Thar She Blows: The Last Hurrah for the Banking System

by Mike Whitney

 

The Bush administration will be mailing out another batch of "stimulus" checks in the very near future. There's no way around it. The Fed is in a pickle and can't lower interest rates for fear that food and energy prices will shoot to stratosphere. At the same time, the economy is shrinking faster than anyone thought possible with no sign of a rebound. That leaves stimulus checks as the only way to "prime the pump" and keep consumer spending chugging along. Otherwise business activity will slow to a crawl and the economy will tank. There's no other choice.

The daily barrage of bad news is really starting to get on people's nerves. Most of the TV chatterboxes have already cut-out the cheery stock market predictions and no one is praising the "impressive powers of the free market" anymore. They know things are bad, real bad. A pervasive sense of gloom has crept into the television studios just like it has into the stock exchanges and the luxury penthouses on Manhattan's West End. That same sense of foreboding is creeping like a noxious cloud to every town and city across the country. Everyone is cutting back on non-essentials and trimming the fat from the family budget. The days of extravagant impulse-spending at the mall are over. So are the "big ticket" purchases and the "go-for-broke" trips to Europe. Consumer confidence is at historic lows, disposal income is a thing of the past, and all the credit cards are at their limit. The country is drowning in red ink.

Something has gone terribly wrong with the economy, but no one knows what it is? In the last three months bank credit has shrunk faster than any time since 1948. The banks aren't lending and people aren't borrowing; that's a lethal combo. When credit-creation slows, the economy falters, unemployment rises and the misery index soars. That's why Bush will have to mail out more stimulus checks whether he wants to or not; his back is against the wall. He'll try to make it look like the economy is still breathing on its own and just needs a spell on the respirator before resuming its normal activities. But Bush is wrong; we've reached Peak credit and the blood-transfusions won't work anymore. The vital signs have shut down and rigamortis is already setting in. Our goose is cooked.

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