MONEY 88 - IMMIGRATION

THIS IS MY 88^TH BLOG ON UNDERSTANDING MONEY TOOLS

In this blog we are going to look at immigration in the US and the world and hypothecate on the economic effects it may have.

There are three distinct groups of people coming into the US; these being legal aliens that need and want to work, wealthy from around the world that want to diversify their financial worth and lastly illegals. All three are going to have a relationship to you and your employment.  So let’s learn.

First, let us look behind the scenes as to why the government has defined laws permitting the first two of the above. I believe everything we do as a country is controlled to a large degree by the whims of the large corporations and wealthy, who own stock in these corporations….back to money, greed and power. This formula hasn’t changed since mankind. The lineage here is big corporations, to lobbyists, to donations to politicians, to politicians designing laws in favor of the big corporations and wealthy; a nice clean circle.

A law was created to bring in aliens, not immigrants, to fill our employment needs, one program is referred to as H-1B law.  It is a visa granted to a foreign individual that continues as long as there is a need by a US employer for specialized services, usually medical or technical.  It is normally for a term of 3 years and then can be extended. It has been around for a long time, and I remember it especially when hospitals needed trained nurses, so we brought them in from foreign countries like Africa.  Just like many things that have good intentions at the start, this law is tremendously abused. Here is one personal experience I have had. A lady I know employed by a major technology company had the role of going to India, three months at a time, training hundreds of people for the company’s applications.  Then, she would come back to the US, get together with their human resource department and post new jobs stating specialized requirements at very low salary. Of course, current employees wouldn’t work for that level of income, therefore would not apply. After a certain amount of time passed the company could then bring in these trained Indian foreign aliens to fill the jobs; hundreds at a time, and the company released current employees.  Lousy, yes, but it is the way corporate America thinks.

Another example of abuses with the program is connected to hospitals. Hospitals usually need specialized employees. Some H-1B individuals come to the US, work for a few months at a hospital and then just don’t show up for work, but stay in the US and never report back to our government.  In this week’s news, (1-18-16), after I started writing this blog it was reported on the news that over 500,000 of these people have not reported in, and the government has no idea as to their locations.

Now let’s go to EB-5 programs.  We have covered these programs pretty thoroughly in the past, so I won’t place much time on specifics. To recap quickly, if a wealthy foreign individual places either a minimum of $500,000 or $1 million into an EB-5 program they have certain immigration rights as an investor. These privileges include being able to buy a home in the US, placing their children in schools and residing here.  Right now with the world turmoil, the world’s rich are diversifying and using this program, especially on both coasts. These people, mainly Asians seeking the West Coast, are buying expensive real estate from Seattle down to San Diego. Twenty years ago, British Columbia had a similar program and the Asians flocked there.  These are educated people and are financially self sufficient, certainly not a drain on our finances, but perhaps our nerves!

The northern cities on the East Coast have an influx of money coming in from Europe, Russia and wealthy Middle Easterners.  Florida has South Americans purchasing real estate.

Let us look at the wealthy Chinese. China reportedly has about 7 million millionaires. It has a population of about 1.3 billion and a fast growing middle class.  The media is all about the slow down in China, however GDP growth there should be in the 6.5% range, that is over three times what our GDP is projected to be.  As the world’s economy has weakened their future expectations of exports is down, and they will in turn look toward internal consumer spending for goods and services; a healthy transition.  I will reserve a bit of space at this end of this blog for the stock market and a further comment on China.

In comparison the USA has averaged only a meager 2% growth rate over the past 7 years.  We have a population of about 320 million people and have about 9.5 million millionaires, but a shrinking middle-class.  There are opportunities to be had here with EB-5 programs and meeting the service needs to these people migrating to the US.

The last category of immigrants is the illegals.  I am sure most are very nice, however taking care of them for basic needs of housing, food, clothing, medical, education paid for mostly by our middle-class is going to drain us financially, as it will in the European Union.  On the positive side here, all the needs paid for by government support is providing employment for Americans in the public sector.

I am going to mention immigration into the European Union quickly.  I believe countries like Germany are permitting immigration to satisfy their own GDP needs, as their exports will also trend downward.  By this I mean, as the world has economically weakened the past couple of years, Germany is preparing to move from a private sector/exporting country to a more public sector economy providing goods and services to the immigrants. As I have mentioned before this cost estimate to date is $1 trillion or more for Germany alone.  Hope it works.  I am thinking that it won’t and the European Union will break apart because of the capabilities of each country being so different and more dissatisfaction arising.  This debacle was first seen in Greece, with the lack of immediate attention by the EU.

Stock market quickly.  I loved to watch the farce happening the first couple weeks this month, except for the amount of money lost by some good people.  At first the downtrend was blamed on China’s economy, and then the second week you never heard about China but the drop in oil prices took precedence. Oil is a commodity related to supply and demand. We have a ton of world supply, and weakening economies around the world need less oil.  We should be more concerned about what is happening here in the US. We export only 13% of our GDP, so fewer exports won’t be hurting our economy like Germany and China, however we need to support our consumer based economy and middle class jobs.  Good paying wages need to keep up.  Around 1990 the US debt to GDP ratio was about 5%, today it is over 105%.  We better mind our own economy!  Henry Ford told us what to do many years ago when he started his auto company, and no one has listened.

Who knows where the market will bottom, but I think it has got a ways to go.  We should go back to more historical norms.   The market never trends down without some up-tick days.  Is that the time to buy back in? No.  On January 19^th, an up-tick day, I looked at volume. Yup, you had the DOW trading only 144 million shares when daily average should be 250 million shares or more. This told me you had a few suckers coming back in, but not strength or institutional buying. Also, this is indicative of people having to cover their “shorts”…..short positions, not dress code here!

MONEY 87 - ECONOMIC THINGS

THIS IS MY 87^TH BLOG ON UNDERSTANIDNG MONEY TOOLS

We have covered a considerable amount of information going back through time on this blog. The wording “understanding money” is very explanatory.  By my intended definition, “tools” relates to  “implementation or instruments of”. To recap we have covered a myriad of industries from real estate, to stocks/bonds, minerals, precious metals, and the pros and cons of investing in each.

From actual investing and understanding industries potentials and pitfalls I have been moving the blog more toward economics, as that in today’s market place seems to be most important.  Economics and analysts’  opinions are listened to by so many people, however tracking history there is little relationship between predictions by the smartest to actual outcomes. Economists try to be “bullish” or positive, but the world we live in is a real world. One example is that between the years 2000 and 2015, economists never predicted one negative year; take a look at 2001 and 2008-9!

We’ll write this blog on January 12, 2016 trying to recap what is more accurate than what you receive on the news.  Again, this is an election year and the media is given information that can be distorted or half the information rather than a full understanding. My job here is to fill in some of the blanks.

The economy is stated to be healthy; the Federal Reserve raised interest rates 25 basis points.  Let’s look at our government as “you” and see how financially stable you are. For income you would have to state you have considerable income, however you always spend more than you make, and you have huge credit card debt. (Even with an approved balanced budget by Congress we run negative because we have about $500 billion to pay annually on bond interest and it is growing.)  Then, a banker asks you for a balance sheet listing your assets and liabilities. You show zero assets!  (Yes, our short and long term liabilities for the US are about $100 trillion, and all of our US assets total about $100 trillion. We were doing better before 2008-9 and the Great Recession wiping out trillions especially real estate values.)  Would your bank give you any kind of loan? No.  The US government ran to the Federal Reserve in 2008-9 and received a huge loan, in the trillions of dollars with no collateral to stand behind it. Prior to August 15, 1971 we had gold in Fort Knox as collateral, but no longer.   Can the US ever pay off the current debt, no.  Our US debt is now climbing toward $19 trillion.

Employment numbers came out a few days ago showing new employment at 292,000 new jobs created. Two economists I follow stated misleading information.  First, the quality of jobs; only 11,000 were high paying jobs, the balance in the $20,000/ year range.  The government estimated the numbers from past years; Holiday Season, part time and lower pay scale employment and came up with these figures.  Some of the employment does include public sector jobs that grow, especially in that we now employ over 30 million in our health, education and welfare industries.  That is not going to carry the economy. The oil industry employed many higher paying jobs in North Dakota and Texas.  There has been a huge industry layoff, and the price of oil is still trending downward with no end in sight.  Many, like Goldman Sachs, see $20/barrel oil.  I watch, to some degree, the options markets and people are still buying puts at $20./barrel oil.  This bodes well for us drivers, however we sacrificed an industry.

Let’s take the stock market.  So easy to find fault. The first week was disastrous, however reality may be setting in; $1 trillion lost in US stock markets, $2.3 trillion lost worldwide. Was it lost? No.  It was current downward valuations of stocks. You don’t take a loss until you sell a stock, for one. Point two, the markets are made up of phony money. Our Federal Reserve printed $4.5 trillion since 2009 and gave this money to various entities they selected like certain banks, GM and others. Is this real money, free market, no!  About 85% of the stock market’s money is made up from large institutions (like the our big banks) and the very wealthy. One thing to remember, these institutions and banks are not on your side, however operate to make money for themselves.  Wall Street firms make money as long as there is volatility, if the market goes up, they go long, if the market appears to be trending downward they short.  For the last 25 years the market has been “traded”, not “invested” in.  The one statistic that is important here for the year is that January historically dictates the outcome for the year. What I mean is that 75% of the time if January closes with a higher market price than when the year started then we usually end the year higher, and vice-versa.  What I see is the markets finally correcting to historical norms with P/E’s in the 15:1 range, not 22-23:1.  You can do your own math where that would have the DOW settle in!  Don’t forget that whether you are in ETF’s (Exchange Traded Funds) or individual stocks there are options for you to hedge the overall market conditions.  Some analysts are recommending gradually buying long-term government bonds  over a period of time, thus cost averaging.  Remember that if the Federal Reserve raises interest rates the market value of bonds goes down, face value held to maturity does not.

I heard Holiday spending was pretty solid, but people wanted 60% or more off from retailers. I’ve been associated to that industry for some time so let’s take a look.  A retailer buys either from the manufacturer or wholesaler, then they look at retail market in terms of  “keystone” plus “X”.  What does this mean?  Keystone is doubling the price of cost. If retailers needed to discount 60%, or more, to sell was there any bottom line?  In our example above, let’s assume a product was priced at retail $100. however the price was lowered 60% to be able to sell, so that is out the door at $40. plus tax for the government.  Typically, to sell an item for $100. the retailer will pay about $40. at cost, then keystone it to $80. and add $20; this would be referred to as keystone plus 20. I don’t see how retailers made any money with these kinds of discounts unless they were buying old inventory, or seconds, thus permitting a larger profit margin.  Train the buying public to only buy when goods are discounted and that is what you will get in the future!

Do I think we are going to have a good 2016 or a tough one?  I think a tough one for the following reasons:

-       Historically we have recessions about every 7 years, and we are due for one.

-       Interest rates were raised by the Federal Reserve late in the cycle and when the economy is very tepid to begin with.

-       Higher interest rates slow growth of any economy and strengthen the country’s currency. This hurts exports and adds to US debt in terms of US Bonds.

-       Transportation industry is down in the US (check train transports of oil, iron ore, and commodities that manufacturing would need.)  International transports are way off also, e.g. manufactured goods from Asia to South America and Europe.

-       Higher US Dollar is going to pop the emerging countries bubbles of debt.

-       US manufacturers are going to have surpluses. Take a look at Apple, which I highly regard.  Their stock is way down from highs and their manufacturing capabilities are much higher than predicted absorption.

-       The US real estate industry has been quite good, especially aided by wealthy foreign buyers utilizing our EB-5 programs to get residency and permit them to buy US real estate. The Northeast is seeing Russian and Middle East buyers, Florida is seeing Europeans and South Americans and our West Coast is seeing Asian buyers. Although this has been a strong industry there is overbuilding in some commercial markets as well as residential.

-       Europe’s economy is not good and with immigration will only get worse. Immigration will backfire, tourism is way off, and the costs of supporting immigrants will drain most countries. This in turn may break up the European Union from what it was intended to be, including devaluations to the Euro currency.

-       Most South American countries are in recession or poor financial condition.

Well, that pretty much wraps up another blog. Best wishes.