on what is coming next…and two renegade, home-schools too. There are those who believe we have a recovery…though weak…that will continue and eventually bring the economy back to health. This is the line of the Obama Administration and most mainstream economists.

Then, there are those who think the recovery will not come as planned…and that the feds’ efforts to spur a recovery – along with strong demand from Asia and the emerging markets – will lead to higher levels of inflation, destroying the dollar and bonds. This is what Marc Faber expects. He urges listeners to avoid going too heavily into cash, since it might be the number one victim of inflation. Instead, you’ll do better in stocks and real estate, he says.

A third line of thinking is what Faber calls “hard core deflationism” – typified by Robert Prechter and Gary Shilling. They think the de-leveraging trend will be catastrophic – leading to outright deflation, taking the Dow down below 1,000, for example.

Then, there’s The Daily Reckoning line. You can call it “soft-core deflationism”:

1) There is no recovery; there won’t ever be a recovery
2) The de-leveraging period will be longer and harder than people expect…leading to spells of deflation and double…triple…dipping
3) The feds will fight it with every weapon available
4) However, they will not push the ‘nuclear button’ – wanton, reckless money printing – until the bond market cracks
5) It will not crack soon, because the feds are incompetent; they will not succeed in getting higher rates of inflation; at least, not soon.
6) The dollar will remain strong. Bonds will go up…for now…
7) The Dow will fall…but not below 1,000…probably not below 5,000

What does that mean for gold? Well, it means gold won’t do spectacularly well. It might decline…say, down to $850 or so.

Eventually, the bull market in gold will resume, however. You can’t keep a good metal down. Just don’t expect it to go up dramatically while the private sector is reducing its debts in an orderly fashion.

Does that mean you should sell your gold? We wouldn’t if we were you. Because something could go very wrong. Another big bank failure. A blow-up in China. It wouldn’t take much to cause a panic. Investors could turn to gold for security.

Or, maybe the feds will panic…and dump dollars from helicopters as Ben Bernanke threatened.

Besides, we could be wrong. Predictions are always difficult to get right. Especially when they’re about the future.

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing. For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.

Unlike my partner I am no foodie. I don’t know the coolest new bistro in town and I never consult Yelp for my dinner selections. And although I like a fine meal once in a while and can cook a few Italian dishes with the skill of a pro, I’d much rather enjoy the warm comfort of a grilled cheese sandwich and fries than some tiny slice of lamb drenched in a puddle of raspberry reduction.

I do however love Anthony’s Bourdain’s No Reservation’s show on the Travel channel. In fact, I have every episode he ever made saved into my iTunes library on my computer and I often watch them over and over. Not only do I like Bourdain’s snarky attitude, his wonderful ear for the English language and the show’s award winning cinematography, but I also appreciate the mad, obsessive-compulsive characters that populate the show.

People who cook food almost universally do it for passion rather than money. To achieve the perfect pizza dough, the perfect steak, the perfect risotto you never think about profit margins, efficiency protocols or labor savings. You think about ingredients, presentation, texture and taste. To be a great chef is to seek but never quite attain perfection and therefore to practice the Greek ideal for living a truly satisfying life.

To watch the guests on No Reservations is to marvel at how completely absorbed and content they are in their profession despite its clear physical and emotional challenges. No cubicle ennui here. No middle management angst. People in the restaurant business are happy in the deepest sense of the word because they have passion and purpose.

Surprisingly enough many traders share the same attributes. After all trading is an unbelievably frustrating and emotionally draining task that requires constant concentration and enormous will power to succeed. No matter how much you plan, no matter how well you analyze, no matter how well you time your entry, markets can trip you up and stop you out at any given moment. Yet most of us are completely obsessed and passionate about taming the beast. Although trading is ostensibly about making money, what actually drives traders every day is the intellectual challenge of figuring out what comes next. The art of a well executed trade is as pleasing as the profits it brings.

Whether they’ve had a winning or a losing week I’ve never once heard a trader moan, “Oh no! It’s Monday, I don’t want to go to work!” In fact for most hard core traders the week-ends is a nuisance that stands between them and the markets. Jack Schwager in his seminal book Market Wizards about the golden days of pit based trading, notes that most of the Chicago traders he interviewed could not wait for Monday to start. How many other professions inspire such intensity?

Very few.

Which is why just like true restaurateurs, traders never have any reservations about their chosen craft despite its relentless challenges.

Boris Schlossberg serves as director of currency research at GFT, and runs bktraderfx.com.

The debate over whether we are in for inflation or deflation was alive and well at the Agora Symposium in Vancouver this this week. It seems that not everyone is ready to join the deflation-first, then-inflation camp I am currently resident in. So in this week’s letter we look at some of the causes of deflation, the elements of deflation, if you will, and see if they are in ascendancy. For equity investors, this is an important question because, historically, periods of deflation have not been kind to stock markets. Let’s come at this week’s letter from the side, and see if we can sneak up on some answers.

Even on the road (and maybe especially on the road, as I get more free time on airplanes) I keep up with my rather large reading habit. This week, the theme in various publications was the lack of available credit for small businesses, with plenty of anecdotal evidence. This goes along with the surveys by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, which continue to show a difficult credit market.

Businesses are being forced to scramble for needed investments, generally having to make do with cash flow and working out of profits. This is an interesting quandary for government policy makers, as 75% of the “rich” that will see the Bush tax cuts go away are small businesses.

There was a great graphic (that I now cannot find) showing that all net new jobs of the past two decades have come from small businesses and start-ups. And yet as of now, when structural employment is over 10% (if you count those who were considered to be in the work force just a few months ago), we want to reduce the availability of revenues to the very people we want to be hiring new workers, and who are cash-starved as it is.

It is not just that taxes will go from 35% to just under 40%. It is the increase in Medicare taxes coming down the pike, too. We are taking money from private hands, where it has the potential to increase productivity, and putting it into government hands, where it will do nothing for growth of the economy. There is no multiplier for government spending. And tax increases reduce potential GDP by a multiplier of at least 1 and maybe 3, depending on which study you want to cite.

I understand that taxes have to go up. I get it. But we would be better off having a discussion of where we want to tax dollars to come from before we risk hurting an economy that will barely be growing at 2% in the 4th quarter, and may be well below that. It is the increase in taxes that has me concerned about a double-dip recession.

That being said, the announcement by several prominent Democratic senators that they think we should extend the Bush tax cuts is significant. As I said a few weeks ago, we should not experience a double-dip recession absent policy mistakes. A slow-growth world, yes. But an actual double dip is rare.

If Congress were to extend the Bush tax cuts for at least a year, until the presidential commission on taxes is done with its work and THEN have the debate, it would make me far more optimistic. And it would be quite bullish for stocks, I think. Businesses would know how to plan, at least, for a year, and the economy would be given more time to actually recover. I am not ready to channel my inner Larry Kudlow, but from what we see this summer it would make me more optimistic and reduce the chances of a double-dip recession significantly.

Some Thoughts on Deflation

Inflation in the US is now just below 1%, whether you look at the CPI, the Cleveland Fed’s measure, or the Dallas Trimmed Mean CPI. The Fed’s favorite, the PCE, is also approaching 1%. The Dallas numbers are a little behind, but they are at all-time lows.



The classic definition of deflation is an economic environment that is characterized by inadequate or deficient aggregate demand. Prices in general fall, and normal economic relationships start to fall apart.

The Super-Trend Puzzle

I am a big fan of puzzles of all kinds, especially picture puzzles. I love to figure out how the pieces fit together and watch the picture emerge, and have spent many an enjoyable hour at the table struggling to find the missing piece that helps make sense of the pattern.

Perhaps that explains my fascination with economics and investing, as there are no greater puzzles (except possibly the great theological conundrums, or the mind of a woman, about which I have only a few clues).

The great problem with the economic puzzles is that the shapes of the pieces can and will change as they rub against one another. One often finds that fitting two pieces together changes the way they meld with the other pieces you thought were already nailed down, which may of course change the pieces with which they are adjoined; and suddenly your neat economic picture no longer looks anything like the real world.

(Which is why all of the mathematical models make assumptions about variables that allow the models to work, except that what they end up showing is not related to the real world, which is not composed of static variables.)

There are two types of major economic puzzle pieces. The first are those pieces that represent trends that are inexorable: they will not themselves change, or if they do it will be slowly; but they will force every puzzle piece that touches them to shift, due to the force of their power. Demographic shifts or technology improvements over the long run are examples of this type of puzzle piece.

The second type is what I think of as “balancing trends,” or trends that are not inevitable but which, if they come about, will have significant implications. If you place that piece into the puzzle, it too changes the shape of all the pieces of the puzzle around it. And in the economic super-trend puzzle, it can change the shape of other pieces in ways that are not clear.

Deflation is in the latter category. I have often said that when you become a Federal Reserve Bank governor, you are taken into a back room and are given a DNA transplant that makes you viscerally and at all times opposed to deflation. Deflation is a major economic game changer. You can argue, as Gary Shilling does, that there is a good kind of deflation, where rising productivity and other such good things produces a general fall in prices, such as we had in the late 19th century. And as we have experienced that in the world of technology, where we view it as normal that the price of a computer will fall, even as its quality rises over time.

But that is not the kind of deflation we face today. We face the deflation of the Depression era, and central bankers of the world are united in opposition. As Paul McCulley quipped to me this spring, when I asked him if he was concerned about inflation, with all the stimulus and printing of money we were facing, “John,” he said, “you better hope they can cause some inflation.” And he is right. If we don’t have a problem with inflation in the future, we are going to have far worse problems to deal with.

Saint Milton Friedman taught us that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. That is, if the central bank prints too much money, inflation will ensue. And that is true, up to a point. A central bank, by printing too much money, can bring about inflation and destroy a currency, all things being equal. But that is the tricky part of that equation, because not all things are equal. The pieces of the puzzle can change shape. When the elements of deflation combine in the right order, the central bank can print a boatload of money without bringing about inflation. And we may now be watching that combination come about.

The Elements of Deflation

Just as every school child knows that water is formed by the two elements of hydrogen and oxygen in a very simple combination we all know as H2O, so deflation has its own elements of composition. Let’s look at some of them (in no particular order).

First, there is excess production capacity. It is hard to have pricing power when your competition also has more capacity than he wants, so he prices his product as low as he can to make a profit, but also to get the sale. The world is awash in excess capacity now. Eventually we either grow the economy to utilize that capacity or it will be taken offline through bankruptcy, a reduction in capacity (as when businesses lay off employees), or businesses simply exiting their industries.

I could load the rest of the letter with charts showing how low world capacity utilization is, but let’s just take one graph, from the US. Notice that capacity utilization is roughly in an area that we associate with the bottom of past recessions (with one exception).



Deflation is also associated with massive wealth destruction. The credit crisis certainly provided that element. Home prices have dropped in many nations all over the world, with some exceptions, like Canada and Australia. Trillions of dollars of “wealth” has evaporated, no longer available for use. Likewise, the bear market in equities in the developed world has wiped out trillions of dollars in valuation, resulting in rising savings rates as consumers, especially those close to a wanted retirement, try to repair their leaking balance sheets.

And while increased saving is good for an individual, it calls into play Keynes’ Paradox of Thrift. That is, while it is good for one person to save, when everyone does it, it decreases consumer spending. And decreased consumer spending (or decreased final demand, in economic terms) means less pricing power for companies and is yet another element of deflation.

Yet another element of deflation is the massive deleveraging that comes with a major credit crisis. Not only are consumers and businesses reducing their debt, banks are reducing their lending. Bank losses (at the last count I saw) are over $2 trillion and rising.

As an aside, the european bank stress tests were a joke. They assumed no sovereign debt default. Evidently the thought of Greece not paying its debt is just not in the realm of their thinking. There were other deficiencies as well, but that is the most glaring. european banks are still a concern unless the ECB goes ahead and buys all that sovereign debt from the banks, getting it off their balance sheets.

When the money supply is falling in tandem with a slowing velocity of money, that brings up serious deflationary issues. I have dealt with that in recent months, so I won’t bring it up again, but it is a significant element of deflation. And it is not just the US. Global real broad money growth is close to zero. Deflationary pressures are the norm in the developed world (except for Britain, where inflation is the issue).



Falling home prices and a weak housing market are one more element of deflation. This is happening not just in the US, but also much of europe is suffering a real estate crisis. Japan has seen its real estate market fall almost 90% in some cities, and that is part of the reason they have had 20 years with no job growth, and that the nominal GDP is where it was 17 years ago.

In the short run, reducing government spending (in the US at local, state, and federal levels) is deflationary in the short run. Martin Wolfe, in the Financial Times, wrote the following last week (arguing that that the move to “fiscal austerity” is ill-advised):

“We can see two huge threats in front of us. The first is the failure to recognize the strength of the deflationary pressures … The danger that premature fiscal and monetary tightening will end up tipping the world economy back into recession is not small, even if the largest emerging countries should be well able to protect themselves. The second threat is failure to secure the medium-term structural shifts in fiscal positions, in management of the financial sector and in export-dependency, that are needed if a sustained and healthy global recovery is to occur.”

Finally, high and chronic unemployment is deflationary. It reduces final demand as people simply don’t have the money to buy things.

Deflation that comes from increased productivity is desirable. In the late 1800’s the US went through an almost 30-year period of deflation that saw massive improvements in agriculture (the McCormick reaper, etc.) and the ability of producers to get their products to markets through railroads. In fact, too many railroads were built and a number of the companies that built them collapsed. Just as we experienced with the fiber-optic cable build-out, there was soon too much railroad capacity, and freight prices fell. That was bad for the shareholders but good for consumers. It was a time of great economic growth.

But deflation that comes from a lack of pricing power and lower final demand is not good. It hurts the incomes of both employer and employee, and discourages entrepreneurs from increasing their production capacity, and thus employment.

That is why it will be important to watch the CPI numbers even more closely in the coming months. The trend, as noted above, is for lower inflation. If that continues, the Fed will act. I did a summary of Bernanke’s 2002 speech on deflation a few weeks ago. For those who didn’t read it, here is the link.

If the US gets into outright deflation, I expect the Fed to react by increasing their assets and by outright monetization, buying treasuries from insurance and other companies, as putting more money into banks when they are not lending does not seem to be helpful as far as deflation is concerned. More mortgages? Corporate debt? Moving out the yield curve? All are options the Fed will consider. We need to be paying attention.

One final thought before I hit the send button. Recessions are by definition deflationary. One of the things we learned from This Time is Different by Rogoff and Reinhart is that economies are more fragile and volatile and that recessions are more frequent after a credit crisis. Further, spending cuts are better than tax increases at improving the health of an economy after a credit crisis.

I think we can take it as a given that there is another recession in front of the US. That is the natural order of things. But it would be better to have that inevitable recession as far into the future as possible, and preferably with a little inflationary cushion and some room for active policy responses. A recession next year would be problematic, if not catastrophic. Rates are as low as they can go. Higher deficits are not in the cards. Yet unemployment would shoot up and tax collections go down at all levels of government.

That is why I worry so much about taking the Bush tax cuts away when the economy is weak. Now, maybe those who argue that tax increases don’t matter are right. They have their academic studies. But the preponderance of work suggests their studies are flawed and at worst are guilty of data mining (looking for data that supports your already-developed conclusions.)

Professor Michael Boskin wrote today in the Wall Street Journal:

“The president does not say that economists agree that the high future taxes to finance the stimulus will hurt the economy. (The University of Chicago’s Harald Uhlig estimates $3.40 of lost output for every dollar of government spending.) Either the president is not being told of serious alternative viewpoints, or serious viewpoints are defined as only those that support his position. In either case, he is being ill-served by his staff.”

As noted at the beginning of this letter, I find it very encouraging that there is a movement among Democrats to think about at least postponing the demise of the Bush tax cuts until the economy is in better shape. Those who advocate letting them lapse are in effect operating on our economic body without benefit of anesthesia. If they are wrong, the consequences will be most severe.

We need to think any tax increase through very thoroughly.

John Mauldin is president of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Contact John at John@FrontlineThoughts.com.

Disclaimer
John Mauldin is president of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC, a registered investment advisor. All material presented herein is believed to be reliable but we cannot attest to its accuracy. Investment recommendations may change and readers are urged to check with their investment counselors before making any investment decisions.

The markets appear to be very nervous in general and particularly nervous about the EU stress test results, which have pressed the euro lower versus the U.S. dollar, which makes sense, but also has been accompanied by a sell-off in spot gold from $1204 to $1190. The gold sell-off does not make sense in relation to the flight away from euros, but is understandable if some investors continue to use any strength in gold to liquidate long positions to raise cash.

Instead of buying gold because of “nervous uncertainty,” they are exiting that market. In any case, a break of 1.2730 in the euro/dollar will indicate that the recovery rally period from 1.1875 to 1.3030 is complete, and that another loop down is in progress. Meanwhile, spot gold prices need to hold support in the $1175-$1165 area to remain in a relatively healthy technical condition.

Mike Paulenoff is a 26-year veteran of the financial markets and author of MPTrader.com.

“You can take your loans and shove them,” the Hungarian economic minister, György Matolcsy, did not say. But that’s what he was thinking. Watch out. The Hungarians are trendsetters. They ran a budget deficit of 9% of GDP back in 2006. They got a $20 billion bailout in 2008 and have been living with austerity measures ever since. The current budget is only in deficit by 3.8% of GDP – barely a third of the US level.

After a regime change in April, they’ve had enough. “We told the IMF/EU that further austerity was out of the question,” said Matolcsy.

Les Echos reported this week that 64% of French workers were retired by age 60. People working for favored state enterprises – such as the SNCF, which runs the train system…or for the “fonction publique,” which keeps people from getting anywhere – may retire earlier. They get extra credit for years worked in hardship overseas destinations – such as Tahiti, for example. And a French politician can get a pension after only 6 years in government. In the old days it was a lucky man who retired before his beard grows white. Now, if he plays his cards right, he could begin collecting a pension before his beard starts to grow at all.

This information comes in the context of a great debate, “a parliamentary battle.” The French government has proposed a law raising the retirement age to 62. The socialists have proposed 150 amendments. Over at The Financial Times, meanwhile, the editors have devoted this week to their own great debate on the subject. “To tighten, or not to tighten – that is the question,” writes Martin Wolf.

The rumbles in Paris and London are just two of many mock skirmishes going on. Neither side wants to aim too carefully at the real problem; they fear they might hit themselves!

You’ll recall, the G20 – the USA dissenting – urged member states to cut public expenses. They pledged to cut public deficits in half by 2013 and to stabilize debt by 2016. But Hungary has already broken ranks.

The big spenders insist that more spending is needed to protect the system. The cutters say more cuts are the thing that will preserve it. Neither has any doubt that the system is worth saving. That, precisely, is the target of today’s back page artillery.

Otto von Bismarck would hardly believe what a smashing success his innovation has become. Practically every advanced government picked it up in one form or other. The little guy liked it because he thought it gave him something for nothing. And the welfare state proved him right. The expenses of the first generations in the system were easily supported by the larger, richer generations that came after. Leaders liked it too, because it made the voters more dependent and controllable: the masses wouldn’t revolt as long as their pension checks kept coming.

Ernest Ackerman must have smiled broadly when he got the first US Social Security check for 17 cents in 1937. Since then, the checks got bigger and came earlier. More benefits were added – education, health care, parks, libraries, unemployment compensation… Ordinary people began to spend more time in universities than they did in bars. Health care services included evermore complicated and expensive procedures. Thousands were employed to regulate, control, protect and administer the public weal. Millions more were able to malinger and leech. One got a subsidy for his farm. Another was ‘disabled’ at work. And still another had his bank bailed out.

The first problem is obvious; the costs got out of hand. The United States has one of the least extensive social welfare systems. (It makes up for it with military spending.) Yet, its basic figures are not much different from those of most european states. The US has a current deficit equal to about 12% of GDP and has debt approaching 100% of GDP. If you include state and local debt, as well as the under-funded liabilities of its pension and health care plans, the total rises to more than 500%. In other words, future generations will have to devote 5 years’ worth of total US output in order to pay for benefits awarded by a previous generation of politicians.

Over time, too, the ‘benefits’ tend to become more and more bogus. Providers and recipients connive in a kind of symbiotic zombie-ism. Perpetual students take pathetic and preposterous classes from permanent professors. Morbid patients, funded by the state, become the health care industry’s best customers. And early retirees clog the highways with their camping cars, when they should be at work. Chiselers, grifters, stuffed-shirts and time-wasters – the welfare state attracts them like a rich old widow attracts gigolos.

The masses are beginning to see this as a losing proposition; the swindle no longer works in their favor. New generations are often smaller. They may not be richer either. Staggered by debt and deadbeats, the next generation will have a hard enough time taking care of itself, let alone paying the accumulated expenses of the ones that came before.

Today, a taxpayer pays a euro to his government. With all the waste and corruption, he’s lucky if he gets 50 centimes’ worth of real services. Officials try to disguise these facts by borrowing, hiding the ‘social charges,’ and printing money. But word gets around: the welfare state no longer pays.

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing. For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.