FedUpUSA

Archive for December, 2009

DoctoRx was puzzled by a report in Bloomberg that the Mayo Clinic in Glendale, Arizona will “stop treating” certain Medicare patients. Many readers no doubt know that Mayo is touted not just as a model for high quality of delivery of health care services, but also affordability.

Here is the gist of the story:

More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government’s largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman. The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won’t affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota….

Mayo’s hospital and four clinics in Arizona, including the Glendale facility, lost $120 million on Medicare patients last year, Yardley said. The program’s payments cover about 50 percent of the cost of treating elderly primary-care patients at the Glendale clinic, he said.

“We firmly believe that Medicare needs to be reformed,” Yardley said in a Dec. 23 e-mail. “It has been true for many years that Medicare payments no longer reflect the increasing cost of providing services for patients.”

Mayo will assess the financial effect of the decision in Glendale to drop Medicare patients “to see if it could have implications beyond Arizona,” he said.

It seems the Mayo move may be a shot over the bow relative to expected Medicare reimbursement cuts:

Nationwide, doctors made about 20 percent less for treating Medicare patients than they did caring for privately insured patients in 2007, a payment gap that has remained stable during the last decade, according to a March report by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a panel that advises Congress on Medicare issues. Congress last week postponed for two months a 21.5 percent cut in Medicare reimbursements for doctors.

DoctoRx commented:

Despite what the article says, It’s not easy under the regs to just charge cash. So I’m not sure what Mayo is referring to. Basically a physician has to drop out of being a Medicare provider in toto in order to then charge freely. Once out, I think you’re out for a whole year (at least). And that includes seeing a patient in hospital who’s a Medicare patient (Medicare “A” covers essentially all Medicare patients). So for a whole year the doctor has to only treat outpatients and have nothing to do with Medicare. Not easy. Especially if Glendale has an elderly population.

He also had these comments about Medicare and costs:

Yes I agree that for primary care docs, it’s tough to make a decent living practicing within the regs. Not only are the rates after expenses to do a basic exam of a patient no better than a waiter’s at a nice restaurant, but because of the amount of documentation the government requires (because of all the fraud it tries to deter), the time spent is significantly greater than the patient sees. Not to mention phone calls the doctor is forbidden from charging for even though his/her lawyer/accountant properly does so.

In New York City, it is becoming difficult to find a decent primary physician (I had a good one who stopped practicing while I was overseas, and my attempts to find his replacement over the last five years sound like a bad Woody Allen movie. Needless to say, I’ve reverted to various stopgaps). My endocrinologist converted his practice to anti-aging because he does not want to deal with insurance (it’s so much more profitable to hand out human growth hormone and HRT and have your own compounding lab to boot). If our primary care system starts cracking, health care delivery will suffer, irrespective of any reform effort.

The European Commission (EC) itself has warned that the finances of half of the Eurozone’s sixteen economies are at risk of becoming ‘unsustainable’, essentially bankrupt. As shown in the Wall Street Journal graphic below, Spain, Ireland, Netherlands, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Greece are all teetering on the brink.

While relatively better off European nations would prefer not to bail out their flailing neighbors, the problem with the euro currency union is that their fates are ultimately all tied together via the euro, even if politically they believe themselves to be separate countries. Thus an old criticism of the euro system is appearing more relevant than ever.
LINK HERE

An Introspective Look At The Future Of America

By Craig Harris
earthblog.news@gmail.com

As we close out 2009 and look forward into 2010 and beyond, this has been a year of near financial catastrophe and monumental change, none of which benefited America or ordinary Americans. Late in 2008 and throughout 2009, events have happened in the US which would have been labeled unfathomable just a few short years ago, and yet already these monumental changes are expected to be filed into the memory hole and Americans are expected to believe nothing has changed.

As we exit the year, we are told the US is a laissez-faire free market economy and yet the US government is now the largest owner of housing in the US as well as the owner of last resort for some of the largest and completely insolvent US corporations. The Federal Reserve, a privately and anonymously owned and controlled corporation chartered with issuing the nations currency, were given the green light by themselves to transfer to themselves and their shareholders the people’s wealth in the form of their future labor. The FED balance sheet has ballooned to become a junk bond warehouse as they overtly and covertly buy their own debt, immune from any sort of oversight, regulation or auditing and operating above the law. Along with that, increasingly coercive brute force measures are now routinely necessary to manage and manipulate so called “free market” asset prices which are cheerled by so called “financial news media” whose board members and management are all the same people who transferred the people’s wealth to themselves. The corporate media party line idea of a “free market US economy” now seems like a distant memory and it all feels like systemic fraud, corruption, malfeasance and organized crime at the very highest levels.

During 2009 we have seen the continued collapse of American industry amid wave after wave of layoffs. The corrupt corporate media cartel likes to trot out a group of FED sponsored shills who call themselves “professors” to call this a “jobless recovery” although it’s difficult to imagine a recovery where American industry has collapsed and is now owned by the government. US cities both large and small have been decimated by the loss of the US manufacturing base. Detroit now resembles a third world country with a 50% unemployment rate. Ransacked, foreclosed houses go for a dollar apparently because no one who has a choice is willing to own property or live there. The US has an officially stated unemployment rate of ten percent and a real unemployment rate of over 20 percent. Wall Street may have recovered due to a direct injection of capital from the future labor of the people, but there has been no action taken whatsoever to improve the situation of the average citizen as the disconnect between the ruling Oligarchs and Wall Street, the real economy and the lives of ordinary Americans continues to widen. The people’s bailout money, which represents the future labor of Americans, went directly into the pockets of the people who created the crisis in the first place because they are in the enviable position of being “too big to fail”. Interestingly, or sadly, the same people and institutions responsible for and who profited from the catastrophe are still in charge and have handed even more power and control to themselves. Although there has been talk in Washington of “too big to fail” being undesirable, the result of the post collapse policies have resulted in ever fewer, ever larger players with more power and control and instead of being “too big to fail” now wield so much money and power that they demonstrate wholesale ownership of the entire US political body.

Due to the post collapse monetary and fiscal policies, the people have now been saddled up with an unpayable level of debt. The cause of the near total collapse of the financial system was too much debt and the “solution” has has been even more debt piled on to the original debt. During the year, the Dallas FED estimated the financial obligations of the US government at 99 trillion dollars. The head of the TARP program estimated the bailout cost at 24 trillion dollars. Totaled together the US has in the neighborhood of 120 trillion dollars of current and future obligations on an annual revenue of around 2 trillion dollars which is falling due to high unemployment, higher state and local taxes and fees and lower wages. Cutting that down to size, imagine earning 200,000 a year and having a debt of 12 million dollars. In short, the US dollar has become a token of an unpayable debt and thus the anchor of the entire global financial system is a ponzi fraud. It becomes impossible to compute the value of anything as measured in a fraudulent currency that represents an unpayable debt.

The banking system is not lending money because it’s still insolvent. The people, having lost over 5 trillion dollars in the real estate bust are also collectively insolvent. Many US states and cities are bankrupt or near bankrupt. One in nine Americans subsist on food stamps. Even as a college education has become unaffordable to most Americans, college graduates now find themselves jobless. One in seven households now have their adult children living back at home due to the inability to find a job. The homeless population is growing and tent cities sprouted up across America during 2009. The estimated homeless population in LA alone is 40,000 people a night. People in the US if they have a job are working longer and harder to make the same income. Wages have remained stagnant and the real cost of living continues to spiral ever higher for ordinary Americans. The new man in charge, elected on a platform of “change”, has delivered his change in the form of change=no change, or how do you like your change now?

By any metric you choose, whether it’s the median home costing half the median income even at artificially low interest rates, to the ballooning cost of insurance, healthcare, education or anything else people spend their money on, the US is experiencing a rapid decline in the standard of living for ordinary Americans and an emerging ultra rich ultra powerful shadow oligarch rule amid a generalized and widespread financial and social decay. The US population is becoming a nation of voiceless serfs with fewer and fewer remaining civil and property rights and a rapidly decaying standard of living, the antitheses of everything America is said to represent and strive for.

The hypocrisy and fraud of the oligarch rule corporate media story line is now nearly impossible for an educated, informed adult to digest. As Jim Grant pointed out recently, according to Section 19 of the Coinage Act of 1792, the penalty prescribed for any official who fraudulently debased the people’s money is death, yet in 2009 debasing the people’s money resulted in a “man of the year” award from the self serving corporate media who will be next in line for a bailout from the people for their good service to the new oligarch rule. This organized crime, this theft, occurring right out in the open, may explain why employees of the largest US financial institution are now not allowed to gather in groups larger than 12 outside and their executives are carrying firearms. In an affront to the intelligence and sensibility of any citizen of this planet, the new US president expanded a war he was elected to end and started a new frontier in Pakistan, for that he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. The people who were awarded hundreds of billions of dollars of the people’s money because they lost all their money are skimming millions and billions off the top for themselves and their associates in what they call “bonuses”. 2009 has been a year of egregious assault on the American public by the people in charge.

The “people’s representatives” as they like to be called, no longer represent the people at all but instead solely represent and pledge allegiance to the special interests and corporate lobbyists who have bought and paid for their votes, along with the media oligarchs who control who sits in the seats. Regardless of whether they call themselves Democrats or Republicans, they are a group of self important, self serving, morally bankrupt, corrupt, clueless buffoons and criminals running unchecked by a complicit corporate media.

Every American should be ashamed, embarrassed and sad that their country has been bought and sold to an organized criminal enterprise which includes the entire political body and the media. The only thing the “people’s representatives” have in common is contempt for the people they are ostensibly representing. It is revolting for any American to watch these cretins heaping praise Ben Bernanke at the congressional theater of the absurd. His institution has already debased the dollar by 95% and failed miserably in every mandate they had since they took over in 1913. If any American has managed to retain or save any money, he can now put it on deposit in their banking system and earn a negative real return (a loss of his purchasing power) while at the same time the banks will take his deposit and loan it to his brother at 30% interest. So Mr Bernanke the money printer has control over the largest legal loan sharking operation ever concocted and it is funded by the America people, against the America people.

During 2009, the leadership has taken actions which benefit the corporations and special interests who own them, while showing nothing but wanton disregard for the millions of citizens whose lives their sponsors have destroyed. What we are headed towards in the US if we are not there already, is a Straussian society of ultra rich, ultra powerful oligarchs and a serfish powerless population with no middle class to speak of. The US president De Jour is, and from here on out will be a yes man, subservient to the ultra powerful too big to fail oligarchs who control the money and power and are responsible for putting him in the drivers seat. This is not compatible whatsoever with prosperity, democracy or anything else the US still holds itself out as. Here at the end of 2009, the United States has morphed into a bankrupt fascist oligarchy which owns the military machine as a policy enforcement tool, the entire political body and the media. It isn’t going to fix itself because the fraud, corruption and malfeasance is systemic. It meets every definition of organized crime and it’s all happening right out in the open.

In my way of thinking, this is not at all unlike the breakdown of the Soviet Union where for a period of time a sort of mafia of oligarchs weilded the wealth and power, carved up the remaining wealth of the country among themselves and had their way with the country amid a climate of manufactured fear, chaos and decay. The key point being that the people in control are out to make money and increase their power at the expense of the citizens. Mr Orwell said “the purpose of power is power” and that statement needs to be well understood. These megalomaniac, sociopathic aspirations of ever more power and control by an elitist group of criminals come at the expense of America and future Americans. It doesn’t matter whatsoever to the oligarchs because they have property waiting in Croatia. When the remaining wealth has been extracted from America, they will all pull out and the citizens will be left with a rusted out bankrupt hull. I believe the circumstances for this eventuality have already been created, just not yet realized due to the enormous size of the economy and the momentum it has. In other words, I believe it’s collapsing as fast as it can although living through it seems like slow motion. When viewed from the future in a historical context however, I think it will have seemed fairly rapid.

The financial markets have deteriorated into a Las Vegas casino atmosphere where the the only consistent winners are the house and the too big to fail entities trading on foreknowledge and inside information shared freely between the treasury and the few remaining large trading houses. The entire system is bankrupt, fraudulent, corrupt and irretrievably broken. The anchor of the global financial system, the US dollar, has become the worlds largest ponzi scheme and the remaining 95% of the worlds population would like a new, viable standard. At this point however, despite any action the FED may or may not take, the US debt is far too large to ever be repaid. It is questionable if the interest payments will even be serviceable if interest rates were to rise, and the only reason interest rates are low is because the FED is using brute force. At this time the only way out without a complete collapse is to inflate away the debt, thus turning a deflationary collapse into a long period of inflationary decay and declining standard of living.

I have been of the opinion that what we saw in October 2008 was a collapse of the global fiat financial system which was more or less expected due to the collapse of the real estate bubble. I have reminded my subscribers that when I was forecasting a drop in real estate prices of as much as 50% during the heyday of the mania, that sounded unfathomable. What I believe is in store for our future sounds nearly as unfathomable now as that idea did back then. I believe the reason it sounds unfathomable is due to the constant barrage of lies, misinformation and propaganda from the tight knit corporate media oligarchy which has essentially merged with the new power structure of the US in a corrupt, overt form of fascism that would make Mussolini blush or Goebbels the propagandist nod in approval.

Over a period of decades and with one FED induced serial bubble after another, the financial system finally reached an unsustainable level of debt and leverage in 2008. When the FED started raising interest rates, when the real estate bubble burst, it involved so much debt and leverage that the whole system failed, pricing models and risk models failed, and the banking system quickly became insolvent.

I believe we have already had a systemic collapse, and the only thing the FED can do now is alter the look and feel of the collapse and to manage the allocation of the remaining wealth. In the end, whether by deflationary collapse or inflationary decay, the result of the collapse will feel the same to the US general population regardless of the interim path taken.

If the FED had done nothing, the whole system would have quickly degenerated into a deflationary collapse and failure of the financial system due to insolvency. The course the FED chose however is the one myself and many others predicted beforehand…the FED chose to solve the problem of too much debt by creating even more debt by taking the unprecedented action of buying it’s own debt under euphemisms like “quantitative easing” and “debt monetization” and also covert buying to artificially force negative real return rates of interest. Through this course of action, the FED so far has been able to turn what would have been a rapid deflationary collapse into a decaying inflationary depression which is euphemistically called “a recession that is now over” by the six people who control 96% of the global media and attempt to pass off propaganda as “news” to a woefully mis informed, dumbed down and apathetic general public.

Going forward, If the FED doesn’t buy enough of their own debt, then interest rates on the long end would rise and the risk becomes a deflationary collapse into insolvency for the FED and it’s banking system. If interest rates remain effectively at zero on the short end and artificially suppressed by quantitative easing on the long end, then the real estate market can recover and the banks can regain solvency. If interest rates rise as the free markets would argue for however, then the real estate market sinks even further, the US dollar rises, and greater insolvency of the banks follows. The higher interest rates go, the thinner the knife edge gets and the FED would quickly find itself staring into another October 2008 collapse kind of situation. On the other hand, if by buying enough of their own debt they can keep short and long term interest rates down, then the free money percolates through the banking system, puts pressure on the dollar, lifts commodity and real estate prices and pulls out of the collapse via inflating away the debt so long as they can avoid run away hyperinflation in the process. This is the path we have traveled throughout 2009.

The key point is that the FED has had the option of doing two things…creating even more debt in order to save itself and the banking system, or do nothing and watch themselves collapse into a mass of failure, loss of power and control, insolvency and domino style bankruptcy and default. They have chosen the expected course, which is to increase the debt and print money, which is the way they save themselves and their banking system. In short, given a choice between saving the people and saving themselves after a collapse, they have taken the expected course which is to attempt to save themselves. What else would you expect? If they had wanted to save the people they would have taken the peoples bailout money and handed it to them in the form of a check. Instead they handed it to the banks.

Although they have been somewhat successful in reducing the insolvency of the banking system, they have effectively created a giant wealth transfer mechanism whereby all the money that disappeared in the collapse was re created out of thin air and given to the banks and wall street. I think of it as a sort of shell game. The money disappeared from Mom and Pop’s 401k and re appeared on the balance sheets of the banks via freshly created new money (debt). As a result, we have something still called “free market capitalism” which is not free market capitalism at all. We have emerged from this crisis with a sort of financial oligarchy where a few entities who control all the wealth and power also control politics and media. Understanding this will help to understand issues like “healthcare reform” which will involve you paying more and getting less, with the primary beneficiaries being the oligarchies who control health care and insurance.

The one major point I have to make at this time is throughout 2009, there was no action taken that put the average citizen in a better position, but instead during the course of the year there was a gigantic wealth transfer from the citizens to the banking system, effectively orchestrated by the so called “people’s representatives” who are in fact, all owned by the banking system and Wall Street with half a dozen or so oligarchies and lobbyists in a public display of fraud, malfeasance and corruption that sets a new historical precedent.

I have been and remain of the opinion that the ultimate “solution” to this crisis will be for the entities who now control the wealth and power to accumulate even more wealth and power via a global central bank and global currency which now for the first time in public has been discussed on and off throughout 2009 and described as the New World Order by such luminaries as Henry Kissinger. So looking out beyond 2010, I see a new global reserve currency emerging and a global central bank which will effectively also be a global governing authority where the heads of state effectively report to the group of central bankers and their anonymous shareholders who effectively control the money, power and politicians on a global scale. When the global currency is introduced, only then do I expect a sort of collapse of the US dollar versus this global currency. In this way, the world can carry on while the former global reserve currency called the US dollar will be free to depreciate to a level where solvency is regained and the now unpayable US debt is inflated away to the point where it can be repaid in depreciated dollars. US citizens will experience a continued decay as the US becomes to resemble more and more, a third world country. Detroit is already there. The corporate media won’t show it to you but if you do a youtube search on Detroit what you see will shock you.

My view of the world tends to be the long view. Throughout 2009 I have been positioned and trading in in various hard assets including but not limited to gold silver, back month crude oil, Soybeans, raw land and Americana. I own and trade some Chinese shares but no US equities or bonds. I have lost confidence in the US leadership. I have lost confidence in the fairness of the “system” where some elite entities are free to keep the profits and nationalize their losses. I have opted to opt out by embarking on a long term effort to transfer more and more capital “off wall street” and their organized crime ring they call the banking system, and instead investing in things without fraudulent or impaired balance sheets. At some point in the future, I want to be short US 10 and 30 year bonds because it is nonsensical to me that anyone would be willing to loan a bankrupt country money for 30 years at an interest rate of 4% or so. The only reason this situation exists today is due to the FED monetizing debt and attempting to manipulate the long end using brute force.

So as we head off into 2010, I see a lot of uncertainty in the short term. If interest rates rise and the US dollar gets stronger, by mid year I would expect a repeat of October 2008. What I expect to happen over the longer term however is that the FED will ultimately print enough money to attempt to slowly inflate the debt away to a manageable amount amid a generalized and severe decay in terms of the standard of living for Average Americans. At some point along the line, I expect the world reserve currency role to be moved into a global currency and for the US dollar to be allowed to float against it without the benefits associated with the world currency role, and for the US standard of living to continue to decline and eventually decay into a societal collapse followed by something different. I expect China to emerge as the dominant economic power in the world and to purchase a large amount of US assets. Somewhere along the line I also expect the Nobel Peace Prize recipient to bomb Iran because he will be ordered to do so by the people who control the money.

Personally, based on what I see coming over the long term I have elected to forego city life and have embarked on a long term project in the picturesque Appalachian foothills in an effort to increase my degree of self sufficiency and insulate myself from the continued decay and declining standard of living sweeping the country. My long view for the US is high inflation which will not show up in the government’s fraudulent statistics, along with a declining standard of living, increasing decay and ultimately leading to chaos, societal and government collapse in the US within a decade or two, maybe sooner.

I would like to end by quoting Marc Faber with one of the most compelling quotes of 2009. I find this quote compelling because the price of anything as measured by a fraudulent standard is meaningless. To me, it is a gift to be able to still exchange US dollars for anything with real value.

“I would buy every three months some gold and not worry so much about the price because the weight stays the same”

The giant banks are treating the American Citizen like we work for them, are holding the economy hostage, and are taking our deposits and using them to speculate in casino style gambling.

They’ve bought and paid for Congress and the White House. See this, this and this.

Will Americans exercise our power, or become serfs to a permanent banking royalty?

An economist says the healthcare bill “is just another bailout of the financial system”, and lawyers say that it is unconstitutional.

Will we defeat this giveaway to the insurance giants, or become permanent slaves to mandatory insurance requirements?

Top scientists, economists and environmentalists all say
that cap and trade is a scam which won’t significantly reduce C02
emissions, and will only help in making the financial players who
crashed the economy even more wealthy.

Will we defeat this
worthless scam, or allow the failed banks like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan
and Citigroup – who have already taken many billions of taxpayer
dollars – to make a fortune off of this con game at our expense?

Will
Americans reclaim our nation in 2010 from the thugs and con artists, or
put our heads down and stay subservient while the little we have left
in the way of money, resources and dignity is stolen by the giant
banks, insurance companies and carbon trading players?

Let’s score the 2009 edition first:

• The economy will NOT recover in 2009:  I’ll take this one, although some would argue I only deserve half (I said 8% unemployment U3, we actually got 10%.) 
• Deflation, not inflation, will become evident well beyond housing.  Miss.  Valid if you look at energy, but the “well beyond” includes a meaningful subset of the various things people buy.  Nope.
• Housing prices will continue to decline: Direct hit.
• The Fed’s attempt to “pump liquidity” will be shown to be an abject failure: 1/2 a point.  Certainly if you look at stock prices, it’s a miss.  If you look at whether credit creation was stabilized and increased, its a horrifying score.  We did get the instability in the dollar, but no bond market crash.  I didn’t specify how, so I can’t take credit for that which I didn’t predict.
• GDP will post a 12-month negative number, Depression print. Clean miss.
• The stock market has not bottomed.  1/2 credit.  It had not bottomed but my SPX 500 @ 500 call was not achieved.  The 50% swing, however, got damn close.  Lots of money to be made if you’re quick and good, but an absolute minefield if you’re a long-term investor – spot on.
• Precious metals will not be a safe haven: Clean miss.  Gold and silver have both performed well.
• The Dollar will not collapse.  Correct.  It hasn’t.  It ended the year of 2008 at 82, it now trades at 78, down 5% or so. 
• The pound or Euro – and perhaps both – will be where the FX dislocation initiates if it occurs.  Early, which means wrong.  Clean miss although the last month sure looks bad for the Euro.
• The US Consumer goes from negative savings to positive:  Direct hit.
• Commercial Real Estate will effectively collapse: Direct hit although the effect has been well-hidden.  Several Tickers have been written on this, including major banks walking off 50% underwater properties.  I can’t take full credit as the REIT explosion I expected didn’t happen, so I only get half a point.
• Along with the above, expect 10% of retail stores to close.  I don’t have accurate numbers on this but it sure looks that way.
• Several states will get in serious financial trouble and the default of one or more may occur.  Point.  While the default didn’t happen that wasn’t a condition of the test, and the list of states in trouble is long and getting longer.
• Mortgages are not done:  No kidding.  Default/delinquency/foreclosure rates continue to skyrocket.  Point.
• If you want to refinance you may get one brief shot with long rates around 4%.  You got two, but I don’t lose for multiple points of impact.  Both of those were good opportunities IF your property isn’t severely underwater (in which case there is no such thing as a good deal.)
• Those who have said that the corporate bond market is being “unreasonable” will start to look like the jackasses that they are.  Maybe.  Actual defaults did in fact skyrocket but new issues are coming to market and subscribing – even for crap-grade paper.  I can’t take a point on this one as my expectation when I wrote it was that issue would go in the toilet.  Miss.
• The calls for “more lending” will go exactly nowhere.  Bingo.
• GM and Chrysler will go bankrupt.  Bingo.
• Protectionism and currency manipulation: Miss, at least in the way I described it.
• Commodities will appear to be headed for a new bull market (falsely): Hit.  Soy, Wheat, etc – all looked to be going parabolic in June.  Now, not so much.  “Beans in the teens” eh?  NOT!
• Sovereign debt defaults will number at least three:  Clean miss.  Greece and a couple of others are on track but didn’t happen this year.  No points for “on track.”
• China will have its first large-scale rumbling of civil unrest:  Clean miss.  I have to admire how they prevented it – more capacity building into an overcapacity world.  That won’t end well but for now they’ve stove it off.
• Foreign uptake of Treasuries will be choked off – by necessity: Hit.  Almost missed that one, but China has stopped buying as the trade imbalance disappeared.  They have, as expected, turned resources inward.
• The City will get it worse than we are:  Since the test was relative I get credit for it; they’re doing things like imposing 90% taxes on banker bonuses.
• Things will get “revolting” in nations: Nope.  Riots and such in Greece don’t count – “revolting” meant what it said.

I count 14 “hits” (including half-points) out of 25, for a score of 56%.  That’s not so good, especially compared to last year.

Ok, so where did I go wrong?

That’s pretty simple: I dramatically underestimated the willingness and ability of “the criminal class” (that would be those in DC and on Wall Street) to lie, cheat, steal, paper over insolvency and get away with it – at least for a while.

Will this ultimately lead to an actual recovery?  No.  It mathematically can’t.  A short-term bounce in various metrics, yes, just like an insolvent person can spend on his credit cards until they get cut off and look like they’re improving.

The S&P 500 currently stands at roughly 1120.  Most “market callers” are expecting another 20% increase next year, which would put it at 1350, just 15% off the all-time high of 1576 and fairly close to where it finished 2007 – that is, as if 2008 and 2009 never happened.  Lunacy, says I, unless leverage can return to where it was in 2007.

Can it?

No.

Let’s remember what happened in 2005 and 2006 that made those things possible.  Investment and commercial banks were stuffing various sorts of securitized paper with garbage loans they knew could not be paid, then selling them off to “investors” (who would later be shown to be bagholders.)  This allowed for an unprecedented expansion in consumer and financial system credit – and that, in turn, allowed the buying of “stuff”, whether it was companies playing LBO or you buying a house to flip with an OptionARM.

That was the legacy of the “expansion” in 2005 through 2007, and it is not coming back.

In short this time it really is different, and the proof is right here:

This is the first time since records began at The Fed that credit outstanding has decreased.  I have taken the liberty of breaking down the periods into 10 year chunks, which makes it easier to see:

Pay attention to this last graph, as it is the important one in terms of the 2003-2007 “recovery” – note that we went from ~32 trillion in outstanding debt to $53 trillion at the peak, an expansion of 66%.   

That’s how we “recovered” from the tech bust, and to believe that we will “recover” from this one you must either find a way to expand debt by a similar amount – that is, to nearly $90 trillion all-in – or figure out how you will get $35 trillion in spending in the US economy above and beyond what we’re doing now over the next three to four years.  In short, we cheated, and to believe we can do it again you must explain how we can cheat once more – and to that degree.

And by the way, for those keeping score – since our monetary system is debt-based declining credit outstanding is the definition of deflation in the monetary sense!

This is exactly what Bernanke said he could avoid.  He was wrong and there is no further room for argument on that point.

Further, I do not believe for a second that the Bernanke’s “pulling back” from the monetary playing field has a thing to do with the “stability” of the markets, especially housing.  Specifically, there is no evidence to be found that housing has stabilized or is improving – quite to the contrary.  Treasury’s “modification” programs have been a joke, with banks either not following through with their supposed responsibilities and borrowers unable to provide documentation of income and assets (because they didn’t have the documentation required at the time of the original loan, and still don’t!)  In short all these “programs” are simply an attempt to paper over the Ponzi in residential housing – with little actual success, but lots of smoke, mirrors and lies. 

Madoff got away with the same game for years – produce some false statements and keep soliciting for that new business.  All is well until the cash flow forces disclosure of the fact that you’re broke – then the ugly truth, that there is no money as it’s all gone – comes out.

Such is happening now.  Servicers have been passing through the interest payments on MBS but principal isn’t there to be repaid.  The journal entries are being ignored – for now – because none of this trash is actually trading.  It’s all being held at or near “par” (100 cents on the dollar) when in fact many of these securities will be lucky to recover anything at all.  Even the “credit supported” tranches are in trouble – nobody ever believed, especially in the “prime” space, that defaults could reach beyond 2 or 3% and recoveries be under 80 or so.  But they are.  Worse, the HELOCs and “silent seconds” are in fact worth zero where the house is worth less than the first note due to priority of claims – yet most of those are being carried at or near full value.

A big part of the reason for this deterioration is due to “misclassification” of loans.  That is, loans were claimed to be “prime” when they were not – they were either “ALT-A” or worse, Subprime in fact, but stuffed into MBS as “prime paper” and then resold onward.  Fannie and Freddie have been recently fingered as a major part of this, but unlike the author of the recent WSJ Opinion piece I believe this scam went much further than the two GSEs – and there has yet to be any honest examination (say much less prosecution) for this conduct.

There’s a rather complex “prisoner’s dilemma” going on at the present time, with none of the banks wanting to liquidate either securities or inventory lest they trigger an avalanche.  Yet each is eying the door, fully-aware that the first one through will be the only one who gets through should anyone bolt.  One of the more-interesting identities for the man yelling “FIRE!” could be a lawsuit – or state prosecution – over the myriad misrepresentation in this space during the bubble years.

Last year (2009) there was almost no net debt issuance between corporates and Treasuries, adjusted for Quantitative Easing.  Indeed, it was only about $200 billion.  That this sort of extreme measure was required to prevent a bond market implosion is rather telling.  But what’s worse is what’s on the calendar for 2010 – nearly $2 trillion of net issue, duration-adjusted.  A huge part of this is Treasury debt, and there the news is even worse, as there’s a serious duration problem in this regard – nearly half (about 40%) has a maturity of one year or less.  This means that Treasury must roll over that debt - about $3 trillion worth - “or else.”

Ask the asset-backed commercial paper market and auction-rate securities folks what happened to them when their short-duration paper couldn’t be rolled on commercially-reasonable terms.  Then extrapolate that to what happens to Treasury if (or possibly when) they’re unable to roll $3 trillion plus issue another $2 trillion on top of it to fund the deficit.  Do you really think that $5 trillion and change of Treasury paper is going to be “all ok” sans “monetization” – or will “they” foment an intentionally-engineered stock market crash to scare people into Treasury debt?  I wish Timmy the best of luck with this – he’s going to need it.

Remember, the belief that foreigners will not be there to rescue us this time around is not speculation – it in fact is born out by the latest TIC data, which showed that China had bought a net zero in Treasury issue in October.  Nor did anyone else step to the plate.  In short foreign nations are chock full of their own issues and are either issuing debt themselves or need their capital internally.

The equity market loves “liquidity” no matter how it comes, whether the truth is embedded in reports or not.  Nasdaq 1999 anyone?  Those firms were not making money and never would but that didn’t stop their stocks from doubling, tripling, and in some cases skyrocketing to 10x their IPO prices. 

The key point is that most of them eventually collapsed and were worth zero, but if you were quick (or lucky) you made a lot of money.  Of course the other side of that ditty is that if you weren’t you lost everything.

There are many who claim that valuations are not “extended” or “bubble-like” and point to the disasters of Q3 and Q4 of 2008 as “drags” on the P/E ratio, claiming that one should ignore negative earnings.  This is kinda of like going to the casino and only counting the winning wagers when determining how well you’ve done.  It may look impressive when you brag to your friends but it won’t change the fact that you go home broke, and ignoring negative earnings is part and parcel of the same sort of disease.

The fact of the matter is that if you look to corporate and personal income taxes they have all but collapsed.  These are of course regressive and governments have been handing out various tax breaks to corporations so this may not be a fair indication of business and consumer activity.

However, sales taxes are, if anything, going up in percentage charged - not down – and yet they are also deep in the red in terms of collections by the states.  Since some “necessities” (specifically food in many states) are not taxed this is particular troublesome since this trend points directly toward a collapse in discretionary spending – exactly what we need to power the economy forward.  Then there’s China, which reported on the 27th that toy shipments to the US were down 15% year/over/year from 2008 – but we’re told that Christmas sales were down “only” 1%.  Riiiiight.

So much for  “economic recovery.”

Productivity has been on a tear – and no wonder.  Watching everyone around you get laid off has a way of providing a hell of an incentive to work harder, lest you follow your friends to the unemployment line.

These trends – letting employees go and demanding that your remaining workers do more for the same pay, does provide a lift to profits.  For a while.  But it also destroys the base of consumers you need to buy those products over time, and thus the lift that you enjoy from such downsizing and squeezes is short-lived.  The hangover from that speedball should be hitting in Q1 or Q2 of the coming year, and I expect it to be quite the doozy.

China, on the other hand, has outdone us.  Burdened with far too much capacity they are, of course, building even more!  That would be great except that there’s no chance they can absorb the output internally.  Not that they care in the short term, as their definition of “GDP” is different than ours – they count a product when it is produced, not sold.  Gee, why are there all these products lined up unused, from cars to washing machines to – gasp – literal empty CITIES of townhouses and apartments?  How far does that bubble inflate before it blows up?  Hell if I know – the Chinese are not exactly models of transparency so the degree of game-playing they can get away with before someone yells “FIRE!” and runs for the door is more difficult to discern than it is over here. 

In the last few days the Chinese Premier has said that he won’t “bow to pressure” to allow the yuan to appreciate.  This of course is code for a weak currency which China desperately wants for its export trade.  Then again, so does Japan, and so does anyone else who exports.  Competitive devaluation sounds quaint, but you’re seeing it, and it is likely to continue as an attempt to play “beggar thy neighbor” in the coming year – and beyond.  Playing with explosives these nations are (including our country!)

In the credit arena few lessons seem to have been learned.  CDOs, CDO^2s and other similar loose-pin grenades aren’t back – yet – but an awful lot of questionable deals are, including, believe it or not, a couple of PIK/Toggle issues.  Those, for the uninformed, are bonds that allow payment not in money but in more debt!  This sort of “debt pyramiding” is the epitome of stupidity when done by a person and a fairly reliable sign of impending default.  In the corporate world we call it “reaching for yield.”  Uh huh.

Many market commentators believe that last year and through March 09 was a “financial panic” similar to 1987, from which the market recovered quickly.  Really?  Go look up the page a bit at the credit chart for the 1980s.  Do you see any contraction in 1987 and 1988 – anywhere?  Nope.  None.  In fact, credit growth continued unabated even though the stock market crashed.  The same occurred in the 2000-2003 time frame (again, look above) during the Tech Implosion.  That’s the differentiating factor: This was not a market panic, it was and is a credit lock-up caused by outstanding debt exceeding servicing capacity for several years, where the premise became not paying debt through current income but rather a Ponzi-style pyramid that permitted refinancing and the appearance of solvency only so long as asset prices rose!

This is an event that last occurred in America in the 1920s and it occurred this time for the same reason it did the last time: lax or utterly absent regulation allowed people to foist off trash on people while claiming that it was “money good”, just as happened with Florida Swampland in the 1920s.  The entire premise of the so-called “financial innovation” then, as now, was fraud.

The simple fact of the matter is that greed often comes with stupidity and nearly always is shortly followed by disaster.  “Rescued” by governments the “princes of finance” learned nothing, were forced to disgorge nothing, and still walk free among us instead of being either jailed or worse, strung up from a lamp post. 

So far.

Whether the people of the various nations will put up with another trip down the bailout, Quantitative Easing or “stimulus” road is another matter entirely.  Tim Geithner and others have gone too far in their grandstanding, cheerleading and claims of “Armageddon Avoided” – or if you prefer, “Mission Accomplished.”  Such claims make for great sound bites but have a habit of slamming the door on future intervention, especially if the need for it appears shortly after the claimed “success.”  Remember well that 2010 contains a midterm election in November, and as things stand our new President has seen his approval rating drop faster than a condemned man does through the floor when the handle is pulled.

Then there’s the “HAMP”, or “mortgage modification” programs generically (there have been several.)  It was claimed that HAMP in particular would prevent 4 million foreclosures by the end of 2009.  It has actually resulted in about a half-million trial modifications, but fewer than 100,000 permanent changes.  This should not surprise – the reason people got in trouble in the first place as that they bought more house than they could reasonably afford on any rational mortgage plan, using schemes such as 1.5 or 2% negative amortization “OptionARMs.”  These were not actual mortgages in intent – they were predicated on ever-rising home “values” so that they could be rolled over in a couple of years and amounted to a perpetual below-market rent payment to a bank, collateralized via the speculative bet that prices would continue to rise.  When home prices stopped going up there was literally no way around the inevitable – foreclosure.

Government refuses to recognize this as all the trash paper is literally everywhere around the globe!  What’s worse is that the very same banks that were making these bets along with homeowners then extended HELOC and other second-priority lines behind the first, extending the trash brigade even further.

Never mind Geithner’s insanity, as displayed here:

GEITHNER: We were very careful from the beginning—but the qualifications get lost—to say that we are going to focus the bulk of the financial force on bringing interest rates and mortgage rates down to cushion the fall in housing prices and help stabilize home values, which will feed into people’s basic sense of financial stability.

The reason we got a bubble in the first place was due to excessively-low rates – that is, a cost of borrowing money that did not reflect the fundamental economic realities of repayment and duration risk.

Insanity defined: Doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.

There is much hot air blown about how businesses and consumers have “de-levered.”  Hogwash.  Again, back to the top graph – we’ve taken a whole $21 billion off the net credit exposure.  Oh sure, if you remove FedGov from the picture (and you arguably should) it’s more like $850 billion – but let’s be real here – we’re talking about a fifty-three trillion dollar debt. 

Even a trillion is less than a 2% reduction in net leverage!

That’s “de-leveraging”?  Like hell.

There is much, much more to go.  To get back to the leverage levels seen in 2000 – which themselves were overheated – we’d have to drop back some twenty five percent, or roughly $13 trillion dollars.

We’re less than 10% of the way there, and we were overheated in 2000.

What’s a more reasonable leverage level?  How about the “more reasonable” time period between 1951 and say, 1983?  175% of GDP?  That would require we cut the outstanding debt by close to half!

Will we see policies that accomplish that?  Not voluntarily!

On a more-macro (beyond one year) level, let’s look at this last-decade debt chart again:

In the beginning of 2000 the total systemic debt outstanding was approximately $25 trillion.  It is now about $53 trillion, or more than double where it was in 2000. Let’s look at where we were in various metrics at that time:

• GDP was at $9.7 trillion.  It is now 40% higher, roughly.  (Gee, did we really produce all that with our hands, or did we borrow the money, spend it, and then count that as “GDP growth?”)
• Aggregate GDP over the 2000-2009 years was about $124 trillion; of that, about 20% (25 trillion) was increase in debt over the same period of time. Our so-called “growth” over these years was in fact a chimera in that more than half of it was not real – and that’s assuming ZERO interest expense now and forevermore.  Of course interest expense isn’t, in fact, zero……
• The S&P began the year 2000 at 1469.  It now stands at 1126, and that’s before inflation adjustment.  The DOW was at 11,500, again, before inflation adjustment, and the Nasdaq 100 was at 3708 (it currently trades 1870.)  Again, all before inflation.  Take 30% off all of today’s numbers to adjust for devaluation of the currency’s purchasing power (that is, inflation) over the last decade and you’re roughly in the ballpark.  The bottom line: you have lost big – more than half if you were in the S&P 500, about 40% in the Dow and a crushing 70% if you were in the Nasdaq 100 over the last ten years.
• There was no shelter to be found in Real Estate either.  Home prices are back to 2000 levels in many parts of the nation, but a huge number of homes are “underwater” on the profligacy of debt taken on by Americans: about 25% of all loans are underwater nationally and nearly half in Florida.  In 2000 that number was basically zero.
• There was no net job creation but we went from 282 million to 307 million people in America.  That means 25 million people are unemployed simply due to population growth.  Ain’t that grand?
• Median household (and per-capita) income has actually declined since 2000 adjusted for inflation.  Of course gasoline is more than twice as expensive ($1.26/gal in January of 2000), eggs are more expensive (double, roughly) and such.  Never mind medical insurance and health care – double-digit escalations every year have been the rule rather than the exception with medical insurance costs being up a literal 200% or more over the last ten years.

This little game of Ponzi (faking “GDP” by taking on more and more debt), by the way, is not new.  I present for your edification the following table:

This is the aggregate GDP (that is, all GDP produced) during each decade from 1960 onward, the “DTi” (or debt increment) during that decade – that is, the additional debt outstanding in all sectors during that decade, and the percentage of “GDP” that in fact was NOT from production, but rather was “created” due to raw borrowing.

What we are facing down today is a fifty year Ponzi scheme.  Drill that into your head folks – for fifty years we have created false output gains, with the last 40 of those years having between 15-20% of each year’s supposed “GDP” not created by the work of people, but by BORROWING MORE MONEY which will have to be repaid with interest.

This is why we hit the wall in 2007.

To run an increase in GDP of about 5%, as so many “pundits” are claiming we will going forward, we would have to increase the total debt in the system to roughly $90 trillion dollars from the present $53 trillion over the next ten years.

That debt would, of course, need to be serviced.  And nobody in their right mind can possibly believe that government could take on another $37 trillion – when the current oustanding public debt is just seven trillion (that is, government would have to increase its debt by 500%!)

If you take nothing else away from this Year in Review Ticker, it should be that singular chart above and a decent understanding of what it means:

To come back into equilibrium, assuming we do not decrease debt in the system at all, we would have to shrink GDP by about 20%.  But shrinking GDP means that money available to pay down debt would also decrease which would generate even more defaults. 

This is how deflationary depressions happen – years, even decades of playing Ponzi by layering debt upon debt.  Bernanke and Geithner, along with President Obama, are well-aware of these facts which is why they are all pounding the table demanding that banks “loan more.” 

The problem with such a prescription is that the wise person won’t borrow, for he knows what’s coming.  The unwise has no collateral to pledge, and thus can’t borrow.

If the government forces (either by persuasion or legislation) lending to those who can’t pay they only extend the Ponzi and in doing so make the inevitable collapse WORSE.

We have made no progress economically in terms of the common weal of the average American but have added debt in dramatic amounts to paper over the deficiency.  That’s the bottom line on the 2000s, and despite all the crooning that “the economy is on the mend” one has to look at the reality of the common man on the street to see what’s coming around the bend for our economy and ask the following question:

How do we get positive economic growth when by every metric available the disposable personal income available to Americans has gone down, personal wealth has in fact decreased when one subtracts out debt (and you must; nobody in their right mind argues that if you go to the bank and take a cash advance for $20,000 on your credit card that you are “more wealthy” as a consequence of having done so!) and while employment at first blush looks “equal” to 2000 in fact there are 25 million more unemployed due to population growth – people who create drag on the economy due to entitlement spending rather than contributing to productive output?

So with all this said, here’s what I believe we’re looking at for 2010… ready or not, here it comes!

• No, this is not a new Bull Market; the market will be lower on December 31st than it is on January 4th, quite possibly by a a hell of a lot.  We may not break the March 2009 lows – but I also don’t believe for a second we’re going back to 1576 on the SPX.  Not without the leverage – and we can’t get the leverage.  I believe we will end the year down from where we begin on January 1st.  McHugh calls it “Wave 3 Down”; I call it “aw crap.”  Either way “irrational exuberance” is back for now but cash flow always wins in the end.  I’ll be a “generational buyer” of stocks when dividend yields are over 5% and P/Es are in single digits.  We didn’t get there last year and yet those are the historical metrics that mark true Bear Market bottoms.  With that said, I would not be surprised if we hit 1220 on the SPX some time earlier in the year – but it is by no means a lock, contrary to what virtually everyone in the “pundit community” expects (most of which are looking for 1350 or more!)
• The Long end of the Bond Curve is going to move higher on yields.  We have completed a long-term (multi-year) inverted Head and Shoulders pattern.  The probability of the targets set by that pattern being achieved is extremely high.  The target?  6.9% on the 30 year “long bond” – a rate that puts 30 year mortgage money at least to 7%.  This prediction assumes that we do not get a panic-style sell-off in the Stock Market – if we do get one (and I think it’s 50/50 on that) then I withdraw this prediction.
• House prices will fall another ~20% – whether as a consequence of the rate back-up or utter destruction in the markets generally.  Sorry folks, the housing mess is not over.  The math on this is simple; a $200,000 principal loan at 4.75% for 30 years produces a P&I of $1039.18.  That same payment with a rate of 7% produces a principal financed of $157,107.95.  If, for whatever reason (engineered or not) the stock market collapses then you get your housing price crash anyway.
• Banks will “give up” on holding their real estate as rates start to backup and will dump their foreclosure inventories.  Why?  Because the regulators may let them to play games with alleged “values” when people can get mortgages at 4%, but at 7% there’s just no way the numbers work and the fraud becomes too difficult to countenance.  There are rumors of major banks dumping hundreds of thousands of homes on the market next year – this is likely the backstory on “why.”
• Credit will not ease for “ordinary people.”  All the exhortations about “lending more” have been going on now for more than two years yet have gone nowhere.  The jawboning will continue but the results will not come, simply because there is no more good collateral left against which to lend.  This will in turn lead to.
• A massive second wave of small business bankruptcies will sweep the nation.  We’ve seen the first part of it.  The second will be worse – far worse.  With long rates backing up and the 30% credit card sweeping the land those who have relied on credit to operate in the small and mid-sized business world will get relentlessly squeezed.  Many will fall.
• Unemployment will appear to be stabilizing – for a while – but that will prove illusory.  We finish 2010 over 10% - no material improvement.  If things get real bad we might see 12-14%.  Yes, U-3.  I won’t stick my neck out that far as a prediction but I believe ending the year at or above 10% is a lock.
• The “revolting” call for last year was early – but not wrong.  There will be at least one major coup or other violent overthrow of a government in 2010 tied to economic instability – either directly or via a war it spawns.
• The states will go to the government well for handouts, they will probably get them, but it won’t matter.  They’ll get some assistance at least, but in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t make any difference in a world where long rates are rising precipitously.  California and Arizona are in the biggest trouble, with Michigan, New Jersey and New York right behind.  The public employee unions will have a kitten but again, it won’t matter – that which isn’t there isn’t there, whether you want it to be or not.
• A “double dip” will be recognized by the end of the year.  Between taxes and rising rates – or an intentionally-detonated stock market to stop the long end of the bond curve going bananas – you can bet on it.
• China will lose control of their property and plant bubble – with horrible consequences.  They’re good at the game, but that which can’t go on forever won’t.  I bet it blows up before the end of the year.  If so, Australia’s property market better watch out – they’re levitating on the strength of China’s commodity demand and pricing there is California-style. 
• The Canadian Real Estate Market will show signs of cracking – especially in places like Vancouver.  They may have another year before it all goes to hell, but the time approaches.  Beware.
• The Fed’s games will “leak” and credibility will be shaken severely.  There’s too much pressure.  Something will give, somewhere.  Washington DC is too hostile a place for the “hold hands and head for the cliff together” game to work with an election coming up……
• The Democrats lose big in the House.  Time is probably too short for a viable third party to emerge for the midterm elections, and I don’t expect the Democrats to lose House control.  However, I do expect them to lose their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and to lose enough seats in The House to trash their “steamroller” approach to legislation.  This might be bullish for the markets late in the year and into 2011 – maybe (divided government is generally good for the markets.)
• Congress continues to try to spend its way out of the recession – and runs head on into rising rates.  Watch the TBAC reports.  Those will be your “tell” along with the TIC data.
• One or more of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) either defaults technically or is forced into austerity by the ECB.  Further, Eastern Europe becomes dangerous destabilized.  There is a real possibility of outright hostilities in that part of the world next year.  Let’s hope not.  The ECB has a nasty problem on their hands; I have said for quite some time that the Euro is likely to trade at PAR down the road.  This year is probably not the year for it, but the cracks in the dam that ultimately could destroy the European Union should become very apparent in 2010.
• Contrary to virtually EVERY “investment pundit” on the street today return OF capital will once again assert itself as the primary consideration.  Sentiment indicators as of 12/31, along with 52-week highs, all are at levels that have been associated with tops on a historical basis.  Treasury has to issue $2.5 trillion this year, while we all cheered when they issued $1.5 trillion last year – and got away with it.  China has housing trading at 80x average incomes, Australia and parts of Canada have housing markets at 10x or more average incomes and the banksters and “investors” alike appear to have learned nothing, with “reaching for yield” coming back in force.  Ponzi ponzi ponzi!  Add to this geopolitical event risk and things get interesting.  That which can’t continue forever won’t – we merely argue over timing, not outcome.  I’ll lay the marker on one or more of these timers reaching zero in 2010.

Note: Subject to minor edits/revisions and perhaps an addition or two until the end of January 1st, as usual.

Edit: 1960s DTi had a misplaced divisor – corrected and paragraph referencing “nutty Ponzi” in that decade removed.

In support of Huffington Post’s call for people to move our money from the giant banks to community banks and credit unions:

• Here is a site which lets you find local credit unions

• Here is a site which rates the safety of banks, thrifts and credit unions

• And here is another site which rates the safety of credit unions

As USA Today pointed out in August 2008:

Credit unions are regulated by the National Credit Union Administration, or NCUA, or by state agencies. The NCUA oversees the safety and soundness of all credit unions.

If you want to check up on your credit union, make sure it’s federally insured by the NCUA and look at its finances, you can do that any time. Go to the NCUA’s website at www.ncua.gov, click on the “Credit Union Data” link on the left-hand side of the page below where it says Data and Services. Next, click on the Find a Credit Union link, type in the credit union’s name and click the Find button.You can then choose to view the Financial Performance Report or the official regulatory document, called the 5300 report. This report will tell you how well capitalized the credit union is and even let you see how many of the loans are going bad.

What about your asset protection? Credit unions are backed by the NCUA, through the NCU Share Insurance Fund, which is backed by the U.S. government. Individual accounts are backed up to $100,000, with additional coverage up to $250,000 for certain retirement accounts. Joint accounts may qualify for coverage of up to $200,000.