Posted by Michael A. Kamperman on December 2, 2009
Tomorrow the Whitehouse is hosting a jobs summit designed to come up with creative ways to create jobs. It most likely will turn out to be a colossal waste of time. Platitudes like we should focus more on exports are not going to create jobs. Neither will a job creation tax-credit create positions companies either don’t need filled or can’t afford. Who would create a $30,000 job to get back $3,000 on their taxes? America already has the greatest entrepreneurial spirit in the world. We also lead the world in inventing new and better products. China may make stuff but we create stuff. Yet you cannot start a new small business if you cannot access capital. The banks have extremely tight lending standards and are cutting back on credit cards. Many small businesses use the owner’s credit cards to fund operations and provide liquidity for the business. And it is scary to start a new business when consumer spending continues to drop. Surprisingly small business owners say access to credit is a big problem but it isn’t their biggest problem. Their biggest problem in this downturn is sales. Demand has simply dried up. To create jobs we will need to open the credit markets back up to consumers and small businesses and we will need to restore confidence to spur spending.
The credit markets could be fixed quickly if we had a Treasury Secretary who had the guts to walk into the Whitehouse and tell the President he needs to spend what little political capital he has left on fixing the banks so they can resume normal lending again. But confidence is a tricky thing to restore once it’s been lost. We run the risk of creating a Humpty Dumpty with consumer spending if we don’t act soon to restore economic hope and swagger to the American populace. Rhetoric alone isn’t going to get the job done. Consumers need to see action and need to see something tangible that they can count on.
What we need to do is lower the age for Social Security and Medicare to age 60 and give everyone on Social Security a 20% raise. This will cost $400 billion per year. We would instantly and dramatically lower the unemployment rate if we could encourage people in their early 60’s to retire. Most of the extra Social Security money would get spent increasing revenues for companies which could then afford to hire more workers to keep up with increased demand. It would also lessen the anxiety over retirement funding sources for many people in their 50’s increasing their confidence to spend. The younger workers would also gain confidence and they and their friends move from the unemployment lines into the jobs of the recently retired. Despite the ranting of the deficit hawks America can afford to do this. The federal government is spending an additional $100 billion annually right now just to pay for extended unemployment benefits. Then one has to add in the costs of having an extra 10 million people on food stamps and millions more on Medicaid. Not to mention the direct loss of tax revenue from the unemployed and the indirect loss of tax revenue from decreased consumer spending. We need the President to step forward and tell us what we can achieve rather than telling us that we have to hunker down and live within our means.
Posted by Michael A. Kamperman on November 24, 2009
I wish I could say we reached the bottom of the decline in home prices. But wishful thinking is no substitute for a hard look at the latest data. In the third quarter 14.4% of all mortgages are somewhere between 30 days past due to being already in the foreclosure process. The WSJ just reported that 23% of all homeowners with mortgages were underwater. Almost 12% of homeowners have mortgages that are more than 20% higher than the value of their home. In October new home starts dropped almost 10% while existing home sales rose almost 10%. That discrepancy is due entirely to the November 30 expiration of the first time homebuyers’ tax credit, which has now been extended. Purchase mortgage applications for homes plunged in November without the aid of the tax credit mirroring the October new home starts. Despite the report from Case/Shiller that home prices rose in the second and third quarter of 2009, a stunning 11% of 2009 home buyers are already underwater on their mortgages. So we enter the fourth quarter of 2009 with one in four mortgages underwater, one in seven mortgages 30 days or more delinquent, and one in ten mortgages to purchase a home in 2009 already underwater. Meanwhile, GDP for the third quarter has been revised down to an annualized growth rate of 2.8%. More significantly the inflation component of GDP was revised down to .5% from .8%. And one in six Americans are unemployed or underemployed and that number continues to rise. Additionally, tightening credit standards by FHA and other key mortgage lenders are further decreasing the pool of potential buyers. Against this backdrop home prices will continue to fall as desperate sellers continue to out number potential buyers. Home prices will not stabilize until supply and demand is balanced.
Most of us interpret stories easier than we interpret statistics. My wife told me a PHD student has moved back to Waco from Seattle to finish her dissertation. She said the job market was so bad in Seattle that a waitress position she applied for had one hundred applicants, mostly from people with Masters Degrees, and only one person received an interview. The 99 people who did not find a job will not be buying a home and some will default on the mortgage they already hold. And really, just what type of home can a waitress buy in Seattle anyway?
Washington will need to provide much more help to the housing market than it has so far. The early rumor is the Federal Reserve is considering extending its quantitative easing program by continuing to purchase agency mortgages in order to keep interest rates low. This would be a positive for housing as will be the recently extended first time homebuyers’ tax credit, which now includes a $6,500 tax credit for those that just sold a home. But low interest rates don’t help those with mortgages underwater refinance and tax credits don’t help unemployed or part-time workers buy a home. A simple solution would be for the federal government to allow everyone who is current on their mortgage to refinance at 4% without a credit report, appraisal, or new title policy. Since the federal government already is on the hook for over 80% of all mortgages this would not significantly increase potential losses to taxpayers. Additionally, lowering payments will lower the number of defaults and the enhanced cash flow in consumers pockets will increase consumer spending. Fewer foreclosures and more jobs will lower the burden on taxpayers, not increase it.
Posted by Michael A. Kamperman on November 17, 2009
The mantra that is being repeated over and over again amongst the political intelligentsia is the U.S. economy consumes too much, imports too much, doesn’t produce enough, and exports too little. The Whitehouse shares this view. President Obama would like to see Americans consume less, save more, and export more. He is in the middle of a trip to Asia telling China, Japan, and others that they can no longer rely on the U.S. consumer and that trade needs to needs to be rebalanced. The reception he has received can best be described as a cold shoulder. The President and his collection of academic advisers seem oblivious to the real world reality that these nations are not going to shutter their own factories and let go their own workers go just to buy more goods made by U.S. workers. Exports will not revive our economy because the overseas consumer markets are not large enough to absorb all of the products they can make, no less the products we can make.
The U.S. is currently only using about 70% of its industrial capacity because of a lack of demand, both internal and external. Normally a country needs to use over 80% of its industrial capacity before it begins to invest in more production capacity. The U.S. doesn’t have a production problem. We have the capacity to produce a lot more than we are currently producing. What the U.S. has is a demand problem. We do not have enough demand from consumers in our country, or in other countries, to buy all of the goods and services we can produce. For example, while we can produce over 16 million cars a year and we are currently selling a little over 10 million cars a year. We used to sell over 16 million cars a year when our consumers could easily access affordable credit, even if they didn’t have a prime credit rating. What we need to weigh as a nation is the cost of losses from subprime lending versus the benefits of employing millions of people to make more trains, planes, and automobiles.
President Obama’s economic philosophy of restrained consumption, exports, savings, and responsible lending is boxing him into an untenable position. He cannot create the 10 million jobs the economy has lost unless U.S. consumers resume spending. The Asian nations just rudely told him don’t look to us to bail you out of your problems. The only way consumers can spend more is to borrow more. The President will have to choose between a country that continues to borrow and spend or a country that continues to have double digit employment and huge fiscal deficits for as far as the eye can see. The jobs situation is so bleak that Teach for America has created a waiting list for qualified applicants because they are not sure they will have as many teaching positions available as they have in the past. The coalition the President put together to win included enthusiastic young voters. He will not have these voters with him in 2012 unless he finds them jobs. And he will not find them jobs unless he fixes the broken credit markets allowing small businesses and consumers to borrow and spend again.
Posted by Michael A. Kamperman on November 14, 2009
The President has already decided that he is only interested in small and minimalist ideas to create jobs. He does not want to consider programs that will cost a lot of political capital or a lot more of the Treasuries dollars. He and his band of Hoover Liquidationist political and economic advisers are more interested in bringing down the deficit than in putting America back to work. The word is his budget directors are asking his Cabinet Secretaries to prepare two budgets, one for zero growth and one for a 5% across the board reduction in spending for the next fiscal year. They are more interested in making things and selling than to foreigners than to other Americans. He and his liquidationists are crazy if they think the Chinese and the Japanese are going to accept selling a lot less to us and buying a lot more from us. In effect, President Obama is in favor of the American standard of living going down. Therefore, his jobs summit is dead on arrival and will prove to be nothing more than a big show so he can say he tried.
Paul Krugman just said “But these aren’t normal times….so it’s time to try something different.” Yes it is time to try something different. But it is not time to buy into the idea that Washington has already stretched itself to the max and can’t do much more because of the debt and the deficit. President Obama and his economic team are looking for creative ideas to create 10 million jobs on the cheap. There are no magic tricks to turn around the economy. There is only the reality that we will not solve the economic crisis without significant leadership from Washington. President Obama needs to be willing to not only try something different, but something big.
We need to create 10 million new jobs. Assuming each job costs employers an average of $50,000, then it will cost the nation $500 billion a year to add these jobs. The private sector cannot do it right now because the credit markets remain broken and it remains very difficult for many consumers and small businesses to borrow money. Yet one of the ideas to reduce the deficit is to use $200 billion in TARP funds to repay debt and lower the current deficit. Wouldn’t this money be better spent bolstering the community banks that are vital to the small business job creation engine? Yes the New Deal helped during the Great Depression, but the unemployment rate was still over 15% at the end of the 1930’s. It was only the massive fiscal spending to fight World War II that truly ended the Great Depression. A comparable stimulus program today would amount to 8 trillion dollars a year for 4 consecutive years. While that may be over-kill, it emphasizes there is no way to end the economic crisis on the cheap just by tinkering at the edges. Two years ago almost everyone would have agreed that if we entered a deflationary depression there are three things we should avoid doing at all cost. First, the federal government should not cut spending. Next, the federal government should not raise taxes. And finally the federal government should not sanction Zombie banks that only pretend to lend. Amazingly, the Obama administration is hell bent on doing the three things it shouldn’t. What’s worse they want the average American to accept the pain of change.
Posted by Michael A. Kamperman on November 7, 2009
Consumer credit fell $14.8 billion in September from the previous month and contracted at an annualized rate of 7.3%. This is the eighth month in a row of falling credit levels and sets the record for consecutive monthly drops going back to 1943 when they first started counting on a monthly basis. Basically this is the worst it has been for consumer credit since the Great Depression. Within a few months it also will be the worst it has been since the Great Depression for unemployment. The two are intricately linked. Because 70% of the U.S. economy is tied to consumer spending, then any cutback in demand by consumers leads to more unemployment. The job losses will not end until the consumers increase their spending levels, which cannot happen unless the banks begin to open up their wallets and lend more money. However, the banks do not need consumer lending to make money in the current environment. Because short term interest rates are near zero percent the banks can borrow at extremely low rates and turn around and purchase risk free U.S. Treasuries earning a return above 2% on a laddered portfolio. There is no incentive for Zombie banks with existing loan losses swept under the rugs to take new risks when they can make money risk free. Whatever lending they are doing for consumers is being done at much higher interest rates. So consumers and small business owners are not seeing readily available credit at low interest rates despite Fed Fund rates near zero. This is why the Fed needs to up their program of quantitative easing. They need to take away the risk free money machine from the banks and force them out on the lending risk curve to make money.
The biggest obstacle to fixing the broken consumer credit markets is the Obama administration wants to transform our economy from a consumer driven model to a production and export driven model. They basically want us to look more like Germany and China where we produce, ship, and save. The only problem is common sense seems to be absent in the Whitehouse’s economic war room. China’s dominance in exports is due to currency manipulation. The Treasury Department seems content with letting the dollar slide to ramp up exports. The only problem is the American standard of living would have to vanish for us to become cost competitive with China. And does the Obama administration understand Germany sits in the middle of Europe and is surrounded by other European Union countries? Just because a bakery in Germany can deliver goods 20 miles away in France doesn’t mean that bakery is ready to be competitive with trans-Atlantic shipments. And have they considered the best market in the world for exports is the U.S. and that we cannot export to ourselves? And even assuming they could successfully transform the American economy to this new model have they considered how many decades it might take to get there?
The solution to restoring the economy back to health is not that complicated and it starts with fixing the still broken credit markets so that consumers and businesses can once again borrow money on reasonable terms. But this requires a belief in a consumer driven economy, which basically means it requires a belief in the American standard of living. It also requires a belief in subprime lending (which is distinctive from AAA rated fraud). Unfortunately, the Obama economic team does not share these beliefs and is on some Don Quito ivory tower quest to transform us into something we are not. If only we could re-label interstate commerce as exports, then we could trick Obama’s team of economic geniuses into believing that a bakery in Missouri that sells a loaf of bread to a store in Kansas is just as valuable as a local German border bakery selling a loaf of bread to a local French border store.
Posted by Michael A. Kamperman on November 6, 2009
This October the official unemployment rate rose to 10.2% and the true U-6 unemployment rate that includes discouraged workers and those forced to work part-time rose to 17.5%. Anyone that is still in denial that we are in a New Great Depression is like an Ostrich with their head in the sand. In October the teen retailers reported much worse than expected sales numbers. The conventional wisdom explanation is that because Halloween fell on Saturday the teens didn’t shop at the end of the month. I guess it was a who-knew surprise to retail analysts that Halloween fell on Saturday. The real reason the teens cut back on shopping is because they and their parents are unemployed. Many adults have been forced to take the traditional part-time jobs normally held by kids. These are the people now counted in the U-6 number. Despite the stimulus bill focused on state and local governments there were zero government jobs created in the last month. Importantly hours worked again remained unchanged at the very low level of 33 hours. The mantra that many keep repeating is that unemployment is a lagging indicator. While unemployment was a lagging indicator in the last two milder recessions, it did not lag the recovery after the deep recessions of the mid 1970’s and early 1980’s. The current economic decline is already deeper than those two recessions.
These numbers are shocking and were not predicted by the econometric forecasting models relied on by Wall Street and Washington. Don’t forget the worst case assumption used by the federal government to stress test the banks assumed unemployment would peak at 10.3% by the end of 2010. Can there be any doubt that the worst case is going to be a lot worse than that? If these leaders would drive back and forth from New York to Washington rather than snooze on the express train or the plane they would have to drive through New Jersey. New Jersey, like the rest of America, is hurting and the reason Governor Corzine lost his re-election bid is directly attributable to the lack of available jobs.
What the rising unemployment rate is telling us is credit remains extremely tight for both small businesses and consumers. Without access to credit the small business jobs engine is sputtering. Without access to credit the consumer spending so many businesses rely on is still retrenching. Hopefully this unemployment number will serve as a wake-up call to the Whitehouse and the Congress that the economy needs a lot more help from Washington. President Obama wants to solve the jobs crisis on the fiscal and political cheap. He is looking for ideas to create jobs that won’t raise the deficit. One plan touted by the Whitehouse is to get those businesses that export to only one country to increase exports by exporting to two countries. Have these Harvard geniuses not figured out most businesses exporting to only one country are located on either the northern or southern border and trade with either Canada or Mexico? President Obama, the time has come for you to put forward a real trillion dollar plus jobs plan and to put all of your remaining political capital on the line to defend it. Otherwise come 2012 you also will wind up being tossed out of office.
Posted by Michael A. Kamperman on November 1, 2009
The FDIC remains as busy as ever with its weekly Friday ritual of closing down banks deemed not to big to fail and therefore not allowed to sweep the losses under the rug. But the losses are real and an effective way to deal with them at the large Zombie banks has not been put forward by the Obama Administration. Since the beginning of the year consumer credit at the nation’s commercial banks has fallen by $45 billion through the end of August. The Zombie banks bailed out by the taxpayers have not only cut credit to consumers, they have jacked up the rates they charge as well. Congress passed a new law that was intended to protect consumers from abusive practices from the credit card companies. Once the law goes into effect near the end of the year it will be very difficult for the banks to arbitrarily change the terms on consumer’s credit cards. So the banks jumped out in front of a law no implemented immediately and dramatically raised credit card interest rates anywhere from 3% to 15%. This will increase the minimum monthly payments on millions and millions of credit cards at a time when the banks are borrowing money at near zero interest rates. The Obama administration which effectively controls the banks still holding TARP funds is complicity silent at this outrage. The banks have also cut the loans to businesses by approximately $170 billion since the beginning of the year. With the collapse of the shadow banking industry there are no real good sources of credit outside of the banks these days. The deflationary depression will continue unless the banks loosen credit terms and lower fees.
Yet with broken banks breaking the backs of businesses and consumers our in over his head Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner declared on Meet the Press this morning that a bright spot in the recovery is the banking system, which he said is “dramatically more stable” because of the government bailout. Yes the panic runs on the banks by depositors have ended. But the continuing shrinkage of credit to small businesses and consumers is a clear sign banking is not a bright spot in the recovery. When asked about another round of stimulus Treasury Secretary Geithner echoed the Obama Administration’s thinking that it is too soon to discuss more stimulus since most economists are predicting job growth will return as soon as the first quarter of 2010. The weekly jobless claims are still running over half a million a week despite the current stimulus program and despite the Dow Jones reaching 10,000. Yet the Treasury Secretary is willing to base policy of forecasts by the same people who didn’t see this problem coming in the first place. The econometric models will not predict the continuing downturn because they are all based on the post World War II inflationary economy that no longer exists.
The Treasury Secretary needs to understand the big banks will not lend as long as they continue to extend and pretend. He needs to put forward a credible plan for a “bad bank” to absorb the toxic assets held by these institutions so they will begin to lend again. He also needs to put forward a credible plan to place government backing on the asset-backed securities market so banks can make a loan, sell it, and then make another loan with the same amount of capital. President Obama is making the same mistakes President Hoover made at the beginning of the last depression by listening to liquidationist thinking that places an emphasis on maintaining monetary integrity and limiting federal budget deficits. President Hoover lamented that error in his memoirs. After President Obama is similarly thrown out of office in 2012 he too will lament the same errors in his memoirs. While there is time for President Obama to fire his economic team and start over, he doesn’t seem to have the recognition of the size and scope of the problems we face or the political will to fix them.
Posted by Michael A. Kamperman on October 29, 2009
The third quarter GDP rose by 3.5%. Media outlets and economic pundits have hailed the report as irrefutable evidence the recession is over. It is not over. Consider that 1% of the gain came from a decline in the decline of inventories. The country shrank inventories at an annualized rate of $130 billion in the third quarter. But because that was an improvement over the second quarter the alchemists consider this negative a positive. A careful reading of the GDP report shows that 1.66% of the gain came from an increase in auto production. This is attributable to a combination of the cash for clunkers program and of GM and Chrysler restarting production that was totally shut down for parts of the second quarter as they went through government controlled bankruptcy proceedings. In September auto sales fell back to depression levels once the cash for clunkers program ran its course. Residential fixed investments increased 23.4% in the third quarter after decreasing 23.3% in the second quarter. But in September sales of new homes fell 3.6%, while sales of existing homes rose 9.4%. This is due to the first time home buyers tax credit. The discrepancy between existing homes sales and new home sales is because in order to qualify for the credit a buyer must close on the home by November 30 and new home cannot be built in less than 90 days. This indicates that just like the cash for clunkers program as soon as federal government stimulus is removed from the marketplace depression level final demand resumes. There is a real possibility a new home buyers tax credit will be extended in some form. However, it will probably not juice sales as much as the last tax credit since everyone who was waiting to buy a home ran out and bought one to take advantage of the tax credit. In other words in both situations demand was pulled forward. The collapse in consumer confidence in October and the persistently high rates of weekly jobless claims indicate the underlying fundamentals of the economy have not materially improved. The banks are still tightening lending and as long as that continues the depression will continue.
The GDP report revealed some stark weaknesses in the economy that will eventually drag the whole economy down again. First and foremost state and local government expenditures shrank by 1.1%. The decrease in tax revenues means local government spending will remain weak for an extended period of time. Also, non-residential spending decreased by 2.5%. The commercial real estate market is flat on its back and will only continue to contract going forward. Finally, disposable personal income decreased by $20.4 billion in the third quarter. This means the 3.4% increase in consumer spending is not sustainable, especially if the consumer remains unable to borrow their way to prosperity.
The real tragedy about the 3rd quarter positive GDP report is the high fives at the Whitehouse and Federal Reserve will prevent much needed economic assistance from Washington making its way to Main Street. The real measure of economic growth is jobs. Unless the federal government statisticians again drop hundreds of thousands of people out of the workforce the unemployment rate will rise to 10%, or higher in next Friday’s report. If not for the federal government dropping 1.5 million people out of the labor force in the last few months the official unemployment report would already be close to 11%. The Obama administration can only hide their heads in the sand like Ostriches for so long. If the new Hoover administration doesn’t get their act together by creating millions of jobs soon they will be looking at a Republican controlled Congress in 2010.
Posted by Michael A. Kamperman on October 22, 2009
The foreclosures and short sales are lined up to keep coming and coming and coming. The WSJ publishes a quarterly survey of real estate fundamentals for 28 metropolitan areas across the country. The news going forward is bleak. In Miami, almost 27% of all first lien mortgages are delinquent, which means they are 30 days or more past due. Imagine a situation where one in 4 homes could wind up in foreclosure sometime during the next couple of years. We have become so desensitized to bad news that we have lost our ability to interpret some of the data we are confronted with. This has now happened to the Journal’s reporter James R. Hagerty when he stated “by contrast, metro areas with relatively low foreclosures and mortgage delinquency rates include Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, and Seattle making them less vulnerable.” The delinquency rate in these cities is averaging 8%. This may be low compared to Miami, but historically it is a very high delinquency rate. Foreclosures started rising and home prices started falling at the beginning of 2007. The worst hit city in the survey in the middle of 2007 was again Miami, with a delinquency rate of 5%. The delinquency rate in Seattle was under 2%. Now, our best areas are in much worse shape than Miami was in the summer of 2007. Real estate prices collapsed in Miami from the second half of 2007 until now. There is no reason to think the pressure that distressed sales will place on home prices in our strongest markets will not drag home prices down much further. To translate, if 8% of the mortgages are delinquent then 1 in 12 homeowners risk foreclosure. This is an average of 1 potential foreclosed house per block. The unemployment rates are much higher in our strongest cities today than they were in Miami two years ago. And credit is much tighter.
Of course the reason so many mortgages are delinquent is that so many of them are underwater. When the borrower gets in trouble they are unable to sell the home and pay off the bank. Home sales and home prices were buoyed by the first time home buyers tax credit this year. Since the borrower must close by November 30 there will no longer be any sales tied to the tax credit. It is possible the tax credit simply pulled demand forward in the same way the cash for clunkers program pulled auto demand forward. After the clunker program ended auto sales went kerplunk. Home prices will probably go kerplunk too.
Needless to say the federal government needs to provide a lot more support to the single family housing market if it wants to see prices stabilize. Rather than another tax credit, we should let everyone who is not delinquent refinance with a 30 year mortgage at 4% interest. Importantly, no credit check and no appraisal should be applied to borrowers who are current on their mortgages. The existing title policy and survey should be kept in force. The loans should be made with no closing costs. This will lower mortgage payments for borrowers currently unable to refinance because their homes are underwater, or they have become unemployed, or their credit is now subprime. Lowering mortgage payments will decrease future delinquencies and raise disposable income for millions of Americans putting people back to work. The federal government already is backing over 80% of all mortgages in America. Anything they can do to stabilize home prices will save the taxpayers a lot of money down the line.
Posted by Michael A. Kamperman on October 16, 2009
In today’s New York Times David Brooks advocated the same policies in the middle of an economic depression that the Liquidationist’s advocated in the early 1930’s. We know how that turned out. They worshipped at the mystical alter of gold. They believed money was finite and a zero sum game. They preached balancing the budget and creative destruction. To stop the deflationary economic decline FDR ditched the gold standard. Even then the country remained in a depression until the U.S. went on a wild spending spree to fight World War II. It was wild government spending that launched a 62 year economic boom. Surely we have advanced enough to know we can enact the same massive spending programs to end this depression without actually going to war. Today money is not finite since we have a fiat currency. Yet you would have us live in a finite world. Why do you obsess over the debt and the deficit when the federal government has the power to print what it owes? You are trapped in 19th century thinking in a 21st century world. This obsession leads you to worry about the growth in entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
The federal government should not worry about the deficit or the debt right now. Only after the economy recovers should it return to fiscal responsibility. The most effective stimulus plan we could have would be to give everyone on Social Security a 20% raise and lower the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare to 60. This would simultaneously restore consumer confidence and spending, open up jobs for younger workers, and lower health insurance premiums for employers. When more money starts moving around the economy, then federal tax revenues will go up. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money.
Most people place far too much faith in econometric forecasting models that project huge future deficits 50 years out. Did these models forecast the current economic crisis? Why should we believe they will be accurate so far out into the future when they can’t even accurately predict a few months out? Your concern about our entitlement programs is they have unfunded liabilities because the revenue sources to pay for them have yet to be identified. Well, when I was in my early 20’s if I was going to live for the next 50 years I would have to eat for the next 50 years. But I didn’t even have the money in the bank to pay for 2 years worth of groceries, no less 50. Somehow I have managed to eat for the last 25 years even though my food budget was an unfunded liability. Right now we should focusing on creating jobs and not focus on the federal budget deficit or the federal debt.
