1. A full FICA suspension:

The suspension of FICA paid by employees restores spending which supports output and employment.
The suspension of FICA paid by business helps keep costs down which in a competitive environment lowers prices for consumers.

2. $150 billion one time distribution by the federal govt to the states on a per capita basis to get them over the hump.

3. An $8/hr federally funded transition job for anyone willing and able to work to assist in the transition from unemployment to private sector employment.

Call me an inflation hawk if you want. But when the fiscal drag is removed with the FICA suspension and funds for the states I see risk of what will be seen as ‘unwelcome inflation’ causing Congress to put on the brakes long before unemployment gets below 5% without the $8/hr transition job in place, even with the help of the FICA suspension in lowering costs for business.

It’s my take that in an expansion the ‘employed labor buffer stock’ created by the $8/hr job offer will prove a superior price anchor to the current practice of using the current unemployment based buffer stock as our price anchor.

The federal government caused this mess for allowing changing credit conditions to cause its resulting over taxation to unemploy a lot more people than the government wanted to employ. So now the corrective policy is to suspend the FICA taxes, give the states the one time assistance they need to get over the hump the federal government policy created, and provide the transition job to help get those people that federal policy is causing to be unemployed back into private sector employment in a more orderly, more ‘non inflationary’ manner.

I’ve noticed the criticism the $8/hr proposal- aka the ‘Job Guarantee’- has been getting in the blogosphere, and it continues to be the case that none of it seems logically consistent to me, as seen from an MMT perspective. It seems the critics haven’t fully grasped the ramifications of the recognition of the currency as a (simple) public monopoly as outlined in Full Employment AND Price Stability and the other mandatory readings.

So yes, we can simply restore aggregate demand with the FICA suspension and funds for the states, but if I were running things I’d include the $8 transition job to improve the odds of both higher levels of real output and lower ‘inflation pressures’.

Also, this is not to say that I don’t support the funding of public infrastructure (broadly defined) for public purpose. In fact, I see that as THE reason for government in the first place, and it should be determined and fully funded as needed. I call that the ‘right size’ government, and, in general, it’s not the place for cyclical adjustments.

4. An energy policy to help keep energy consumption down as we expand GDP, particularly with regard to crude oil products.

Here my presumption is there’s more to life than burning our way to prosperity, with ‘whoever burns the most fuel wins.’

Perhaps more important than what happens if these proposals are followed is what happens if they are not, which is more likely going to be the case.

First, given current credit conditions, world demand, and the 0 rate policy and QE, it looks to me like the current federal deficit isn’t going to be large enough to allow anything better than muddling through we’ve seen over the last few years.

Second, potential volatility is as high as it’s ever been. Europe could muddle through with the ECB doing what it takes at the last minute to prevent a collapse, or doing what it takes proactively, or it could miss a beat and let it all unravel. Oil prices could double near term if Iran cuts production faster than the Saudis can replace it, or prices could collapse in time as production comes online from Iraq, the US, and other places forcing the Saudis to cut to levels where they can’t cut any more, and lose control of prices on the downside.

In other words, the risk of disruption and the range of outcomes remains elevated.

They post prices and then let their refiners buy as much as they want at their posted prices.

They have no choice but to be price setter, but they also don’t want anyone to know they are simply setting prices, so they talk around it and have obviously done a good pr job in that regard.

So after production spiked due to lost Libyan output, production now seems be falling back to prior levels as Libya comes back online.

There are other things affecting supply and demand as well, also altering Saudi production accordingly.

The Saudis lose control of price on the upside only when they don’t have sufficient productive capacity to meet demand. And they lose control on the downside when they can’t cut sufficiently to address a fall in net demand.

Looks to me like they will remain in that catbird seat for quite a while.

And if they keep prices relatively stable there will not likely be a 70′s style global inflation problem.

As previously discussed a few weeks ago, with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve release initiated by President Obama now winding down, the glut in Cushing that looks to have caused West Texas crude prices to fall to about a $25 discount to Brent crude and world prices in general looks to be coming to an end. Additionally, to help ensure it doesn’t happen again, it was announced the flow in a large pipeline will soon be reversed to allow crude to flow out of Cushing.

As a consequence the WTI price has been rising steadily and looks to me to be reconverging with Brent prices.

And seems to me, watching the news broadcasting, the increase is at best very disconcerting to the US consumer in front of the holiday shopping season.

At the same time, the austerity continues to weaken the euro economies, with Q4 potentially going negative, driving deficits that much higher in the process.

The ‘answer’ remains the ECB writing the check, which they’ve sort of seemed to recognize, but they remain (errantly) concerned that reliance on the ECB is inherently inflationary, and thereby violates the ECB’s mandate for price stability. So it won’t happen until things again get bad enough to force it to happen.

The catastrophic risk remains a failure, when push comes to shove, to allow the ECB to write the check as they have been doing to allow it all to muddle through.

The range of outcomes couldn’t be wider. Write the check and not much happens, don’t write the check and there is unthinkable collapse.

Meanwhile, the 1% running the US looks to be trying to take the lead in the global austerity race to the bottom as the Democrats in the super committee on deficit reduction have led off by proposing a $4 trillion deficit reduction package.

Toss in West Texas crude prices heading to Brent levels of about $110/barrel as the strategic petroleum reserve release winds down over the next three weeks and the looks to me like the US consumer crawls back into his foxhole just in time for the holiday season.

Not to mention Japan now darning the torpedoes and buying dollars to take back a bit of the export market they lost by kowtowing to former tsy sec paulson’s demands to not be a ‘currency manipulator’ in the context of still weakening global demand in general.

The number one threat to world order remains a failure to sustain demand. The good news is sustaining aggregate demand is a simple matter once the monetary system is understood. The bad news is there seems to be no one of authority who doesn’t have it all backwards.

If so, WTI is marching towards $110/barrel which seems to me could trigger substantial market reactions.

And about the same time the super committee deficit reduction talks will be in full swing, euro financing stresses elevated, exacerbated by confirmation of the 0 gdp growth forecasts hit the headlines, and further slowdown news from China complicating things as well.

The ‘answer’ remains as simple as it is further away from political reality than ever, even though the right policy responses couldn’t be more attractive to both sides:

The US budget deficit is too small.

Russia says close to final stage on China gas deal

By Gleb Bryanski

October 11 (Bloomberg) — Russia said on Tuesday it was close to the final stage of a huge gas supply deal with China, in what would be a landmark trade agreement between the long-wary neighbours.

A deal to supply the world’s second biggest economy with up to 68 billion cubic metres of Russian gas a year over 30 years has long been delayed over pricing disagreements.

“We are nearing the final stage of work on gas supplies,” said Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, on his first overseas trip since announcing he was ready to reclaim the Russian presidency.

Putin is hoping his two-day visit will help broaden trade with China, which he expects to grow to $200 billion in 2020 from $59.3 billion last year.

From CNBC:

Libyan oil production was just shy of 1.6 million barrels per day in February, before the uprising swept across the country, leading to six months of civil war. Production in May was down to 60,000 barrels per day, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

“The medium-term outlook is that they probably have the potential to produce more than the 1.6 million, so it’s a very bullish scenario for anyone who is ready to invest in Libya,” Johannes Benigni, managing director of JBC Energy, told CNBC Wednesday morning. “The reality factor is, everyone knows that Libya was easier to run in a dictatorship than in a democratic or semi-democratic environment, and those guys first have to prove that they are able to bring back stability.”

The TNC, headed by Mustafa Jalil, appears to be relatively cohesive at the moment, but the rebels are composed of a complex mix of political, tribal and social alliances that analysts worry may not hold once their common enemy is beaten.

Benigni said that he expected that Libya could pump 400,000 barrels per day by the end of the year, but that in the best case scenario it would be 12-18 months before it returned to pre-war levels.

Goldman Sachs had forecast average output of 250,000 barrels per day in 2012, with a potential to increase to 585,000 barrels per day by the end of the year if rebels were to take control of infrastructure in the west of the country. The rebellion, which began in the east of the country, rapidly seized parts of the Libyan oil industry. Goldman’s predictions were based around output from those eastern facilities.

In a report issued on Tuesday, however, the bank said that the seizure of western oil assets increases the likelihood that output could ramp up more swiftly.

Analysts have been struggling to obtain reliable information on the state of much of the Libyan oil infrastructure. A report from Exclusive Analysis, the risk forecasting firm, said that exports would be likely to resume from the east within three months and from the west within six to nine months.

The federal deficit is chugging along at maybe 9% of US GDP, supporting income and adding to savings by exactly that much, so a collapse in aggregate demand, while not impossible, is highly unlikely.

After recent downward revisions, that sent shock waves through the markets, so far this year GDP has grown by .4% in Q1 and 1.2% in Q2, with Q3 now revised down to maybe 2.0%. Looks to me like it’s been increasing, albeit very slowly. And today’s employment report shows much the same- modest improvement in an economy that’s growing enough to add a few jobs, but not enough to keep up with productivity growth and labor force growth, as labor participation rates fell to a new low for the cycle.

And, as previously discussed, looks to me like H1 demonstrated that corps can make decent returns with very little GDP growth, so even modestly better Q3 GDP can mean modestly better corp profits. Not to mention the high unemployment and decent productivity gains keeping unit labor costs low.

Lower crude oil and gasoline profits will hurt some corps, but should help others more than that, as consumers have more to spend on other things, and the corps with lower profits won’t cut their actual spending and so won’t reduce aggregate demand.

This is the reverse of what happened in the recent run up of gasoline prices.

Japan should be doing better as well as they recover from the shock of the earthquake.

Yes, there are risks, like the looming US govt spending cuts to be debated in November, but that’s too far in advance for today’s markets to discount.

A China hard landing will bring commodity prices down further, hurting some stocks but, again, helping consumers.

A euro zone meltdown would be an extreme negative, but, once again, the ECB has offered to write the check which, operationally, they can do without limit as needed. So markets will likely assume they will write the check and act accordingly.

A strong dollar is more a risk to valuations than to employment and output, and falling import prices are very dollar friendly, as is continuing a fiscal balance that constrains aggregate demand to the extent evidenced by the unemployment and labor force participation rates. And Japan’s dollar buying is a sign of the times. With US demand weakening, foreign nations are swayed by politically influential exporters who do not want to let their currency appreciate and risk losing market share.

The Fed’s reaction function includes unemployment and prices, but not corporate earnings per se. It’s failing on it’s unemployment mandate, and now with commodity prices coming down it’s undoubtedly reconcerned about failing on it’s price stability mandate as well, particularly with a Fed chairman who sees the risks as asymmetrical. That is, he believes they can deal with inflation, but that deflation is more problematic.

So with equity prices a function of earnings and not a function of GDP per se, as well as function of interest rates, current PE’s look a lot more attractive than they did before the sell off, and nothing bad has happened to Q3 earnings forecasts, where real GDP remains forecast higher than Q2.

So from here, seems to me both bonds and stocks could do ok, as a consequence of weak but positive GDP that’s enough to support corporate earnings growth, but not nearly enough to threaten Fed hikes.

Consumer borrowing up in June by most in 4 years

By Martin Crutsinger

May 25 (Bloomberg) — Americans borrowed more money in June than during any other month in nearly four years, relying on credit cards and loans to help get through a difficult economic stretch.

The Federal Reserve said Friday that consumers increased their borrowing by $15.5 billion in June. That’s the largest one-month gain since August 2007. And it is three times the amount that consumers borrowed in May.

The category that measures credit card use increased by $5.2 billion — the most for a single month since March 2008 and only the third gain since the financial crisis. A category that includes auto loans rose by $10.3 billion, the most since February.

Total consumer borrowing rose to a seasonally adjusted annual level of $2.45 trillion. That was 2.1 percent higher than the nearly four-year low of $2.39 trillion hit in September.

Daily Oil Note: OSPs a Critical Piece in the Supply Puzzle

A key source of market uncertainty is how much oil Saudi Arabia will produce and export over the next few months. We see reports that Saudi Aramco recently offered additional cargoes to term buyers, but reportedly many declined because pricing was unattractive versus alternatives. Tanker bookings also do not point to a substantial ramp up in Middle East liftings in coming weeks. In fact, they are running well behind the pace in June.

The only way OPEC could block Saudi attempts to lower price would be production cuts beyond the Saudi’s ability to increase supply.

In the past, OPEC has never actually been able to do that, as apart from the Saudis the rest pretty much always pump flat out even after they agree to cut.

I suspect the Saudis and Obama also know Lybia will be back online soon with another 1 million barrels a day make it that much more problematic for the rest of OPEC to cut sufficiently to get the price up.

And the US and the Saudis probably also know world demand is falling short of forecasts, or they probably wouldn’t have undertaken the price cutting actions.

*DJ OPEC Secretary General: Sees No Good Reason For IEA Oil Release
*DJ OPEC Secy Genl: Wants Immediate Cessation Of Stocks Release
*DJ OPEC President Ready To Call Emergency Meeting If Needed
*DJ OPEC President: Hopes Oil Market Won’t Warrant Emergency Meeting