“Obamacare” is the name commonly used for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010. The very moniker is indicative of how name-and-image-centric our world has become; Medicare was never called “Johnsoncare” when President Johnson signed it into law in 1965 and Johnson was not exactly a man of small-personality. At any rate, Obamacare or the PPACA ranks as one of the most misrepresented issues from the campaign, by both sides of the ever-slimming aisle.

The Tea-Party Conservative types get it embarrassingly wrong when they call it a “government takeover of health care.” Likewise, Progressive Obama-supporters are deluded in accepting it as the most sweeping healthcare reform since Medicare. (Side note: I wish the word ‘sweeping’ could be retired from politics until it actually means -sweeping.)

Here’s why. The PPACA does nothing to restructure the health insurance industry, anymore than the Dodd-Frank Act restructures the banking industry. This means everything else it attempts to do, positive or negative, will be vastly overshadowed by an industry accelerating to morph itself into a acquisition machine in order to circumvent anything that even smells like a restriction, including laws that exist and ones to come.

How? By doing the same thing energy and telecom companies did after they were deregulated in 1996, and that banks did after they were summarily deregulated (after moving that way for decades) in 1999. They are merging, consolidating, eliminating competitors, and controlling their domain. They are manufacturing power.

Investment bankers are roaming the world to exploit this hot new opportunity. That’s one reason insurance companies don’t even call themselves that anymore. Now, they are ‘managed health care’ companies. Call yourself a managed health care company, and you can buy everything from other insurance companies to hospitals to clinics to doctors. The more consolidation, the more fees bankers rake in, and the more premiums and medical reimbursements and health care procedures, each company can control.

The result of 1996 energy deregulation was a glut of crime-spawned bankruptcies like Enron. Likewise WorldCom led a pack of telecom degenerates in the production of tens of billions of dollars worth of accounting fraud. The final repeal of Glass-Steagall ignited a merge-fest of investment and commercial banks, their linkages ensuring that taxpayers, whose deposits have been protected since the New Deal, provide a safety-net upon which they can mint toxic assets loosely based on over-leveraged home mortgages, and engage in risky, speculative activity; big banks don’t go bankrupt when they fabricate values or lose big on stupid bets, they get federally subsidized in all sorts of ways.

You know who else is similarly too big to fail? The insurance industry. UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest health insurer covers 50% of the insurable population in over 30 states. Blue Cross-Blue Shield, covers 100 million people through a constellation of 38 sub-companies. They, and other insurance companies are growing in breadth. When companies consolidate, the result is less transparency, less competition, and more possibility for fraud and shady behavior. Every. Single. Time.

Obamacare and Accounting Fraud

By January 2014, the PPACA will require insurance companies to list their prices on competitive exchanges. In Obama-theory, this is supposed to reduce premiums via competition. But what if, say, only three companies control nearly all of the premiums? Consider the fact that it costs the same $3 to extract your money from a Chase, Bank of America or Citigroup ATM (if you don’t get it directly from the firm you bank at.) They constitute a monopoly that defies anti-trust inspection (thank you, Department of Justice.) What incentive would any of them have to charge less? None. That’s why they don’t.

Managed Health Care companies don’t just administer private, but government health insurance policies as well. The http://www.healthcare.gov website says that under the PPACA, the life of the Medicare Trust Fund will be extended to 2024 as a result of reducing waste, fraud, abuse, and slowing cost growth. President Obama promised to reduce Medicare fraud 50% by 2012 according to the site – but if he did, he forgot to mention it during the campaign period. 

To supposedly combat price hikes, the PPACA calls for a new Rate Review program, wherein insurance companies must justify premium hikes of more than 10% to a state or federal review program. Given that banks aren’t supposed to hold more than 10% of the nation’s deposits in any one institution, and three do, this isn’t a comforting constraint.

While it is positive that the PPACA requires coverage of people with pre-existing conditions and prohibits lifetime caps, it can’t control what people pay for insurance, because it doesn’t limit actual premiums, which have risen 13% on average since the Act was passed.

The medical cost ratio limitation the PPACA instills; that 80% of premiums must be used for medical care in the case of individuals and small groups, and 85% in the case of large groups) to supposedly ensure companies operate on a more efficient premium in vs. premium out basis, is a joke. Its punch line is accounting manipulation.  Call everything a medical cost; even buying another company, and the ratio is meaningless.

WellPoint got the Joke

WellPoint got that joke immediately. The largest for-profit “managed health care” company in the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, it began trading publicly on December 1, 2004. Depending on the state, it operates under Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Blue Cross or Anthem. 

After the PPACA was passed, in March 2010, WellPoint allegedly reclassified certain administrative costs as medical care costs in order to meet the law’s new medical loss ratio requirements (which requires insurers spend at least 80% or 85% of premiums on health care services, depending on the type of plan, individual or group respectively.)

A month earlier, WellPoint announced its Anthem Blue Cross unit would raise insurance rates for some individual policies in California up to 39%. Federal and California regulators are still investigating this, but the premium hikes remained.

WellPoint is also one of Wall Street’s favorite “managed health care” companies; cause it keeps getting bigger through acquisitions that pay hefty fees to the bankers involved. On October 23^rd, WellPoint got approval from Amerigroup’s shareholders to acquire Amerigroup, a Medicaid-focused health insurer, in a $4.9 billion cash deal. The deal makes WellPoint the nation’s largest Medicaid insurer, and provides it greater access to Medicaid patients who also qualify for Medicare.

It was the largest cash deal ever, and the largest premium paid for a company in the managed health care realm. As a result, Goldman Sachs (who advised Amerigroup) and Credit Suisse (who advised WellPoint) retained their top positions in the global healthcare deal advisory league table.

The value of Amerigroup, as a company, dropped 34% within two weeks of that agreement, in stark shades of what happened when Bank of America took over Merrill Lynch in the fall of 2008.

This summer, Amerigroup and Goldman Sachs faced a shareholder lawsuit filed by the city of Monroe Employees Retirement System and Louisiana Municipal Police Employees Retirement System. It alleged that Goldman advised Amerigroup to accept WellPoint’s offer quickly, rather than seek other bids, because the bank had structured a complex, and fee-heavy derivatives transaction on the back of the deal. The insurers resolved the suit by tweaking the deal parameters. All parties denied ‘any wrongdoing.’ But where there’s smoke in complex derivatives land, there is fire.

Other Mergers

After the Supreme Court upheld the PPACA, a spate of mergers rippled through the managed health care realm, to ostensibly cope with smaller profit margins and  ‘compliance costs.’  But really, it’s because each firm wants to corner as much as possible of the market, in as many states as it can, to garner more premiums and control more disbursements and prices at the upcoming insurance ‘exchanges.’

In late August, the third largest insurance company in the US, Aetna announced it was buying Coventry Health Care for $5.7 billion. Coventry provides Medicare and Medicaid services, thus the takeover expands Aetna’s Medicare and Medicaid business. Being part of Aetna enables Coventry to grab more consumers on more state-run health insurance exchanges, reducing competition in the process. The Department of Justice is examining anti-trust issues surrounding the deal, but it’s still expected to close in mid-2013.

On October 17^th, UnitedHealth Group issued $2.5 billion of bonds as part of its $4.9 billion acquisition of Brazil’s Amil Participacoes. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley, UBS and Wells Fargo Securities were lead underwriters on the deal.

They are not buying international companies in order to increase accounting transparency. Like other multinationals, they are doing so to move profits around and circumvent restrictions and tax laws. They are using cash, or raising extra debt, to do so, rather than to reduce premiums or increase disbursements to medical professionals.

And if you’re keeping score – billion of dollars are flowing from insurance companies – NOT to reduce premiums to patients and NOT to reimburse doctors and NOT to enhance the quality of care, but to simply expand nationally and globally. Meanwhile, their CEOs are doing quite well from all that non-health care related movement.

Total compensation for the bulk of health care company CEOs rose by 14.7% in 2011 by 14.7%, or $11.1 million, to $87 million. Cigna’s CEO David Cordani made $19.1 million. UnitedHealth Group's CEO, Stephen J. Hemsley bagged $49 million in salary, stock options, and other compensation last year. The highest-paid CEO made 94 times the average compensation level of primary care physicians. And none of them had to pick up a single scalpel in the process.

Doctors as profit centers

Not just patients, but physicians have been bled steadily from the current state of insurance company controlled health care through diminishing insurance reimbursements, electronic medical records mandates whereby they spend as much time complying with Kafkaesque controls over their decisions on performing surgeries and providing care, and debt. New doctors are graduating with an average of $250,000 in debt, which, combined with diminishing disbursement and soaring costs, will keep many, underwater. Forever.

According to Dr. Michael H. Heggeness, President of the North American Spine Society, a group of 6500 global spinal and orthopedic surgeons (at which I delivered a speech last month), “The last people, that most of the population feels sorry for are doctors, yet they are in an economic crisis of their own. In 2002, 80% were in private practice, now 70% are in hospitals because they can’t afford to make a private practice work.”

Meanwhile the more hospitals are viewed as profit centers, the more their Chairmen will cut costs to maximize returns, and not care quality. They will seeks ways to sell underperforming assets, programs or services and reduce the number of nonessential employees, burdening those that remain. No doubt the private equity community will be getting more into this game, as insurance companies buy more hospitals, doctors, clinics, and perhaps drug companies, or vice versa, and ‘restructuring’ accelerates.

And if insurance companies can manage doctors directly, they can control not just costs, but treatment – our treatment. It’s not an imaginary government takeover anyone should fear; but a very real, here-and-now insurance company takeover, to which no one in Washington is paying attention.

For, after three debates (well, four), when it comes to banking, finance, and the ongoing subsidization of Wall Street, both presidential candidates and their parties’ attitudes toward the banking sector is similar  – i.e. it must be preserved – as is – at all costs, rhetoric to the contrary, aside.

Obama hasn’t brought ‘sweeping reform’ upon the Establishment Banks, nor does Romney need to exude deregulatory babble, because nothing structurally substantive has been done to harness the biggest banks of the financial sector, enabled, as they are, by entities from the SEC to the Fed to the Treasury Department to the White House.

In addition, though much is made of each candidates' tax plans, and the related math that doesn’t add up (for both presidential candidates), the bottom line is, Obama hasn’t explained exactly WHY there’s $5 trillion more in debt during his presidency, nor has Romney explained HOW to get a $5 trillion savings. 

For the record, both missed, or don’t get, that nearly 32% of that Treasury debt is reserved (in excess) at the Fed, floating the banking system that supposedly doesn’t need help. The ‘worst economic period since the Great Depression’ barely produced a short-fall of  an approximate average of $200 billion in personal and corporate tax revenues per year, according to federal data.)

Consider that the amount of tax revenue since 2008, has dropped for individual income contributions from $1.15 trillion in 2008 to $915 billion in 2009, to $899 billion in 2010, then risen to $1.1 trillion in 2011. Corporate tax contributions have dropped (by more of course) from $304 billion in 2008 to $138 billion in 2009 to $191 billion in 2010, to $181 billion in 2011. Thus, at most, we can consider to have lost $420 billion in individual revenue and $402 billion in corporate revenue, or $822 billion from 2009 on. The Fed has, in addition, held on average of $1.6 trillion Treasuries in excess reserves. That, plus $822 billion equals $2.42 trillion, add on the other $900 billion of Fed held mortgage securities, and you get $3.32 trillion, NOT $5 trillion, and most to float banks.

The most consistent political platform is that big finance trumps main street economics, and the needs of the banking sector trump those of the population.  We have a national policy condoning zero-interest-rate policy (ZIRP) as somehow job-creative. (Fed Funds rates dropped to 0% by the end of 2008, where they have remained since.)

We are left with a regulatory policy of pretend. Rather than re-instating Glass-Steagall to divide commercial from investment banking and insurance activity, thereby removing the platform of government (or public) supported speculation and expansion, props leaders that pretend linguistic tweaks are a match for financial might. We have no leader that will take on Jamie Dimon, Chairman of the country’s largest bank, JPM Chase, who can devote 15% of the capital of JPM Chase, which remains backstopped by customer deposit insurance, to bet on the direction of potential corporate defaults, and slide by two Congressional investigations like walks in the park.

Pillars of Collusion

A few months ago, Paul Craig Roberts and I co-wrote an article about the LIBOR scandal; the crux of which, was lost on most of the media. That is; the banks, the Fed, and the Treasury Department knew banks were manipulating rates lower to artificially support the prices of hemorrhaging assets and debt securities. But no one in  Washington complained, because they were in on it; because it made the over-arching problem of debt-manufacturing and bloating the Fed’s balance sheet to subsidize a banking industry at the expense of national economic health, evaporate in the ether of delusion.

In the same vein, the Fed announced QE3, the unlimited version – the Fed would buy $40 billion a month of mortgage-backed securities from banks. Why – if the recession is supposedly over and the housing market has supposedly bottomed out – would this be necessary? 

Simple. If the Fed is buying securities, it’s because the banks can’t sell them anywhere else. And because  banks still need to get rid of these mortgage assets, they won't lend again or refinance loans at faster rates, thereby sharing their advantage for cheaper money, as anyone trying to even refinance a mortgage has discovered. Thus, Banks simply aren’t ‘healthy’, not withstanding their $1.53 trillion of excess reserves (earning interest), and nearly $900 billion in mortgage backed securities parked at the Fed. The open-ended QE program is merely perpetuating the illusion that as long as bank assets get marked higher (through artificial buyers, zero percent interest rates, or not having to mark them to market), everything is fine.

Meanwhile, Washington coddles and subsidizes the biggest banks - not to encourage lending, not to encourage saving, and  not to better the country, but to contain harsh truths about how badly banks played, and are still playing, the nation.

The SEC’s Role

According to the SEC’s own report card on “Enforcement Actions: Addressing Misconduct that led to or arose from the Financial Crisis”: the SEC has levied charges against 112 entities and individuals, of which 55 were CEOs, CFOs, and other Senior Corporate Officers.

In terms of fines; the SEC ‘ordered or agreed to’ $1.4 billion of penalties, $460 million of disgorgement and prejudgment interest, and $355 million of “Additional Monetary Relief Obtained for Harmed Investors. That’s a  grand total of $2.2 billion of fines. (The Department of Justice dismissed additional charges or punitive moves.)

Goldman, Sachs received the largest  fine, of $550 million, taking no responsibility (in SEC-speak, “neither confirming nor denying’ any wrongdoing) for packaging CDOs on behalf of one client, which supported their prevailing trading position, and pushing them on investors without disclosing that information, which would have materially changed pricing and attractiveness. (The DOJ found nothing else to charge Goldman with, apparently not considering misleading investors, fraud.)

Obama-appointed SEC head, Mary Shapiro, originally settled with Bank of America for a friendly $34 million, until Judge Rakoff quintupled the fine to $150 million, for misleading shareholders during its Fed-approved, Treasury department pushed, acquisition of Merrill Lynch, regarding bonus compensation. (Merrill’s $3.6 billion of  bonuses were paid before the year-end of 2008, while TARP and other subsidies were utilized). Still embroiled in ongoing lawsuits related to its Countrywide acquisition, Bank of America agreed to an additional $601.5 million in one non-SEC settlement, and $2.43 billion in another relating to those Merrill bonuses. Likewise, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $590 million for its fall-2008 acquisition of Wachovia’s foul loans and securities. These are small prices to pay to grow your asset and customer base.

Citigroup agreed to pay $285 million to the SEC to settle charges of misleading investors and betting against them, in the sale of one (one!) $1 billion CDO. Judge Rakoff rejected the settlement, but Citigroup is appealing. So is its friend, the SEC.  Outside of that, Citigroup agreed to an additional $590 million to settle a shareholder CDO lawsuit, denying wrongdoing.

JPM Chase agreed to a $153.5 million SEC fine relating to one (one!) CDO. Outside of Washington, it agreed to a $100 million settlement for hiking credit card fees, and a $150 million settlement for a lawsuit filed by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists retirement fund and other investors, over losses from its purchase of  JPM’s Sigma Finance Hedge Fund, when it used to be rated ‘AAA.’

There you have it. No one did anything wrong. The total of $2.2 billion in SEC fines, and about $4.4 billion in outside lawsuits is paltry. Consider that for the same period (since 2007), total Wall Street bonuses topped $679 billion, or nearly 309 times as much as the SEC fines, and 154 times as much as all the settlements.

The SEC & Dodd Frank Dance

The SEC embarked upon 90 actions, divided into 15 categories, related to the Dodd-Frank Act that amount to proposing or adopting rules with loopholes galore, and creating reports that summarize things we know. Some of the obvious categories, like asset backed related products or derivatives, don’t even include CDOs, which got the lion’s share of SEC fines and DOJ indifference.

Rather than tightening regulations on the most egregious financial product culprits; insurance swaps, such as the credit default swaps imbedded in CDOs, the SEC loosened them. It did so by approving an order making many of the Exchange Act requirements not applicable to security-based swaps. In one new post-Dodd-Frank order, it stated, a “product will not be considered a swap or security-based swap if ,,, it falls within the category of…insurance, including against default on individual residential mortgages.” Thus, credit default swaps, considered insurance since their inception, warrant no special attention in the grand land of sweeping reform.

The credit ratings category includes 20 items proposed, requested, or adopted. Under things accomplished, the SEC gave a report to Congress that basically says that the majority of rating agency business is paid for by issuers (which we knew), and proclaims (I kid you not) that a security is rated “investment grade” if it is rated “investment grade” by at least one rating agency. Further inspection of SEC self-labeled accomplishments provides no more confidence, that anything has, or will, change for the safer.

The White House & Congress

Yet, the Obama White House wants us to believe that Dodd-Frank was ‘sweeping reform.’ Romney and the Republicans are up and arms over it, simply because it exists and sounds like regulation, and Democrats defensively portray its effectiveness.

Ignore them both and ask yourself the relevant questions. Are the big banks bigger? Yes. Can they still make markets and keep crappy securities on their books, as long as they want, while formulating them into more complicated securities, buoyed by QE measures and ZIRP? Yes. Do they have to evaluate their positions in real world terms so we know what’s really going on? No.

Then, there’s the Volcker Rule  which equates spinning off private equity desks or moving them into asset management arms, with regulatory progress. If it could be fashioned to prohibit all speculative trading or connected securities creation on the backbone of FDIC-insured deposits, it might work, but then you’d have Glass-Steagall, which is the only form of regulatoin that will truly protect us from banking-spawned crisis.

Meanwhile, banks can still make markets and trade in everything they were doing before as long as they say it’s on behalf of a client. This was the entire problem during the pre-crisis period. The implosion of piles of toxic assets based on shaky loans or other assets didn’t result from  private equity trading or even from isolating trading of any bank’s own books (except in cases like that of Bear Stearns’ hedge funds), but from federally subsidized, highly risky, ridiculously leveraged, assets engineered under the guise of 'bespoke' customer requests or market making related ‘demand.’ 

When the Banking Act was passed in 1933, even Republican millionaire bankers, like the head of Chase, Winthrop Aldrich, understood that reducing systemic risk might even help them in the long run, and publicly supported it. Today, Jamie Dimon shuns all forms of separation or regulation, and neither political party dares interfere.

But things worked out for Dimon. JPM Chase’s board (of which he is Chairman) approved his $23 million 2011 compensation package (the top bank CEO package), despite disclosure of a $2 billion (now about $6 billion) loss in the infamous Whale Trade. He banked $20.8 million in 2010, the highest paid bank CEO that year, too. In 2009, Dimon made $1.32 million, publicly, but really bagged $16 million worth of stock and options. He made $19.7 million in total compensation for 2008, and $34 million for 2007. Still a New York Fed, Class A director, he’s proven himself to be untouchable.

Yet, the kinds of deals that were so problematic are creeping back. According to Asset Backed Alert, JPM Chase was the top asset-baked security (ABS) issuer for the first half of 2012, lead managing $66 billion of US ABS deals.

In addition, according to Asset Back Alert, US public ABS deal volume rose 92.8% for the second half of 2012 vs. 2011, while issuance of US prime MBS (high quality deals) fell 50.6%. Overall CDO issuance rose 50.2%. (Citigroup is the lead issuer (up 552%.))

ZIRP’s  hidden losses

According to a comprehensive analysis of data compiled from regulatory documents by  Bill Moreland and his team at my new favorite website, www.bankregdata.com, some really scary numbers pop out. Here’s the kicker: ZIRP costs citizens and disproportionately helps the biggest banks, by about $120 billion a year.

Between 2005 and 2007, US commercial banks held approximately $6.97 trillion of interest bearing customer deposits. During the past two quarters, they held an average of $7.31 trillion. During that first period, when fed funds rates averaged 4.5%, banks paid their customers an average of $39.6 billion of interest per quarter. More recently, with ZIRP, they paid an average of $8.9 billion in interest per quarter, or nearly 77% LESS. In dollar terms - that’s about $30.7 billion less per quarter, or $123 billion less per year.

Since ZIRP kicked into gear in 2008, banks have saved nearly $486 billion in interest payments. Average salary and compensation increased by approximately 23%. Dividend payments declined by 14.05%.

The biggest banks are the biggest takers. Consider JPM Chase’s cut. Although its deposits disproportionately increased by 46% from 2007 (pre ZIRP and helped by the acquisition of Washington Mutual) to 2012, its interest expenses declined by nearly 89%. From 2004 to 2007, Chase paid out $34.4 billion in interest to its deposit customers. From 2008 to mid-2012, it paid out $3.4 billion. JPM Chase’s ratio of interest paid to deposits of .27% is the lowest of the big four banks, that on average pay less than smaller banks anyway.

The percentage of JPM Chase’s assets comprised of loans and leases is lower at 36.04% compared to its peers’ percentage of 52.4%. Its trading portion of assets is higher, as 14.78% vs. 6.88% for its peers, and 4.23% for all banks.

Looking Ahead

To recap: savers, borrowers, and the economy are still losing money due to the preservation of the illusion of bank health. More critically, the big banks grew through acquisitions and the ongoing closures of smaller local banks that provided better banking terms to citizens.  The big banks have more assets and deposits, on which they are over-valuing prices, and paying less interest than before, due to a combination of Fed and Treasury blessed mergers in late 2008, QE and ZIRP. Yet, we’re supposed to believe this situation will somehow manifest a more solid and productive economy.  

Meanwhile, past faulty securities and  loans will fester until their transfer to the Fed is complete or they mature, while new ones take their place. This will inevitably lead to more of a clampdown on loans for productive purposes and further economic degradation and instability. Financial policy trumps economic policy. Banks trump citizens, and absent severe reconstruction of the banking system, the cycle will absolutely, unequivocally continue.

According to news reports, UK banks fixed the London interbank borrowing rate (Libor) with the complicity of the Bank of England (UK central bank) at a low rate in order to obtain a cheap borrowing cost. The way this scandal is playing out is that the banks benefitted from borrowing at these low rates. Whereas this is true, it also strikes us as simplistic and as a diversion from the deeper, darker scandal.

Banks are not the only beneficiaries of lower Libor rates. Debtors (and investors) whose floating or variable rate loans are pegged in some way to Libor also benefit. One could argue that by fixing the rate low, the banks were cheating themselves out of interest income, because the effect of the low Libor rate is to lower the interest rate on customer loans, such as variable rate mortgages that banks possess in their portfolios. But the banks did not fix the Libor rate with their customers in mind. Instead, the fixed Libor rate enabled them to improve their balance sheets, as well as help to perpetuate the regime of low interest rates. The last thing the banks want is a rise in interest rates that would drive down the values of their holdings and reveal large losses masked by rigged interest rates.

Indicative of greater deceit and a larger scandal than simply borrowing from one another at lower rates, banks gained far more from the rise in the prices, or higher evaluations of floating rate financial instruments (such as CDOs), that resulted from lower Libor rates. As prices of debt instruments all tend to move in the same direction, and in the opposite direction from interest rates (low interest rates mean high bond prices, and vice versa), the effect of lower Libor rates is to prop up the prices of bonds, asset-backed financial instruments, and other "securities." The end result is that the banks' balance sheets look healthier than they really are.

On the losing side of the scandal are purchasers of interest rate swaps, savers who receive less interest on their accounts, and ultimately all bond holders when the bond bubble pops and prices collapse.

We think we can conclude that Libor rates were manipulated lower as a means to bolster the prices of bonds and asset-backed securities. In the UK, as in the US, the interest rate on government bonds is less than the rate of inflation. The UK inflation rate is about 2.8%, and the interest rate on 20-year government bonds is 2.5%. Also, in the UK, as in the US, the government debt to GDP ratio is rising. Currently the ratio in the UK is about double its average during the 1980-2011 period.

The question is, why do investors purchase long term bonds, which pay less than the rate of inflation, from governments whose debt is rising as a share of GDP? One might think that investors would understand that they are losing money and sell the bonds, thus lowering their price and raising the interest rate.

Why isn’t this happening?

PCR’s June 5 column, “Collapse at Hand,” explained that despite the negative interest rate, investors were making capital gains from their Treasury bond holdings, because the prices were rising as interest rates were pushed lower. 

What was pushing the interest rates lower?

The answer is even clearer now. First, as PCR noted, Wall Street has been selling huge amounts of interest rate swaps, essentially a way of shorting interest rates and driving them down. Thus, causing bond prices to rise.

Secondly, fixing Libor at lower rates has the same effect. Lower UK interest rates on government bonds drive up their prices.

In other words, we would argue that the bailed-out banks in the US and UK are returning the favor that they received from the bailouts and from the Fed and Bank of England’s low rate policy by rigging government bond prices, thus propping up a government bond market that would otherwise, one would think, be driven down by the abundance of new debt and monetization of this debt, or some part of it.

How long can the government bond bubble be sustained? How negative can interest rates be driven?

Can a declining economy offset the impact on inflation of debt creation and its monetization, with the result that inflation falls to zero, thus making the low interest rates on government bonds positive?

According to his public statements, zero inflation is not the goal of the Federal Reserve chairman. He believes that some inflation is a spur to economic growth, and he has said that his target is 2% inflation. At current bond prices, that means a continuation of negative interest rates.

The latest news completes the picture of banks and central banks manipulating interest rates in order to prop up the prices of bonds and other debt instruments. We have learned that the Fed has been aware of Libor manipulation (and thus apparently supportive of it) since 2008. Thus, the circle of complicity is closed. The motives of the Fed, Bank of England, US and UK banks are aligned, their policies mutually reinforcing and beneficial. The Libor fixing is another indication of this collusion.

Unless bond prices can continue to rise as new debt is issued, the era of rigged bond prices might be drawing to an end. It would seem to be only a matter of time before the bond bubble bursts.

Yes, $2 billion in the scheme of JPM Chase’s book and quarterly earnings is tiny, a ‘trading blip’ as it’s been called by some business press. But that’s not a mitigating factor in what it represents. In this era dominated by a few consolidated and complex banks, the very fact that it’s a relatively small loss IS the red flag. 

First - because the loss could (and will) grow. Second, because even if it doesn’t, it’s a blatant example of a big bank incurring un-due risk within barely regulated, highly correlated financial markets. It only takes another Paulson hedge fund, or a trading desk at Goldman Sachs, to short the hell out of the corporates that JPM Chase is synthetically long, or take whatever the other side really is, to create a liquidity crisis that will further screw those least able to access credit – individuals, small businesses, and productive capital users.

We know this. We’ve seen this. We're in this. There’s no such thing as an isolated trading loss anymore. And yet Jamie Dimon, seated atop the most powerful bank in the world, has smugly led the charge to adamantly oppose any moves to alter the banking framework that allows him, or any bank, to call a bet - a hedge or client position or market-making maneuver  - with central bank, government official, and regulatory impunity.

Flashback to the unimaginable in 1933

It’s 1933 and the country has undergone several years of painful Depression following the 1920s speculation that crashed in the fall of 1929. Investigations into the bank related causes began under Republican President, Herbert Hoover and continued under Democratic President, FDR.

Okay, that’s pretty common knowledge. But, here’s something that isn’t: of all the giant banks operating their trusts schemes and taking advantage of off-book deals, and international bets in the late 1920s, it was an incoming head of Chase (replacing Al Wiggins who shorted Chase stock in a network of fraud) that advocated for Glass-Steagall. Indeed, despite all pedigree to the opposite (his father was Senator Nelson Aldrich architect of the Federal Reserve and brother-in-law, John D. Rockefeller), Chase Chair, Winthrop Aldrich, took to the front pages of the New York Times in March, 1933 to pitch decisive separation of commercial and speculative activity arguments.  Fellow bankers hated him.

His motives weren’t totally altruistic to be sure, but somewhere in his calculation that Chase would survive a separation of activities and emerge stronger than rival, Morgan Bank, was an awareness that something more – permanent – had to be put in place if only to save the banking industry from future confidence breaches and loss. It turned out he was right. And wrong. (much more on that in my next book, research still ongoing.)

Financial history has a sense of irony. JPM Chase was the post-Glass-Steagall repeal marriage, 66 years in the making, of  Morgan Bank and Chase. Today, it is the largest bank in America, possessing greater control of the nation’s cash than any other bank.  It also has the largest derivatives exposure ($70 trillion) including nearly $6 trillion worth of credit derivatives. 

It is the size of a bank holding company’s deposits that dictates the extent of the risk it takes, risk ‘models’ not withstanding: the more deposits, the more risk, the more potential loss. JPM Chase is not alone in using its position as deposit taker to increase speculation, but it has more to play with.

And the more access to other people’s money, the greater the gambling incentive. The largest banks hold deposits (our deposits) hostage in the global game of financial warfare. Related access to capital and bailouts are enabling weaponry in the fight for worldwide insitutional supremacy.

The Alleged Hedge

Now, consider JPM Chase’s alleged ‘hedge’ itself; a trading position taken in the London department, the chief investment office,  set up to allegedly protect the bank’s overall book and ‘invest’ its excess capital.  Any investment is a bet. A hedge is supposed to mitigate loss if the bet fails. An investment is not a hedge.

Let’s pretend for a moment that banks were about simple conventional - banking – taking deposits and making loans. In that context, it would be nonsensical to hedge loan risk by pouring on more loan risk, or put out a fire by pouring fuel on its flames.

In other words, if a bank lends money to, say Boeing, it accepts a rate, in return,  more or less related to its assessment of the risk involved in getting its money back, which translates into an interest payment. To hedge that payment, a bank could purchase ‘insurance’ or ‘protection’ from a counterparty solvent enough to make good on any shortfall in Boeing’s ability to pay its interest, or in the event of an Boeing default.  What is not a hedge for the loan, is further exposure to the risk that Boeing could default.  Yet, in a more complex manner, that’s exactly what happened here.

By engaging in a trade that tied up 15% of its assets, or $350 billion, no matter what label that trade received, the Whale man and his managers (leading up to Jamie Dimon), went long credit risk by shorting an index of synthetic credits, thereby placing the bank in the position of paying out, or losing money, if those credits deteriorate. In effect, and super-simplistically, it doubled down. In its more complex form, the firm took a short position in an index of credit default swaps representing 125 North American investment grade corporations (including Boeing), called the CDX.NA.IG.9. The index reference of underlying corporates has been diving in price, hence the loss - and mounting loss to JPM.

Deception and Delusion

Going long the corporate credit market while still immersed in the fallout of having been long the European sovereign and US real estate market, demonstrates the same cluelessness about the economy and financial system prevalent in the media and in Washington every time the words ‘slow recovery’ rather than something to the effect of ‘prolonged, continued, enduring depression’ are uttered.

In such a charade, why wouldn’t JPM Chase, a bank existing on an array of federal largesse, and Jamie Dimon who was re-voted to Class A NY Fed Director, the position he held during the 2008 crisis, in early 2010 – rubber stamp a bet that corporate economic health is a foregone conclusion.

It was under that same misplaced, other people’s money optimism and hubris that MF Global stole (or for the apologists, ‘mistakenly took’) $1.6 billion of its segregated customers' money to stay in a bad bet. Former MF Global CEO, the ‘honorable’ Jon Corzine’s bet was that certain European sovereign credits would improve. Only they didn’t. Not in time for his margins to hold out.

It’s more than ironic, that JPM Chase, the bank still entangled with MF Global customer money, took the same bet, albeit with different credits and is trying to pawn it off as an ‘egregious’ mistake, a blip on the radar of an otherwise pristinely risk-managed bank.

It’s also supremely annoying that Dimon is right about something, that the Volcker Rule wouldn’t necessarily apply to this ‘hedge.’ There’s nothing particularly wrong with the Volcker Rule; it will mitigate some fraction of risk, though given the SEC and Fed’s inability to understand what risk is, it’s unlikely they’ll take the mental leap to segment trades as mitigating it, or not. Yet, the Volcker Rule will not change one fundamental pillar of global systemic risk – as long as banks are not segregated ala Glass Steagall along deposit-taking  / loan-making vs. speculation lines, they will have access to capital to burn. And burn it they will.  

I applaud Smith's decision to bring the nature of Goldman's profit-making strategies to the forefront of the global population's discourse, as so many others have been doing through books, investigative journalism, and the Occupy movements over the past decade since my book, Other People's Money, was written after I resigned from Goldman. It would be great if Smith's illuminations would serve as the turning point around which serious examination and re-regulation of the banking system framework would transpire.

The inherent conflict of interest that firms such as Goldman possess through enjoying the multiple roles of 'market-maker,' 'securities creator' and 'client-advisor' foster an environment rife with systemic risk. The trading revenue portion of Goldman's profits, as well as its derivatives vs. assets ratio, is the highest amongst the American bank holding companies. And yet, in the fall of 2008, the Federal Reserve approved Goldman Sachs (along with Morgan Stanley) to alter its moniker from investment bank to bank holding company, thereby allowing it to gain access to federal subsidies and potential ongoing support.

In this regard, the firm's practices should remain under intense scrutiny by the general public and legislators. I would hope that the message behind Smith's resignation will not be obfuscated by debates over the extent to which the firm's clients are either supported or exploited, but instead, serve as a powerful call to foster a more-strictly delineated and less reckless financial system.

Another commonality between the MF Global incident and Animal Farm is the abject rewriting, or re-interpretation, of rules. At the farm, the rule ‘No animal shall drink alcohol” was ultimately ‘re-remembered’ as ‘No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.’ Absent opposition to this particular fact alteration, the pigs got drunk. It wasn’t pretty.

The Orwellian nature of finance is spiraling out of control. It was acutely demonstrated during the fall 2008, merge-and-be-bailed period, and subsequently, through mainstream acceptance that “too big to fail” validates the subsidization of reckless banking practices (bail first, ask questions or consider tepid regulation later), and the European debacle.

Three wrinkles of audacity underscore the potential MF Global bonus approvals. First, there is the moral responsibility layer. MF Global, classified as a broker-dealer wasn’t specifically subject to the investment-advisor fiduciary rule that requires ‘systemic safety and soundness’’ with respect to retail customers. But, comingling customers’ funds inappropriately with the firm’s, as former chief, Jon Corzine’s European bets were blowing up, was an abject misinterpretation of the rule's intent.

Aside from that, MF Global lied about funds segregation to its customers, which constitutes fraud. The final page of the firm’s brochure touts “the strict physical separation of clients’ assets from MF Global accounts.”

Separately, MF Global broker-dealer activities were subject to SEC oversight and restrictions on its use of client funds. During any normal investigation, like say for embezzlement, funds should be frozen until issues are resolved. Releasing any bonus pay until this matter is settled is just plain wrong.

The reason for possibly allowing bonuses for MF Global chief operating officer, Bradley I. Abelow, finance chief, Henri J. Steenkamp, and general counsel, Laurie R. Ferber follows the same twisted logic pervading Wall Street: no one else can do the job as well.

These people are apparently so special that despite incompetence, negligence or potential malfeasance in diverting customers’ funds away from their rightful spots, their expertise is critical to the bankruptcy proceeding. In that realm, their ‘job performance’ will help Freeh "maximize value for creditors of the company”. Translation: it will ensure banks like JPM Chase keep their cut, since customers are not creditors. Again, plain wrong.

But forget simple matters of right and wrong for a moment. After all, this is Big Finance: what's most important is not necessarily what’s legal or illegal, but more practically, what you can get away with and what you can’t. In that regard, the sheer impotence of regulators, the Department of Justice, and the FBI are enabling factors in perpetuating financial crimes. 

In early 1933, during the Depression that followed the 1929 Stock market Crash, Democratic president, FDR and Republican Treasury Secretary, William Woodin, declared a bank holiday, during which Treasury Department agents examined banks’ (which included at the time, broker-dealers) books to determine solidity and solvency.

Today, our regulatory bodies are incapable, or simply don’t want to be bothered with, tracing money and returning it to the public customers to whom it belongs. The inability to independently examine MF Global’s books, without its executive involved, reveals the sorry state of our financial system.  In this post-Glass-Steagall-repeal world, the mixing of customer money and speculative betting – whether at a super-market bank or broker-dealer, whether involving subprime loans packages or European Sovereign debt, poses too dangerous a level of complexity. If regulatory bodies can’t, or won’t, diminish the related risk, more concrete Glass-Steagall boundaries throughout the financial framework should be resurrected.

Meanwhile, two senators have taken on the bonus-pay fight. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), member of the Senate Agriculture Committee investigating MF Global, wrote to Freeh that the plan is "unacceptable." Senator Jon Tester (D., Mont.), whose constituency includes a number of farmers with funds in the ‘missing’ category, called it "outrageous.”

On Sunday, Freeh's spokesperson released a statement saying the senators’ concerns were ‘noted’ and a final decision on the bonuses hadn’t been made. But to the extent that the money trails shrouding MF Global’s final moments remain more apparent to its former employees than external examiners, it’s likely the people involved in the wreckage, will be paid extra for sorting thru it. And, that’s an expensive, outrageous, shame.

In Los Angeles, traveling eastward on Santa Monica Boulevard, you pass the mansion-laden enclave of Beverly Hills on your left, and a less ornate stretch of police and office buildings on your right. While we were driving, the driver revealed a mark of inequality, seemingly secret and trivial, and yet so significant.

“See that,” he gestured to a sprawling, perfectly manicured estate. “People that order a taxi from there to the airport, pay a flat rate of $30.  But over there,” he points to my right, “you’re on the meter. Forty-five bucks.”  

He shook his head, “They make 100 times more in those homes than what other people make. You tell me why the people with all the money get the cheaper fare.”

The answer was the line connecting the dots of the show I’d just taped.  They reap the benefits, because they make, or buy, the rules. A half an hour earlier, Alonya and I had discussed four other dots.

The first was an FT piece that noted there had been no new bank applications in the United States in 2011, after only 3 in 2010.  What does this mean? It means that it’s cheaper to acquire a bank with FDIC and Fed assistance, than to start a small one. Not only that, smaller banks can’t even raise the capital required to stake out a physical location. This, while mega-banks sprout like weeds on the corner of every block, capturing spacious street-front property, rolling out expensive signage, and able to negotiate better rents for their bulk presence. It is a sign of the small being crushed by the large; a situation whose side-effects include removing choice from citizens, who are left paying collusively high fees for ATM and banking services, at omnipresent, federally subsidized institutions.

The second dot was the excellent video, accompanying a petition, that Public Citizen just released called Breaking up is Hard to Do – aimed at Bank of America (but that could equally have been addressing any member of the too-big-to-fail contingent.) Alonya asked me what I thought of the video. I replied, “It’s not going to happen.” (These goliaths will remain joined at the commercial and speculative hip.) Not because it shouldn't, but because...

Our regulatory and legislative systems have been supremely indulgent of these behemoths. Here and there, the big banks emerge from settlements with fines for fraudulent practices, but it doesn’t make a dent in the risk they can manufacture, or the size to which they can grow. The Federal Reserve has ultimate regulatory authority over the big banks, and under Chairman Ben Bernanke, used that authority to approve, not reject mergers, to facilitate a cheap money party to fuel, what would otherwise have been insolvent financial giants, and to allow those same giants to re-funnel their subsidies back to the books of the Federal Reserve as excess reserves that gross .25% interest per year. Separately, the tepid Dodd-Frank Act gets watered down more each day. But even at its ‘strongest’ inception state, it didn’t break up the banks, nor reduce the risk they pose our global economy. Bank of America holds 35% MORE derivatives today than before the fall of 2008.

The third dot had to do with a billionaire index that Bloomberg created.  It provides a closer to daily tracking of the wealth of the world’s 20 most ostentatiously wealthy.  I don’t really know what to say about that.  But, whoever gave the internal go-ahead to that monstrous showcase of inequality should have perhaps included a location-tracker, so people could send their daily heart-felt awe and congratulations.

The fourth dot was the income gain of the top 1% vs. the 99% over the past year. The fact that the top 1% captured 93% (basically almost all) of the growth demonstrates that the inequality gap isn’t just widening; it’s accelerating. The more one has, the greater the cushion to soften economic Depressions. It was no different going into the 1930s Great Depression as illustrated in my novel, Black Tuesday. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you feel each oppressive drop of an increase in health care, education, childcare, food, energy and utilities costs. If your income isn’t growing in tandem, you are comparatively falling further down an economic hole. This accelerated income-rise-to-the-top is one more sign that when the media and Washington say we’re in an economic recovery, they have an ultra-myopic definition of who constitutes ‘we’, and it’s not the majority of the population.

That’s why there’s an Occupy Movement. As I wrote on behalf of the compelling book, "The economic elite vs. the People," “Occupy Wall Street has coalesced across towns, cities, and countries. It represents people of every race, age, and disposition as the only meaningful opposition to a winner-take-all financial system that extracted untold wealth from the global population to puff up the personal portfolios of elite executives with impunity. And until a more equitable society and system prevail, the Occupy movement is not going anywhere.” (See the rest on www.ampedstatus.com)

All these dots and lines project a gamed world, where it is not sweat or merit that propels people forward, but connections and power and pedigree. Which brings me back to my cabbie friend.  As he dropped me off, he offered this morsel of wisdom, “Things won’t change until we’re all paying the same fares. At least, that’s a start.” 

Despite no signs of the first bailout working – certainly not in growing the Greek economy or helping its population - but not even in being sufficient to cover speculative losses, Euro elites finalized another 130 billion Euro, ($170 billion) bailout today. This is ostensibly to avoid banks’ and credit default swap players’ wrath over the possibility of Greece defaulting on 14.5 billion Euros in bonds.

Bailout promoters seem to believe (or pretend) that: bank bailout debt + more bank bailout debt + selling national assets at discount prices + oppressive unemployment = economic health. They fail to grasp that severe austerity hasn’t, and won’t, turn Greece (or any country) around. Banks, of course, just  want to protect their bets and not wait around for Greece to really stabilize for repayment.

Prior to the Great Depression, the Greek economy experienced years of growth, a healthy commercial activity spree, and like today, a stark increase in (less-leveraged) bank loans to finance it. When the Depression struck, banks and local businesses faced unpayable loans and declining asset values.  (Stop me when this sounds familiar).

Credit constricted immediately, choking internal economic activity.  In 1928, the Greek Drachma was tied to the gold standard, but pegged to the British pound. When Britain devalued its pound in 1931, the Greek government responded by raising public investments and pegging the Drachma to the US dollar.

But by early 1932, central bank reserves had fallen so much that they only backed 40% of Greek bonds. Even without the slow drip of rating agency downgrades to highlight this leveraged debt situation (which is nothing compared to say, today’s US reserves vs. debt leverage), the lack of reserves caused foreign speculators to fleece the Drachma/dollar exchange rate. Bond yields blew out. Borrowing costs shot up.  

So in March 1932, the League of Nation’s (the precursor bank bailout entity to the ECB/IMF) agreed to provide a loan to service Greece’s debt in return for – wait for it - austerity measures. Unlike today, the government said ‘hell no.’ Instead, in April, 1932, it floated the Drachma - which devalued quickly. It also declared a public debt moratorium, and increased infrastructure spending to strengthen its economy. It negotiated repayment terms with creditors for overdue interest.  By 1934, agriculture and industrial production rose, the currency was more stable, employment increased, and the budget balanced.

The situation is different now. Though national Greek banks registered relatively few domestic loan losses in 2009 ( a fact unrecognized by the bailout supporters), they did begin taking losses in their trading books due to various international bets. Their borrowing and margin costs rose sharply and quickly with each rating downgrade which increased their trade losses, and kept them from extending or renegotiating loans locally, which caused more economic pain for the population.

Greece would have been better off, had it not suffered a rapid series of downgrades and been pulverized by subsequent hot-money flight and pressure. Despite a clear warning from the Central Bank of Greece in late 2009 (when Greece was critical, but breathing) that it could sustain its costs if they didn’t rise egregiously, Moody’s (and later others) cut Greece’s sovereign debt rating from A1 to A2 in December, 2009.  From that point on, the international banking community went into ravage mode, fast.

Moody's cut Greece’s debt again, to A3 in April, 2010, to Ba1 (junk) in June, 2010, and to B1 in March, 2011. Three months later, Greece’s rating was cut to Caa1. By September, 2011 the six biggest Greek banks were downgraded to Caa2, a smidge above default levels, crushing national credit flow to the population.

When any country is downgraded from single A to junk within 18 months, it has to issue more expensive debt to stay even, which by definition, makes the credit-worthiness of its bonds decline.  As in any country, Greece's banks are big buyers of its government bonds. They also use those bonds as collateral for other borrowing  and trades - with each other – and with  international banks.

As Greek banks weakened and borrowing costs soared, their ability to buy Greek bonds from their own government diminished, which weakened the value of government debt. Circularly, Greek banks took further hits for holding the devalued Greek bonds and thus become weaker - further reducing their ability to sustain local needs.

That is why the Greek government wants to bolster its now junk-rated banks (in addition to the money that banks are getting directly from bailout-for-austerity loans) and foreign ones, at the cost of hurting the population.  But since the economy (even at its healthiest level ever) can’t sustain its bailout borrowing costs (as opposed to its operating costs which would have been payable without the increased rates and bailout principle mixed in), this is an unstoppable downward spiral.

Greece’s GDP has contracted 13% (by 7% in the last quarter of 2011) from a late 2008 record high. (By comparison, the United Kingdom’s GDP has fallen by 20% in the same period, and though its unemployment rate has risen, its borrowing costs remain manageably low, making it cheaper to sustain its banks.) Greece’s savings rate at 7.5% is at three decade lows (but still higher than that of the US).

Meanwhile, Greece’s debt to GDP ratio is 160%. (It hovered around 100% from 1994 through 2008.) The unemployment rate at 20.9%, and the youth unemployment rate at 48%, has doubled since January 2008. There is nothing to indicate it won’t keep rising.

Money continues fleeing Greek banks, bonds, and stocks, as citizens try to preserve what they can, and foreign speculators play a game of chicken with bailout providers. The Greek stock market stands at just one-fifth of its January 2008 level. Ten year government bond yields are at 33%, compared to 5% just two years ago.

The speed and intensity of Greece’s decline reflects nothing short of an international mafia-style hit.

The majority of Greek workers didn’t break the government’s back, even if a very small subset strained it. Further, the more bailout measures forced on Greece, the more its economy will be ravaged to repay them.  After four rounds of austerity, nationwide protests, $110 billion Euros in IMF and ECB bailouts, escalating interest rates driving borrowing costs higher and choking credit, a downgrade to junk, a Prime Minister replacement, and now another big bailout, Greece’s tragedy is just beginning.

Yet lessons from the Great Depression exist. By floating the Drachma (the equivalent of leaving the Euro), negotiating individually with creditors (telling banks to back off), and increasing internal public focus (the opposite of what's going on now) Greece was able to stabilize more quickly than larger European countries. It’s not entirely too late to try again: but it requires the currently unimaginable: a political will that is population – rather than bank – oriented.

It turned out that my pre-determination proved accurate. I wonder if the members of Congress felt the same sense of same déjà vu that I did, as they were bopping up and down and applauding. 

Obama's speech was a compilation of highlights from his past ones. One part optimism, two parts repetition equals one total uninspiring. Maybe it’s so boring, because it matters so little at this point. Taking away popularity polls, our national threshold for belief in hope or change has been trampled, not just because of Obama or Romney, but of the whole political apparatus that thrives on deflection of reality and posturing. We don’t have the same energy to expend listening to politicians, the endless spin that renders fact obsolete, responsibility absent, and true accomplishment, unnecessary.

We saw Optimistic Obama in his first address to Congress in 2009: “While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”

We got Presumptuous Obama in 2010: “As we stabilized the financial system, we also took steps to get our economy growing again, save as many jobs as possible, and help Americans who had become unemployed.”

We watched Philosophical Obama in 2011: “We are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea -– the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny.  That’s why centuries of pioneers and immigrants have risked everything to come here… The future is ours to win.”

Now, we had Campaigning on Fairness Obama. He returned to the roots of his pre-Presidential words, having accomplished little to attain the goal that his words implied. Here are ten things that President Obama skirted: 

1) The cost of healthcare insurance. Obama tried to play both sides, slapping a populist spin on an insurance industry gift. “That’s why our health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a Government program.” He claimed he won’t “go back” on things like health insurance companies being able to cancel policies. He didn’t say that insurance premiums have already risen 22% in the past two years. Republicans hate Obama’s ‘signature’ healthcare reform bill because it unconstitutionally forces people to purchase insurance. Democrats support the bill because Obama passed it. The reality is – by the time it takes effect in 2014, premium costs may have doubled. Frame it however you want, that means health insurance could cost twice as much when this bill takes effect as it did before it was passed. Meanwhile, there are more people without insurance (because they can’t afford it) even though insurance companies can’t cancel policies or deny insurance for pre-existing conditions. This bill merely offers insurance companies a wider pool of customers, with a few restrictions on how much they can pillage them.

2) Student Loan Defaults. Obama claimed he wants to cap interest rates on student loans - which would be great, but can only work in this particularly low rate environment. He urged  colleges to keep costs down – again, something that’s worked out really well when he’s mentioned it before. This year, student loan debt surpassed credit card debt, breaching the $1 trillion mark, at an average of more than $25,000 per student (and up 47% over a decade ago, not all under Obama, but still a problem). Not surprisingly, student loan defaults rates have risen alongside this debt increase. Nearly 9% of loans defaulted in 2010, of those that began repayment in 2009, vs. 7% that began in 2008.) Obama didn’t mention this growing concern. 

3) Youth unemployment. Obama took credit for the creation of 3 million jobs (I’m not going to debate that here). Regardless, youth unemployment is at its highest rate since 1948. The unemployment rate for those under age 25 is 18.1%, (31% for blacks) having risen sharply since 2008. Do the math. High student loan debt + diminishing  job prospects =  bad ending. Work-study programs have to be intense to really alter that.

4) Big banks. The largest firms continue to grow their asset bases and fee extrapolation strategies from their captive customer base (If you’re say, a JPM Chase customer, it costs you $5 to extract your own money from a Bank of America ATM – both banks get a cut). It was Obama that re-confirmed Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke for another fourteen years (and yes, a bi-partisan Congress agreed), and who still keeps Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner around. Both men were gung-ho about the merger mania that dotted Wall Street in the fall of 2008 and making the ‘too-big-to-fail” banks bigger, as they now are.

5) Small banks. President Obama didn’t address the smaller bank closings occurring because the big banks got disproportionate subsides;, 389 smaller banks (with $297 billion in assets) failed from 2009 to 2011. Like during the early years of the Great Depression, this means less choice for individuals, less loans for local businesses, and consolidation of influence and market share for the big banks – which comprise Obama’s largest bundling base.

6) Borrowers. Despite a few tepid programs to help homeowners, the sheer number of foreclosures is higher today than it was in 2008. There were a record number of foreclosure filings:  2.9 million in 2010 and 2.7 million in 2011.  These are predicted to rise in 2012 amidst default surges and more lender notices than in 2011. 

Why? Because Obama’s program (that was supposed to help 5 million borrowers, and helped half a million) had to be approved by the banks. Banks don’t like citizen aid programs, even if they screwed citizens to begin with by fueling a $14 trillion toxic asset pyramid repackaging risky (for people), high interest-bearing (for them). Obama said, “The banks will repay a deficit of trust”? What?! When?! Where?!

7) Recent regulator incompetence. Regulators looked the other way, Obama said, pre-crisis. But he mentioned nothing about regulators' more recent passes; the SEC bestows banks settlements for fraudulent mortgage asset products, without extracting any admission of wrongdoing. He missed saying anything about the lack of related DOJ criminal indictments. The top five banks agreed to pay $1.149 billion to the SEC to settle subprime-mortgage related fraud charges, with no admission of guilt or criminal indictments. (The SEC settlement of $285 million with Citigroup was rejected by Judge Rakoff in November, 2011 and is being re-negotiated.) And Obama wants to create a Financial Crimes Unit? What’s the SEC supposed to be doing? or the DOJ? or the FBI?

8) MF Global and customer money. On the same topic – the deficit of trust thing: Obama avoided any talk about his buddy, Jon Corzine or MF Global, the nation’s eight largest bankruptcy. He didn’t point out how diabolical it was to use and ‘lose’ customer funds that were supposed to have been kept separate from bad bets. He didn’t suggest having a solid separation between customer money and financial firm money - as in - don't have it at the same firm. He claimed, "we will not bail you out again” and yet, we still are.

9) Banks hoarding. Obama neglected to mention the $1.6 trillion that banks are stashing at the Fed in the form of excess (and interest-bearing) reserves, which do nothing for the Main Street economy. Meanwhile, small business loans are at a 12-year low, having shrunk continuously since 2008.

10) Obama conveyed that we dodged a bullet by getting the banking system under control. He didn’t note the rising risk in the banking system: the largest four US banks (JPM Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs) control nearly 95% of the US derivatives market, which has grown by 20% since just last year, to  $235 trillion. JPM Chase holds 11% of the world’s derivative exposure, Citibank, Bank of America, and Goldman comprise about 7% each. Goldman has 537 times as many (from 440 times last year) derivatives as assets and it’s still considered a bank holding company (as per Bernanke) that gets federal backing.

In all, the President's speech was reminiscent of George Clooney’s in Ides of March. We’ve heard it all before, maybe with slightly different words: America lost 4 million jobs before I got here, and another 4 million before our policies went into effect, but in the last 12 months, we added 3 million job. We must reduce tax loopholes, and provide tax incentives to businesses that hire in America. We must reform taxes for the wealthy (though he signed an extension of Bush’s tax cuts.) We must train people for an apparent abundance of expert jobs. We need more clean energy initiatives.  We created regulations (big sigh of relief he didn’t use the word ‘sweeping’) to stop fraudulent financial practices. We will help homeowners. Wall Street must make up a "trust deficit.”  Like Jamie Dimon cares. 

In other words, Obama gave Wall Street a pass, while waxing populist. Don’t get me wrong. I expected nothing different. I will continue to expect nothing different, when he gets a second term, given the lame duo the GOP favors his key contenders to be.

Nowadays, when any sovereign (including the US) gets downgraded by a rating agency, it's not just because its debt repayment ability is questionable (the publicized logic of rating agencies), but because it incurred more expensive debt to float its banking system. It chose to subsidize banks over people.

The S&P likes moving on Friday nights. It was on a Friday night that it downgraded US debt to AA+ from AAA. On Friday night, January 13, 2012,  it downgraded France and Austria from AAA to AA+, and 7 other European countries, too; Cyprus, Italy, Portugal, and Spain by two notches; Malta, Slovakia, and Slovenia, by one notch. Portugal, Cyprus, Ireland and Greece are at junk status. Germany’s AAA rating is intact.

Nowhere in S&P’s statement about “global economic and financial crisis”, did it clarify that sovereigns were hit due to backing their largest national banks (and international, US ones) which engaged in half a decade of leveraged speculation. But here’s how it worked:

1) Big banks funneled speculative capital, and their own, into local areas, using real estate and other collateral as fodder for securitized deals with derivative touches. 2) They lost money on these bets, and on the borrowing incurred to leverage them. 3) The losses ate their capital. 4) The capital markets soured against them in mutual bank distrust so they couldn’t raise more money to cover their bets as before. 5) So, their borrowing costs rose which made it more difficult for them to back their bets or purchase their own government’s debt. 6) This decreased demand for government debt, which drove up the cost of that debt, which transformed into additional country expenses. 7) Countries had to turn to bailouts to keep banks happy and plush with enough capital. 8) In return for bailouts and cheap lending, governments sacrificed citizens. 9) As citizens lost jobs and countries lost assets to subsidize the international speculation wave, their economies weakened further. 10) S&P (and every political leader) downplayed this chain of events.

The United States

On Aug. 5, 2011, S&P downgraded US government debt to 'AA+'. This was four days after Congress voted to raise the US debt cap - to prevent a downgrade - proceeded by political squabbling and the US Treasury and Fed begging Congress to raise the debt cap. S&P, beacon of stamp-any-toxic-asset-AAA, accountability, claimed, “American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges.” In other words, too much debt, too little income.

According to the US Treasury, the main reason for the debt increase was a stalling economy –  lack of enough incoming tax receipts to pay US expenses, (which include interest payments on growing debt.) That’s not true. Tax receipts dropped $400 billion to $2.1 trillion in 2009 vs. 2008. Expenditures jumped to $3.5 trillion in 2009 from $3 trillion in 2008. Treasury debt ballooned by nearly $4 trillion from 2008 through 2010.

Where’s the money? About $1.6 trillion lies on the Fed’s books as excess reserves which banks  - dealers for sovereign debt - put there. Nearly a trillion dollars went to backing Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac - which enabled banks to artificially overvalue related securities, and extra interest payments. There was $700 billion in TARP, which though mostly repaid, never manifested into debt reduction, and hundreds of billions of dollars of asset guarantees underlying big bank mergers. So, 75% of the extra debt went to saving banks. S&P didn’t mention this. The policy repeated across the Atlantic.

Ireland

The Irish government’s pain started when it guaranteed the bonds of Anglo-Irish bank in September 2008. By May, 2010, Central Bank head, Patrick Honohan, assured the world that he’d have ‘two big banks, fixed by the end of the year.’ Upon that endorsement, the government backed bondholders on the banks’ behalf. The economy deteriorated.

Six months later, nobody would lend to Irish banks. Irish austerity promises didn’t change the fact that Irish banks weren’t big enough to contain their waste. By November, 2010, banks paid for $60 billion Euro of maturing bonds with emergency ECB loans, and the ECB became the backbone for the Irish bank guarantee scheme, whose participants included Ireland’s big financial firms: Irish Life & Permanent p.l.c., Bank of Ireland, Allied Irish Bank p.l.c., Anglo Irish Bank Corporation Limited, and Irish Nationwide Building Society. Irish Government Debt doubled from 65.3 billion Euro to 118 billion Euro since 2009.

The ECB deemed the bailout a success. Yet, by the summer of 2011, Ireland was downgraded to a notch above junk and households (and foreigners) accelerated extracting money from Irish banks, weakening the banks’ funding base further. The Irish government now owes 110 billion Euros to the banks, the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA, aka “bad bank”) the EU, ECB and IMF, with no way to repay it.

Spain

According to a recent Business Week article, Spanish banks hold 30 billion Euros ($41 billion) of “unsellable” real estate loans. Just like in the US where smaller banks got hit hardest, small and mid-sized Spanish banks did too. In addition, about 308 billion Euros worth of Spanish loans are ‘troubled.’ Home prices in Spain are off 28% from their April, 2007 peak, with land values in the outskirts of urban areas, down by as much as 75%.

In economic desperation, the public elected conservative party leader, Mariano Rajoy, as Prime Minister in the end of 2011 who promised to lead Spain to economic recovery, by invoking austerity measures in return for backing to help the biggest Spanish banks.

Meanwhile, the top six Spanish banks sit on $33 billion of foreclosed assets having set aside 105 billion Euros in write-downs against bad loans since 2008, with another 60 billion Euros to come. The backdrop is a 23% unemployment rate, triple its 7.9% May, 2009 level. Property transactions continue to decline. Foreclosures keep ramping up. The gap between what banks want to sell foreclosed or troubled property at, and what investors are wiling to pay continues to widen, forcing more small and mid-size banks to buckle under larger than anticipated losses, which in turn squeezes liquidity out of local usage.

Greece

According to an SEC report from the National Bank of Greece (NBR) for the year ending 2010 – loans to businesses and households were expected to “remain under considerable pressure…[due to] “downward pressure on household disposable incomes and firms’ profitability from the austerity measures… are likely to impair further demand for loans.” They weren’t kidding. In order for the NCB (or any bank) to reduce its dependency on ECB funding, it has to reduce loans to its own economy.

The ECB agreed to accept worse collateral (with junk ratings), including bank issued bonds with Greek government guarantees (under a May, 2010 rule change for all member countries). The ECB bought Greek (and other) government bonds in the secondary markets, to support their value and thus, their value as loan collateral. As with the Fed’s QE measures, Euro-style – this only perpetuates a fantasy of demand.

After four rounds of austerity measures, nationwide protests, 110 billion Euros in IMF and ECB bailouts to keep bondholders (and banks) happy, escalating interest rates driving borrowing costs higher, a downgrade to junk, and a Prime Minister swap; Greece remains in tatters with more pain to come.

Italy and Portugal

Last summer, S&P warned it would downgrade Portugal if it didn’t play ball with the IMF and EU over a 78 billion Euro bailout. So Portugal towed the austerity line. Its economy deteriorated. S&P downgraded it to junk status.

The IMF and EU declared that Italy too, needed ‘structural reform’, meaning public austerity and privatization.  National assets went up for fire-sale, as they did in Spain and Portugal, to the highest international bidder. Now, the high borrowing costs the government faces as a result of bolstering the banking system, paying bondholders and selling infrastructure, has resulted in more downgrades and dim prospects.

According to the Italian Central Bank, 500 Italian cities are facing losses on derivatives contracts. JPM Chase and Banco IMI are accepting Italian government bonds as collateral, rather than less risky US Treasuries or cash, certain that the ECB will step in to buy, and thus prop up, Italian bonds if needed, as they did in August, 2011.

As Greece showed, using high-cost sovereign debt as collateral leads to more bailouts to ensure big lenders get their money back. JPM Chase, having weathered the US subprime crisis with support from the US Fed, isn’t about to lose on that bet. Meanwhile, several Italian towns, the City of Milan and the Tuscan region, are suing the big American, German, Swiss and French banks over derivative losses and misleading asset purchases, who will likely get bailout money anyway.

Bailout Economics Doesn’t Work

ECB bailout money didn’t (and won’t) go towards helping any European country’s local economy, any more than it went to aiding the mainstream US economy. The ECB and IMF, at the Fed, US Treasury and US administration’s urging, camouflaged the insolvency of European banks, perpetuating losses with bailouts, and forcing cowardly governments to support them, while turning a blind eye to boosting core economies.

Meanwhile, banks with access to the ECB’s ‘window’ are taking the money and immediately putting it back into the ECB as reserves. Overnight deposits at the ECB continue to break records, currently hovering around 500 billion Euro ($640 billion). As in the US, European banks aren’t using that liquidity to help fix local economies, but hoarding it to preserve themselves. The amount on reserve is 98% of the total made available in emergency 3-year loans in late December at 1% interest; banks get 0.25%, which means they are paying 0.75% interest for the loans, far less than the market would charge them.

The die has been cast. Central entities like the Fed, ECB, and IMF perpetuate strategies that further undermine economies, through emergency loan facilities and  bailouts, with rating agency downgrades spurring them on. Governments attempt to raise money at harsher terms PLUS repay the bailouts that caused those terms to be higher. Banks hoard cheap money which doesn’t help populations, exacerbating the damaging economic effects. Unfortunately, this won't end any time soon.