Ben Bernanke...new captain of the Titanic?

Paul Krugman alluded to it yesterday but Bill Bonner says it straight out; Ben Bernanke has been appointed to be the new captain of the Titanic after Alan Greenspan piloted it towards an iceberg.

The Greenspan Fed, colluding with the federal government, brought about the biggest dose of financial stimulus the world has ever seen. Did it create a boom in America? Yes, but not the boom it wanted. What it had hoped to create was a charming old-fashioned economic upturn, in which consumers bought more, businesses hired more, and everyone ended up with more money. Instead, it created a boom in debt, and residential property. Americans were able to spend more, but they had no means of earning more.

The new jobs were created in China, not in America. It was a boom, but it was an ugly, ungainly one.

Now, when Americans spend, the Chinese hire. And when Americans stop spending, the poor Chinese assembly line worker gets laid off. Financially, too, globalization has brought a strange division of labor.

The Chinese (and Asia generally) export deflation. They can make "stuff" cheaper than anyone. The more they compete for market share, the more sophisticated their production facilities become, and the further prices fall. We Americans (and Europeans, too) are happy beneficiaries. Let the poor Asians bust their humps! We'll think.

But how do we think we'll pay for the things they make? Ah...that's the other side of the globalized financial market. While they export deflation, we export inflation. We export money. Our money is then recycled to central banks all over Asia, where it is bought with local currency. The central banks must create currency to buy it, which causes inflation all over the world. Since prices of manufactured goods are falling – thanks to Asian production – the inflation seeps into the prices of things Asians can't manufacture: property, oil, gold and luxury goods and services.

Like I have been saying all along the Bush "recovery" was no recovery at all. It was built on the creation of debt not the creation of wealth. The globalized economy business leaders have fought for and the Thomas Friedman's of the world have pushed have resulted in an economy that the United States no longer has control of.
We don't even own our own country.

Asian central banks now have enough dollars to control every company on the Dow. But rather than buy equities, they've bought bonds. This, combined with a 24-year bull market in bonds, is what made Alan Greenspan a genius. As long as the Asians were buying and rates were falling, asset prices increased; the maestro looked like he knew what he was doing.

And now poor Ben Bernanke takes the helm of a ship headed towards a disaster.

But now, Ben Bernanke faces the lopsided world that Alan Greenspan helped to build; he may not find being a central banker so agreeable. The great bull market in bonds appears to have come to an end in June of 2003. Since then, the 10-year T-note has gone down. As it falls, the cost of credit goes up, reaching 4.59% yesterday. If the trend continues, as it is likely to do, the next Fed governor may pull on levers, twist knobs and find that nothing good happens. Asset prices will decline with bonds; Americans' purchasing power will fall with their homes. Bernanke won't have to raise rates; bond investors will be raising them for him.

Prior to the 2004 election there were a few wise Republicans who realized that the policies of the Bush administration were going to result in serious problems both on the economic front and in Iraq. Many of them quietly hoped that Kerry would win so the Democrats would be saddled with the blame. The same can be said for Greenspan and the economy. Greenspan has sent the US economy towards that proverbial iceberg but he is going to jump ship before it hits leaving poor Ben Bernanke hold the wheel.