• 477 days Will The ECB Continue To Hike Rates?
  • 477 days Forbes: Aramco Remains Largest Company In The Middle East
  • 479 days Caltech Scientists Succesfully Beam Back Solar Power From Space
  • 878 days Could Crypto Overtake Traditional Investment?
  • 883 days Americans Still Quitting Jobs At Record Pace
  • 885 days FinTech Startups Tapping VC Money for ‘Immigrant Banking’
  • 888 days Is The Dollar Too Strong?
  • 889 days Big Tech Disappoints Investors on Earnings Calls
  • 889 days Fear And Celebration On Twitter as Musk Takes The Reins
  • 891 days China Is Quietly Trying To Distance Itself From Russia
  • 891 days Tech and Internet Giants’ Earnings In Focus After Netflix’s Stinker
  • 895 days Crypto Investors Won Big In 2021
  • 896 days The ‘Metaverse’ Economy Could be Worth $13 Trillion By 2030
  • 896 days Food Prices Are Skyrocketing As Putin’s War Persists
  • 899 days Pentagon Resignations Illustrate Our ‘Commercial’ Defense Dilemma
  • 899 days US Banks Shrug off Nearly $15 Billion In Russian Write-Offs
  • 902 days Cannabis Stocks in Holding Pattern Despite Positive Momentum
  • 903 days Is Musk A Bastion Of Free Speech Or Will His Absolutist Stance Backfire?
  • 903 days Two ETFs That Could Hedge Against Extreme Market Volatility
  • 905 days Are NFTs About To Take Over Gaming?
What's Behind The Global EV Sales Slowdown?

What's Behind The Global EV Sales Slowdown?

An economic slowdown in many…

How The Ultra-Wealthy Are Using Art To Dodge Taxes

How The Ultra-Wealthy Are Using Art To Dodge Taxes

More freeports open around the…

Michael Pento

Michael Pento

Euro Pacific

Michael Pento is Senior Economist and Vice President of Managed Products for Euro Pacific Capital. He is a well-established specialist in the Austrian School of…

Contact Author

  1. Home
  2. Markets
  3. Other

The 'Deleveraging' Deception

There is wide agreement among economists and the financial media that our lackluster economic performance stems from continued "deleveraging" among consumers and businesses. Although it is certainly true that after decades of overly speculative borrowing, individuals and corporations are paying down debt, rebuilding their savings, and generally repairing their respective balance sheets. But these activities cannot be faulted for our economic malaise.

In fact, as a country, we haven't deleveraged at ALL. All the moves made by the private sector have been vastly outpaced by the federal government's efforts to add leverage to the economy. The net result is that we are much more indebted now than we were before the recession began; as a result, we are digging ourselves even faster into debt.

The good news is that households paid down debt for the 9th quarter in a row. In Q2, they deleveraged at a 2.3% annual rate, as their total debt outstanding dropped from $13.52 trillion to $13.45 trillion from Q1. That's still around 92% of GDP, which is way up from the 48% level in 1980, but the direction is positive. Ultimately, the message here could not be clearer: American households have decided - either voluntarily or involuntarily - that it is in their best interest to quit borrowing money and reduce their debt levels in order to reconcile their balance sheets. The bad news is that most economists view this as a pernicious tendency.

To counter the trend, economists have called for government to provide the spending that others have deferred - and the feds have been thrilled to comply. In fact, during Q2, Washington accumulated debt at a 24.4% annualized rate! So, even though households and state and local governments have begun to learn some valuable lessons, DC still managed to increase the overall level of non-financial debt in the US to a record $35.45 trillion. In an era of supposed deleveraging, the rate of debt accumulation has increased from 4.5% to 4.8% annualized over the past quarter.

By focusing solely on the behavior of the private sector, and ignoring the equally important fiscal habits of government, the financial media and mainstream economists have displayed a dangerous blind spot in their thinking. They fail to understand or acknowledge that borrowing done by a household or a government is virtually the same thing. The US government does have any independent means to generate wealth to pay off debt. It doesn't own factories or mines, and it does not operate a profitable service-sector business. It does not have an independent store of savings in another dimension, from which it can produce goods outside the bounds of economic law.

In the real world, all government stimulus comes from borrowing, spending, or printing, or to put it another way: deferred taxation, capital redistribution, or inflation. That means all US debt is ultimately backed by the tax base of the country. Therefore, whether the consumer or the government that does the borrowing is really unimportant because, in the end, it is the consumer that will receive the bill.

Meanwhile, government interventions are particularly pernicious because they encourage short-sighted behavior in the private market as well. It was reported today that corporations are using the rock-bottom interest rate environment to execute leveraged buybacks of their shares. While this temporarily increases shareholder value, it ultimately leaves the corporations - and the broader economy -- even further in debt.

As of Q2 2010, total non-financial debt is rising at a 4.8% annual rate but GDP is growing at only 1.6% annualized. US debt as a percentage of GDP continues to climb, which should put to bed any talk of a deleveraging or deflating economy. Consumers are clearly only part of the equation - and, for now, the smaller part. The US government, in fighting the claimed deleveraging, is sending the total debt level into the stratosphere. As we watch it soar upward, the dollar steadily drifts downward.

 


For in-depth analysis of this and other investment topics, subscribe to Euro Pacific's Global Investor Newsletter. Click here for your free subscription.

Click here to download Euro Pacific's Special Report: My Five Favorite Gold & Silver Mining Stocks.

Be sure to pick up a copy of Peter Schiff's just-released economic fable, How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes.

 

Back to homepage

Leave a comment

Leave a comment