Virtual Rome

Modular Apartment Buildings

Currency in Circulation and Excess Reserves

I think that Currency in Circulation is a pretty good measure of the real economy.

Rich people don't need cash.  They just pull out their Amex Platinum card even on the golf course to tip the caddy who has an app for that.  Then they have their accountant pay off the bill from a trust fund.  Your middle class debt slave has his salary automatically deposited to his account, and his mortgage and car payment automatically deducted.  Once in a while he might take out cash for a night on the town.

But their is a whole other underclass of working class people who don't trust or use banks at all.  As soon as they get a check, they convert it into cash.  And they pay everything in cash, and if cash doesn't work, a money order.

So what are the numbers?  Exhibit A, Currency in Circulation.

The right hand axis is percent  change times 100 to try to make these similar sized.  As you can see, right now, the cash is at about $1.4 trillion, growing at about 6% per year.  The growth tends to decrease until a recession starts and then it skyrockets.  Another indicator that we are not yet in a recession.

Exhibit B - Excess Reserves

The excess reserves steadily decline, except during periods of quantitative easing.  The excess reserves are of no benefit to anyone. (Except maybe the government, because the Fed collects extra interest in the range of about $100 billlion per year, which it then turns over to the government as a stealth tax and to insure the government's gratitude to their owners, the monied class.)

So my quick analysis of this is that the real economy is growing at about 6% per year.  And quantitative easing had absolutely no impact on that at all, and may have even had a negative impact by making interest rates drop.  (Remember that old prudent people would like to live off the interest on their savings no matter what the crazy Keynesian scientists want them to do and if they are earning less interest they will cut back on spending).

In my opinion, the Fed should engage in quantitative tightening and start draining the excess reserves, starting with the shorter-term notes.  This will cause interest rates to rise naturally, which is a good and healthy thing, which shows respect for the currency, and this will actually help the economy.

The End Game

Stepping Out

Looks easy

Credit Card Hacks

Macedonia vs the ravaging horde

http://www.balkanalysis.com/macedonia/2016/02/10/macedonia-to-seal-southern-border-employ-unconventional-methods-ahead-of-anticipated-migrant-surge/

"Germany and Greece are in a secret alliance over the migrant issue; they are opposed by the Visegrad countries, which constitute the core of a second and rival European alliance. Macedonia, therefore, has become the front line in a struggle between much bigger powers, owing to its strategic position- as in several wars of the past."

Immigration Crisis

$19 trillion national debt

The national debt just reached $19,012,827,698,417.93 on 1/28/2016.

It reached $18 trillion on about 11/27/2014 or about 14 months ago.  The pace seems to have increased, so I expect it to reach $20 trillion on about 2/1/2017, right after the new president is sworn in.

Suburban hell

Devastating Metastasizing Global Depression On its Way

$30 Trillion National Debt in 10 years

The accumulation of those deficits will deepen the gross public debt from $18.1 trillion at the end of 2015 to $29.3 trillion in 2026. By contrast, the debt stood at $10.6 trillion when Mr. Obama took office in 2009.  Looking decades into the future, the picture only gets worse, the CBO said.

“Beyond the 10-year period, if current laws remained in place, the pressures that had contributed to rising deficits during the baseline period would accelerate and push debt up even more sharply. Three decades from now, for instance, debt held by the public is projected to equal 155 percent of GDP, a higher percentage than any previously recorded in the United States,” the analysts concluded.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jan/25/warning-feds-now-foresee-30-trillion-debt/

Humans Need Not Apply

Frederick Taylor vs Slackers

New largest prime number found

https://www.ucmo.edu/news/cooper.primenumber2016.cfm

Missouri is the world leader in finding huge prime numbers.  The latest one is 2^74207281 – 1.  It is 22 million digits long.

A plan to improve transportation in Denver

http://reason.org/files/reducing_congestion_denver.pdf

One of the more interest ideas is to create 4 new north-south "managed arterials"/freeways on US-93, Wadsworth, Colorado Blvd/University, Parker/Buckley/Airport/Tower/US 85.  And 5 new east-west freeways on Arapahoe Ave/Baseline, 104th, Colfax, US 285/Hampden, Ridgegate Parkway/Titan Rd.  This would require building about 125 new intersections at a cost of about 35 million each, for a total of $4.2 billion.

The total cost of the plan is $52 billion, with a large portion of it paid by tolls.

Curitiba

Very interesting documentary.  The secret?  Dedicated bus lanes

What a difference five months makes

The projections in August 2015 were that the long-term national debt would stabilize at about 77% of GDP.  Now, the debt will reach 86% of GDP within 10 years and keep rising.

"The near record-high national debt is on an unsustainable path. CBO now projects deficits more than tripling, from $439 billion in 2015 to $1.37 trillion by 2026, with trillion dollar deficits returning by 2022 – three years earlier than prior projections. Debt held by the public, meanwhile, will grow by over $10 trillion from $13.1 trillion at the end of 2015 to $23.8 trillion by 2026. As a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), debt will grow from 74 percent of GDP in 2015 – already twice its pre-recession levels – to 86 percent of GDP in 2026. By comparison, August projections showed debt on track to reach roughly 77 percent of GDP, or $21 trillion, by 2025."
--http://crfb.org/blogs/deficits-rise-latest-budget-projections

Once trillion dollar deficits return, it will be almost impossible to ever cut them, because most of the deficits will be made up of social programs and interest on the debt.

I actually expect trillion dollar deficits to return next year, as a reaction to the "Greater Recession" (I just made that up).

Why go downtown at all?

 A video from 1965 talking about urban decay in St. Louis.

The suburbs surround what we have long thought of as the central city, the core area, but what will happen to the surrounding belt of suburbs if this core simply disintegrates and then
vanishes? Could the suburban belt just go on expanding forever leaving a bigger and bigger circle of nothing much in the middle, a bigger and bigger hole in the doughnut?
--http://nextstl.com/2015/12/why-go-downtown-at-all-presaging-urban-decline-in-st-louis/

Nomi Prins on the downward spiral