Common Cents

Pass The Hat

Ralph Murphy

(8/2) The Congressional House of Representatives passed the 2021 budget request effectively reestablishing last years programs at 1.3 trillion dollars. The measure now moves to the Senate for further review and approval. In keeping with current legislative initiatives it does reflect tax based financing for established programs favoring defense but maintains others at last years levels. Notably the bill maintains policy review that severed over 2 trillion in overcharge to auditors. That same bill would have read 3.7 trillion dollars in 2017 and political alignments and policy commitments now broadly reflect it amid some major structural realignments to federal programs.

The reader is likely familiar with news reports on Congressional bills and policy, this bill is not to be confused with other recent stop gap funding measures such as the 2.2 trillion CARES ACT or the Climate Change bill at over 1.5 trillion or the Infrastructure bill at 1 trillion dollars which either passed and weren’t funded or died in committee. The 1.3 trillion dollars, if Congress gets the full request amount, and last year it was downsized from that level, would be tax funded not debt issue but pay all the federal debts. Implied severed were varied transfer programs that favored alleged allied interests here and abroad but were not included in the federal spending. Now at quandary include bought relations of the officials abroad. It should also be reviewed to corporate policy as investor money is available and with the right player shift may prove useful with exchanges not simple gift transfers to its foreign policy role.

There are several structural features of the American economy that seem to have been exploited through legislation or lightly contended corporate action that while functional in lower grade programs were in recent years grossly abused. Subsidy programs initiated with commodity anti trust legislation waivers since the 1933 New Deal allowed cartel like mergers of agricultural interests in a 5 year Farm Bill among others It sets prices and quotas for the basic commodities but provides income guarantees to that lobby with some provisions so lenient farmers here and oddly abroad are often paid not to produce. At than over 860 billion dollars the bill now includes social programs in non affiliated Omnibus provisions.

The farm lobby was followed by similar groups in healthcare, then by the 1970 s housing, energy, and more complex automotive or aviation groups were subject to the subsidies with associated income guarantees through planned non market policy targeting. Cartels merge producers that otherwise would be competing. The markets tend to be relatively primitive and in a social structure that does allow price signal favoring of options may be eclipsed or even replaced by other systems. A government control authority can keep a market of that type operational through law coercion or subsidy payments but the broker role is routinely costly and options do exist if the private sector and security can be mobilized to confront the cartel.

In the fields mentioned above the income guarantees and vague ownership or inelastic need for the goods were seldom successfully challenged. There seemed injections from alternate equity funds especially incontestable corporate or personal income taxes that maintained an appearance of value or price policy that conventional supply and demand would have downgraded or replaced. Pooled wealth concepts of value gave marginal members an appearance of equal strength both economic and political so long as they maintained their quota position. Personal and corporate income could be almost any level in that environment and eccentricity paralleled convention as complexity otherwise so low. Officials could manage a commodity market, maybe a healthcare cartel to include inflated medicine and medical prices. The automotive sector was pushing the system and output abroad briefly passed them before trade restrictions stifled those advances.

If a cartel member the personal wealth was virtually guaranteed. What appeared to have happened, however, was the private sector banking mergers coupled with corporate price fixing in the private sector treated complex markets that could only be optimally run with cost benefit price signals as if primitive commodities. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange was able to gain control of pricing policy to the corporate output and simply pegged them from currency indices to precious metal to actual sales in a corporate coup effectively paralleled by the 2008 bank mergers. It further gained control of the Intercontinental Exchange or ICE price fixing futures markets of Europe and their former spheres of influence in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. It’s reflected by policy commitment of Nikkei 225 futures index in Japan that tracks controls over its major producers.

The issue now is the way forward as the manipulation of cartel type price pegging and output quotas failed to the point of security redress by federal sanction. There are several trade facets that seem to merge concepts of competence with appearance that are challenged in the markets. Subsidy programs are tax control based guarantees that again can maintain a loss maker or eclipse emergent markets but suit a player type of equal complexity in that sense. Relevant to international accords there appears on accounting forms secondary income that was a simple grant program to foreign groups and officials. It was one the federal government was willing to admit undertaken and declared in foreign direct investment or non grounded income flows cross border. FDI to accounting understandings can confusingly include domestic transfers to foreign nationals who reside here, so was often palatable to auditor review as the money was retained. Its an accounting issue but control features of the repatriation can be troubling to policy officials.

What was relatively clear from that House bill is despite the coronavirus gyrations the security groups have dropped support for the older cartel arrangements and if they can’t fill that over 2 trillion dollar gap they used to take for granted as given, they’re literally out on the street pending legal charges. The industry frame of reference seemed relative equality in some markets between vastly different competitors to their field. Personal wealth perception reflected member viewing prism based on promises, despite the realistic value of their contribution routinely minimal. A good or service is worth what supply and demand forces in a conventional trade environment determine at price. The cartels value became policy discretion not consumer worth and tax money filled the difference. Again they could do that in primitive systems but that Chicago group as well as the New York bankers took it to the corporate board, were confronted when China was bailed out in addition to Europe and are now bit players to press reports as they needed the 2 trillion tax overcharge and undisclosed transfers now restored to corporate and personal earners.

That transfer system involved an awkwardly high simple theft regimen that seems linked to Goldman Sachs that bridged politics with stored earnings. The list of officials who were senior executives there is staggering both foreign and domestic. The American Federal Reserve Chairman, Treasury secretary, Commonwealth leaders, varied Prime Minister, Finance Chairmen and Central Bank Officials from Canada to England, Europe to its colonies all worked there as senior executives. It included International Monetary Bank, World Bank and European Central Bank figures such as senior dispersal agents as well. There was a chronic fund outflow apparently brokered by the Goldman group as well as an every decade recession where they’d just drain accounts to varied gift programs abroad. If in that group the politicians could deliver those funds. The arrangement seemed to have collapsed when for whatever reason and it alludes common understanding, China was incorporated into the system at about the time of 2010 Dodd Frank institutional requirements favoring a strong investment bank role at the expense of regional ones.

There were reported Chinese growth earnings that went from bit world player to top of the world that were reversed as simple transfers. HSBC became overnight a major retail or branch bank. It’s strong conjecture but it appears the Goldman Sachs and its affiliated network to include Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America’s, JPMorgan and a couple emergent ones were going to piece meal the funds back to the states from Shanghai storage in what would have favored their few friends, but were caught and really haven’t been much heard from since Dodd Frank repeal in 2018 restored the money to regional and conventional investors That leaves the political and corporate climate with ‘beached whales’ who have burned their bridges with the corporate community in an alliance structure dependent on the commodity money or mentality rather than actual real value. They’ll have to get in better touch with the earners as few in the security or corporate world seem sold on old pitch men or ladies.

As it influences foreign policy there is a type that knows the peculiarities of cultural variance and can invest to market reward despite the border differences. Most can’t. They’ll address religious or poorly understood social interactive as similar to what they’ve experienced at home, lose investment cash and often petition the feds for help. To succeed in foreign investment there has to be a marriage of systemic resolve that is often blocked by irregular extraneous rebukes based on statute or custom. In policy commitment. Supply and demand are price brokered to convention but restrictions can degrade or terminate the deal. There’s a tendency in some cultures to allow precedent to guide the current market or social actions despite often completely different sets of circumstances linked to available resources or social to include legal changes. The market model assumes flexible response to shifting circumstances in that regard so when there is a lockdown in a policy commitment it takes an almost revolutionary effort to establish a new standard. The latter can be very conventional universal systems in most other areas but if a local control authority as religious or somehow cultural lead dictates personal policy it can be terminated.

The main point is with personal commitment investor options become very focused on the trade objectives or good or service provision. Government programs lack that initiative, favor past successes or morph to alternate objectives when resource allocation dictates a closure or realignment to all but official interests. Up until the Dodd Frank repeal and scrutiny of New York bankers and their Chicago friends it was a simple transfusion policy to include the executive offspring of the Goldman diaspora. They were the monetary control not the market.

The money is now retained with the earners who seem to deal closer to their regional or interests as the cartels did prove too costly. The earners in the cartel group might be able to retain it if they keep a relatively low profile but probably don’t want to challenge a rebound attempt judging from that 2 trillion dollar gap as they don’t seem in touch with conventional value. The system as emergent will pay exactly what the markets are worth at the purchasing point in time. Program reviews will likely show more resolve to need as well. With the cartels again output, reward options investor strategies were policy whim and it collapsed to earner and security interests. As an accounting anomaly I think there was real perception of personal retained ownership to joint funds that was maintained in the break up of the system. It’s similar to believing one owns a community pool as a member of it. Personal wealth would likely extend to whatever was secured during the heady merger era, but if the ownership hints at future earnings or more specifically combined ones they would have to settle for actual market value and other arrangements. They also may have inflated wealth perception as they’re counting shared as personal assets in cartels which then affects GDP reports as likely inflated to maintain policy.

In foreign dealing there can be near exact resource availability and vast earnings variance between nations. That points to the cultural or legal differences in varied caps or redirects that would have to harmonized but can be if the product environment is understood. There are also human factors as well cultural or genetic ones. Germans seem a bit ‘ high strung’ for example though unlike others manage to productively channel it in industry. Dealing with the community requires a broker- you can’t just space in there and succeed.

What’s clear at this point is official monetary policy and its effect on social understandings and order will no longer be dictated by the arbitrary institutional banks but rather investors closer to output. The tax usurp has been vastly curtailed as well. The reader can monitor measures to fill that 2 trillion dollar overcharge gap but it appears fairly obvious the security organs or ‘guns’ of ‘guns and butter’ review doesn’t back them anymore. Legislation that drops the cartel anti trust waivers would help as well.