14 APR 2009, Tuesday

1. Folks, if you've wondered why I'm so negative...the first picture should allow you to draw some conclusions. Put simply, credit expansion has limits. When those limits are exceeded, it all goes into reverse for awhile as previous debts are paid down or defaulted through bankruptcy. Only after the weak debt is purged from the system, can the machinery of capitalism begin to function cleanly again. That, like it or not, is the way it works...lessons from the past.
2. And the second picture shows the impact to GDP of each dollar of debt. You can see that it's not having the impact it once did. Why? Because there is just too much debt. When will we get a negative return for each dollar of debt? Dunno. But that is when we are officially a banana republic.