Is red state America seceding?

In the last decade of the 20th century, as the Soviet Empire disintegrated, so, too, did that prison house of nations, the USSR.
Out of the decomposing carcass came Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldova, all in Europe; Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus; and Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia.
Transnistria then broke free of Moldova, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought free of Georgia.
Yugoslavia dissolved far more violently into the nations of Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo.
The Slovaks seceded from Czechoslovakia. Yet a Europe that plunged straight to war after the last breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939 this time only yawned. Let them go, all agreed.
The spirit of secession, the desire of peoples to sever ties to nations to which they have belonged for generations, sometimes for centuries, and to seek out their own kind, is a spreading phenomenon.
Scotland is moving toward a referendum on independence from England, three centuries after the Acts of Union. Catalonia pushes to be free of Madrid. Milanese and Venetians see themselves as a European people apart from Sicilians, Neapolitans and Romans.
Dutch-speaking Flanders wants to cut loose of French-speaking Wallonia in Belgium. Francophone Quebec, with immigrants from Asia and the Third World tilting the balance in favor of union, appears to have lost its historic moment to secede from Canada.
What are the forces pulling nations apart? Ethnicity, culture, history and language – but now also economics. And separatist and secessionist movements are cropping up here in the United States.
While many red state Americans are moving away from blue state America, seeking kindred souls among whom to live, those who love where they live but not those who rule them are seeking to secede.
The five counties of western Maryland – Garrett, Allegany, Washington, Frederick and Carroll, which have more in common with West Virginia and wish to be rid of Baltimore and free of Annapolis, are talking secession.
The issues driving secession in Maryland are gun control, high taxes, energy policy, homosexual marriage and immigration.
Order Pat Buchanan’s brilliant and prescient books at WND’s Superstore.
Scott Strzelczyk, who lives in the town of Windsor in Carroll County and leads the Western Maryland Initiative, argues: “If you have a long list of grievances, and it’s been going on for decades, and you can’t get it resolved, ultimately [secession] is what you have to do.”
And there is precedent. Four of our 50 states – Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, West Virginia – were born out of other states.
Ten northern counties of Colorado are this November holding non-binding referenda to prepare a future secession from Denver and the creation of America’s 51st state.
Nine of the 10 Colorado counties talking secession and a new state, writes Reid Wilson of the Washington Post – Cheyenne, Kit Carson, Logan, Morgan, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington, Weld and Yuma – all gave more than 62 percent of their votes to Mitt Romney. Five of these 10 counties gave Romney more than 75 percent of their vote.
Their issues with the Denver legislature: A new gun control law that triggered a voter recall of two Democratic state senators, state restrictions on oil exploration and the Colorado legislature’s party-line vote in support of gay marriage.

http://www.wnd.com/2013/10/is-red-state-america-seceding/print/

China and ECB sign $57bn currency swap deal

China and the European Central Bank have signed a currency swap agreement worth 350bn yuan ($57bn; £36bn), state-owned Xinhua news agency has said.

Such agreements mean the central banks can exchange currencies and firms can settle trade in local currencies rather than in US dollars.
The deal is one of the largest for China as it looks to build a more international role for the yuan.
It will last for three years and can be extended if both parties agree.
China's currency, the yuan, is also referred to as renminbi.

Ensuring stability
Foreign exchange swaps such as these mean two countries agree to swap, or borrow, each other's currency at an agreed rate.
In doing so, the parties involved avoid swings in exchange rates. They can also be less reliant on the US dollar for bilateral trade and some business deals.
China's central bank has now signed currency swap deals amounting to some 2.2 trillion yuan with 22 countries and regions, according to Xinhua.
"The new arrangement will provide more liquidity to the renminbi market in the euro area, promote overseas use of the yuan, and help facilitate trade and investment," Xinhua reported China's central bank as saying in a statement.
The European Central Bank said: "The swap arrangement has been established in the context of rapidly growing bilateral trade and investment between the euro area and China, as well as the need to ensure the stability of financial markets."
Europe's central bank also said the deal would reassure eurozone banks of the continuous provision of Chinese yuan.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24486685

The Biggest Banking Disconnect Since Lehman Hits A New Record

As regular readers know, the biggest (and most important) disconnect in the US banking system [10]is the divergence between commercial bank loans, which most recently amounted to $7.32 trillion, a decrease of $9 billion for the week, and are at the same the same level when Lehman filed for bankruptcy having not grown at all in all of 2013 (blue line below), and their conventionally matched liability: deposits, which increased by $60 billion in the past week to $9.63 trillion, an all time high. The spread between these two key monetary components - at least in a non-centrally planned world - which also happen to determine the velocity of money in circulation (as traditionally it is private banks that create money not the Fed as a result of loan demand) is now at a record $2.3 trillion.
Which, of course, also happens to be the amount of reserves [11]the Fed has injected into the system (i.e., how much the Fed's balance sheet has expanded) since the great experiment to bailout the US financial system started in September 2008, in which Ben Bernanke, and soon Janet Yellen, stepped in as the sole source of credit money. The only difference is that while the Fed is actively pumping bank deposits courtesy of the fungibility of reserves, loan are unchanged.
For those who still don't understand the identity between Fed reserves and bank deposits, here is Manmohan Singh with the simplest explanation on the topic [12]:

When central banks buy securities, one of the immediate effects is to increase bank deposits, which adds to M2 (in the U.S., practically the Fed has bought from nonbanks, not banks). Whether banks maintain those added deposits as deposits, or convert them into other liabilities (or, by calling in loans, reducing or moderating the growth of their balance sheets), is an open question.

Actually it's not. As the JPM London Whale episode taught us, it is the excess deposits on bank balance sheets courtesy of the Fed, that serve as collateral for marginable derivatives (IG9, HY9, ES, etc) which then can and are used by banks to chase risk higher, often with leverage that runs into the orders of magnitude. In other words, as the chart below shows, in the past week, the Fed injected a net $69 billion in risk-ramping power on the commercial bank balance sheets, and, more importantly, since the failure of Lehman, this amount is a record $2.308 trillion.
[13]
So for those confused where the money comes from to ramp equities ever higher on a daily basis for the duration of QE, and why the S&P correlates (and "causates") exquisitely with the Fed's balance sheet, now you know. More impotantly: don't expect banks to lend out much if any real new loans as long as they can generate far greater and far less riskier returns simply by chasing risk in the capital markets.

10 Disturbing Facts About "Exceptional" America

1. 65% of Americans say news organizations focus on unimportant stories [4] rather than on important ones (28%).

[4]

 

2. More express concern over civil liberties [5] (47%) than protection from terrorism (35%) for the first time in Pew Research Center polling.

[5]

 

3. 3% of Americans still connect to the internet at home via a dial-up connection [6].

[6]

4. During the first two years of the nation’s economic recovery, the mean net worth of households in the upper 7% of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28%, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4% [7].

[7]

 

5. For the first time in more than four decades of polling on the issue, a majority (52%) of Americans favor legalizing the use of marijuana [8].

[8]

6. 15% of American adults do not use the internet or email [9].

[9]

7. 56% of U.S. adults say they would not want to undergo medical treatments to slow the aging process and live to be 120 or more [10], but roughly two-thirds (68%) think that most other people would. 

[10]

 

 

8. In 23 of 39 nations surveyed, a majority or plurality of the people say China either already has replaced or eventually will replace the U.S. as the top superpower [11].

[11]

 

9. One-in-ten (7.7 million) children were living with a grandparent [12] in 2011. Approximately 3 million of these children were being cared for primarily by that grandparent.

[12]

10. In 2012, 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31—the so-called Millennial generation—were living in their parents’ home [13].

[13]

 

Via Pew Research [14]

GDP Size relative to China

We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

It’s been one full week since the flagship technology portion of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) went live. And since that time, the befuddled beast that is Healthcare.gov has shutdown, crapped out, stalled, and mis-loaded so consistently that its track record for failure is challenged only by Congress.
The site itself, which apparently underwent major code renovations over the weekend, still rejects user logins, fails to load drop-down menus and other crucial components for users that successfully gain entrance, and otherwise prevents uninsured Americans in the 36 states it serves from purchasing healthcare at competitive rates – Healthcare.gov’s primary purpose. The site is so busted that, as of a couple days ago, the number of people that successfully purchased healthcare through it was in the “single digits,” according to the Washington Post.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/opinion/obamacare-healthcare-gov-website-cost/

Moody's offers different view on debt limit

One of the nation’s top credit-rating agencies says that the U.S. Treasury Department is likely to continue paying interest on the government’s debt even if Congress fails to lift the limit on borrowing next week, preserving the nation’s sterling AAA credit rating.
In a memo being circulated on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Moody’s Investors Service offers “answers to frequently asked questions” about the government shutdown, now in its second week, and the federal debt limit. President Obama has said that, unless Congress acts to raise the $16.7 trillion limit by next Thursday, the nation will be at risk of default.
Not so, Moody’s says in the memo dated Oct. 7.
” We believe the government would continue to pay interest and principal on its debt even in the event that the debt limit is not raised, leaving its creditworthiness intact,” the memo says. “The debt limit restricts government expenditures to the amount of its incoming revenues; it does not prohibit the government from servicing its debt. There is no direct connection between the debt limit (actually the exhaustion of the Treasury’s extraordinary measures to raise funds) and a default.
The memo offers a starkly different view of the consequences of congressional inaction on the debt limit than is held by the White House, many policymakers and other financial analysts. During a press conference at the White House Tuesday, Obama said missing the Oct. 17 deadline would invite “economic chaos.”
The Moody’s memo goes on to argue that the situation is actually much less serious than in 2011, when the nation last faced a pitched battle over the debt limit.
“The budget deficit was considerably larger in 2011 than it is currently, so the magnitude of the necessary spending cuts needed after 17 October is lower now than it was then,” the memo says.
Treasury Department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics-live/liveblog/live-updates-the-shutdown-4/?hpid=z2#c1e3ada3-dc00-41d8-92cb-327c5c814d82

US Treasuries Are "Riskier" Than Italian And Spanish Bonds

In the equity asset management world, the word risk is ubiquitously interchangeable with the word "volatility" for myriad asset allocation models that promise mathematical precision way beyond the realms of possibility in a dynamic world. However, extending that definition of risk, we thought it worth pointing out that, for the last month, US Treasury bonds have become more volatile (more risky) than Italian and Spanish bonds. Something to ponder for The Fed's new head we suspect...

The 3 month volatility of US Treasuries is now higher than that of Spain and Italy (both of which offer significantly higher yields than the US)...


One can only imagine the automated overweighting that a lower risk, higher return implies for the peripheral European bond markets... but for all those MPT asset allocators out there, when all you have is hammer...

This is what decline of a superpower looks like

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Foreign policy analysts at home and abroad have been predicting for years the inevitable decline of American power, often with a fair amount of schadenfreude and sometimes even with glee.

But now that political dysfunction in Washington is accelerating, the downsizing of the world’s only remaining superpower, all you hear is whining.

“The American self-blockade is shocking,” Karl-Georg Wellmann, a foreign-policy expert for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party, complained to the business daily Handelsblatt. “The position as the West’s leading power will be affected.” 

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-what-decline-of-a-superpower-looks-like-2013-10-08/print?guid=EA658968-3030-11E3-B4B5-00212803FAD6

Self Employed as a share of non-farm employment

What Does Heart Surgery Really Cost, And Why Is It 70 Times More Expensive In The US?

Indian philanthropist and cardiac surgeon, Devi Prasad Shetty is obsessed with making heart surgery affordable for millions of Indians. As Bloomberg notes [4], Shetty is not a public health official motivated by charity. He’s a heart surgeon turned businessman who has started a chain of 21 medical centers around India. By trimming costs, he has cut the price of artery-clearing coronary bypass surgery to 95,000 rupees ($1,583), half of what it was 20 years ago, and wants to get the price down to $800 within a decade. The same procedure costs $106,385 at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic. Of course, this will come as no surprise after we showed the incredible spread of the price of an appendectomy [5]. “It shows that costs can be substantially contained,” notes the World Heart Federation, "it’s possible to deliver very high quality cardiac care at a relatively low cost." But, for Americans of course, when you have government footing the cost (and deficit spending), who cares?

Via WaPo, [6]
[7]

Via Bloomberg [4],

...

“It shows that costs can be substantially contained,” said Srinath Reddy, president of the Geneva-based World Heart Federation, of Shetty’s approach. “It’s possible to deliver very high quality cardiac care at a relatively low cost.”

Medical experts like Reddy are watching closely, eager to see if Shetty’s driven cost-cutting can point the way for hospitals to boost revenue on a wider scale by making life-saving heart operations more accessible to potentially millions of people in India and other developing countries.

“The current price of everything that you see in health care is predominantly opportunistic pricing and the outcome of inefficiency,” Shetty, 60, said in an interview in his office in Bangalore, where he started his chain of hospitals, with the opening of his flagship center, Narayana Hrudayalaya Health City, in 2001.

...

In the future, Shetty sees costs coming down further as more Asian electronics companies enter the market for CT scanners, MRIs and catheterization labs -- bringing down prices. As India trains more diploma holders in specialties such as anesthesiology, gynecology, ophthalmology and radiology, Narayana will be able to hire from a larger, less expensive talent pool.

One positive unforeseen outcome may be that many of the cost-saving approaches could be duplicated in developed economies, especially in the U.S. under health reform.

“Global health-care costs are rising rapidly and as countries move toward universal health coverage, they will have to face the challenge of providing health care at a fairly affordable cost,” said the World Heart Federation’s Reddy, a New Delhi-based cardiologist who is also president of the Public Health Foundation of India.

NSA's Utah Spy Supercenter Crippled By Power Surges

Long before Edward Snowden's whistleblowing revelations hit the world and the Obama administration's approval ratings like a ton of bricks, we ran a story in March 2012 which exposed the NSA's unprecedented domestic espionage project, codenamed Stellar Wind, and specifically the $1.4+ billion data center spy facility located in Bluffdale, Utah, which spans more than one million square feet, uses 65 megawatts of energy (enough to power a city of more than  20,000), and can store exabytes or even zettabytes of data (a zettabyte is 100 million times larger than all the printed material in the Library of Congress), consisting of every single electronic communication in the world, whether captured with a warrant or not. Yet despite all signs to the contrary, Uber-general Keith Alexander and his spy army are only human, and as the WSJ reports, the NSA's Bluffdale data center - whose interior may not be modeled for the bridge of the Starship Enterprise - has been hobbled by chronic electrical surges as a result of at least 10 electrical meltdowns in the past 13 months.

The facility above is where everyone's back up phone records and emails are stored.
Such meltdowns have prevented the NSA from using computers at its new Utah data-storage center which then supposedly means that not every single US conversation using electronic media or airwaves in the past year has been saved for posterity and the amusement of the NSA's superspooks.
This being the NSA, of course, not even a blown fuse is quite the same as it would be in the normal world: "One project official described the electrical troubles—so-called arc fault failures—as "a flash of lightning inside a 2-foot box." These failures create fiery explosions, melt metal and cause circuits to fail, the official said. The causes remain under investigation, and there is disagreement whether proposed fixes will work, according to officials and project documents. One Utah project official said the NSA planned this week to turn on some of its computers there."
More from the WSJ on this latest example of what even the most organized and efficient of government agencies ends up with when left to its non-private sector resources:

Without a reliable electrical system to run computers and keep them cool, the NSA's global surveillance data systems can't function. The NSA chose Bluffdale, Utah, to house the data center largely because of the abundance of cheap electricity. It continuously uses 65 megawatts, which could power a small city of at least 20,000, at a cost of more than $1 million a month, according to project officials and documents.

Utah is the largest of several new NSA data centers, including a nearly $900 million facility at its Fort Meade, Md., headquarters and a smaller one in San Antonio. The first of four data facilities at the Utah center was originally scheduled to open in October 2012, according to project documents. The data-center delays show that the NSA's ability to use its powerful capabilities is undercut by logistical headaches. Documents and interviews paint a picture of a project that cut corners to speed building.

Backup generators have failed numerous tests, according to project documents, and officials disagree about whether the cause is understood. There are also disagreements among government officials and contractors over the adequacy of the electrical control systems, a project official said, and the cooling systems also remain untested.

The Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing the data center's construction. Chief of Construction Operations, Norbert Suter said, "the cause of the electrical issues was identified by the team, and is currently being corrected by the contractor." He said the Corps would ensure the center is "completely reliable" before handing it over to the NSA.

But another government assessment concluded the contractor's proposed solutions fall short and the causes of eight of the failures haven't been conclusively determined. "We did not find any indication that the proposed equipment modification measures will be effective in preventing future incidents," said a report last week by special investigators from the Army Corps of Engineers known as a Tiger Team.

The architectural firm KlingStubbins designed the electrical system. The firm is a subcontractor to a joint venture of three companies: Balfour Beatty Construction, DPR Construction and Big-D Construction Corp. A KlingStubbins official referred questions to the Army Corps of Engineers.

Tsk tsk: this is what happens when you use taxpayer dollars to pay the lowest bidder - you can't even build an efficient totalitarian superstate!

The first arc fault failure at the Utah plant was on Aug. 9, 2012, according to project documents. Since then, the center has had nine more failures, most recently on Sept. 25. Each incident caused as much as $100,000 in damage, according to a project official. It took six months for investigators to determine the causes of two of the failures. In the months that followed, the contractors employed more than 30 independent experts that conducted 160 tests over 50,000 man-hours, according to project documents.

This summer, the Army Corps of Engineers dispatched its Tiger Team, officials said. In an initial report, the team said the cause of the failures remained unknown in all but two instances. The team said the government has incomplete information about the design of the electrical system that could pose new problems if settings need to change on circuit breakers. The report concluded that efforts to "fast track" the Utah project bypassed regular quality controls in design and construction.

Contractors have started installing devices that insulate the power system from a failure and would reduce damage to the electrical machinery. But the fix wouldn't prevent the failures, according to project documents and current and former officials.

Contractor representatives wrote last month to NSA officials to acknowledge the failures and describe their plan to ensure there is reliable electricity for computers. The representatives said they didn't know the true source of the failures but proposed remedies they believed would work. With those measures and others in place, they said, they had "high confidence that the electrical systems will perform as required by the contract."

A couple of weeks later, on Sept. 23, the contractors reported they had uncovered the "root cause" of the electrical failures, citing a "consensus" among 30 investigators, which didn't include government officials. Their proposed solution was the same device they had already begun installing.

Wait, we know: it's the Syrians.
So for those who have no choice but to live in a totalitarian banana republic, may we suggest at least laughing about it. We present the Domestic Surveillance Directorate.

Julian Robertson Warns "We Are In A Bubble Market" And Yellen Is "Way Too Easy Money"

"Steve Jobs was really a pretty terrible man... and I just don't believe bad guys do well in the long run," is the subtle way the billionaire fund managed describes the ex Apple CEO before shifting his view to the broader market. A spell-bound Maria Bartiromo was looking for any silver lining when Julian Robertson responded ominously, "we're in the middle of a kind of bubble market," and when they "prick the bubble, there will probably be a pretty bad reaction." With views on The Fed's easy-money, Twitter, and market frothiness, Robertson is a breath of truthy fresh air that we suspect will not be back on the money-honey's show anytime soon...


On Steve Jobs:

"I came to the conclusion that it was unlikely that a man as really awful as I think that Steve Jobs was, could possibly create a great company for the long term.

I just don't believe bad guys do well in the long run," Robertson said.

On The Market:

...the broader market is "fully valued" and otherwise appears a little frothy.

"I think we're in the middle of a kind of bubble market, where it's going to take something bubble-like to happen to prick the bubble and will probably have pretty bad reaction to the breaking of the bubble," Robertson said.

"Probably will not [happen] right now and somehow I think we'll wallow through the political and fiscal crisis we have in front of us and then we'll sort of see what happens."

On The Fed:

...he would not prefer Vice Chair Janet Yellen because he thinks she's "way too easy money."

 http://www.zerohedge.com/print/479874

Now the Chinese are wagging their fingers at Obama

October 7, 2013
Sovereign Valley Farm, Pencahue, Chile
“Diminishing Superpower”
This was the headline streaking across the weekend edition of the Jakarta Globe, one of the largest newspapers in Indonesia.
The photo beneath was of Barack Obama, his lips pursed and eyes steeled as if he was fighting back tears. Or perhaps staring off into the fiscal abyss.
The subheadline read: “Obama’s APEC absence symbolic of US waning influence in Asia.”
The article goes on to describe how the President’s conspicuous absence from this weekend’s summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (a multinational trade bloc in the Asia/Pacific region) highlights the decline of the US as the world’s superpower.
It’s so obvious to everyone else that the US is in terminal decline.
(Granted, the Indonesians are a bit miffed given that they went to the trouble of closing the brand new airport in Bali for four days, partly because of the anticipated arrival of Air Force One… and then the President didn’t bother showing up.)
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping stepped up in Obama’s stead, taking the world’s stage in yet another clear sign of where the real economic power and leadership is.
Putin himself was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize… for preventing a former Nobel Peace Prize recipient (Barack Obama) from starting a war Syria.
Meanwhile, China’s vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao has been wagging his finger at the US Treasury Department, warning that “the clock is ticking” and that Obama should “take decisive and credible steps to avoid a default on its Treasury bonds.”
All this comes at a time when the US has been caught red handed spying on the rest of the world, including its own people… and its allies. This prompted the Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to cancel an official visit to the United States this month.
It’s amazing when you step back and look at the big picture.
The Russians are preventing a US military invasion. The Chinese actually have to step in and say something publicly to ensure that the US government pays its bills. The Brazilians are too disgusted to even visit Washington DC.
What a completely different world we live in, even compared to just 10 or 15 years ago.
Think back to the late 90s. The US really was the pinnacle of civilization. The government was beginning to pay down its debt. America’s reputation was unblemished. And to most foreigners, the US economy was the envy of the world.
What’s happening today would have been unthinkable back then. But it just goes to show how quickly things can unravel.
It’s tremendously important that the reputation of the US government is sinking to an all-time low internationally.
Remember, the reason that the US Federal Reserve can print trillions of dollars is because the rest of the world has for decades been willing to accept dollars for international transactions and sovereign reserves.
Nearly every government and central bank on the planet has a big pile of dollars stashed away.
The US government seems to think that this arrangement will last forever, and that their actions are without consequence. Nothing is further from the truth.
As the US government’s international reputation craters after one embarrassing episode after another, other nations are beginning to no longer trust the US, whether it comes to spying or managing a sound currency.
This puts the US dollar at even greater risk of quickly losing global reserve domination, and along with it, the ability to print money without damning ramifications.
As history has shown so many times before, this is exactly how the end begins.

Related posts:

1. What the international community REALLY thinks about Obama
2. Obama’s policies reveal presidential authoritarian power
3. Equity track records: Public Obama worse than Private Romney
4. Speaking of Chinese influence in South America…

Fed Magically Creates $180 Billion In Student And Car Loans Out Of Thin Air

Normally, we would report the change in total consumer debt (revolving and non-revolving) in this space, but today we will pass, for the simple reason that the number is the merely the latest entrant in a long series of absolutely made up garbage. It appears that in the "quiet period" of data releases, when the BLS realized its "non-critical", pre-update 8MHz 8086-based machines are unable to boot up the random number generator spreadsheets known as "economic data", Ben Bernanke decided to quietly slip a modest revision to the monthly consumer credit data. A modest revision, which amounts to a whopping $180 billion cumulative increase in non-revolving credit beginning in January 2006.
So add that to the GDP [12], to Personal Income [13], to Household Net Worth [14], to the BLS' JOLTS "data [15]", and of course, to last year's repeat revision of consumer credit data [16], as a data set, which while present, is absolutely meaningless following recent arbitrary revisions which meant all prior data contained therein was just as irrelevant.
To summarize: for whatever reason, the Fed decided to recast its entire non-revolving credit data series starting in January 2006, and has magically created $188 billion in student loan and car debt that previously "did not exist."
Old vs Revised series shown below.
[17]
For those who still opt to live in the Matrix and be treated like mushrooms, demanding to know just what the "new" fabricated, made up series implies, here it is: total consumer credit rose by$13.6 billion driven entirely by non-revolving credit, or $14.5 billion of the total, while revolving credit has now dripped for three months in a row as households continue to pay down their credit cards, better known as deleverage. In other words: using Uncle Sam as a charge card for cars and university courses, for everything else there is paying down debt.
[18]
Finally, perhaps the most amusing implication of today's revision, is the longer term chart of non-revolving credit. As the St Louis Fed chart below shows, we are about to go beyond exponential and purely asymptotic.

[19]

Source: Federal Reserve [20] [20]