Episode 45 April 13, 2020.
CLP Topic Category: Economic Collapse.
U. S. National Covid Economic Collapse and the Collapse of the U. S. Dollar.
Our podcast today is titled, U. S. National Covid Economic Collapse and the Collapse of the U. S. Dollar.
This podcast audio and text is just the introduction to a much longer article, available at the clpnewsnetwork.com.
The other sections of the longer article are:
Section 1. The Origins of the Economic Collapse.
Section 2. The Collapse of the National GDP.
Section 3. The Effect of the GDP Collapse on the U. S. Dollar as International Reserve Currency.
Section 4. The Collapse of the U. S. Dollar.
Section 5. Trump’s Economic Goals for Economic Growth.
The full audio and text of this podcast is available for free, for one week. The entire historical archive of all CLP podcasts is available for an annual subscription of $30.
Introduction: How The Covid Political Public Relations Panic Damaged the U. S. Economy.
Our podcast extends the analysis of Angelo Codevilla about the economic effect of Trump’s initial March 15, 2020, “15 days to stop the spread,” decision to shut the U. S. economy down, and his subsequent decision to shut the nation’s economy down for an additional 30 days, on March 30, 2020.
In his article, “Is the President Forgetting Politics 101?” Codevilla combines a political analysis with an economic analysis in order to describe President Trump’s decision to shut the U. S. economy down.
Codevilla’s analysis begins with the identification of an American “ruling class” that is at war with President Trump’s effort to defend the sovereign national economic interest.
The ruling class wants globalism, not Trump’s economic nationalism.
Codevilla writes,
“The ruling class savors the grip on us that it has achieved during the past three weeks—above all the presumption that we must quietly accept non-legal decrees from on high. It will not give up that grip without a fight. President Trump has placed himself on a path that leads to political suicide. He did this by surrendering to the ruling class—Drs. Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, et al, not to mention House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, his judgment on whether and for how long, the country should be shut down.”
We extend Codevilla’s analysis of the ruling class to include their motivation to damage Trump, politically. Trump had been having campaign rallies where he touted the stock market and economic growth as benefitting working class Americans.
It was imperative for the political forces who hate Trump to take those two issues away from him.
TABLE B-56. Common stock prices and yields, 2000-2019
The Dow Jones increased from 24,719, in 2017, to 28,538, at the end of 2019.
The GDP was increasing at an average annual growth rate of 3%.
TABLE 8-9 real gdp by industry
After the ruling class unleashed the fear panic, the Dow Jones dropped to a low around 18,000, and GDP is expected to decline about 35% by the end of 2020.
The ruling class used the public relaltions panic of Covid to destroy Trump’s two main political issues, and the damage to the economy, via shutting the economy down, was collateral damage to their main goal of damaging Trump.
As Bill Gates also suggested, banning large public gatherings, such as Trump rallies, may also be a good idea to stop the spread and flatten the curve.
Prior to the Covid panic, the ruling class had already damaged the economic structure of America with its political promotion of disastrous trade deals.
The trade deals caused the American economy to bifurcate into a component of big companies that benefit from global trade, and the rest of the economy that is not connected to global markets.
After the economy split into two parts, the labor market shifted from a diversified job structure to a job structure where 80% of all jobs were in the service sector.
The ruling class had soothingly murmured, in 1992, that the loss of U. S. manufacturing jobs would be replaced by high-paying, stable jobs in the service sector, commonly called the gig economy.
That was a lie, on the same order of magnitude as the lies of the Bill Gates-funded IHME model that Trump relied upon to shut the economy down.
The shift to a service sector economy left the labor market and economy much weaker to recover from an economic collapse because the service sector does not generate the same level of income and employment multipliers as manufacturing.
For example, in order to produce a dollar of output, each of the six service sectors requires about 3cents from the manufacturing sector. The economy, after the trade deals, was entirely dependent on consumer spending, much of which was spent on cheap Chinese imports.
Every dollar of consumer spending delivered to the finished goods, final demand market in services, like bars and retail shops, generates an additional 15 cents in indirect income in other sectors.
The consumer spending services part of the economy became disconnected from the manufacturing economy because manufacturing was now in China.
In order to produce a dollar of output, the manufacturing sector requires 34 cents from its own supply chain and only about 9 cents from the 6 service sectors.
Every dollar of output delivered by manufacturing to the final demand markets creates about $2 worth of indirect income benefits, and an additional 50 cents in induced, or third round benefits.
Bureau of Economic Analysis bea commodity by industry
The transition to the services sector, as a result of trade with China, weakened the U.S. economy because services are not well integrated into the rest of the economy, and have very few income multiplier linkages with manufacturing.
The national economy is weak because 70% of all GDP is in the services sector, and about 80% of all jobs are in the services sector.
Even if the economy is opened back up, the economic structure is already too weak to transmit employment and income multipliers throughout the gig economy.
Large global corporations, and the ruling class, will not suffer to the same extent as the gig economy because the global corporations still have their global interindustry supply chains to transmit economic growth to that part of the economy.
In other words, as a result of the bifurcation, about 100% of all future GDP will be related to the 30% of the economy that is connected to the global market.
The U. S. economy, and the social structure, will look just like the European economy and social structure, with large corporations conducting business as usual, and the rest of society making a living cutting each other’s hair and painting each other’s toenails.
The reason that Kudlow and Navarro are wrong about the U. S. economy “bouncing back,” whenever Trump gets around to opening the economy back up is that the economic structure of the American economy was already damaged by the trade deals, and the gig service sector does not have interindustry multiplier linkages with the rest of the economy.
Just like Chicago’s economy, in the 1980s, the U. S. economy has been “hollowed out” by the trade deals. Trump’s Covid economic stimulus, that would have worked in America, prior to 1992, is wasted because the employment and income multipliers are gone.
We argue that this will not be a hockey stick, V-shaped, economic recovery. The income pathways to distribute income across all social classes no longer exist.
This argument about the economic importance of supply chains and multipliers is similar to the argument about the economic weakness caused by the global corporations moving the biotech and pharma interindustry supply chains to China.
The economic sovereignty of the nation is damaged by having the medical supply chains in China, and the crony capitalists who are responsible for moving the supply chains to China are the same forces that are undermining Trump’s Presidency.
It will take years to rebuild the national economic interindustry linkages, even if Trump is successful in compelling the companies to move manufacturing production back to the U. S.
The structural weakness of the service sector in generating economic growth is made even more damaging because the service sector does not generate technological innovation.
Almost 75% of all future economic growth is caused by technological innovation, not productivity improvements.
And, that technological economic growth is caused by private business capital investments in new technology ventures, not increased government spending.
Trump’s massive new government spending stimulates fleeting, transitory, increases in consumer consumption, but does not increase private sector investment in technology innovation.
The ruling class has been successful in consolidating technology innovation in a big business-university closed loop of research, where the benefits of innovation are tightly controlled by the global companies.
In the same way that the Covid stimulus is wasted because the economic structure has been damaged, the large corporations direct the benefits of innovation to themselves, and not to the broader domestic economy.
In other words, the global corporations, and the ruling class, benefit from this closed innovation platform, while the rest of the American society suffers.
This is one explanation of why Gates and Fauci want a university-corporate research based vaccine to deal with Covid, and are not interested in promoting the existing malaria drug to treat the disease.
Gates and Fauci are globalists, intent on protecting globalism, not Trump’s national economic sovereignty.
That unelected big business power over technology innovation is not going to change, when Trump finally decides to open up the economy.
As both Codevilla, and Rush Limbaugh have noted, the only person that can peel away Trump voters from Trump, is Trump.
Trump is on the verge of going from being a great President to being the world’s greatest magician, who made the greatest economy, in history, disappear in 60 days.
I am Laurie Thomas Vass, and this is the copyrighted Citizen Liberty Party News Network podcast for April 13, 2020.
Section 1. The Origins of the Economic Collapse.
Our economic analysis combines 3 components of the economy that are not usually seen together, to argue why the economic collapse will be dramatic and hard to correct.
We combine macro general equilibrium theory, with its emphasis on GDP, and productivity improvements, with the role of the U. S. dollar as the basic reserve currency for global trade, and the U. S. strength of the dollar as it relates to the Treasury’s role in increasing money supply of M1.
These are the 3 components of our model:
| Macro General Equilibrium, GDP. | Dollar as the international reserve, especially for the oil market. | Value of the U. S. dollar related to the growth of M1. |
The three components interact with each other, in a dynamic model, with the GDP component being the most important, initially, and later receiving feedback and feed forward effects from the international monetary exchange market, and the weak dollar, caused by the increase in the domestic money supply.
We begin our analysis of GDP by observing the decline in market demand in the raw goods, commodity markets, at the very beginning of the general equilibrium model.
As that initial decline in commodity market demand works it way through the economy, to the finished goods, final demand market, the value-added to all goods declines, leading to an aggregate GDP decline.
We are particularly interested in observing the demand decline in the oil markets, because oil transactions are denominated in the U. S. dollar. Oil market demand is down around 35%, compounded by a drop in oil price per barrel from around $55 to $23.
In normal economic conditions, a decline in oil price would be expected to lead to an increase in demand. Instead, the decline in oil prices has led to a decline in oil demand.
Our predictions of the aggregate decline in GDP of 35% is similar to both the JP Morgan model, that predicts a 40% decline in GDP, and the St. Louis Fed prediction of a 35% decline in employment.
Our model is different from theirs because we predict a cumulative, causal feedback effect, from the first round decline, that began March 15, while their models focus on short-term quarterly effects.
We predict that macro general equilibrium conditions will deteriorate, causing GDP to decline, by about 35% by the end of 2020, to a GDP of $14 trillion. Most of the remaining $14 trillion will be related to economic transactions in large global corporations.
The decline of the GDP will weaken the dollar as a unit for international currency transactions because the strength of the dollar, globally, depends on the strength of the U. S. economy, domestically.
The strength of the U. S. economy, at a $21 trillion GDP, provided credibility and value to the dollar as the international reserve currency.
Monetary growth and the increasing issuance of Treasury notes that are not backed by a strong economy will lead the dollar to collapse, in U. S. domestic transactions.
We estimate that, in 2019, when there was comparability between a 21 trillion dollar GDP, and a 20 trillion dollar national debt, that the U. S. dollar still had value.
The U. S. GDP will decline to around $14 trillion, and the amount of sustainable, comparable U. S. debt should be $14 trillion, not $24 trillion.
Trump’s $2 trillion dollar Covid relief package constitutes a 6% increase in M1 money supply of worthless U. S. Greenbacks, backed by worthless U. S. bonds, issued by the U. S. Treasury and gobbled down by the U. S. Federal Reserve.
Like Codevilla’s analysis, that combines politics with economics, our political analytical framework begins with crony corporate capitalism, where national economic policy decisions are made in secret to benefit the crony capitalists, the same entity that Codevilla calls the ruling class.
We begin our analysis of the economic collapse at the March 30 time period that Codevilla cites for President Trump’s decision, that was based on the Fauci and Birx bogus IHME model of hospital capacity, and deaths, related to Covid.
Trump’s initial instincts to re-open the economy on April 12 would have been correct because herd immunity had already spread through most of the nation, especially in the 40 million civilian population of California.
And, most of the Covid new cases, around 99%, recover. And, most of the reported deaths from Covid are entirely bogus.
However, on the last weekend in March, just before his first “15 days to stop the spread” order would expire, he allowed Fauci and Birx to overturn his instincts on the economy.
As Codevilla correctly describes, the globalist ruling class would have screamed bloody murder, no matter what Trump did that weekend. The ruling class intent was to damage Trump with the fake public relations scare, and they must scarcely believe their good luck that Trump is the one who shot himself in the foot by closing the economy.
Section 2. The Collapse of the National GDP.
The weakness in the U. S. economy from bifurcation into a global sector and a domestic sector can be seen in Table B-1, from the 2020 Economic Report of the President.
The final demand, finished goods sector in 2019 declined 7%, and net imports exceeded net exports by 2%.
National Income or Expenditure
B-1. Percent changes in real gross domestic product, 1969-2019
Table B-2 describes how personal consumption expenditures, in 2019, were already declining, while the most important economic variable for future economic growth, fixed investment in equipment, was only contributing .08% to GDP.
By the end of 2019, personal consumption expenditures on services represented $14 trillion, out of a $21 trillion GDP.
Before March 30, 2020, the U. S. economy was already overly dependent on consumer expenditures, which made the Trump decision to shut that part of the economy down more damaging to the overall GDP growth.
About 80% of the overall decline in GDP will be concentrated in that part of the economy. In other words, that part of the economy will decline about $11 trillion, from around $14 trillion, to around $3 trillion.
In conjunction with the bifurcation of the U. S. economy, and the shift to a services economy, the sources of income for workers also shifted. Hourly wage income, primarily from unstable gig work went up.
Most of the new job growth was in the service sector gig economy. Young millennials are correct to complain that the U. S. economy is not generating decent, upwardly mobile occupations because the gig economy is not connected to the global interindustry supply chains, which have good career paths.
At the same time as the economy became overly dependent on services, welfare payments from government to citizens also went up, from around $2.8 trillion in 2017, to about $3.1 trillion in 2019.
Exhibit 16 Sources of Personal Income
Exhibit 17 Employment non agric
At the same time that the service sector employment and income were increasing, the rate of private capital investment in technology innovation in equipment stagnated.
Exhibit 26 Private Fixed Investment
The rate of investment in 2018 was $1.222 trillion and was $1.24 trillion in 2019.
Our analysis is based on the idea that current capital investment today creates new interindustry supply chains, which creates new future markets, which distribute new flows of income that did not exist in the prior time periods.
We conclude this section with the argument that the rate of capital investment is too low, today, and that the service economy is too weak, to “bounce” back from a 35% decline in GDP that is concentrated in the services sector.
The national economy is wildly out of balance for future economic growth, with only 12 million workers in manufacturing and over 105 million in services.
TABLE B 29 Employees on non ag
Trump’s idea to increase government spending on infrastructure, or other boondoggles, will increase short term consumer consumption, and do nothing to increase private capital investment that re-creates the conditions of future economic growth.
Section 3. The Effect of the GDP Collapse on the U. S. Dollar as International Reserve Currency.
Our model explains the first round collapse as the effect of a decline of GDP on the dollar as the international reserve currency.
The first round effect has a second round feedback effect on the decline of the GDP.
These feed forward and feedback effects are cumulative, and causal. In other words, the first round effect of the decline in GDP causes confidence in the dollar to decline, which then causes GDP to decline even more.
The cumulative causation finally ends when the rate of future U. S. economic growth returns to the pre-panic level, and the value of the dollar has regained the confidence of parties to global exchanges.
The most important commodity denominated by the U. S. dollar is oil. However, the U. S. economy derives many non-market benefits from being the reserve currency.
Loans made by the IMF and other global agencies are denominated in dollars. The loans must be repaid in dollars, which provides future stability to the strength of the dollar, as long as both the lender and the borrower agree on the future value of the dollar loan repayments.
Central banks, which coordinate global financial policy to serve large corporations, hold 60% of their foreign exchange reserves in dollars. The banks want the current value of their dollar reserves to stay stable so that they do not end up holding worthless greenbacks.
The value of the dollar of their reserves is linked to the GDP strength of the U. S. economy.
A majority of all imports and exports of all nations are denominated in dollars, and the exchange of most international currency markets are denominated in dollars.
Both importers and exporters, plus all international currency traders, expect the dollar value to be stable, and those parties will seek other alternatives when confronting a 35% decrease in the value of the dollar.
The most important commodity traded on the global markets is oil. The trade in oil is so important that oil, itself, acts as a surrogate form of currency, commonly called “petrodollars.”
When oil petrodollars collapse, because demand for oil collapsed, the money effect on all other raw commodity markets causes the demand for other commodities to decline.
Prior to the collapse of U. S. GDP, the U. S. could use its position as the reserve currency to import goods at a low non-market, phantom monetary rate, simply by printing more dollars.
The monetary effect of the import payment gambit served to “monetize” the U. S. current account, which meant that foreign nations financed the U. S. deficits by providing a type of revolving credit line to the U. S. economy, which was denominated in dollars.
That U. S. import payment gambit worked, as long as the U. S. economy was strong.
That gambit will no longer work because the countries exporting goods to the U. S. do not want to be paid in worthless greenbacks, and do not want their own reserves of U. S. dollars to decline 35%
The decline of the value of the dollar, as the global reserve currency, reduces the purchasing power of the rest of the world, especially in the most important commodity, oil.
If, and when, Putin and the Crown Prince resolve their oil pricing disagreement, the price of oil will return to $55 per barrel, and the nations which have their reserve currency in worthless greenbacks will not be able to pay the increased price.
As long as global oil prices remain below $55 per barrel, the U. S. shale oil production cannot function at a profit, thus effectively eliminating shale oil as a source of export for the U. S.
The rest of the oil production in the U. S. was from drilled rigs, and the price per raw barrel had declined to around $8, to get the oil out of the ground. It cost another $15 per barrel to get the oil to the refinery and get it refined for shipment to the market.
In other words, the cost of a barrel of drilled rig oil in the U. S. that is ready for shipment is around $21- $23. This is great news for oil importers, as long as their dollar reserves are stable.
Prior to March 30, 2020, the real value of the U. S. dollar was holding steady, and the nominal value of the dollar was increasing. The stability of the dollar value is partially due to the stability the U. S. dollar obtains as the global reserve currency.
exhibit 4 real vs nominal dollar
The stability of the value of the dollar as the reserve currency depends on the strength of the U. S. economy. We predict that the value of the U. S. dollar as the reserve currency will decline by at least 35%, reflecting the decline in the GDP.
The cumulative causation of the second round feedback to the U. S. GDP will cause additional, but marginally diminishing, declines in U. S. economic growth.
Section 4. The Collapse of the U. S. Dollar
The operational funds to operate the Fed are not from Congressional appropriations, they are from internal corporate funds generated by the Fed in conducting its operations.
The revenue model of the Fed is risk-free and fool proof, and guarantees a net profit, every year.
First, the Treasury creates money by both printing dollars and selling bonds that are backed only by “promise to pay” as legal tender. The promise to pay depends on the strength of the U. S. economy.
Next, the Fed buys the bonds issued by the Treasury for its own investment account. The bonds are guaranteed to mature at a profit.
The Fed sells its bonds to its global banking partners, making profits on the sale of debt.
The profits from the Fed’s operations are then used by the Fed to provide the monetary reserves for the nation’s banking system, so that the banks will not go belly-up when they engage in risky speculative loans.
The Fed conducts this lucrative business model through one of its operational divisions, called the Open Market Committee, a secret insider trading system between the Fed and global banks.
The Fed imposes discipline on member banks by regulatory oversight, setting reserve requirements, which forces banks to buy the Fed’s bonds, and its manipulation of interest rates.
The federal funds rate is another secret, insider trading system that sets the rate of interest that member banks loan money to each other. The loans are guaranteed to make a profit, which encourages speculation.
Changes in the federal funds rate triggers a chain of economic and financial events that eventually lead to an economic collapse about every ten years.
The Federal funds rate is linked to the operations of a global banking cartel that controls economic conditions in all world governments.
Nothing about the Fed’s activities are under the legitimate authority of the consent of the governed. The operations of the Federal Open Market Committee do not require approval by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government.
Our model describes a feed forward and feed back effect from the collapse of the U. S. economy to the collapse of the U. S. dollar.
In the first round effect, the 35% decline in GDP causes the Treasury to issue more bonds and create more M1 money supply to increase financial liquidity. The government spends worthless dollars on worthless boondoggles like infrastructure projects.
The second round effects encompass both a feed back to the value of the dollar as the international reserve currency, and a cumulative negative effect on economic growth because the Government’s actions divert productive investment assets to non-productive assets, that do not create private capital investment in technology.
At the end of 2019, M1 was growing at a rate of about 6%, about 3% faster than could be sustained at a 3% GDP growth rate, to maintain a stable dollar value.
At the end of 2019, before the March 30, 2020, economic shut down, the Federal government was already $22 trillion in debt, on a $21 trillion dollar GDP.
At that time, $16 trillion of the debt was held by the public, and about $6 trillion was held in the investment account of the Fed.
At the end of March 2020, the Government issued $2 trillion in bonds for Covid relief. The new bonds were bought by the Fed, and increased the Federal debt to around $24 trillion.
The sustainable level of debt for a stable dollar value, based upon a $14 trillion dollar GDP is $14 trillion, not $24 trillion.
Our model predicts that the Fed is now holding worthless U. S. government debt, and that the citizens who obtain their $1200 Covid relief checks had better hurry and trade the worthless Covid greenbacks for an asset, like food, or gold, or guns and ammo, that will have longer durable market value than the greenbacks.
This problem of worthless dollars and worthless bonds will be compounded if Trump moves forward with an additional $2 trillion in so-called infrastructure projects.
Trump should know better that government spending is not the engine of economic growth. The engine of economic growth is private capital investment in technology ventures.
Increased government spending diverts potentially valuable capital assets into worthless government boondoggles.
Prior to the March 30, 2020, shut down, individual citizens were already paying about 75% of all government taxes, in the form of income taxes and retirement payments.
Prior to the massive increase in debt for Covid, the U. S. Government was already going into the hole about a trillion dollars a year.
Individual income taxes will not be paid if citizens are not working, and there is no other source of revenues for the government to tax. The value of the dollar is not sustainable if the U. S. government cannot repay its debt.
Continuing to print worthless greenbacks, and issue new bonds does not create the conditions for economic growth to get the American economy out of the hole, caused by the collapse of the economy, and the collapse of the U. S. dollar.
Section 5. Trump’s Economic Goals for Economic Growth.
Trump is currently claiming that the decision to open the economy back up is the hardest decision of his Presidency. Our analysis begs to differ.
His initial decision to open the economy back up on April 12, 2020, would have been the hardest, but best decision, he could have made. But, as in golf, he whiffed.
The national economy is seriously damaged by his incorrect decision, and his options to correct his bad decision are limited, and will take several years to work.
Trump is putting together an economic panel of advisors to provide advice on economic policy. The economists should focus on the top economic goals for Trump’ economic policy.
The first, most important goal, is to get the national financial and fiscal policies under control. There are currently about 2 million federal government workers, who are paid $331 billion per year. The federal workforce should be cut by 35%, reducing the federal payroll to $200 billion.
The national economic debt of $24 trillion should match the current GDP of $14 trillion. The debt is $10 trillion too high, which contributes to the continued weakness of the U. S. dollar.
Getting the federal government spending under control also means not wasting more money on government boondoggles, like the useless infrastructure project. Adding another $2 trillion to government debt does not solve the economic crisis.
The annual rate of M1 growth should be 3%, not 6%.
Second, the main economic goal is to increase the rate of private capital investment in existing and new technology ventures. The goal means new capital market mechanisms to target investments to the industrial clusters in the existing 350 metro regions.
Trump’s current idea of economic opportunity zones and apprenticeship could be improved if it was strategically focused on metro regions, and not directed from the central government.
The opportunity zones and apprenticeship programs should be combined with regional capital market investments in each metro region. (The Nexus of Financial and Political Interests between Crowd Funders and Regional Economic Development Professionals: The New-New Innovation Economics.)
The private sector in each metro region needs new econometric tools to target private capital investments. This type of targeting is not the job of governors or mayors. (The Practical Application of the Investment Management Methodology in U. S. Patent 7251627 B1: A Method of Identifying a Universe of Stocks for Inclusion into an Investment Portfolio.)
This capital market targeting is the job of registered investment advisors and capital market professionals in each region. (Increasing the Number of Crowdfunding Technological Investment Opportunities in Your Local Small Business Economy.)
Capital market professionals need to combine their capital market expertise with regional economic development goals, and they need better econometric models to use. (Using Feser’s Input-Output Model of Technological Affinities to Target Innovation Investments to Regional Industrial Value Chains.)
Trump now states that he will rely on his instincts about opening the economy. His initial instincts about opening the economy on April 12, 2020, would have been correct.
That date is now past, and every day Trump delays his decision makes his mistake of shutting the economy down even harder to correct.
I am Laurie Thomas Vass, and this podcast is a copyrighted production of the CLP News Network.
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Note to viewers. We believe that the ideological differences between socialists and conservatives are irreconcilable and that conservatives must prepare for what comes after the National civil dissolution. We advocate the state sovereignty framework of the Articles of Confederation, based upon a democratic republic of states.