http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrFX28Xq9Jw&feature=player_embedded

Enjoy!

We have reached such heights in our hysteria about growth and our psychological addiction to more-more-more, that we have seen stock prices fall, even with record revenues, if the corresponding company doesn’t meet expectations of even higher growth and revenue. It is getting to the point where a company cannot simply have a solid year and just pay out its dividends and maintain its good health. Instead companies have to be ever hopped-up on economic steroids and cost-cutting (i.e. shipping jobs to virtual slave labor in China) so as to not fall short of expectations.

And this one:

We no longer have functioning capitalism. Call it what you want— corporate socialism, crony capitalism, cancer capitalism, plutocracy, kleptocracy, oligarchy, neofeudalism— the system we have now is the equivalent of an individual going up to a complete stranger on the street and shaking that stranger down for “protection money” to pay for the individual’s underwater house mortgage.

You can access the full article here:

“Guest Post: The First Dominoes: Greece, Reality, And Cascading Default”
Submitted by Zeus Yiamouyiannis from Of Two Minds
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-first-dominoes-greece-reality-and-cascading-default

When it comes to the media, we should always remember that most of these conflicting signals originate in a media echo chamber, itself filled by a mixture of mainstream and social media, which more often than not tends to latch onto good news without digging any deeper.  This is why whether stocks or gold or currencies are up or down is such a major focus… it can be delivered quickly and spun in almost any way (good or bad).  In an era where news is crafted into fifteen second sound bites and 140-character-or-less chunks it is easy to become convinced that being well-connected is therefore the same as being well-informed.  And when those doing most of shouting in the echo chamber are nothing more than readers of government and/or corporate press-releases or are (paid to be) obsessed with the latest celebrity Facebook posts and Twitter ‘Twends’… it should not be surprising that people get confused or are sometimes completely misinformed.

A week or so ago, while listening to CBC Radio (coming out of Calgary so this shouldn’t be surprising), they held up another statistic stating that some high-end retail sector in the city is doing great and that this must be some sign that the recovery is here/gaining-momentum.  This is typical of Calgary radio… economic analysis with heavy rose-coloured spin is a regular occurrence.  Which brings me to the title of this post or at least the ‘the recession is sooo… 2009′ part.  That was another statement made by someone on CBC radio in early 2010.  Another rose-coloured, and completely misleading, statement made by a business reporter on our beloved public broadcaster.  On the private broadcasters (I cannot even watch Global National anymore) it is just as bad.  After Christmas, the stories centered around boutique brands and other high-end retail enjoying healthy sales over the holidays:

Porche & Lamborghini: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-10/porsche-rolls-royce-chasing-record-sales.html

Samsung: http://www.arabianbusiness.com/samsung-posts-record-q4-profit-amid-high-end-sales-boom-438831.html

And, of course, more recently, Apple: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/apple-profit-doubles-thanks-largely-to-37-million-iphone-sales-in-three-months/article2313464/

And this is not a recent trend either as is evidenced by these articles from approximately a year ago:

IBM: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/18/ibm_q4_2010_numbers/

High-end Retail: http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/03/03/retail-sales-high-end-most-trendy-teens-doing-best/

So, what is up?  Should we be like the average CBC Calgary reporter and announce that this all is just more evidence that the recession (and economic worries) are “sooo… 2009″? that European contagion is a myth? that Canada is not in a housing bubble? That everything is just the fault of lazy Greeks and PIIGS?

As I said, I do not find this surprising at all and if you have been reading entries on this blog then you will know why.  To me, this makes perfect sense.  Since the global meltdown in 2007 and 2008, governments and central banks have been pouring trillions into various financial sectors and bailing out corporations in sectors like banking and auto manufacturing.  And this continues.  It continues because the crisis never went away; rather than being a solution, the actions of governments and central banks the world over were just an attempt to kick the can down the road… and funnel more money into the financial/banking sector (which donates lots to (re)election campaigns after all).  The (intended) side-effect was that all that money-printing went directly to the upper echelons of the economy.  With a few exceptions, such as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the upper echelon was preserved.  The best example is the housing market in the U.S.  As thousands of individual homeowners lost their homes, the lenders and mortgage brokers were thrown government-guaranteed lifelines.  This is the real ‘wealth redistribution’ and not the kind that those on the extreme right banter about.

And this is reflected in the retail numbers.  While the U.S. faces record numbers of people living under the poverty level or using food stamps (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-02/u-s-food-stamp-use-reaches-record-45-8-million-usda-says.html), high-end retail surges.  The upper middle class and the elites in Western nations are doing fine (and are driving record sales in upscale, high-end, and boutique sectors).  Their wealth has been preserved while the poor and the lower end of the working population are suffering and inflation is exported to less-developed parts of the world.

The dangerous thing is that for in the media echo chamber (which, let’s face it, is populated mostly by the middle and upper-middle classes) they look in the mirror and things seem fine.  The mainstream media doesn’t tell anyone that the stock markets are kept afloat by a few profitable companies like Apple (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/ieconomy-demonstrating-how-apple-distorts-market), Microsoft and IBM (mostly tech and energy companies) and the illusory effects of ramped up high-frequency trading (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/presenting-rise-hft-machine-visual-confirmation-how-skynet-broke-stock-market-us-downgrade-day). And the illusion is rebroadcast and retweeted endlessly so that it appears, on the surface of televisions and smartphones everywhere, that the recession is sooo… very 2009.

This is the scenario:

As part of its strategy to spur growth and especially employment (made altogether more urgent after the Tiananmen uprising in 1989), China embarked on a program whereby its abundant labour could be made available to the world.  As part of this, it pegged its currency to the U.S. dollar.  As of 1997, the yuan was pegged at 8.28 to the dollar and China’s GDP growth more than doubled in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. financial deregluation and ultra low interests rates fuelled bubblenomics.  The tech bubble bursting and, later, 911 and the ensuing war on terror… coupled with Chinese growth… kept the U.S. Federal Reserve scared enough to keep rates at these low rates.  As Rickards adds, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan “Greenspan’s low rates… were also a kind of intravenous drug to Wall Street.” (104)  ‘Helicopter Ben’ Bernake  arrived at the Fed (first as a governor but then as Greenspan’s replacement), underlining the deflation-fighting low interest rates with a plan for the printing of money to monetize government deficits.  The stage was set for the housing bubble and the grand printing of money involving the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve System, Wall Street and Congress. Oh yeah, and let’s not forget China and the many Western corporations taking advantage of extremely poorly paid Chinese workers (as well as the non-existent labour and environmental laws), because here is where it all gets so very interesting:

When a Chinese exporter ships goods abroad and earns dollars or euros, it must hand over those currencies to the People’s Bank of China in exchange for yuan at a rate fixed by the bank.  When an exporter needs some dollars or euros to buy foreign materilas or other imports, it can get them, but the PBOC makes only enough dollars or euros available to pay for the imports and no more; the rest is kept by the bank.

 

The process of absorbing all the surplus dollars… produced a number of unintended consequences.  The first problem was that the PBOC did not just take the surplus dollars, but rather purchased them with newly printed yuan. This meant that as the Fed printed dollars and those dollars ended up in China to purchase goods, the PBOC had to print yuan to soak up the suplus. In effect, China had outsourced its monetary policy to the Fed, and as the Fed printed more, the PBOC also printed more in order to maintain the pegged exchange rate.

 

The second problem was what to do with the newly acquired dollar.  The PBOC needed to invest its reserves somewhere… preferring highly liquid government securities issued by the United States Treasury. (106)

And this doesn’t even get at the internal debt financing happening inside China as part of its economic expansion and domestic building spree, nor does really include the Euro Zone.  Truly, the global financial system is out of control.

What caught my eye today was a story that Foxconn workers were ‘upping’ the pressure on management of the Chinese manufacturing company and threatening mass suicide if their demands over working conditions were not met:

‘Mass suicide’ protest at Apple manufacturer Foxconn factory
Malcolm Moore, Daily Telegraph (Jan. 11, 2012)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9006988/Mass-suicide-protest-at-Apple-manufacturer-Foxconn-factory.html

This is not a joke (or an Onion article).  Foxconn has become infamous for having to install nets around its factories in order to dissuade its workers from publicly committing suicide to protest unbearable working conditions.  This is a fact that I mention to my students as much as I can because it is indicative of the realities of North American technology consumption: our corporations ‘design’ the products, which are then manufactured and assembled in mostly Asian countries where labour is cheap, where labour laws are weak or–more commonly–virtually non-existent, and where rules governing pollution or working conditions are overseen by a authoritarian government (meaning they are really, really bad).

As I said, it is unfair to single out Apple because it is rare to find anything ‘tech’ related today that is manufactured in Western nations and by Western citizens.  But Apple stands out because it is considered as a premiere brand and the cult of Apple/SteveJobs is so strong that often its adherents are completely clueless as to how the company operates.  I see this constantly where I work as many assume that Apple products are somehow different from the product category in which they come from.  Macs, according to Apple Logic, are not PCs, even though the guts of a Mac are the very same components which show up in competitors’ products.  In many cases, as with the Apple A5 chip that is found in the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4S, components are actually manufactured by competitors (with respect to the A5, it is made by Samsung).  Again, why this is not recognized is all due to the strength of Apple’s pervasive marketing but it still does not paper over the fact (for those paying attention anyway) that Western companies–and by extension the emotional branding and satisfaction that we often derive from a inexpensive tech gadgets–are completely dependent upon the exploitation of people and resources in distant lands.  And with a company like Apple that is sitting on a mountain of cash (stashed in overseas bank accounts so as to not have to pay taxes in the U.S.) and which enjoys a seemingly ‘untarnishable’ reputation, it is sad that so many are so misinformed about the actual circumstances surrounding the company’s operations.

Can anyone say, ‘commodity fetishism’?