Malthus resucitado

Cuenta el NYT, aunque sobre evidencia anecdótica, que están aumentando los hombres que se realizan una vasectomía en Estados Unidos. La tendencia parece ser mayor en la zona cara de Manhattan donde pegó la crisis Wall Street.

Más evidencia anecdótica es el aumento del tráfico de Vasectomy.com

El análisis es, claro, malthusiano. Un hijo le cuesta a los padres unos U$S 260.000 hasta los 17 años sin incluir el colegio.

A coger que se acaba el mundo.

El día que el dólar empezó a morir

Imagino que dentro de varias décadas alguien va a escribir un nuevo clásico sobre el orden monetario mundial y va a fechar el día que el dólar empezó a perder su estatus de moneda única de reserva.

La tentación de ese académico será ¿fecharlo el día que nació el euro? Veremos. Aunque lo dudo: no se si el euro sobrevive a la 2GD.

Con la falta de perspectiva, para la mi la fecha es el 11 de marzo.

Si se te pasó, es el día que el Banco Popular de China lanzó un programa piloto para usar el yuan como moneda de referencia en el intercambio entre Guangdong, el delta del río Yangtze y Hong Kong. Y sigue para toda china continental.

Algo así como el día que la tierra se detuvo... excepto que todavía muchos no se dieron cuenta.

Se agotan las cajas fuertes... en EEUU

Believe it or not...

El pánico financiero ya hace que los estadounidenses nos copien. La demanda de cajas fuertes en Nueva York está aumentando entre 20% y 40%.

Al final no eramos tan especiales los argentos.

Destruyendo mitos

Imperdible reporte de Merrill Lynch que transcribo:

The myths get debunked

The demise of the belief system

Look back at what the pundits were trying to sell you over the past two years:

1. That the problems in subprime would stay contained and not to worry about housing because it is a small share of GDP;
2. That corporate balance sheets are strong, which should keep capital spending strong and act as a solid antidote to the real estate downturn (capex began to contract in the first quarter of this year);
3. That the global economy would manage to “decouple” (France moved into recession before the US did) and that the banks were well capitalized in this post-Basel Accord world;
4. That commodities were in a super-cycle, that we were in a new structural uptrend in inflation, and that a secular bear market in Treasuries had begun (remember the summer of 07?);
5. That strong foreign demand would help shore up home prices – meanwhile, mmigration is down 17% YoY and the just-released Pew report showed that illegal immigration has dropped to 500,000 annually from the norm of 800,000 through the first five years of the decade.
6. And finally, that we had no reason at all to be concerned over the US consumer because, didn’t you know, that the top 2% of the nation’s income earners do 95% of all the spending in the economy. What a nice handholding story. We can’t tell you how many hours we spent, not disproving this stylized fact as much as showing that, indeed, the beloved high-end, well-heeled Fifth Avenue shopper is just as cyclical as the rest of the population.

Read the article on page B1 of the Saturday NYT for a few examples of how fast the upper crust is going bust (“They’re Pinching Hundred-Dollar Bills”); as well as “Goodbye To All That” on the front page of the Sunday business section – “the yacht is probably the first thing to go”. As households, businesses and financial entities liquidate assets and pay down debt, our standard of living is going to decline in the next few years.

The tax bill that will be necessary to ensure the financial system remains intact is also going to take a very big toll on discretionary income in coming years – fiscal policymakers will be waging wars on all fronts: the war on the credit crunch, the war on terrorism and the war on entitlements. Top marginal tax rates could well end up going back to pre-Reagan levels because something tells us that it is going to be the American taxpayer, not some central bank or sovereign wealth fund in Asia or the Middle East that is going to be funding the rapid expansion of the budget deficit in coming years.

It also has to be understood that we have come off two gigantic asset bubbles that have burst in just the past seven years. This is epic. As our good friend and former colleague Dick McCabe just pointed out to us, the common talk after the 2000-2002 market decline was that people would have to work until they were 75 to replenish their savings/401Ks before they would be able to retire. The figure must be up to 85 or 90 now!