Charting the Suck

The chart below was compiled using the FDIC Quarterly Profile and Federal Reserve Charge-Off data. I adjusted bank assets by removing any category that wouldn't result in money going into the real economy. Adjustments included bank holdings of Treasury securities, reserves held at the Fed, trading assets, and loans to other banks.

The profile data for Q2 should be released within the next few days. That should be very interesting. At the moment, I'd say it looks like we may need some more blue for the latest recession bar.

Speaking of that, Calculated Risk's instructions for adding recession bars to a chart were instrumental.

What's the Point?

If you look at the diagram of suckiness thumbnailed on the top right, you will see the "real economy" represented as a line between C (consumers) and B (businesses). The money circulating in that system is the economy's blood supply. Right now, loan payments (both principal and interest) are draining blood out of the system.

We know this because loan balances to businesses and consumers are dropping, even after we subtract writeoffs (writeoffs don't remove money from the system, only paydowns do).

The government has been giving the "real economy" transfusions via fiscal stimulus. But until bank loan books start growing, our economic body continues to be on life support. And bank loans are still shrinking. Which should be no surprise because the consumer remains leveraged to the hilt.

No growth in money supply means no growth in the economy: no new jobs, no new sales.