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What is American business afraid of ? (Why not start hiring again ?)
American Thinker ^ | Dec 18,2008 | Mikiel de Bary

Posted on 12/18/2008 7:27:53 PM PST by SeekAndFind

In less than three months recently (from August 30 to November 19), the Federal Reserve System increased bank reserves in U.S. banks to more than $650 billion from under $50 billion. To remark that this was both a large and an unprecedented action would be an understatement. Since banks are permitted to lend a multiple of such reserves, it is possible that some day the U.S. money supply will begin to skyrocket amidst a new lending boom. Mr. Bernanke may now longingly dream of that day when he can become the stern central banker who must "take away the punch bowl" while at the same time receiving accolades for having "saved the economy." Between now and then, however, American businesses must overcome the mountain of fear that they have come to know during this past year. Unless their fear is overcome, banks won't lend, and worthy business borrowers won't seek loans. Money supply growth will be stunted, at best, and GDP will continue to languish or fall as it faces the headwind of a drop in the velocity of spending.

What are businesses afraid of? Perhaps they suspect that asset values may continue to drop a lot more or for a longer time than experts predict. This scenario implies a difficult period of indeterminate length for businesses -- i.e., employers -- and for stock and credit markets. The medicine for this? -- to make sure nothing prolongs the agony, that is, to let the free market work.

But a look at certain facts implies there is more to fear than just adapting to lower asset values.

Fact # 1: The Federal government and the Federal Reserve appear determined to use all their power to prevent the downward adjustment of asset values, that is, to prevent price changes that must take place prior to recovery. For example, to the extent they are successful in propping up or, God forbid, reestablishing status quo ante housing prices, real estate markets could be frozen indefinitely. Many buyers, certainly, might avoid the housing market for this reason and any other market they saw as artificially propped up by government. A new round in the effort to prop up the real estate market began Tuesday with the Fed's promise to "provide support."

Fact # 2: The "rescue" program of the Bush (and, prospectively, the Obama) administrations consists in an expansion of the public sector at the expense of the private sector. Allegedly, some of this program (the "bailouts") is to be temporary and will be reversed when recovery comes. Yet, even temporary public sector expansion suppresses the forces for recovery-including both the confidence of the un-bailed-out businesses and their financial means of survival.

Fact # 3: The Federal government and the Federal Reserve have not admitted their roles in producing the economic crisis, much less the implications of such an admission. The theory of Congress and the bureaucracy, it appears, is that "the free market" was to blame for the crisis and that the existing vast reach of business regulation must therefore be increased. This will not encourage recovery. It merely frightens businesses and investors-again, read employers if you are concerned with the unemployment rate. Then there is the Federal government's impressive avoidance of admitting blame for having encouraged the sub-prime mortgage fiasco and the real estate boom in general. But the most amazing evasion of responsibility, surely, is that of the Federal Reserve System, whose provision of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the asset bubble will be studied for decades. The academic debate may eventually be: Was it Fed policy of the last few years only which caused it, or the many decades of easy money that never once allowed the money and credit system to regain a sound footing?

The Fed's attempt to reinflate the economy may "succeed," i.e., it may overwhelm fear with a new round of delusion by providing us with a fresh array of high asset valuations. If it does, we can then wonder about the next frightening downward adjustment. Or perhaps we are now beginning a prolonged economic depression, like the last one impervious to "pragmatic" governmental "stimulus"-macabre government-orchestrated parodies of free market activity. Either way, American business may be forgiven for thinking the inmates are still fully in charge of the asylum. This could be the real fear.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: afraid; business; depression; recession
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To: Cementjungle

Prediction-
Beginning January 21, 2009 most lamestream media reports describing the US economy will be positive. You will see consumer confidence rebound, spending will increase, unemployment will stabilize and fall, and a self-fulfilling prophesy will ensue. So much of this current crisis was “manufactured” in the media that since the fix has always been in , it will continue in so much that a recovery will also be manufactured. Short term of course.
Remember-sell in May (2009) and go away. JMHO


21 posted on 12/18/2008 8:17:39 PM PST by LibraTango (hithvptv)
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To: BenLurkin

if things start picking up, he’s gonna raise taxes out of sight. All the companies I can think of around here have a hiring freeze. Not only that, they are laying off like crazy.


22 posted on 12/18/2008 8:21:59 PM PST by television is just wrong
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To: LibraTango

I have that strong apprehension as well.

I think we fail to conceive how thoroughly hoodwinked we are by the media.

Its also difficult to conceptualize the economic impact of gasoline that is nearly 1/3 the cost it was 18 months ago. That is a huge mutliplier back into the economy.

I do not want Obama to get credit but there are some factors in the mix that make rebound probable.

In some ways, if he raised taxes it would nip the growth in the bud and make him look really bad.


23 posted on 12/18/2008 8:25:48 PM PST by lonestar67 (Its time to withdraw from the War on Bush-- your side is hopelessly lost in a quagmire.)
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy

Great summary.

My answer to the question is, the banks are simply afraid of throwing good money after bad. The complete and total lack of transparency is a disincentive for banks to lend. They can’t tell if the institutions they lend to are on the verge of insolvency, so they refuse to lend to anyone who can’t prove sterling credit circumstances beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Quick question. If all the toxic paper was exposed today, wouldn’t this solve the liquidity trap? The banks would immediately begin lending to that half you mentioned that are doing real business with real money, and the other half would be left hanging out to dry as the banks would avoid them like the plague.

Not that this will ever happen... Just saying. Or, asking.


24 posted on 12/18/2008 8:31:44 PM PST by Freedom_Is_Not_Free
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To: o_zarkman44
As someone who works for one small business and owns two other (very) small businesses, I can tell you that the biggest fear on the part of most small businesses is simply UNCERTAINTY. That's uncertainty about a lot of things -- including sales prospects, credit availability, cost escalation, etc.
25 posted on 12/18/2008 8:34:03 PM PST by Alberta's Child (I'm out on the outskirts of nowhere . . . with ghosts on my trail, chasing me there.)
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To: LibraTango
Beginning January 21, 2009 most lamestream media reports describing the US economy will be positive.

Yes indeed.

26 posted on 12/18/2008 8:36:35 PM PST by Cementjungle
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To: arkady_renko

Many Freepers are flat clueless, because they refuse to study about the liquidity crisis. In a way, I don’t blame them for being cynical and distrusting what they read in the MSM, and thinking the worst of the leftists. No surprise there.

But the bulk of Freepers are just too busy or too apathetic to really study this liquidity crisis. As a result, you get ignorant asinine posts like these on a continuing, ongoing basis. Lots of people here honestly think this is nothing but either a manufactured crisis or an all out lie while the economy is really not so bad.

Just mind-numbing to think people could be so ignorant or so stupid.

Maybe it is not the bulk anymore, as more are feeling the downturn in their immediate pocketbooks. But there are many that must be wealthy enough retirees or who haven’t been hit in their personal employment, to be insulated in their day to day life, and are just clueless about the details of this true financial crisis, now economic crisis.


27 posted on 12/18/2008 8:37:27 PM PST by Freedom_Is_Not_Free
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To: lonestar67; television is just wrong
I beg to differ with you both. I think we are really heading for some tough times. I'm not sure how tough, but a lot rougher than we've seen in many years. I do believe there are at least 3 reasons.

1. The media and dims have been talking 'recession' for at least 3 years and many who have never lived through one have believed for quite a while. They have taken on a scared attitude and are looking for the 'magic negro' and papa federal gov't. to bail them out.

2. The damned washingtonians are are going to 'push on the string' with bailouts even more than they have and greatly multiply the adverse effects of proping up dishonest scum and scalawags both in and out of government.

3. This mass increase in the lendable money supply WILL come back to haunt us in rampant inflation at some point. The whipsaw of deflation/inflation will have the possibility to devastate the economy.

As a side note, my parents lived through the 'Great Depression' and it would take a WHOLE lot to even approach those depths again.

Nam Vet

28 posted on 12/18/2008 8:43:39 PM PST by Nam Vet (This space for rent............Hard currency only)
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To: SeekAndFind
I know of a local trucking firm that specializes in refrigerated goods. They were considering building a new warehouse so that they could grow.

However with Obama (and all that his election implies) they have decided to hold off on expansion and are just serving their current customers.

29 posted on 12/18/2008 8:46:13 PM PST by ikka (Brother, you asked for it!)
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To: Nam Vet

I think what you are saying is also quite possible. You have good reasons and analysis.

I think I am still in the perception shapes reality crowd. I think we will have a pretty good idea of where this is headed by mid February.


30 posted on 12/18/2008 8:46:23 PM PST by lonestar67 (Its time to withdraw from the War on Bush-- your side is hopelessly lost in a quagmire.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Business hires because they have a job than needs doing. If the job is getting done without hiring more people, why the hell would they want to hire someone? Business is about making a profit, not about a jobs program.


31 posted on 12/18/2008 8:50:02 PM PST by upsdriver
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To: SeekAndFind

Putting aside the author’s conspiracy theories, businesses will hire when there is a strain on their ability to satisfy consumer demand. As demand ramps up, businesses will probably use temp’s at first until the increase in demand is proven to be lasting. Then, they will hire, not before.

This is not a hard issue to work out unless you’re an over-educated Liberal Arts grad who’s never learned about the real world.


32 posted on 12/18/2008 9:17:32 PM PST by Rembrandt
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy
Federal Reserve Is Damned Either Way As It Battles Debt And Deflation

"We know what causes a recession to metastasize into a slump. Irving Fisher, the paramount US economist of the inter-war years, wrote the text in 1933: "Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions".

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 6:34PM GMT 18 Dec 2008

"Such a disaster is somewhat like the capsizing of a ship which, under ordinary conditions is always near stable equilibrium but which, after being tipped beyond a certain angle, has no longer this tendency to return to equilibrium, but a tendency to depart further from it," he said.

Today we call this "Gladwell's tipping point". Once it goes, you can't get back up. This is why the Federal Reserve has resorted to emergency measures that seem mad at first sight.

It has not only cut rates to near zero for the first time in US history, it is also conjuring $2 trillion of stimulus out of thin air. This is Quantitative Easing, or just plain 'QE' in our brave new world.

The key is the toxic mix of high debt and deflation. An economy can handle one at a time, but not both.

[snip]

33 posted on 12/18/2008 9:18:53 PM PST by blam
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To: Nam Vet
"The whipsaw of deflation/inflation will have the possibility to devastate the economy."

I expect the change from one to the other to be pretty sudden too.

34 posted on 12/18/2008 9:23:22 PM PST by blam
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To: SeekAndFind

Only government hires people that they don’t need!


35 posted on 12/18/2008 9:27:38 PM PST by dalereed
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To: Nam Vet

I grew up in the last depression and we are just about to the point of entering another one and it’s going to be world wide like the last one.

all the government bailouts aren’t going to delay it more than a few months at best.

If Obamas espoused monetary policy is put into effect it will last at least 10 years.


36 posted on 12/18/2008 9:37:21 PM PST by dalereed
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To: blam; Nam Vet; B4Ranch
To believe the media has the power to overcome the realities of the economic whirlwind is whistling past the graveyard.

Anything short of full "Prep for the Dep" (preparing for depression) is pure delusion. This is all going to reveal it's nasty ugliness in the next six to eight months...

Do it for the children. Prep for the Dep!

37 posted on 12/18/2008 10:07:43 PM PST by JDoutrider (Heading to Galt's Gulch... It is time.)
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To: dalereed
Like your observations, the few folks I know that went through the last one agree the same way.

These younger folk don't have a clue...

38 posted on 12/18/2008 10:13:19 PM PST by JDoutrider (Heading to Galt's Gulch... It is time.)
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To: Nam Vet; blam; outrider

I think this is going to be needed to convince Americans that the installation of a new money system is necessary ....... as the new Amero Dollar comes marching in.


39 posted on 12/18/2008 10:29:31 PM PST by B4Ranch ( Veterans: "There is no expiration date on our oath, to protect America from all enemies, ...")
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To: arkady_renko

That is EXACTLY my thought. People are having some retail therapy and getting in every purchase they can on their credit card before they either lose them, or get bailed out.

I’m a little stumped to claim that the entire economic issue is manufactured because some people were shopping. At Christmas.


40 posted on 12/19/2008 3:04:17 AM PST by autumnraine
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