joi, 19 iulie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Tech Sector Layoffs Surge to Three-Year High

Posted: 19 Jul 2012 04:59 PM PDT

I am starting to think the next jobs report is going to be downright miserable. New orders have plunged and mass layoffs are on the rise.

Please consider Tech sector layoffs surge to three-year high
During the first half of the year, 51,529 planned job cuts were announced across the tech sector, representing a 260 percent increase over the 14,308 layoffs planned during the first half of 2011. Things are so bad so far this year that the figure is 39 percent higher than all the job cuts recorded in the tech sector last year.

Hewlett-Packard proved to be the major force behind this year's uptick in planned layoffs, after the company announced in May that it would cut 30,000 jobs. Those layoffs will be completed by the end of fiscal 2014, and shave off 8 percent of HP's entire workforce.

It was also a tough beginning of the year for Sony and Nokia, both of which said they would lay off 10,000 employees. Panasonic and Olympus are also eyeing layoffs to make their operations more nimble.

The issue in the tech sector, according to the outplacement firm, is that success is increasingly finding its way to a short list of companies. All others are hoping they can stay afloat or revive their operations around new ideas. And all of that could lead to more cuts across the industry in the coming months.

"We may see more job cuts from the computer sector in the months ahead," John A. Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said today in a statement. "While consumers and businesses are spending more on technology, the spending appears to favor a handful of companies. Those that are struggling to keep up with the rapidly changing trends and consumer tastes are shuffling workers to new projects or laying them off altogether."
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Job Losses and Unemployment Skyrocketing in China; Thinner, Taller iPhone 5

Posted: 19 Jul 2012 11:39 AM PDT

In the video below Jefferies Managing Director Peter Misek discusses the coming iPhone 5 with Emily Chang on Bloomberg TV.

Misek reports the iPhone will be significantly thinner and taller because of new technology he did not expect to be available for at least another year.

What really caught my eye, however, was a segment in the middle of the video regarding grim statistics on sales and employment in China starting at about the 2:26 mark.



Link if video does not play: Details on iPhone 5 Emerge

Partial Transcript

Emily Chang: Another thing you say is smart-phone and PC demand in China is dropping off significantly. What exactly is going on there?

Peter Misek: We came back from China really depressed, I have to say. It appears that mainland China is correcting significantly. The statistics the government publishes, frankly we think are largely fabricated. So you have to rely on other statistics such as retail sales, electricity usage, mall traffic, etc. And what we saw, and what we heard was pretty grim. We think consumer electronic sales could be falling double-digits year-over-year in June and thus far in July. And we think the catalyst frankly is job losses. The premier of China was on this morning basically saying the labor situation is severe, meaning job losses are accelerating and unemployment is skyrocketing. That is causing the Chinese consumer who naturally saves more than we do, to save even more.

Plunging New Orders Everywhere

The rise in Chinese unemployment ties in perfectly with my July 6 report Plunging New Orders Suggest Global Recession Has Arrived.

The grim data also fits in with the email yesterday from Michael Pettis yesterday: "China Rebalancing Has Begun"; What are the Global Implications?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


U.S. Treasuries a Buy or a Short?

Posted: 19 Jul 2012 01:27 AM PDT

I had a nice conversation the other day with Lacy Hunt at Hoisington Investments. We agree on many aspects of the global economy and I have a few excerpts of Hoisington's latest forecast below.

First, let me state that if you are looking for someone who has called the US treasury market correct this past decade, look no further than Hunt.

While I have been US treasury bullish (on-and-off ) for years (more on than off), and I can also claim to have never advocated shorting them (in contrast to inflationistas running rampant nearly everywhere), Lacy has correctly been a steadfast unwavering treasury bull throughout.

Will Hoisington catch the turn?

That I cannot answer. However, one look at Japan suggests the actual turn may be a lot further away than people think.

For a viewpoint remarkably different than you will find anywhere else, please consider a few snips from the Hoisington Quarterly Review and Outlook, for the Second Quarter 2012 (not yet publicly posted but may be at any time).
Abysmal Times Confirm the Research

In the eleven quarters of this expansion, the growth of real per capita GDP was the lowest for all of the comparable post-WWII business cycle expansions. Real per capita disposable personal income has risen by a scant 0.1% annual rate, remarkably weak when compared with the 2.9% post-war average.

It is often said that economic conditions would have been much worse if the government had not run massive budget deficits and the Fed had not implemented extraordinary policies.

This whole premise is wrong.

In all likelihood the governmental measures made conditions worse, and the poor results reflect the counterproductive nature of fiscal and monetary policies. None of these numerous actions produced anything more than transitory improvement in economic conditions, followed by a quick retreat to a faltering pattern while leaving the economy saddled with even greater indebtedness. The diminutive gain in this expansion is clearly consistent with the view that government actions have hurt, rather than helped, economic performance.

Economic conditions have been worse in euro-currency zone countries, the UK, and Japan. All three of these major economies have also resorted to massive deficit financing and highly unprecedented monetary policies, and all have substantially higher debt to GDP levels than the United States.

The UK and much of continental Europe is experiencing recession to some degree. Whether Japan is in or out of recession is a pedantic point since the level of nominal GDP is unchanged since 1991. Even such prior stalwarts of the global scene such as China, India, Russia and Brazil are plagued with deteriorating growth. In such circumstances a return to the normal business cycle of one to two rough years, followed by four to five good years, remains highly unlikely in the United States or in these other major economic centers.

Based upon the historical record of effects of excessive and low quality indebtedness, along with the academic research, the 30-year Treasury bond, with a recent yield of less than 3%, still holds value for patient long-term investors. Even when this bond drops to a 2% yield, it may still have value in relation to other assets.

If high indebtedness is indeed the main determinant of future economic growth and further government "stimulus" is counterproductive, then a prolonged state of debt induced coma may so limit returns on other riskier assets that a 30-year Treasury bond with a 2% yield would be a highly desirable asset to hold.
Those were the ending paragraph of Hoisington's four-page 2nd quarter review. I added paragraph breaks for ease in reading.

Are US Treasuries "Undervalued"?

I will respond to my own question with another question: Undervalued compared to what?

Certainly I would not advocate blindly buying 30-year year US treasuries with the intention of holding on to them for 30 years. Nor would Lacy Hunt.

Likewise, I see no real value in holding 10-year US treasuries for the next 10-years either.

Then again, I have stated the US may go in and out of deflation for as long as a decade. If that does happen, treasuries may easily outperform for that entire period.

One look at the Japanese stock market shows what might happen.

Three Lost Decades



click on chart for sharper image

I do not believe that is the path for US equities. However, I may very well be wrong. It is always important to consider what happens if you are wrong. Few bother to do just that.

If I am wrong (and that is certainly a decent chance), then what does that say about the potential for US treasuries?

Rather than advocating buying or shorting treasuries here, I am advising people to do something different:

Think!



Please consider all aspects of a trade, and in this case, what might easily happen to the widely espoused notion "US Treasuries are a Short". Also think about who is on the other side of the trade and why.

Short-term, US treasuries are overbought. Otherwise, they are hugely unloved.

People have been saying Japanese treasuries are a short for at least two decades. They will eventually be correct, and in my opinion much sooner than US treasury shorts (ignoring short-term US volatility).

Think about this: Bull markets do not end with the asset class being universally despised except by dedicated funds and foreign governments (the latter primarily for balance-of-trade purposes only).

Rather, bull markets end with nearly everyone becoming a believer.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Facebook Promoted Posts vs Sponsored Stories

Facebook Promoted Posts vs Sponsored Stories


Facebook Promoted Posts vs Sponsored Stories

Posted: 18 Jul 2012 08:03 PM PDT

Posted by Justin_Vanning

There's been a lot of buzz around Facebook's Promoted Post feature over the past few months. I've read several blog posts (the HasOffers post was great) who have tried testing the effectiveness of Promoted Posts vs Facebook's Sponsored Story ads, and thought it would be interesting to do a similar test here at SEOmoz. Before I jump in to the results of my test, I'll give a quick overview on Promoted Posts for those who aren't familiar.

What's the Difference Between a Promoted Post and a Sponsored Story?

Facebook rolled out their Promoted Post feature at the end of May, allowing Brand Page owners to pay to push content to a broader audience than normal. What some people don't know is that when you publish content on your Facebook Brand Page, only a small percentage of your fans are seeing that content appear in their news feeds.

Facebook uses its complex EdgeRank algorithm to determine which content each user sees in their news feed. Facebook estimates that only 16% of a company's fans will see every post they generate in their news feed. Some companies will obviously have a much higher percentage of engaged fans than others, but it shows that simply publishing content on your Brand Page won't get it seen by 100% of your audience.

So, this is where Promoted Posts come in handy. You now can dedicate up to $100 to "promote" a recent post on your Facebook Brand Page. Facebook says, "Your promoted posts will be seen by a larger percentage of the people who like your page than would normally see it. It will also be seen by a larger percentage of the friends of people who interact with your post." What this means is that Facebook will distribute your content to a much broader segment of your fan base instead of just the fans who are already engaged with your brand. Sounds interesting, right?

Now, let's quickly discuss another tool for distributing your content on Facebook to a broad audience. Facebook's Sponsored Story is created within the Facebook Ad Platform and functions just like a Facebook Ad. You can set this up the same way as you set up Facebook Ads and select your targeting from the large list of available targeting and interest category options that Facebook provides. You'll create an ad image, write your ad copy, link to your content, assign a budget, set your bid, and then activate it. The main difference is that Sponsored Stories look like Facebook ads so they only appear in the right side of the Facebook Page where all the other ads are, and they will mainly target people who aren't fans of your Brand Page.

The Test: Promoted Post vs Sponsored Story

Show me the results, baby! We decided to use a recent update to our Beginner's Guide to SEO as the content piece that we would Promote and run in our Sponsored Story. For the Promoted Post, we created a simple post on our Brand Page linking to the Beginner's Guide and dedicated $100 to it. This Post had a reach of 26,275. It generated 198 actions, 1,311 clicks and had a CTR of 4.99%. The CPC was $.076.

For the Sponsored Story, we targeted 266,580 people who live in the US, Canada, UK, or Australia and like SEO related topics and websites. The actual reach of the campaign was 44,247 with a frequency of 6.2. This Sponsored Story generated 16 actions, 162 clicks, had a CTR of 0.366% and a CPC of $1.44.

As you can see from our test results, the Promoted Post generated far more engagement than the Sponsored Story, had a higher CTR, and had a significantly lower CPC! 

  Campaign Reach Actions Clicks CTR Spend CPC
Promoted Post 26,275 198 1,311 4.990% $100.00 $0.076
Sponsored Story 44,247 16 162 0.366% $233.47 $1.441

The only area that the Sponsored Story out-performed the Promoted Post was in campaign reach. This makes sense since we were targeting a large group of SEO professionals and enthusiasts through Facebook Ads' interest targeting. At the end of the day, our Promoted Post to our fans who had not engaged with us in a significant amount of time generated a huge amount of interest in our content and drove a majority of the actions and clicks on our post.

To conclude, the combination of a Promoted Post and a Sponsored Story helped us to achieve metrics on our post that we have never seen before on our Brand Page.

This was our most viewed post ever (more than 5x's the previous record and was also the most liked and most shared)! While this didn't necessarily generate revenue for us, it was great to see how the Promoted Post and Sponsored Story can work together to achieve massive reach and engagement. The next step will be to see how the Promoted Post and Sponsored Story tools perform when driving a promotional offer or direct CTA type of content.

In the end, the main thing this test taught us was that it's important for every advertiser and brand to test things on their own. Just because one company sees a certain set of results doesn't mean that your company will see the same. Every brand, fan base, target audience, and customer base is different and will react differently so what it boils down to in my opinion is test, test, and test again.

I hope this analysis was helpful, and I'd love to hear from any of you who've run similar tests or messed around with the Promoted Post and Sponsored Story to see what types of results you've experienced.


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Photo: A Paw Up on Things

The White House

Your Daily Snapshot for
Thursday, July 19, 2012

 

Photo: A Paw Up on Things

White House photographers are hard at work every day capturing some incredible moments for history, and every month we release a photo gallery that takes you behind the scenes, giving you an inside look at the President and what keeps him busy.

Check out our June gallery, including photos of the G20 Summit, the President welcoming the New York Giants to the White House, and some great photos of Bo, the First Dog.

Check out our behind-the-scenes gallery from June:

June Behind-the-Scenes Photos

Brian Mosteller, Director of Oval Office Operations, sits with Bo, the Obama family dog, in the Outer Oval Office, June 20, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

In Case You Missed It

Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog:

White House Office Hours: #STEM Master Teacher Corps
Kumar Garg, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Steve Robinson, Domestic Policy Council, took to Twitter to answer questions about the STEM Master Teacher Corp. Check out the full Q&A.

Helping Local Officials Achieve Healthier Communities with Let's Move! Cities, Towns and Counties
First Lady Michelle Obama joins local elected officials from across the country to announce new opportunities to bring Let’s Move! to cities, towns and counties across America.

Boosting Advanced Manufacturing and Driving Innovation
The steering committee for the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership outlines a set of recommendations for driving innovation.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

10:45 AM: The President departs the White House en route Joint Base Andrews
 
11:00 AM: The President departs Joint Base Andrews en route Jacksonville, Florida

12:45 PM: The President arrives in Jacksonville, Florida
 
1:15 PM: The President delivers remarks at a campaign event

2:45 PM: The Vice President delivers remarks at a campaign event
 
3:05 PM: The President attends a campaign event
 
4:35 PM: The President departs Jacksonville, Florida en route West Palm Beach, Florida 
 
5:35 PM: The President arrives West Palm Beach, Florida
 
6:20 PM: The President delivers remarks at a campaign event
 
7:35 PM: The President attends a campaign event

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Seth's Blog : The importance of going first

The importance of going first

The second person to write a story about a young boy and an escaped slave on the Mississippi wasn't a novelist, he was a typist.

"Just like that hot viral video but different/better/more clever," is extremely different from "that hot viral video."

In more and more fields, the originator of the novel idea reaps an outsize share of the benefits. One reason is that it's easier to gain attention quickly. Another is that once you gain attention and reputation, it's easier to lock in permission and turn it into a foundation for your next project. And most of all, when attention is precious, earning that attention with innovation is priceless.

Yes, there are exceptions for those that bring service or price or reliability along to polish an existing idea. And there are certainly businesses that profit from taking over after the innovator, exhausted, gives up and moves on.

But given the choice, I'd say first is a better use of your talent.



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miercuri, 18 iulie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


"China Rebalancing Has Begun"; What are the Global Implications? Michael Pettis on China Rebalancing, Chinese Price Deflation, and Spain Exit from Euro; Target 2 Revisited

Posted: 18 Jul 2012 12:21 PM PDT

Michael Pettis at China Financial Markets has some interesting comments via email regarding much needed China rebalancing and a timeframe for a possible Spain exit from euro.

Pettis On Spain Exit ...
How will Spanish households react to a default on preferred shares and subordinated bonds, or even a very public discussion about the possibility of such a default?  I don't know, but I assume that it will speed up deposit withdrawals from the banking system even more.  For that reason it continues to be a very good idea to keep an eye on Target 2 balances.  These serve as a pretty good proxy, I think, for the behavior of depositors.

Things are evolving in Spain exactly as we would expect them to evolve according to the sovereign-debt-crisis handbook.  Unless we get real fiscal union in Europe, or Germany leaves the euro, or Germany stimulates its economy into running a very large trade deficit, or the euro depreciates by 15-20% against the dollar in the next year – all very unlikely, I think – I really see no reason to doubt that Spain will leave the euro and restructure its debt within the next few years. 
Mish Comments on Target 2

Target 2 stands for Trans-European Automated Real-time Gross Settlement System. It is a reflection of capital flight from the "Club-Med" countries in Southern Europe (Greece, Spain, and Italy) to banks in Northern Europe.

Please see Target2 and the ELA (Emergency Liquidity Assistance) program; Reader From Europe Asks "Can You Please Explain Target2?" for a more compete description.

There is much misinformation floating around on how Target 2 works, what Germany's liabilities are, so please click on the above link if you are interested in target 2 balances.

The following chart from PIMCO article ​​TARGET2: A Channel for Europe's Capital Flight shows the capital flight through March. The problem has accelerated since then, because of fears in Spain and Italy.



Pettis On China Price Deflation...
China's official GDP growth rate has fallen sharply – on Friday Beijing announced that GDP growth for the second quarter of 2012 was a lower-than-expected 7.6% year on year, the lowest level since 2009 and well below the 8.1% generated in the first quarter. This implies of course that quarterly growth is substantially below 7.6%.  Industrial production was also much lower than expected, at 9.5% year on year. 

In fact China's real GDP growth may have been even lower than the official numbers.  This is certainly what electricity consumption numbers, which have been flat, imply, and there have been rumors all year of businesses being advised by local governments to exaggerate their revenue growth numbers in order to provide a better picture of the economy.  Some economists are arguing that flat electricity consumption is consistent with 7.6% GDP growth because of pressure on Chinese businesses to improve energy efficiency, but this is a little hard to believe.  That "pressure" has been there almost as long as I have been in China (over ten years) and it would be startling if only now did it have an impact, especially with such a huge impact occurring so suddenly.

Adding to the slow economic growth, the country may be tipping into deflation.  Last Monday the National Bureau of Statistics released the following inflation data:

In June, the consumer price index (CPI) went up by 2.2 percent year-on-year. The prices grew by 2.2 percent in cities areas and 2.0 percent in rural areas. The food prices went up by 3.8 percent, while the non-food prices increased by 1.4 percent. The prices of consumer goods went up by 2.3 percent and the prices of services grew by 1.9 percent. In the first half of this year, the overall consumer prices were up by 3.3 percent over the same period of previous year.

In June, the month-on-month change of consumer prices was down by 0.6 percent, prices in cities and rural went down by 0.6 and 0.5 percent respectively. The food prices dropped by 1.6 percent, the non-food prices kept at the same level (the amount of change was 0). The prices of consumer goods decreased by 0.9 percent, and the prices of services increased by 0.3 percent.


My very smart former PKU student Chen Long, who follows monetary conditions in China as closely as anyone else I know tells me:

The most interesting thing is that even if CPI remains stable month-on-month, it will turn negative year-on-year in January 2013.  And if it continues to decline month-on-month at current rates, we could see negative year-on-year CPI as early as August/September.  

Unlike some other analysts, in other words, I am not concerned about deflation persisting for long unless the PBoC cuts interest rates much more sharply than any of us expect.  I know this may sound strange – most analysts believe that cutting interest rates will actually reignite CPI inflation – but remember that the relationship between inflation and interest rates in China is, as I have discussed many times before, not at all like the relationship between the two in the US.  It works in the opposite way because of the very different structure of Chinese debt and consumption.
Pettis On China Rebalancing... 
After many failed attempts, over the past six months we may be seeing for the first time the beginning of China's urgently needed economic rebalancing, in which China reduces its overreliance on investment in favor of consumption.

Regular readers of my newsletter may be surprised to see me say this.  For the past four or five years analysts have been earnestly assuring us that the rebalancing process had finally begun, and I had always insisted that it couldn't have begun yet.

Why?  Because as I understand it rebalancing is almost arithmetically impossible under conditions of high GDP growth rates and low real interest rates.  Once the real numbers came in, it always turned out that in fact imbalances had gotten worse, not better.  Typically many of those too-eager analysts have resorted to insisting that the consumption data are wrong, although even if they are right this does not confirm that rebalancing had taken place since errors in reporting consumption have always been there.

But this time seems different.  Now for the first time I think maybe the long-awaited Chinese rebalancing may have finally started. 

Of course the process will not be easy. With China's consumption share of GDP at barely more than half the global average, and with the highest investment rate in the world, rebalancing will require determined effort.
How to rebalance
The key to raising the consumption share of growth, as I have discussed many times, is to get household income to rise from its unprecedentedly low share of GDP.  This requires that among other things China increase wages, revalue the renminbi and, most importantly, reduce the enormous financial repression tax that households implicitly pay to borrowers in the form of artificially low interest rates.

Forcing up the real interest rate is the most important step Beijing can take to redress the domestic imbalances and to reduce wasteful spending.

And this seems to be happening.  [Yet] Beijing has reduced interest rates twice this year, and reluctant policymakers are under intense pressure to reduce them further.  [However] The students in my central bank seminar at PKU tell me that there are new rumors about the way the cuts were implemented.  "Usually it is the PBoC that submits a proposal of rates cut to the State Council," one of them wrote me recently, "but this time (July 5th) it was the State Council who handed down to the PBoC the decision to cut rates, so that the PBoC was not fully aware of the rates cut before July 5th."

If my student is right (and this class has an impressive track record), this suggests that monetary easing is being driven by political considerations, not economic ones, which of course isn't at all a surprise.  But even with the rate cuts, perhaps demanded by the State Council, with inflation falling much more quickly than interest rates the real return for household depositors has soared in recent months, as has the real cost of borrowing.  China, in other words, is finally repairing one of its worst distortions.

China bulls, late to understand the unhealthy implications of the distortions that generated so much growth in the past, have finally recognized how urgent the rebalancing is, but they still fail to understand that this cannot happen at high growth rates.  The problem is mainly one of arithmetic.  China's investment growth rate must fall for many years before the household income share of GDP is high enough for consumption to replace investment as the engine of rapid growth.

As China rebalances, in other words, we would expect sharply slowing growth and rapidly rising real interest rates, which is exactly what we are seeing.  Rather than panicking and demanding that Beijing reverse the process, we should be relieved that Beijing is finally resolving its problems.

As an aside, we need to make two adjustments to the trade surplus in order to understand what is really going on within the balance of payments.  First, one of the causes of last month's weak imports has been a sharp decline in commodity purchases.  I have many times argued that commodity stockpiling artificially lowers China's trade surplus by converting what should be classified as a capital account outflow into a current account inflow.  If China is now destocking, then China's real trade surplus is actually lower than the posted numbers.

Second, we know that wealthy Chinese businessmen have been disinvesting and taking money out of the country at a rising pace since the beginning of 2010.  One of the ways they can do so, without running afoul of capital restrictions, is by illegally under- or over-invoicing exports and imports.  This should cause exports to seem lower than they actually are and imports to seem higher.  The net effect is to reduce the real trade surplus.

Since these two processes, commodity de-stocking and flight capital, work in opposite ways to affect the trade account, it is hard to tell whether China's real trade surplus is lower or higher than the reported surplus.  But once de-stocking stops, we should remember that the trade numbers probably conceal capital outflows.

How does all this affect the world?  In the short term rebalancing may increase the amount of global demand absorbed by China, but over the longer term it should reduce it.  Rebalancing will inevitably result in falling prices for hard commodities, and so will hurt countries like Australia and Brazil that have gotten fat on Chinese overinvestment.  Rising Chinese consumption demand over the long term and lower commodity prices, however, are positive for global growth overall, and especially for net commodity importers.  Slower growth in China, it turns out, is not necessarily bad for the world.  The key is the evolution of the trade surplus.
There is much more in his email that I wanted to use, but I stretched the bounds of fair use already.

Those wishing to see more can follow Michael Pettis on his blog China Financial Markets which I consider one of the very few "must read" sites.

The above report should appear on his blog shortly, with more details. Thanks Michael!

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Voters From Both Parties Overwhelmingly Support Big Defense Cuts

Posted: 18 Jul 2012 01:25 AM PDT

Mitt Romney needs to wake up to this simple political reality: Voters Overwhelmingly Want Big Defense Cuts
Americans of all stripes have had enough of massive Pentagon budgets and want significant cuts in defense spending, according to new survey data released on Monday.

In Republican and Democratic districts across the country, 74 percent and 80 percent of respective voters said they want less defense spending, the study found.

On average, voters indicated that they wanted a budget for fiscal 2013 that would be nearly 20 percent less than current defense spending.

With $645 billion enacted for total defense spending this year, the average voter's preferred budget for next year, an 18 percent cut, would translate into a $116 billion savings—money lawmakers trying to balance the budget could sorely use.

"The idea that Americans' would want to keep total defense spending up so as to preserve local jobs is not supported by the data," said Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation, which conducted the survey with the Stimson Center and the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative journalism group.
Mitt Romney must be living in some kind of alternate universe. He sees a need to increase military spending. That stance is going to cost him plenty of independent votes, and I believe the election.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List