United States

Expanded Version: The US Economy Has Not Recovered And Will Not Recover

Paul Craig Roberts

The US economy died when middle class jobs were offshored and when the financial system was deregulated.

Jobs offshoring benefitted Wall Street, corporate executives, and shareholders, because lower labor and compliance costs resulted in higher profits. These profits flowed through to shareholders in the form of capital gains and to executives in the form of “performance bonuses.” Wall Street benefitted from the bull market generated by higher profits.

The Central Banks hate physical cash. So much so they there will likely try to ban it in the near future.

You see, almost all of the “wealth” in the financial system is digital in nature.

1)   The total currency (actual cash in the form of bills and coins) in the US financial system is a little over $1.36 trillion.

2)   When you include digital money sitting in short-term accounts and long-term accounts then you’re talking about roughly $10 trillion in “money” in the financial system.

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

Larry Summers is a pretentious Keynesian fool, but I refer to him as the Great Thinker’s Vicar on Earth for a reason. To wit, every time the latest experiment in Keynesian intervention fails - as 84 months of ZIRP and massive QE clearly have - he can be counted on to trot out a new angle on why still another interventionist experiment or state sponsored financial fraud is just the ticket.

The president will visit Cuba as part of a Latin American tour next month:

The US president confirmed his Cuba trip in a post on Twitter, saying: “Next month, I’ll travel to Cuba to advance our progress and efforts that can improve the lives of the Cuban people.”

Just when traders thought that the biggest and most violent 3-day short squeeze in 7 years was about to end...

... a squeeze that has resulted in 3 consecutive 1%+ sessions for the S&P for the first time since October 2011, overnight we got one of the Fed's biggest faux-hakws, St. Louis Fed's Jim Bullard, who said that it would be "unwise" to continue hiking rates at this moment, and hinted that "if needed", the most natural option for the Fed going forward would be to do further Q.E.