I Read This Web Article in early 2006 and It Was Quite Compelling

I Read This Web Article About Three Years Ago... and it was quite compelling. I believe it was published in late 2005.

"One has to realize that all the increase in US consumer spending is borrowed. And it is borrowed against rising house prices. In 2001, Greenspan replaced the bursting stock market bubble with the housing bubble. But soon he'll be faced with a bursting housing bubble. The only question is when."

The thing to realize, of course, is that the housing bubble is many times more dangerous than the stock market bubble, because it involves the whole banking system. Greenspan has replaced one bubble with an even bigger and more dangerous bubble.

American monetary policy is out of control. Greenspan has created a debt Colossus. This debt Colossus needs permanent new credit. In an economy that needs four dollars in credit to produce one dollar of GDP, simply reducing credit could be disastrous. Even a slight reduction of credit could create enormous negative repercussions in the asset markets and financial markets.

The level of credit excess in America has reached such a level of absurdity that no return to normalcy is possible without a disastrous effect on the economy.

What I often hear is that there's so much liquidity in the US economy and US financial markets. But this liquidity is not from cash. It is credit. There is huge liquidity in the asset markets that could turn into a savage deflation tomorrow. This is an illusion, this liquidity argument. It works as long as the system of inflating asset prices functions. But when it stops, liquidity is gone. If there is a lot of leverage in the market, it can collapse.

It has not yet happened…But it will, as soon as credit becomes more expensive or difficult to obtain…

The crucial support for the American financial infrastructure is the massive purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by foreign central banks. The Americans think that this is to their advantage. But this only means that they have a longer rope with which to hang themselves. To have too much credit is never good, not for a country and not for an individual and not for a company.

Because consumption has grown so far out of proportion to production, capitalist America relies on the generosity of communist China. Americans don't even realize how ridiculous and absurd this is. It's so absurd I can't believe it. I think this is the worst sign that I could imagine. It means that net investment is collapsing.

Consumption produces the least desirable kind of growth. And the simple thing to know is that it is unsustainable. It is unsustainable because real incomes are not growing. In America you're having a fiasco in employment and income growth. The average income of the American middle-class is declining in real terms. And they have debts and debts and debts and zero savings. They have no reserves.