All Things Bearish

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Crisis of Confidence

Doug Nolan


Global markets are indicating heightened vulnerability. Thursday trading saw the S&P500 decline 1.54%, the second biggest decline of 2017. The session also saw the junk bond market under pressure. A notable $2.18bn of junk fund outflows this week spurred the headline, “Risk Exodus Gets Real With Biggest Fund Redemptions in 6 Months.” Currency markets are increasingly unstable. The euro traded to 1.1838 on Monday and fell to a trading low of 1.1662 on Thursday. The dollar/yen rose to 110.95 on Wednesday before reversing course to a near nine-month low of 108.60 during Friday trading. Gold traded to $1,300 in early Friday trading, the high going back to the election. Early-week market relief over the North Korean situation quickly shifted to unease over festering domestic issues.

August 16 – Wall Street Journal (Gabriel Wildau): “One of the most influential analysts of China’s financial system believes that bad debt is $6.8tn above official figures and warns that the government’s ability to enforce stability has allowed underlying problems to go unchecked. Charlene Chu built her reputation as China banking analyst at credit rating agency Fitch, where she was among the earliest to warn of risks from rising debt, especially in the country’s shadow banking system… In her latest report, Ms Chu estimates that bad debt in China’s financial system will reach as much as Rmb51tn ($7.6tn) by the end of this year, more than five times the value of bank loans officially classified as either non-performing or one notch above. That estimate implies a bad-debt ratio of 34%, well above the official 5.3% ratio for those two categories at the end of June… ‘What I’ve gotten a greater appreciation for is how everything is so orchestrated by the authorities,’ she said. ‘The upside is that it creates stability. The downside is that it can create a problem of proportions that people would think is never possible. We’re moving into that territory.’”

As is typical, China’s Credit expansion slowed during the month of July. Growth in Total Aggregate Social Finance declined to about $180bn. New loans increased $124bn, the slowest rise since last November - but still stronger-than-expected and much stronger than July 2016. In a data point to follow closely, loans to households (mostly mortgages) slowed from June’s strong pace. Shadow banking contracted during June (first since October), although y-o-y growth remained a robust 16.5%. At 9.2%, y-o-y money supply growth was the slowest in decades.

It’s worth mentioning that Chinese data generally disappointed this week. Retail sales (up 10.4%) were down marginally from June and were below estimates (10.8%). Growth in Fixed Investment (8.3%) and Industrial Production (6.4%) were similarly down m-o-m and below forecasts.

August 13 – Bloomberg: “China’s home sales grew last month at the slowest pace in more than two years amid regulators’ moves to rein in soaring prices. The value of new homes sold rose 4.3% to 779 billion yuan ($117bn) in July from a year earlier… The increase is the smallest since March 2015, when the home market started to take off on policies to encourage demand from buyers.”

There is significant uncertainty associated with Chinese Credit and economic prospects.

Through July, the growth in Total Aggregate Finance is tracking 20% above 2016’s record level. The first-half boom in Chinese Credit growth – especially household mortgage borrowings – goes a long way in explaining economic resiliency. There are certainly indications that Chinese officials are increasingly concerned with overall system Credit growth, but there is also the view that no tough measures will be adopted that would risk instability heading into this fall’s communist party gathering.

August 15 – Financial Times (Tom Mitchell): “China’s economy will grow faster than expected over the next three years because of the government’s reluctance to rein in ‘dangerous’ levels of debt, the International Monetary Fund warned… In an annual review of the world’s second-largest economy, IMF staff said China’s annual economic growth would average 6.4% in 2018-20, compared with a previous estimate of 6%. The IMF is also predicting that the Chinese economy will expand 6.7% this year, up from its earlier forecast of 6.2% growth. The Chinese government, which pledged to double the size of the economy between 2010 and 2020, has tolerated a rapid run-up in debt in order to meet its target. ‘The [Chinese] authorities will do what it takes to attain the 2020 GDP target,’ the IMF said. As a result, the IMF now expects China’s non-financial sector debt to exceed 290% of GDP by 2022, compared with 235% last year. The fund had previously estimated that debt levels would stabilise at 270% of GDP over the next five years.”

Looking out past the next few months, there’s significant uncertainty associated with Chinese policymaking, finance and economic performance. And before we segue to the mess in Washington, there are as well major near-term uncertainties with respect to global monetary management. There were indications this week that both the ECB and Federal Reserve lack the confidence and consensus necessary to communicate a plan for unwinding what have been years of unprecedented monetary stimulus. It’s not confidence inspiring.

August 17 – Wall Street Journal (Todd Buell): “The European Central Bank is wary of pulling the plug too soon on its large bond-buying program, and worried that any move in that direction will push the euro higher, the accounts of its latest meeting showed… The comments suggest that ECB President Mario Draghi will move with immense caution as he approaches two major public appearances in the coming weeks…”

August 17 – Bloomberg (Craig Torres): “Federal Reserve officials are looking under the hood of their most basic inflation models and starting to ask if something is wrong. Minutes from the July 25-26 Federal Open Market Committee meeting showed a revealing debate over why the economy isn’t producing more inflation in a time of easy financial conditions, tight labor markets and solid economic growth. The central bank has missed its 2% price goal for most of the past five years. Still, a majority of FOMC participants favor further rate increases. The July minutes showed an intensifying debate over whether that is the right policy response. ‘These minutes to me were troubling,’ said Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies… ‘They don’t have their confidence in their policy decisions; and they don’t have confidence that they can provide the right kind of guidance.’”

August 16 – Wall Street Journal (David Harrison): “New doubts over sagging inflation in the past few months are driving a split at the Federal Reserve about the timing of the next increase in interest rates. The internal debate raises the possibility that the Fed could deviate from its plans for a third rate increase this year. Soft inflation has bedeviled Fed officials, forcing them to pull back on plans to raise rates multiple times in 2015 and 2016. Minutes from the July 25-26 meeting released Wednesday reveal growing concern among some officials that recent soft inflation numbers could be a sign that something has fundamentally changed in the economy, leading them to suggest holding off on raising rates again for the time being.”

China is in an historic Bubble, and this has created extraordinary uncertainty for the future. Global central banks have been engaged in an unprecedented and prolonged monetary inflation, and this has created extraordinary uncertainty for the future. An important facet of the problem is that years of extreme monetary stimulus have ensured that way too much “money” has gravitated to highly speculative global securities and derivatives markets. This has profoundly distorted inflationary dynamics in the securities markets as well as in the global economy overall.

Central bankers are increasingly perplexed as to how to proceed with normalization. While markets remain convinced that monetary policies globally will stay loose indefinitely, I believe indecision at the major central banks creates uncertainties that will increasingly weigh on risk-taking (especially with leverage). Watch the currencies. With the backdrop set, let’s move on to Washington.

The Trump Administration now confronts a full-fledged Crisis of Confidence. Even Republican supporters are calling for radical change. And it would at this point appear that some degree of radical departure will be required for the President to muster enough support to move forward with his agenda. I assume the administration will adopt a razor-sharp focus on tax cuts and reform in an attempt to stabilize a sinking ship.

As for the stock market, this week saw the “Trump Rally” conveniently morph to the “Cohn Rally.” Rumors of a Gary Cohn departure were said to be behind market selling pressure. It would be shocking to see Cohn abandoned Washington. He may now be the second most powerful individual in the country, with the most powerful enveloped in mayhem.

Importantly, “Risk Off” is gathering some momentum. Over recent years we’ve witnessed the markets repeatedly disregard – or at least downplay – major political developments. For the most part, markets were this week generally resilient in the face of a distressing and rapidly deteriorating political landscape. So far, the monetary and economic backdrops have remained constructive.

This week saw a stronger-than-expected reading in the Empire Manufacturing Index. Monthly Retail Sales were stronger-than-expected, as was the National Home Builders Housing Market Index (although Starts and Permits lagged). The weekly Bloomberg Consumer Comfort index rose to the highest level since 2001. The Bloomberg National Economy Expectations index surged back to near multi-year highs.

It’s worth noting that 10-year Treasury yields declined less than four basis points during Thursday’s stock market swoon. For a week that saw U.S. risk markets under some pressure and the VIX spike for the second straight week, it was notable that Treasury yields rose slightly. This should raise concerns that Treasuries may not provide much of a hedge during the next bout of “Risk Off.” And if Treasury gains are limited in the event of “Risk Off,” what are the ramifications for an overheated corporate debt marketplace?

Unprecedented risk has accumulated across the markets over the past nine years. “Money” has flooded into passive strategies that are essentially a speculation that the bull market – in equities and corporate Credit – will run unabated. Myriad derivatives strategies have flourished, with the proliferation of many products that are essentially writing market insurance (“flood insurance during a drought”).

Markets have experience “flash crashes” in the recent past, so I assume there will be more. For good reason, market participants these days presume that central banks will use their balance sheets to ensure that markets remain abundantly liquid. At the same time, the reality is that global central bankers have limited policy tools available in the event of market instability. The downside of delaying policy normalization (for years) is that we’re in the late innings of a global Bubble yet rates remain at or near zero around the globe. Central banks have little room to cut interest-rates, while pressure builds to wind down extraordinary balance sheet operations.

I am somewhat reminded of when accounting fraud issues precluded Fannie and Freddie from providing the MBS marketplace a liquidity backstop. It was a pivotal development, though market players were content to ignore ramifications for several years. With booming markets anticipating liquidity abundance indefinitely, it wasn’t until the 2008 de-leveraging episode that the absence of the GSE backstop bid mattered.

I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself here, but it’s worth noting that bank CDS has begun to price in rising risk. For the most part, CDS price reversals are modest and come from multi-year lows. But bank CDS risk has been increasing now for going on a month. And on a global basis, it’s kind of the same old potential problem children that have experienced the biggest gains – Dexia, Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, UBS, BNP Paribas and Credit Suisse. Some of the big European banks saw CDS rise to two month highs this week. U.S. banks are now also seeing a modest rise in CDS prices, in many cases ending the week at one-month highs. It’s worth noting as well that the broker/dealer equities index (XBD) declined more than 2% Thursday and was hit 1.4% for the week. Japan’s TOPIX Bank Index dropped 2.4% this week.

August 15 – Financial Times (Eric Platt): “Amazon sealed the year’s fourth-largest corporate bond sale on Tuesday as the technology and online retail group locked in $16bn to fund its takeover of premium grocer Whole Foods… The company, founded by Jeff Bezos, borrowed the $16bn across seven tranches, ranging from three- to 40-year maturities. Orders for the multibillion-dollar deal climbed to nearly $49bn as banks closed their books…”

I’ll also be closely monitoring indicators of corporate Credit risk. According to Dealogic, August’s $110 billion of U.S. corporate debt sales pushed y-t-d issuance to $1.2 TN. And while corporate debt prices for the most part held their own this week, spreads have widened meaningfully from July. Even the investment-grade market is indicating a changing backdrop.

I feel compelled to offer brief comments on the sad state of our great nation. Sure, the stock market is close all-time highs and unemployment is at multi-year lows. Business and consumer confidence are strong, which is understandable considering the prolonged Bubble period. That there are such widespread feelings of acrimony and animosity - and that our country can be so bitterly divided - in the midst of today’s economic/market backdrop must be alarming to anyone paying attention. I hate to think of the environment after the Bubble bursts – the type of hostility and insecurity that would seem to ensure an epic bear market.

It’s almost unbelievable that the November election offered a choice between about the two most divisive figures in American politics. It’s as if there are two completely divergent and irreconcilable views of how the world works, how the economy should operate and the role of the federal government. Somehow we’ve gotten to the point where there cannot even be a civil discussion – let along a meeting of the minds - on the most basic issues.

As has become a popular (Daniel Moynihan) quote to recite, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.” These days, facts are in dispute and they’re often disputed hatefully. Okay, let’s assume the Administration does see some legislative success. What happens after the mid-terms?

It’s too easy to blame the political class. Yet politicians do what politicians do. There should be little doubt that the boom and bust dynamics experienced over recent decades have taken a toll on our nation’s social and economic fabric. And while many want to blame “globalization,” I believe much that we label “globalization” would be more accurately understood as fallout from years of unfettered global finance. Could NAFTA have been as destabilizing to U.S. manufacturing without endless cheap finance flooding into Mexico (and EM more generally). How dominant would China be today without essentially limitless amounts of virtually free “money” to finance over-investment the likes of which the world has never experienced?

I strongly believe that unfettered finance has been instrumental in the long period of U.S. deindustrialization – the transformation from a manufacturing powerhouse into an experiment in a consumption and services-based economic structure. Bubbling securities markets and booming Wall Street finance were integral to this fateful structural shift.

Millions of skilled jobs have been lost, replaced by millions of service sector positions where workers can toil for years and still possess skills of only marginal value. It’s now been decades of malinvestment and structural impairment. There has been profound overinvest in almost all things consumption related, which impinges both economic productivity and wage growth.

Unimaginable monetary stimulus has spurred asset inflation and spending, but we’re now left with a historic Bubble and only deeper structural maladjustment.

Understandably, much of the population feels they’ve been shortchanged or even cheated. The ongoing inequitable redistribution of wealth becomes only more conspicuous as those fortunate enough to participate in the Bubble accumulate incredible wealth. There’s a general sense that the system is unfair and untrustworthy. Too many citizens no longer trust Washington and Wall Street, and they’re as well losing trust in our institutions more generally. There’s tremendous deep-seated anger for large groups of citizens that feel cheated and marginalized. Two-decades of spectacular boom and bust dynamics have left a tremendous amount of damage.

It’s all been so frustratingly predictable. Certainly not for the first time in history, the scourge of unsound money and inflationism has been so subtle that it goes virtually undetected. Instead of being appreciated as the root cause of economic, social, political and geopolitical trouble, monetary inflation is viewed as integral to the solution. Just a little more – just one more round of monetary inflation will do the trick and we’ll get back to normal. Right… It ensures hopeless addiction – with tremendous collateral damage. It was a troubling week where the absurdity of it all seemed on full display.

It could happen

How to avoid nuclear war with North Korea

There are no good options to curb Kim Jong Un. But blundering into war would be the worst



IT IS odd that North Korea causes so much trouble. It is not exactly a superpower. Its economy is only a fiftieth as big as that of its democratic capitalist cousin, South Korea. Americans spend twice its total GDP on their pets. Yet Kim Jong Un’s backward little dictatorship has grabbed the attention of the whole world, and even of America’s president, with its nuclear brinkmanship. On July 28th it tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit Los Angeles. Before long, it will be able to mount nuclear warheads on such missiles, as it already can on missiles aimed at South Korea and Japan. In charge of this terrifying arsenal is a man who was brought up as a demigod and cares nothing for human life—witness the innocents beaten to death with hammers in his gigantic gulag. Last week his foreign ministry vowed that if the regime’s “supreme dignity” is threatened, it will “pre-emptively annihilate” the countries that threaten it, with all means “including the nuclear ones”. Only a fool could fail to be alarmed.

What another Korean war might look like

Yet the most serious danger is not that one side will suddenly try to devastate the other. It is that both sides will miscalculate, and that a spiral of escalation will lead to a catastrophe that no one wants. Our briefing this week lays out, step by step, one way that America and North Korea might blunder into a nuclear war. It also lists some of the likely consequences. These include: for North Korea, the destruction of its regime and the death of hundreds of thousands of people. For South Korea, the destruction of Seoul, a city of 10m within easy range of 1,000 of the North’s conventional artillery pieces. For America, the possibility of a nuclear attack on one of its garrisons in East Asia, or even on an American city. And don’t forget the danger of an armed confrontation between America and China, the North’s neighbour and grudging ally. It seems distasteful to mention the economic effects of another Korean war, but they would of course be awful, too.

President Donald Trump has vowed to stop North Korea from perfecting a nuclear warhead that could threaten the American mainland, tweeting that “it won’t happen!” Some pundits suggest shooting down future test missiles on the launchpad or, improbably, in the air. Others suggest using force to overthrow the regime or pre-emptive strikes to destroy Mr Kim’s nuclear arsenal before he has a chance to use it.

Yet it is just this sort of military action that risks a ruinous escalation. Mr Kim’s bombs and missile-launchers are scattered and well hidden. America’s armed forces, for all their might, cannot reliably neutralise the North Korean nuclear threat before Mr Kim has a chance to retaliate. The task would be difficult even if the Pentagon had good intelligence about North Korea; it does not. The only justification for a pre-emptive strike would be to prevent an imminent nuclear attack on America or one of its allies.

Can Mr Kim be cajoled or bribed into giving up his nuclear ambitions? It is worth trying, but has little chance of success. In 1994 President Bill Clinton secured a deal whereby Kim Jong Il (the current despot’s father) agreed to stop producing the raw material for nuclear bombs in return for a huge injection of aid. Kim took the money and technical help, but immediately started cheating. Another deal in 2005 failed, for the same reason. The younger Kim, like his father, sees nuclear weapons as the only way to guarantee the survival of his regime. It is hard to imagine circumstances in which he would voluntarily give up what he calls his “treasured sword of justice”.

If military action is reckless and diplomacy insufficient, the only remaining option is to deter and contain Mr Kim. Mr Trump should make clear—in a scripted speech, not a tweet or via his secretary of state—that America is not about to start a war, nuclear or conventional. However, he should reaffirm that a nuclear attack by North Korea on America or one of its allies will immediately be matched. Mr Kim cares about his own skin. He enjoys the life of a dissolute deity, living in a palace and with the power to kill or bed any of his subjects. If he were to unleash a nuclear weapon, he would lose his luxuries and his life. So would his cronies. That means they can be deterred.

To contain Mr Kim, America and its allies should apply pressure that cannot be misconstrued as a declaration of war. They should ramp up economic sanctions not only against the North Korean regime but also against the Chinese companies that trade with it or handle its money.

America should formally extend its nuclear guarantee to South Korea and Japan, and boost the missile defences that protect both countries. This would help ensure that they do not build nuclear weapons of their own. America should convince the South Koreans, who will suffer greatly if war breaks out, that it will not act without consulting them. China is fed up with the Kim regime, but fears that if it were to collapse, a reunified Korea would mean American troops on China’s border. Mr Trump’s team should guarantee that this will not happen, and try to persuade China that in the long run it is better off with a united, prosperous neighbour than a poor, violent and unpredictable one.

Everyone stay calm

All the options for dealing with the North are bad. Although America should not recognise it as a legitimate nuclear power, it must base its policy on the reality that it is already an illegitimate one. Mr Kim may gamble that his nukes give him the freedom to behave more provocatively, perhaps sponsoring terrorism in the South. He may also sell weapons to other cruel regimes or terrorist groups. The world must do what it can to thwart such plots, though some will doubtless succeed.

It is worth recalling that America has been here before. When Stalin and Mao were building their first atom bombs, some in the West urged pre-emptive strikes to stop them. Happily, cooler heads prevailed. Since then, the logic of deterrence has ensured that these terrible weapons have never been used. Some day, perhaps by coup or popular uprising, North Koreans will be rid of their repulsive ruler, and the peninsula will reunite as a democracy, like Germany. Until then, the world must keep calm and contain Mr Kim.

Why Jobs, Wages and Savings Mean Weaker Profits

Weak wage growth has Americans saving less. That can’t go on forever.

By Justin Lahart


SO MUCH FOR FRUGALITY
Personal Savings Rate

A Pillar of Chinese Growth Starts to Show Cracks

As prices in the all-important interior lose momentum, the market looks close to an inflection point

By Nathaniel Taplin


HEAT STROKE
Chinese Housing prices, change from a month earlier

How to Fix Libor Pains

The time has come to phase in an alternative to the interest-rate benchmark.

By Jerome Powell and J. Christopher Giancarlo
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Doug Casey on the End of the Nation-State




There have been a fair number of references to the subject of “phyles” in Casey Research publications over the years. This essay will discuss the topic in detail. Especially how phyles are likely to replace the nation-state, one of mankind’s worst inventions.

Now might be a good time to discuss the subject. We’ll have an almost unremitting stream of bad news, on multiple fronts, for years to come. So it might be good to keep a hopeful prospect in mind.

Let’s start by looking at where we’ve been. I trust you’ll excuse my skating over all of human political history in a few paragraphs, but my object is to provide a framework for where we’re going, rather than an anthropological monograph.

Mankind has, so far, gone through three main stages of political organization since Day One, say 200,000 years ago, when anatomically modern men started appearing. We can call them Tribes, Kingdoms, and Nation-States.

Karl Marx had a lot of things wrong, especially his moral philosophy. But one of the acute observations he made was that the means of production are perhaps the most important determinant of how a society is structured. Based on that, so far in history, only two really important things have happened: the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.

Everything else is just a footnote.

Let’s see how these things relate.

The Agricultural Revolution and the End of Tribes

In prehistoric times, the largest political/economic group was the tribe. In that man is a social creature, it was natural enough to be loyal to the tribe. It made sense. Almost everyone in the tribe was genetically related, and the group was essential for mutual survival in the wilderness.

That made them the totality of people that counted in a person’s life—except for “others” from alien tribes, who were in competition for scarce resources and might want to kill you for good measure.

Tribes tend to be natural meritocracies, with the smartest and the strongest assuming leadership. But they’re also natural democracies, small enough that everyone can have a say on important issues. Tribes are small enough that everybody knows everyone else, and knows what their weak and strong points are. Everyone falls into a niche of marginal advantage, doing what they do best, simply because that’s necessary to survive. Bad actors are ostracized or fail to wake up, in a pool of their own blood, some morning. Tribes are socially constraining but, considering the many faults of human nature, a natural and useful form of organization in a society with primitive technology.

As people built their pool of capital and technology over many generations, however, populations grew. At the end of the last Ice Age, around 12,000 years ago, all over the world, there was a population explosion. People started living in towns and relying on agriculture as opposed to hunting and gathering. Large groups of people living together formed hierarchies, with a king of some description on top of the heap.

Those who adapted to the new agricultural technology and the new political structure accumulated the excess resources necessary for waging extended warfare against tribes still living at a subsistence level. The more evolved societies had the numbers and the weapons to completely triumph over the laggards. If you wanted to stay tribal, you’d better live in the middle of nowhere, someplace devoid of the resources others might want. Otherwise it was a sure thing that a nearby kingdom would enslave you and steal your property.

The Industrial Revolution and the End of Kingdoms

From around 12,000 B.C. to roughly the mid-1600s, the world’s cultures were organized under strong men, ranging from petty lords to kings, pharaohs, or emperors.

It’s odd, to me at least, how much the human animal seems to like the idea of monarchy. It’s mythologized, especially in a medieval context, as a system with noble kings, fair princesses, and brave knights riding out of castles on a hill to right injustices. As my friend Rick Maybury likes to point out, quite accurately, the reality differs quite a bit from the myth. The king is rarely more than a successful thug, a Tony Soprano at best, or perhaps a little Stalin. The princess was an unbathed hag in a chastity belt, the knight a hired killer, and the shining castle on the hill the headquarters of a concentration camp, with plenty of dungeons for the politically incorrect.

With kingdoms, loyalties weren’t so much to the “country”—a nebulous and arbitrary concept—but to the ruler. You were the subject of a king, first and foremost. Your linguistic, ethnic, religious, and other affiliations were secondary. It’s strange how, when people think of the kingdom period of history, they think only in terms of what the ruling classes did and had.

Even though, if you were born then, the chances were 98% you’d be a simple peasant who owned nothing, knew nothing beyond what his betters told him, and sent most of his surplus production to his rulers. But, again, the gradual accumulation of capital and knowledge made the next step possible: the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution and the End of the Nation-State

As the means of production changed, with the substitution of machines for muscle, the amount of wealth took a huge leap forward. The average man still might not have had much, but the possibility to do something other than beat the earth with a stick for his whole life opened up, largely as a result of the Renaissance.

Then the game changed totally with the American and French Revolutions. People no longer felt they were owned by some ruler; instead they now gave their loyalty to a new institution, the nation-state. Some innate atavism, probably dating back to before humans branched from the chimpanzees about 3 million years ago, seems to dictate the Naked Ape to give his loyalty to something bigger than himself. Which has delivered us to today’s prevailing norm, the nation-state, a group of people who tend to share language, religion, and ethnicity. The idea of the nation-state is especially effective when it’s organized as a “democracy,” where the average person is given the illusion he has some measure of control over where the leviathan is headed.

On the plus side, by the end of the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution had provided the common man with the personal freedom, as well as the capital and technology, to improve things at a rapidly accelerating pace.

What caused the sea change?

I’ll speculate it was largely due to an intellectual factor, the invention of the printing press; and a physical factor, the widespread use of gunpowder. The printing press destroyed the monopoly the elites had on knowledge; the average man could now see that they were no smarter or “better” than he was. If he was going to fight them (conflict is, after all, what politics is all about), it didn’t have to be just because he was told to, but because he was motivated by an idea. And now, with gunpowder, he was on an equal footing with the ruler’s knights and professional soldiers.

Right now I believe we’re at the cusp of another change, at least as important as the ones that took place around 12,000 years ago and several hundred years ago. Even though things are starting to look truly grim for the individual, with collapsing economic structures and increasingly virulent governments, I suspect help is on the way from historical evolution. Just as the agricultural revolution put an end to tribalism and the industrial revolution killed the kingdom, I think we’re heading for another multipronged revolution that’s going to make the nation-state an anachronism. It won’t happen next month, or next year. But I’ll bet the pattern will start becoming clear within the lifetime of many now reading this.

What pattern am I talking about? Once again, a reference to the evil genius Karl Marx, with his concept of the “withering away of the State.” By the end of this century, I suspect the US and most other nation-states will have, for all practical purposes, ceased to exist.

The Problem with the State—And Your Nation-State

Of course, while I suspect that many of you are sympathetic to that sentiment, you also think the concept is too far out, and that I’m guilty of wishful thinking. People believe the state is necessary and—generally—good. They never even question whether the institution is permanent.

My view is that the institution of the state itself is a bad thing. It’s not a question of getting the right people into the government; the institution itself is hopelessly flawed and necessarily corrupts the people that compose it, as well as the people it rules. This statement invariably shocks people, who believe that government is both a necessary and permanent part of the cosmic firmament.

The problem is that government is based on coercion, and it is, at a minimum, suboptimal to base a social structure on institutionalized coercion. Let me urge you to read the Tannehills’ superb The Market for Liberty, which is available for free, download here.

One of the huge changes brought by the printing press and advanced exponentially by the Internet is that people are able to readily pursue different interests and points of view. As a result, they have less and less in common: living within the same political borders is no longer enough to make them countrymen. That’s a big change from pre-agricultural times when members of the same tribe had quite a bit—almost everything—in common. But this has been increasingly diluted in the times of the kingdom and the nation-state. If you’re honest, you may find you have very little in common with most of your countrymen besides superficialities and trivialities.

Ponder that point for a minute. What do you have in common with your fellow countrymen? A mode of living, (perhaps) a common language, possibly some shared experiences and myths, and a common ruler. But very little of any real meaning or importance. To start with, they’re more likely to be an active danger to you than the citizens of a presumed “enemy” country, say, like Iran. If you earn a good living, certainly if you own a business and have assets, your fellow Americans are the ones who actually present the clear and present danger. The average American (about 50% of them now) pays no income tax. Even if he’s not actually a direct or indirect employee of the government, he’s a net recipient of its largesse, which is to say your wealth, through Social Security and other welfare programs.

Over the years, I’ve found I have much more in common with people of my own social or economic station or occupation in France, Argentina, or Hong Kong, than with an American union worker in Detroit or a resident of the LA barrios . I suspect many of you would agree with that observation. What’s actually important in relationships is shared values, principles, interests, and philosophy.

Geographical proximity, and a common nationality, is meaningless—no more than an accident of birth. I have much more loyalty to a friend in the Congo—although we’re different colors, have different cultures, different native languages, and different life experiences—than I do to the Americans who live down the highway in the trailer park. I see the world the same way my Congolese friend does; he’s an asset to my life. I’m necessarily at odds with many of “my fellow Americans”; they’re an active and growing liability.

Some might read this and find a disturbing lack of loyalty to the state. It sounds seditious. Professional jingoists like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, or almost anyone around the Washington Beltway go white with rage when they hear talk like this. The fact is that loyalty to a state, just because you happen to have been born in its bailiwick, is simply stupid.

As far as I can tell, there are only two federal crimes specified in the US Constitution: counterfeiting and treason. That’s a far cry from today’s world, where almost every real and imagined crime has been federalized, underscoring that the whole document is a meaningless dead letter, little more than a historical artifact. Even so, that also confirms that the Constitution was quite imperfect, even in its original form. Counterfeiting is simple fraud. Why should it be singled out especially as a crime?
(Okay, that opens up a whole new can of worms… but not one I’ll go into here.) Treason is usually defined as an attempt to overthrow a government or withdraw loyalty from a sovereign. A rather odd proviso to have when the framers of the Constitution had done just that only a few years before, one would think.

The way I see it, Thomas Paine had it right when he said: “My country is wherever liberty lives.”

But where does liberty live today? Actually, it no longer has a home. It’s become a true refugee since America, which was an excellent idea that grew roots in a country of that name, degenerated into the United States. Which is just another unfortunate nation-state. And it’s on the slippery slope.

So now what? Here’s where Phyles come in.