Saturday, February 11, 2017

In Purchasing Power Parity - America is a Third World Country


sprottmoney |  What metric does PricewaterhouseCooper rely upon as the basis for its economic projection? It uses an economic term called “purchasing power parity”. It is the total purchasing power of that population.

PWC argues that this produces a clearer picture of actual economic strength because it cancels out price differentials between economies. In general, prices are much higher in Western economies than in the Emerging Market countries (and even BRICS nations), thus having higher nominal amounts of wealth circulating in Western economies can be deceiving, since it can buy less stuff.

What makes this metric and report so interesting is that PWC is essentially projecting the real wealth levels of these populations. This projection is about a lot more than just evening out price differentials.

Canada’s GDP is more than four times as much as that of Egypt, and more than five times as much as that of Pakistan. Even by 2050; PWC estimates that Canada will still have GDP greater than either nation. But Egypt and Pakistan will have stronger economies, because their populations will have more real wealth circulating in those economies.

We’re not dealing with a small differential here. Note that PWC is talking about Egypt and Pakistan having much stronger economies than Canada. By 2050, measured in purchasing power parity, both Egypt and Pakistan will have economies more than 1/3 stronger than Canada.

This seems to be incongruous. If Canada will still have the larger economy by 2050 (as measured in GDP), why will Egypt and Pakistan both have stronger economies, as measured in the real wealth circulating within that economy? We get a large clue by looking at a chart which is familiar to regular readers.
For the past 8+ years; the bankers of the Federal Reserve and the bankers of Wall Street have been boasting about all the “wealth” that has been created in the United States during the mythical U.S. recovery. Yes, lots and lots of wealth.

Regular readers know that B.S. Bernanke conjured more than $3 trillion of new U.S. funny-money into existence during the infamous Bernanke Helicopter Drop, quintupling the entire U.S. money supply in less than five years. And every, single dollar was handed to the Big Banks of Wall Street – for free. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Thanks to the magic of “fractional-reserve banking”, where U.S. banks are allowed to lend $35 for every $1 they receive. The $3+ trillion which B.S. Bernanke handed to them became well over $100 trillion in new liquidity. That works out to more than $300,000 per American.

So why are there roughly 50 million permanently unemployed Americans? Why are more than 40 million forced to rely upon food stamps to survive? Because when the bankers conjured their $100+ trillion into existence (for free), they kept it all – kept it all for their Masters, the oligarchs. What did the oligarchs do with that extra $100+ trillion?

As the chart above clearly shows, the oligarchs stuffed most of that $100+ trillion into their own hoards, spending virtually nothing. Of course that’s not entirely true either. They gambled with much of their funny money, in the bankers’ private, unregulated, rigged casino – the derivatives market. The derivatives market is a hoard of private wealth which never circulates in the real economy that is somewhere in the magnitude of $1.5 quadrillion ($1,500 trillion).

We’re no longer sure how large the rigged casino has swollen, since in 2010 the bankers changed their “definition” of the casino, and overnight the derivatives market (supposedly) shrunk by 50%. This financial cesspool is the most gigantic repository of dark pool liquidity the world has ever seen.

The gambling done in the derivatives market is used to manipulate the real economy, but none of the “wealth” in that rigged casino ever circulates within the real economy. The chart above, the heartbeat of the U.S. economy, shows what happens when most of the wealth/liquidity in an economy is hoarded: the economy withers and dies.

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What Is France To Do With The Thousands Of Soldiers Expelled From Africa?

SCF  |    Russian President Vladimir Putin was spot-on this week in his observation about why France’s Emmanuel Macron is strutting around ...