The Only Part That Mattered In Obama's Telethon (Karl Denninger)

 

The Market Ticker ® - Commentary on The Capital Markets

Posted 2010-09-20 14:36
by Karl Denninger
in Investing

The Only Part That Mattered In Obama's Telethon

 

Yes, telethon.

Let me direct you to the only question that had value from an investment perspective:

SANTELLI: Mr. President. If I were to ask an investor would he invest in a company that for every dollar it spent it had to borrow 42 cents, I think that investor would think long and hard. Now if you look at the amount of money the government takes in and the amount of spending, those are pretty much the numbers for our government right now.

Does it bother you that 42 percent of our spending is borrowed even understanding that we have to deficit spend under tough times. How long can the U.S. continue to spend in that fashion without potentially hurting our long time financial health.

OBAMA: Well, it bothers me a lot. It bothered me when I was running for office and it bothered me when I arrived and I had a $1.3 trillion deficit wrapped in a bow and waiting for me in the Oval Office.

So, the answer to Rick's question is we've got to do something about it. And we have to do something about it fairly rapidly. The first thing you do is not dig it deeper. That's why this tax debate is important. We can't give $700 billion away to some of America's wealthiest people. We've got to make sure we're responsible for our budget, that's point #1....

The one thing I have to say to the public is that about 60 percent of our budget is entitlements, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And a lot of the discretion I have is somewhat limited on these programs.

Now part of the reason health-care reform was so important is because the biggest driver of our long term budget deficits is Medicare. If our economy is growing at 2 or 3 or 4 percent, but health care costs are going up 6, or 7 or 8 percent, than the budget will blow up no matter how many cuts I make in other programs...

Right.  But notice how he sidesteps this and tries to turn it into a growth problem?  It's not.

 

19.6%: Social Security
16.1%: Unemployment/Welfare
12.8%: Medicare
8.2%: Medicaid/SCHIP

56.7% - right now, here, today.

100% - 42% = 58%, or basically the portion of the budget that encompasses entitlements.

Entitlements consume, for all intents and purposes, every dollar of tax receipts in the here and now.  Not tomorrow, not as growth in medical spending occurs, not in the future.

Right here, right now, today.

Note that we haven't spent one nickel on defense yet.  Nor have we paid the interest on the debt, which is quite mandatory.  Nor have we funded one of our so-called "discretionary" programs, including Homeland Security, Energy, Education, HUD, Department of State, Veterans Affairs, Justice or anything else.

What President Obama told you is that The Federal Government has no plan to deal with this, not now and not in the future.  It cannot even meet its own entitlement spending from the taxes it collects, leaving the entirety of the rest of the government, including national defense, to be put on the credit card.

You were told, today, that our government is insolvent.

Not "might become" insolvent if we don't change our ways.

The United States is insolvent, right here, right now, today, and The President announced it for all who cared to listen worldwide on national television.

President Obama says "we can't afford" that $700 billion.  But that number is over 10 years, as are all numbers proffered by the CBO and other agencies when talking about the budget and debt.  Those numbers are thrown around because they make you think they're big now, which is especially important when a politician wants to lie to you about what they can and will do about deficits tomorrow.

In point of fact it's $70 billion a year, or about $5.8 billion a month.

The Federal Government accumulates, at today's run rates, approximately $4.1 billion in deficits per day. 

That is, this big fat "$700 billion" amounts to roughly 5% of the deficit, and that is what we would "collect" if taxes go up and people do not shift behavior as a consequence (but they probably will.)

Got it yet?

The "Bush Tax Cuts" are absolutely irrelevant to this discussion.  The problem is not found in taxes and cannot be solved via tax policy.  President Bush, via signing Medicare Part D, dramatically exacerbated this problem, but he was hardly the one who started it.  For that you need to look back to FDR and Eisenhower, along with all the others since including The Right's "standard bearer" Ronald Reagan.

It is mathematically impossible to solve this problem without dramatically cutting back on entitlement spending - by something approximating one third to one half.

That isn't going to happen (voluntarily) either.

So as an investor you are reduced to one - and only one - question:

How long will the "bubble view" of both Treasuries and Equites hold up - that is, for how long will people buy both stocks (at ridiculous bubble-spending levels where the government is providing 12% of GDP's gross amount via deficit borrowing) and bonds (funding said 12% of GDP) before those very same people have sink into their skulls The Admission The President of The United States just made on National Television: WE DO NOT HAVE THE ABILITY TO FUND THE GOVERNMENT TODAY AND STRUCTURALLY NEVER WILL, BECAUSE HE DOES NOT HAVE THE DISCRETION TO DECREASE SPENDING IN THE PROGRAMS THAT CONSUME ALL OF PRESENT TAX REVENUES.

That's it folks.  That's the only question to ask as a long-term investor.

For how long does the mass-delusion last?

Nothing else matters, because when (not if) that delusion ends the valuations of both stocks and bonds are going to collapse.

Not "dip", not "recede", not "sell off."

Collapse.