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Jul 11, 2015 | msn.com
ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay - His speeches can blend biblical fury with apocalyptic doom. Pope Francis does not just criticize the excesses of global capitalism. He compares them to the "dung of the devil." He does not simply argue that systemic "greed for money" is a bad thing. He calls it a "subtle dictatorship" that "condemns and enslaves men and women."
Having returned to his native Latin America, Francis has renewed his left-leaning critiques on the inequalities of capitalism, describing it as an underlying cause of global injustice, and a prime cause of climate change. Francis escalated that line last week when he made a historic apology for the crimes of the Roman Catholic Church during the period of Spanish colonialism - even as he called for a global movement against a "new colonialism" rooted in an inequitable economic order.
The Argentine pope seemed to be asking for a social revolution. "This is not theology as usual; this is him shouting from the mountaintop," said Stephen F. Schneck, the director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic studies at Catholic University of America in Washington.
The last pope who so boldly placed himself at the center of the global moment was John Paul II, who during the 1980s pushed the church to confront what many saw as the challenge of that era, communism. John Paul II's anti-Communist messaging dovetailed with the agenda of political conservatives eager for a tougher line against the Soviets and, in turn, aligned part of the church hierarchy with the political right.
Francis has defined the economic challenge of this era as the failure of global capitalism to create fairness, equity and dignified livelihoods for the poor - a social and religious agenda that coincides with a resurgence of the leftist thinking marginalized in the days of John Paul II. Francis' increasingly sharp critique comes as much of humanity has never been so wealthy or well fed - yet rising inequality and repeated financial crises have unsettled voters, policy makers and economists.
Left-wing populism is surging in countries immersed in economic turmoil, such as Spain, and, most notably, Greece. But even in the United States, where the economy has rebounded, widespread concern about inequality and corporate power are propelling the rise of liberals like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who, in turn, have pushed the Democratic Party presidential front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to the left.
Even some free-market champions are now reassessing the shortcomings of unfettered capitalism. George Soros, who made billions in the markets, and then spent a good part of it promoting the spread of free markets in Eastern Europe, now argues that the pendulum has swung too far the other way.
"I think the pope is singing to the music that's already in the air," said Robert A. Johnson, executive director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, which was financed with $50 million from Mr. Soros. "And that's a good thing. That's what artists do, and I think the pope is sensitive to the lack of legitimacy of the system."
Many Catholic scholars would argue that Francis is merely continuing a line of Catholic social teaching that has existed for more than a century and was embraced even by his two conservative predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Pope Leo XIII first called for economic justice on behalf of workers in 1891, with his encyclical "Rerum Novarum" - or, "On Condition of Labor."
Mr. Schneck, of Catholic University, said it was as if Francis were saying, "We've been talking about these things for more than one hundred years, and nobody is listening."
Francis has such a strong sense of urgency "because he has been on the front lines with real people, not just numbers and abstract ideas," Mr. Schneck said. "That real-life experience of working with the most marginalized in Argentina has been the source of his inspiration as pontiff."
Francis made his speech on Wednesday night, in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, before nearly 2,000 social advocates, farmers, trash workers and neighborhood activists. Even as he meets regularly with heads of state, Francis has often said that change must come from the grass roots, whether from poor people or the community organizers who work with them. To Francis, the poor have earned knowledge that is useful and redeeming, even as a "throwaway culture" tosses them aside. He sees them as being at the front edge of economic and environmental crises around the world.
In Bolivia, Francis praised cooperatives and other localized organizations that he said provide productive economies for the poor. "How different this is than the situation that results when those left behind by the formal market are exploited like slaves!" he said on Wednesday night.
It is this Old Testament-like rhetoric that some finding jarring, perhaps especially so in the United States, where Francis will visit in September. His environmental encyclical, "Laudato Si'," released last month, drew loud criticism from some American conservatives and from others who found his language deeply pessimistic. His right-leaning critics also argued that he was overreaching and straying dangerously beyond religion - while condemning capitalism with too broad a brush.
"I wish Francis would focus on positives, on how a free-market economy guided by an ethical framework, and the rule of law, can be a part of the solution for the poor - rather than just jumping from the reality of people's misery to the analysis that a market economy is the problem," said the Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, which advocates free-market economics.
Francis' sharpest critics have accused him of being a Marxist or a Latin American Communist, even as he opposed communism during his time in Argentina. His tour last week of Latin America began in Ecuador and Bolivia, two countries with far-left governments. President Evo Morales of Bolivia, who wore a Che Guevara patch on his jacket during Francis' speech, claimed the pope as a kindred spirit - even as Francis seemed startled and caught off guard when Mr. Morales gave him a wooden crucifix shaped like a hammer and sickle as a gift.
Francis' primary agenda last week was to begin renewing Catholicism in Latin America and reposition it as the church of the poor. His apology for the church's complicity in the colonialist era received an immediate roar from the crowd. In various parts of Latin America, the association between the church and economic power elites remains intact. In Chile, a socially conservative country, some members of the country's corporate elite are also members of Opus Dei, the traditionalist Catholic organization founded in Spain in 1928.
Inevitably, Francis' critique can be read as a broadside against Pax Americana, the period of capitalism regulated by global institutions created largely by the United States. But even pillars of that system are shifting. The World Bank, which long promoted economic growth as an end in itself, is now increasingly focused on the distribution of gains, after the Arab Spring revolts in some countries that the bank had held up as models. The latest generation of international trade agreements includes efforts to increase protections for workers and the environment.
The French economist Thomas Piketty argued last year in a surprising best-seller, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," that rising wealth inequality was a natural result of free-market policies, a direct challenge to the conventional view that economic inequalities shrink over time. The controversial implication drawn by Mr. Piketty is that governments should raise taxes on the wealthy.
Mr. Piketty roiled the debate among mainstream economists, yet Francis' critique is more unnerving to some because he is not reframing inequality and poverty around a new economic theory but instead defining it in moral terms. "Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy," he said on Wednesday. "It is a moral obligation. For Christians, the responsibility is even greater: It is a commandment."
Nick Hanauer, a Seattle venture capitalist, said that he saw Francis as making a nuanced point about capitalism, embodied by his coinage of a "social mortgage" on accumulated wealth - a debt to the society that made its accumulation possible. Mr. Hanauer said that economic elites should embrace the need for reforms both for moral and pragmatic reasons. "I'm a believer in capitalism but it comes in as many flavors as pie, and we have a choice about the kind of capitalist system that we have," said Mr. Hanauer, now an outspoken proponent of redistributive government policies like a higher minimum wage.
Yet what remains unclear is whether Francis has a clear vision for a systemic alternative to the status quo that he and others criticize. "All these critiques point toward the incoherence of the simple idea of free market economics, but they don't prescribe a remedy," said Mr. Johnson, of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
Francis acknowledged as much, conceding on Wednesday that he had no new "recipe" to quickly change the world. Instead, he spoke about a "process of change" undertaken at the grass-roots level.
"What can be done by those students, those young people, those activists, those missionaries who come to my neighborhood with the hearts full of hopes and dreams but without any real solution for my problems?" he asked. "A lot! They can do a lot. "You, the lowly, the exploited, the poor and underprivileged, can do, and are doing, a lot. I would even say that the future of humanity is in great measure in your own hands."
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Jun 30, 2017 | www.unz.com
Introduction
The most striking feature of recent elections is not ' who won or who lost' , nor is it the personalities, parties and programs. The dominant characteristic of the elections is the widespread repudiation of the electoral system, political campaigns, parties and candidates.
Across the world, majorities and pluralities of citizens of voting age refuse to even register to vote (unless obligated by law), refuse to turn out to vote (voter abstention), or vote against all the candidates (boycott by empty ballot and ballot spoilage).
If we add the many citizen activists who are too young to vote, citizens denied voting rights because of past criminal (often minor) convictions, impoverished citizens and minorities denied voting rights through manipulation and gerrymandering, we find that the actual 'voting public' shrivel to a small minority.
As a result, present day elections have been reduced to a theatrical competition among the elite for the votes of a minority. This situation describes an oligarchy – not a healthy democracy.
Oligarchic Competition
Oligarchs compete and alternate with one another over controlling and defining who votes and doesn't vote. They decide who secures plutocratic financing and mass media propaganda within a tiny corporate sector. 'Voter choice' refers to deciding which preselected candidates are acceptable for carrying out an agenda of imperial conquests, deepening class inequalities and securing legal impunity for the oligarchs, their political representatives and state, police and military officials.
Oligarchic politicians depend on the systematic plundering Treasury to facilitate and protect billion dollar/billion euro stock market swindles and the illegal accumulation of trillions of dollars and Euros via tax evasion (capital flight) and money laundering.
The results of elections and the faces of the candidates may change but the fundamental economic and military apparatus remains the same to serve an ever tightening oligarchic rule.
The elite regimes change, but the permanence of state apparatus designed to serve the elite becomes ever more obvious to the citizens.
Why the Oligarchy Celebrates " Democracy "
The politicians who participate in the restrictive and minoritarian electoral system, with its predetermined oligarchic results, celebrate 'elections' as a democratic process because a plurality of voters, as subordinate subjects, are incorporated.
Academics, journalists and experts argue that a system in which elite competition defines citizen choice has become the only way to protect 'democracy' from the irrational 'populist' rhetoric appealing to a mass of citizens vulnerable to authoritarianism (the so-called ' deplorables' ). The low voter turn-out in recent elections reduces the threat posed by such undesirable voters.
A serious objective analysis of present-day electoral politics demonstrates that when the masses do vote for their class interests – the results deepen and extend social democracy. When most voters, non-voters and excluded citizens choose to abstain or boycott elections they have sound reasons for repudiating plutocratic-controlled oligarchic choices.
We will proceed to examine the recent June 2017 voter turnout in the elections in France, the United Kingdom and Puerto Rico. We will then look at the intrinsic irrationality of citizens voting for elite politicos as opposed to the solid good sense of the popular classes rejection of elite elections and their turn to extra-parliamentary action.
Puerto Rico's Referendum
The major TV networks (NBC, ABC and CBS) and the prestigious print media ( New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times and Washington Post ) hailed the ' overwhelming victory' of the recent pro-annexationist vote in Puerto Rico. They cited the 98% vote in favor of becoming a US state!
The media ignored the fact that a mere 28% of Puerto Ricans participated in the elections to vote for a total US takeover. Over 77% of the eligible voters abstained or boycotted the referendum.
In other words, over three quarters of the Puerto Rican people rejected the sham ' political elite election '. Instead, the majority voted with their feet in the streets through direct action.
France's Micro-Bonaparte
In the same way, the mass media celebrated what they dubbed a ' tidal wave ' of electoral support for French President Emmanuel Macron and his new party, 'the Republic in March'. Despite the enormous media propaganda push for Macron, a clear majority of the electorate (58%) abstained or spoiled their ballots, therefore rejecting all parties and candidates, and the entire French electoral system. This hardly constitutes a 'tidal wave' of citizen support in a democracy.
During the first round of the parliamentary election, President Macron's candidates received 27% of the vote, barely exceeding the combined vote of the left socialist and nationalist populist parties, which had secured 25% of the vote. In the second round, Macron's party received less then 20% of the eligible vote.
In other words, the anti-Macron rejectionists represented over three quarters of the French electorate. After these elections a significant proportion of the French people – especially among the working class –will likely choose extra-parliamentary direct action, as the most democratic expression of representative politics.
The United Kingdom: Class Struggle and the Election Results
The June 2017 parliamentary elections in the UK resulted in a minority Conservative regime forced to form an alliance with the fringe Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a far-right para-military Protestant party from Northern Ireland. The Conservatives received 48% of registered voters to 40% who voted for the Labor Party. However, 15 million citizens, or one-third of the total electorate abstained or spoiled their ballots. The Conservative regime's plurality represented 32% of the electorate.
Despite a virulent anti-Labor campaign in the oligarch-controlled mass media, the combined Labor vote and abstaining citizens clearly formed a majority of the population, which will be excluded from any role the post-election oligarchic regime despite the increase in the turnout (in comparison to previous elections).
Elections: Oligarchs in Office, Workers in the Street
The striking differences in the rate of abstention in France, Puerto Rico and the UK reflect the levels of class dissatisfaction and rejection of electoral politics.
The UK elections provided the electorate with something resembling a class alternative in the candidacy of Jeremy Corbyn. The Labor Party under Corbyn presented a progressive social democratic program promising substantial and necessary increases in social welfare spending (health, education and housing) to be funded by higher progressive taxes on the upper and upper middle class.
Corbyn's foreign policy promised to end the UK's involvement in imperial wars and to withdraw troops from the Middle East. He also re-confirmed his long opposition to Israel's colonial land-grabbing and oppression of the Palestinian people, as a principled way to reduce terrorist attacks at home.
In other words, Corbyn recognized that introducing real class-based politics would increase voter participation. This was especially true among young voters in the 18-25 year age group, who were among the UK citizens most harmed by the loss of stable factory jobs, the doubling of university fees and the cuts in national health services.
In contrast, the French legislative elections saw the highest rate of voter abstention since the founding of the 5 th Republic. These high rates reflect broad popular opposition to ultra-neo-liberal President Francois Macron and the absence of real opposition parties engaged in class struggle.
The lowest voter turn-out (28%) occurred in Puerto Rico. This reflects growing mass opposition to the corrupt political elite, the economic depression and the colonial and semi-colonial offerings of the two-major parties. The absence of political movements and parties tied to class struggle led to greater reliance on direct action and voter abstention.
Clearly class politics is the major factor determining voter turnout. The absence of class struggle increases the power of the elite mass media, which promotes the highly divisive identity politics and demonizes left parties. All of these increase both abstention and the vote for rightwing politicians, like Macron.
The mass media grossly inflated the significance of the right's election victories of the while ignoring the huge wave of citizens rejecting the entire electoral process. In the case of the UK, the appearance of class politics through Jeremy Corbyn increased voter turnout for the Labor Party. However, Labor has a history of first making left promises and ending up with right turns. Any future Labor betrayal will increase voter abstention.
The established parties and the media work in tandem to confine elections to a choreographed contest among competing elites divorced from direct participation by the working classes. This effectively excludes the citizens who have been most harmed by the ruling class' austerity programs implemented by successive rightist and Social Democratic parties.
The decision of many citizens not to vote is based on taking a very rational and informed view of the ruling political elites who have slashed their living standards often by forcing workers to compete with immigrants for low paying, unstable jobs. It is deeply rational for citizens to refuse to vote within a rigged system, which only worsens their living conditions through its attacks on the public sector, social welfare and labor codes while cutting taxes on capital.
Conclusion
The vast majority of citizens in the wage and salaried class do not trust the political elites. They see electoral campaigns as empty exercises, financed by and for plutocrats.
Most citizens recognize (and despise) the mass media as elite propaganda megaphones fabricating 'popular' images to promote anti-working class politicians, while demonizing political activists engaged in class-based struggles.
Nevertheless, elite elections will not produce an effective consolidation of rightwing rule. Voter abstention will not lead to abstention from direct action when the citizens recognize their class interests are in grave jeopardy.
The Macron regime's parliamentary majority will turn into an impotent minority as soon as he tries carry out his elite promise to slash the jobs of hundreds of thousands of French public sector workers, smash France's progressive labor codes and the industry-wide collective bargaining system and pursue new colonial wars.
Puerto Rico's profound economic depression and social crisis will not be resolved through a referendum with only 28% of the voter participation. Large-scale demonstrations will preclude US annexation and deepen mass demands for class-based alternatives to colonial rule.
Conservative rule in the UK is divided by inter-elite rivalries both at home and abroad. ' Brexit' , the first step in the break-up of the EU, opens opportunities for deeper class struggle. The social-economic promises made by Jeremy Corbyn and his left-wing of the Labor Party energized working class voters, but if it does not fundamentally challenge capital, it will revert to being a marginal force.
The weakness and rivalries within the British ruling class will not be resolved in Parliament or by any new elections.
The demise of the UK, the provocation of a Conservative-DUP alliance and the end of the EU (BREXIT) raises the chance for successful mass extra-parliamentary struggles against the authoritarian neo-liberal attacks on workers' civil rights and class interests.
Elite elections and their outcomes in Europe and elsewhere are laying the groundwork for a revival and radicalization of the class struggle.
In the final analysis class rule is not decided via elite elections among oligarchs and their mass media propaganda. Once dismissed as a 'vestige of the past', the revival of class struggle is clearly on the horizon.
(Republished from The James Petras Website by permission of author or representative)
Brás Cubas Show Comment Next New Comment June 28, 2017 at 5:57 pm GMT
WorkingClass Show Comment Next New Comment June 29, 2017 at 5:18 pm GMTA much needed analysis by Mr. Petras. Here in Brazil it is becoming increasingly apparent that extra-electoral manifestations are the only path left for the destitute classes. The only name to which the Left seems able to garner votes is the eternal Luiz da Silva, who has pandered to Capital all through his political career, and will possibly become inelectable anyway, by upcoming criminal convictions.
jilles dykstra Show Comment Next New Comment June 30, 2017 at 7:26 am GMT"In the final analysis class rule is not decided via elite elections among oligarchs and their mass media propaganda. Once dismissed as a 'vestige of the past', the revival of class struggle is clearly on the horizon."
Globalism is the new Feudalism. In the U.S. the serfs still think they are "middle class".
Only the working class can help the working class. This truism is being re-learned.
jilles dykstra Show Comment Next New Comment June 30, 2017 at 7:28 am GMTWe see in any country with a district voting system how democracy does not function: USA, GB and France.
The Dutch equal representation system is far superior, the present difficulties of forming a government reflect the deep divisions in Dutch society.
These deep divisions should be clear anywhere, now that the struggle between globalisation and nationalism is in full swing.jacques sheete Show Comment Next New Comment June 30, 2017 at 9:05 am GMT@Brás Cubas In nearly the whole of S America elections just reflect the struggle between two or more groups of rich people for power.
Expletive Deleted Show Comment Next New Comment June 30, 2017 at 11:38 am GMTThe vast majority citizens (sic) in the wage and salaried class do not trust the political elites. They see electoral campaigns as empty exercises, financed by and for plutocrats.
And they'd be correct.
What amazes me is how many "professional" people still smugly retain faith in an obviously rigged and parasitic system even as their independence is relentlessly eroded. Also, most of them, even the non-TV watchers, seem to slurp the usual propaganda about who the enemies supposedly are.
Self reflection obviously ain't their shtick. Maybe there's comfort in denial and mythology.
Expletive Deleted Show Comment Next New Comment June 30, 2017 at 11:59 am GMTThe DUP would be very quick to insist that they are not para-militaries. As would their Tweedledee, Sinn Féin (invariably referred to as 'Sinn-Féin-I-R-A' by the Unionist factions; not even banter).
It is undeniable that in the past they have had links to UVF/UDA, both straight-up rightwing paramilitary thug outfits formed to mirror and combat the Provisionals and latterly the Continuity IRA and self-styled "Real IRA" nationalist/socialist thugs. And presumably do so to this day.
"Everybody knows" that each political group is pretty much furtively hand-in-glove with their respective heavy mobs, and who's in which one. It's a wee tiny place, the Six Counties.
eD Show Comment Next New Comment June 30, 2017 at 12:56 pm GMTCorbyn has definitely struck a rich vein of popularity (if not populism) among the "don't vote it just encourages them" tendency, and a healthy majority of wealthy and not so wealthy young Brits. Listen to the Glasto crowd. He gets this everywhere now in public (and maybe at home, IDK).
Remarkable transformation for somebody who only few years ago was a dull grey teadrinker from Camden Council, with a half-century-old cardigan and a Catweazle beard.
Even The Demon Blair could never raise this sort of adulation.
TG Show Comment Next New Comment June 30, 2017 at 1:35 pm GMTI want to like the article, but Petras gives three examples, all of which are bad examples for different reasons.
In the case of Puerto Rico, opposition parties campaigned, not for people to vote and to vote against the government position, but to abstain altogether. This is a long standing political tactic of opposition parties and other examples can be found. Its not used that often because its usually a better tactic to just try to get people to get out and vote against the government. However, it can work if there is a minimum turnout requirement for the election to be valid, which is often the case in referenda and seems to be here. But this is evident of people rejecting the government position, not the entire system. Voters obviously responded to the pro-Commonwealth status campaign. By the way, usually referenda on things like independence, or in this case statehood, get unusually high turnout, it was the opposite this time because of the opposition tactic.
On the other hand, in the 2017 French elections there really was a high amount of non-organized or dis-organized abstention on the part of pissed off voters. The problem with Petras account is that this was in fact widely covered in French media and by French political analysts, with commentary along the lines of "these people must be really pissed off not to vote!".
In the recent UK elections turnout was both quite high and increased, so I have no idea wtf Petras is talking about here.
If the examples used weren't so ridiculously bad the article could be OK I guess.
High abstention rates occur when big chunks of the electorate suspect that the elections are rigged, usually by means of vote counting fraud, but effective or legal restrictions on who can run or who can vote can do the job. The rigging might even take the form of discarding ballots, which is the most common form in the US, which means turnout would be recorded as low even if people tried to vote!
Keep in mind that with universal suffrage, it seems consistently that about a quarter of the electorate has no interest in participating in electoral politics whatever the situation. If forced to vote by law, they will spoil their ballots, vote for parties that campaign to end the democratic system, or not vote anyway and suffer whatever legal penalties are imposed. Reasonably healthy democracies can get to turnouts of around 70% fairly consistently. Anything less should be taken as evidence of widespread electoral fraud.
jacques sheete Show Comment Next New Comment June 30, 2017 at 3:21 pm GMTModern "Democracy" is a system for privatizing power and socializing responsibility. The elites get the power, the masses have to take responsibility for the consequences. because, of course, it's a 'democracy.'
Bottom line: political systems are to a great extent irrelevant. Putting your faith in any system: monarchy, socialism, representative democracy, parliamentary democracy, checks and balances, etc., is a mistake. There is (almost) no system that cannot be made to muddle through if the elites have some consideration for the society as a whole. And there is absolutely no system that cannot be easily corrupted if the elites care only about themselves.
jacques sheete Show Comment Next New Comment June 30, 2017 at 3:26 pm GMTIn nearly the whole of S America elections just reflect the struggle between two or more groups of rich people for power.
The same could be said for the revolution of 1776, and it continues in the US today.
I said, "No, there is a great difference. Taft is amiable imbecility. Wilson is willful and malicious imbecility and I prefer Taft."
Roosevelt then said : "Pettigrew, you know the two old parties are just alike. They are both controlled by the same influences, and I am going to organize a new party " a new political party " in this country based upon progressive principles.
"Roosevelt then said : "Pettigrew, you know the two old parties are just alike. They are both controlled by the same influences "- R. F. Pettigrew, "Imperial Washington," The story of American Public life from 1870 to 1920 (1922), p 234
Wally Show Comment Next New Comment June 30, 2017 at 4:42 pm GMTI recommend not voting because it is not ethical to send a non-corrupt person to Washington. The United States is too powerful.
Good recommendation and for a good reason.
I'd say that it's unethical to send anyone to Washington since there is too much wealth and power concentrated in the hands of too few, ethical or not.
In fact, the record shows that few men are worthy to wield much power at all and a system such as we have is almost guaranteed to produce hideous, irresponsible monsters if not downright sadistic ones (like Hillary, for instance).
Instead of talking about draining the swamp, we should have flushed the toilet long go. Now we have to live with the stench.
Wally Show Comment Next New Comment June 30, 2017 at 4:44 pm GMT@Expletive Deleted Looks like a Trump rally.
http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/AP_Donald_Trump_Rally_hb_160310_4x3_992.jpg
bluedog Show Comment Next New Comment June 30, 2017 at 8:04 pm GMT@Daniel Thom Hmmm.
President Trump Has Now Signed 40 Pieces Of Legislation As He Moves To Enact His Agenda
unpc downunder Show Comment Next New Comment June 30, 2017 at 11:06 pm GMT@jilles dykstra Yes indeed just like it is here in the election between Clinton and Trump, two packs of wolves fighting over the sheep
Wizard of Oz Show Comment Next New Comment July 1, 2017 at 12:20 am GMTThe primary reason why lots of working class people don't vote is because they dislike the liberal policy combinations offered by the elite-controlled political parties. Most working class people are socially conservative and economically moderate, while most wealthy, educated people are socially and economically liberal, so mainstream political parties only offer liberal policy packages.
Modern representative democracy was designed in the late 19th Century to allow for some democratic representation for the middle class while protecting the bourgeois elites from the rule of the mob. That may have been a reasonable concern at the time, but it now means tyranny of the liberal elites.
The solution is to reduce the power of political parties, either by making political parties more accountable to their grass roots supporters or getting rid of political parties and directly electing government ministers.
Wizard of Oz Show Comment Next New Comment July 1, 2017 at 12:49 am GMT@eD A well informed comment without the kind of Marxist or other blinkers on that Petras wears. But I question the last sentence. Electoral fraud could work to add votes as well as destroy or lose them and vigilance is needed anyway. Are there highly numerate and worldly wise psephologists with adequate research funding who are acting plausibly to keep a check on the way the bureaucratic guardians of our electoral processes do their job? (All sorts of factors could make a big difference in the proportion who vote. Is it part of the culture one was broùght up in to believe that one had a duty to do one's modest best to participate? Are there a lot of elections at sometimes inconvenient times within a short space of time? Is there a genuine problem deciding between the only candidates who might win on either grand moral or national policy grounds or even simple self interest? Is it assumed only one candidate can possibly win the seat? That last is one of the few arguments for proportional representatiion because a dutiful voter who has a preference for one party will make his infinitesimal contribution by voting).
Even Australia with its 80 to 90+ per cent turnouts to vote in sometimes complicated elections with mixed Alternative Vote/Preferential and proportional representation for the different houses of parliament (and not much "informal" voting as protest) exhibits the growing weaknesses of democracies. That is, as I propose to write in another comment, the corruption of respect for the oligarchs (whether traditional upper and upper middle classes or labour bosses), the replacement of the class that went into politics as a duty by professiinal calculating careerists – plus opportunistic extremists – and the growth of a sense of entitlement which ptobably adds up by now to 150 per cent of all that is or can be. Thanks to China's huge appetite for Australian resources and products Australian democracy can stagger on with scope even for absurd fantasies e.g. about Australia's proper level of masochism in rejecting coal for energy when it can make absolutely no difference to Australia – except to make it poorer.
Wizard of Oz Show Comment Next New Comment July 1, 2017 at 1:00 am GMT@unpc downunder Your version of history differs from mine. 1832 and even 1867 in the UK still built in some protection from the unpropertied lower orders (and 100 per cent from women – publicly anyway) but Australian colonial suffrage was typically the alarming manhood suffrage with only property qualification for some upper house elections as a break on the masses' savage expropriatory instincts – not too much to be feared amongst ambitious colonial strivers in fact. The general assumption that everyone with an IQ of 100 and a degree in Fashionable Jargon-ridden Muddled Thinking is as worth listening to as anyone from the tradional educated bougeois or landed elite has inevitably put politics into the hands of the ruthless, often arriviste careerists.
Please think again about your last par. which I suggest is a prescription for (even worse) disaster. The idea of getting rid of political parties (how?) is as unrealistic as having the bored populace vote directly for membership of the executive government who, in parliamentary systems at least, have to command legislative majorities to be effective. And why do you think responsiveness to those few who join political parties is likely to benefit the wider public when you consider what has been wrought in the UK Labour Party by election of the leader by a flood of new young members wlling to pay £3 to join!! I believe the Tories have also moved in that idiotic direction. Imagine even the comparatively simple business of making motor cars being headed by a CEO who had campaigned for votes amingst all workers who had been employed for more than 4 weeks with promises of squeezing shareholders and doubling wages.
Wizard of Oz Show Comment Next New Comment July 1, 2017 at 1:21 am GMT@jilles dykstra Your observation seems to depend for its truth on people (and you?) seeing politics and national life as a zero sum game with no chance of increase in wealth or other good things of life. That seems to be a logical attitude only in countries which sre still Malthusian like say Niger with its TFF of 7! Is that a tealistic assessment of 2017 South America, or most of it?
@jilles dykstra We see in any country with a district voting system how democracy does not function: USA, GB and France.
The Dutch equal representation system is far superior, the present difficulties of forming a government reflect the deep divisions in Dutch society.
These deep divisions should be clear anywhere, now that the struggle between globalisation and nationalism is in full swing. I had in mind your comment when writing part of my last par in #17 which I won't repeat.But allow me to expŕess astonishment at the idea that a truly sovereign nation benefits from an electoral system which so represents irreconcilable differences in society that a government cannot be formed. The Netherlands comfortable position as a minor feature of the EU makes it perhaps less of a problem than, at least potentially, it is for Israel. Whenever Israel handles anything really stupidly it is a good bet that it is during wrangling over putting together a majority government.
Another problem with PR well illustrated by Israel that you don't mention is that citizens have no local member who has to show that he cares about his constituents' concerns and actually gets to know about them. That, for the average citizen has to be a really important matter. In Australia we have just seen a pretty dodgy Chinese government aligned businessman/ donor to the New South Wales Labor Party rewarded with nomination to a winnable place in the PR election of the Senate. There is no way he would be put forward to win votes in a local electorate of thousands of voters rather than millions.
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Oct 06, 2015 | Zero Hedge
We have just witnessed one of the most significant steps toward a one world economic system that we have ever seen. Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership have been completed, and if approved it will create the largest trading bloc on the planet. But this is not just a trade agreement. In this treaty, Barack Obama has thrown in all sorts of things that he never would have been able to get through Congress otherwise. And once this treaty is approved, it will be exceedingly difficult to ever make changes to it. So essentially what is happening is that the Obama agenda is being permanently locked in for 40 percent of the global economy.The United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam all intend to sign on to this insidious plan. Collectively, these nations have a total population of about 800 million people and a combined GDP of approximately 28 trillion dollars.
Of course Barack Obama is assuring all of us that this treaty is going to be wonderful for everyone…
In hailing the agreement, Obama said, "Congress and the American people will have months to read every word" before he signs the deal that he described as a win for all sides.
"If we can get this agreement to my desk, then we can help our businesses sell more Made in America goods and services around the world, and we can help more American workers compete and win," Obama said.
Sadly, just like with every other "free trade" agreement that the U.S. has entered into since World War II, the exact opposite is what will actually happen. Our trade deficit will get even larger, and we will see even more jobs and even more businesses go overseas.
But the mainstream media will never tell you this. Instead, they are just falling all over themselves as they heap praise on this new trade pact. Just check out a couple of the headlines that we saw on Monday…
- Time Magazine: "Pacific Trade Deal Is Good for the U.S. and Obama's Legacy"
- The Washington Post: "The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a trade deal worth celebrating"
Overseas it is a different story. Many journalists over there fully recognize that this treaty greatly benefits many of the big corporations that played a key role in drafting it. For example, the following comes from a newspaper in Thailand…
You will hear much about the importance of the TPP for "free trade".
The reality is that this is an agreement to manage its members' trade and investment relations - and to do so on behalf of each country's most powerful business lobbies.
These sentiments were echoed in a piece that Zero Hedge posted on Monday…
Packaged as a gift to the American people that will renew industry and make us more competitive, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a Trojan horse. It's a coup by multinational corporations who want global subservience to their agenda. Buyer beware. Citizens beware.
The gigantic corporations that dominate our economy don't care about the little guy. If they can save a few cents on the manufacturing of an item by moving production to Timbuktu they will do it.
Over the past couple of decades, the United States has lost tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities and millions of good paying jobs due to these "free trade agreements". As we merge our economy with the economies of nations where it is legal to pay slave labor wages, it is inevitable that corporations will shift jobs to places where labor is much cheaper. Our economic infrastructure is being absolutely eviscerated in the process, and very few of our politicians seem to care.
Once upon a time, the city of Detroit was the greatest manufacturing city on the planet and it had the highest per capita income in the entire nation. But today it is a rotting, decaying hellhole that the rest of the world laughs at. What has happened to the city of Detroit is happening to the entire nation as a whole, but our politicians just keep pushing us even farther down the road to oblivion.
Just consider what has happened since NAFTA was implemented. In the year before NAFTA was approved, the United States actually had a trade surplus with Mexico and our trade deficit with Canada was only 29.6 billion dollars. But now things are very different. In one recent year, the U.S. had a combined trade deficit with Mexico and Canada of 177 billion dollars.
And these trade deficits are not just numbers. They represent real jobs that are being lost. It has been estimated that the U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every 1 billion dollars of goods that are imported from overseas, and one professor has estimated that cutting our trade deficit in half would create 5 million more jobs in the United States.
Just yesterday, I wrote about how there are 102.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now. Once upon a time, if you were honest, dependable and hard working it was easy to get a good paying job in this country. But now things are completely different.
Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, only about 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.
Why aren't more people alarmed by numbers like this?
And of course the Trans-Pacific Partnership is not just about "free trade". In one of my previous articles, I explained that Obama is using this as an opportunity to permanently impose much of his agenda on a large portion of the globe…
It is basically a gigantic end run around Congress. Thanks to leaks, we have learned that so many of the things that Obama has deeply wanted for years are in this treaty. If adopted, this treaty will fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, healthcare, copyright and patent protection, food safety, environmental standards, civil liberties and so much more. This treaty includes many of the rules that alarmed Internet activists so much when SOPA was being debated, it would essentially ban all "Buy American" laws, it would give Wall Street banks much more freedom to trade risky derivatives and it would force even more domestic manufacturing offshore.
The Republicans in Congress foolishly gave Obama fast track negotiating authority, and so Congress will not be able to change this treaty in any way. They will only have the opportunity for an up or down vote.
I would love to see Congress reject this deal, but we all know that is extremely unlikely to happen. When big votes like this come up, immense pressure is put on key politicians. Yes, there are a few members of Congress that still have backbones, but most of them are absolutely spineless. When push comes to shove, the globalist agenda always seems to advance.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media will be telling the American people about all of the wonderful things that this new treaty will do for them. You would think that after how badly past "free trade" treaties have turned out that we would learn something, but somehow that never seems to happen.
The agenda of the globalists is moving forward, and very few Americans seem to care.
HedgeAccordinglytwo hootsBill Clinton on signing NAFTA:
First of all, because NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't support this agreement.
Freddie
Many of those NeoCon Bibi lovers and Jonathan Pollard conservatives love TPP and H1B Ted Cruz. Ted is also a Goldman Sachs boy.
Squids_In
That giant sucking sound just got gianter.
MrTouchdown
Probably, but here's a thought:
It might be a blowing sound of all things USA deflating down (in USD terms) to what they are actually worth when compared to the rest of the world. For example, a GM assembly line worker will make what an assembly line worker in Vietnam makes.
This will, of course, panic Old Yellen, who will promptly fill her diaper and begin subsidizing wages with Quantitative Pleasing (QP1).
Buckaroo Banzai
If this gets through congress, the Republican Party better not bother asking for my vote ever again.
Chupacabra-322
Vote? You seem to think "voting" will actually influence actions / Globalists plans which have been decades in the making amoungst thse Criminal Pure Evil Lucerferian Psychopaths hell bent on Total Complete Full Spectrum World Domination.
Yea, keep voting. I'll be out hunting down these Evil doers like the dogs that they are.
Buckaroo Banzai
I have no illusions regarding the efficacy of voting. It is indeed a waste of time.
What I said was, they better not dare even ASK for my vote.
Ignatius
Doesn't matter. Diebold is so good at counting that you don't even need to show up at the polls anymore. It's like a miracle of modern technology.
Peter Pan
Did the article say 40%?
I imagine they meant 40% of whatever is left after we all go to hell in a hand basket.
Great day for the multinationals and in particular the pharmaceutical companies.
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finance.yahoo.com
While cheaper fuel is a boost to consumer spending power in much of the developed world, it is also a disinflationary force that reinforces bets on loose monetary policy in Europe, Japan and China, even as the Federal Reserve proceeds with glacial tightening.
Oil prices are ending the year how they began - under pressure.
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Zero Hedge
Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,
...Already, investment is estimated to have dropped by 20% in 2015, and that is just the beginning.
This unfolding collapse of oil and gas investments, of course, will ricochet through the capital goods and heavy construction sectors with gale force. Eventually, annual investment may decline by $250 to $400 billion before balance is restored, meaning that what were windfall profits and surging wages and bonuses in these sectors just a year or two back will evaporate in the years ahead.
... ... ...
... as the credit bubble begins to shrink it means that profits, incomes, balance sheets and credit-worthiness are all shrinking, too. So is the related GDP.
But now the days of heady accumulation of "sovereign wealth" in Saudi Arabia, Norway, Kazakhstan and dozens of commodity producers in between is over and done. What is happening is that these funds are entering a cycle of liquidation which is unprecedented in financial history.
Indeed, the data for Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is stunning. During the global credit boom they amassed sovereign wealth funds totaling $2.3 trillion. But with deficits now estimated at 13% of GDP and rising, the level of asset liquidation is soaring.
Thus, if crude oil prices recover to $56 per barrel next year, the GCC states will need to liquidate $208 billion of investments.
... ... ...
In a word, the unnatural Big Fat Bid of the sovereign wealth funds is going All Offers as oil and commodity producers struggle to fund their budgets.
... ... ...
Jack Burton
ENERGY Sector "what were windfall profits and surging wages and bonuses in these sectors just a year or two back will evaporate in the years ahead."
This is already crushing Canada and North Dakota, whose actual oil field cut backs are only now beginning as they tried to produce their way out of the debt crisis. But the hedges have run out, prices seem glued to the basement and NOW the time has come to eliminate the expeditures. That mean people losing jobs all up and down the line.
Stockman is brilliant here, as always.
I was watching "The Big Short" last night too. Excellent film. Very historic and everyone should watch it.
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Dec 30, 2015 | Economist's View
Sandwichman, December 30, 2015 at 10:06 AM"Graduate students of economics learn, early in their careers, that markets allocations are Pareto Optimal."What they don't learn is that
1. the ideal markets that would produce Pareto Optimal allocations don't actually exist and
2. moving from actually existing non-ideal markets to ideal markets WOULD NOT BE Pareto Optimal even if it was possible to do so, which it isn't.
In short, Pareto Optimality is a just so story that has absolutely no bearing on the real world other than as an ideological justification for tons of bullshit.
The next step in graduate students' indoctrination is to teach them that although Pareto Optimal reallocations are implausible, you can get around that with a "principle of compensation." The principle, too is based on a same yardstick fallacy. But never mind the Pareto Optimality smokescreen and the compensation smokescreen have constrained economists to think in terms of doing what is best for the wealthiest. Funny how that happens.
anne said in reply to Sandwichman
Pareto Optimality is a just so story that has absolutely no bearing on the real world other than as an ideological justification for tons of bull----.[ Agreed completely and I think this an important conclusion. ]
Paine said in reply to anne
YesSandy gets the guts of it
Though
The compensation principle is precisely what Pareto rule is all about
Yes we can scramble the goods all we want so long as in the end everyone is at least as well off as before the scramble
In a pure exchange model this is less exciting then in a one period production model
Going on to an inter temporal model with an infinite horizon gets into real juicy Wonderlands
The academy makes it's living as much by distracting fine minds as training them
anne said in reply to Sandwichman
The next step in graduate students' indoctrination is to teach them that although Pareto Optimal reallocations are implausible, you can get around that with a "principle of compensation." The principle, too is based on a same yardstick fallacy. But never mind the Pareto Optimality smokescreen and the compensation smokescreen have constrained economists to think in terms of doing what is best for the wealthiest....anne said in reply to Sandwichman...December 29, 2015
Richest in U.S. Shape Private Tax System to Save Billions
By NOAM SCHEIBER and PATRICIA COHENThe very wealthiest families are able to quietly shape tax policy that will allow them to shield millions, if not billions, of their income using maneuvers available only to several thousand Americans.
Supposing I understand the essay, Roger Farmer is just writing the logical justification to Herbert Spencer's (never Charles Darwin's) "survival of the fittest" rationale that Spencer made wildly popular after Darwin published "On the Origin of Species."
Spencer was the successful ultimate justifier of British "sun-never-setting-on-the-Empire" capitalism. Spencer sold a biological justification, Farmer is selling a logical justification of Empire.
Sandwichman said in reply to anne
No, I think Farmer is dissing Pareto Optimality and using "sunspots" as sarcasm. He seems to do it in a way that opens up space for countless side arguments that leave Pareto Optimality unscathed.The bottom line is that NO ONE would have ever paid any attention to the not just "weak" but nonsensical concept if it didn't serve the function of justifying and ultimately glorifying great inequalities of wealth and income.
;anne said in reply to Sandwichman
I understand the argument and I am entirely right:Roger Farmer is just writing the logical justification to Herbert Spencer's (never Charles Darwin's) "survival of the fittest" rationale that Spencer made wildly popular after Darwin published "On the Origin of Species."
Spencer was the successful ultimate justifier of British "sun-never-setting-on-the-Empire" capitalism. Spencer sold a biological justification, Farmer is selling a logical justification of Empire capitalism.
anne said in reply to Sandwichman
I needed to be sure the argument was as empty morally as I supposed initially, but I supposed correctly. The Roger Farmer essay is an amoral logical justification of imperial capitalism. Plato's "Republic" conceived amorally. ;anne said in reply to Sandwichman
A mean little essay, carefully subtle and mean.Paine said in reply to anne
But Anne as sandy points out Roger blows up the use of Pareto by his future generations argumentThose unable to establish their preferences are unaccounted for in the scrum
He uses this to draw a bold distinction between securities markets and fish catch of the day markets
Paine said in reply to Paine
It's not the way I'd make his pointBut his distinction is important
Some are impacted that are not participating
Third party effects that can not be resolved even with repeated " games "
Because the players are not yet presentanne said in reply to Sandwichman
Farmer is dissing Pareto Optimality and using "sunspots" as sarcasm. He seems to do it in a way that opens up space for countless side arguments that leave Pareto Optimality unscathed.The bottom line is that NO ONE would have ever paid any attention to the not just "weak" but nonsensical concept if it didn't serve the function of justifying and ultimately glorifying great inequalities of wealth and income.
[ Agreed completely, but this argument runs with mine. ]
anne said in reply to Sandwichman
Farmer is dissing Pareto Optimality and using "sunspots" as sarcasm. He seems to do it in a way that opens up space for countless side arguments that leave Pareto Optimality unscathed....[ The issue is that Roger Farmer leaves Pareto Optimality unscathed, and this is an essential point. The essay is beyond the morality of now, but there is no beyond. ]
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Dec 30, 2015 | Economist's View
Sandwichman, December 30, 2015 at 10:06 AM"Graduate students of economics learn, early in their careers, that markets allocations are Pareto Optimal."What they don't learn is that
1. the ideal markets that would produce Pareto Optimal allocations don't actually exist and
2. moving from actually existing non-ideal markets to ideal markets WOULD NOT BE Pareto Optimal even if it was possible to do so, which it isn't.
In short, Pareto Optimality is a just so story that has absolutely no bearing on the real world other than as an ideological justification for tons of bullshit.
The next step in graduate students' indoctrination is to teach them that although Pareto Optimal reallocations are implausible, you can get around that with a "principle of compensation." The principle, too is based on a same yardstick fallacy. But never mind the Pareto Optimality smokescreen and the compensation smokescreen have constrained economists to think in terms of doing what is best for the wealthiest. Funny how that happens.
anne said in reply to Sandwichman
Pareto Optimality is a just so story that has absolutely no bearing on the real world other than as an ideological justification for tons of bull----.[ Agreed completely and I think this an important conclusion. ]
Paine said in reply to anne
YesSandy gets the guts of it
Though
The compensation principle is precisely what Pareto rule is all about
Yes we can scramble the goods all we want so long as in the end everyone is at least as well off as before the scramble
In a pure exchange model this is less exciting then in a one period production model
Going on to an inter temporal model with an infinite horizon gets into real juicy Wonderlands
The academy makes it's living as much by distracting fine minds as training them
anne said in reply to Sandwichman
The next step in graduate students' indoctrination is to teach them that although Pareto Optimal reallocations are implausible, you can get around that with a "principle of compensation." The principle, too is based on a same yardstick fallacy. But never mind the Pareto Optimality smokescreen and the compensation smokescreen have constrained economists to think in terms of doing what is best for the wealthiest....anne said in reply to Sandwichman...December 29, 2015
Richest in U.S. Shape Private Tax System to Save Billions
By NOAM SCHEIBER and PATRICIA COHENThe very wealthiest families are able to quietly shape tax policy that will allow them to shield millions, if not billions, of their income using maneuvers available only to several thousand Americans.
Supposing I understand the essay, Roger Farmer is just writing the logical justification to Herbert Spencer's (never Charles Darwin's) "survival of the fittest" rationale that Spencer made wildly popular after Darwin published "On the Origin of Species."
Spencer was the successful ultimate justifier of British "sun-never-setting-on-the-Empire" capitalism. Spencer sold a biological justification, Farmer is selling a logical justification of Empire.
Sandwichman said in reply to anne
No, I think Farmer is dissing Pareto Optimality and using "sunspots" as sarcasm. He seems to do it in a way that opens up space for countless side arguments that leave Pareto Optimality unscathed.The bottom line is that NO ONE would have ever paid any attention to the not just "weak" but nonsensical concept if it didn't serve the function of justifying and ultimately glorifying great inequalities of wealth and income.
;anne said in reply to Sandwichman
I understand the argument and I am entirely right:Roger Farmer is just writing the logical justification to Herbert Spencer's (never Charles Darwin's) "survival of the fittest" rationale that Spencer made wildly popular after Darwin published "On the Origin of Species."
Spencer was the successful ultimate justifier of British "sun-never-setting-on-the-Empire" capitalism. Spencer sold a biological justification, Farmer is selling a logical justification of Empire capitalism.
anne said in reply to Sandwichman
I needed to be sure the argument was as empty morally as I supposed initially, but I supposed correctly. The Roger Farmer essay is an amoral logical justification of imperial capitalism. Plato's "Republic" conceived amorally. ;anne said in reply to Sandwichman
A mean little essay, carefully subtle and mean.Paine said in reply to anne
But Anne as sandy points out Roger blows up the use of Pareto by his future generations argumentThose unable to establish their preferences are unaccounted for in the scrum
He uses this to draw a bold distinction between securities markets and fish catch of the day markets
Paine said in reply to Paine
It's not the way I'd make his pointBut his distinction is important
Some are impacted that are not participating
Third party effects that can not be resolved even with repeated " games "
Because the players are not yet presentanne said in reply to Sandwichman
Farmer is dissing Pareto Optimality and using "sunspots" as sarcasm. He seems to do it in a way that opens up space for countless side arguments that leave Pareto Optimality unscathed.The bottom line is that NO ONE would have ever paid any attention to the not just "weak" but nonsensical concept if it didn't serve the function of justifying and ultimately glorifying great inequalities of wealth and income.
[ Agreed completely, but this argument runs with mine. ]
anne said in reply to Sandwichman
Farmer is dissing Pareto Optimality and using "sunspots" as sarcasm. He seems to do it in a way that opens up space for countless side arguments that leave Pareto Optimality unscathed....[ The issue is that Roger Farmer leaves Pareto Optimality unscathed, and this is an essential point. The essay is beyond the morality of now, but there is no beyond. ]
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www.theguardian.com
The IMF managing director, Christine Lagarde, said the prospect of rising interest rates in the US and an economic slowdown in China were feeding uncertainty and a higher risk of economic vulnerability worldwide.
Added to that, growth in global trade has slowed considerably and a decline in raw material prices was posing problems for economies reliant on commodities, while many countries still had weak financial sectors as the financial risks increase in emerging markets, she said.
"All of that means global growth will be disappointing and uneven in 2016," Lagarde said, noting that mid-term prospects had also weakened as low productivity, ageing populations and the effects of the global financial crisis dampened growth. In October, the IMF forecast that the world economy would grow by 3.6% in 2016.
... ... ....
Emerging market companies with debt in dollars and revenue in sinking local currencies could struggle as the Fed begins what is expected to be a series of interest rate increases.
Lagarde warned that rising US interest rates and a stronger dollar could lead to companies defaulting on their payments and that this could "infect" banks and states.
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Dec 29, 2015 | Economist's View
'The Fed and Financial Reform – Reflections on Sen. Sanders op-Ed'
This is the beginning of a long response from Larry Summers to an op-ed by Bernie Sanders:JohnH said...The Fed and Financial Reform – Reflections on Sen. Sanders op-Ed : Bernie Sanders had an op Ed in the New York Times on Fed reform last week that provides an opportunity to reflect on the Fed and financial reform more generally. I think that Sanders is right in his central point that financial policy is overly influenced by financial interests to its detriment and that it is essential that this be repaired.At the same time, reform requires careful reflection if it is not to be counterproductive. And it is important in approaching issues of reform not to give ammunition to right wing critics of the Fed who would deny it the capacity to engage in the kind of crisis responses that have judged in their totality been successful in responding to the financial crisis.
The most important policy priority with respect to the Fed is protecting it from stone age monetary ideas like a return to the gold standard, or turning policymaking over to a formula, or removing the dual mandate commanding the Fed to worry about unemployment as well as inflation. ...
Disagree!!! There is more to this than just interest rates. There is the matter of how the policy gets implemented--who gets low rates. Currently the low rates serve mostly the 1%, who profit enormously from them. Case in point: Mort Zuckerberg's 1% mortgage!JohnH said in reply to JohnH..."The obvious candidate for this dark force [correlation between (rising) inequality and (low) growth] is crony capitalism. When a country succumbs to cronyism, friends of the rulers are able to appropriate large amounts of wealth for themselves -- for example, by being awarded government-protected monopolies over certain markets, as in Russia after the fall of communism. That will obviously lead to inequality of income and wealth. It will also make the economy inefficient, since money is flowing to unproductive cronies. Cronyism may also reduce growth by allowing the wealthy to exert greater influence on political policy, creating inefficient subsidies for themselves and unfair penalties for their rivals."
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-12-24/cronyism-causes-the-worst-kind-of-inequality
As we know (although most here steadfastly ignore it) the Fed is rife with crony capitalism. As Bernie pointed out, 4 of the regional governors are from Goldman Sachs. Other examples are abundant. Quite simply, the system is rigged to benefit the few, minimizing any potential trickle down.
If a broad economic recovery is the goal, ending cronyism at the Fed is likely to be far more effective that low interest rates channeled only to the 1%.
Stiglitz:Peter K. said in reply to JohnH...The real problem is that money does not go to where it should go, as we see for example in the United States. The money does not flow into the real economy, because the transmission mechanism is broken. That is why we have a bubble in the financial system. The answer is not to tighten monetary policy, but to reform monetary policy so as to ensure that the money gets to the right place...
Small and medium enterprises cannot borrow money at zero interest rates - not even a private person, I wish I could do that (laughs). I'm more worried about the loan interest rates, which are still too high. Access for small and medium enterprises to credit is too expensive. That's why it is so important that the transmission mechanism work..."
http://www.cash.ch/news/alle/stiglitz-billiggeld-lost-kein-problem-3393853-448And let's not forget consumer credit rates, which barely dropped during the Great Recession and are still well above 10%. Even mortgage lending, which primarily benefits the affluent, have been stagnant for years despite historically low rates.
As Stiglitz notes, the transmission mechanisms are broken. Economists' trickle down monetary policy might work in theory, but not in practice, as we have seen for the last seven years, when low rates don't trickle down and were wasted instead on asset speculation by the 1%.
Reform of the Fed, and the end of cronyism are essential to making sure that the stimulus of low rates gets to Main Street, to ordinary people, and not primarily to asset speculators.
EMichael said in reply to Peter K....Bernie Sanders:
"The recent decision by the Fed to raise interest rates is the latest example of the rigged economic system. Big bankers and their supporters in Congress have been telling us for years that runaway inflation is just around the corner. They have been dead wrong each time. Raising interest rates now is a disaster for small business owners who need loans to hire more workers and Americans who need more jobs and higher wages. As a rule, the Fed should not raise interest rates until unemployment is lower than 4 percent. Raising rates must be done only as a last resort - not to fight phantom inflation. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/opinion/bernie-sanders-to-rein-in-wall-street-fix-the-fed.html
JF said...It is hilarious.
"He's right! But his policies are wrong!"
You couldn't make this up......
The financial system reform legislation in 2017 will also need to include these matters:BillB said...1. Licensure fees and higher and more differential income taxation rates based on the type of financial trading ratios the entities have (in order to direct more emphasis to real-economy lending and away from speculative and leveraged positions used in the financial asset trading marketplaces, so hedge funds probably would face the highest rates in income taxation). For a certain period after enactment these added taxes would be payable by the banks using their excess reserves, which will simply be eliminated until the reserve accounts return to the historically normal period when excess reserves were very small (there would no longer be a need for IOER, as the excess would be eliminated by operation of the taxation statutes). Attaching added ways & means statutes to all the financial service entities also serves to 'cover' some more of huge financial risk held by society and produced by them while the success of this huge sector actually contributes to the financing of self-government - which is also an indirect way to attach high Net Worth being used).
2. New statutory provisions need to reach any and all entities in the financial community regardless of definitions based on the functions they serve or provide (or the way they are named - so yes, the prior separation for deposit-management banking from investing activities can still happen, but this only helps to define which of the differential provisions apply, not help the entity escape them). Perhaps as a result Bank Holding Companies and other large entities won't use a complex network of hundreds of subsidiaries as these would not then serve as a way to avoid taxation, regulatory standards on what are prudent expectations, or supervision; or be used simply to obfuscate -- so investors and regulators can't see the truth of matters.
3. The newly named central bank needs to hold the discretion to buy Treasury bonds directly from the Treasury. This would discipline these fundamental asset-trading marketplaces and the huge primary dealer group of entities, and weaken the fox-and-hen-house influence on public finance.
4. New accounting approaches for the central bank would clarify what happens should the Congress direct redemption amounts or asset sales for the public's purposes. A good portion of the current FRB's book of owned assets can be redeemed or sold without affecting the 'power' of the central bank, and the proceeds used then, for example, to lower payroll taxes via a direct transfer to the social security trust fund's set of accounts).
Senator Sanders, good stuff. Bring out the vote, let us get others in Congress with whom you can work.
Summers: "The most important policy priority with respect to the Fed is protecting it from stone age monetary ideas like a return to the gold standard, or turning policymaking over to a formula, or removing the dual mandate commanding the Fed to worry about unemployment as well as inflation."pgl said in reply to pgl...And in one sentence Summers illustrates exactly why we dodged a bullet in not appointing Summers to be Fed Chair. Preserving the power of the Fed is not the most important policy. Changing the Fed composition so that it is more consumer friendly and not dominated by Wall Street interests is the most important policy change needed.
Summers argument is the same we always hear from so-called "centrists." "You hippies should shut up because you are helping the opposition."
You hear the same sort of argument with respect to Black Lives Matter.
On financial regulation - Summers is spot on here:
"the Balkanized character of US banking regulation is indefensible and would be ended. The worst regulatory idea of the 20th century-the dual banking system-persists into the 21st. The idea is that we have two systems one regulated by the States and the Fed and the other regulated by the OCC so banks have choice. With ambitious regulators eager to expand their reach, the inevitable result is a race to the bottom."
It is called regulatory capture.
Summers is also calling for higher capital requirements. Excellent stuff!
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Dec 28, 2015 | Monthly Review
... ... ...Summers's remarks and articles were followed by an explosion of debate concerning "secular stagnation"-a term commonly associated with Alvin Hansen's work from the 1930s to '50s, and frequently employed in Monthly Review to explain developments in the advanced economies from the 1970s to the early 2000s.2 Secular stagnation can be defined as the tendency to long-term (or secular) stagnation in the private accumulation process of the capitalist economy, manifested in rising unemployment and excess capacity and a slowdown in overall economic growth. It is often referred to simply as "stagnation." There are numerous theories of secular stagnation but most mainstream theories hearken back to Hansen, who was Keynes's leading early follower in the United States, and who derived the idea from various suggestions in Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936).
Responses to Summers have been all over the map, reflecting both the fact that the capitalist economy has been slowing down, and the role in denying it by many of those seeking to legitimate the system. Stanford economist John B. Taylor contributed a stalwart denial of secular stagnation in the Wall Street Journal. In contrast, Paul Krugman, who is closely aligned with Summers, endorsed secular stagnation on several occasions in the New York Times. Other notable economists such as Brad DeLong and Michael Spence soon weighed in with their own views.3
Three prominent economists have new books directly addressing the phenomena of secular stagnation.4 It has now been formally modelled by Brown University economists Gauti Eggertsson and Neil Mehrotra, while Thomas Piketty's high-profile book bases its theoretical argument and policy recommendations on stagnation tendencies of capitalism. This explosion of interest in the Summers/Krugman version of stagnation has also resulted in a collection of articles and debate, edited by Coen Teulings and Richard Baldwin, entitled Secular Stagnation: Facts, Causes and Cures.5
Seven years after "The Great Financial Crisis" of 2007–2008, the recovery remains sluggish. It can be argued that the length and depth of the Great Financial Crisis is a rather ordinary cyclical crisis. However, the monetary and fiscal measures to combat it were extraordinary. This has resulted in a widespread sense that there will not be a return to "normal." Summers/Krugman's resurrection within the mainstream of Hansen's concept of secular stagnation is an attempt to explain how extraordinary policy measures following the 2007–2008 crisis merely led to the stabilization of a lethargic, if not comatose, economy.
But what do these economists mean by secular stagnation? If stagnation is a reality, does their conception of it make current policy tools obsolete? And what is the relationship between the Summers/Krugman notion of secular stagnation and the monopoly-finance capital theory?
... ... ...
In "secular stagnation," the term "secular" is intended to differentiate between the normal business cycle and long-term, chronic stagnation. A long-term slowdown in the economy over decades can be seen as superimposed on the regular business cycle, reflecting the trend rather than the cycle.
In the general language of economics, secular stagnation, or simply stagnation, thus implies that the long-run potential economic growth has fallen, constituting the first pillar of MISS. This has been most forcefully argued for by Robert Gordon, as well as Garry Kasparov and Peter Thiel.6 Their argument is that the cumulative growth effect of current (and future) technological changes will be far weaker than in the past. Moreover, demographic changes place limits on the development of "human capital." The focus is on technology, which orthodox economics generally sees as a factor external to the economy and on the supply-side (i.e., in relation to cost). Gordon's position is thus different than that of moderate Keynesians like Summers and Krugman, who focus on demand-side contradictions of the system. In Gordon's supply-side, technocratic view, there are forces at work that will limit the growth in productive input and the efficiency of these inputs. This pillar of MISS emphasizes that it is constraints on the aggregate supply-side of the economy that have diminished absolutely the long-run potential growth.
The second pillar of MISS, also a supply-side view, goes back at least to Joseph Schumpeter. To explain the massive slump of 1937, Schumpeter maintained there had emerged a growing anti-business climate. Moreover, he contended that the rise of the modern corporation had displaced the role of the entrepreneur; the anti-business spirit had a repressive effect on entrepreneurs' confidence and optimism.7 Today, this second pillar of MISS has been resurrected suggestively by John B. Taylor, who argues the poor recovery is best "explained by policy uncertainty" and "increased regulation" that is unfavorable to business. Likewise, Baker, Bloom, and Davis have forcefully argued that political uncertainty can hold back private investment and economic growth.8
Summers and Krugman, as Keynesians, emphasize a third MISS pillar, derived from Keynes's famous liquidity trap theory, which contends that the "full-employment real interest rate" has declined in recent years. Indeed, both Summers and Krugman demonstrate that real interest rates have declined over recent decades, therefore moving from an exogenous explanation (as in pillars one and two) to a more endogenous explanation of secular stagnation.9 The ultimate problem here is lack of investment demand, such that, in order for net investment to occur at all, interest rates have to be driven to near zero or below. Their strong argument is that there are now times when negative real interest rates are needed to equate saving and investment with full employment.
However, "interest rates are not fully flexible in modern economies"-in other words, market-determined interest rate adjustments chronically fail to achieve full employment. Summers contends there are financial forces that prohibit the real interest rate from becoming negative; hence, full employment cannot be realized.10
Some theorists contend that there has been demographic structural shifts increasing the supply of saving, thus decreasing interest rates. These shifts include an increase in life expectancy, a decrease in retirement age, and a decline in the growth rate of population.
Others, including Summers, point out that stagnation in capital formation (or accumulation) can be attributed to a decrease in the demand for loanable funds for investment. One mainstream explanation offered for this is that today's new technologies and companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook, require far less capital investment. Another hypothesis is that there has been an important decrease in the demand for loanable funds, although they argue this is due to a preference for safe assets. These factors can function together to keep the real interest rate very low. The policy implication of secular low interest rates is that monetary policy is more difficult to implement effectually; during a recession, it is weakened and can even become ineffectual.
Edward Glaeser, focusing on "secular joblessness," places severe doubt on the first pillar of MISS, but then makes a very important additional argument. Glaeser rejects the notion that there has been a slowdown in technological innovation; innovation is simply "unrelenting." Likewise, he is far less concerned with secular low real interest rates, which may be far more cyclical. "Therefore," contends Glaeser, "stagnation is likely to be temporary."
Nonetheless, Glaeser underscores secular joblessness, and thus the dysfunction of U.S. labor markets constitutes a fourth pillar of MISS: "The dysfunction in the labour market is real and serious, and seems unlikely to be solved by any obvious economic trend." Somehow, then, the problem is due to a misfit of skills or "human capital" on the side of workers, who thus need retraining. "The massive secular trend in joblessness is a terrible social problem for the US, and one that the country must try to address" with targeted policy.11 Glaeser's argument for the dysfunction of U.S. labor markets is based on recession-generated shocks to employment, specifically of less-skilled U.S. workers. After 1970, when workers lost their job, the damage to human capital became permanent. In short, when human capital depreciates due to unemployment, overall abilities and "talent" are "lost" permanently. This may be because the skills required in today's economy need to be constantly practiced to be retained. Thus, there is a ratchet-like effect in joblessness caused by recessions, whereby recession-linked joblessness is not fully reversed during recoveries-and all this is related to skills (the human capital of the workers), and not to capital itself. According to Glaeser, the ratchet-like effect of recession-linked joblessness is further exacerbated by the U.S. social-safety net, which has "made joblessness less painful and increased the incentives to stay out of work."12
Glaeser contends that, if his secular joblessness argument is correct, the macroeconomic fiscal interventions argued for by Summers and Krugman are off-base.13 Instead, the safety net should be redesigned in order to encourage rather than discourage people from working. Additionally, incentives to work need to be radically improved through targeted investments in education and workforce training.14 Such views within the mainstream debate, emphasizing exogenous factors, are generally promoted by freshwater (conservative) rather than saltwater (liberal) economists. Thus, they tend to emphasize supply-side or cost factors.
The fifth pillar of MISS contends that output and productivity growth are stagnant due to a failure to invest in infrastructure, education, and training. Nearly all versions of MISS subscribe to some version of this, although there are both conservative and liberal variations. Barry Eichengreen underscores this pillar and condemns recent U.S. fiscal developments that have "cut to the bone" federal government spending devoted to infrastructure, education, and training.
The fifth pillar of MISS necessarily reflects an imbalance between public and private investment spending. Many theorists maintain that the imbalance between public and private investment spending, hence secular stagnation, "is not inevitable." For example, Eichengreen contends if "the US experiences secular stagnation, the condition will be self-inflicted. It will reflect the country's failure to address its infrastructure, education and training needs. It will reflect its failure to…support aggregate demand in an effort to bring the long-term unemployed back into the labour market."15
The sixth pillar of MISS argues that the "debt overhang" from the overleveraging of financial firms and households, as well as private and public indebtedness, are a serious drag on the economy. This position has been argued for most forcefully by several colleagues of Summers at Harvard, most notably Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.16 Atif Mian and Amir Sufi also argue that household indebtedness was the primary culprit causing the economic collapse of 2007–2008. Their policy recommendation is that the risk to mortgage borrowers must be reduced to avoid future calamities.17
As noted, the defenders of MISS do not necessarily support a compatibility between the above six pillars: those favored by conservatives are supply-side and exogenous in emphasis, while liberals tend towards demand-side and endogenous ones. Instead, most often these pillars are developed as competing theories to explain the warrant of some aspect of secular stagnation, and/or to defend particular policy positions while criticizing alternative policy positions. However, the concern here is not whether there is the possibility for a synthesis of mainstream views. Rather, the emphasis is on how partial and separate such explanations are, both individually and in combination.
Hans G. Despain teaches political economy at Nichols College, where he is the chair of the Department of Economics.
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Dec 27, 2015 | The Guardian
marketingexpert -> HorseCart 27 Dec 2015 14:38
lingyai -> SrdeAth 27 Dec 2015 14:25If the big borrower nations like GB and USA were honest, it would be electoral suicide because all they could promise is massive reduction in living standards back to a level we can afford
And that will happen either by progressive erosion or catastrophic bubble burst and economiccollapse.
But It is so much easier Lefty fashion to promise jam today for everyone, and invent bogus bogeymen to pay for it all, or pretend you can borrow or print to prosperity. Anyone north of a five year old can see through such nonsense from the day they trade mars bars for marbles,
Buy gold, or farmland.
KillerMarmot -> Lafcadio1944 27 Dec 2015 14:25that's what the US has all those military bases around the world for.. can't have the world reserve currency being threatened...
Marjallche -> gilesjuk 27 Dec 2015 13:02Neoliberalism is going to provide prosperity when clear-eyed analysis shows Neoliberalism to be little more than subjugation to oligarch rule and the most egregious inequity the world has ever known.
Actually the world is more prosperous than it has ever been. Over the last few decades, billions of people have been lifted out of abject poverty into something resembling a modern lifestyle. Infant mortality has been falling steadily. Life expectancy has been raising steadily. It is resounding triumph, but one that is little recognized,
Marjallche -> JudiHoskyn885 27 Dec 2015 12:57Yes I actually think it is, as dependencies breed fear of being exploited, breeds distrust as to whether the other side does or does not threaten with blackmail etc. I got the idea from Keynes, who saw stability in self-reliance of nations and instability in population import, which threw the balance in favour of big capital.
Iconoclastick 27 Dec 2015 12:54WW I happened after 20 yrs during which the the superpower Britain had been blatantly replacing their dwindling economic influence by demonstrations of military powers. Now which nation today is siphoning off by ever more military means the products and raw materials of others, while not even caring a bit about welfare for the majority of their own citizens?
But it's so much easier to make propaganda against Mr Putin's public appearances than seriously address the point that this guy is genuinely popular at home precisely because he refuses his country to be a sellout to USA's 1O %. Another pre WWI parallel. PS it seems to be a very anglo-saxon notion that the upper 10% belong to a better and preferable breed of humans. The rest being granted the "freedom" to crawl in the dirt and die in the name of "freedom" for the preservation of their "democratic" 1%ers privilege.
Sammy Johnston -> gilesjuk 27 Dec 2015 12:41It was bad in 2012, it's got far worse.
as the chart below shows, if there is anything the global financial system needs, is for the rating agencies, bond vigilantes, and lastly, general public itself, to realize that the UK's consolidated debt (non-financial, financial, government and household) to GDP is... just under 1000%. That's right: the UK debt, when one adds to its more tenable sovereign debt tranche all the other debt carried on UK books (and thus making the transfer of private debt to the public balance sheet impossible), is nearly ten times greater than the country's GDP. To call that "game over" is an insult to game overs everywhere.
MancuMan -> eveofchange 27 Dec 2015 12:50All political parties follow the will of the banking families and corporate elites. The economy is in it's intended state, gearing up for the third world war, the formation of world government and the eventual digitalization of currency world wide.
To state that cameron has any control is naive. To say corbyn can be effective to oppose it is naive. We need to eliminate our current elite and start a new paradigm to have any sense of freedom again.
Aye, a few million people got murdered by the Communists but apart from that and the lack of joy in life for the survivors it all went very well indeed and we should give it another go.
ldopas -> eveofchange 27 Dec 2015 12:37
eveofchange -> jonsnow92 27 Dec 2015 12:25I see you have been studying the socialist comics again.
Evidence tells us, evidence, that capitalism has problems. Lots of them. But it does work for the most part, and the model of capitalism also when there is a disruption mostly recovers like a cut in the skin that heals. Socialism wherever tried ALWAYS has produced poor if not catastrophic results, and once a downward spiral is established there is nothing to stop it, no mechanism in place to heal it like capitalism.
So my money, pun intended, is with capitalism.
Look if you are fed up of our capitalist first world services, infrastructure and healthcare there are still a few deluded places where some sort of socialism exists; Cuba for example where everyone is equal in poverty and their infrastructure is non existent, perhaps N Korea?
Ask yourself this. when a country that is poor and gets the chance for democracy, why do they always go more capitalistic?
jonsnow92 -> eveofchange 27 Dec 2015 12:17I have told you what would happen if capitalism continues.
I opposed Stalin and his ilk, and his corruption of socialism. But under even he, Russia escaped the economic collapse of the thirties, and was invaded by a country that had been ravaged by capitalism's collapse . Russia even emerged stronger.
The nationalised economy worked perfectly, and defeated capitalist Germany (although Hitler himself,introduced aspects of socialism--as did the UK and US). But without a workers and working class democracy, nationalisation will not work for any length of time .
eveofchange 27 Dec 2015 12:02unless consciously overthrown by a working class takeover for socialism, would still carry on. What do you want?
It didn't work in USSR did it? The working class took over and it didn't end up in milk and honey on the streets. Same for East Germany - apart from the genius of Trabant not much else going on until the people started voting with their feet jumping walls and going to capitalism. And I didn't mention Albania, Cuba, North Korea and other great success stories from socialism.
BTW - in socialist countries you couldn't have a strike as the working class was in power and as Stalin said: "why would the working class strike if they are in power?"
> newsfreak 27 Dec 2015 13:33The problem is capitalism, as Marx correctly pointed out and analysed. One "solution" always leads to a worse problem---and it cannot be resolved,or solved Eventually there is either a major war, between desperate capitalist states fighting over shrinking markets, or there is a gigantic crash.--or both.This literally wipes out productive capacity, and thus the problem of "overproduction" is temporarily "solved". The same cycle is then repeated, to it's inevitable conclusion--again.
Millions, throughout the world, even in the UK, are made destitute by this, or even die--but capitalism, unless consciously overthrown by a working class takeover for socialism, would still carry on. What do you want?ID7829806 27 Dec 2015 11:58The ambiguity of economic and financial forecasters tend to reach proverbial limits. They make a living out of ambiguity and what later end up being frustrated expectations: "2016 will be a year of living dangerously for the global economy" yet "there will be no explosion in 2016, but a fuse will be lit." How dangerous is a lit fuse? The whole financial world system is a sham based on printing currencies with no backing standard. At some point there will be a wake up call, a reality check, and a devastating free fall.
Dan_de_Macy 27 Dec 2015 11:58Economic forecasting is a mug's game.
But a lot of people get paid a lot of money to do it. Forecasting is of course, at best, an inexact and purely speculative effort (I nearly wrote 'an inexact science', but there is nothing scientific about it, at all).
Those who have the confidence/cheek/arrogance to predict, tend to stick close to the average of an (emerging) consensus, if there is one. Commentators keep looking around and over their shoulders - no one wants to look silly - and so feed-on and affirm each other. Few stick their necks out - but then, if they do, they are likely unknown or a maverick, and does anyone therefore notice, or care?
A broken clock is right twice a day, but who wants to predict that the clock will fall off the wall (unless they have inside knowledge)?
Larry, you may be right. Or you may be wrong. 2016 is an Election Year in the US, which suggests 'nothing to see here' for the next 12 months. But then again, it didn't stop the last crash happening.
But the feeling in your water could be right, precisely because we are in unknown and unprecedented territory. The historic economic 'rule-book' hasn't so much been torn-up in recent years, rather - quietly - put back on the shelve, and self-consciously ignored.
These are unprecedented times. So: who knows what might happen? An unprecedented economic implosion round about 2017 is possible. Or not. But on a balance of probabilities: something without precedent is likely to happen (for good or ill): and none of us will have predicted it.
Iconoclastick 27 Dec 2015 11:50Prediction:
Going South: Why Britain will have a Third World Economy by 2014 Paperback – 14 Jun 2012
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Going-South-Britain-Third-Economy/dp/0230392547
Reality:
Other stuff building up a storm on the horizon...
Forget About Junk Bonds, This Is the New Credit-Equity Disconnect Investors Should Be Watching
Can contagion spread to stocks?This Junk Bond Derivative Index Is Saying Something Scary About Defaults. Markit's CDX index is pricing in a 2008-like selloff.
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Dec 27, 2015 | naked capitalism
An excellent column by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, where he is the lead economics editor. Starting with principles put forward by Ben Bernanke in his recent speech on income inequality, Wolf concludes that America cannot do without some form of a welfare state, specifically improved training, education, and universal health care.
James Levy, December 26, 2015 at 4:32 pm
I have no idea if Marx was right, in the long run, or wrong–the verdict is still out on the long-term viability of industrial capitalism, which is less than 250 years old and creaking mightily as I write this. It may be that when Rosa Luxemburg said that the choice was between Socialism and Barbarism, she underestimated how likely barbarism was. What I do know is that capitalism today isn't just too ugly to tolerate, it is downright murderous. Its imperatives are driving the despoliation of the planet. It's love of profit over all else is cutting corners and creating externalities that are lethal. But it has made a few percent of the global population comfortable and powerful, and they are holding onto that comfort and that power come hell or high water (and, ironically, if things continue apace both are on the menu).
Our problem is that we are asking for concessions that are beyond the acceptable limit for elites in any historical epoch. We're asking the powerful and the rich to give up their money and power for the greater good of all mankind. This is not likely to happen unless a powerful enough segment of the elite comes to the inescapable conclusion that they're literally dead meat if they don't and therefore opts for survival over position. I am not enthusiastic that this will happen before it is way too late to save more than a fraction of the current world population, and send those people back to the lifestyles and thought patterns of 30 Year's War Europe.
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economistsview.typepad.com
Dean Baker:
An Aging Society Is No Problem When Wages Rise: Eduardo Porter discusses the question of whether retirees will have sufficient income in twenty or thirty years. He points out that if no additional revenue is raised, Social Security will not be able to pay full scheduled benefits after 2034.While this is true, it is important to note that this would have also been true in the 1940, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. If projections were made for Social Security that assumed no increase in the payroll tax in the future, there would have been a severe shortfall in the trust fund making it unable to pay full scheduled benefits.We have now gone 25 years with no increase in the payroll tax, by far the longest such period since the program was created. With life expectancy continually increasing, it is inevitable that a fixed tax rate will eventually prove inadequate if the retirement age is not raised. (The age for full benefits has already been raised from 65 to 66 and will rise further to 67 by 2022, but no further increases are scheduled.)The past increases in the Social Security tax have generally not imposed a large burden on workers because real wages rose. The Social Security trustees project average wages to rise by more than 50 percent over the next three decades. If most workers share in this wage growth, then the two or three percentage point tax increase that might be needed to keep the program fully funded would be a small fraction of the wage growth workers see over this period. Of course, if income gains continue to be redistributed upward, then any increase in the Social Security tax will be a large burden.For this reason, Social Security should be seen first and foremost as part of the story of wage inequality. If workers get their share of the benefits of productivity growth then supporting a larger population of retirees will not be a problem. On the other hand, if the wealthy manage to prevent workers from benefiting from growth during their working lives, they will also likely prevent them from having a secure retirement.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said...Hey, if the plutocrats won't raise wages then they will need to raise the payroll tax cap on Social Security. They should have thought of that before starting so many wars. The Bonus Army will not be denied.
DrDick -> Darryl, Ron...
"they will need to raise the payroll tax cap on Social Security"
Raise it my foot, they need to eliminate it. The cap has always been more welfare for the rich.
Bud Meyers -> DrDick...
Why not eliminate the income cap ($118k) entirely and start taxing capital gains and dividends for Social Security too? Members of Congress pay this tax on 65% of the salaries ($174k), while 95% of all wage earners pay this tax on 100% of their earnings.
mulp
"We have now gone 25 years with no increase in the payroll tax, by far the longest such period since the program was created. With life expectancy continually increasing, it is inevitable that a fixed tax rate will eventually prove inadequate if the retirement age is not raised."
Illogical!
If wages of younger workers were maintaining the same gains over their previous generation peers, and in fact, gained even more due to reduced supply of workers relative to steady demand for labor as the large boomer cohort leaves the labor force to the smaller subsequent generation.
Instead, conservative free lunch economicntheory, itself grossly illogical, has led to cuts in wages as a matter of policy based on the idea that workers are not consumers, so gdp can grow faster if workers are paid less, leading to a larger supply of consumers with pockets of money being created by the tinker bell of wealth.
While changing demographics might require higher payroll taxes, say younger generations having more kids than the boomer generation and being stay at home parents than boomers were, in reality, the younger generations are moving further along the trend line of working more, just like the boomers.
Incomes are falling leading to reduced gdp growth because that is driven by labor incomes which are labor costs, and lower gdp means lower wage income means lower tax revenue with a fixed tax rate.
Social Security has structural problems simply because conservatives have sold Americans a bill of goods, promising something for nothing.
TANSTAAFL
As a leading edge boomer, I've had the best of both good and bad policy. Great big government benefits when young to give me a great start in life, followed by bad policy tax hikes for me paid for by screwing the generation of children I did not have, and now 68, getting the great big government Social Security benefits Reagan signed into law in 1983, doubly great because, my big government start in life lasted to 2001 and made me very rich from simply working and living like my parents who were shaped by the depression. And Republicans can not cut my benefits because I'm hidden in the biggest block of the Republican base who almost all depend on Social Security.
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Zero Hedge
Stephen Roach is worried that the Fed has set the world up for another financial market meltdown.Lower for longer rates and the proliferation of unconventional monetary policy have created "a breeding ground for asset bubbles, credit bubbles, and all-too frequent crises, so the Fed is really a part of the problem of financial instability rather than trying to provide a sense of calm in an otherwise unstable world," Roach told Bloomberg TV in an interview conducted a little over a week ago.
To be sure, Roach's sentiments have become par for the proverbial course. That is, it may have taken everyone a while (as in five years or so) to come to the conclusion we reached long ago, namely that central banks are setting the world up for a crisis that will make 2008 look like a walk in the park, but most of the "very serious" people are now getting concerned. Take BofAML for instance, who, in a note we outlined on Wednesday, demonstrated the prevailing dynamic with the following useful graphic:
Perhaps Jeremy Grantham put it best: "..in the Greenspan/ Bernanke/Yellen Era, the Fed historically did not stop its asset price pushing until fully- fledged bubbles had occurred, as they did in U.S. growth stocks in 2000 and in U.S. housing in 2006."
Indeed. It's with that in mind that we bring you the following excerpts from a new piece by Roach in which the former Morgan Stanley chief economist and Yale fellow recounts the evolution of the Fed and how the FOMC ultimately became "beholden to the monster it had created".
* * *
From "The Perils of Fed Gradualism" as posted at Project Syndicate
By now, it's an all-too-familiar drill. After an extended period of extraordinary monetary accommodation, the US Federal Reserve has begun the long march back to normalization.
A majority of financial market participants applaud this strategy. In fact, it is a dangerous mistake. The Fed is borrowing a page from the script of its last normalization campaign – the incremental rate hikes of 2004-2006 that followed the extraordinary accommodation of 2001-2003. Just as that earlier gradualism set the stage for a devastating financial crisis and a horrific recession in 2008-2009, there is mounting risk of yet another accident on what promises to be an even longer road to normalization.
The problem arises because the Fed, like other major central banks, has now become a creature of financial markets rather than a steward of the real economy. This transformation has been under way since the late 1980s, when monetary discipline broke the back of inflation and the Fed was faced with new challenges.
The challenges of the post-inflation era came to a head during Alan Greenspan's 18-and-a-half-year tenure as Fed Chair. The stock-market crash of October 19, 1987 – occurring only 69 days after Greenspan had been sworn in – provided a hint of what was to come. In response to a one-day 23% plunge in US equity prices, the Fed moved aggressively to support the brokerage system and purchase government securities.
In retrospect, this was the template for what became known as the "Greenspan put" – massive Fed liquidity injections aimed at stemming financial-market disruptions in the aftermath of a crisis. As the markets were battered repeatedly in the years to follow – from the savings-and-loan crisis (late 1980s) and the Gulf War (1990-1991) to the Asian Financial Crisis (1997-1998) and terrorist attacks (September 11, 2001) – the Greenspan put became an essential element of the Fed's market-driven tactics.
The Fed had, in effect, become beholden to the monster it had created. The corollary was that it had also become steadfast in protecting the financial-market-based underpinnings of the US economy.
Largely for that reason, and fearful of "Japan Syndrome" in the aftermath of the collapse of the US equity bubble, the Fed remained overly accommodative during the 2003-2006 period. The federal funds rate was held at a 46-year low of 1% through June 2004, before being raised 17 times in small increments of 25 basis points per move over the two-year period from mid-2004 to mid-2006. Yet it was precisely during this period of gradual normalization and prolonged accommodation that unbridled risk-taking sowed the seeds of the Great Crisis that was soon to come.
Today's Fed inherits the deeply entrenched moral hazard of the Asset Economy. The longer the Fed remains trapped in this mindset, the tougher its dilemma becomes – and the greater the systemic risks in financial markets and the asset-dependent US economy.
* * *
Roach goes on to say that we're already seeing the beginnings of what may very well turn out to be a dramatic unwind as high yield rolls over and the emerging world struggles to cope with a soaring dollar (remember, even though EM has largely avoided "original sin" i.e. borrowing in dollars, at the sovereign level, corporates are another story).
As an aside, those interested in a comprehensive account of what Roach covers in the article cited above are encouraged to reach David Stockman's "The Great Deformation."
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marknesop.wordpress.com
Cortes, December 18, 2015 at 3:38 amMichael Hudson on IMF manoeuvresTim Owen, December 18, 2015 at 6:24 amhttp://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/18/the-imf-changes-its-rules-to-isolate-china-and-russia/
Hard to overstate the importance of this article. Thanks for spotting it.marknesop, December 18, 2015 at 10:36 amThere's a lot here but this passage is kind of free-standing in its value by simply condensing how the IMF has contorted itself:
"The IMF thus is breaking four rules:
- Not lending to a country that has no visible means to pay back the loan breaks the "No More Argentinas" rule adopted after the IMF's disastrous 2001 loan.
- Not lending to countries that refuse in good faith to negotiate with their official creditors goes against the IMF's role as the major tool of the global creditors' cartel.
- And the IMF is now lending to a borrower at war, indeed one that is destroying its export capacity and hence its balance-of-payments ability to pay back the loan.
- Finally, the IMF is lending to a country that has little likelihood of refuse carrying out the IMF's notorious austerity "conditionalities" on its population – without putting down democratic opposition in a totalitarian manner. Instead of being treated as an outcast from the international financial system, Ukraine is being welcomed and financed."
I'm still trying to think through the implications but they are certainly disquieting. Without trying to hard I'd summarize that "the masks are coming off."
The question then is, what happens after "the masks come off?"
… war.
(Sometimes it's best just to blurt out what's worrying you.)
Short-sighted western pundits will still be penning deadline copy headlined "How Putin lost Ukraine" while those with real vision will be putting the finishing touches on "How America Lost the Rest of the World".
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Zero Hedge
The Big Short opens nationwide today. But it happened to have one showing last night at a theater near me. My youngest son and I hopped in the car and went to see it. I loved the book by Michael Lewis. The cast assembled for the movie was top notch, but having the director of Anchorman and Talledaga Nights handle a subject matter like high finance seemed odd.The choice of Adam McKay as director turned out to be brilliant. The question was how do you make a movie about the housing market, mortgage backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, collateralized debt swaps, and synthetic CDOs interesting for the average person. He succeeded beyond all expectations.
Interweaving pop culture icons, music, symbols of materialism, and unforgettable characters, McKay has created a masterpiece about the greed, stupidity, hubris, and arrogance of Wall Street bankers gone wild. He captures the idiocy and complete capture of the rating agencies (S&P, Moodys). He reveals the ineptitude and dysfunction of the SEC, where the goal of these regulators was to get a high paying job with banks they were supposed to regulate. He skewers the faux financial journalists at the Wall Street Journal who didn't want to rock the boat with the truth about the greatest fraud ever committed.
...Ultimately, it is a highly entertaining movie with the right moral overtone, despite non-stop profanity that captures the true nature of Wall Street traders. This is a dangerous movie for Wall Street, the government, and the establishment in general. They count on the complexity of Wall Street to confuse the average person and make their eyes glaze over. That makes it easier for them to keep committing fraud and harvesting the nation's wealth.
This movie cuts through the crap and reveals those in power to be corrupt, greedy weasels who aren't really as smart as they want you to think they are. The finale of the movie is sobering and infuriating. After unequivocally proving that Wall Street bankers, aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve, Congress, the SEC, and the mainstream media, destroyed the global financial system, put tens of millions out of work, got six million people tossed from their homes, and created the worst crisis since the Great Depression, the filmmakers are left to provide the depressing conclusion.
No bankers went to jail. The Too Big To Fail banks were not broken up – they were bailed out by the American taxpayers. They actually got bigger. Their profits have reached new heights, while the average family has seen their income fall. Wall Street is paying out record bonuses, while 46 million people are on food stamps. Wall Street and their lackeys at the Federal Reserve call the shots in this country. They don't give a fuck about you. And they're doing it again.
Every American should see this movie and get fucking pissed off. The theater was deathly silent at the end of the movie. The audience was stunned by the fact that the criminals on Wall Street got away with the crime of the century, and they're still on the loose. I had a great discussion with my 16 year old son on the way home. At least there is one millennial who understand how bad his generation is getting screwed.
wee-weed up
I read the book last year... It is outstanding! Highest recommendation. If you have not read this book, you cannot understand how today's market really works.
JRobby
This subject matter has to be put in a form that can be understood by the masses. Hopefully the popular actors and this director is a step in that direction.
Main stream Hollywood as an informer? Hmmmmm? This adds to the current assumptions and rumors of fractures among the elite groups.
We are reasonable people. If the banking elite is sacrificed and the other corporate oligarchs come into a more socially acceptable line, we may be satisfied. However, the banking elite must be sacrificed. There is no negotiation on that point.
Of course some will say I am over optimistic, they are throwing it in our faces to make $$$ and it ends up a total police state so enjoy your "entertainment" for now.
Time goes on. Time will tell.
chunga
chungaFirst you'd have to believe that politicians give a fuck about any damn thing but themselves. REAL concern for minorities or communities LOL! Then you'd have to believe banks were forced to do *anything* they don't want.
Then, you'd have to fall right to sleep and miss the part where all this crap was sold on Wall Street while at the same time betting against all the "shitty deals" they made, then the whole thing getting bailed out @ par. With par being at the absurd fraudulent property appraisals that were made by the lenders or their agents. It's just nuts.
This was all planned, beginning with Greenspan. AIG's Greenberg KNEW their CDS paper was no damn good, but didn't care because the also KNEW there would be a bailout. The only problem for him was Paulson and Blankfein conspired to steal the bailout money...and they did!
That's why all this money went looking for people...it was all planned.
Hundreds of scandals have gone by since then, thoroughly unpunished, so I wonder why this movie is coming out now. I looked into some of the cronies calling the shots at the GSE's back then and saved it. A lot is outdated by now. Seems like a fairly bi-partisan effort.
FRANKLIN RAINES [D] – FNMA CEO (1999 – 2004) Raines accepted "early retirement" from his CEO position while the SEC pretended to investigate accounting irregularities. Fannie's own OHFHEO also accused him of abetting widespread accounting errors, including the shifting of losses, so he and his fellow execs could "earn" large bonuses. The WSJ reported back in 2008 that Raines was one of several cronies that received below market rates for mortgages from Countrywide. Raines alone receive loans for over $3 million while CEO of FNMA. Raines' compensation for his "work" at FNMA - $90 million.
RAINES GRADE – F
DANIEL MUDD [R] – FNMA CEO (2005 – 2008) Before becoming CEO of FNMA, Mudd worked at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, was an advisor to Asia-Pacific Economic Corp., "served" on the board of the Council of Foreign Relations, "consulted" at the World Bank, and held many positions at GE Capital including president and CEO. Mudd was dismissed as CEO of FNMA when FHFA became conservator in 2008. In 2011 Mudd and other GSE execs were charged by SEC with securities fraud. After his career at FNMA Mudd became CEO of a NYC hedge fund named "Fortress". Fortress invested in purchasing tax liens on delinquent property taxes from local governments under many benign corporate names such as "Pleasant Valley Capital" and "Travis Farm Investments". Cozy. Mudd's compensation for his "work" at FNMA - $80 million.
MUDD GRADE – F
NEEL KASHKARI [R] – FNMA CEO (Tenure is murky) Kashkari was a former investment banker for Goldman Sachs, was tapped by Hank "The Shank" Paulson to lend his skills over at TARP HQ, and now rather ironically, continues God's work as a Managing Director at PIMCO. Kashkari's compensation for his "work" at FNMA is also murky; I'll just assume it was too much.
KASHKARI GRADE - F
HERB ALLISON [D] – FNMA CEO (2008 – 2009) The esteemed Mr. Allison was quickly whisked off to oversee the wildly successful TARP program. I didn't find much on his compensation during his brief stint as FNMA CEO. Allison served in various positions at Merrill Lynch and became a member of the board in 1997. He was a director of the NYSE from 2003 – 2005.
ALLISON GRADE – F
MICHAEL WILLIAMS [?] – FNMA CEO (2009 – Jan 1, 2012) Mr. Williams is a 20 year veteran at FNMA. While "serving" as FNMA CEO, Williams managed to scrape by on less than $6 million in 2011 alone. This could and should be considered a hardship, given the complexities involved in purloining ~ $60 billion of Fed bailout money.
WILLIAMS GRADE – F
FANNIE'S MAJOR DANCE PARTNER, FREDDIE MAC, HAS ALSO PERFORMED VERY POORLY.
Charles (my friends call me "Ed") Haldeman has announced his retirement plans but intends to be a good sport and stay on with insolvent FHLMC until another crony can be found to fill his wing-tips.
That might take a while. "Serving" as CEO of the ultimate backstops for the lion's share of the MBS Ponzi is very stressful.
We'll have to accept former Freddie exec David Kellermann's testimony posthumously. Mr. Kellermann was found hanging by the neck in the basement of his posh Vienna, VA home in the affluent suburb of Washington. D.C. way back in April of 2009. It is presumed he had no help and local police have stated there was no evidence of foul play.
Urban Redneck
GREED is non-partisan. And all sides agreed MOAR "home ownership" was desirable. The left got its SJW colorblind automation, while the underwriters were able to increase volumes by thousands of percent while reducing overall headcount. Securitization wasn't actually "automated" since the fuckwits were using MS-Excel, but it was commoditized with Blackrock's pricing model.
These were the days of the original algorithms of mass financial destruction, which were primitive and largely FICO-centric, but everyone wanted to minimize the cost (of logic coding and external data sources) so they coding decisioning based solely on information contained in the mortgage application and the applicant's electronic credit report.
khakuda
Enjoyed the movie, but in typical Hollywood fashion, the role of the Federal Reserve and government in pushing housing down to those unable to afford it was not even mentioned once.
Keynesians
Wall Street is laughing at all the clowns who think this movie will "wake up America". It would have never came out if it was any kind of danger to Wall Street, the FED, or the establishment.
Agent P
Directed by Adam McKay (Anchorman, Step Brothers, The Other Guys....), so ... yeah I'm going to go see it. Remember the end credits for The Other Guys? He hates Wall Street....
GoldenDonuts
Perhaps you should read the book. These are real characters from a non fiction book. They may have changed a name or two but these are real people. I will lend you my copy if you can't afford one.
conraddobler
Yeah I can't imagine a commercially successful movie out of this that would actually tell the truth and make it to the screens.
What someone should do is write one of those fantastical novels where everything is a symbol for something else and jazz it up, put some romance, danger, intrigue and of course big boobs in it.
The real message ala the olden days usually had to be hidden to avoid the wrath of those it was really aimed at.
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reason said... December 18, 2015 at 02:20 AMI wish Krugman would attack the view that is being propagated at the moment that low nominal interest rates (it seems irrespective of the reason for them) foster bubbles. It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense - leverage doesn't just magnify the gains, it magnifies the losses as well - what really counts is expectations regardless of nominal interest rates.)The distribution of the use of credit between pure financial speculation and productive investment is not a function of interest rates, but of things like bank culture, bank regulation and macro-economic and technological prospects.
JF said in reply to reason... December 18, 2015 at 05:19 AM
Great comment. I especially liked this point: "The distribution of the use of credit between pure financial speculation and productive investment is not a function of" ....Supervising regulators need to look carefully at the ratio of credit used for financial trading compared to credit used for what we've called real-economy matters. They should adjust the level of monitoring based on this view while they also inform policy makers including those in the legislature.
There may be an opportunity in 2017 to revise the statutes so the public plainly says what the rules of Commerce are in these financial 'inter-mediation' areas - society is better served if more of such credit offerings go to investments in the real economy where inputs are real things like employees, supplies, equipment/technologies. The public's law can effect this change.
david said in reply to JF...
except that a significant chunk of institutional investors have sticky nominal targets for return thanks to the politics of return expectation setting (true for pension fund and endowments) -- low interest rates do encourage chasing phantoms or looking to extract some rents, for those subject to that kind of pressuresanjait said in reply to david... December 18, 2015 at 02:47 PM
Are there enough of those to dominate securities prices?I don't see how there possibly could be. For everyone trying to reach for yield there are a lot of people happy to arbitrage or otherwise exploit those inefficiencies.
pgl said in reply to reason... December 18, 2015 at 05:53 AM
Nice comment. I think Krugman is letting others take out the bubble brains. But if he's reading your excellent comment - maybe he will go the fray.BenIsNotYoda said in reply to reason... December 18, 2015 at 06:35 AM
"The distribution of the use of credit between pure financial speculation and productive investment is not a function of interest rates, but of things like bank culture, bank regulation and macro-economic and technological prospects."The relationship between low interest rates and bubbles has nothing to do with the above. Low interest rates RAISE asset prices. Through the magic of low discount rates, the future earnings and cash flows are worth a lot higher today. This is why Bernanke cut rates and kept them low. Raising asset prices and the resultant higher net worth was supposed to lead to higher spending today. But outsized returns also attracts speculation. what is so difficult to understand? John Williams of SF Fed has shown how positive returns in asset markets raises the speculator's expected returns. when this dynamic gets out of control, it is a bubble.
Sanjait said in reply to BenIsNotYoda... December 18, 2015 at 07:35 AM
It's hard to see how to your claim that expected returns are high when earnings yields across the board are historically low.BenIsNotYoda said in reply to Sanjait... December 18, 2015 at 07:38 AM
That is exactly the point. Expected returns in stocks have nothing to do with earnings growth. http://www.frbsf.org/our-district/press/presidents-speeches/williams-speeches/2013/september/asset-price-bubbles-tomorrow-yesterday-never-today/BenIsNotYoda said in reply to BenIsNotYoda... December 18, 2015 at 07:38 AM
I mean earnings yields not earnings growth.Sanjait said in reply to BenIsNotYoda... December 18, 2015 at 07:48 AM
So you say. And yet, stock values today conform very well with the standard model Williams says doesn't historically fit the data. While you are talking bubbles, the equity risk premium is parked in the normal range.How do you explain that?
BenIsNotYoda said in reply to Sanjait... December 18, 2015 at 07:54 AM
so says Williams. dividend yields, earnings yields and risk premiums are not necessarily weighted heavily in investors' formation of expected returns. past returns do, to a great extent. that is what Williams shows.BenIsNotYoda said in reply to BenIsNotYoda... December 18, 2015 at 07:56 AM
our prehistoric brains are wired to trend follow patterns.pgl said in reply to BenIsNotYoda... December 18, 2015 at 09:13 AM
Williams actually tries to model the rise in stock prices and defines any increase the model cannot explain a bubble. Of course maybe his modeling is not entirely spot on and fundamentals can explain the rise stock prices.But this is not what you do as you see any asset price increase as a bubble. Which is beyond stupid. Of course it would help if you ever bothered to do what Williams attempted - use a basic model of financial economics. Then again my guess is that is beyond your understanding of basic financial economics. So troll on!
BenIsNotYoda said in reply to pgl... December 18, 2015 at 10:40 AM
You think a rise in stock prices created by a fall in the cost of capital is a bubble. But no - it is a change in fundamentals.keeping the risk free rate at zero for 7 years is not a change in fundamentals. and if it is and it rises leading to a large fall in equity prices, you will be the first one crying uncle. so why put the economy through this?
JohnH said in reply to pgl... December 18, 2015 at 04:22 PM
The first thing pgl did when stocks corrected this summer was to call for QE4...he panicked because his portfolio was threatened...but claimed that he was only worried about workers!Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to reason... December 18, 2015 at 10:57 AM
It does not seem reasonable or
fair to pay practically no interest
on savings, which is a consequence
of Fed policy.A consequence of this is that people
go into risky investments that lead
to catastrophe, sometimes widespread.If the goal was to get people to spend
(i.e. consume) more, it seems that they
are persistently & stubbornly frugal.Chris Herbert said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... December 18, 2015 at 02:31 PM
Rising stock prices allow corporations to raise debt, because the stock is put up as collateral. This makes funding easier, but it doesn't favor any particular purpose of the funding. It could be to buy back stock, for example. Said buy back can raise the stock price even more, which in turn can pay off the borrowing. Didn't cost a dime.sanjait said in reply to reason...
Let me be the fourth person to compliment that comment."leverage doesn't just magnify the gains, it magnifies the losses as well - what really counts is expectations regardless of nominal interest rates."
QFT!
The one hypothetical caveat (as BINY alluded to, knowingly or not) is that expectations often get out of whack based on momentum trading. So hypothetically, lowering rates could possibly feed that.
But guess what? Rates are already at zero. They can't go lower. It's not even a question of lowering rates, but rather whether to keep them where they are. So a bubbles-from-monetary-fed-momentum argument falls completely flat. We've been at zero for 7 years now!
reason said...
It always seem to me that right wing economists credit businessmen with superhuman foresight and sophistication, except when it comes to the actions of the Fed and then something addles their brains and they become completely stupid. As I once put, it seems investors can't understand what the Fed is doing, even though they tell you.Sanjait said in reply to reason...
That's it exactly. Markets are efficient, unless the government does anything, and then markets lose their minds and it's the government's fault.And somehow the RW economists see no problem with this model
DeDude said in reply to Sanjait...
Here is how they evaluate models: Good model; one that reaches the "right" good conclusions. Bad model; one that ends up saying stuff nobody should believe in.likbez said in reply to Sanjait..."Markets are efficient, unless the government does anything"This is a dangerous neoliberal dogma. Total lie.
=== quote ===
The efficient market hypothesis (EMH) is a flavor of economic Lysenkoism which became popular for the last 30 years in the USA. It is a pseudo scientific theory or, in more politically correct terms, unrealistic idealization of market behavior. Like classic Lysenkoism in the past was supported by Stalin's totalitarian state, it was supported by the power of neoliberal state, which is the state captured by financial oligarchy (see Casino Capitalism and Quiet coup for more details).Among the factors ignored by EMH is the positive feedback loop inherent in any system based on factional reserve banking, the level of market players ignorance, unequal access to the real information about the markets, the level of brainwashing performed on "lemmings" by controlled by elite MSM and market manipulation by the largest players and the state.
Economics, it is said, is the study of scarcity. There is, however, one thing that certainly isn't scarce, but which deserves the attention of economists - ignorance.
...Conventional economics analyses how individuals choose - maybe rationally, maybe not - from a range of options. But this raises the question: how do they know what these options are? Many feasible - even optimum - options might not occur to them. This fact has some important implications. ...
Slightly simplifying, we can say that (financial) markets are mainly efficient in separation of fools and their money... And efficient market hypothesis mostly bypasses important question about how the inequity of resources which inevitably affects the outcomes of market participants. For example, the level of education of market players is one aspect of the inequity of resources. Herd behavior is another important, but overlooked in EMH factor.Peter K. said in reply to reason...
And/or the markets are telling the Fed something, like they don't believe the Fed's forecasts about growth and inflation and are betting otherwise, but the hawks at the Fed dismiss the markets and say we need to raise rates now.It's all very convenient reasoning about markets.
Vile Content said...
"
constant repetition, especially in captive media, keeps this imaginary history in circulation no matter how often it is shown to be false.
"
~~pK~... ... ...
anne said...
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/23/shorts-subject/November 23, 2015
Shorts Subject
By Paul KrugmanLast night I was invited to a screening of "The Big Short," which I thought was terrific; who knew that collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps could be made into an edge-of-your-seat narrative (with great acting)?
But there was one shortcut the narrative took, which was understandable and possibly necessary, but still worth noting.
In the film, various eccentrics and oddballs make the discovery that subprime-backed securities are garbage, which is pretty much what happened; but this is wrapped together with their realization that there was a massive housing bubble, which is presented as equally contrary to anything anyone respectable was saying. And that's not quite right.
It's true that Greenspan and others were busy denying the very possibility of a housing bubble. And it's also true that anyone suggesting that such a bubble existed was attacked furiously - "You're only saying that because you hate Bush!" Still, there were a number of economic analysts making the case for a massive bubble. Here's Dean Baker in 2002. * Bill McBride (Calculated Risk) was on the case early and very effectively. I keyed off Baker and McBride, arguing for a bubble in 2004 and making my big statement about the analytics in 2005, ** that is, if anything a bit earlier than most of the events in the film. I'm still fairly proud of that piece, by the way, because I think I got it very right by emphasizing the importance of breaking apart regional trends.
So the bubble itself was something number crunchers could see without delving into the details of mortgage-backed securities, traveling around Florida, or any of the other drama shown in the film. In fact, I'd say that the housing bubble of the mid-2000s was the most obvious thing I've ever seen, and that the refusal of so many people to acknowledge the possibility was a dramatic illustration of motivated reasoning at work.
The financial superstructure built on the bubble was something else; I was clueless about that, and didn't see the financial crisis coming at all.
* http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/housing_2002_08.pdf
** http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/that-hissing-sound.html
anne said in reply to anne...
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/16/opinion/mind-the-gap.htmlAugust 16, 2002
Mind the Gap
By PAUL KRUGMANMore and more people are using the B-word about the housing market. A recent analysis * by Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic Policy Research, makes a particularly compelling case for a housing bubble. House prices have run well ahead of rents, suggesting that people are now buying houses for speculation rather than merely for shelter. And the explanations one hears for those high prices sound more and more like the rationalizations one heard for Nasdaq 5,000.
If we do have a housing bubble, and it bursts, we'll be looking a lot too Japanese for comfort....
* http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/housing_2002_08.pdf
anne said in reply to anne...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/that-hissing-sound.htmlAugust 8, 2005
That Hissing Sound
By PAUL KRUGMANThis is the way the bubble ends: not with a pop, but with a hiss.
Housing prices move much more slowly than stock prices. There are no Black Mondays, when prices fall 23 percent in a day. In fact, prices often keep rising for a while even after a housing boom goes bust.
So the news that the U.S. housing bubble is over won't come in the form of plunging prices; it will come in the form of falling sales and rising inventory, as sellers try to get prices that buyers are no longer willing to pay. And the process may already have started.
Of course, some people still deny that there's a housing bubble. Let me explain how we know that they're wrong.
One piece of evidence is the sense of frenzy about real estate, which irresistibly brings to mind the stock frenzy of 1999. Even some of the players are the same. The authors of the 1999 best seller "Dow 36,000" are now among the most vocal proponents of the view that there is no housing bubble.
Then there are the numbers. Many bubble deniers point to average prices for the country as a whole, which look worrisome but not totally crazy. When it comes to housing, however, the United States is really two countries, Flatland and the Zoned Zone.
In Flatland, which occupies the middle of the country, it's easy to build houses. When the demand for houses rises, Flatland metropolitan areas, which don't really have traditional downtowns, just sprawl some more. As a result, housing prices are basically determined by the cost of construction. In Flatland, a housing bubble can't even get started.
But in the Zoned Zone, which lies along the coasts, a combination of high population density and land-use restrictions - hence "zoned" - makes it hard to build new houses. So when people become willing to spend more on houses, say because of a fall in mortgage rates, some houses get built, but the prices of existing houses also go up. And if people think that prices will continue to rise, they become willing to spend even more, driving prices still higher, and so on. In other words, the Zoned Zone is prone to housing bubbles.
And Zoned Zone housing prices, which have risen much faster than the national average, clearly point to a bubble....
EMichael said in reply to anne...
Yeah, the only thing he missed was the timing of the collapse.The day he wrote this the Fed had already raised rates 250% in one year, on the way to a total of 400% in the next 6 months.
Yet prices accelerated until the top was reached a year after the column.
anne said in reply to EMichael...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/opinion/25krugman.htmlAugust 25, 2006
Housing Gets Ugly
By PAUL KRUGMANBubble, bubble, Toll's in trouble. This week, Toll Brothers, the nation's premier builder of McMansions, announced that sales were way off, profits were down, and the company was walking away from already-purchased options on land for future development.
Toll's announcement was one of many indications that the long-feared housing bust has arrived. Home sales are down sharply; home prices, which rose 57 percent over the past five years (and much more than that along the coasts), are now falling in much of the country. The inventory of unsold existing homes is at a 13-year high; builders' confidence is at a 15-year low.
A year ago, Robert Toll, who runs Toll Brothers, was euphoric about the housing boom, declaring: "We've got the supply, and the market has got the demand. So it's a match made in heaven." In a New York Times profile of his company published last October, he dismissed worries about a possible bust. "Why can't real estate just have a boom like every other industry?" he asked. "Why do we have to have a bubble and then a pop?"
The current downturn, Mr. Toll now says, is unlike anything he's seen: sales are slumping despite the absence of any "macroeconomic nasty condition" taking housing down along with the rest of the economy. He suggests that unease about the direction of the country and the war in Iraq is undermining confidence. All I have to say is: pop! ...
EMichael said in reply to anne...
"Mr. Toll now says, is unlike anything he's seen: sales are slumping despite the absence of any "macroeconomic nasty condition""You gotta love builders and RE agents. It wasn't macro that caused it, it was default rates across the board on supposedly safe investments that caused mortgage money supply to totally disappear.
One day people will understand that payments are the key to all finance.
JohnH said...
"and it is an outrage that basically nobody ended up being punished ."Yes, indeed. And who do we have to blame for that? Obama and Holder, of course. They made the investigation of mortgage securities fraud DOJ's lowest priority. Krugman's Democratic proclivities prevent him from stating the obvious.
I' m sure that pgl and his band of merry Obamabots will try to spin this in Obama's favor...I.e. Congress prevented him from implementing the law, even though Congress has nothing to do with it.
Fact is, Obama has intentionally been a lame duck ever since he took office. He was even clueless on how to capitalize on a filibuster-proof majority in the midst of an economic crisis...which brings us to Trump. Many are so desperate for leadership after Obama's hollow presidency that they'll even support a racist demagogue to avoid another empty White House.
JohnH said in reply to anne...
Oh, please...Krugman could barely criticize Obama, even when Obama introduced an austerity budget back in 2011.The tendency of people like Krugman to overlook Democrats' bad behavior only encourages more bad behavior. If Krugman really cared about the policies he champions, he would let the chips fall wherever...and not let empty suits like Obama get away with austerity and failure to enforce the law when Wall Street willfully violates it.
pgl said in reply to JohnH...
Did you forgot to read the post before firing off your usual hate filled fact free rant? Here - let me help you out:"some members of the new commission had a different goal. George Santayana famously remarked that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." What he didn't point out was that some people want to repeat the past - and that such people have an interest in making sure that we don't remember what happened, or that we remember it wrong. Sure enough, some commission members sought to block consideration of any historical account that might support efforts to rein in runaway bankers."
It seems Krugman indeed bashed how the government sort of let this crooks off the hook. We know you have an insane hatred for President Obama. But do you also hate your poor mom? Why else would you continue to write such incredibly stupid things?
JohnH said in reply to pgl...
As I expected, rationalizations for Obama's refusal to enforce the law...since when does the buck no longer stop at the White House? And what's with trying to defend people who refuse to do their job and uphold the rule of law?pgl said in reply to JohnH...
Krugman did not rationalize that. Neither have I.Either you know you are lying or you flunked preK reading.
JohnH said in reply to pgl...
Of course pgl rationalizs Obama's failures...he spent a lot of time denying that Obama introduced and signed off on austerity...and that he proposed cutting Social Security. And now he can't admit that Obama and Holder have refused to defend the rule of law by not prosecuting...or even seriously investigating...Wall Street criminality.RGC said in reply to William...
Prosecutions don't require congressional action.Most of the New Deal was accomplished in 100 days.
Promotion by a president can galvanize action.
pgl said in reply to EMichael...
The lack of prosecutions was a bad thing. Of course any prosecutor would tell you putting rich people in jail for anything is often difficult. Rich people get to hire expensive, talented, and otherwise slimy defense attorneys. I have to laugh at the idea that JohnH thinks he could have pulled this off. The slimy defense attorneys would have had his lunch before the judge's gavel could come down.JohnH said in reply to pgl...
Obama could have at least made the investigations a high priority...but he let Holder, a Wall Street attorney, consign them to the lowest.pgl is intent on explaining away Obama's failure to enforce the law...thereby encouraging more lawlessness.
JohnH said in reply to William...
Democrats' filibuster-proof majority consisted of 58 Democrats and two independents who caucused with them. Only an inept President and Senate majority leader could have failed to take advantage of such a majority to implement significant parts of the party platform. Even Lieberman had a good record on many issues. Except for ACA, it turned out to be a do-nothing Congress, reflecting an abject lack of leadership...which is why many are so desperate for leadership. Having lacked it for seven years, many are willing to turn to anybody, even Trump, to provide it. Pathetic!RGC said in reply to William...
No vitriol, just facts. And Obama had the example of FDR to follow - why didn't he follow it? I have been deeply disappointed in Obama.JohnH said in reply to pgl...
pgl conveniently forgets my choice words about Bill Clinton, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. What I object to is Democrats who position themselves to sound like FDR and then prosecute a neo-liberal agenda.Gullible folks like pgl and his coterie believe what these Democrats say and waste our time defending their neoliberal behavior.
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Peter K. said in reply to pgl... December 16, 2015 at 10:07 AM"It seems to me looking at a year when the stock market has gone down a bit, credit spreads have widened substantially and the dollar has been very strong it is hard to say that now is the time to fire a shot across the bow of financial euphoria. Looking especially at emerging markets I would judge that under-confidence and excessive risk aversion are a greater threat over the next several years than some kind of financial euphoria."Summers is right that bubbles are usually accompanied by some kind of financial euphoria.
... ... ...
Peter K. said in reply to Benedict@Large...
I disagree with your assessment. People (elite?) are talking about unusual solutions because fiscal policy is being blocked politically.MMT doesn't seem that different from Keynesianism, except proponents have very big chips on their shoulders for some reason.
Right now the Keynesians are arguing that the Fed shouldn't raise rates. Are the MMTers arguing any differently? Or are they merely giving us the blue prints for utopia. Blue prints don't help much if the politics are against you.
Syaloch said in reply to Peter K....
Great question.Dan Kervick said in reply to Syaloch...If I have two black boxes that always produce exactly the same outputs, does it matter whether their internal mechanisms are different?
Dan Kervick said in reply to pgl..."Or maybe they would be effective because people believe they ought to be effective."Possibly. I think back in the 80's when monetarism was the super-sexy new view, there were a lot of people who thought inflation was mainly a function of the monetary base, so if the Fed made a big public stink about pumping up the monetary base, that could be counted on the boost inflation expectations, at least in some quarters, and the high expectations would in turn help to boost actual inflation. That doesn't seem to be the case any longer.
The heyday of monetarism was the late 70's and early 80's. That's when Friedman's monetary theory of inflation caught the public imagination, and it's the only time the Fed ever attempted (briefly) to target the money supply.Dan Kervick said in reply to pgl...Conservative spear-carrier Niall Ferguson knows how important monetarism was to the neoliberal movement, and how big a deal it was during the Thatcher-Reagan era.
Other references to the heyday of monetarism abound:
http://www.voxeu.org/article/nominal-gdp-targeting-developing-nations
The heyday of monetarism was the late 70's and early 80's. That's when Friedman's monetary theory of inflation caught the public imagination, and it's the only time the Fed ever attempted (briefly) to target the money supply.bakho said... December 16, 2015 at 05:45 AMConservative spear-carrier Niall Ferguson knows how important monetarism was to the neoliberal movement, and how big a deal it was during the Thatcher-Reagan era.
Other references to the heyday of monetarism abound:
http://www.voxeu.org/article/nominal-gdp-targeting-developing-nations
Kevin Hoover, The emperor has no clothes!"Given what we know about representative-agent models…there is not the slightest reason for us to think that the conditions under which they should work are fulfilled. The claim that representative-agent models provide microfundations succeeds only when we steadfastly avoid the fact that representative-agent models are just as aggregative as old-fashioned Keynesian macroeconometric models. They do not solve the problem of aggregation; rather they assume that it can be ignored."
This the reason Macro needs to move into more data driven empirics.
There will be massive pushback because so many have wasted many years and resources building mathematically elegant but fatally flawed models that do not make accurate predictions on even represent the fundamentals of any economy.
Syaloch said... December 16, 2015 at 05:50 AM
The Advantages of Higher Inflation - The New York TimesFrom the article:
"A critical problem with aiming for higher inflation is how to get from here to there. The Fed has spent enormous effort anchoring people's expectations to 2 percent. Even economists sympathetic to a higher target are wary of what such a shift might do to its credibility.
"'A perfect world, where you could commit to 4 percent and everybody believed it, would be great,' Mr. Mishkin told me. 'We are not in a perfect world. Moving much higher than 2 percent raises the risk that expectations become unanchored.'
"So here is an alternative proposal. If the Fed is too cautious to risk unhinging inflationary expectations, how about just delivering what it has promised? Among economists and investors, the problem with the Fed's 2 percent target is that just about everybody believes it is really a ceiling. That makes it even harder for inflation to rise to that level. The market expects the Fed to act pre-emptively to ensure it never goes over that line - which is what it seems to be doing now.
"If the Fed is not going to aim for higher inflation, the least it could do is re-anchor expectations to the goal it established, allowing inflation to fluctuate above and below a 2 percent average. That alone might help deal with the next economic crisis.
"'We haven't fully tested whether we can deal with this kind of crisis with a 2 percent inflation target,' said David H. Romer of the University of California, Berkeley. 'Central banks have lots of tools. If they say they are willing to keep using them until they get where they want, they can eventually do it.'"
This highlights a confusing aspect of inflation targets. If the Fed simply announces a higher inflation target without taking any other action, have they really done anything? What's more, they not only need to announce the new target, they need to convince markets that they are willing to do whatever it takes to hit that target -- it's all about credibility and re-anchoring expectations. And while engaging in QE to push down longer-term rates might help make that statement more convincing, it doesn't seem to be strictly necessary for the new target to be effective.
Thus inflation targets seem in at least some cases to operate purely through psychological manipulation, as a sort of placebo effect: inflation rises not because the Fed has injected money into the economy today or changed the cost of lending today, but rather because the Fed is able to "trick" markets into believing it will rise in the future.
Peter K. said in reply to Syaloch...
And the reverse is true. The markets are skeptical that the Fed will hit its 2 percent ceiling target any time soon.Dan Kervick said in reply to Peter K....Inflation expectations are becoming un-anchored on the downside but nobody cares because .... oil.
I guess we'll all have to wait for Yellen's future memoirs to know the thinking that was going on inside the Fed during 2015. But it's interesting that both Yellen and Stanley Fischer, both formerly held in gigantic respect by the more prominent liberal economists, are now the targets of ire for apparently not seeing eye-to-eye with their opinionated friends on the outside. Despite the fact that BoG members have access to mountains of internal research and policy input that people on the outside can only guess at, the default position of the outsiders is that the insiders have been corrupted by power and fast-talking bankers or something.Here's my conjecture about what the Fed's thinking is: The Fed recognizes that keeping policy interest rates down at an unprecedentedly low basement level for years on end sends this message to the global economy: the US economy is a sick basket case. It needs the permanent life support of extraordinary monetary policy intervention to be kept from flat-lining.
I think the people who actually work inside the Fed think that is total bunk, and that as they gradually wean the financial sector off of the monetary ventilator, nothing bad is going to happen at all. The patient is going to get up, walk around and breathe normally. And when that happens, it will say, "Wow, maybe I should have tried that earlier!" Business confidence will spurt; people will think, "Hey, I guess we're not in that gloomy post-2008 depression any more!", and the country will get on with its business more cheerfully.
The Fed has had a devil of a time getting back to normal, because despite its best intentions it has inadvertently re-defined a condition of zero rates and excess reserves bleeding from bankers's ears as the new normal, and created an out-of-control public fixation on monetary policy intervention. Fed communications strategies aimed at guiding the market have turned back on them in a reflexive and self-defeating cycle. They got themselves into a terrible pattern for a while where every time there was good economic news, the markets would respond negatively because they interpreted the good news as evidence that the Fed would "taper" - which they regarded as bad news! And if there was bad news, the markets would respond favorably because they saw the bad news as evidence that the fed would "remain aggressive" - which is good news! Obviously that's a pretty pathological cycle to be in: it's a mechanism fro economic self-stultification. Indicating a move toward normalization too suddenly in 2013 caused the irrational "taper tantrum", so they have had to go more slowly this time around with the hand-holding and by building a longer "guidance" runway.
Their chief need now is to push back against the monetary maniacs and hyperventilators who keep trying to convince impressionable business people and consumers that the Fed has somehow been "keeping the economy" afloat, and that when interest rates go up - from 1/4 to 1/2 of a percent! - we're all going to drown. If you have enough ambulance chasers convincing people they are sick and damaged, they will act sick and damaged.
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economistsview.typepad.com
Why are Murdoch-controlled newspapers attacking "The Big Short?"
'The Big Short,' Housing Bubbles and Retold Lies, by Paul krugman, Commentary, NY Times: In May 2009 Congress created a special commission to examine the causes of the financial crisis. The idea was to emulate the celebrated Pecora Commission of the 1930s, which used careful historical analysis to help craft regulations that gave America two generations of financial stability.But some members of the new commission had a different goal. ... Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute, wrote to a fellow Republican on the commission ... it was important that what they said "not undermine the ability of the new House G.O.P. to modify or repeal Dodd-Frank"...; the party line, literally, required telling stories that would help Wall Street do it all over again.
Which brings me to a new movie the enemies of financial regulation really, really don't want you to see.
"The Big Short" ... does a terrific job of making Wall Street skulduggery entertaining, of exploiting the inherent black humor of how it went down. ... But you don't want me to play film critic; you want to know whether the movie got the underlying ... story right. And the answer is yes, in all the ways that matter. ...
The ...housing ... bubble ... was inflated largely via opaque financial schemes that in many cases amounted to outright fraud - and it is an outrage that basically nobody ended up being punished ... aside from innocent bystanders, namely the millions of workers who lost their jobs and the millions of families that lost their homes.
While the movie gets the essentials of the financial crisis right, the true story ... is deeply inconvenient to some very rich and powerful people. They and their intellectual hired guns have therefore spent years disseminating an alternative view ... that places all the blame ... on ... too much government, especially government-sponsored agencies supposedly pushing too many loans on the poor.
Never mind that the supposed evidence for this view has been thoroughly debunked..., constant repetition, especially in captive media, keeps this imaginary history in circulation no matter how often it is shown to be false.
Sure enough, "The Big Short" has already been the subject of vitriolic attacks in Murdoch-controlled newspapers...
The ... people who made "The Big Short" should consider the attacks a kind of compliment: The attackers obviously worry that the film is entertaining enough that it will expose a large audience to the truth. Let's hope that their fears are justified.
btg said in reply to pgl...
I get the feeling that if doing a film review of "The Force Awakens", most economists would be rooting for the Empire to win - after all the empire will bring free trade within its borders, like the EU. Krugman would not, however.
Sanjait said...
In market fundamentalist world, markets don't fail. They can only be failed. Though it's still not clear how they think a little bit of government incentive for loans to low income borrowers caused the entire financial sector to lose its mind wrt CDOs.
Are markets efficient or not? I feel like the fundiesndont really have a coherent explanation for what happened, other than insisting the government somehow did it.
reason said...
reason said... December 18, 2015 at 02:32 AMI wish Krugman would attack the view that is being propagated at the moment that low nominal interest rates (it seems irrespective of the reason for them) foster bubbles. It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense - leverage doesn't just magnify the gains, it magnifies the losses as well - what really counts is expectations regardless of nominal interest rates.)
The distribution of the use of credit between pure financial speculation and productive investment is not a function of interest rates, but of things like bank culture, bank regulation and macro-economic and technological prospects.
Sanjait said in reply to reason... December 18, 2015 at 08:06 AMIt always seem to me that right wing economists credit businessmen with superhuman foresight and sophistication, except when it comes to the actions of the Fed and then something addles their brains and they become completely stupid. As I once put, it seems investors can't understand what the Fed is doing, even though they tell you.
That's it exactly. Markets are efficient, unless the government does anything, and then markets lose their minds and it's the government's fault.
And somehow the RW economists see no problem with this model
DeDude said in reply to Sanjait... December 18, 2015 at 08:18 AM
likbez said in reply to Sanjait...Here is how they evaluate models:
Good model; one that reaches the "right" good conclusions. Bad model; one that ends up saying stuff nobody should believe in.
"Markets are efficient, unless the government does anything"
This is a dangerous neoliberal dogma. Total lie.
=== quote ===
The efficient market hypothesis (EMH) is a flavor of economic Lysenkoism which became popular for the last 30 years in the USA. It is a pseudo scientific theory or, in more politically correct terms, unrealistic idealization of market behavior. Like classic Lysenkoism in the past was supported by Stalin's totalitarian state, it was supported by the power of neoliberal state, which is the state captured by financial oligarchy (see Casino Capitalism and Quiet coup for more details).Among the factors ignored by EMH is the positive feedback loop inherent in any system based on factional reserve banking, the level of market players ignorance, unequal access to the real information about the markets, the level of brainwashing performed on "lemmings" by controlled by elite MSM and market manipulation by the largest players and the state.
Economics, it is said, is the study of scarcity. There is, however, one thing that certainly isn't scarce, but which deserves the attention of economists - ignorance.
...Conventional economics analyses how individuals choose - maybe rationally, maybe not - from a range of options. But this raises the question: how do they know what these options are? Many feasible - even optimum - options might not occur to them. This fact has some important implications. ...
Slightly simplifying, we can say that (financial) markets are mainly efficient in separation of fools and their money... And efficient market hypothesis mostly bypasses important question about how the inequity of resources which inevitably affects the outcomes of market participants. For example, the level of education of market players is one aspect of the inequity of resources. Herd behavior is another important, but overlooked in EMH factor.JF said in reply to reason...
Great comment. I especially liked this point: "The distribution of the use of credit between pure financial speculation and productive investment is not a function of"
....Supervising regulators need to look carefully at the ratio of credit used for financial trading compared to credit used for what we've called real-economy matters. They should adjust the level of monitoring based on this view while they also inform policy makers including those in the legislature.
There may be an opportunity in 2017 to revise the statutes so the public plainly says what the rules of Commerce are in these financial 'inter-mediation' areas - society is better served if more of such credit offerings go to investments in the real economy where inputs are real things like employees, supplies, equipment/technologies. The public's law can effect this change.
david said in reply to JF...
except that a significant chunk of institutional investors have sticky nominal targets for return thanks to the politics of return expectation setting (true for pension fund and endowments) -- low interest rates do encourage chasing phantoms or looking to extract some rents, for those subject to that kind of pressure
BenIsNotYoda said in reply to reason...
"The distribution of the use of credit between pure financial speculation and productive investment is not a function of interest rates, but of things like bank culture, bank regulation and macro-economic and technological prospects."
The relationship between low interest rates and bubbles has nothing to do with the above. Low interest rates RAISE asset prices. Through the magic of low discount rates, the future earnings and cash flows are worth a lot higher today. This is why Bernanke cut rates and kept them low. Raising asset prices and the resultant higher net worth was supposed to lead to higher spending today. But outsized returns also attracts speculation. what is so difficult to understand? John Williams of SF Fed has shown how positive returns in asset markets raises the speculator's expected returns. when this dynamic gets out of control, it is a bubble.
Sanjait said in reply to BenIsNotYoda...
It's hard to see how to your claim that expected returns are high when earnings yields across the board are historically low.
BenIsNotYoda said in reply to Sanjait...
That is exactly the point. Expected returns in stocks have nothing to do with earnings growth.
Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to reason...
anne, December 18, 2015 at 06:37 AMIt does not seem reasonable or fair to pay practically no interest on savings, which is a consequence of Fed policy. A consequence of this is that people go into risky investments that lead to catastrophe, sometimes widespread. If the goal was to get people to spend (i.e. consume) more, it seems that they are persistently & stubbornly frugal.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/23/shorts-subject/
November 23, 2015
Shorts Subject
By Paul KrugmanLast night I was invited to a screening of "The Big Short," which I thought was terrific; who knew that collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps could be made into an edge-of-your-seat narrative (with great acting)?
But there was one shortcut the narrative took, which was understandable and possibly necessary, but still worth noting.
In the film, various eccentrics and oddballs make the discovery that subprime-backed securities are garbage, which is pretty much what happened; but this is wrapped together with their realization that there was a massive housing bubble, which is presented as equally contrary to anything anyone respectable was saying. And that's not quite right.
It's true that Greenspan and others were busy denying the very possibility of a housing bubble. And it's also true that anyone suggesting that such a bubble existed was attacked furiously - "You're only saying that because you hate Bush!" Still, there were a number of economic analysts making the case for a massive bubble. Here's Dean Baker in 2002. * Bill McBride (Calculated Risk) was on the case early and very effectively. I keyed off Baker and McBride, arguing for a bubble in 2004 and making my big statement about the analytics in 2005, ** that is, if anything a bit earlier than most of the events in the film. I'm still fairly proud of that piece, by the way, because I think I got it very right by emphasizing the importance of breaking apart regional trends.
So the bubble itself was something number crunchers could see without delving into the details of mortgage-backed securities, traveling around Florida, or any of the other drama shown in the film. In fact, I'd say that the housing bubble of the mid-2000s was the most obvious thing I've ever seen, and that the refusal of so many people to acknowledge the possibility was a dramatic illustration of motivated reasoning at work.
The financial superstructure built on the bubble was something else; I was clueless about that, and didn't see the financial crisis coming at all.
* http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/housing_2002_08.pdf
** http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/that-hissing-sound.html
anne said in reply to anne... December 18, 2015 at 06:43 AM
anne said in reply to anne... December 18, 2015 at 06:44 AMhttp://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/16/opinion/mind-the-gap.html
August 16, 2002
Mind the Gap
By PAUL KRUGMANMore and more people are using the B-word about the housing market. A recent analysis * by Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic Policy Research, makes a particularly compelling case for a housing bubble. House prices have run well ahead of rents, suggesting that people are now buying houses for speculation rather than merely for shelter. And the explanations one hears for those high prices sound more and more like the rationalizations one heard for Nasdaq 5,000.
If we do have a housing bubble, and it bursts, we'll be looking a lot too Japanese for comfort....
* http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/housing_2002_08.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/that-hissing-sound.html
August 8, 2005
That Hissing Sound
By PAUL KRUGMANThis is the way the bubble ends: not with a pop, but with a hiss.
Housing prices move much more slowly than stock prices. There are no Black Mondays, when prices fall 23 percent in a day. In fact, prices often keep rising for a while even after a housing boom goes bust.
So the news that the U.S. housing bubble is over won't come in the form of plunging prices; it will come in the form of falling sales and rising inventory, as sellers try to get prices that buyers are no longer willing to pay. And the process may already have started.
Of course, some people still deny that there's a housing bubble. Let me explain how we know that they're wrong.
One piece of evidence is the sense of frenzy about real estate, which irresistibly brings to mind the stock frenzy of 1999. Even some of the players are the same. The authors of the 1999 best seller "Dow 36,000" are now among the most vocal proponents of the view that there is no housing bubble.
Then there are the numbers. Many bubble deniers point to average prices for the country as a whole, which look worrisome but not totally crazy. When it comes to housing, however, the United States is really two countries, Flatland and the Zoned Zone.
In Flatland, which occupies the middle of the country, it's easy to build houses. When the demand for houses rises, Flatland metropolitan areas, which don't really have traditional downtowns, just sprawl some more. As a result, housing prices are basically determined by the cost of construction. In Flatland, a housing bubble can't even get started.
But in the Zoned Zone, which lies along the coasts, a combination of high population density and land-use restrictions - hence "zoned" - makes it hard to build new houses. So when people become willing to spend more on houses, say because of a fall in mortgage rates, some houses get built, but the prices of existing houses also go up. And if people think that prices will continue to rise, they become willing to spend even more, driving prices still higher, and so on. In other words, the Zoned Zone is prone to housing bubbles.
And Zoned Zone housing prices, which have risen much faster than the national average, clearly point to a bubble....
EMichael said in reply to anne... December 18, 2015 at 06:59 AM
Yeah, the only thing he missed was the timing of the collapse. The day he wrote this the Fed had already raised rates 250% in one year, on the way to a total of 400% in the next 6 months.
Yet prices accelerated until the top was reached a year after the column.
anne said in reply to EMichael... December 18, 2015 at 07:43 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/opinion/25krugman.html
August 25, 2006
Housing Gets Ugly
By PAUL KRUGMANBubble, bubble, Toll's in trouble. This week, Toll Brothers, the nation's premier builder of McMansions, announced that sales were way off, profits were down, and the company was walking away from already-purchased options on land for future development.
Toll's announcement was one of many indications that the long-feared housing bust has arrived. Home sales are down sharply; home prices, which rose 57 percent over the past five years (and much more than that along the coasts), are now falling in much of the country. The inventory of unsold existing homes is at a 13-year high; builders' confidence is at a 15-year low.
A year ago, Robert Toll, who runs Toll Brothers, was euphoric about the housing boom, declaring: "We've got the supply, and the market has got the demand. So it's a match made in heaven." In a New York Times profile of his company published last October, he dismissed worries about a possible bust. "Why can't real estate just have a boom like every other industry?" he asked. "Why do we have to have a bubble and then a pop?"
The current downturn, Mr. Toll now says, is unlike anything he's seen: sales are slumping despite the absence of any "macroeconomic nasty condition" taking housing down along with the rest of the economy. He suggests that unease about the direction of the country and the war in Iraq is undermining confidence. All I have to say is: pop! ...
EMichael said in reply to anne... December 18, 2015 at 07:52 AM
JohnH said..."Mr. Toll now says, is unlike anything he's seen: sales are slumping despite the absence of any "macroeconomic nasty condition""
You gotta love builders and RE agents. It wasn't macro that caused it, it was default rates across the board on supposedly safe investments that caused mortgage money supply to totally disappear.
One day people will understand that payments are the key to all finance.
"and it is an outrage that basically nobody ended up being punished ."
Yes, indeed. And who do we have to blame for that? Obama and Holder, of course. They made the investigation of mortgage securities fraud DOJ's lowest priority. Krugman's Democratic proclivities prevent him from stating the obvious.
I' m sure that pgl and his band of merry Obamabots will try to spin this in Obama's favor...I.e. Congress prevented him from implementing the law, even though Congress has nothing to do with it.
Fact is, Obama has intentionally been a lame duck ever since he took office. He was even clueless on how to capitalize on a filibuster-proof majority in the midst of an economic crisis...which brings us to Trump. Many are so desperate for leadership after Obama's hollow presidency that they'll even support a racist demagogue to avoid another empty White House.
run75441 said in reply to JohnH...
Yes you are correct. From 2001 into 2008 when all of the liar and ninja loans were being made, not one government official stepped forward to investigate the possibility of fraud, the predatory lending, the misrepresentation of loans taking place, the loans with "teaser" rates which later ballooned, the packing of loans with deceptive fees, the illegal kick backs, etc. Not one. To make matters worst, the administration from 2001-2008 aligned itself with the banks along with the maestro hisself "Greenspan."
When state AGs took on the burden of investigating the flagrant violations, the administration moves to block them saying they had no jurisdiction to do so. It did this through the OCC issuing rules preventing the states from prosecuting the banks. Besides blocking any investigation, the OCC failed in its mission to audit the banks for which it was by law to do.
What was the SEC doing during this time period? What was the administration doing with Enron in 2002? Didn't Cheney get sued by the GAO to find out who he was talking to at Enron?
Yes there is the matter of not prosecuting banking execs after 2008; however, the issue was allowed to grow during the prior administration and left on the next administration's doorstep. Closing the barn door after the perps have escaped is a bit late and it should have been stopped dead in its tracks during the prior 8 years.
So keep going down that path and we can also talk about fraud with tranching, CDS, Naked CDs, reserves, etc.
So, where was the administration during this time period?
DeDude said...
Alex H said in reply to Peter K....Subprime loans in poor communities represented a very small fraction of the total subprime volume and defaulted loans. I mean talk about the mouse and the elephant. Yet the FoxBots are being convinced to look at those scary mice and all that thundering noise they are making.
In the book, one of the supposed villains went to the division of AIG that was selling CDSes (i.e. "insuring" the toxic crap) and explained to a direct subordinate of the division exactly how his bank and the other companies of Wall Street were suckering them into taking on absurd risks. In *2005*.Because he was massively short in this market, and AIG pulling the plug would have popped the bubble. Nobody else was selling CDSes (then), and Wall Street couldn't have pretended that their risks were covered without them. That doesn't make him a hero, but seriously, if AIG had listened, no collapse.
Several of the characters effectively called up the ratings agencies to shout at them. Others called NYT and WSJ reporters, who ignored them. Then they called the SEC's enforcement division, who ignored them.
Besides, if the other side in all of those bets were foreign "widows and orphans", then it wouldn't have wrecked the financial system. If Bear Stearns had been sitting as the middleman between a Korean pension fund and Steve Eisman, they'd have just taken their cut and moved on.
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December 17, 2015 | Angry Bear
by Joseph Joyce
The Enduring Relevance of "Manias, Panics, and Crashes"
The seventh edition of Manias, Panics, and Crashes has recently been published by Palgrave Macmillan. Charles Kindleberger of MIT wrote the first edition, which appeared in 1978, and followed it with three more editions. Robert Aliber of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago took over the editing and rewriting of the fifth edition, which came out in 2005. (Aliber is also the author of another well-known book on international finance, The New International Money Game.) The continuing popularity of Manias, Panics and Crashes shows that financial crises continue to be a matter of widespread concern.
Kindleberger built upon the work of Hyman Minsky, a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis. Minsky was a proponent of what he called the "financial instability hypothesis," which posited that financial markets are inherently unstable. Periods of financial booms are followed by busts, and governmental intervention can delay but not eliminate crises. Minsky's work received a great deal of attention during the global financial crisis (see here and here; for a summary of Minksy's work, see Why Minsky Matters by L. Randall Wray of the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the Levy Economics Institute).
Kindleberger provided a more detailed description of the stages of a financial crisis. The period preceding a crisis begins with a "displacement," a shock to the system. When a displacement improves the profitability of at least one sector of an economy, firms and individuals will seek to take advantage of this opportunity. The resulting demand for financial assets leads to an increase in their prices. Positive feedback in asset markets lead to more investments and financial speculation, and a period of "euphoria," or mania develops.
At some point, however, insiders begin to take profits and withdraw from the markets. Once market participants realize that prices have peaked, flight from the markets becomes widespread. As prices plummet, a period of "revulsion" or panic ensues. Those who had financed their positions in the market by borrowing on the promise of profits on the purchased assets become insolvent. The panic ends when prices fall so far that some traders are tempted to come back into the market, or trading is limited by the authorities, or a lender of last resort intervenes to halt the decline.
In addition to elaborating on the stages of a financial crisis, Kindleberger also placed them in an international context. He wrote about the propagation of crises through the arbitrage of divergences in the prices of assets across markets or their substitutes. Capital flows and the spread of euphoria also contribute to the simultaneous rises in asset prices in different countries. (Piero Pasotti and Alessandro Vercelli of the University of Siena provide an analysis of Kindleberger's contributions.)
Aliber has continued to update the book, and the new edition has a chapter on the European sovereign debt crisis. (The prior edition covered the events of 2008-09.) But he has also made his own contributions to the Minsky-Kindleberger (and now –Aliber) framework. Aliber characterizes the decades since the early 1980s as "…the most tumultuous in monetary history in terms of the number, scope and severity of banking crises." To date, there have been four waves of such crises, which are almost always accompanied by currency crises. The first wave was the debt crisis of developing nations during the 1980s, and it was followed by a second wave of crises in Japan and the Nordic countries in the early 1990s. The third wave was the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, and the fourth is the global financial crisis.
Aliber emphasizes the role of cross-border investment flows in precipitating the crises. Their volatility has risen under flexible exchange rates, which allow central banks more freedom in formulating monetary policies that influence capital allocation. He also draws attention to the increases in household wealth due to rising asset prices and currency appreciation that contribute to consumption expenditures and amplify the boom periods. The reversal in wealth once investors revise their expectations and capital begins to flow out makes the resulting downturn more acute.
These views are consistent in many ways with those of Claudio Borio of the Bank for International Settlements (see also here). He has written that the international monetary and financial system amplifies the "excess financial elasticity," i.e., the buildup of financial imbalances that characterizes domestic financial markets. He identifies two channels of transmission. First, capital inflows contribute to the rise in domestic credit during a financial boom. The impact of global conditions on domestic financial markets exacerbates this development (see here). Second, monetary regimes may facilitate the expansion of monetary conditions from one country to others. Central bankers concerned about currency appreciation and a loss of competitiveness keep interest rates lower than they would otherwise, which furthers a domestic boom. In addition, the actions of central banks with international currencies such as the dollar has international ramifications, as the current widespread concern about the impending rise in the Federal Funds rate shows.
Aliber ends the current edition of Manias, Panics and Crashes with an appendix on China's financial situation. He compares the surge in China's housing markets with the Japanese boom of the 1980s and subsequent bust that initiated decades of slow economic growth. An oversupply of new housing in China has resulted in a decline in prices that threatens the solvency of property developers and the banks and shadow banks that financed them. Aliber is dubious of the claim that the Chinese government will support the banks, pointing out that such support will only worsen China's indebtedness. The need for an eighth edition of Manias, Panics and Crashes may soon be apparent.
cross posted with Capital Ebbs and Flows
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Dec 19, 2015 | Beat the Press
... ... ...
But what is even more striking is the Post's ability to treat the Fed a neutral party when the evidence is so overwhelming in the opposite direction. The majority of the Fed's 12 district bank presidents have long been pushing for a rate hike. While there are some doves among this group, most notably Charles Evans, the Chicago bank president, and Narayana Kocherlakota, the departing president of the Minneapolis bank, most of this group has publicly pushed for higher rate hikes for some time. By contrast, the governors who are appointed through the democratic process, have been far more cautious about raising rates.
It should raise serious concerns that the bank presidents, who are appointed through a process dominated by the banking industry, has such a different perspective on the best path forward for monetary policy. With only five of the seven governor slots currently filled, there are as many presidents with voting seats on the Fed's Open Market Committee as governors. In total, the governors are outnumbered at meetings by a ratio of twelve to five.
Any serious discussion of Fed policy would note that the banking industry appears to have a grossly disproportionate say in the country's monetary policy. Furthermore, it seems determined to use that influence to push the Fed on a path that slows growth and reduces the rate of job creation. The Post somehow missed this story or at least would prefer that the rest of us not take notice.
-- Dean Baker
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peakoilbarrel.com
Peter, 12/18/2015 at 2:01 pmIn ten years time I doubt very much most people around the world will care about small changes in shale oil production.The United States uses 19 million barrels of oil per day. The same population in Germany, Great Britain, France, Poland, the low countries and Scandinavia use 10 million.
The United States could reduce it's exorbitant consumption by firstly having the sort of extensive bus services that most European countries have. Ever time a train system can be built up and people would still get to work etc without any real hardship.
http://www.bueker.net/trainspotting/map.php?file=maps/germany/germany.gifThe real problems facing the world are far more difficult to adapt to.
http://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/overfishing
85% of fishing stock is being over fished and many stocks are collapsing, billions of people will be effected.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/arable-land-soil-food-security-shortage
Due to over plowing, over use of fertilizers and not allowing land to lie fallow, vast areas of arable land is being turned into wasteland or lost.
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December 18, 2015 | cepr.netDean Baker:
Working Paper: : In the years since 1980, there has been a well-documented upward redistribution of income. While there are some differences by methodology and the precise years chosen, the top one percent of households have seen their income share roughly double from 10 percent in 1980 to 20 percent in the second decade of the 21st century. As a result of this upward redistribution, most workers have seen little improvement in living standards from the productivity gains over this period.This paper argues that the bulk of this upward redistribution comes from the growth of rents in the economy in four major areas: patent and copyright protection, the financial sector, the pay of CEOs and other top executives, and protectionist measures that have boosted the pay of doctors and other highly educated professionals. The argument on rents is important because, if correct, it means that there is nothing intrinsic to capitalism that led to this rapid rise in inequality, as for example argued by Thomas Piketty.
Flash | PDFRC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Fair Economist, December 18, 2015 at 11:34 AM
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron, December 18, 2015 at 11:42 AM"...the growth of finance capitalism was what would kill capitalism off..."
"Financialization" is a short-cut terminology that in full is term either "financialization of non-financial firms" or "financialization of the means of production." In either case it leads to consolidation of firms, outsourcing, downsizing, and offshoring to reduce work force and wages and increase rents.
Consolidation, the alpha and omega of financialization can only be executed with very liquid financial markets, big investment banks to back necessary leverage to make the proffers, and an acute capital gains tax preference relative to dividends and interest earnings, the grease to liquidity.
It takes big finance to do "financialization" and it takes "financialization" to extract big rents while maintaining low wages.
[THANKS to djb just down thread who supplied this link:]pgl said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron, December 18, 2015 at 03:25 PMhttp://www.democraticunderground.com/10021305040
Finance sector as percent of US GDP, 1860-present: the growth of the rentier economy
[graph]
Financialization is a term sometimes used in discussions of financial capitalism which developed over recent decades, in which financial leverage tended to override capital (equity) and financial markets tended to dominate over the traditional industrial economy and agricultural economics.
Financialization is a term that describes an economic system or process that attempts to reduce all value that is exchanged (whether tangible, intangible, future or present promises, etc.) either into a financial instrument or a derivative of a financial instrument. The original intent of financialization is to be able to reduce any work-product or service to an exchangeable financial instrument... Financialization also makes economic rents possible...financial leverage tended to override capital (equity) and financial markets tended to dominate over the traditional industrial economy and agricultural economics...
Companies are not able to invest in new physical capital equipment or buildings because they are obliged to use their operating revenue to pay their bankers and bondholders, as well as junk-bond holders. This is what I mean when I say that the economy is becoming financialized. Its aim is not to provide tangible capital formation or rising living standards, but to generate interest, financial fees for underwriting mergers and acquisitions, and capital gains that accrue mainly to insiders, headed by upper management and large financial institutions. The upshot is that the traditional business cycle has been overshadowed by a secular increase in debt.
Instead of labor earning more, hourly earnings have declined in real terms. There has been a drop in net disposable income after paying taxes and withholding "forced saving" for social Security and medical insurance, pension-fund contributions and–most serious of all–debt service on credit cards, bank loans, mortgage loans, student loans, auto loans, home insurance premiums, life insurance, private medical insurance and other FIRE-sector charges. ... This diverts spending away from goods and services.
In the United States, probably more money has been made through the appreciation of real estate than in any other way. What are the long-term consequences if an increasing percentage of savings and wealth, as it now seems, is used to inflate the prices of already existing assets - real estate and stocks - instead of to create new production and innovation?
Your graph shows something I've been meaning to suggest for a while. Take a look at the last time that the financial sector share of GDP rose. The late 1920's. Which was followed by the Great Depression which has similar causes as our Great Recession. Here is my observation.Peter K. said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron, December 18, 2015 at 11:50 AMGive that Wall Street clowns a huge increase in our national income and we don't get more services from them. What we get is screwed on the grandest of scales.
BTW - there is a simple causal relationship that explains both the rise in the share of financial sector income/GDP and the massive collapses of the economy (1929 and 2007). It is called stupid financial deregulation. First we see the megabanks and Wall Street milking the system for all its worth and when their unhanded and often secretive risk taking falls apart - the rest of bear the brunt of the damage.
Which is why this election is crucial. Elect a Republican and we repeat this mistake again. Elect a real progressive and we can put in place the types of financial reforms FDR was known for.
djb said..." and it takes "financialization" to extract big rents while maintaining low wages."
It takes governmental macro policy to maintain loose labor markets and low wages. Perhaps the financialization of the economy and rising inequality leads to a corruption of the political process which leads to monetary, currency and fiscal policy such that labor markets are loose and inflation is low.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to djb, December 18, 2015 at 12:03 PMhttp://www.democraticunderground.com/10021305040
I don't know about the last couple years but this chart indicates a large growth in financials as a share of gdp over the years since the 40's
[Anne gave you FIRE sector profits as a share of GDP while this gives FIRE sector profits as a share of total corporate profits.]Puerto Barato said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron,*
[Smoking gun excerpt:]
"...The financial system has grown rapidly since the early 1980s. In the 1950s, the financial sector accounted for about 3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Today, that figure has more than doubled, to 6.5 percent. The sector's yearly rate of growth doubled after 1980, rising to a peak of 7.5 percent of GDP in 2006. As finance has grown in relative size it has also grown disproportionately more profitable. In 1950, financial-sector profits were about 8 percent of overall U.S. profits-meaning all the profit earned by any kind of business enterprise in the country. By the 2000s, they ranged between 20 and 40 percent...
[Ouch!]
[Now the whole enchilada:]
If you want to know what happened to economic equality in this country, one word will explain a lot of it: financialization. That term refers to an increase in the size, scope, and power of the financial sector-the people and firms that manage money and underwrite stocks, bonds, derivatives, and other securities-relative to the rest of the economy.
The financialization revolution over the past thirty-five years has moved us toward greater inequality in three distinct ways. The first involves moving a larger share of the total national wealth into the hands of the financial sector. The second involves concentrating on activities that are of questionable value, or even detrimental to the economy as a whole. And finally, finance has increased inequality by convincing corporate executives and asset managers that corporations must be judged not by the quality of their products and workforce but by one thing only: immediate income paid to shareholders.
The financial system has grown rapidly since the early 1980s. In the 1950s, the financial sector accounted for about 3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Today, that figure has more than doubled, to 6.5 percent. The sector's yearly rate of growth doubled after 1980, rising to a peak of 7.5 percent of GDP in 2006. As finance has grown in relative size it has also grown disproportionately more profitable. In 1950, financial-sector profits were about 8 percent of overall U.S. profits-meaning all the profit earned by any kind of business enterprise in the country. By the 2000s, they ranged between 20 and 40 percent. This isn't just the decline of profits in other industries, either. Between 1980 and 2006, while GDP increased five times, financial-sector profits increased sixteen times over. While financial and nonfinancial profits grew at roughly the same rate before 1980, between 1980 and 2006 nonfinancial profits grew seven times while financial profits grew sixteen times.
This trend has continued even after the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent financial reforms, including the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Financial profits in 2012 were 24 percent of total profits, while the financial sector's share of GDP was 6.8 percent. These numbers are lower than the high points of the mid-2000s; but, compared to the years before 1980, they are remarkably high.
This explosion of finance has generated greater inequality. To begin with, the share of the total workforce employed in the financial sector has barely budged, much less grown at a rate equivalent to the size and profitability of the sector as a whole. That means that these swollen profits are flowing to a small sliver of the population: those employed in finance. And financiers, in turn, have become substantially more prominent among the top 1 percent. Recent work by the economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole, and Bradley T. Heim found that the percentage of those in the top 1 percent of income working in finance nearly doubled between 1979 and 2005, from 7.7 percent to 13.9 percent.
If the economy had become far more productive as a result of these changes, they could have been worthwhile. But the evidence shows it did not. Economist Thomas Philippon found that financial services themselves have become less, not more, efficient over this time period. The unit cost of financial services, or the percentage of assets it costs to produce all financial issuances, was relatively high at the dawn of the twentieth century, but declined to below 2 percent between 1901 and 1960. However, it has increased since the 1960s, and is back to levels seen at the early twentieth century. Whatever finance is doing, it isn't doing it more cheaply.
In fact, the second damaging trend is that financial institutions began to concentrate more and more on activities that are worrisome at best and destructive at worst. Harvard Business School professors Robin Greenwood and David Scharfstein argue that between 1980 and 2007 the growth in financial-industry revenues came from two things: asset management and loan origination. Fees associated either with asset management or with household credit in particular were responsible for 74 percent of the growth in financial-sector output over that period.
The asset management portion reflects the explosion of mutual funds, which increased from $134 billion in assets in 1980 to $12 trillion in 2007. Much of it also comes from "alternative investment vehicles" like hedge funds and private equity. Over this time, the fee rate for mutual funds fell, but fees associated with alternative investment vehicles exploded. This is, in essence, money for nothing-there is little evidence that hedge funds actually perform better than the market over time. And, unlike mutual funds, alternative investment funds do not fully disclose their practices and fees publicly.
Beginning in 1980 and continuing today, banks generate less and less of their income from interest on loans. Instead, they rely on fees, from either consumers or borrowers. Fees associated with household credit grew from 1.1 percent of GDP in 1980 to 3.4 percent in 2007. As part of the unregulated shadow banking sector that took over the financial sector, banks are less and less in the business of holding loans and more and more concerned with packaging them and selling them off. Instead of holding loans on their books, banks originate loans to sell off and distribute into this new type of banking sector.
Again, if this "originate-to-distribute" model created value for society, it could be a worthwhile practice. But, in fact, this model introduced huge opportunities for fraud throughout the lending process. Loans-such as "securitized mortgages" made up of pledges of the income stream from subprime mortgage loans-were passed along a chain of buyers until someone far away held the ultimate risk. Bankers who originated the mortgages received significant commissions, with virtually no accountability or oversight. The incentive, in fact, was perverse: find the worst loans with the biggest fees instead of properly screening for whether the loans would be any good for investors.
The same model made it difficult, if not impossible, to renegotiate bad mortgages when the system collapsed. Those tasked with tackling bad mortgages on behalf of investors had their own conflicts of interests, and found themselves profiting while loans struggled. This process created bad debts that could never be paid, and blocked attempts to try and rework them after the fact. The resulting pool of bad debt has been a drag on the economy ever since, giving us the fall in median wages of the Great Recession and the sluggish recovery we still live with.
And of course it's been an epic disaster for the borrowers themselves. Many of them, we now know, were moderate- and lower-income families who were in no financial position to borrow as much as they did, especially under such predatory terms and with such high fees. Collapsing home prices and the inability to renegotiate their underwater mortgages stripped these folks of whatever savings they had and left them in deep debt, widening even further the gulf of inequality in this country.
Moreover, financialization isn't just confined to the financial sector itself. It's also ultimately about who controls, guides, and benefits from our economy as a whole. And here's the last big change: the "shareholder revolution," started in the 1980s and continuing to this very day, has fundamentally transformed the way our economy functions in favor of wealth owners.
To understand this change, compare two eras at General Electric. This is how business professor Gerald Davis describes the perspective of Owen Young, who was CEO of GE almost straight through from 1922 to 1945: "[S]tockholders are confined to a maximum return equivalent to a risk premium. The remaining profit stays in the enterprise, is paid out in higher wages, or is passed on to the customer." Davis contrasts that ethos with that of Jack Welch, CEO from 1981 to 2001; Welch, Davis says, believed in "the shareholder as king-the residual claimant, entitled to the [whole] pot of earnings."
This change had dramatic consequences. Economist J. W. Mason found that, before the 1980s, firms tended to borrow funds in order to fuel investment. Since 1980, that link has been broken. Now when firms borrow, they tend to use the money to fund dividends or buy back stocks. Indeed, even during the height of the housing boom, Mason notes, "corporations were paying out more than 100 percent of their cash flow to shareholders."
This lack of investment is obviously holding back our recovery. Productive investment remains low, and even extraordinary action by the Federal Reserve to make investments more profitable by keeping interest rates low has not been able to counteract the general corporate presumption that this money should go to shareholders. There is thus less innovation, less risk taking, and ultimately less growth. One of the reasons this revolution was engineered in the 1980s was to put a check on what kinds of investments CEOs could make, and one of those investments was wage growth. Finance has now won the battle against wage earners: corporations today are reluctant to raise wages even as the economy slowly starts to recover. This keeps the economy perpetually sluggish by retarding consumer demand, while also increasing inequality.
How can these changes be challenged? The first thing we must understand is the scope of the change. As Mason writes, the changes have been intellectual, legal, and institutional. At the intellectual level, academic research and conventional wisdom among economists and policymakers coalesced around the ideas that maximizing returns to shareholders is the only goal of a corporation, and that the financial markets were always right. At the legal level, laws regulating finance at the state level were overturned by the Supreme Court or preempted by federal regulators, and antitrust regulations were gutted by the Reagan administration and not taken up again.
At the institutional level, deregulation over several administrations led to a massive concentration of the financial sector into fewer, richer firms. As financial expertise became more prestigious than industry-specific knowledge, CEOs no longer came from within the firms they represented but instead from other firms or from Wall Street; their pay was aligned through stock options, which naturally turned their focus toward maximizing stock prices. The intellectual and institutional transformation was part of an overwhelming ideological change: the health and strength of the economy became identified solely with the profitability of the financial markets.
This was a bold revolution, and any program that seeks to change it has to be just as bold intellectually. Such a program will also require legal and institutional changes, ones that go beyond making sure that financial firms can fail without destroying the economy. Dodd-Frank can be thought of as a reaction against the worst excesses of the financial sector at the height of the housing bubble, and as a line of defense against future financial panics. Many parts of it are doing yeoman's work in curtailing the financial sector's abuses, especially in terms of protecting consumers from fraud and bringing some transparency to the Wild West of the derivatives markets. But the scope of the law is too limited to roll back these larger changes.
One provision of Dodd-Frank, however, suggests a way forward. At the urging of the AFL-CIO, Dodd-Frank empowered the Securities and Exchange Commission to examine the activities of private equity firms on behalf of their investors. At around $3.5 trillion, private equity is a massive market with serious consequences for the economy as a whole. On its first pass, the SEC found extensive abuses. Andrew Bowden, the director of the SEC's examinations office, stated that the agency found "what we believe are violations of law or material weaknesses in controls over 50 percent of the time."
Lawmakers could require private equity and hedge funds to standardize their disclosures of fees and holdings, as is currently the case for mutual funds. The decline in fees for mutual funds noted above didn't just happen by itself; it happened because the law structured the market for actual transparency and price competition. This will need to happen again for the broader financial sector.
But the most important change will be intellectual: we must come to understand our economy not as simply a vehicle for capital owners, but rather as the creation of all of us, a common endeavor that creates space for innovation, risk taking, and a stronger workforce. This change will be difficult, as we will have to alter how we approach the economy as a whole. Our wealth and companies can't just be strip-mined for a small sliver of capital holders; we'll need to bring the corporation back to the public realm. But without it, we will remain trapped inside an economy that only works for a select few.
[Whew!]
"3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Today, that figure has more than doubled, to 6.5"
~~RC AKA Darryl, Ron ~Growth of the non-financial-sector == growth in productivity
Growth of the financial-sector == growth in upward transfer of wealth
Ostensibly financial-sector is there to protect your money from being eaten up by inflation. Closer inspection shows that the prevention of *eaten up* is by the method of rent collection.
Accountants handle this analysis poorly, but you can see what is happening. Boiling it down to the bottom line you can easily see that wiping out the financial sector is the remedy to the Piketty.
Hell! Financial sector wiped itself out in 008. Problem was that the GSE and administration brought the zombie back to life then put the vampire back at our throats. What was the precipitating factor that snagged the financial sector without warning?
Unexpected
deflation
!Gimme some
of thatpgl said in reply to djb...
Rock O Sock O Choco said in reply to djb... December 18, 2015 at 06:26 PMPeople like Brad DeLong have noted this for a while. Twice as many people making twice as much money per person. And their true value to us - not a bit more than it was back in the 1940's.
JEC - MeanSquaredErrors said...
tew said...Wait, what?
Piketty looks at centuries of data from all over the world and concludes that capitalism has a long-run bias towards income concentration. Baker looks at 35 years of data in one country and concludes that Piketty is wrong. Um...?
A little more generously, what Baker actually writes is:
"The argument on rents is important because, if correct, it means that there is nothing intrinsic to capitalism that led to **this** rapid rise in inequality, as for example argued by Thomas Piketty." (emphasis added)
But Piketty has always been very explicit that the recent rise in US income inequality is anomalous -- driven primarily by rising inequality in the distribution of labor income, and only secondarily by any shift from labor to capital income.
So perhaps Baker is "correctly" refuting Straw Thomas Piketty. Which I suppose is better than just being obviously wrong. Maybe.
cm said in reply to tew...Some simple math shows that this assertion is false "As a result of this upward redistribution, most workers have seen little improvement in living standards" unless you think an apprx. 60% in per-capita real income (expressed as GDP) among the 99% is "little improvement".
Real GDP 2015 / Real GDP 1980 = 2.57 (Source: FRED)
If the income share of the 1% shifted from 10% to 20% then The 1%' real GDP component went up 410% while that of The 99% went up 130%. Accounting for a population increase of about 41% brings those numbers to a 265% increase and a 62% increase.Certainly a very unequal distribution of the productivity gains but hard to call "little".
I believe the truth of the statement is revealed when you look at the Top 5% vs. the other 95%.
pgl said in reply to tew...For most "working people", their raises are quickly eaten up by increases in housing/rental, food, local services, and other nondiscretionary costs. Sure, you can buy more and better imported consumer electronics per dollar, but you have to pay the rent/mortgage every months, how often do you buy a new flat screen TV? In a high-cost metro, a big ass TV will easily cost less than a single monthly rent (and probably less than your annual cable bill that you need to actually watch TV).
Are you trying to be the champion of the 1%? Sorry dude but Greg Mankiw beat you to this.
anne said...
anne said in reply to anne...In the years since 1980, there has been a well-documented upward redistribution of income. While there are some differences by methodology and the precise years chosen, the top one percent of households have seen their income share roughly double from 10 percent in 1980 to 20 percent in the second decade of the 21st century. As a result of this upward redistribution, most workers have seen little improvement in living standards from the productivity gains over this period....
-- Dean Baker
anne said in reply to don...http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/
September 16, 2015
Real Median Household Income, 1980 & 2014
1980 ( 48,462)2014 ( 53,657)
53,657 - 48,462 = 5,1955,195 / 48,462 = 10.7%
Between 1980 and 2014 real median household income increased by a mere 10.7%.anne said in reply to anne...I would be curious to know what has happened to the number of members per household....
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/
September 16, 2015
Household Size
2014 ( 2.54)
1980 ( 2.73)[ The difference in household size to real median household incomes is not statistically significant. ]
cm said...http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/families/index.html
September 16, 2015
Real Median Family Income, 1948-1980-2014
1948 ( 27,369)1980 ( 57,528)
2014 ( 66,632)
57,528 - 27,369 = 30,15930,159 / 27,369 = 110.2%
66,632 - 57,528 = 9,1049,104 / 57,528 = 15.8%
Between 1948 and 1980, real median family income increased by 110.2%, while between 1980 and 2014 real median family income increased by a mere 15.8%."protectionist measures that have boosted the pay of doctors and other highly educated professionals"
Protectionist measures (largely of the variety that foreign credentials are not recognized) apply to doctors and similar accredited occupations considered to be of some importance, but certainly much less so to "highly educated professionals" in tech, where the protectionism is limited to annual quotas for some categories of new workers imported into the country and requiring companies to pay above a certain wage rate for work visa holders in jobs claimed to have high skills requirements.
A little mentioned but significant factor for growing wages in "highly skilled" jobs is that the level of foundational and generic domain skills is a necessity, but is not all the value the individual brings to the company. In complex subject matters, even the most competent person joining a company has to become familiar with the details of the products, the industry niche, the processes and professional/personal relationships in the company or industry, etc. All these are not really teachable and require between months and years in the job. This represents a significant sunk cost. Sometimes (actually rather often) experience within the niche/industry is in a degree portable between companies, but some company still had to employ enough people to build this experience, and it cannot be readily bought by bringing in however competent freshers.
This applies less so e.g. in medicine. There are of course many heavily specialized disciplines, but a top flight brain or internal organ surgeon can essentially work on any person. The variation in the subject matter is large and complex, but much more static than in technology.
That's not to knock down the skill of medical staff in any way (or anybody else who does a job that is not trivial, and that's true for many jobs). But specialization vs. genericity follow a different pattern than in tech.
Another example, the legal profession. There are similar principles that carry across, with a lot of the specialization happening along different legislation, case law, etc., specific to the jurisdiction and/or domain being litigated.
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cepr.net
December 17, 2015
GDP Forecasts Have Consistently Been Too High
In an article * on the Federal Reserve Board's decision to raise interest rates, the Washington Post referred to the 2.4 percent median growth forecast of the Fed's Open Market Committee. For example, last December their median forecast for growth in 2015 was 2.8 percent. It now appears growth will be around 2.2 percent for the year. The Fed was not out of line with other forecasts. For example the Congressional Budget Office, which quite explicitly tries to be near the middle of major forecasts, forecast 2.9 percent growth for 2015.
-- Dean Baker
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www.cbo.gov
"CBO's Publications - CBO's 2015 Long-Term Projections for Social Security: Additional Information"
New From CBOpdf 446.38 KB
"CBO's 2015 Long-Term Projections for Social Security: Additional Information"
"Under current law, CBO projects, Social Security's trust funds, considered together, will be exhausted in 2029. In that case, benefits in 2030 would need to be reduced by 29 percent from the scheduled amounts."
Summary
"Social Security, which marked its 80th anniversary in 2015, is the largest single program in the federal government's budget. About 72 percent of the roughly 60 million people who currently receive Social Security benefits are retired workers or their spouses and children, and another 10 percent are survivors of deceased workers; all of those beneficiaries receive payments through Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI). The remaining 18 percent of beneficiaries are disabled workers or their spouses and children; they receive Disability Insurance (DI) benefits.
In fiscal year 2015, spending for Social Security benefits totaled $877 billion, or almost one-quarter of federal spending. OASI payments accounted for about 84 percent of those outlays, and DI payments made up about 16 percent."
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Jesse's Café Américain
...There is a heavy lean towards believing that the Fed will raise rates 25 basis points.
Fed Funds futures are indicating expectation of a move to 100 basis points total by the end of next year. Let's see if they can pull that one off. It seems aspirational, if one wishes to have room to cut when their latest folly falls back upon them.The idea that since recoveries are often accompanied by inflation, if we can only use monetary policy to create inflation then the recovery will come, is so wrong-headed that it leaves me aghast.
Even Keynes recognized that the point of stimulus was to provoke aggregate demand, which is the organic form of growth in the economy that will provide all the inflation that one might expect.
But to pursue this effete, top down stimulus focused primary on the still unreformed Banking system and the wealthiest top few percent is beyond policy error, and more policy malpractice. And of course, if one puts austerity and financial parasitism into the mix, then we just aren't in Kansas anymore Toto.
So let's see how things go this week, keeping in mind that there may be antics aplenty after the Fed announcement and into the quad witch for stocks on Friday. The miners have been beaten bloody.
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Dec 14, 2015 | zerohedge.com
"Yeah but it's junk credit... who cares! I am invested in solid megacaps and even solider FANGs - what can go wrong?"
The biggest buyer of stocks in 2016, will be, according to Goldman Sachs, the same as it was in 2015 - corporate management teams buying back their own stock in near record quantities. But there is a problem with this thesis... the cost of funding these epic buybacks is surging, making the un-economic actions of the CFO (if very economical for their own bank accounts as they sell record amounts of their own personal stock to their company) even more irrational.
Here is Goldman's David Kostin explaining who the biggest buyer of stocks is (and will be) - as a reminder, it's not "mom(o) and pop".
We expect corporations will continue to be the largest source of demand for stocks, with net purchases by US companies totaling $450 billion, equal to about 2% of public equity cap. We forecast equity inflows from equity-related ETFs ($225 billion), equity mutual funds ($200 billion), life insurance ($50 billion), and foreign investors ($25 billion). We forecast net outflows from households ($25 billion) and pensions ($150 billion).
Well, the cost of funding that carnival of financial engineering and artifice (just ask Nordstrom, Macy's, IBM and so on) is soaring, as high-yield decompression pukes over into investment grade markets, spiking the cost of funding and crushing the 'economic feasibility' of debt-funded shareholder-friendliness:
Charts: Bloomberg
And, in case you thought "well, cost of funding has only gone up 30-40bps in IG, they can handle that," you are wrong! To all those who claim US corporate balance sheets are in great shape - they are not! Leverage is at record highs and interest coverage near record lows for the IG universe. And judging by today's collapse in Investment Grade bond prices, the market just woke up to this reality.
Simply put, the Fed's policies enabled massive releveraging and now corporations are stuck with few options to escape a vicious circle - which by the way, is why it's called the credit 'cycle'.
And this is why the contagion to IG matters: the biggest buyer of stocks of the last few years is about to priced away as its (cheap debt) funding dries up, removing the biggest pillar of delusion from current equity valuations.
Selected Skeptical Commentsstrannick
Wow, the foremost scholar on Russia is one dumb motherfucker. Did nobody tell this stupid asshole that the west funds jihadism in order to conquer Russia?Professor Steve Cohen, the foremost Russia scholar in the U.S., laments, is that it is this narrative which has precluded America from ever concluding any real ability to find a mutually acceptable modus vivendi with Russia – which it sorely needs, if it is ever seriously to tackle the phenomenon of Wahhabist jihadism (or resolve the Syrian conflict).
sam i am
The Western nations underestimated the horrible trauma that the Russian society experienced in 1990s when the Russians peacefully surrendered their society, their lands, their economy to the West, hoping to be accepted and treated as equals by the "world" community. Instead, the West dealt with the Russian skillfully, decisively, and mercilessly, just like the American Indians were dealt with by the colonizers. The Russia was gutted, scalped, and hanged on a cross to die slow and painful death. Some say that Russia like a cat has nine lives. Others say that Russia died and resurrected like Phoenix or Jesus. Open wounds have not healed yet, when after the February 22nd 2014 putsch in Kiev, and publication of the US Department of Defense tenders on the constructions of facilities in Sevastopol for the US fleet and NAVY everyone in Russia, including its government, understood that it was a declaration of war, and stood up in arms.
http://thesaker.is/ukraine-sitrep-december-13th-2015-by-scott/
Global Observer
...After Ukraine and Syria, Russians have no illusions left about how the West intends to treat Russia. Russians are ready for any action Putin may take against the West and any fall out from it for themselves.
Ghordius
"It is the basis to America's and Europe's claim to exceptionalism and leadership". seriously?
"What is sometimes forgotten, is how the Bush neo-cons gave their "spin" to this narrative for the Middle East by casting Arab national secularists and Ba'athists as the offspring of "Satan": David Wurmser was advocating in 1996, "expediting the chaotic collapse" of secular-Arab nationalism in general, and Baathism in particular. He concurred with King Hussein of Jordan that "the phenomenon of Baathism" was, from the very beginning, "an agent of foreign, namely Soviet policy.""
so? yes, King Hussein is right, in the very beginning it was mainly the Soviet Union that fostered Ba'athism. and again, so? the Soviet Union is no more
junction
Obama is stark raving mad, and his female neocons - Nuland, Powers and assorted other power hungry bitches - are too busy following orders from Israel to realize they are on a treasonous path to World War III. Putin will vaporize Raqqa with one of his new nuclear weapons that works like a neutron bomb. In all likelihood, when the first Kalibr cruise missiles hit ISIS/Bush's Captagon meth plant in Raqqa, the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office couldn't even detect them to warn CIA black ops spies in the drug facility to run. Putin knows Erdogan was following Obama's orders when Erdogan let US Air Force pilots in Turkish planes shot down the Russian bomber.
Global Observer
NOBODY WINS A NUCLEAR WAR.
I hope that Putin and his Military Advisors are smart enough to figure that out.
They are. But what the Americans don't seem to be aware of is that for some there are worse things than being dead and in order to avoid these worse things, people are prepared to die and nations willing to risk annihilation.
Russia is willing to risk annihilation in order to be able to live peacefully and with dignity. Is the USA willing to risk annihilation in order to be able to continue to insult Russia and bully the world? If the USA is indeed willing to risk annihilation to continue to do that, it would be silly for Russia not to attack the USA while she still can, because if the US were ever to develop the capability to neutralise a Russian nuclear attack, Russia can be guaranteed she will be treated with no greater respect than Iraq under Saddam was. Neither being locked in a weapons race to keep the US vulnerable to Russian attacks nor being prepared to live under Western dictates are options for Russia.
monk27
If the US will be stupid enough to start a war with Russia or/and China, it will lose such a fight big time. That will be the end of America as we know it, and also the end of the contemporary Western "elite" whether they believe it or not. Their move...
MrPalladium
"and also the end of the contemporary Western "elite"
Our DC Beltway and NYC elites are wildly delusional about "their" ability to win a nuclear war. They listen only to the defense contractors. In fact the West's elites are the prime target in a nuclear war, and even though a small and select strata might have time to hide in a deep bunker, the vast substrata that supports them, runs their bureaucracies and mans their deep state will certainly be annihilated.
No intelligent power like Russia is likely to waste a perfectly good nuke on Paducah Kentucky, but it is certain that the entire population of Manhattan Island, and the DC beltway will be vaporized along with West Los Angeles (propaganda production central) and Silly Valley. The effluvia of the silos in Iowa and Nebraska can be intercepted. Remarkably, our elites and their supporting substrata still believe that the main combatants will be rural boys from Texas and Tennessee which in a strange turn of justice will be the safest places to hide. Our 400 or so billionaire oligarchs who control this country are concentrated in about 20 zip codes. Do you really think that Russia hasn't already targeted them? The whole point of nuclear war is to decapitate the regime but spare the resources and general population for future use, and the real regime, the oligarchs, occupy a very modest and easily cleared amount of territory.
The nuclear war our elites seek to provoke will be the first in nearly a thousand years in which the elites themselves will be on the front lines of the combat.
August
I do like the way you think, Mr. P, and it's entertaining to speculate about war, TEOTWAWKI etc.
Personally, I think the biggest weakness the USA has is its increasingly diverse and divided population (which is also rather dumbed-down, infantile and irresponsible). The Pentagon and their masters must expect to resolve any future major conflict by means of technologic jujitsu; if they think that "Americans from all walks of life" are going to rally in support of a major foreign war of choice, support mass conscription etc., they're making IMHO a big mistake.
Still, with enough provocation and manipulation, perhaps the typical Amurican can be goosed into enthusiasm for a "fight against Islam"; TPTB certainly seem to be giving this angle their best shot these days.monk27
"They" (i.e. the Russians) stand a better chance to survive than us. Ours is a much more complex AND violent society than theirs. The Mad Max way of living works only in movie...
Tall Tom
NO. THEY DO NOT. NUCLEAR WINTER, PAL.
You will either freeze to death or succumb to suffocation due to LACK OF OXYGEN.
The ash will blot out most sunlight. Plants require sunlight to photosynthesize Carbon, from CO2, into complex sugars and starches.
They transpire OXYGEN. Without the plants...YOU ARE DEAD.
Watch this video. Even the former Soviet Academy of Sciences concur with this modeling. NOBODY WILL SURVIVE. It is GLOBAL EXTINCTION. It is a God Damned Extinction Level Event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCTKcd2Ko98
I am a physicist. This is valid science. My warning is not without a solid foundation.
Volkodav
Soviet did not so much invade. Soviet was already, support moderate government, building infrastructure, schools and other. Girls attended school in dresses.
Search for photos Kabul in 60's 70's
Moderate leader was murdered in coup by extremist backed from outsiders. Russians, moderates and monorities were slaughtered. That is when Soviet, after much concern debate, sent additional forces. Soviet was not defeated, but withdrew orderly result of collapse of funds, problems.
Soviet controlled more of country than west coalition ever did and alone, against outside interferences aiding radicals there was some beginning of what is today, some nasty creations. You never understood there was other side, moderate and civil
ebworthen
What a shame, such stupidity; the other great power and nation that is at least still Western and Christian. Europe appears to be lost, and yet the U.S. arms Muslim armies and pokes Russia on its borders. Abject insanity.
Insurrexion
Simple. Kill the Neocons one by one and we have a safer world for your children, your family and you.
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TheStreet
Keep in mind that the Fed's first rate hike won't really change much. Rates will still be at historic lows. It all depends on how much the central bank raises rates in the coming months. So you don't have to rush to do anything.
An increase of 0.25 percentage point on Wednesday will almost certainly not result in big swings in bond values, especially given how many in the market expect the hike. And the Fed is likely to say that the pace of future increases will be slow.Still, higher rates lessen the value of the bonds you currently own. That's because newly issued bonds under those higher rates will pay out more than older ones. So the price of your older bonds falls as a result.
For investors who hold bonds primarily for the income they generate, the drop in prices doesn't matter as much. That's because if you hold a bond until maturity, you never have to sell it and take a loss.
But it's a different story if you hold bonds through a mutual fund, as most investors do. The value of the fund declines with any interest rate hike because the fund becomes less attractive to investors.
The drop in value is closely linked with the term of the bonds, known as duration. Those durations are usually indicated as short term, intermediate term, or long term. In theory, short-term bonds will drop the least in value, and long-term bonds will drop the most when rates go up.
So what should investors do?
Larry Swedroe, author of The Only Guide to a Winning Bond Strategy You'll Ever Need, urges investors not to make big moves without making a plan first.
"Inaction is almost always better" than making a sudden shift in strategy in a panic, he said.
"The most anticipated event of any we can think of is that the Fed is going to raise interest rates on Dec. 16," Swedroe said. "The market must already have that information incorporated into the current price" of bonds (and stocks too, for that matter).
Don't try to outsmart the market, said Swedroe, who also is director of research for the BAM Alliance of financial advisers.
Investors "stretching for yield" can make "very bad errors," Swedroe said, including investing in real estate investment trusts, dividend-paying stocks, emerging-market bonds, and other securities that are much more risky than bonds.
If the economy falters and investors flee those asset classes and move to high-quality investments, investors in riskier assets "get crushed, just when you need the safety the most," said Swedroe.
Swedroe suggests three possible strategies for investors looking for yield in this market.
1.Stick to the middle. For bonds, the "sweet spot" for balancing risk and reward is via intermediate-term bonds with about a 5-year duration, Swedroe said. Investors there can get "most of the term premium without the longer-term inflation risk." Consider any low-cost, intermediate-term, high-quality bond fund, he said. That could include the Vanguard Intermediate-Term Bond ETF (BIV) or the Fidelity Spartan U.S. Bond Index Fund (FBIDX) -- there are many such funds available.
2.Move to CDs. Investors who really want yield but can't stomach the market fluctuation of bond funds should look at certificates of deposit, "where you can have much higher yields" than bonds but with very low risk and no mutual fund fees. For example, 5-year CDs can pay up to 2.45% in annual percentage yield, while 5-year U.S. Treasury securities pay a yield of a mere 1.56%. Swedroe said CDs are most useful for investors with IRAs, who can choose where they hold their assets.
3.Embrace the wisdom of the markets. This is the most Zen option. Swedroe said investors should take a page out of Warren Buffett's book, ignore market forecasts, and simply develop a financial plan. Find the best way to implement the plan -- with simplicity and low costs. "Stop worrying and stick with your plan," he said. Forever.If investors really do want to rely on the consensus judgment of the markets, they should consider the world's largest bond fund, the Vanguard Total Bond Market Index (VBMFX) (VBTLX) (BND) . (In April, Vanguard's fund surpassed Pacific Investment Management's Pimco Total Return Fund (PTTAX) , which had been the largest bond fund for decades.)
Must Read: Why Wall Street Won't Be Pouring Cristal on New Year's Eve
Vanguard's Total Bond index fund is totally market weighted, with no active calls about which types of bonds will outperform and which will not. The investor class charges a 0.2% fee annually, and the ETF class charges 0.07%. The fund's SEC yield is 2.27% and its average duration is 5.8 years (in the "sweet spot"), and its pretax return for the past 12 months as of Sept. 30 has been 2.64%. It's hard to get cheaper or simpler.
Investors can also buy Treasury bonds directly from the government via Treasury Direct -- and pay no fees. The bonds available there are high-quality and simple to buy. There are some caveats: EE and E savings bonds must be held for at least one year, and you'll pay a penalty of three months' interest if you sell them within five years of buying them; they earn interest for 30 years. Other Treasury notes and bonds can be bought directly through Treasury Direct, but if you want to sell them before their term is up, you'll need to move them to a broker for sale. You can also buy resold Treasury securities at auction on Treasury Direct.
And investors should also maintain perspective, according to Vanguard.
"Many people look at bonds independently from their stocks," Fran Kinniry, of Vanguard's Investment Strategy Group, said in a statement. "But it's more beneficial to think, 'How do my bonds complement my stocks and fit into my whole investment picture?' You really want to put the two types of investments together and see how they interact as a whole. Ask yourself: 'What's my risk level for all my holdings? Does it align with my risk comfort if there's a downturn?' If you answer no, make the appropriate adjustments."
In other words, investors should hold bonds to manage volatility, to provide consistency in a portfolio, and to earn a reasonable return. Using bonds for speculation or to take more risk makes an entire portfolio more volatile.
So investors may want to stick to plain-vanilla bonds. If they plan to hold a bond fund to its average duration, which is listed on the prospectus, they will likely come out ahead even after an interest rate hike -- being paid more in interest than they have lost to reduced principal (or the face value of the bonds).
Investors hold bonds for safety -- or at least they should. If you have too much money tied up in junk bonds or in long-term bonds, be prepared for swings in the value of the principal. If you can wait out the duration of the bonds, you will likely be OK. If you can't stomach big swings, face that about yourself and move to shorter duration bonds or CDs. They could pay less, but they will also fluctuate less in value.
Must Read: 8 Winning Financial Stocks Once the Fed Raises Interest Rates
Fixed-income investing is about reducing risk and receiving a predictable payment on schedule. Remember that the bonds will keep paying the same even if their face value has dropped.
Now's the time when bond investors should verify that they have enough -- not too much, not too little -- in bonds, then sit back and collect the interest.
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Peter K. said... December 13, 2015 at 06:18 AMMany people are merely worried about having a job and getting by rather than "profoundly" changing the system or being organized under "shrewd far sighted" leadership.djb said in reply to Peter K....In Denver, Worries That the Fed Will Chill a Sizzling Recovery
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUMDEC. 13, 2015
AURORA, Colo. - William Harris tapped his retirement savings to open A-Town Pizza, a Neapolitan pizzeria, in this Denver suburb three years ago. He borrowed $200,000 to open a second location this year and now employs 60 people. On a good Friday, his shops sell 1,200 pies.
In such stories, the Federal Reserve finds evidence that its seven-year campaign to reboot the American economy is succeeding. So on Wednesday, the Fed, which has held short-term interest rates near zero since December 2008, will most likely announce that it will start nudging rates upward, slowly ending what has amounted to a once-in-a-lifetime sale on money.
Mr. Harris, for one, is not ready. "It's scary when you hear that the government is planning to slow things down," the wiry 39-year-old said as he folded menus. "We live on people's extra money. That's the money they spend on pizza. And it still feels very fragile."
Monetary policy is conducted in a language of bloodless abstraction, and most Americans pay little, if any, attention. But the Fed is about to make a big bet, and the decisions it makes in Washington have large consequences, here in Colorado and across the nation.
Janet L. Yellen, the Fed's chairwoman, and her colleagues have concluded that the economy is finally strong enough to grow with a little less help from the central bank. Indeed, they worry inflation will rise too quickly if they do not start raising interest rates. The first rate increase will be small, then the Fed expects to raise rates about one percentage point a year for the next few years.
The Fed's move is coming in the face of worries about the health of the stock market and falling commodities prices. Still, by itself, the increase probably will not matter much. The Fed is expected to set short-term rates in a range from 0.25 to 0.5 percent, a small jump from the current range of zero to 0.25 percent.
It is what follows that will make the difference.
Denver seems ready for higher rates. The area's economy has enjoyed one of the nation's strongest rebounds from the recession. The local unemployment rate fell to 3.1 percent in October. There are new skyscrapers downtown and new subdivisions in every direction. The former oil town is now at the center of one of the nation's largest booms of technology start-ups.
Yet the local mood is fragile. Housing prices have climbed 24 percent above the precrisis peak, but whereas that once would have encouraged economic optimism, now people fret that home prices are due for a fall.
Optimists say that the economic expansion is just gaining steam and that modestly higher rates will probably not slow the region's growth.
Pessimists see evidence of fragility in the same facts. Josh Downey, president of the Denver Area Labor Federation, says the resurgence of development has created construction jobs for a new generation of workers. They need cars to reach their jobs, and jobs to pay for their cars. "If those buildings stop going up in Denver, they're going to be out of a job and a car," he said.
Mark McKissick, director of fixed-income research at Denver Investments, says he is waiting to see how quickly the Fed raises rates before he adjusts the firm's investment holdings. The economy, he says, does not seem strong enough to handle higher rates, and he expects the Fed to reach the same conclusion. Otherwise, he worries it could push the economy back into recession.
"The Fed threw a bunch of money into the financial system, but it hasn't stimulated growth or inflation the way it might have in earlier periods," he said.
Builders, for example, will start construction on about 9,000 single-family homes in the Denver metropolitan area this year, according to Metrostudy, a real estate research firm. That is up 14 percent from last year - but less than half the 20,000 home starts in the Denver area at the peak of the bubble in 2005.
Some workers will be getting raises. Bakery and deli clerks at King Soopers, a grocery chain, will earn a minimum wage of $10.50, an increase of as much as $2 an hour, under the terms of a new contract negotiated by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. The previous four-year deal held wages steady.
Others, however, are still waiting for prosperity to affect them.
Ethel Ayo's landlord raised her rent this year by $400 a month, to $1,126. Ms. Ayo has a part-time job as a home-care worker and her son, a college student, works at Enterprise Rent-a-Car. Together they can barely afford the rent - and then only because the landlord does not require full payment at the beginning of the month. "And you didn't hear me talk about food," Ms. Ayo said. "After I work two or three days, I buy $50 of food and make it last two or three weeks."
Mr. Harris, the restaurateur, says Denver's growth feels nothing like the boom he lived through in Southern California a decade ago. He is struggling to repay his start-up costs, particularly during the holidays, when people eat less pizza. The Fed will most likely raise rates before his risks have paid off. If it has overestimated the recovery and moves too fast, people would have less money to spend, and Mr. Harris said he could lose his restaurants and his retirement savings.
On South Broadway, a commercial strip south of downtown lined with dilapidated auto dealerships and freshly painted marijuana shops, those worries seem far away. Khalid Sarway, sales manager at Famous Motors, says he is selling about 25 used cars a month, and he does not think higher rates will bother his customers.
"The people, they don't care about the rate," said Mr. Sarway, who added that he was making more money now than in the best years before the recession. "They just want a vehicle. They just want to be able to get back and forth between their jobs and school, or whatever their lifestyle is."
North of downtown, Denver's tech entrepreneurs also see little immediate danger from higher rates.
Steve Adams, the 62-year-old chief executive of Leo Technologies, runs a start-up, his sixth, in a former produce warehouse that has been renamed Industry, where the nearest thing to manual labor occurs when people play table tennis in the atrium.
Uber has its Denver office in one corner of the sprawling building.
Mr. Adams is trying to raise $500,000 to test a biometric device that uses blood pressure readings to measure hydration levels - data he says could help athletes as well as people with medical conditions, like those on dialysis.
Like many of his peers, Mr. Adams thinks low rates have made it easier for young companies to raise money from investors seeking higher returns. Denver is also a technology frontier town, reliant on coastal capital, so it may be more vulnerable if the availability of funding begins to recede.
But Mr. Adams said he expected the money to keep flowing even as rates on safer investments like corporate bonds started to rise. "The people I'm pitching want to get in early and make a big multiple," he said.
Some in the real estate business similarly insist that the local market will probably remain hot. Greg Geller, the owner of Vision Real Estate, says builders are struggling to keep pace with population growth because it takes years to find land, obtain permits and train replacements for workers laid off during the recession.
Others are less sanguine. Mitchell Goldman, the owner of Apex Homes, said customers rushed to buy houses in recent years because they worried prices would climb. Now people are holding back, wondering if prices will fall.
"I've been getting asked the question a lot, 'Should we wait?'"
Mr. Goldman said he expected that higher rates would also push some buyers out of the market. The math, after all, is inexorable. If mortgage rates increase by one percentage point, the monthly cost of a $300,000 mortgage increases by $177.
He added that he was looking for land to build a home for his own family. They have moved several times in recent years, but with higher interest rates on the horizon, he wants to build "a more permanent forever home."
"I'm a little more anxious," Mr. Goldman said. "Interest rates are never going to be what they were when I was growing up, but every little bit makes a difference."
"Like many of his peers, Mr. Adams thinks low rates have made it easier for young companies to raise money from investors seeking higher returns."Peter K. said...yes exactly how monetary policy is supposed to work
More Beckworth on the Fed tightening during 2008:Peter K. said in reply to Peter K....
- http://macromarketmusings blogspot.com/2015/12/how-consequential-was-fed-tightening-in.html
- http://tinyurl.com/oszdnsv
....
Again, the Fed tightening in 2008 was not just about the absence of a 2% interest rate cut. It was about an expectation that the Fed was going to raise rates going forward, even though the economy was weakening. This development was huge because current spending decisions are shaped more by the expected path of interest rates than by current interest rates.
So why did the public expect this tightening? Because the Fed was signalling it! Among other places, this signalling was clear in the August and September 2008 FOMC statements. Here is a gem from the August FOMC meeting (my bold):
"Although downside risks to growth remain, the upside risks to inflation are also of significant concern to the Committee."
And from the September FOMC meeting we get a similar warning:
"The downside risks to growth and the upside risks to inflation are both of significant concern to the Committee"
This was forward guidance at its worst and points to a far more intense tightening cycle than is apparent by looking only at the current policy interest rate. The Fed was willing to strangle the already weak economy over inflation concerns and the market knew it.
It was this severe tightening of monetary policy that turned an otherwise ordinary recession into the Great Recession. As I noted before, this tightening of policy occurred before the worst part of the financial crisis in late 2008. Recall that many of the CDOs and MBS were not subprime, but when the market panicked in late 2008 a liquidity crisis became a solvency crisis for all. Had the Fed not tightened during the second half of 2008 the financial panic probably would have been far less severe and the resulting bankruptcies far fewer. So no, it is not obvious that a severe financial crisis was inevitable.
P.S. The Fed was not the only central bank to tighten in 2008 because of inflation concerns. The ECB did as well and repeated the mistake two times in 2011. These experiences illustrates the the limits of inflation targeting and why it is a monetary regime that has outlived its expiration date.
This is policy malfeasance by Bush's Fed. Once can think of it as macro policy rather than strictly monetary policy. The Fed needs its independence b/c politicians don't have the technical know-how? The Fed didn't demonstrate technical know-how. The corrupt politicians appointed the wrong technocrats.Peter K. said in reply to Peter K....Imagine there was one of Wren-Lewis's fiscal councils deciding on fiscal spending for the year. As the housing bubble deflated, they should have increased fiscal spending to replace lost home builder jobs and lost housing wealth, instead of tightening fiscal policy over inflation fears.
You regulate the financial sector to decrease risk and increase sustainability. You don't starve it of credit so the entire thing collapses.
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Peter K. said... December 13, 2015 at 06:58 AMhttp://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/dan-balz-and-the-pew-research-center-discover-wage-stagnationDan Balz and the Pew Research Center Discover Wage Stagnation
by Dean Baker
Published: 13 December 2015
Okay, this one is a bit personal, but it reflects a larger issue. The Pew Research Center just put out a study showing that declining share of the U.S. population is middle class, with greater percentages falling both in the upper and lower income category than was the case four decades ago. Washington Post columnist Dan Balz touted this declining middle class story as an explanation for the rise of Donald Trump.
The problem here is that there is zero new in the Pew study. My friend and former boss, Larry Mishel, has been writing about wage stagnation for a quarter century at the Economic Policy Institute. The biannual volume, The State of Working America, has been tracking the pattern of stagnating middle class wages and family income (for the non-elderly middle class, income is wages) since 1990.
The Pew study added nothing new to this research. They simply constructed an arbitrary definition of middle class and found that fewer families fall within it.
Perhaps having a high budget "centrist" outfit like Pew tout this finding is the only way to get a centrist Washington Post columnist like Balz to pay attention, but it is a bit annoying when we see someone touted for discovering what was already well-known. Oh well, at least it creates good-paying jobs for people without discernible skills.
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RGC said...
EMichael -> RGC...Hillary Clinton Is Whitewashing the Financial Catastrophe
She has a plan that she claims will reform Wall Street-but she's deflecting responsibility from old friends and donors in the industry.
By William Greider
Yesterday 3:11 pmHillary Clinton's recent op-ed in The New York Times, "How I'd Rein In Wall Street," was intended to reassure nervous Democrats who fear she is still in thrall to those mega-bankers of New York who crashed the American economy. Clinton's brisk recital of plausible reform ideas might convince wishful thinkers who are not familiar with the complexities of banking. But informed skeptics, myself included, see a disturbing message in her argument that ought to alarm innocent supporters.
Candidate Clinton is essentially whitewashing the financial catastrophe. She has produced a clumsy rewrite of what caused the 2008 collapse, one that conveniently leaves her husband out of the story. He was the president who legislated the predicate for Wall Street's meltdown. Hillary Clinton's redefinition of the reform problem deflects the blame from Wall Street's most powerful institutions, like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, and instead fingers less celebrated players that failed. In roundabout fashion, Hillary Clinton sounds like she is assuring old friends and donors in the financial sector that, if she becomes president, she will not come after them.
The seminal event that sowed financial disaster was the repeal of the New Deal's Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had separated banking into different realms: investment banks, which organize capital investors for risk-taking ventures; and deposit-holding banks, which serve people as borrowers and lenders. That law's repeal, a great victory for Wall Street, was delivered by Bill Clinton in 1999, assisted by the Federal Reserve and the financial sector's armies of lobbyists. The "universal banking model" was saluted as a modernizing reform that liberated traditional banks to participate directly and indirectly in long-prohibited and vastly more profitable risk-taking.
Exotic financial instruments like derivatives and credit-default swaps flourished, enabling old-line bankers to share in the fun and profit on an awesome scale. The banks invented "guarantees" against loss and sold them to both companies and market players. The fast-expanding financial sector claimed a larger and larger share of the economy (and still does) at the expense of the real economy of producers and consumers. The interconnectedness across market sectors created the illusion of safety. When illusions failed, these connected guarantees became the dragnet that drove panic in every direction. Ultimately, the federal government had to rescue everyone, foreign and domestic, to stop the bleeding.
Yet Hillary Clinton asserts in her Times op-ed that repeal of Glass-Steagall had nothing to do with it. She claims that Glass-Steagall would not have limited the reckless behavior of institutions like Lehman Brothers or insurance giant AIG, which were not traditional banks. Her argument amounts to facile evasion that ignores the interconnected exposures. The Federal Reserve spent $180 billion bailing out AIG so AIG could pay back Goldman Sachs and other banks. If the Fed hadn't acted and had allowed AIG to fail, the banks would have gone down too.
These sound like esoteric questions of bank regulation (and they are), but the consequences of pretending they do not matter are enormous. The federal government and Federal Reserve would remain on the hook for rescuing losers in a future crisis. The largest and most adventurous banks would remain free to experiment, inventing fictitious guarantees and selling them to eager suckers. If things go wrong, Uncle Sam cleans up the mess.
Senator Elizabeth Warren and other reformers are pushing a simpler remedy-restore the Glass-Steagall principles and give citizens a safe, government-insured place to store their money. "Banking should be boring," Warren explains (her co-sponsor is GOP Senator John McCain).
That's a hard sell in politics, given the banking sector's bear hug of Congress and the White House, its callous manipulation of both political parties. Of course, it is more complicated than that. But recreating a safe, stable banking system-a place where ordinary people can keep their money-ought to be the first benchmark for Democrats who claim to be reformers.Actually, the most compelling witnesses for Senator Warren's argument are the two bankers who introduced this adventure in "universal banking" back in the 1990s. They used their political savvy and relentless muscle to seduce Bill Clinton and his so-called New Democrats. John Reed was CEO of Citicorp and led the charge. He has since apologized to the nation. Sandy Weill was chairman of the board and a brilliant financier who envisioned the possibilities of a single, all-purpose financial house, freed of government's narrow-minded regulations. They won politically, but at staggering cost to the country.
Weill confessed error back in 2012: "What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking. Have banks do something that's not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that's not going to be too big to fail."
John Reed's confession explained explicitly why their modernizing crusade failed for two fundamental business reasons. "One was the belief that combining all types of finance into one institution would drive costs down-and the larger institution the more efficient it would be," Reed wrote in the Financial Times in November. Reed said, "We now know that there are very few cost efficiencies that come from the merger of functions-indeed, there may be none at all. It is possible that combining so much in a single bank makes services more expensive than if they were instead offered by smaller, specialised players."
The second grave error, Reed said, was trying to mix the two conflicting cultures in banking-bankers who are pulling in opposite directions. That tension helps explain the competitive greed displayed by the modernized banking system. This disorder speaks to the current political crisis in ways that neither Dems nor Republicans wish to confront. It would require the politicians to critique the bankers (often their funders) in terms of human failure.
"Mixing incompatible cultures is a problem all by itself," Reed wrote. "It makes the entire finance industry more fragile…. As is now clear, traditional banking attracts one kind of talent, which is entirely different from the kinds drawn towards investment banking and trading. Traditional bankers tend to be extroverts, sociable people who are focused on longer term relationships. They are, in many important respects, risk averse. Investment bankers and their traders are more short termist. They are comfortable with, and many even seek out, risk and are more focused on immediate reward."
Reed concludes, "As I have reflected about the years since 1999, I think the lessons of Glass-Steagall and its repeal suggest that the universal banking model is inherently unstable and unworkable. No amount of restructuring, management change or regulation is ever likely to change that."
This might sound hopelessly naive, but the Democratic Party might do better in politics if it told more of the truth more often: what they tried do and why it failed, and what they think they may have gotten wrong. People already know they haven't gotten a straight story from politicians. They might be favorably impressed by a little more candor in the plain-spoken manner of John Reed.
Of course it's unfair to pick on the Dems. Republicans have been lying about their big stuff for so long and so relentlessly that their voters are now staging a wrathful rebellion. Who knows, maybe a little honest talk might lead to honest debate. Think about it. Do the people want to hear the truth about our national condition? Could they stand it?
http://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clinton-is-whitewashing-the-financial-catastrophe/
Peter K. -> EMichael..."She claims that Glass-Steagall would not have limited the reckless behavior of institutions like Lehman Brothers or insurance giant AIG, which were not traditional banks."Of course this claim is absolutely true. Just like GS would not have affected the other investment banks, whatever their name was. And just like we would have had to bail out those other banks whatever their name was.
Can you list all of the pro- or anti- Wall Street "reforms" and actions Bill Clinton performed as President including nominating Alan Greenspan as head regulator? Cutting the capital gains tax? Are you aware of Greenspan's record?sanjait -> Peter K....Yes Hillary isn't Bill but she hasn't criticized her husband specifically about his record and seems to want to have her cake and eat it too.
Of course Hillary is much better than the Republicans, pace Rustbucket and the Green Lantern Lefty club. Still, critics have a point.
I won't be surprised if she doesn't do much to rein in Wall Street besides some window dressing.
"Can you list all of the pro- or anti- Wall Street "reforms" and actions Bill Clinton performed..."That, right there, is what's wrong with Bernie and his fans. They measure everything by whether it is "pro- or anti- Wall Street". Glass Steagall is anti-Wall Street. A financial transactions tax is anti-Wall Street. But neither has any hope of controlling systemic financial risk in this country. None.
You guys want to punish Wall Street but not even bother trying to think of how to achieve useful policy goals. Some people, like Paine here, are actually open about this vacuity, as if the only thing that were important were winning a power struggle.
Hillary's plan is flat out better. It's more comprehensive and more effective at reining in the financial system to limit systemic risk. Period.
You guys want to make this a character melodrama rather than a policy debate, and I fear the result of that will be that the candidate who actually has the best plan won't get to enact it.
likbez -> sanjait...
RGC -> EMichael..."You guys want to make this a character melodrama rather than a policy debate, and I fear the result of that will be that the candidate who actually has the best plan won't get to enact it."
You are misrepresenting the positions. It's actually pro-neoliberalism crowd vs anti-neoliberalism crowd. In no way anti-neoliberalism commenters here view this is a character melodrama, although psychologically Hillary probably does has certain problems as her reaction to the death of Gadhafi attests. The key problem with anti-neoliberalism crowd is the question "What is a realistic alternative?" That's where differences and policy debate starts.
"Her argument amounts to facile evasion"Fred C. Dobbs -> RGC...
'The majority favors policies to the left of Hillary.'
Nah. I don't think so.
No, Liberals Don't Control the Democratic Party http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/no-liberals-dont-control-the-democratic-party/283653/
The Atlantic - Feb 7, 2014... The Democrats' liberal faction has been greatly overestimated by pundits who mistake noisiness for clout or assume that the left functions like the right. In fact, liberals hold nowhere near the power in the Democratic Party that conservatives hold in the Republican Party. And while they may well be gaining, they're still far from being in charge. ...
Paine -> RGC...
What's not confronted ? Suggest what a System like the pre repeal system would have done in the 00's. My guess we'd have ended in a crisis anyway. Yes we can segregate the depository system. But credit is elastic enough to build bubbles without the depository system involved
EMichael -> Paine ...
Exactly.
Most people think of lending like the Bailey Brothers Savings and Loan still exists.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> EMichael...
Don't be such a whistle dick. Just because you cannot figure out why GLBA made such an impact that in no way means that people that do understand are stupid. See my posted comment to RGC on GLBA just down thread for an more detailed explanation including a linked web article. No, GS alone would not have prevented the mortgage bubble, but it would have lessened TBTF and GS stood as icon, a symbol of financial regulation. Hell, if we don't need GS then why don't we just allow unregulated derivatives trading? Who cares, right? Senators Byron Dorgan, Barbara Boxer, Barbara Mikulski, Richard Shelby, Tom Harkin, Richard Bryan, Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders all voted against GLBA to repeal GS for some strange reason and Dorgan made a really big deal out of it at the time. I doubt everyone on that list of Senators was just stupid because they did not see it your way.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> EMichael...I ran all out of ceteris paribus quite some time ago. Events do not occur in isolation. GLBA increased TBTF in AIG and Citi. TBTF forced TARP. GLBA greased the skids for CFMA. Democrats gained majority, but not filibuster proof, caught between Iraq and a hard place following their votes for TARP and a broader understanding of their participation in the unanimous consent passage of the CFMA, over "objection" by Senators James Inhofe (R-OK) and Paul Wellstone (D-MN). We have had a Republican majority in the House since the 2010 election and now they have the Senate as well. If you are that sure that voters just choose divided government, then aren't we better off to have a Republican POTUS and Democratic Congress?sanjait -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
"I ran all out of ceteris paribus quite some time ago. Events do not occur in isolation. GLBA increased TBTF in AIG and Citi. TBTF forced TARP. GLBA greased the skids for CFMA. "I know you think this is a really meaningful string that evidences causation, but it just looks like you are reaching, reaching, reaching ...
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> sanjait...
Maybe. No way to say for sure. It certainly fits the kind of herd mentality that I always saw in corporate Amerika until I retired. The William Greider article posted by RGC was very consistent in its account by John Reed with the details of one or two books written about AIG back in 2009 or so. I don't have time to hunt them up now. Besides, no one would read them anyway.I am voting for whoever wins the Democratic nomination for POTUS. Bernie without a like-minded Congress would not do much good. But when we shoot each other down here at EV without offering any agreement or consideration that we might not be 100% correct, then that goes against Doc Thoma's idea of an open forum. Granted, with my great big pair then I am willing to state my opinion with no consideration for validation or acceptance, but not everyone has that degree of a comfort zone. Besides, I am so old an cynical that shooting down the overdogs that go after the underdogs is one of the few things that I still care about.
RGC -> Paine ...
GS was one of several actions taken by the New Deal. That it wasn't sufficient by itself doesn't equate to it wasn't beneficial.RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> RGC...
[Lock and load.]http://www.occasionalplanet.org/2015/05/13/glass-steagall-one-democratic-senator-who-got-it-right/
Glass-Steagall: Warren and Sanders bring it back into focus
Madonna Gauding / May 13, 2015
Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are putting a new focus on the Glass-Steagall Act, which was, unfortunately, repealed in 1999 and led directly to the financial crises we have faced ever since. Here's a bit of history of this legislative debacle from an older post on Occasional Planet published several years ago :
On November 4, 1999, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) took to the floor of the senate to make an impassioned speech against the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, (alternately known as Gramm Leach Biley, or the "Financial Modernization Act") Repeal of Glass-Steagall would allow banks to merge with insurance companies and investments houses. He said "I want to sound a warning call today about this legislation, I think this legislation is just fundamentally terrible."
According to Sam Stein, writing in 2009 in the Huffington Post, only eight senators voted against the repeal. Senior staff in the Clinton administration and many now in the Obama administration praised the repeal as the "most important breakthrough in the world of finance and politics in decades"
According to Stein, Dorgan warned that banks would become "too big to fail" and claimed that Congress would "look back in a decade and say we should not have done this." The repeal of Glass Steagall, of course, was one of several bad policies that helped lead to the current economic crisis we are in now.
Dorgan wasn't entirely alone. Sens. Barbara Boxer, Barbara Mikulski, Richard Shelby, Tom Harkin, Richard Bryan, Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders also cast nay votes. The late Sen. Paul Wellstone opposed the bill, and warned at the time that Congress was "about to repeal the economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place."
Democratic Senators had sufficient knowledge about the dangers of the repeal of Glass Steagall, but chose to ignore it. Plenty of experts warned that it would be impossible to "discipline" banks once the legislation was passed, and that they would get too big and complex to regulate. Editorials against repeal appeared in the New York Times and other mainstream venues, suggesting that if the new megabanks were to falter, they could take down the entire global economy, which is exactly what happened. Stein quotes Ralph Nader who said at the time, "We will look back at this and wonder how the country was so asleep. It's just a nightmare."
According to Stein:
"The Senate voted to pass Gramm-Leach-Bliley by a vote of 90-8 and reversed what was, for more than six decades, a framework that had governed the functions and reach of the nation's largest banks. No longer limited by laws and regulations commercial and investment banks could now merge. Many had already begun the process, including, among others, J.P. Morgan and Citicorp. The new law allowed it to be permanent. The updated ground rules were low on oversight and heavy on risky ventures. Historically in the business of mortgages and credit cards, banks now would sell insurance and stock.
Nevertheless, the bill did not lack champions, many of whom declared that the original legislation - forged during the Great Depression - was both antiquated and cumbersome for the banking industry. Congress had tried 11 times to repeal Glass-Steagall. The twelfth was the charm.
"Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century," said then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. "This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy."
"I welcome this day as a day of success and triumph," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, (D-Conn.).
"The concerns that we will have a meltdown like 1929 are dramatically overblown," said Sen. Bob Kerrey, (D-Neb.).
"If we don't pass this bill, we could find London or Frankfurt or years down the road Shanghai becoming the financial capital of the world," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "There are many reasons for this bill, but first and foremost is to ensure that U.S. financial firms remain competitive."
Unfortunately, the statement by Chuck Schumer sounds very much like it was prepared by a lobbyist. This vote underscores the way in which our elected officials are so heavily swayed by corporate and banking money that our voices and needs become irrelevant. It is why we need publicly funded elections. Democratic senators, the so-called representatives of the people, fell over themselves to please their Wall Street donors knowing full well there were dangers for the country at large, for ordinary Americans, in repealing Glass-Steagall.
It is important to hold Democratic senators (along with current members of the Obama administration) accountable for the significant role they have played in the current economic crisis that has caused so much suffering for ordinary Americans. In case you were wondering, the current Democratic Senators who voted yes to repeal the Glass-Steagall act are the following:
Daniel Akaka – Max Baucus – Evan Bayh – Jeff Bingaman – Kent Conrad – Chris Dodd – Dick Durbin – Dianne Feinstein – Daniel Inouye – Tim Johnson – John Kerry – Herb Kohl – Mary Landrieu – Frank Lautenberg – Patrick Leahy – Carl Levin – Joseph Lieberman – Blanche Lincoln – Patty Murray – Jack Reed – Harry Reid – Jay Rockefeller – Chuck Schumer – Ron Wyden
Former House members who voted for repeal who are current Senators.
Mark Udall [as of 2010] – Debbie Stabenow – Bob Menendez – Tom Udall -Sherrod Brown
No longer in the Senate, or passed away, but who voted for repeal:
Joe Biden -Ted Kennedy -Robert Byrd
These Democratic senators would like to forget or make excuses for their enthusiastic vote on the repeal of Glass Steagall, but it is important to hold them accountable for helping their bank donors realize obscene profits while their constituents lost jobs, savings and homes. And it is important to demand that they serve the interests of the American people.
*
[The repeal of Glass Steagal was a landmark victory in deregulation that greased the skids for the passage of CFMA once Democrats had been further demoralized by the SCOTUS decision on Bush-v-Gore. The first vote on GLBA was split along party lines, but passed because Republicans had majority and Clinton was willing to sign which was clear from the waiver that had been granted to illegal Citi merger with Travelers. Both Citi and AIG mergers contributed to too big to fail. The CFMA was the nail in the coffin that probably would have never gotten off the ground if Democrats had held the line on the GLBA. Glass-Steagal was insufficient as a regulatory system to prevent the 2008 mortgage crisis, but it was giant as an icon of New Deal financial system reform. Its loss institutionalized too big to fail.]
pgl -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Gramm Leach Biley was a mistake. But it was not the only failure of US regulatory policies towards financial institutions nor the most important. I think that is what Hillary Clinton is saying.RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> pgl...
It was more symbolic caving in on financial regulation than a specific technical failure except for making too big to fail worse at Citi and AIG. It marked a sea change of thinking about financial regulation. Nothing mattered any more, including the CFMA just a little over one year later. Deregulation of derivatives trading mandated by the CFMA was a colossal failure and it is not bizarre to believe that GLBA precipitated the consensus on financial deregulation enough that after the demoralizing defeat of Democrats in Bush-v-Gore then there was no New Deal spirit of financial regulation left. Social development is not just a series of unconnected events. It is carried on a tide of change. A falling tide grounds all boats.pgl -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
We had a financial dereg craze back in the late 1970's and early 1980's which led to the S&L disaster. One would have thought we would have learned from that. But then came the dereg craziness 20 years later. And this disaster was much worse.I don't care whether Hillary says 1999 was a mistake or not. I do care what the regulations of financial institutions will be like going forward.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> pgl...
I cannot disagree with any of that.sanjait -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> sanjait..."Deregulation of derivatives trading mandated by the CFMA was a colossal failure and it is not bizarre to believe that GLBA precipitated the consensus"Yeah, it is kind of bizarre to blame one bill for a crisis that occurred largely because another bill was passed, based on some some vague assertion about how the first bill made everyone think crazy.
Democrats did not vote for GLBA until after reconciliation between the House and Senate bills. Democrats were tossed a bone in the Community Reinvestment Act financing provisions and given that Bill Clinton was going to sign anyway and that Republicans were able to pass the bill without a single vote from Democrats then all but a few Democrats bought in. They could not stop it, so they just bought into it. I thought there was supposed to be an understanding of behaviorism devoted to understanding the political economy. For that matter Republicans did not need Democrats to vote for the CFMA either, but they did. That gave Republicans political cover for whatever went wrong later on. No one with a clue believed things would go well from the passage of either of these bills. It was pure Wall Street driven kleptocracy.likbez -> sanjait...It was not one bill or another. It was a government policy to get traders what they want.See
Bruce E. Woych | August 6, 2013 at 5:45 pm |
The Untold Story: Brooksley Born, Larry Summers & the Truth …
http://www.imackgroup.com/mathematics/989981-the-untold-story-brooksley-born-larry...
Oct 5, 2012 … Larry Summers is attempting to re-write history at the expense of … and they might just find one critical point revealed in Mr. Cohan's article.
[PERTINENT EXCERPT]: Oct 5, 2012"As the western world wakes to the fact it is in the middle of a debt crisis spiral, intelligent voices are wondering how this manifested itself? As we speak, those close to the situation could be engaging in historical revisionism to obfuscate their role in the design of faulty leverage structures that were identified in the derivatives markets in 1998 and 2008. These same design flaws, first identified in 1998, are persistent today and could become graphically evident in the very near future under the weight of a European debt crisis.
Author and Bloomberg columnist William Cohan chronicles the fascinating start of this historic leverage implosion in his recent article Rethinking Robert Rubin. Readers may recall it was Mr. Cohan who, in 2004, noted leverage issues that ultimately imploded in 2007-08.
At some point, market watchers will realize the debt crisis story will literally change the world. They will look to the root cause of the problem, and they might just find one critical point revealed in Mr. Cohan's article.
This point occurs in 1998 when then Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) ChairwomanBrooksley Born identified what now might be recognized as core design flaws in leverage structure used in Over the Counter (OTC) transactions. Ms. Born brought her concerns public, by first asking just to study the issue, as appropriate action was not being taken. She issued a concept release paper that simply asked for more information. "The Commission is not entering into this process with preconceived results in mind," the document reads.
Ms. Born later noted in, the PBS Frontline documentary on the topic speculation at the CFTC was the unregulated OTC derivatives were opaque, the risk to the global economy could not be determined and the risk was potentially catastrophic. As a result of this inquiry, Ms. Born was ultimately forced from office.
This brings us to Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury Secretary of the United States and at the time right hand man to then Treasury Security Robert Rubin. Mr. Summers was widely credited with implementation of the aggressive tactics used to remove Ms. Born from her office, tactics that multiple sources describe as showing an old world bias against women piercing the glass ceiling.
According to numerous published reports, Mr. Summers was involved in. silencing those who questioned the opaque derivative product's design. "
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> Paine ...
TBTF on steroids, might as well CFMA - why not?Bubbles with less TBTF and a lot less credit default swaps would have been a lot less messy going in. Without TARP, then Congress might have still had the guts for making a lesser New Deal.
EMichael -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
TARP was window dressing. The curtain that covered up the FED's actions.pgl -> RGC...
Where have I heard about William Greider? Oh yea - this critique of something stupid he wrote about a Supreme Court decision:pgl -> RGC...
"Exotic financial instruments like derivatives and credit-default swaps flourished, enabling old-line bankers to share in the fun and profit on an awesome scale."These would have flourished even if Glass-Steagall remained on the books. Leave it to RGC to find some critic of HRC who knows nothing about financial markets.
RGC -> pgl...
Derivatives flourished because of the other deregulation under Clinton, the CFMA. The repeal of GS helped commercial banks participate.RGC -> pgl...
The repeal of GS helped commercial banks participate.Fred C. Dobbs -> pgl...
Warren Buffet used to rail about how risky derivative investing is, until he realized they are *extremely* important in the re-insurance biz, which is a
big part of Berkshire Hathaway.Peter K. said...
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-and-cracking-down-on-wall-streetHillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Cracking Down on Wall Street
by Dean BakerPublished: 12 December 2015
The New Yorker ran a rather confused piece on Gary Sernovitz, a managing director at the investment firm Lime Rock Partners, on whether Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton would be more effective in reining in Wall Street. The piece assures us that Secretary Clinton has a better understanding of Wall Street and that her plan would be more effective in cracking down on the industry. The piece is bizarre both because it essentially dismisses the concern with too big to fail banks and completely ignores Sanders' proposal for a financial transactions tax which is by far the most important mechanism for reining in the financial industry.
The piece assures us that too big to fail banks are no longer a problem, noting their drop in profitability from bubble peaks and telling readers:
"not only are Sanders's bogeybanks just one part of Wall Street but they are getting less powerful and less problematic by the year."
This argument is strange for a couple of reasons. First, the peak of the subprime bubble frenzy is hardly a good base of comparison. The real question is should we anticipate declining profits going forward. That hardly seems clear. For example, Citigroup recently reported surging profits, while Wells Fargo's third quarter profits were up 8 percent from 2014 levels.
If Sernovitz is predicting that the big banks are about to shrivel up to nothingness, the market does not agree with him. Citigroup has a market capitalization of $152 billion, JPMorgan has a market cap of $236 billion, and Bank of America has a market cap of $174 billion. Clearly investors agree with Sanders in thinking that these huge banks will have sizable profits for some time to come.
The real question on too big to fail is whether the government would sit by and let a Goldman Sachs or Citigroup go bankrupt. Perhaps some people think that it is now the case, but I've never met anyone in that group.
Sernovitz is also dismissive on Sanders call for bringing back the Glass-Steagall separation between commercial banking and investment banking. He makes the comparison to the battle over the Keystone XL pipeline, which is actually quite appropriate. The Keystone battle did take on exaggerated importance in the climate debate. There was never a zero/one proposition in which no tar sands oil would be pumped without the pipeline, while all of it would be pumped if the pipeline was constructed. Nonetheless, if the Obama administration was committed to restricting greenhouse gas emissions, it is difficult to see why it would support the building of a pipeline that would facilitate bringing some of the world's dirtiest oil to market.
In the same vein, Sernovitz is right that it is difficult to see how anything about the growth of the housing bubble and its subsequent collapse would have been very different if Glass-Steagall were still in place. And, it is possible in principle to regulate bank's risky practices without Glass-Steagall, as the Volcker rule is doing. However, enforcement tends to weaken over time under industry pressure, which is a reason why the clear lines of Glass-Steagall can be beneficial. Furthermore, as with Keystone, if we want to restrict banks' power, what is the advantage of letting them get bigger and more complex?
The repeal of Glass-Steagall was sold in large part by boasting of the potential synergies from combining investment and commercial banking under one roof. But if the operations are kept completely separate, as is supposed to be the case, where are the synergies?
But the strangest part of Sernovitz's story is that he leaves out Sanders' financial transactions tax (FTT) altogether. This is bizarre, because the FTT is essentially a hatchet blow to the waste and exorbitant salaries in the industry.
Most research shows that trading volume is very responsive to the cost of trading, with most estimates putting the elasticity close to one. This means that if trading costs rise by 50 percent, then trading volume declines by 50 percent. (In its recent analysis of FTTs, the Tax Policy Center assumed that the elasticity was 1.5, meaning that trading volume decline by 150 percent of the increase in trading costs.) The implication of this finding is that the financial industry would pay the full cost of a financial transactions tax in the form of reduced trading revenue.
The Tax Policy Center estimated that a 0.1 percent tax on stock trades, scaled with lower taxes on other assets, would raise $50 billion a year in tax revenue. The implied reduction in trading revenue was even larger. Senator Sanders has proposed a tax of 0.5 percent on equities (also with a scaled tax on other assets). This would lead to an even larger reduction in revenue for the financial industry.
It is incredible that Sernovitz would ignore a policy with such enormous consequences for the financial sector in his assessment of which candidate would be tougher on Wall Street. Sanders FTT would almost certainly do more to change behavior on Wall Street then everything that Clinton has proposed taken together by a rather large margin. It's sort of like evaluating the New England Patriots' Super Bowl prospects without discussing their quarterback.
Syaloch -> Peter K....
Great to see Baker's acknowledgement that an updated Glass-Steagall is just one component of the progressive wing's plan to rein in Wall Street, not the sum total of it. Besides, if Wall Street types don't think restoring Glass-Steagall will have any meaningful effects, why do they expend so much energy to disparage it? Methinks they doth protest too much.Peter K. -> Syaloch...
Yes that's a good way to look it. Wall Street gave the Democrats and Clinton a lot of campaign cash so that they would dismantle Glass-Steagall. If they want it done, it's probably not a good idea.EMichael -> Syaloch...
Slippery slope. Ya' gotta find me a business of any type that does not protest any kind of regulation on their business.Syaloch -> EMichael...
Yeah, but usually because of all the bad things they say will happen because of the regulation. The question is, what do they think of Clinton's plan? I've heard surprisingly little about that, and what I have heard is along these lines: http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/08/investing/hillary-clinton-wall-street-plan/"Hillary Clinton unveiled her big plan to curb the worst of Wall Street's excesses on Thursday. The reaction from the banking community was a shrug, if not relief."
pgl -> Syaloch...
Two excellent points!!!sanjait -> Syaloch...
"Besides, if Wall Street types don't think restoring Glass-Steagall will have any meaningful effects, why do they expend so much energy to disparage it? Methinks they doth protest too much."It has an effect of shrinking the size of a few firms, and that has a detrimental effect on the top managers of those firms, who get paid more money if they have larger firms to manage. But it has little to no meaningful effect on systemic risk.
So if your main policy goal is to shrink the compensation for a small number of powerful Wall Street managers, G-S is great. But if you actually want to accomplish something useful to the American people, like limiting systemic risk in the financial sector, then a plan like Hillary's is much much better. She explained this fairly well in her recent NYT piece.
Paine -> Peter K....
There is absolutely NO question Bernie is for real. Wall Street does not want Bernie. So they'll let Hillary talk as big as she needs to . Why should we believe her when an honest guy like Barry caved once in powerPaine -> Paine ...
Bernie has been anti Wall Street his whole career . He's on a crusade. Hillary is pulling a sham bolaPaine -> Paine ...
Perhaps too often we look at Wall Street as monolithic whether consciously or not. Obviously we know it's no monolithic: there are serious differencesWhen the street is riding high especially. Right now the street is probably not united but too cautious to display profound differences in public. They're sitting on their hands waiting to see how high the anti Wall Street tide runs this election cycle. Trump gives them cover and I really fear secretly Hillary gives them comfort
This all coiled change if Bernie surges. How that happens depends crucially on New Hampshire. Not Iowa
EMichael -> Paine ...
If Bernie surges and wins the nomination, we will all get to watch the death of the Progressive movement for a decade or two. Congress will become more GOP dominated, and we will have a President in office who will make Hoover look like a Socialist.Syaloch -> EMichael...
Of course. In politics, as they say in the service, one must always choose the lesser of two evils. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4PzpxOj5Ccpgl -> EMichael...
You should like the moderate Democrats after George McGovern ran in 1972. I'm hoping we have another 1964 with Bernie leading a united Democratic Congress.EMichael -> pgl...
Not a chance in the world. And I like Sanders much more than anyone else. It just simply cannot, and will not, happen. He is a communist. Not to me, not to you, but to the vast majority of American voters.pgl -> EMichael...
He is not a communist. But I agree - Hillary is winning the Democratic nomination. I have only one vote and in New York, I'm badly outnumbered.ilsm -> Paine ...
I believe Hillary will be to liberal causes after she is elected as LBJ was to peace in Vietnam. Like Bill and Obomber.pgl -> ilsm...
By 1968, LBJ finally realized it was time to end that stupid war. But it seems certain members in the State Department undermined his efforts in a cynical ploy to get Nixon to be President. The Republican Party has had more slime than substance of most of my life time.pgl -> Peter K....
Gary Sernovitz, a managing director at the investment firm Lime Rock Partners? Why are we listening to this guy too. It's like letting the fox guard the hen house.sanjait -> Peter K....
"The piece is bizarre both because it essentially dismisses the concern with too big to fail banks and completely ignores Sanders' proposal for a financial transactions tax which is by far the most important mechanism for reining in the financial industry."This is just wrong. Is financial system risk in any way correlated with the frequency of transactions? Except for market volatility from HFT ... no. The financial crisis wasn't caused by a high volume of trades. It was caused by bad investments into highly illiquid assets. Again, great example of wanting to punish Wall Street but not bothering to think about what actually works.
Peter K. said...
Robert Reich to the Fed: this is not the time to raise rates.RGC said...
Iceland's Radical Money PlanIceland, too, is looking at a radical transformation of its money system, after suffering the crushing boom/bust cycle of the private banking model that bankrupted its largest banks in 2008. According to a March 2015 article in the UK Telegraph:
Iceland's government is considering a revolutionary monetary proposal – removing the power of commercial banks to create money and handing it to the central bank. The proposal, which would be a turnaround in the history of modern finance, was part of a report written by a lawmaker from the ruling centrist Progress Party, Frosti Sigurjonsson, entitled "A better monetary system for Iceland".
"The findings will be an important contribution to the upcoming discussion, here and elsewhere, on money creation and monetary policy," Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson said. The report, commissioned by the premier, is aimed at putting an end to a monetary system in place through a slew of financial crises, including the latest one in 2008.
Under this "Sovereign Money" proposal, the country's central bank would become the only creator of money. Banks would continue to manage accounts and payments and would serve as intermediaries between savers and lenders. The proposal is a variant of the Chicago Plan promoted by Kumhof and Benes of the IMF and the Positive Money group in the UK.
Public Banking Initiatives in Iceland, Ireland and the UK
A major concern with stripping private banks of the power to create money as deposits when they make loans is that it will seriously reduce the availability of credit in an already sluggish economy. One solution is to make the banks, or some of them, public institutions. They would still be creating money when they made loans, but it would be as agents of the government; and the profits would be available for public use, on the model of the US Bank of North Dakota and the German Sparkassen (public savings banks).
In Ireland, three political parties – Sinn Fein, the Green Party and Renua Ireland (a new party) - are now supporting initiatives for a network of local publicly-owned banks on the Sparkassen model. In the UK, the New Economy Foundation (NEF) is proposing that the failed Royal Bank of Scotland be transformed into a network of public interest banks on that model. And in Iceland, public banking is part of the platform of a new political party called the Dawn Party.
December 11, 2015
Reinventing Banking: From Russia to Iceland to Ecuadorby Ellen Brown
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/11/reinventing-banking-from-russia-to-iceland-to-ecuador/
pgl -> RGC...
"Banks would continue to manage accounts and payments and would serve as intermediaries between savers and lenders."OK but that means they issue bank accounts which of course we call deposits. So is this just semantics? People want checking accounts. People want savings accounts. Otherwise they would not exist. Iceland plans to do what to stop the private sector from getting what it wants?
I like the idea of public banks. Let's nationalize JPMorganChase so we don't have to listen to Jamie Dimon anymore!
sanjait -> pgl...
I don't know for sure (not bothering to search and read the referenced proposals), but I assumed the described proposal was for an end to fractional reserve banking. Banks would have to have full reserves to make loans. Or something. I could be wrong about that.Syaloch said...
Sorry, but Your Favorite Company Can't Be Your FriendTo think that an artificial person, whether corporeal or corporate, can ever be your friend requires a remarkable level of self-delusion.
A commenter on the Times site aptly quotes Marx in response:
"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
"The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers."
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm
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Within days the Fed will begin hiking interest rates in an effort to prevent inflation. This is nuts. There's no sign of dangerous inflation anywhere. Raising rates will just slow the economy, making it harder for people to find jobs. The share of working-age people in jobs is near a 40-year low. Watch our video to find out what this is all about -- and how it will affect you.Dwight McCabe
According to Paul Krugman the banks desperately need rates higher so they make more profits. With these very low rates they are stuck in low profit. The Fed lives in the financial culture and all the learned people around them, bankers, are convinced that the economy needs higher rates. The economy will not benefit but the financial community sure will.
David Van Dyne
...By the way, how about the negative returns on money market funds invested through a 401(k) plan?
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BenIsNotYoda said... Friday, December 11, 2015 at 03:42 AM
Another leg of the reach-for-yield/carry trade crumbling. Emerging markets, commodities and now corporate high yield. No bubbles here. Carry on.BenIsNotYoda said in reply to BenIsNotYoda...Junk Fund's Demise Fuels Concern Over Bond Rout
Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund takes rare step, seeking an orderly liquidation as junk-bond market swoons
A firm founded by legendary vulture investor Martin Whitman is barring investor withdrawals while it liquidates its high-yield bond fund, an unusual move that highlights the severity of the months long junk-bond plunge that has swept Wall Street.
The decision by Third Avenue Management LLC means investors in the $789 million Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund may not receive all their money back for months, if not more.
of course, biotech has to be added to this list; down 20%.pgl said in reply to BenIsNotYoda...Amgen shares trading at $145 and Gilead shares trading at $102. Not feeling sorry for these dudes.pgl said in reply to BenIsNotYoda...Talk about burying the lead:Peter K. said in reply to pgl..."The yield spread between junk-rated debt and U.S. Treasurys narrowed to a multiyear low in mid-2014, reflecting investors' confidence in companies' business prospects. But spreads have since risen, reflecting lower prices, as the energy bust intensified questions about junk-rated companies' ability to repay debts. All 30 of the largest high-yield bond funds tracked by Morningstar have lost money this year, reflecting price declines as investors shied away from risk.
"Investors have been dazzled that yields on bonds have climbed so high, even while default rates remained low," said Martin Fridson, founder of Lehmann Livian Fridson Advisors and a longtime junk-bond analyst. "Currently, though, the ability to sell a large position is especially poor…. When that tension gets especially high, you can see something snap."
The Securities and Exchange Commission has been warning mutual-fund managers who purchase illiquid securities-those that may be difficult to buy or sell at stated prices because of a lack of willing investors-to prepare better for potential redemptions and is drawing up new rules requiring such measures."
Simply put - people who go into the junk bond market get a very high return but they also take the risk. No feeling sorry for these guys especially given that the SEC gave them fair warning.
pgl said in reply to Peter K...."All 30 of the largest high-yield bond funds tracked by Morningstar have lost money this year, reflecting price declines as investors shied away from risk."Investors are shying away from risk? I thought ZIRP encouraged reach-for-yield.
The market goes up and down. Only drama queens would see a bubble like the tech stock bubble or housing bubble in the data.
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/matt-o-brien-takes-obama-to-task-on-fed-appointees
Dean Baker again:
"Preventing the rebirth of housing bubbles in these markets was a very good thing in my book. I will add the qualification that high interest rates is not my preferred way of bursting bubbles. The first recourse should be talk, as in using the Fed's bully pulpit, coupled with its research, to warn the markets of rising bubbles. Janet Yellen did this successfully in the summer of 2014 when she used congressional testimony to warn of bubbles in social media companies, biotech stocks, and junk bonds. She did not follow through with subsequent warnings, but all three markets did take a hit in the weeks following her testimony.
For some reason most economists reject the idea of having the Fed talk down bubbles. I guess it is considered impolite. This seems more than a bit bizarre given the enormous damage done by bursting bubbles compared with the virtually costless effort to talk them down.
Of course the Fed also has substantial regulatory powers which can be used to curb bank lending to support bubbles. This is also a policy option that should be pursued before deliberately slowing the economy with higher interest rates.
Anyhow, I was not happy to see the economy slowed by the Taper Tantrum, but I was very happy to see that it prevented the growth of another bubble. It is unfortunate that almost no one knows this story - I guess it is difficult for reporters to get access to the Case-Shiller data on the web."
"The market goes up and down. Only drama queens would see a bubble like the tech stock bubble or housing bubble in the data."likbez said in reply to Peter K....Yep! And the lack of QE of late has driven up both government bond rates and credit spreads. Now wonder these vulture investors lost money. I'm not feeling for them a bit. And yes - BenIsNotYoda was being a drama queen.
"Investors are shying away from risk? I thought ZIRP encouraged reach-for-yield."Yes, very true.
Speculation by retail investors in high risk instruments like high yield bonds, oil ETN funds (based off oil futures), gold funds, etc rose tremendously during ZIPR period. Probably several billions were lost by retail investors during this period in search for yield. The same is true about participation of retail investors in regular casino games such as stock funds and indexes like S&P500.
Conservative investments like TIPS suffered.
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angrybearblog.com
Angry Bear... ... ...
The natural unemployment rate hypothesis failed spectacularly in Europe in the 1980s. Extremely high unemployment did not lead to deflation - rather it coexisted with moderate inflation for a long time, then with low inflation.
Krugman posted a graph showing how the US graph of inflation and unemployment has changed (just click the link and look). In the past high unemployment gradually lead to lower inflation and then to lower inflation and unemployment - this is the pattern predicted by Friedman, Phelps, Tobin (and discussed already by Samuelson and Solow in 1960). But in the recent past extremely high unemployment has come with low and stable core inflation.
Things used look very different here in Italy than in the USA. Here is a graph of data from before January 2008. Extremely high unemployment was consistent with moderate and then with low inflation. The only clear shift in inflation occurred in 1996 and 1997 (which may or may not be when Italians began to think they might actually earn the wonderful reward of being allowed to adopt the Euro).
By 2008, The flat Phillips curve (the Fillipo curve?) was already very clear to anyone who read Italian newspapers.
Here are all data which are available on FRED (yes I sit in Rome and surf to St Louis for Italian data). Oddly the harmonized unemployment series is only available (at FRED) from 1983 on.
In this graph there is also very little sign of Friedman-Phelps cycles. The old pattern was a steady decline from extremely high inflation - it looks almost like an expectations unaugmented Phillips curve. But then (really from 1986 on) there was fairly stable moderate to low inflation along with extreme swings in unemployment. I stress that this is CPI inflation including food and energy not core inflation. the peak oil spike in 2007 and the collapse in 2008 are clearly visible. It is possible that the most recent observations show a slide to actual persistent deflation, but it is more likely that the recent decline in inflation is due to the collapse of the price of oil.
Unlearning economic paradigms | Bruegel , November 30, 2015 7:22 am
[…] Robert Waldmann writes that that the reason Krugman was surprised by the failure of the supply side is that he didn't pay enough attention to the European unemployment problem. The natural unemployment rate hypothesis failed spectacularly in Europe in the 1980s. Extremely high unemployment did not lead to deflation - rather it coexisted with moderate inflation for a long time, then with low inflation. By 2008, the flat Phillips curve was already very clear to anyone who read Italian newspapers. […]
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Dec 11, 2015 | Economist's View
anne said...Fine column, with which I agree. Federal Reserve policy as such is difficult and contentious enough to avoid wandering to social-economic analysis or philosophy from aspects of the Fed mandate.anne -> RW (the other)...As for the use of the word "hack" in referring to Janet Yellen, that needlessly insulting use was by a Washington Post editor and not by columnist Michael Strain.
likbez -> anne...As Brad notes, many Fed Chairs before Yellen have opined on matters outside monetary policy so why is Yellen subject to a different standard?
[ Fine, I have reconsidered and agree. No matter how the headline was written, the headline was meant to be intimidating and was willfully mean and that could and should have been made clear immediately by the writer of the column. ]
"Federal Reserve policy as such is difficult and contentious enough to avoid wandering to social-economic analysis or philosophy from aspects of the Fed mandate."
Anne,
I think FED chairman is the second most powerful political position in the USA after the POTUS. Or may be in some respects it is even the first ;-) So it is quintessentially high-power political position masked with the smokescreen of "purely economic" (like many other things are camouflaged under neoliberalism.)
That's why Greenspan got it, while being despised by his Wall-Street colleagues...
He got it because he was perfect for promoting deregulation political agenda from the position of FED chair.
pgl -> likbez...
Greenspan was despised on Wall Street? Wow as he tried so hard to serve their interests. I guess the Wall Street crowd is never happy no matter how much income we feed these blow hards.
anne -> likbez...
Peter K. said...So it is quintessentially high-power political position masked with the smokescreen of "purely economic" (like many other things are camouflaged under neoliberalism.)
[ I understand, and am convinced. ]
Peter K. -> Peter K....I respectfully disagree. Republicans are always working the refs and despite what the writer from AEI said, they're okay with conservative Fed chairs talking politics. They have double standards.
Greenspan testified to Congress on behalf of Bush's tax cuts for the rich. Something about how since Clinton balanced the budget, the financial markets had too little safe debt to work with. (maybe that's why they dove into mortgaged-backed securities). But tax cuts versus more government spending? He and Rubin advised Clinton to drop his middle class spending bill and trade deficit reduction for lower interest rates. That's economics which have political outcomes.
So if the rightwing is going to work the the refs, so should the left. We shouldn't unilaterally disarm over fears Congress will gun for the Fed. There should be more groups like Fed Up protesting.
The good thing about Yellen's speech is that it's a signal to progressives that inequality is problem for her even as she is raising rates in a political dance with hawks and Congress.
The Fed is constantly accused of increasing inequality so it's good Yellen is saying she thinks it's a bad thing and not American.
Bernie Sanders is right that for change to happen we'll need more political involvement from regular citizens. We'll need a popular movement with many leaders.
The Fed should be square in the sights of a progressive movement. A high-pressured economy with full employment should be a top priority.
Instead I saw Nancy Pelosi being interviewed by Al Hunt on Charlie Rose the other night. Hunt asked her about Yellen raising rates.
Pelosi said no comment as she wasn't looking at the data Yellen was and didn't want to interfere. The Fed should be independent, etc. Perhaps like Thoma she has the best of motives and doesn't want to motivate the Republicans to go after the Fed and oppose what she wants.
Still I felt the Democratic leadership should be committed to a high-pressure economy. Her staff should know what Krugman, Summers etc are saying. What the IMF and World Bank are sayings.
She should have said "they shouldn't raise rates until they see the whites of inflation's eyes" as Krugman memorably put it. She should have said that emphatically.
We need a Democratic Party like that.
Instead Peter Diamond is blocked from becoming a Fed governor by Republicans and Pelosi is afraid to comment on monetary policy.
A longer reply from DeLong:
Must-Read: I would beg the highly-esteemed Mark Thoma to draw a distinction here between "inappropriate" and unwise. In my view, it is not at all inappropriate for Fed Chair Janet Yellen to express her concern about excessive inequality. Previous Fed Chairs, after all, have expressed their liking for inequality as an essential engine of economic growth over and over again over the past half century--with exactly zero critical snarking from the American Enterprise Institute for trespassing beyond the boundaries of their role.
But that it is not inappropriate for Janet Yellen to do so does not mean that it is wise. Mark's argument is, I think, that given the current political situation it is unwise for Janet to further incite the ire of the nutboys in the way that even the mildest expression of concern about rising inequality will do.
That may or may not be true. I think it is not.
But I do not think that bears on my point that Michael R. Strain's arguments that Janet Yellen's speech on inequality was inappropriate are void, wrong, erroneous, inattentive to precedent, shoddy, expired, expired, gone to meet their maker, bereft of life, resting in peace, pushing up the daisies, kicked the bucket, shuffled off their mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the bleeding choir invisible:
Mark Thoma: Why It's Tricky for Fed Officials to Talk Politically: "I think I disagree with Brad DeLong...
pgl -> Peter K....
"my point that Michael R. Strain's arguments that Janet Yellen's speech on inequality was inappropriate are void, wrong, erroneous..."
DeLong is exactly right here. Strain's argument has its own share of partisan lies whereas Yellen is telling the truth. Brad will not be intimidated by this AEI weasel.
sanjait said...
Why would Yellen not talk about inequality? It's an important macroeconomic topic and one that is relevant for her job. It's both an input and an output variable that is related to monetary policy.
And, arguably I think, median wage growth should be regarded as a policy goal for the Fed, related to its explicit mandate of "maximum employment."
But even if you think inequality is unrelated to the Fed's policy goals, that doesn't stop them from talking about other topics. Do people accuse the Fed of playing politics when they talk about desiring reduced financial market volatility? That has little to do with growth, employment and general price stability.
likbez -> sanjait...
I think that is a hidden principle behind attacks on FED chair. A neoliberal principle that the state should not intrude into economics and limit itself to the police, security, defense, law enforcement and few other related to this functions. So their point that she overextended her mandate is an objection based on principle. Which can be violated only if it is used to uphold neoliberalism, as Greenspan did during his career many times.
Sandwichman said...
I think I disagree with Mark Thoma's disagreement with Brad DeLong. Actually, ALL economic discourse is political and efforts to restrain the politics are inevitably efforts to keep the politics one-sided
Dan Kervick said...
This kind of debate seems to be a by-product of the contemporary obsession with having an "independent" central bank, run according to the fantasy that there is such a thing as a neutral or apolitical way to conduct monetary policy.
But there really isn't. Different kinds of social, economic and political values and policy agendas are going to call for different kinds monetary and credit policies. It might be better for our political health if the Fed were administratively re-located as an executive branch agency that is in turn part of a broader Department of Money and Banking - no different from the Departments of Agriculture, Labor, Education, etc. In that case everybody would then view Fed governors as ordinary executive branch appointees who report to the President, and whose policies are naturally an extension of the administration's broader agenda. Then if people don't like the monetary policies that are carried out, that would be one factor in their decision about whom to vote for.
There is no reason for central banks to have the kind of independence that judicial institutions have. Justice may be blind and above politics, but money and banking are not. Decisions in that latter area should be no more politics-free than decisions about taxing and spending. If we fold the central bank more completely into the regular processes of representative government, then if a candidate wants to run on a platform of keeping interest rates low, small business credit easy, bank profits small, etc., they could do so without all of the doubletalk about the protecting the independence of the sacrosanct bankers' temple.
We could also then avoid unproductive wheel-spinning about that impossibly vague and hedged Fed mandate that can be stretched to mean almost anything people want it to mean. The Fed's mandate under the political solution would just be whatever monetary policy the President ran on.
likbez -> Dan Kervick...
"The Fed's mandate under the political solution would just be whatever monetary policy the President ran on"
Perfect !
Actually sanjait in his post made a good point why this illusive goal is desirable (providing "electoral advantage") although Greenspan probably violated this rule. A couple of hikes of interest rates from now till election probably will doom Democrats.
Also the idea of FEB independence went into overdrive since 80th not accidentally. It has its value in enhancing the level of deregulation.
Among other things it helps to protect large financial institutions from outright nationalization in cases like 2008.
Does somebody in this forum really think that Bernanke has an option of putting a couple of Wall-Street most violent and destructive behemoths into receivership (in other words nationalize them) in 2008 without Congress approval ?
Dan Kervick -> Sanjait ...
Sanjait, with due respect, you are not really responding to the reform proposal, but only affirming the differences between that proposal and the current system.
Yes, of course fiscal policy is "constrained" by Congress. Indeed, it is not just constrained by Congress but actually made by Congress, subject only to an overridable executive branch veto. The executive branch is responsible primarily for carrying out the legislature's fiscal directives. That's the point. In a democratic system decisions about all forms of taxation and government spending are supposed to be made by the elected legislative branch, and then executed by agencies of the executive branch. My proposal is that monetary policy should be handled in the same way: by the elected political branches of the government.
You point out that under current arrangements, central banks can, if they choose, effect large monetary offsets to fiscal policy (or at least to some of the aggregate macroeconomic effects of those policies). I don't understand why any non-elected and politically unaccountable branch of our government should have the power to offset the policies of the elected branches in this way. Fiscal and monetary policy need to be yoked together to achieve policy ends effectively. Those policy ends should be the ones people vote for, not the ones a handful of men and women happen to think are appropriate.
JF -> Dan Kervick...
"In a democratic system" is what you wrote.
It is more proper to refer to it as republicanism. The separation of powers doctrine, underlying the US constitution, is a reflection of James Madison's characterization in the 51st The Federalist Paper, and it is a US-defined republicanism that is almost unique:
"the republican form, wherein the legislative authority necessarily predominates."
- or something like that is the quote.
In the US framers' view, at least those who constructed the re-write in 1787 and were the leaders - I'd say the most important word in Madison's explanation is the word "necessarily" - this philosophy has all law and policy stemming from the public, it presumes that you can't have stability and dynamic change of benefit to society without this.
Arguably, aristocracies, fascists, totalitarians, and all the other isms, just don't see it that way, they see things as top-down ordering of society.
The mythology of the monetary theorizing and the notions about a central bank being independently delphic has some of this top-down ordering view to it (austerianism, comes to mind). Well, I don't believe in a religious sense that this is how it should be, nor do you it seems.
It will be an interesting Congress in 2017 when new legislative authorities are enacted to establish clearer framing of the ministerial duties now held by the FRB.
Are FED officials scared that this will happen, and as a result they circle the wagons with their associates in the financial community now to fend off the public????
I hope this is not true. They can allay their own fears by leading not back toward 1907, in my opinion.
Of course, I could say where I'd like economic policies to go, and do here often, but this thread is about Yellin and other FED officials.
I recognize that FRB officials can say things too, and should, as leaders of this nation (with a whole lot of research power and evidence available to them their commentary on political economics should have merit and be influential).
Thanks for continuing to remind people that we govern ourselves in the US in a US-defined republican-form. But I think the people still respect and listen to leadership - so speak out FED officials.
JF -> Dan Kervick...
But Dan K, then you'd de-mythologize an entire wing of macroeconomics in a wing referred to as monetary theory based on a separate Central Bank, or some non-political theory of money.
Don't mind the theory as it is an analytic framework that questions and sometimes informs - but it is good to step back and realize some of the religious-like framing.
It is political-economy.
Peter K. -> pgl...
Yellen really lays it out in her speech.
"The extent of and continuing increase in inequality in the United States greatly concern me. The past several decades have seen the most sustained rise in inequality since the 19th century after more than 40 years of narrowing inequality following the Great Depression. By some estimates, income and wealth inequality are near their highest levels in the past hundred years, much higher than the average during that time span and probably higher than for much of American history before then.2 It is no secret that the past few decades of widening inequality can be summed up as significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top and stagnant living standards for the majority. I think it is appropriate to ask whether this trend is compatible with values rooted in our nation's history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity."
And even links to Piketty in footnote 42.
"Along with other economic advantages, it is likely that large inheritances play a role in the fairly limited intergenerational mobility that I described earlier.42"
42. This topic is discussed extensively in Thomas Piketty (2014), Capital in the 21st Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press). Return to text
Sanjait said...
A number of commenters and authors have recently pointed out that inequality may not just be an unrelated phenomenon to monetary policy, but actually, in part at least, a byproduct of it.
The theory is that the Fed in the Great Moderation age has been so keen to stave off even the possibility of inflation that it chokes down the vigor of recoveries before they get to the part where median wages start rising quickly. The result is that wages get ratcheted down with the economic cycle, falling during recessions and never fully recovering during the recoveries.
Do I believe this theory? Increasingly, yes I do. And seeing the Fed right now decide to raise rates, citing accelerating wage growth as one of the main reasons, has reinforced my belief.
A Boy Named Sue said...
Two Things: (i) The Fed should be open and honest about monetary policy. No one wants to return to the Greenspan days. (ii) Brad Delong is a neoliberal hack.
A Boy Named Sue -> A Boy Named Sue...
I do admit, Delong is my favorite conservative economist. He is witty and educational, unlike most RW hacks.
Jeff said...
As to "why risk a political backlash" in the piece, the short answer is: to invoke the debate on whether politics or fact (science) is going to dominate. Because they can't both. See: Romer. Let's have this out once and for all.
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Zero Hedge
Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,
Presumably, Yellen and her posse know that we did not have seven years running of negative real money market rates even during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
So after one pretension, delusion, head fake and forecasting error after another, the denizens of the Eccles Building have painted themselves into the most dangerous monetary corner in history. They have left themselves no alternative except to provoke a riot in the casino - the very outcome that has filled them with fear and dread all these years.
... ... ...
But the fantastic global credit bubble summarized below has now reached its apogee. China and the EM economies are rolling over into a debilitating deflation, thereby catalyzing the mother of all margins calls. This time subprime is lettered in Chinese and speaks with a Portuguese accent.
... ... ...
According to Dr. Summers, the thing to do when recession strikes is to cut interest rates by 300 basis points. But even he admits it ain't going to happen this time.Even if were technically possible to have a negative 300 bps federal funds rate, what is already a 2016 election year gong show would take on a whole new level of crazy. The brutally trod upon savers and retirees of American would well and truly revolt.
Katherine Schock, 1 year agoHistorical experience suggests that when recession comes it is necessary to cut interest rates by more than 300 basis points. I agree with the market that the Fed likely will not be able to raise rates by 100 basis points a year without threatening to undermine the recovery. But even if this were possible, the chances are very high that recession will come before there is room to cut rates by enough to offset it. The knowledge that this is the case must surely reduce confidence and inhibit demand.
Central bankers bravely assert that they can always use unconventional tools. But there may be less in the cupboard than they suppose. The efficacy of further quantitative easing in an environment of well-functioning markets and already very low medium-term rates is highly questionable. There are severe limits on how negative rates can become. A central bank that is forced back to the zero lower bound is not likely to have great credibility if it engages in forward guidance.
Just spent the major part of my day putting together the records to file the old man's tax this year. We have contributed mightily to the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the medical industry and yes, a major part of our income that makes up our yearly retirement amount has ended up in the pockets of these Wall Street bums! Therefore, I am posting this song as a tribute to Wall Street...thanks to you guys we barely have a dime left over! Hope you choke on your fucking bonus!Gene Burnett - Jump You F#kers (A Song For Wall Street) - YouTube
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Economist's View
bakho said...Regarding the "The Future is Bright ".cawley said in reply to bakho...We had a sluggish economy during the Bush Mismanagement years. The Fed compensated by allowing an under regulated housing bubble to form. We never fixed the core problem that led to the 2001 recession. It would be foolish to try to fix the jobs problem with housing alone and I think Bondad has a point that housing is not saving us this time.
Agreed. Also with the crucial indicator being real wage growth.ken melvin said in reply to bakho...
Yup, housing is the effect, not the cause.RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to ken melvin...
Exactly!New Deal democrat said in reply to bakho...
Thanks.My post at Bonddad was an elaboration on a comment I made here two days ago. I had been meaning to reply to CR last year when he made the same argument, but never got around to it.
In fairness, I think Bill makes an excellent case that we won't have another recession brought about by a housing bubble, and/or too much consumer leverage any time soon. But there are plenty of other reasons why the economy might tip back into recession, as comments here have already mentioned.
Dan Kervick said in reply to New Deal democrat...
Another problem is that we live in a bad society. Whether or not there is another recession affects the precise level of pain. But even if there is no recession the future will only be "bright" for a select class of socially privileged winners. For many, many Americans, the future is bleak no matter what - absent major structural political and economic changes.Dan Kervick said in reply to JF...
Well I said the prospects are bleak only absent major structural political and economic changes. And they are. American society is killing off whole classes of people. The prisons are full; there are epidemics of substance abuse going on, and rising suicide rates. The Financial Times reported today Even if there is no recession, that just means that these people are not also laid off, and can trudge back and forth every day from their Wal-Jobs to their hardscrabble communities, slums and trailer parks and afford more booze to drink themselves to death or buy lottery tickets to win imaginary pots of gold that will never come, and to have a functioning TV so they can watch people scream at each other all night. Oh, and the prices of hookers and drugs are down. Bright times!Why should any of these people care what the "Bonddad" thinks about how bright the future is for people who ... well, own bonds; or who party in Manhattan and Silicon Valley with their fortunes; or who make use of their abundant low-anxiety leisure to talk to their college chums all day in the establishment punditariat?
The up and down cyclical motions of the pretty horsies going up and down mean little to the people who sleep in the dark machinery underneath the merry-go-round.
If US society keeps its basic overall shape, the future isn't bright. But it does contain just enough glare to make sure that the party boys with their ever-evolving fashion lines of fancy sunglasses will continue not to see half of the world.
Dan Kervick said in reply to Dan Kervick...
Incomplete sentence. I meant to say, "The Financial Times reported today on the further hollowing out of the US middle class and growing income stratification."Dan Kervick said in reply to Dan Kervick...
America, 2015:http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/14/homan-square-detainee-police-abuse
JF said in reply to Dan Kervick...
Yes, we absolutely have the opportunity to do better. We ought to try.Julio said in reply to JF...
We are rich beyond belief. We just have to get used to the idea. Then, new vistas open up.JF said in reply to Julio...
Yes. Net Wealth of US residents is nearly $85 T with an annual flow of economic activity over $17 T.We have a rising population, not a declining one.
We produce more food than we can eat and have access to immense energy sources.
And we have one of the better judicial systems and at least historically a governing set of institutions that brings up to the pragmatic middle that has made sound currency and nationwide payment systems, lots of supportive infrastructure including some good literacy levels from the educational system part of it.
We can do better, but I'd take the US over any other place (we even have a moderate climate).
This election might change my thinking on this last point about taking the US over say Canada - but I think I'll be happy to remain.
Julio said in reply to JF...
Yes, I went through some of the same thoughts when we reelected Bush-Cheney. But here I am.Dan Kervick said in reply to JF...
JF, I agree that the aggregates and net numbers are great. But our cruel, stratified, inegalitarian social system is the problem. The way those aggregate quantities are spread out over the population is a global scandal.America is good for me too, personally. My wife and I live in a well-off upper middle class community in New Hampshire. Very good schools, no crime to speak of, a town full of healthy and advantaged kids 95% bound for colleges. We had and still do have various recession-related anxieties, but they are the anxieties most people in the world only dream of.
But my life isn't America. It's a privileged and charmed part of it. If I get pulled over by a policeman for driving a bit too fast, I just get a courteous and smiling warning from Officer Friendly. Many others run a good chance of getting tasered, shot or sodomized in a police station. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of the savage inequalities.
anne said in reply to New Deal democrat...
http://bonddad.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-future-is-bright-or-perhaps-not.htmlDecember 9, 2015
The Future is Bright . . . or perhaps not
By New Deal democrat[ Really nicely done. ]
Peter K. said in reply to bakho...
Clinton's tech stock bubble popped and morphed into Bush's housing bubble. Bush thought military Keynesianism and tax cuts for the rich would help but they didn't help much. The solution is to regulate and tax the financial industry to prevent bubbles from forming. Greenspan denied its existence.The solution is not to raise interest rates in a depressed economy.
As DeLong has written the housing bubble was deflating and housing jobs were being replaced by export jobs.
Then the whole thing short-circuited with the financial crisis.
At the time the Fed was passively tightening over inflation concerns.
Peter K. said in reply to Peter K....
Another solution is more fiscal policy so that monetary policy doesn't carry all of the burden.Tax cuts for the rich isn't good fiscal policy.
pgl said in reply to Peter K....
Greg Mankiw links to some report on the effects of the Jeb! tax cuts but does not comment (Krugman did comment in this report). I followed the link and read the abstract. It is not exactly what Mankiw usually says about the wonders of tax cuts for rich people.Peter K. said in reply to pgl...
I avoid Mankiw's website. No comments.:D
Interesting though. Didn't Krugman blog that the report backs up his (everyone's) claims?
pgl said in reply to Peter K....
Krugman did. Abstract of the report and Krugman's comment below. I just found it funny that Mankiw gave a hat tip to something that I doubt he even read first. I guess Greg is getting a lot like JohnH in that way.Peter K. said in reply to pgl...
"I guess Greg is getting a lot like JohnH in that way."So much trolling to do, so little time. It's hard to keep up with all the misinformation.
PPaine said in reply to Peter K....
Pay roll tax cuts and increased retirement paymentsPlus a greatly expanded earned income subsidy aka tax credit
These are job class macro moves
Bernie gets this
Hillary ???
PPaine said in reply to PPaine ...
The fed needs to be captured first before we can rely on. It to operate in sync with a pro job class macro policyilsm said in reply to PPaine ...
ARAMCO and the pentagon need the cash!Norovirus said in reply to Peter K....
"tax the financial industry to prevent"~~Peter K~
When you need less of something, tax it. This will shift the supply/price/demand curve of financial "services". We need more of sawmills but less of banks, brokers and quants. Production we need. Casino we don't need. Hell!
If you want casino then go to Vegas -- more bells and whistles for you money!
Guten
fahrt
!Laundry Bank & Trust said in reply to Norovirus...
Most efficient way to tax financial services is a simple tool."simplicity is the meaning of life.
"
~~Ockham's axiom~"
Simplicity is more sustainable than complexity.
"
~~Ockham's first theorem~The simple tool for reining in our excessively top-heavy financial sector is deflation!
sanjait said in reply to bakho...
It's generally useful to talk about macroeconomic factors in terms of "cyclical" and "structural" factors. It's a reductionist framework, but one that IMO holds up well and is quite clarifying. So when I hear someone say something about a nebulous "core problem" that leads to recessions, I am very suspicious. Usually, such claims are about someone's hobby horse structural issue, which may or may not be important, but is generally not the cause of recessions.PPaine said in reply to sanjait...
Well a chronic trade deficit And. Spontaneous over accumulation are clearly structural problems that may well require significant if varying full employment budget deficits over the whole cycleThe inter action of structural and cyclical requires composite macro policy programs using multiple instruments
The dollar should stay at the assumed long run balanced trade forex thru out the cycle
Over accumulation suggests a ceiling of zero real for the policy rateEtc etc
Sanjait said in reply to PPaine ...
Rich developed countries are supposed to have a chronic trade deficit.But sure, let's humor that concern for a sec:
What then, do you claim, is the structural factor that causes chronic trade deficits? This should be interesting.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said...
RE: The Evolution of Work[This piece is sort of like the David Warsh broad brush economic history short form pieces except that it is focused purely on the plight of the proletariat instead of elites.]
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Dani Rodrik seems to be on the side of the weebles.ken melvin said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Are we still evolving?RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to ken melvin...
Yep. Evolution never seems to be happening when most of what one sees is within their own generation, sort of by definition. What the millennials are evolving into is something I want to learn, but have not had the chance to duly observe for myself yet. Jealousy between my current wife and the mother of my children created an atmosphere too tedious for my current wife to be subjected to. You should know though that I am not the father of my children either. I just raised them from 4, 6, and 12. Husbands number one and two of the mother of my children were the biological fathers. She had no children with husbands number three (me) nor four. She is still hunting for number five but her powder is too wet now to fire.So, what have you learned from your grandchildren?
From our three girls I learned that progress is mighty slow.
PPaine said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
YesI love his strong advocacy for cross border labor mobility. Control the borders but increase the OECD inflow
We should set a huge quota for middle easterners
But let them in very slowly
Meanwhile those that apply
Get to stay in a safe area provided by lady libertyInside the us !
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to PPaine ...
That would trump Trump.ilsm said in reply to PPaine ...
Wll st banks already get a cut on banking al Qaeda!bakho said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Dani does not address hours worked or time off.
The US has one of the worst leave policies in the developed world.
When was the last reduction in the work week?
There are a lot of services that are not being provided due to lack of money. Some of the underemployed could move into low level service jobs if other workers moved up to a higher level.It is a failure when large numbers of people do not have productive work. They have too little money to sustain potential output, leaving employment far below potential. It is a vicious downward spiral. The spiral is fixed by intervention that reverses the spiral. We have a failure of fiscal policy to address the root problem.
Dan Kervick said in reply to bakho...
He's a development economist and his article is about work in the developing world.RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to bakho...
We have a lot of failures and I don't have time enough to make a full list. Changing stuff requires political action on behalf of and usually orchestrated by those that have the needs that require addressing. We need massive working class majority electoral solidarity. Until then the political establishment is safe to treat us as second rate constituents and focus on the desires of the elite.JF said in reply to bakho...
The Tim Taylor piece is helping to remind people to focus more attention on economic policies related to work practices being seen in society. More talk about this the better.My two cents, is that society is better when people are hired for stable, full-time jobs. All kinds of definitional matters attend to just saying this, but I still think it needs to be a predominating focus. Society wants more people to have full-time jobs, however you define full-time. So we need to watch developments in the gig economy carefully.
By predominating full-time employment as a policy-making factor, I'd say this view means that in serious downturns, for instance, we do not want govts eliminating full time, stable jobs if we can somehow do fiscal sharing to avoid this as much as can be done.
The largest employer segment in the US (well at least it used to be bigger than retail, last time I studied this) is state and local govt employment. These employers don't pay out of whack high-salaries and for the most part the hiring has had a stable and proportional growth rate (political bosses in the US don't hand out jobs to create voters much anymore). These employers create floors in the labor marketplace and this forces other employers to compete on stability factors and on the notion of being full-time. I think we want this type of competition.
The right-wing Machiavelli ones understand this dynamic and that is why they are very happy to undermine govt employment (cut it, they are lazy anyway, ugh-bureaucrats don't do real things, etc.) - they don't want the competition as it raises the costs of their decades long control over wages.
But any employer offering stability and full-time jobs - this is good, and economic policies for our society ought to take this into account as a predominating factor.
sanjait said in reply to JF...
Hey JF.I didn't have time to write up a solid reply the other day, but I did want to eventually respond to your question and comments about whether the central bank has control of long term interest rates ("it's own instruments...") through purchases.
My quick answer:
It influences their prices, but not through inducing scarcity. That is because, unlike commodities, securities are not priced based on their scarcity, they are priced based on their expected returns.
So when the Fed buys $40b in bonds per month, in a $500+b per month liquid market, it's hardly going to move the price.
But, the Fed does influence long term bond rates both by modulating the entire money supply and by setting expectations for how it will modulate the money supply in the future (aka., the reaction function.)
One very huge observation apropos of all this: every time the Fed announced a new round of QE, longer term bond rates went UP rather than DOWN. Why? Because it showed the Fed's reaction function was looser than previously thought, and also they were more committed to staving off disinflation.Though I will concede, not everyone sees it this way. Even inside the Fed many of them had a simple model that says: buying more bonds = pushing down the price. But I get the impression they generally abandoned that model after operation twist utterly failed to work in that way.
JF said in reply to sanjait...
OK. Yield, price, cost to the govt - not always the same thing, but each has a perspective.Assuming you are correct that the later QE, and I don't know myself, just assumed that the cost to the govt of a new 10 year moderated a bit in a later QE, I think this evidence points to why they don't use new-QEing now.
It dawned on them that its initial cost-to-govt effects, lowering interest rates, was just not happening. So why subsidize the dealer networks and stuff more assets on to their books using electronic entries into reserve accounts as payment when we (the FRB) have no idea what to do with assets of this magnitude.
But off the thread's topic.
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finance.yahoo.com
NEW YORK(Reuters) - When health insurer Humana Inc reported worse-than-expected quarterly earnings in late 2014 – including a 21 percent drop in net income – it softened the blow by immediately telling investors it would make a $500 million share repurchase.
In addition to soothing shareholders, the surprise buyback benefited the company's senior executives. It added around two cents to the company's annual earnings per share, allowing Humana to surpass its $7.50 EPS target by a single cent and unlocking higher pay for top managers under terms of the company's compensation agreement.
Thanks to Humana hitting that target, Chief Executive Officer Bruce Broussard earned a $1.68 million bonus for 2014.
Most publicly traded U.S. companies reward top managers for hitting performance targets, meant to tie the interests of managers and shareholders together. At many big companies, those interests are deemed to be best aligned by linking executive performance to earnings per share, along with measures derived from the company's stock price.
But these metrics may not be solely a reflection of a company's operating performance. They can be, and often are, influenced through stock repurchases. In addition to cutting the number of a company's shares outstanding, and thus lifting EPS, buybacks also increase demand for the shares, usually providing a lift to the share price, which affects other performance markers.
As corporate America engages in an unprecedented buyback binge, soaring CEO pay tied to short-term performance measures like EPS is prompting criticism that executives are using stock repurchases to enrich themselves at the expense of long-term corporate health, capital investment and employment.
"We've accepted a definition of performance that is narrow and quite possibly inappropriate," said Rosanna Landis Weaver, program manager of the executive compensation initiative at As You Sow, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that promotes corporate responsibility. Pay for performance as it is often structured creates "very troublesome, problematic incentives that can potentially drive very short-term thinking."
A Reuters analysis of the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index found that 255 of those companies reward executives in part by using EPS, while another 28 use other per-share metrics that can be influenced by share buybacks.
In addition, 303 also use total shareholder return, essentially a company's share price appreciation plus dividends, and 169 companies use both EPS and total shareholder return to help determine pay.
STANDARD PRACTICE
EPS and share-price metrics underpin much of the compensation of some of the highest-paid CEOs, including those at Walt Disney Co, Viacom Inc, 21st Century Fox Inc, Target Corp and Cisco Systems Inc.
... ... ...
As reported in the first article in this series, share buybacks by U.S. non-financial companies reached a record $520 billion in the most recent reporting year. A Reuters analysis of 3,300 non-financial companies found that together, buybacks and dividends have surpassed total capital expenditures and are more than double research and development spending.
Companies buy back their shares for various reasons. They do it when they believe their shares are undervalued, or to make use of cash or cheap debt financing when business conditions don't justify capital or R&D spending. They also do it to meet the expectations of increasingly demanding investors.
Lately, the sheer volume of buybacks has prompted complaints among academics, politicians and investors that massive stock repurchases are stifling innovation and hurting U.S. competitiveness - and contributing to widening income inequality by rewarding executives with ever higher pay, often divorced from a company's underlying performance.
"There's been an over-focus on buybacks and raising EPS to hit share option targets, and we know that those are concentrated in the hands of the few, and that the few is in the top 1 percent," said James Montier, a member of the asset allocation team at global investment firm GMO in London, which manages more than $100 billion in assets.
The introduction of performance targets has been a driver of surging executive pay, helping to widen the gap between the richest in America and the rest of the country. Median CEO pay among companies in the S&P 500 increased to a record $10.3 million last year, up from $8.6 million in 2010, according to data firm Equilar.
At those levels, CEOs last year were paid 303 times what workers in their industries earned, compared with a ratio of 59 times in 1989, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit.
SALARY AND A LOT MORE
Today, the bulk of CEO compensation comes from cash and stock awards, much of it tied to performance metrics. Last year, base salary accounted for just 8 percent of CEO pay for S&P 500 companies, while cash and stock incentives made up more than 45 percent, according to proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services.
...In 1992, Congress changed the tax code to curb rising executive pay and encourage performance-based compensation. It didn't work. Instead, the shift is widely blamed for soaring executive pay and a heavier emphasis on short-term results.
Companies started tying performance pay to "short-term metrics, and suddenly all the things we don't want to happen start happening," said Lynn Stout, a professor of corporate and business law at Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York. "Despite 20 years of trying, we have still failed to come up with an objective performance metric that can't be gamed."
Shareholder expectations have changed, too. The individuals and other smaller, mostly passive investors who dominated equity markets during the postwar decades have given way to large institutional investors. These institutions tend to want higher returns, sooner, than their predecessors. Consider that the average time investors held a particular share has fallen from around eight years in 1960 to a year and a half now, according to New York Stock Exchange data.
"TOO EASY TO MANIPULATE"
Companies like to use EPS as a performance metric because it is the primary focus of financial analysts when assessing the value of a stock and of investors when evaluating their return on investment.
But "it is not an appropriate target, it's too easy to manipulate," said Almeida, the University of Illinois finance professor.
...By providing a lift to a stock's price, buybacks can increase total shareholder return to target levels, resulting in more stock awards for executives. And of course, the higher stock price lifts the value of company stock they already own.
"It can goose the price at time when the high price means they earn performance shares … even if the stock price later goes back down, they got their shares," said Michael Dorff, a law professor at the Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles.
Exxon Corp, the largest repurchaser of shares over the past decade, has rejected shareholder proposals that it add three-year targets based on shareholder return to its compensation program. In its most recent proxy, the energy company said doing so could increase risk-taking and encourage underinvestment to achieve short-term results.
The energy giant makes half of its annual executive bonus payments contingent on meeting longer-term EPS thresholds. Since 2005, the company has spent more than $200 billion on buybacks.
ADDITIONAL TWEAKS
While performance targets are specific, they aren't necessarily fixed. Corporate boards often adjust them or how they are calculated in ways that lift executive pay.
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www.eia.gov
- EIA forecasts that Brent crude oil prices will average $53/b in 2015 and $56/b in 2016. Forecast West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices average $4/b lower than the Brent price in 2015 and $5/b lower in 2016. The current values of futures and options contracts for March 2016 delivery (Market Prices and Uncertainty Report) suggest the market expects WTI prices to range from $30/b to $63/b (at the 95% confidence interval). ...
- The monthly average price of U.S. regular retail gasoline was $2.16/gallon (gal) in November, a decrease of 13 cents/gal from October and 75 cents/gal lower than in November 2014. EIA forecasts U.S. regular gasoline retail prices to average $2.04/gal in December 2015 and $2.36/gal for 2016.
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finance.yahoo.com
This important event falls at a peculiar time–less than 48 hours before the largest option expiry in many years," wrote Kolanovic, noting that $1.1 trillion worth of Standard & Poor's 500-stock index options–of which $670 billion are puts–will expire on Dec. 18. Roughly one-third of the puts poised to expire are at or near the money, with strike prices from 1,900 to 2,050.
"Clients are net long these puts and will likely hold onto them through the event and until expiry," the strategist wrote. "At the time of the Fed announcement, these put options will essentially look like a massive stop loss order under the market."
When a put is close to expiry, the writer of the option becomes a seller of the underlying security as it hits the strike price in order to mitigate the exposure. Thus, a negative reaction in the S&P 500 index to the Fed decision could trigger a wave of forced selling, potentially agitating markets.
No one knows better than Kolanovic how systematic selling can amplify price changes in financial markets.
However, it's fair to quibble with the premise: Is Janet Yellen really monitoring open interest in options linked to the S&P 500?
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Zero Hedge
Thought Processor
...Seriously though, aren't HYG's always the canary in the coal mine...... No better buzzer for an incomming slowdown.
anti Oligarchy
I work right in the thick of the real economy... construction / utility / etc. It is happening right now on the ground floor, sales are drying up, inventories going up. It is as serious as you are projecting in these articles.
Paint By Number
My experience exactly. The industrial market (except for the flash in the pan oil boom) has been struggling since 2008. But something changed in September/October of this year. I can't tell you how many times I've heard "it's like someone flipped a switch."
Most people have no idea of how many highly technical and specialized products (valves, cables, pumps, transformers, special alloy components) are keeping electricity, gas, and water going to their homes. Many of these manufacturers are teetering on the edge. If this situation does not change for the better in the next few months we will begin to see major and spectacular failures in our infrastructure.
I can't overstate the potential devastating social and environmental chaos. It's all great fun to talk about popcorn and watching bankers jump from the 14th floor, but if the lights go out and don't come back on, there won't be much laughing.
kelley805
J.P. Morgan analysts wrote that the three best leading indicators for recession have been credit spreads, the shape of the yield curve and profit margins.
Here are some signs of a coming recession.
1. Investors in high-yield bonds are expecting to see their first negative return since the start of the credit crisis in 2008.
2. Factory orders continue to drop
3. Default risk spikes
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-02/us-financials-default-risk-spikes-2-year-high
4. M&A set record
http://michaelekelley.com/2015/05/29/mergers-and-acquisitions-set-record/
5. Iron ore prices tumble
6. Baltic dry shipping index tumbles
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Dec 06, 2015 | Calculated Risk
Note: I've made one recession call since starting this blog. One of my predictions for 2007 was a recession would start as a result of the housing bust (made it by one month - the recession started in December 2007). That prediction was out of the consensus for 2007 and, at the time, ECRI was saying a "recession is no longer a serious concern". Ouch.For the last 6+ years, there have been an endless parade of incorrect recession calls. The most reported was probably the multiple recession calls from ECRI in 2011 and 2012.
... ... ...
Also on Friday I posted an excerpt from a Citi's research piece also suggesting a 65% chance of a recession in 2016.
Here is the Citi research piece.
[A] statistical approach is shown in Figure 46 and highlights the cumulative probability of a recession based on data from 1970-14 across US, UK, Germany and Japan. As the U.S. economy enters year seven, the cumulative probability of a recession in the next year rises to 65%.This is just an historical statistical approach based on elapsed time.Looking at the economic data, the odds of a recession in 2016 are very low (extremely unlikely in my view). Someday I'll make another recession call, but I'm not even on recession watch now.
Rob_Dawg
We have so messed with market forces and reporting and baselines and seasonal adjustments that all the old metrics are useless. We've also financialized everything. That means velocity. It means contagion. It means liquidity freezes. You know the list. The speed at which the next recession arrives will render any prediction useless except to historians.
sum_luk
Rob_Dawg:
all the old metrics are useless.
.... so, now we have an unduly enlarged glut of savings chasing an ever dimming prospect of profit. .... ultimate fiat trapped in a ponzi.
sum_luk
Rajesh:
I don't expect the U.S. economy to boom except on a relative basis.
... of course, Janet's theory is domestic US will carry on despite the fact that a strong dollar makes for cheap imports.
Rob_Dawg
Eventually China will have a shadow banking crisis that will leave the rest of the world with the problem of deciding how much to contain it. Very dangerous. 2016? No way of telling.
sm_landlord
Rajesh
I'm with you on that, Rajesh. To the extent that I'm doomy about the macro economy, it's mostly about the rest of the world. The US looks to do far less well than it could, but so far, it doesn't look like a US recession is imminent.
On the middle/micro level, I see a lot of government spending on things like street/road maintenance, which should prop some things up. Also, auto traffic seems to be back to pre-GR levels. Based on my recent visit to SM, anyway, most of the downtown area is approaching gridlock for much of the day again...
Can't say the risk is zero, though, because I still see a lot of fragility and testing of limits.
Cinco-X
Rajesh:
My no recession call for 2015 is looking good. I'm making a no recession in 2016 call now.
I was in Walmart on Friday evening picking up a prescription, and the place was a ghost town. Drove by Best Buy the previous evening and the parking lot was about 25% full
yuan
curioussm_landlord:
The US looks to do far less well than it could, but so far, it doesn't look like a US recession is imminent.
Umm...so pretty much business as usual since 2008 (and the republican plan to sabotage obummers by opposing anything that might benefit working class 'merkins).
CitizenAllenMHHNW_GDP.jpg 1920x1080 105 KB
Early on in the housing bubble, Bill made a number of comments about bubbles using a plot of Household Net Worth to GDP ratio. Early on, he wrote that the ratio had been stable for nearly 50 years. He then changed his tune and started talking about a gradual increase since the 70's.
Here's the raw data series.
Funny how the Boomer generation peak is going to change the economics of so much, just like I predicted.
I also predict a stunning comeback for Wal-Mart as the cost of living cuts really get going, and the Social Security Day Sales and Foodstamp sales kick off the monthly sales.
The America of limited everything, as free riders are eliminated.
Now, have you written off your skybox for 2015?
LoL- business has so much fat they will need to cut to survive the increase in poverty that will be the boomer retirement.
Already planning to shed vehicles as fast as Google Cars become available in 10 years
Someday this war's gonna end...
CitizenAllenM
LoL- you have paid more to store that organ than any value it has--- http://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/msg/5329410176.html3
Yup, $250 bucks for the middle class 1950s fantasy item!
Can't really give them away- Upright Pianos are the worst- worth more as parts for creative reuse than as instruments.
Grand Pianos still have some marginal value- unless a decent name brand and in excellent condition.
One of my friends was talking about how valuable the family Steinway was, and I told them to contact the local piano dealer to get an idea of the value, and then see how much it was going to cost to have shipped down from Minnesota- after she made the calls she decided it was no prize and stopped negotiating for it in the estate settlement :wink:
Technology is ruthlessly destroying mass books next, along with vinyl records, dvds, cds, etc. 8 tracks are worthless, cassette tapes even more worthless.
Printers and scanners are the junk of America.
Someday this war's gonna end...
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Project Syndicate
When Inequality Kills by Joseph E. Stiglitz - Project Syndicate
The basic perquisites of a middle-class life were increasingly beyond the reach of a growing share of Americans. The Great Recession had shown their vulnerability. Those who had invested in the stock market saw much of their wealth wiped out; those who had put their money in safe government bonds saw retirement income diminish to near zero, as the Fed relentlessly drove down both short- and long-term interest rates. With college tuition soaring, the only way their children could get the education that would provide a modicum of hope was to borrow; but, with education loans virtually never dischargeable, student debt seemed even worse than other forms of debt.
... ... ...
The international Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, which I co-chaired and on which Deaton served, had earlier emphasized that GDP often is not a good measure of a society's wellbeing. These new data on white Americans' declining health status confirms this conclusion. The world's quintessential middle-class society is on the way to becoming its first former middle-class society.
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www.counterpunch.org
... ... ...The university of North Carolina at Chapel Hill now faces one year of probation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges as a result of a report that documents "widespread and long-lasting academic fraud at the university." For years, employees of the university "knowingly steered about 1,5000 athletes toward no-show courses that never met and were not taught by any faculty members, and in which the only work required was a single research paper that received a high grade no matter what the content."
It isn't only athletes who get the benefit of such "no-show" courses. Small academic programs and departments struggling to survive occasionally come up with such courses as a way of boosting their numbers of majors. Even Harvard is now having to grapple with the question of whether their "General Education" program has had the effect of encouraging students to take easy courses.
Universities will bend over backwards not to fail a student–so long as he or she is actually paying tuition. I know of a case of a professor who was told by the director of the program in which the professor teaches to "take some responsibility" for the fact that some of this professor's students were failing a course. Apparently, the professor was expected to find a way to ensure that all the students passed the course. Fortunately, the professor is tenured, and hence had to freedom to refuse to do more than to try to help the students actually LEARN the material. Would an adjunct have felt free to do the same thing?
Students are increasingly perceived as customers and some administrators, and even some faculty, appear to conceive the "product" the university is selling as a degree rather than an education, so it does seem counter productive to risk losing a customer for something so insignificant as failing to go to class.
Failing to pay tuition, however, is a different matter. Faculty are sometimes instructed not to allow students to attend courses if they have not paid their tuition by the beginning of the term (which, because of the glacial slowness of some financial aid programs, is frequently a problem).
There's been a lot of discussion recently about how all students need to be taught ethics in college. Of course you can't require everyone to take the standard ethics class that is taught in the philosophy department. That would be too much work. If you suddenly are going to require that everyone at your university take ethics, well, you'd better dumb it down, so students won't object.
Keep it rigorous, or dumb it down, requiring students to take an ethics course is unlikely to make them more ethical. The thing is, you rarely make people ethical by teaching them ethics. You can help them to better understand the complexities of some ethical dilemmas and you can arm them with theoretical language they can use to defend choices they probably would have made anyway, but that doesn't make them better people so much as it makes them happier people.
Moral character is largely formed by the time students enter college. It isn't entirely formed, of course, so what happens to students in college can affect their moral development. People are so profoundly social that they continue to develop their conceptions of what is acceptable behavior throughout their entire lives. Aristotle recognized that. That's why he asserted that ethics was a subset of politics. If you want people to behave well, you have to organize your society in such a way that it sends a clear message concerning the behavior it approves of and the behavior it condemns. If the leaders of a given society want people to be honest and responsible, then they have to exemplify these character traits themselves, and then reward citizens who emulate their example.
Universities would do a much better job of shaping students' characters in positive ways if instead of requiring students to take dumbed-down ethics classes, they gave a damn about ethics themselves, if they cared more about actually delivering the product they purport to be selling, rather than giving mere lip service to it. Many universities are now delivering degrees that are effectively equivalent to the indulgences sold by the Catholic church in the middle ages: expensive, but otherwise meaningless, pieces of paper.
Today's college students may be ignorant, but they aren't stupid. They take the measure of an institution pretty quickly. They can smell hypocrisy, and if they have to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for the dubious privilege of uninterrupted olfactory assault, they'll very likely develop the moral equivalent of olfactory fatigue. The message that, sadly, is all too often driven home to students today is that none of the traditional human values that educational institutions purport to preserve and foster, including learning in the broadest sense, really matter. The message they all to often receive now is that nothing really matters but money.
Now THAT is a nightmare!
M.G. Piety teaches philosophy at Drexel University. She is the editor and translator of Soren Kierkegaard's Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs. Her latest book is: Ways of Knowing: Kierkegaard's Pluralist Epistemology. She can be reached at: [email protected]
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Economist's View
likbez said...
When capital became unable of reaping large and fairly secure profits from manufacturing it like water tries to find other ways. It starts with semi-criminalizing finance -- that's the origin of the term "casino capitalism" (aka neoliberalism). I see casino capitalism as a set of semi-criminal ways of maintaining the rate of profits.The key prerequisite here is corruption of regulators. So laws on the book does not matter much if regulators do not enforce them.
As Joseph Schumpeter noted, capitalism is not a steady-state system. It is unstable system in which population constantly experience and then try to overcome one crisis after another. Joseph Schumpeter naively assumed that the net result is reimaging itself via so called "creative destruction". But what we observe now it "uncreative destruction". In other words casino capitalism is devouring the host, the US society.
So all those Hillary statements are for plebs consumption only (another attempt to play "change we can believe in" trick). Just a hot air designed to get elected. Both Clintons are in the pocket of financial oligarchy and will never be able to get out of it alive.
GeorgeK said...
I believe I'm the only one on this blog that has actually traded bonds, done swaps and hedged bank portfolios with futures contracts. Sooo I kinda know something about this topic.
Hilary is a fraud; her daughter worked at a Hedge fund where she met her husband Marc Mezvinsky, who is now a money manager at the Eaglevale fund. Oddly many of the Eaglevale investors are investors in the Clinton Foundation and have also given money to Hilary's campaign. The Clinton Foundation gets boat loads of money from Hedge funds and will not raise taxes on such a rich source of funding.
The grooms mother is Marjory Margolies (ex)Mezvinsky, she cast the final vote giving Clinton the winning vote to raise taxes. She subsequently lost her run for reelection to congress, then her husband was convicted of fraud and they divorced.
This speech is an attempt to pry people away from Bernie, it won't work with primary voters but might with what's left of rational Republicans in the general election.
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Economist's View
likbez said...
When capital became unable of reaping large and fairly secure profits from manufacturing it like water tries to find other ways. It starts with semi-criminalizing finance -- that's the origin of the term "casino capitalism" (aka neoliberalism). I see casino capitalism as a set of semi-criminal ways of maintaining the rate of profits.The key prerequisite here is corruption of regulators. So laws on the book does not matter much if regulators do not enforce them.
As Joseph Schumpeter noted, capitalism is not a steady-state system. It is unstable system in which population constantly experience and then try to overcome one crisis after another. Joseph Schumpeter naively assumed that the net result is reimaging itself via so called "creative destruction". But what we observe now it "uncreative destruction". In other words casino capitalism is devouring the host, the US society.
So all those Hillary statements are for plebs consumption only (another attempt to play "change we can believe in" trick). Just a hot air designed to get elected. Both Clintons are in the pocket of financial oligarchy and will never be able to get out of it alive.
GeorgeK said...
I believe I'm the only one on this blog that has actually traded bonds, done swaps and hedged bank portfolios with futures contracts. Sooo I kinda know something about this topic.
Hilary is a fraud; her daughter worked at a Hedge fund where she met her husband Marc Mezvinsky, who is now a money manager at the Eaglevale fund. Oddly many of the Eaglevale investors are investors in the Clinton Foundation and have also given money to Hilary's campaign. The Clinton Foundation gets boat loads of money from Hedge funds and will not raise taxes on such a rich source of funding.
The grooms mother is Marjory Margolies (ex)Mezvinsky, she cast the final vote giving Clinton the winning vote to raise taxes. She subsequently lost her run for reelection to congress, then her husband was convicted of fraud and they divorced.
This speech is an attempt to pry people away from Bernie, it won't work with primary voters but might with what's left of rational Republicans in the general election.
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www.counterpunch.org
... ... ...The university of North Carolina at Chapel Hill now faces one year of probation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges as a result of a report that documents "widespread and long-lasting academic fraud at the university." For years, employees of the university "knowingly steered about 1,5000 athletes toward no-show courses that never met and were not taught by any faculty members, and in which the only work required was a single research paper that received a high grade no matter what the content."
It isn't only athletes who get the benefit of such "no-show" courses. Small academic programs and departments struggling to survive occasionally come up with such courses as a way of boosting their numbers of majors. Even Harvard is now having to grapple with the question of whether their "General Education" program has had the effect of encouraging students to take easy courses.
Universities will bend over backwards not to fail a student–so long as he or she is actually paying tuition. I know of a case of a professor who was told by the director of the program in which the professor teaches to "take some responsibility" for the fact that some of this professor's students were failing a course. Apparently, the professor was expected to find a way to ensure that all the students passed the course. Fortunately, the professor is tenured, and hence had to freedom to refuse to do more than to try to help the students actually LEARN the material. Would an adjunct have felt free to do the same thing?
Students are increasingly perceived as customers and some administrators, and even some faculty, appear to conceive the "product" the university is selling as a degree rather than an education, so it does seem counter productive to risk losing a customer for something so insignificant as failing to go to class.
Failing to pay tuition, however, is a different matter. Faculty are sometimes instructed not to allow students to attend courses if they have not paid their tuition by the beginning of the term (which, because of the glacial slowness of some financial aid programs, is frequently a problem).
There's been a lot of discussion recently about how all students need to be taught ethics in college. Of course you can't require everyone to take the standard ethics class that is taught in the philosophy department. That would be too much work. If you suddenly are going to require that everyone at your university take ethics, well, you'd better dumb it down, so students won't object.
Keep it rigorous, or dumb it down, requiring students to take an ethics course is unlikely to make them more ethical. The thing is, you rarely make people ethical by teaching them ethics. You can help them to better understand the complexities of some ethical dilemmas and you can arm them with theoretical language they can use to defend choices they probably would have made anyway, but that doesn't make them better people so much as it makes them happier people.
Moral character is largely formed by the time students enter college. It isn't entirely formed, of course, so what happens to students in college can affect their moral development. People are so profoundly social that they continue to develop their conceptions of what is acceptable behavior throughout their entire lives. Aristotle recognized that. That's why he asserted that ethics was a subset of politics. If you want people to behave well, you have to organize your society in such a way that it sends a clear message concerning the behavior it approves of and the behavior it condemns. If the leaders of a given society want people to be honest and responsible, then they have to exemplify these character traits themselves, and then reward citizens who emulate their example.
Universities would do a much better job of shaping students' characters in positive ways if instead of requiring students to take dumbed-down ethics classes, they gave a damn about ethics themselves, if they cared more about actually delivering the product they purport to be selling, rather than giving mere lip service to it. Many universities are now delivering degrees that are effectively equivalent to the indulgences sold by the Catholic church in the middle ages: expensive, but otherwise meaningless, pieces of paper.
Today's college students may be ignorant, but they aren't stupid. They take the measure of an institution pretty quickly. They can smell hypocrisy, and if they have to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for the dubious privilege of uninterrupted olfactory assault, they'll very likely develop the moral equivalent of olfactory fatigue. The message that, sadly, is all too often driven home to students today is that none of the traditional human values that educational institutions purport to preserve and foster, including learning in the broadest sense, really matter. The message they all to often receive now is that nothing really matters but money.
Now THAT is a nightmare!
M.G. Piety teaches philosophy at Drexel University. She is the editor and translator of Soren Kierkegaard's Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs. Her latest book is: Ways of Knowing: Kierkegaard's Pluralist Epistemology. She can be reached at: [email protected]
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www.nakedcapitalism.com
VatchroadriderJKF? I didn't know that the historian John King Fairbank was assassinated.
skkThen I guess you have solid evidence to account for the actions of Allen Dulles, David Atlee Phillips, William Harvey, David Morales, E. Howard Hunt, Richard Helms, James Angleton and other CIA personnel and assets who had
1) perhaps the strongest motives to murder Kennedy
2) the means to carry out the crime, namely, their executive action (assassination) capability and blackmail the government into aiding their cover up and
3) the opportunity to carry out such a plan given their complete lack of accountability to the rest of the government and their unmatched expertise in lying, deceit, secrecy, fraud.
Because if you actually took the time to research or at least read about their actions in this matter instead of just spouting bald assertions that you decline to back up with any facts you would find their behavior nearly impossible to explain other than having at, the very least, guilty knowledge of the crime.
skkRuby claimed he was injected with cancer in jail, which ultimately rendered his second trial (after winning appeal overturning his death sentence) moot. It sounded crazy, but so did the motive proffered at his first trial-- that he wanted to save Mrs. Kennedy the anguish...
that is such an amazing story.. i've yet to watch the video of Lyndon Johnson's swearing in - where Marr states he's seen to be winking and smiling etc -
Jim Marrs - Kennedy Assassination Lecturethose who wish - Pick it up at around 12 minutes. actually in that lecture he may well be showing videos of it - I wdn't know cos just listen to the audio.
JFK is the one 'safe' conspiracy to talk about without getting the extreme whacko label.
fascinating "lectures" - British Humanist Society and all - still you gotta listen to everything especially the other side:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/V6s_Jw3RU9g?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&list=PL44BEE83ED9D841A8Make a note of the names - rising stars in the I'm "left" but I'm not a conspiracist gaggle - ist a standard gaggle - Chomsky, Monbiot are in it ( to win it of course - their fabled "socialist" kingdom" ) - yeah yeah its BritLand so yeah why I care I suppose.
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peakoilbarrel.com
VK, 12/04/2015 at 2:57 pmBeware Economics 101. The peer review mechanism has horribly failed.Dennis Coyne, 12/04/2015 at 6:11 pmWhen you read Krugman, this is what he and our central bankers believe.
"The problem for early would - be neoclassical macroeconomists was that, strictly speaking, there was no microeconomic model of macroeconomics when they began their campaign. So they developed a neoclassical macro model from the foundation of the neoclassical growth model developed by Nobel laureate Robert Solow (Solow 1956) and Trevor Swan (Swan 2002). They interpreted the equilibrium growth path of the economy as being determined by the consumption and leisure preferences of a representative consumer, and explained deviations from equilibrium – which the rest of us know as the business cycle – by unpredictable 'shocks' to technology and consumer preferences.
This resulted in a model of the macroeconomy as consisting of a single consumer, who lives for ever, consuming the output of the economy. Which is a single good produced in a single firm, which he owns and in which he is the only employee, which pays him both profits equivalent to the marginal product of capital and a wage equivalent to the marginal product of labor. To which he decides how much labor to supply by solving a utility function that maximizes his utility over an infinite time horizon, which he rationally expects and therefore correctly predicts.
The economy would always be in equilibrium except for the impact of unexpected 'technology shocks' that change the firm's productive capabilities (or his consumption preferences) and thus temporarily cause the single capitalist/worker/consumer to alter his working hours.
Any reduction in working hours is a voluntary act, so the representative agent is never involuntarily unemployed, he's just taking more leisure. And there are no banks, no debt, and indeed no money in this model."
Prof. Steve Keen, Debunking Economics.
Hi VK,VK, 12/05/2015 at 1:41 amNo this is not what Krugman believes at all. There are some economists that think in these terms, in the US it is primarily in the interior of the country, the economists on the east and west coast, (this includes Krugman and many others) would not think in these terms at all.
Have you ever read anything by Krugman?
Read Krugman for years. The basic neoclassical models are founded on the representative agent model with the above assumptions as core. Look up the PhD text book on economics – http://www.amazon.com/Microeconomic-Theory-Andreu-Mas-Colell/dp/0195073401VK, 12/04/2015 at 3:04 pmKrugman gives assessments based on the representative agent models, with its no money, no debt, no banks assumptions. Very linear models, no dynamic modeling.
Economic theory and modeling is stuck in the 19th century. Rest of the hard sciences, physics, chemistry, atmospherics moved on with Poincare and later Lorenz to dynamic simulations.
To Dennis Coyne, debt levels matter because "loans create deposits" and not vice versa. Bank of England published a paper last year on modern money creation http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q1prereleasemoneycreation.pdfDennis Coyne, 12/04/2015 at 6:24 pmThe fractional reserve banking model taught in economics is absolutely empirically wrong. Because banks have the power to create credit money, they can issue in excess.
Under the empirically correct credit money creation model, there can be an excessive build up of debt. Hence the more than 250 sovereign and domestic govt debt crises since 1850.
Hi VK,VK, 12/05/2015 at 1:56 amRune Likvern posted the link and I read the paper. US textbooks through 1990 covered this exactly as in that paper, so it was a good refresher, but not different from what I had learned in the past.
There can be excessive debt and banks can fail due to poor lending practices combined with a severe recession. Nations can also default. The question is how much debt is too much debt. In economics there are different opinions on this question. When I was studying economics the focus was on public debt crowding out private debt when an economy was close to full employment.
Now there seems to be more focus on private debt, which nobody in economics used to worry about.
It may be that the lack of banking regulation and the rise of shadow banking has made this more of a problem, I am out of date on the latest research.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/06/public-debt
The article at the link above suggests up to about a 150% debt to GDP ratio is a safe level for public debt.
U.S. Textbooks don't cover this at all. The assumption that Paul Samuelson used in his seminal undergraduate textbook that millions have studied was the fractional reserve lending model which is empirically false.Jef, 12/05/2015 at 9:12 amThe whole of economics is empirically false, it would be a laughing stock if people looked under the hood with its assumptions that are meant to preserve straight line thinking rather than dealing with reality, which is highly non-linear and dynamic.
Private debt wasn't a concern in economics because they assumed away the role of banks to preserve the equilibrium models. Once you incorporate reality into the models, which is what a true science would do, you find that private debt levels matter.
What economists think: Saver lends to borrower. Saver loses purchasing power, borrower gains purchasing power. Purchasing power hasn't changed in the economy. Just a shift
What really happens: Saver puts money in a bank, has access to his money anytime. Borrower wants money, bank issues a credit and writes loan amount as asset. Purchasing power as a whole increases across the economy as both saver and borrower now have money to buy goods and services with.
That's how the economy grows – bank issuance of credit. And it can easily be in excess.https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/the-keenkrugman-debate-a-summary/
Thanks for hanging in there VK.Glenn Stehle, 12/05/2015 at 9:34 amI tried to explain this to my father in law who is an attorney specializing in finance and accounting. He simply could not accept it or even wrap his head around it even after reading the Bank of England piece.
It is fraud plain and simple and the cost to humanity in both financial terms and lives lost is huge.
Paul Krugman is a quintessential neoclassical economist. Neoclassical economists threw the notion that economics should deal with empirical or factual reality overboard quite some time ago.Glenn Stehle, 12/05/2015 at 9:55 amPerhaps no one was more explicit in articulating this notion that science should discard factual reality than Milton Friedman.
Any number of critics have pointed this out. For instance,
Economists often invoke a strange argument by Milton Friedman that states that models do not have to have realistic assumptions to be acceptable - giving them license to produce severely defective mathematical representations of reality.
–NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB, The Black Swan
and
Economists as a rule do not deny that their assumptions about human nature are highly unrealistic, but instead claim, following Friedman (1962, 1982), that the absence of realism does not diminish the value of their theory because it "works," in the sense that it generates valid predictions….
Most important, philosophers of science have almost universally rejected Friedman's position (Boland, 1979). It is very widely agreed that the purpose of a theory is to explain. Otherwise, [predictions] are unable to foretell under what conditions they will continue to hold or fail.
AMITAI ETZIONI, The Moral Dimension
With the advent of the Great Financial Crisis, which began in 2007 and continues to this day, the neoclassical models did fail. And they failed in the most spectacular way.
Nevertheless, for those like Krugman who are in love with orthodox economic theory, when facts don't conform to theory, so much worse for the facts.
It should be added that not everyone who rejects the orthodox, neoclassical theory of exogenous money creation and its "available funds" theory of banking, as Keen calls it, believes that debt matters.Dennis Coyne, 12/05/2015 at 12:38 pmA very good example of this is the MMT school, which even though it rejects the orthodox theory of money creation, nevertheless discounts the importance of debt, or at least public debt.
The distinction between private debt and public debt, however, is not a clear one. We all saw, for instance, the ease with which private debt was converted into public debt in the cases of Ireland and Spain in the wake of the GFC.
Hi Glenn,Glenn Stehle, 12/05/2015 at 1:57 pmKrugman does hold relatively mainstream views, but there are significant differences of opinion within economics. Many economists reject Keynesian theory, Krugman does not. The piece that VK posted by Keen was essentially a rejection of the macroeconomic theory that was formulated to replace Keynesian theory. Krugman would make many of the exact same criticisms.
The "debt doesn't matter" theme is carried a little too far, nobody really argues this. The argument is that when the economy is doing poorly due to low aggregate demand (during a severe recession) and monetary policy is not effective because interest rates are near zero (so that the federal funds rate cannot be lowered any further), cutting fiscal deficits is poor public policy.
Perhaps you disagree?
Dennis,Dennis Coyne, 12/05/2015 at 12:15 pmAre you unaware of the famous debate between Krugman and Keen, and what it is all about?
Perhaps this article by Ann Pettifor will help:
The debate between these two economists on the role of banking and specifically the creation of credit is of fundamental importance in understanding the shortcomings of orthodox economic thinking – and why it was so ill-equipped to handle, let alone predict, the crash of 2008.
Many rightly applaud Paul Krugman for using his platform at the New York Times to defend further fiscal stimulus in the US–against a hostile political crowd, not to mention the downright opposition of neo-liberal economists –- and we commend him for that.
However, because he has such an important platform, it matters more to many monetary economists (including the editor of this series) that he appears to lack a proper understanding of the nature of credit, and the role of banks in the economy.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/steve-keen/keen-krugman-debate
I very much recommend reading the entire article, and much more can be found by Googling "Keen vs Krugman debate."
Hi Vk,Dennis Coyne, 12/05/2015 at 1:41 pmThere are many of us who have studied beyond the introductory level. In my introductory courses, I believe we were taught this correctly, but that was long ago, I know when I instructed the introductory students as a grad student what I was teaching was essentially what I read in the paper you cited. Perhaps the "textbooks" have improved over time, I haven't read an economics textbook for many years.
Have you read any economics papers lately, perhaps there has been more progress than you think. A fundamental problem with economics is that how we understand the workings of the economy can affect the way people behave. People will always try to game the system and this then effects the system. It is a difficult modelling problem not faced by chemists and physicists.
If you solve it you should publish a paper.
Hi VK,Rune Likvern, 12/05/2015 at 1:43 pmYou said:
What economists think: Saver lends to borrower. Saver loses purchasing power, borrower gains purchasing power. Purchasing power hasn't changed in the economy. Just a shift
Economists don't think this way at all. These kinds of lessons are often presented in introductory economics courses to show how economists once thought things worked in 1803 when Say introduced "Say's Law".
Then the economics professor goes on to explain how a modern economy actually works (which we don't understand all that well.)
Generally speaking economic growth is considered a good thing, and banks lending to borrowers that are likely to be able to repay the loan (not true leading up to the financial crisis due to poor regulation and lending practices), is not a problem in a well regulated banking sector (in the US this went away in the 1980s).
So yes debt is a big problem with a poorly regulated banking industry (financial industry really because of shadow banking).
Debt is like a lot of things in life, too much or too little can be a bad thing.
The central bank can certainly influence the amount of lending by raising interest rates, as long as inflation is moderate, there is not much reason to do so.
"US textbooks through 1990 covered this exactly as in that paper, so it was a good refresher, but not different from what I had learned in the past."And what is the title of those textbooks?
"Now there seems to be more focus on private debt, which nobody in economics used to worry about."
Was it US public or private debt that started the GFC in 2007/2008?
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www.zerohedge.com
What is the service sector? Mostly software, restaurants, banks, construction companies, retailers, doctors and hospitals.Can an economy thrive if it doesn't make or move physical things? Intuitively the answer is no, because most of the services mentioned above either maintain the status quo (like healthcare and restaurants) or (like houses) consume rather than build capital. As for banking, in its current incarnation it's almost certainly a net negative, draining capital from productive uses and funneling it to trading desks and political action committees.
The US, in short, is engaged in an experiment to see how long an economy can function with services growing and manufacturing contracting. As with so many of today's monetary and fiscal experiments, no one knows when definitive results will come in. But the data so far aren't encouraging.
NoplebianHistory shows when the fiat currency system reaches it's end cycle, there is always a call for war. This one however, will wipe out billions!
http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2015/12/road-to-ww3-time-to...
Eyeroller
"The US, in short, is engaged in an experiment to see how long an economy can function with services growing and manufacturing contracting."
Should read:
"The US, in short, is engaged in an experiment to see how long an economy can function with services growing and manufacturing contracting while the MSM tells us how awesome everything is."
toady
Another "oldy-but-a-goody". This "transition from a manufacturing to a services economy" has been going on since before NAFTA, and it's now almost finished we'll finally get to see what the Reagan-Bush1 voodoo economics hath wrought.
Good times!
Amish Hacker
In politics, "definitive results" do not exist. Causes and effects can be, and are, argued and denied ad infinitum , in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. For example, Cheney & the neocons still claim they did the right thing in Iraq & Afghanistan, and proudly boast that they would do the same thing again today. Keynesian economists will argue that they made no mistakes over the last 8 years, we just didn't apply their prescriptions aggressively enough. And so on.
In politics, confirmation bias is the leading cause of blindness.
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peakoilbarrel.com
Don Stewart, 12/01/2015 at 12:25 pmFred Magyar, 12/01/2015 at 1:41 pmDear Ron and Others
Relative to the alleged 'decoupling' of GDP from energy. Please see:
http://www.pnas.org/content/112/20/6271.full
The material footprint of nationsThe apparent decoupling turns out to be mostly a mirage. It is true that rich countries outsource some of the more energy and materials intensive operations to poor countries, but if you count back from consumption, the rich countries are essentially as energy and materials dependent as they ever were. For fossil fuels, the coefficient is 90 percent…a 90 point increase in fossil fuels is needed for a 100 point increase in GDP.
Part of what happens can perhaps be understood by thinking about beef imports. If England imports beef from Africa, then there is a great deal of materials and energy consumed in Africa to produce the beef. Only a small percentage of the resource used gets exported to England. If you start with the steak in England and look back at the supply chain, you find that the consumption of the pound of steak in England was responsible for the consumption of lots of energy and materials in Africa.
I think that 'decoupling' is not the same as energy efficiency. Suppose, for example, that we look at the efficiency with which firewood is burned in an ordinary house. Back in the olden days, the wood was burned in a fireplace, which is inefficient. Then Franklin invented the Franklin stove and heating became more efficient in terms of calories of usable heat per cord of wood. But the stove wasn't necessarily any less or more expensive than the fireplace. Since GDP essentially measures cash outlay, the increased efficiency doesn't necessary have any direct impact on GDP.
Recently, we have begun to adjust GDP for 'hedonic factors'. Suppose, for example, that one has an old radio with lots of static and poor sound quality. Then one buys a new radio with better sound quality. But suppose that the price you pay for the new radio is the same as it was for the old radio. GDP would be the same for both radios. But, recently, the US government has begun to make adjustments for the quality of the sound.
Whether the hedonic adjustments make any sense depends on what sort of question you are trying to answer. If you are asking 'will my radio company be able to pay our debts?', then all that matters is your actual income. The fact that you had to improve the sound quality in order to remain competitive is an ancillary fact. If you are not getting any more income, then paying your debts doesn't get any easier.
Don Stewart
Why the GDP Is Not An Good Measure of A Nation's Well BeingVes, 12/02/2015 at 8:49 am
https://goo.gl/xKKHZxIn their book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger (link is external), Professors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, present data taken from multiple credible sources that show the gap between the poor and rich the greatest in the U.S. among all developed nations; child well being is the worst in the U.S. among all developed nations; and levels of trust among people in the U.S. among the worst of all developed nations.
The Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight of the U.S. Congress' House Committee on Foreign Affairs stated, after examining the issue of the U.S.'s declining image abroad, "the decline in international approval of U.S. leadership is caused largely by opposition to the invasion of Iraq, U.S. support for dictators, and practices such as torture and rendition. They testified that this opposition is strengthened by the perception that our decisions are made unilaterally and without constraint by international law or standards-and that our rhetoric about democracy and human rights is hypocritical."
The US ranks 114th out of 125 countries in international peace and security.
To those in power who believe that only strength counts, and that people are always self-interested, I say "We tried it your way, and it didn't work. Let's try something new."
Simon Anholt
Hi Dennis,Dennis Coyne, 12/02/2015 at 12:39 pm
I see up there little discussion about GDP and what it means.
Let's say:
Country A: use washable rags to clean kitchen counter-tops.
Country B: use paper towels to clean same kitchen counter-tops.As result they both have clean kitchen counter-tops but Country B has higher GDP due to use of paper towels.
So GDP means absolutely nothing or anything depending what you want to present.
GDP is like looking at the sunset and your mind is thinking that you are actually looking at the sunset. But it takes 8 minutes for sunlight to reach the earth and that sun that we think we are looking at is already gone. (Since this site is loaded with scientist they can correct me with if that 8 minutes is more or less correct )
Anyway, mostly GDP is used by some "smart" people we call economist to tell us some "story". For example they tell us: "You see sunny boy that GDP is big number this year, bigger than one from last year. So you should be content and happy. Not convinced? Don't worry we will "super size" that GDP for you next year. Isn't your tummy already feeling full and content?"
This kind of storytelling is usually printed as financial news about GDP. Meaningless if you ask me from the point of average citizen.
I have to go now because I have whole day of work planned for me by this economy and I will catch you later tonight to see your thoughts. Another thing that crosses my mind is how come that we work more or at least the same now when oil is at $40 compared to when oil was $100 last year? Wasn't the official meme that use of oil as our biggest invention beside sliced bread, made our life easier so we actually work less and spent more time with family & friends and doing odd staff like canoeing How come I don't feel that I did not get 60% discount due to price of oil in terms of work load from the last year Who is pocketing that 60%
How about employed folks who bought kiwi Leaf? Do they work less and have more time with family and friends or they are paddling in the same hamster wheel we call economy?Hi Ves,I agree GDP is a poor measure of well being. Another example would be World War 2 where a lot of output was created to destroy stuff (tanks, bombs, planes, ships, guns, etc), then stuff was destroyed, cities and other infrastructure in Europe and Asia and then it was rebuilt leading to a lot of economic growth. Were we better off? Probably not, especially the millions who died and their families.
GDP has many problems, beyond paper towels and paper plates and other wasteful (in my opinion) uses of resources.
I did a different chart using the human development index (HDI) from 1980 to 2013 which shows World primary energy use per unit of HDI(a dimensionless number) has been increasing roughly linearly, not decreasing as is the case for energy intensity.
The HDI is also far from perfect as a measure of human welfare, but probably better than GDP.
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naked capitalism
Many studies of the Eurozone crisis focus on peripheral European states' current account deficits, or German neo-mercantilist policies that promoted export surpluses. However, German financialization and input on the eurozone's financial architecture promoted deficits, increased systemic risk, and facilitated the onset of Europe's subsequent crises.Increasing German financial sector competition encouraged German banks' increasing securitization and participation in global capital markets. Regional liberalization created new marketplaces for German finance and increased crisis risk as current accounts diverged between Europe's core and periphery. After the global financial crisis of 2008, German losses on international securitized assets prompted retrenchment of lending, paving the way for the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis. Rethinking how financial liberalization facilitated German and European financial crises may prevent the eurozone from repeating these performances in the future.
After the 1970s, German banks' trading activity came to surpass lending as the largest share of assets, while German firms increasingly borrowed in international capital markets rather than from domestic banks. Private banks alleged that political subsidies and higher credit ratings for Landesbanks, public banks that insured household, small enterprise, and local banks' access to capital, were unfair, and, in response, German lawmakers eliminated state guarantees for public banks. Landesbanks, despite their historic role as stable, non-profit, providers of credit, consequently had to compete with Germany's largest private banks for business. Changes in competition restructured the German financial system. Mergers and takeovers occurred, especially in commercial banks and Landesbanks. German financial intermediation ratios-total financial assets of financial corporations divided by the total financial assets of the economy-increased. Greater securitization and shadow banking relative to long-term lending increased German propensity for financial crisis, as securities, shares, and securitized debt constituted increasing percentages of German banks' assets and liabilities.
Throughout this period, Germany lacked a centralized financial regulatory apparatus. Only in 2002 did the country's central bank, the Bundesbank, establish the Bundenstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, known as BaFin), which consolidated the responsibilities of three agencies to oversee the whole financial sector. However, neither institution could keep pace with new sources of financial and economic instability. German banking changes continued apace and destabilizing trends in banking grew.
German desire for financial liberalization at the European level, meanwhile, helped increase potential systemic risk of European finance. Despite some European opposition to removing barriers to capital and trade flows, Germany prevailed in setting these preconditions for membership in the European economic union. Germany's negotiating power stemmed from its strong currency, as well as French, Italian, and smaller European economies' desire for currency stability. Germany demanded an independent central bank for the union, removal of capital controls, and an expansion of the tasks banks could perform within the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The Second Banking Coordination Directive (SBCD) mandated that banks perform commercial and investment intermediation to be certified within the EMU; the Single Market Passport (SMP) required free trade and capital flows throughout the EMU. The SMP and SBCD increased the scope of activity that financial institutions throughout the union were expected to provide, and opened banks up to markets, instruments, and activities they could neither monitor nor regulate, and hence to destabilizing shocks.
Intra-EMU lending and borrowing subsequently increased, and total lending and borrowing grew relative to European countries' GDP from the early 1990s onward. Asymmetries emerged in capital flows between Europe's core, particularly the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands, to Europe's newly liberalized periphery. German banks lent increasing volumes to EMU member states, especially peripheral states. Though this lending on a country-by-country basis was a small percentage of Germany's GDP, it constituted larger percentages of borrowers' GDPs. In 2007, Germany lent 1.23% of its GDP to Portugal; this represented 17.68% of Portugal's GDP; in 2008, Germany lent 6% of its GDP to Ireland; this was 84% of Irish GDP. Germany, the largest European economy, lent larger percentages of its GDP to peripheral EMU nations relative to its lending to richer European economies. These flows, more potentially disruptive for borrowers than for the lender, reflected lack of oversight in asset management. German lending helped destabilize European financial systems more vulnerable to rapid capital inflows, and created conditions for large-scale capital flight in a crisis.
Financial competition increased in Europe over this period. Financial merger activity first accelerated within national borders, and later grew at supra-national levels. These movements increased eurozone access to capital, but increased pressure for banks to widen the scope of the services and lending that they provided. Rising European securitization in this period increased systemic risk for the EMU financial system. European holdings of U.S.-originated asset-backed securities increased by billions of dollars from the early 2000s until shortly before 2008. German banks were among the EMU's top issuers and acquirers of such assets. As banks' holdings of these assets increased, European systemic risk increased as well.
European total debt as a percentage of GDP rose in this period. Financial debt relative to GDP grew particularly sharply in core economies; Ireland was the only peripheral EMU economy with comparable levels of financial debt. Though government debt relative to GDP fell or held constant for most EMU nations, cross-border acquisition of sovereign debt increased until 2007. German banks acquired substantially larger portfolios of sovereign debt issued by other European states, which would not decrease until 2010. Only in 2009 did government debt relative to GDP increase throughout the eurozone, as governments guaranteed their financial systems to minimize the costs of the ensuing financial crisis.
The newly liberalized financial architecture of the eurozone increased both the market for German financial services and overall systemic risk of the European financial system; these dynamics helped destabilize the German financial system and economy at large. Rising German exports of goods, services, and capital to the rest of Europe grew the German economy, but divergence of current account balances within the EMU exposed it to sovereign debt risk in peripheral states. Potential systemic risk changed into systemic risk after the subprime mortgage crisis began. EMU economies would not have subsequently experienced such pressure to backstop national financial systems or to repay sovereign loans had German banks not lent so much or purchased so many sovereign bonds within the union. Narratives that fail to acknowledge Germany's role in promoting the circumstances that underlay the eurozone crisis ignore the destabilizing power of financial liberalization, even for a global financial center like Germany.
susan the other, December 3, 2015 at 1:06 pm
This is very interesting. It describes just how the EU mess unfolded beginning in 1970 with deregulation of the financial industry in the core. Big fish eat little fish. It is as if for 4 decades the banks in Germany compensated their losses to the bigger international lenders by taking on the riskier borrowers and were able to do so because of German mercantilism and financial deregulation. Like the German domestic banks loaned the periphery money with abandon, and effectively borrowed their own profits by speculating on bad customers. As German corporations did business with big international banksters, who lent at lower rates, other German banks resorted to buying the sovereign bonds of the periphery and selling CDOs, etc. The German banks were as over-extended looking for profit as consumers living on their credit cards. Deregulation enriched only the biggest international banks. We could call this behavior a form of digging your own grave. In 2009 the periphery saw their borrowing costs threatened and guaranteed their own financial institutions creating the "sovereign debt" that the core then refused to touch. Hypocrisy ruled. Generosity was in short supply. The whole thing fell apart. Deregulation was just another form of looting.
washunate, December 3, 2015 at 1:28 pm
German losses on international securitized assets prompted retrenchment of lending, paving the way for the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis.
I agree with the general conclusion at the end that German financialization is part of the overall narrative of EMU, but I don't follow this specific link in the chain of events as described. The eurozone has a sovereign debt crisis because those sovereign governments privatized the profits and socialized the losses of a global system of fraud. And if we're assigning national blame, it's a system run out of DC, NY, and London a lot more than Berlin, Frankfurt, and Brussels.
Current and capital account imbalances cancel each other out in the overall balance of payments. As bank lending decreases (capital account surplus shrinks) then the current account deficit shrinks as well (the 'trade deficit'). The problem is when governments step in and haphazardly backstop some of the losses – at least, when they do so without imposing taxes on the wealthy to a sufficient degree to pay for these bailouts.
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EconoSpeak
The OECD's Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) initiative is an effort by the G20 to curb the abuse of transfer pricing by multinationals. Senator Hatch is not a fan:
Throughout this process we have heard concerns from large sectors of the business community that the BEPS project could be used to further undermine our nation's competitiveness and to unfairly subject U.S. companies to greater tax liabilities abroad. Companies have also been concerned about various reporting requirements that could impose significant compliance costs on American businesses and force them to share highly sensitive proprietary information with foreign governments. I expect that we'll hear about these concerns from the business community and others during today's hearing.Indeed we heard from some lawyer representing The Software Coalition who was there to mansplain to us how BEPS is evil. I learned two startling things. First – Bermuda must be part of the US tax base. Secondly, if Google is expected to pay taxes in the UK, it will take all those 53,600 jobs which are mainly in California and move them to Bermuda:in particular how the changes to the international tax rules as developed under BEPS will significantly reduce the U.S. tax base and create disincentives for U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs) to create R&D jobs in the United StatesYes – I find his testimony absurd at so many levels. Let's take Google as an example. When they say foreign subsidiaries – think Bermuda. Over the past three year, Google's income has average $15.876 billion per year but its income taxes have only average $2.933 billion for an effective tax rate of only 18.5%. How did that happen? Well – 55% of its income is sourced to these foreign subsidiaries and the average tax rate on this income is only 6.5%. Nice deal! Google's tax model is not only easy to explain but is also a very common one for those in the Software Coalition. While all of the R&D is done in the U.S. and 45% of its sales are in the U.S. – U.S. source income is only 45% of worldwide income. Very little of the foreign sourced income ends up in places like the UK even 11% of Google's sales are to UK customers. Only problem is that income ends up on Ireland's books with the UK getting a very modest amount of the profits. Now you might be wondering how Google got to the foreign taxes to be only 6.5% of foreign sourced income since Ireland's tax rate is 12.5%. But think Double Irish Dutch Sandwich and you'll get how the profits ended up in Bermuda as well as perhaps a good lunch! But what about that repatriation tax you ask. Google's most recent 10-K proudly notes:"We have not provided U.S. income taxes and foreign withholding taxes on the undistributed earnings of foreign subsidiaries".In other words, they are not paying that repatriation tax. Besides the Republicans want to eliminate. Let's be honest – Congress has hamstringed the IRS efforts to enforce transfer pricing. The BEPS initiative arose out of this failure. And now the Republicans in Congress are objecting to even these efforts. And if Europe has the temerity of expecting its fair share of taxes, U.S. multinationals will leave California and relocate in Bermuda? Who is this lawyer kidding? Myrtle BlackwoodThe development model in nation after nation is dependent upon global corporations. What is happening is simply a byproduct of this.JackWould the problem of transfer mythical corporate location and the resulting lost taxes be resolved if taxes were based on point of revenue? Tax gross income where it is earned instead of taxing profits where they are not earned.
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Zero Hedge
johngaltfla
Fascinating article Tyler. Because if the math is correct, which I believe it to be or damned close, then the Fed is about to drain several hundred billion dollars from an illiquid credit market leaving no bid at year end.
So after the Fed created mini-crash, then a Santa Claus Bullcrap Rally, we move into year end and on to January with a smashing potential for a 10-20% rapid correction in the S&P along with a Treasury market crashing in parallel and no buyers.
Shit could get real between the next two Fed meetings, that is for certain.
FireBrander
Bernanke did a little "draining" of his own; and brought down the global financial system...
THEN "SAVED IT", AND HE WAS HAILED AS A FUCKEN HERO!
Yellen my just be trying to secure her spot on the cover of Time for "Saving Us Again".
Fish Gone Bad
In October of 2008 there was a fairly large drain of money and things got scary (https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&height=600&...[1][id]=MULT&width=1000).
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ftalphaville.ft.com
The social instability that comes alongside creative destruction - or 'disruption' - is often justified by the notion that unemployment effects are only temporary since in the long run a multitude of new jobs (many of which we can't even imagine yet) will inevitably be created.Well, a new Oxford Martin School study by Carl Benedikt Frey and Thor Berger has found…
- Only 0.5% of the US labor force is employed in industries that did not exist in 2000.
- Even in Silicon Valley, only 1.8% of workers are employed in new industries
- The majority of the 71 new 'tech' jobs relate to the emergence of digital technologies, (such as online auctions, video and audio streaming and web design) but also include renewable energy and biotech.
- New jobs cluster in skilled cities, making economic activity increasingly concentrated and contributing to growing regional inequalities.
This, in other words, is the reality of the new "zero to one" tech world, where moving fast and breaking things (including jobs), then not worrying about the consequences until you're a billionaire who can give his wealth away in one billion dollar tranches, is the acceptable norm. (Even though, arguably, the accumulation of those billions in the first place is often the job-destroying problem.)
Dr. Frey adds the valuable commentary that:
"Because digital businesses require only limited capital investment, employment opportunities created by technological change may continue to stagnate as economies become increasingly digitized. Major economies like the US need to think about the implications for lower-skilled workers, to ensure that vast swathes of people don't get left behind."
Very fair point.
Limited capital investment equals extremely low barriers to entry. This in turn equals absolutely ruthless competition, which - somewhat ironically - leads to the "why should I bother investing in anything at all since there's nothing in it for me in the long run" effect. The real-world equivalent, if you will, of the Grossman Stiglitz Paradox.
As a consequence, faddy network effects - a.k.a who's first to benefit from natural monopoly formation or old-fashioned populism by another name - increasingly mean everything, reducing successful entrepreneurial enterprise to a simple lottery/gambling game or (at best) a highly politicised popularity contest, wherein marketing spend stands equivalent to political campaigning outlay.
Except, whereas political campaigns pay off electorate loyalty with promises of better lives in material terms, the most successful technology campaigns tend to do the opposite: pay off users for network loyalty with the promises of better digital returns, at the same time as transferring a greater share of material wealth to a tiny platform owning elite.
Indeed, because tech firms are mainly focused on redistributing existing wealth rather than creating more of it, for them to profit, some share of real economy product must be snatched from those who actually worked to produce it. That's Schumpeterian creative destruction in action, albeit at the cost of producers who tend to share their profits with workforces through wages.
The lowest cost producer will always be the one with smallest human workforce.
All of which then sparks a dangerous race to the bottom focused on cutting out the most expensive material input: the human.
What's worse, once that race starts, there's little to no incentive for anyone to invest in any business which ever involves human capital again.
The irony is, without any beneficiary workforce within the new business structure, it's only capital owners (or lucky billionaire charity cases) who get to benefit from the dividends created by the system. Demand for products and services is destroyed. To wit, a vicious deflationary cycle begins, which shrinks the pie rather than grows it.
Regarding the labour-destroying digital/tech trend, Frey and Berger's paper says specifically:
Relative to major corporations of the early computer revolution, the companies leading the digital revolution have created few employment opportunities: while IBM and Dell still employed 431,212 and 108,800 workers respectively, Facebook's headcount reached only 7,185 in 2013.
To be blunt, that arguably means it's not looking good for three of the core Schumpeterian presumptions, namely:
It is, however, looking better for the Schumpeterian conclusion that eventually capitalism must give way to socialism if it's to create a widespread commonwealth.
- Technological disruption will eventually create jobs of equal merit elsewhere in the system (i.e. unemployment is temporary).
- Recessions lead to efficiency gains that create social well-being for all.
- Successful innovation must be rewarded with a temporary monopoly if it's to continue incentivising anyone to bear the risks of entrepreneurship.
Why? Because, whilst it's never been easier, cheaper or less risky to grab yourself a ticket for the 'monopoly reward' lottery - and thus more profitable when you do win - these cheap tickets are only available to businesses redistributing existing wealth that's focused on contracting consumer surplus as a whole.
In the digital tech era, that's at best an exercise in political-populism (marketing spend to get consumers to support this platform rather than another, for as low a consumer surplus cost as possible to the platform leader) and at worst an exercise in total utter randomness. Neither, consequently, really justifies outsized rewards to any winning party.
To the contrary, if you're in the business of creating new value utilising real human workforces or focused on creating new areas of demand, it's arguably never been more difficult, expensive or risky to take a punt on success - and thus less profitable if you do win. And that's because the very concept of rewarding a large workforce or consumer base with a steady, dependable and secure consumer surplus is considered to be a fundamental competitive disadvantage.
Related links:
- How information technology is shrinking the pie – FT Alphaville
- Disrupting FREEDOM! – FT Alphaville
Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.
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marknesop.wordpress.com
karl1haushofer, December 3, 2015 at 9:42 amTurkish Stream is now officially cancelled. All the eggs are now in the same basket: Nord Stream II. Hopefully the US/UK/Baltics/Poland front will not be able to stop it. Because otherwise Russia is stuck with Ukraine as a transit country.marknesop, December 3, 2015 at 10:45 amWell, I don't think they want to stop it. They want the gas the same as before – they just want it on their own terms. Brussels wants to exercise control over whose gas goes through the pipeline, so that if they are have a "spat" with Russia, they can stop orders of Russian gas and bring some at-this-moment-unknown supplier's gas through the same pipeline, probably Azerbaijan.kirill , December 3, 2015 at 2:17 pmRead this 2011 press conference with Gazprom; I found it while looking for a layman's explanation of what the Third Energy Package actually entails. Because it appears what is most unappealing to it from Gazprom's point of view is that it limits vital investment in gas futures, considering it would substantially restrict long-term contracts. They could be happy with you today, buying off your competitors tomorrow. According to Brussels, that's healthy competition which ensures the customer gets the best price, while Gazprom naturally prefers to deal in long-term contracts which lock the customer in, although they are usually willing to talk out a deal if it looks like the customer is really unhappy because unhappy customers are bad for business, even in the gas industry.
Right away, you notice that Europe accepts long-term contracts, but nonetheless takes the position that long-term capacity supply orders upset the market. As Gazprom correctly points out, these two views cannot reasonably coexist.
In 2011, Gazprom was still considering a joint venture with NaftoGaz Ukraine, and intended to actually increase gas transit through Ukraine while simultaneously building South Stream. They were also considering a merger, and Miller said if that came about, Ukrainian gas consumers would pay the same prices as Russia. Look how far they are away from that now – funny old world, innit? Here was Miller's vision, at the time, for a Gazprom-NaftoGaz merger:
"Firstly, Ukraine is an energy-deficient country and the tendency we observe today will continue and develop: gas production in Ukraine will decline and consumption will grow. We proceed from the assumption that the Ukrainian economy will develop successfully. The present-day level of gas consumption clearly shows that Ukraine has not solved all of its economic problems. In this regard, gas supplies to Ukraine will increase in the medium and long term.
Secondly, if a merger takes place, we will load Ukraine's gas transmission system to the extent possible and it surely means additional income that is significant for the Ukrainian budget. At the same time, if the Ukrainian gas transmission system is loaded with some 95 billion cubic meters of gas per year, we know well that it may deliver 120 and even 125 billion cubic meters with a particular level of investments in modernization and reconstruction, of course. And if small investments are made in new compressor stations and pipeline loops, we may probably speak of 140 billion cubic meters of gas. However, we realize that European gas consumption will grow. According to our estimates, gas demand in Europe may grow up to 130-140 billion cubic meters of gas by the turn of 2020."You can see, I'm sure, why Brussels didn't like it. Under the Third Energy Package, the operator of the gas transit system will be elected by the European Union on a tender basis. You can see, I'm sure, why Gazprom didn't like that. If the merger between Gazprom and NaftoGaz Ukraine had come about, Ukrainians would have paid Russian domestic prices, in a word, forever.
What Europe's position boils down to is it wants a system whereby its suppliers do not own anything of the transit system, and the operator could be anyone depending on who sucks up to Europe the most, so that it can make its suppliers fight with one another and be assured of the cheapest prices. Until that magical sugar-daddy supplier appears that can provide steady and sustained competition to Russia, Europe is not in a very good bargaining position. But you bet that would change fast if the western alliance could get rid of Assad, partition Syria and get a Qatari gas pipeline laid across it.
Here's a poignant reminder of what might have been, which serves to point up who are the real troublemakers:
"Remember the story with biogas, wonderful – 20 per cent by 2020, and mass media start writing that it will enable escaping from dependence on Russia. Then we find out that biogas is there, together with food supply problems, etc. Then we observed the European Union's wonderful program – "20-20-20". I think, there's no need of deciphering it – everyone knows about it. And again mass media say that it will enable reducing dependence on Gazprom and Russia. The same thing is with shale gas. First, no one will cope with shale gas transportation, because it is too expensive, add transport – and it is already a business with no prospects. I have a plea for mass media – would you please stop frightening Europe, stop frightening everyone around with Russia and Gazprom. For Europe it is a real blessing that it has such a powerful neighbor with such conventional gas reserves. Exploration of non-conventionals [N.B.: Non-conventional energy resources] may end with no results, as experience of certain countries shows. So let's live in peace and friendship and contribute to strengthening Russia's contacts and ties with the European Union and Ukraine."
See above. It is time for Russia to lay down the law. Russia can go without the $25 billion per year of lost revenues. But whole EU economies will crash into epic depressions without this energy supply. In other words, the EU is looking at TRILLIONS of DOLLARS in economic damage. The Brussels Uncle Scam cocksuckers will have to justify their actions. Russia does not have to since it is the vendor. If you are not happy, then shop the fuck elsewhere, idiots.
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peakoilbarrel.com
So much for decoupling…BC, 11/30/2015 at 4:37 pmhttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/24/consume-conserve-economic-growth-sustainability
"A paper published earlier this year in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences proposes that even the relative decoupling we claim to have achieved is an artefact of false accounting. It points out that governments and economists have measured our impacts in a way that seems irrational.
Here's how the false accounting works. It takes the raw materials we extract in our own countries, adds them to our imports of stuff from other countries, then subtracts our exports, to end up with something called "domestic material consumption". But by measuring only the products shifted from one nation to another, rather than the raw materials needed to create those products, it greatly underestimates the total use of resources by the rich nations.
For instance, if ores are mined and processed at home, these raw materials, as well as the machinery and infrastructure used to make finished metal, are included in the domestic material consumption accounts. But if we buy a metal product from abroad, only the weight of the metal is counted. So as mining and manufacturing shift from countries such as the UK and the US to countries like China and India, the rich nations appear to be using fewer resources. A more rational measure, called the material footprint, includes all the raw materials an economy uses, wherever they happen to be extracted. When these are taken into account, the apparent improvements in efficiency disappear."
VK, precisely. The US has been in a net-exergetic deficit in debt-money-based terms per capita since the mid- to late 1960s to mid-1970s to mid-1980s, having compensated by increasing to an unprecedented level to date debt to wages and GDP.Ron Patterson, 11/30/2015 at 5:02 pmMoreover, the BEA-determined industry requirement costs as the basis of estimated gross and real value-added output (what we refer to as GDP), adjusted for our net-exergetic deficit in debt-money terms, the US has been in recession/"slow-motion depression" since Q4 2000-Q1 2001, and the world since 2005-08.
Senior BEA, BLS, Commerce, White House economic advisors, CIA, NSA, military intelligence, and Pentagon planners all know this in varying degrees as it relates to their imperatives and prerogatives.
However, the mass public and most political leaders are utterly unaware, or in the case of the latter, have no incentive to know or to share with the public what they know because they will not be able to raise a nickel thereafter for reelection if they do share.
And so it goes . . .
Thanks VK, I suspected as much.Jimmy, 12/02/2015 at 11:38 amHe told me that he and his colleagues had conducted a similar analysis, in this case of the UK's energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, "and we find a similar pattern". One of his papers reveals that while the UK's carbon dioxide emissions officially fell by 194m tonnes between 1990 and 2012, this apparent reduction is more than cancelled out by the CO2 we commission through buying stuff from abroad. This rose by 280m tonnes in the same period.
GDP is about as decoupled from energy about as much as a dog's tail is decoupled from his ass.
I'm with Ron on this one. If for example GDP units are produced at a ratio of 1:1 for every unit of energy consumed then a graph representing this trend could perhaps have 2 superimposed lines. If efficiency gains then begin to create 2 units of GDP for every unit of energy consumed then the 2 lines on the graph will diverge. There is no decoupling.Ron Patterson, 12/02/2015 at 11:58 amOnly a divergence due to more units of GDP produced per unit of energy consumed. When somebody can create units of GDP and consume no energy at all then we will have decoupling. Coupling and decoupling are all or none terms/states of being. You're either coupled or your decoupled. Any arguments to the contrary are pedantic and uninformed.
Thanks Jimmy, with all the Pollyannas on this site I need all the support I can get.Dennis Coyne, 12/02/2015 at 1:56 pmHi Jimmy,Dennis Coyne, 12/01/2015 at 8:07 amLook up the meaning of decouple it is reduce or eliminate the effect of one part of a circuit on another. In this context the appropriate meaning is reduce.
Doesn't really matter, nobody thinks that energy inputs can be eliminated, that would be absurd.
Hi VK,Javier, 12/01/2015 at 9:23 amThe problem is solved by looking at World output and World primary energy use.
Energy intensity for the World has improved, though during the Chinese rapid expansion from 2000-2010, the progress stopped for a decade as energy was not used very efficiently in China over that period, since 2010 the progress has continued. Energy intensity is energy per unit of GDP produced.
Chart below for 1965 to 2014 using World Bank(from FRED), UN, and BP data.Left vertical axis is in metric tons of oil equivalent (toe) per millions of 2005$ of real GDP (M2005$).
Hi Dennis,Dennis Coyne, 12/01/2015 at 1:56 pmThat graph shows several things mixed that have co-evolved independently, so not many conclusions can be extracted.
- -It reflects improvements in energy usage, meaning we are able to extract more economic yield per unit of energy. This is the only real efficiency improvement.
- -It reflects increase in debt, that is reflected in GDP but does not use energy. If I borrow money GDP increases yet no energy is used.
- -It reflects increase in tertiary economy at the expense of primary and secondary economies. We pay more for services and less for resources and goods.
We don't know the contribution of each to that graph (at least I don't), but given the magnitudes involved I would guess that the real efficiency improvement is small. This is supported by how the graph reacts to recessions (not the Chinese expansion as you claim), indicating that the main factor is economic, not energetic.
Now we know that debt has a limit, and once debt saturation is reached the economy, and specially the tertiary sector would be very badly affected. If that happens we might very well see that graph turn around and energy intensity increase.
Hi Javier,Javier, 12/01/2015 at 2:21 pmGDP only increases if your money is spent on goods or services. It is output of goods and services. On a World level the debts and liabilities balance, so if I save my money and lend it to you, I spend less and you spend more. You should review your economics. At a World level, the debt has no effect, assuming we don't have ant interstellar debts. There was a World recession from 2000 to 2010? I hadn't heard about that.
Yes services might have increased, if that is what people want to spend their money on, then the share of services in the economy will increase. I don't have figures on the "non-service economy". Part of this increase reflects women entering the labor pool in greater numbers, some of the work cleaning the house or taking care of the garden are now part of GDP when before they were taken care of by the family. We may not have good data for the World on this effect.
Dennis,Dennis Coyne, 12/01/2015 at 3:16 pmI think I do understand. If I go to the bank and ask for a 200,000 $ mortgage loan, that money is created from thin air, and when I go and pay for the house, GDP jumps by 200,000 $, so yes, increasing debt increases GDP as soon as the debt money is used. Since no oil was used to create the money, it counts as a reduction in oil intensity. Of course if I return the money to the bank the operation is reversed (they do keep the interests), but since on average debt is always expanding, except during crisis periods, oil intensity is always decreasing, except during crisis periods. Debt that is used to buy stocks or companies or to extract oil from the ground is the same.
Hi Javier,Rune Likvern, 12/01/2015 at 3:26 pmThe point is that you purchased a $200,000 house. That house was not created from thin air, not my house anyway.
It is not the debt, it is building a house that creates the GDP.
So what comes first; The debt that allows for building the house, or first building the house and then creating the debt?Dennis Coyne , 12/01/2015 at 3:47 pmHi Rune,Dennis Coyne, 12/01/2015 at 4:25 pmIn most cases the debt will come first if the home is purchased with financing. It is possible to build a home using savings, in which case there would be no debt.
So the debt is not a requirement for GDP, just creating a new house, car, or other good or service.
Would GDP be lower if there were no debt, of course!
As long as debt grows at reasonable rates (similar to GDP growth at full employment), when there is a recession debt will initially grow faster than GDP and then will slow down until GDP growth catches up and surpasses the debt rate of growth.
Hi Rune,Nick G, 12/02/2015 at 2:14 pmI am curious. Do you think what Javier is saying is correct? Energy intensity has decreased because Debt to GDP ratios have increased? I am pretty sure Javier is not right, but you are very knowledgeable about economics. Perhaps you can explain it to me, if I am mistaken.
If all GDP was created with no debt (all of it was based on savings and income with no new borrowing) in year 1. And in year 2 50% of income was borrowed from banks to create the same level of GDP, would that mean in year 2 we have 150% of the first year because of the debt?
I don't think so, but I may be missing something.
Dennis,Dennis Coyne, 12/01/2015 at 4:16 pmJavier's suggestion about debt is not correct. Really, really not correct. Debt is just accounting for various kinds of ownership and obligations. If this were the old Soviet Union, construction would happen based on a central plan, and there would be no debt at all, but there would still be GDP.
Let's say there two houses on an island, and 2 residents, 1 in each house. One owns both houses, the other rents from the 1st. Then the renter borrows from the owner, and buys the house he/she lives in. Their monthly payment was rent, now it's a mortgage payment. The renter is now leveraged.
But, has anything "real" changed? No. Same amount of wealth, same amount of income, with different kinds of ownership, and different obligations (the renter now has to fix his own roof!).
Hi Javier,Javier, 12/01/2015 at 7:06 pmYou should read up on national income accounting. Debt does not really come into play, and more or less debt says absolutely nothing about the energy intensity of GDP. The chart I created is primary energy in metric tons of oil equivalent divided by real GDP in millions of 2005$. Debt plays no role.
Try the following link for a detailed introduction to national income accounting:
Dennis,Dennis Coyne, 12/01/2015 at 10:17 pmI still disagree. It is well known that the increase in debt has a positive effect on GDP, while the total outstanding debt can become a drag on GDP if too high. It is difficult to sustain that debt plays no role in GDP in light of the evidence.
For example China has had a phenomenal rate of growth accompanied by the highest rate of debt growth that the world has seen.
I think it is easy to understand.
- Country A finances everything with savings and profits without increasing debt and sees an increase in GDP of 2%.
- Country B finances half of the goods and services with an increase in debt and sees an increase in GDP of 2%.
Both countries use the same oil so both report the same oil intensity. However country B has brought half of the wealth used to increase the GDP from the future without bringing any future oil. That wealth will have to be repaid eventually, detracting from future GDP but at that point no oil will be recovered.
So in reality country B is reporting half of its real oil intensity. With present wealth it would have grown GDP by only 1% yet it has spent the same amount of oil than A.
Net effect is that debt reduces oil intensity when it is created and it increases oil intensity when it is payed. We have not seen that yet because we have not paid any debt yet. Debt is always increasing.
Hi Javier,Javier, 12/02/2015 at 8:54 amMany problems with your example.
First we need the GDP level of countries A and B, not just their growth rate. If we only talk about the incremental increases in GDP and energy use for each country it makes a little more sense.
So in reality country B is reporting half of its real oil intensity. With present wealth it would have grown GDP by only 1% yet it has spent the same amount of oil than A.
What you say above is incorrect.
For simplicity I will assume if output grows by 2%, that energy use also grows by 2%, I will further assume each country has the same GDP, we will say it is $100 million before the 2% growth in your example.
If country B does not take on any debt and its GDP grows by 1%, then its energy use will also grow by 1% (not by 2%) as the energy use is proportional to GDP. So the energy intensity would remain the same. There is no reason for it to change, it depends on technology and the structural features of the economy (proportion of agriculture, manufacturing, and services).
Another basic fact of economics is that the loans taken out by a business are to take advantage of a business opportunity and they will tend to lead to higher growth, so your example is flawed.
If countries A and B are of similar size and similar levels of development (twins as it were), then if country A and country B both shunned any borrowing they will both grow at the same rate, say 2% and have the same energy intensity (energy use also grows by 2%). Let's now assume both countries are the same except that country A's culture is such that they think debt is bad, but country B does not have the same aversion to debt.
Country B borrows at 2% interest to take advantage of an investment opportunity which will have a rate of return of 4%, so country B grows faster than country A at 3% and its energy use also grows at 3% (energy intensity remains the same). The extra income earned is used to pay back the debt and the individual businesses come out ahead earning a net profit of 2% after paying back the interest. This is how rational businesses operate, they borrow money to make money.Dennis,Javier, 12/02/2015 at 9:23 amI also have lots of problems with your example, so let's take a step back to look at the big picture.
That an increase on debt increases GDP is not in doubt. It is not only supported by evidence, but the basis for an entire economic theory that supports fighting recessions with debt-based stimulus.
So the question is if an increase in debt increases also GDP without oil consumption as to reduce oil-intensity. The answer is a resounding yes. Financial services are proportional to debt increase. Net interest expenses in the financial sector are seen as production and value added and are added to GDP. Any service charged by financial companies also increases GDP, and none of this economic activities uses oil, and very little energy.
I believe that a significant part of oil intensity reduction has come from the financialization of the economy linked to debt-increase, and therefore oil intensity is a fake measure of oil decoupling. If you look at energy-intensity you see the same phenomenon as with oil. It seems that we are decoupling from energy because we are moving towards a fake economy based on financial instruments. Finanzialization also appears linked to raising inequality as it effect is to increase the wealth only of owners of financial instruments.
I do not doubt that some oil and energy efficiency is real, after all it is a process that has been going on forever since the first oven was built to cook. But I seriously doubt that it is a process significant enough to solve an energy deficit problem which is what peak oil is going to bring. And to me oil intensity is a fake measure of increases in oil efficiency, that I do not doubt are real but much overstated.
Gail Tverberg has a lot more to say about decoupling GDP growth from energy growth in her article at TOD for anybody interested in the matter:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8615
Or to put it more clearly:Dennis Coyne, 12/02/2015 at 10:43 am
- These two things are related. And decoupling is largely a myth.
- In blue US energy intensity inverted
Hi Javier,Dennis Coyne, 12/02/2015 at 10:51 amYes the financial sector has increased to a small degree from 4% of GDP to 8% based on the chart you posted (which is only for the United States rather than the World).
This has probably increased to some degree (more or less than the US is unknown) at the World level as well. This might explain a very small slice of the decrease in energy intensity, but I doubt it accounts for most of the change.
I agree with you that changes in the structure of the World economy (higher proportion of services) has probably decreased energy intensity, but I doubt that accounts for all of the change. The bottom line is that the World economic system is becoming more service oriented with services accounting for a larger share of GDP. At some point, services may reach some maximum level, in percentage terms, beyond which they cannot go. I don't know where that level is, debt levels will also reach some maximum level (in percentage terms) beyond which they cannot rise (maybe total debt of 300% to 350% of GDP at a World level as a potential maximum).
When those points are reached growth may be limited by how much more efficiently we can use energy and how quickly we can ramp up alternative energy as fossil fuel output declines. There is much that is unknown about the future.
Hi Javier,Javier, 12/02/2015 at 11:55 amNote that you keep talking about oil, the chart shows primary energy (all forms of energy used by the economic system.)
Can you explain why country B in your example uses the same amount of energy whether it grows at 1% or 2%. One would expect that the energy use would be proportional to GDP, as that is what the World data shows.
Dennis,Dennis Coyne, 12/02/2015 at 2:01 pmThat is not what I said or meant. Country B by increasing GDP 1% through an increase in debt is in essence bringing GDP from the future to the present. That borrowed GDP is using present energy.
The financial sector has increased from 2% to 8%, a 4x increase. This is not small peanuts. Specially considering that only a minor part of the financial transactions are considered towards GDP. Probably only Luxembourg and perhaps Switzerland and other banking paradises have a bigger share.
Hi Javier,Dennis Coyne, 12/02/2015 at 5:57 pmYou said:
So in reality country B is reporting half of its real oil intensity. With present wealth it would have grown GDP by only 1% yet it has spent the same amount of oil than A.
You say above without the borrowing country B would grow by 1% (why does it grow less than country A?) but it uses the same amount of oil as country A, why if it grows more slowly?
Hi Javier,Rune Likvern, 12/01/2015 at 2:23 pmLook closely at your chart in 1970 (when energy intensity started to decline) it was 4% and the most recent points on the chart are about 8.4%. I used the data from your chart (even though it is for the US rather than the World) and did an exponential trend from 1970 to 2010 for 4% to 8% and then extended to 2014 (8.5%) for financial GDP of World economy (probably not correct, but this is an illustration). Then I found the Energy intensity of the non-financial sector by assuming the financial sector has zero energy inputs (I expect they are low, this is an approximation). The Non-Financial Energy intensity is in the chart below.
Finally, Aggregate Demand is increased when there is more debt, but consider the Aggregate supply of goods produced to meet that demand. Whether the aggregate demand is because of private or public debt or not does not change the amount of energy needed to produce the supply of goods and services, it only changes how much demand there will be for those goods and services. I really cannot make it any simpler than that. Oh one more thing, do you think the energy needed to build a car (total energy embodied in all processes used to create the car and its components) changes if someone pays cash for the car vs financing the car?
Dennis,Dennis Coyne, 12/01/2015 at 3:37 pmBank of England has a different take on this;
" This article explains how the majority of money in the modern economy is created by commercial banks making loans.
Money creation in practice differs from some popular misconceptions - banks do not act simply as intermediaries, lending out deposits that savers place with them, and nor do they 'multiply up' central bank money to create new loans and deposits."
Hi Rune,Rune Likvern, 12/01/2015 at 5:45 pmYes that is correct. The banks create money by lending and borrowers destroy money as they pay back their loans. The money supply is controlled by the Central Bank buying and selling bonds.
The debt is only a problem if it grows too quickly. If the rate of debt growth slows or the rate of GDP growth increases there will not be a problem. There are differing views on how much debt is too much.
For public debt there is:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/06/public-debt
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellingenheld/2015/10/22/the-world-needs-more-debt/
Dennis,Dennis Coyne, 12/02/2015 at 8:30 amDid you read the document from Bank of England?
Hi Rune,Dennis Coyne, 12/02/2015 at 8:18 amYes I did. Under normal circumstances the supply of money is primarily influenced by the interest rate that is paid by commercial banks for money borrowed from the central bank. When the economy is in a severe recession and this interest rate falls to the "effective lower bound" (about 0.5%), the central bank loses its ability to increase the supply of money through lower interest rates.
Under these circumstances the central bank will buy assets (government bonds) to increase the money supply, it does not sell assets to reduce the money supply, it simply raises the interest rate it charges the commercial banks.
Hi Rune,Glenn Stehle, 12/01/2015 at 10:00 amThanks for that link, it is a nice review of how central banks influence the supply of money by setting the interest rate which banks must pay on money borrowed from the central bank, which feeds through to interest rates throughout the economy and affects saving and borrowing through market interest rates set by banks.
I would encourage Javier to read that link as it addresses many misconceptions about money.
Dennis,Dennis Coyne, 12/01/2015 at 1:41 pmYou are comparing apples to oranges. GDP is determined using a price, or market, theory of value. So you are comparing a value determined using a market theory of value to a value determined using an intrinsic theory of value - the toe of energy.
If you want to compare apples to apples, then you have to compare GDP to the market value of the energy used.
Hi Glenn,Glenn Stehle, 12/01/2015 at 10:17 pmIf we are concerned the energy constraints will limit real GDP, then the amount of energy consumed per unit of GDP produced is very relevant in my view.
It is not a comparison, it is a measure of energy intensity and how it has changed over time. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity
I have simply charted the World Energy Intensity from 1965 to 2014.
Well again, Dennis, a valid comparison is one which compares dollars and cents to dollars and cents, not dollars and cents to toe.Dennis Coyne, 12/02/2015 at 8:52 amThere was a time (1970 to 2010) when the EIA published the total amount spent in the United States on energy. I have plotted the ratio of total spent on energy to total nominal GDP for those years. This is a true measure of "energy intensity," as it compares apples to apples, and does not omit the price of energy as your graph does.
I have added YOY growth in real GDP (calculated using constant 2009 dollars).
I don't want to draw too many conclusions from the graph, but it paints a far bleaker picture than your graph does. When energy intensity goes over .08 - as it did in 1974 and 2008 - then the economy began having convulsions.
The period from 1983 to 2006 is what is known as "the Great Moderation." It is also a period of low and generally declining energy intensity. When energy intensity began increasing again, as it did in 1999, surpassing .08 in 2006, then this marked the end of the Great Moderation. Is this mere coincidence?
Botton line: In my opinion not only is the quantity of energy (measured in toe) important to the performance of the economy, but the price of that energy is also important.
Using your graph, which makes no allowance for the price of energy, it is easy to see how you have come to believe that the economy is decoupling from energy.
Hi Glenn,Glenn Stehle, 12/02/2015 at 12:28 pmIt is not a comparison of money spent, energy intensity is defined as energy consumed per unit of output (measured in dollars) as there are many different goods and services and their monetary value is measured in constant dollars.
The difficulty with using price is that there are many different forms of energy (oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, and biofuels) which are included in the "primary energy" category. Note that your chart shows only one country not the world. I would present a chart for the World if I had it, I am using the data I have for primary energy divided by real GDP. I think it is useful because it is energy contraints we are concerned about, currently some forms of energy (fossil fuels especially) have very low prices so in monetary terms money spent on Energy divided by real GDP would be quite low.
Energy prices are quite volatile so I like the Energy intensity measure better as it shows energy needed to produce a unit of GDP, which has in fact declined since 1970 by about 30%(or an average annual decrease of about 0.8% per year).
Dennis,Glenn Stehle, 12/02/2015 at 1:06 pmI suppose price doesn't matter as long as one can get somebody else to pick up the tab.
For instance, we can compare a new $40,000 Chevy Bolt ev to a new $20,000 Honda HRV. There's no way the Bolt can compete on price. But if you can get somebody else to pick up the tab for the Bolt? Well then, no sweat!
As part of its COP21 coverage, CBS did a puff piece on their Evening News last night about how EVs are sweeping Norway.
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/how-electric-cars-are-taking-over-norways-roads/
They interviewed one fellow who said he "had done the math" and will be able to drive his new EV "for free."
So I did a little bit more digging, and sure 'nuf, it looks like he's right.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Norway currently has 54,000 EVs on the road. Last year their owners received $540,000 in various forms of rebates, tax breaks and other perks from the Norwegian state. That's a cool $10,000 per car per year. So at that clip, it would only take 4 years to recover the cost of a $40,000 EV. And then after that one can enjoy almost free driving, all on the government's tab.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/electric-car-perks-put-norway-in-a-pinch-1442601936
But it looks like there's trouble in paradise. The WSJ says the government give-a-ways are set to end. The day of reckoning is still up in the air, but the latest date for phasing out the government largess is 2020. So the Norwegian government is taking the punch bowl away. The EV crowd, of course, isn't taking this horrible injustice lying down:
Christina Bu, secretary-general of the lobbying group Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, said the 25,000-member association has been stalking political parties and government officials to ensure the main incentives remain in place, at least until 2020.
"If you cut all the incentives overnight, sales will plummet," she said.
Weaning buyers from such purchase incentives could add new headwinds to sales of vehicles already undercut by cheap fuel prices in some markets. In the U.S., the state of Georgia halted its $5,000 tax credit on July 1. Electric cars were about 2% of purchases in the state in 2014, estimates Washington-based think tank Keybridge Research LLC. It forecasts a 90% decline, or 8,700 fewer sales annually, as a result of the loss.
EditDennis Coyne, 12/02/2015 at 2:06 pmLast year their owners received $540 million in various forms of rebates, tax breaks and other perks from the Norwegian state.
Hi Glenn,Nick G, 12/02/2015 at 2:32 pmDo you have the price of primary energy from 1965 to 2014? I would be happy to do the chart you would like, but I don't know the appropriate price of energy, which has many different forms and prices throughout the World.
I agree price matters, as does the amount of energy available to purchase (which is what is in my chart).
Glenn,Ralph, 12/02/2015 at 8:46 amYou're looking at something different.
The original study in question was asking about whether an economy can grow without increasing it's inputs of oil, steel, etc.*
That's a very different question than whether an economy will be hurt by a sudden increase in the price of a key commodity, like oil. If the price of oil spikes, that can create a shock for the economy (e.g., people wait to see what happens with prices before they buy their next vehicle, and that delay causes a recession), but an increase in prices doesn't mean energy consumption has gone up.
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* (it can, of course, but that's separate issue from whether our societies have chosen to do so).I am far from convinced that GDP growth is a good way of measuring progress in a society. Let's take an example from the UK economy. (btw I am not worried about the genders here, I would happily be a house husband if my wife's earning potential was close to mine).Dennis Coyne, 12/02/2015 at 10:14 amToday, nearly 70% of women of working age work. Families need both incomes to meet a reasonable standard of living. As a result, a large majority of UK children grow up in families with both parents working. Many parents end up sending young children to child minders and crèches so that they can work. This employs a lot of people, mostly women. More wealthy families then employ house cleaners and gardeners and handymen etc. to clean, garden and repair their homes that they don't have time to do themselves. Poorer people do without. This employs a lot more people. All the working women and the people employed by the working women pay taxes which means that people end up working more hours to afford to pay someone else to do these jobs than it would take to do the jobs themselves. Unless your own rate of pay is significantly higher than the people you pay to do the jobs, you would be financially better off doing it yourself. The government and the economists are delighted because tax take and GDP rise. All these extra people in useful employment driving around from low skilled job to to low skilled job, consuming extra resources, especially fossil fuels, when they would be a lot less stressed, more free time and financially better off, just doing all these activities for themselves.
It is a major mistake to professionalise low skilled domestic work. All it does is free up time for the rich and increases government tax take. Society as a whole is worse off.
Hi Ralph,I agree GDP is by no means a perfect measure, just a measure that is available at the World level. There are other measures such as the social progress index, but this is not available at the World level. There is also the United Nations Human Development Index(HDI), but again these measures are not published at the World level (or I couldn't find it). Actually I found some World data for the HDI from 1980 to 2013. The measure is not perfect see link below for data:
http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/table-2-human-development-index-trends-1980-2013
Discussion of HDI athttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
Also from UN document:
Human Development Index (HDI): A composite index measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of human development-a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living. See Technical note 1 (http://hdr.undp.org/en) for details on how the HDI is calculated.
Chart below with World Primary energy (ktoe) divided by World HDI from 1980 to 2013. Based on the HDI, more energy is needed to improve well being and GDP is not a good measure of human welfare.
There is also an index for HDI that takes account of inequality, but the index (called IHDI) is only available from 2010 to 2013.
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www.nakedcapitalism.com
allanAnother disruptive innovation turns out not to work out as advertised.
Democratizing education? Examining access and usage patterns in massive open online courses [Science]
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are often characterized as remedies to educational disparities related to social class. Using data from 68 MOOCs offered by Harvard and MIT between 2012 and 2014, we found that course participants from the United States tended to live in more-affluent and better-educated neighborhoods than the average U.S. resident. Among those who did register for courses, students with greater socioeconomic resources were more likely to earn a certificate. Furthermore, these differences in MOOC access and completion were larger for adolescents and young adults, the traditional ages where people find on-ramps into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) coursework and careers. Our findings raise concerns that MOOCs and similar approaches to online learning can exacerbate rather than reduce disparities in educational outcomes related to socioeconomic status.
Lambert Strether, December 3, 2015 at 3:17 pm
That's not a bug. It's a feature.
jrs, December 3, 2015 at 5:40 pm
Well that's pretty much the same charge that could be leveled against most higher education. It makes disparities worse, maybe less so community colleges, I don't know.
cwaltz, December 3, 2015 at 6:16 pm
I wonder how much of that is due to inability to access the web in neighborhoods that are less affluent?
An online course isn't going to help me if mom or dad can't afford to pay for internet.
Bob Haugen, December 3, 2015 at 8:06 pm
Most education in the world now, whether in classrooms or MOOCs, is oriented toward improving the personal capital of the upwardly striving. There is no "make yourself a better citizen" or "improve your community" curriculum.
likbez, December 3, 2015 at 10:47 pm
"Most education in the world now, whether in classrooms or MOOCs, is oriented toward improving the personal capital of the upwardly striving."
Very true. Thank you !
This is the essence of neoliberal transformation of the university education.
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Equitable Growth
The geography of student debt is very different than the geography of delinquency. Take the Washington, D.C. metro region. In zip codes with high average loan balances (western and central Washington, D.C.), delinquency rates are lower. Within the District of Columbia, median income is highest in these parts of the city. Similar results–low delinquency rates in high-debt areas–can be seen for Chicago, as well. (See Figure 1.)
...What explains this relationship? There appear to be two possible, and mutually consistent, theories. First, although graduate students take out the largest student loans, they are able to carry large debt burdens thanks to their higher salaries post-graduation. Second, the rise in the number of students borrowing relatively small amounts for for-profit colleges has augmented the cumulative debt load, but because these borrowers face poor labor market outcomes and lower earnings upon graduation (if they do in fact graduate), their delinquency rates are much higher. This is further complicated by the fact that these for-profit college attendees generally come from lower-income families who may not be able to help with loan repayments.
The inverse relationship between delinquency and income is not surprising, especially when considering that problems of credit access have disproportionately affected poor and minority populations in the past.
...It might seem counterintuitive that lack of access to credit results in delinquency-seemingly a problem of "too much debt." But in fact, lack of access to credit and delinquency are two sides of the same coin. Nearly everyone needs access to credit markets to meet basic economic needs, and if they can't get loans through competitive, transparent financial networks, poor people are more likely to be subjected to exploitative credit arrangements in the form of very high rates and other onerous terms and penalties, including on student loans. That disadvantage interacts with and is magnified by their lack of labor market opportunities. The result is exactly what we see across time and space: high delinquency rates for those with the least access to credit markets.
...For user-friendliness, we assign each of these student debt scale variables a qualitative category. If average loan balance on the map is "somewhat high," for example, then it means that a zip code's average loan balance is between 25 and 35 percent higher than the national average of $24,271. Similarly, if the delinquency reads "very low," it corresponds to a scale level between 0.067 and 0.091.
Figure 6 summarizes the relationship between each of the scale variables' levels and their qualitative description.
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Dec 02, 2015 | The Atlantic
Americans are, compared with populations of other countries, particularly enthusiastic about the idea of meritocracy, a system that rewards merit (ability + effort) with success. Americans are more likely to believe that people are rewarded for their intelligence and skills and are less likely to believe that family wealth plays a key role in getting ahead. And Americans' support for meritocratic principles has remained stable over the last two decades despite growing economic inequality, recessions, and the fact that there is less mobility in the United States than in most other industrialized countries.This strong commitment to meritocratic ideals can lead to suspicion of efforts that aim to support particular demographic groups. For example, initiatives designed to recruit or provide development opportunities to under-represented groups often come under attack as "reverse discrimination." Some companies even justify not having diversity policies by highlighting their commitment to meritocracy. If a company evaluates people on their skills, abilities, and merit, without consideration of their gender, race, sexuality etc., and managers are objective in their assessments then there is no need for diversity policies, the thinking goes.
But is this true? Do commitments to meritocracy and objectivity lead to more fair workplaces?
Emilio J. Castilla, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, has explored how meritocratic ideals and HR practices like pay-for-performance play out in organizations, and he's come to some unexpected conclusions.
In one company study, Castilla examined almost 9,000 employees who worked as support-staff at a large service-sector company. The company was committed to diversity and had implemented a merit-driven compensation system intended to reward high-level performance and to reward all employees equitably.
But Castilla's analysis revealed some very non-meritocratic outcomes. Women, ethnic minorities, and non-U.S.-born employees received a smaller increase in compensation compared with white men, despite holding the same jobs, working in the same units, having the same supervisors, the same human capital, and importantly, receiving the same performance score. Despite stating that "performance is the primary bases for all salary increases," the reality was that women, minorities, and those born outside the U.S. needed "to work harder and obtain higher performance scores in order to receive similar salary increases to white men."
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Equitable Growth
The geography of student debt is very different than the geography of delinquency. Take the Washington, D.C. metro region. In zip codes with high average loan balances (western and central Washington, D.C.), delinquency rates are lower. Within the District of Columbia, median income is highest in these parts of the city. Similar results–low delinquency rates in high-debt areas–can be seen for Chicago, as well. (See Figure 1.)
...What explains this relationship? There appear to be two possible, and mutually consistent, theories. First, although graduate students take out the largest student loans, they are able to carry large debt burdens thanks to their higher salaries post-graduation. Second, the rise in the number of students borrowing relatively small amounts for for-profit colleges has augmented the cumulative debt load, but because these borrowers face poor labor market outcomes and lower earnings upon graduation (if they do in fact graduate), their delinquency rates are much higher. This is further complicated by the fact that these for-profit college attendees generally come from lower-income families who may not be able to help with loan repayments.
The inverse relationship between delinquency and income is not surprising, especially when considering that problems of credit access have disproportionately affected poor and minority populations in the past.
...It might seem counterintuitive that lack of access to credit results in delinquency-seemingly a problem of "too much debt." But in fact, lack of access to credit and delinquency are two sides of the same coin. Nearly everyone needs access to credit markets to meet basic economic needs, and if they can't get loans through competitive, transparent financial networks, poor people are more likely to be subjected to exploitative credit arrangements in the form of very high rates and other onerous terms and penalties, including on student loans. That disadvantage interacts with and is magnified by their lack of labor market opportunities. The result is exactly what we see across time and space: high delinquency rates for those with the least access to credit markets.
...For user-friendliness, we assign each of these student debt scale variables a qualitative category. If average loan balance on the map is "somewhat high," for example, then it means that a zip code's average loan balance is between 25 and 35 percent higher than the national average of $24,271. Similarly, if the delinquency reads "very low," it corresponds to a scale level between 0.067 and 0.091.
Figure 6 summarizes the relationship between each of the scale variables' levels and their qualitative description.
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Dec 02, 2015 | The Atlantic
Americans are, compared with populations of other countries, particularly enthusiastic about the idea of meritocracy, a system that rewards merit (ability + effort) with success. Americans are more likely to believe that people are rewarded for their intelligence and skills and are less likely to believe that family wealth plays a key role in getting ahead. And Americans' support for meritocratic principles has remained stable over the last two decades despite growing economic inequality, recessions, and the fact that there is less mobility in the United States than in most other industrialized countries.This strong commitment to meritocratic ideals can lead to suspicion of efforts that aim to support particular demographic groups. For example, initiatives designed to recruit or provide development opportunities to under-represented groups often come under attack as "reverse discrimination." Some companies even justify not having diversity policies by highlighting their commitment to meritocracy. If a company evaluates people on their skills, abilities, and merit, without consideration of their gender, race, sexuality etc., and managers are objective in their assessments then there is no need for diversity policies, the thinking goes.
But is this true? Do commitments to meritocracy and objectivity lead to more fair workplaces?
Emilio J. Castilla, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, has explored how meritocratic ideals and HR practices like pay-for-performance play out in organizations, and he's come to some unexpected conclusions.
In one company study, Castilla examined almost 9,000 employees who worked as support-staff at a large service-sector company. The company was committed to diversity and had implemented a merit-driven compensation system intended to reward high-level performance and to reward all employees equitably.
But Castilla's analysis revealed some very non-meritocratic outcomes. Women, ethnic minorities, and non-U.S.-born employees received a smaller increase in compensation compared with white men, despite holding the same jobs, working in the same units, having the same supervisors, the same human capital, and importantly, receiving the same performance score. Despite stating that "performance is the primary bases for all salary increases," the reality was that women, minorities, and those born outside the U.S. needed "to work harder and obtain higher performance scores in order to receive similar salary increases to white men."
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November 21, 2015 | naked capitalism
By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street.
Magic trick turns into toxic mix.
Stocks have been on a tear to nowhere this year. Now investors are praying for a Santa rally to pull them out of the mire. They're counting on desperate amounts of share buybacks that companies fund by loading up on debt. But the magic trick that had performed miracles over the past few years is backfiring.
And there's a reason.
IBM has blown $125 billion on buybacks since 2005, more than the $111 billion it invested in capital expenditures and R&D. It's staggering under its debt, while revenues have been declining for 14 quarters in a row. It cut its workforce by 55,000 people since 2012. And its stock is down 38% since March 2013.
Big-pharma icon Pfizer plowed $139 billion into buybacks and dividends in the past decade, compared to $82 billion in R&D and $18 billion in capital spending. 3M spent $48 billion on buybacks and dividends, and $30 billion on R&D and capital expenditures. They're all doing it.
"Activist investors" – hedge funds – have been clamoring for it. An investigative report by Reuters, titled The Cannibalized Company, lined some of them up:
In March, General Motors Co acceded to a $5 billion share buyback to satisfy investor Harry Wilson. He had threatened a proxy fight if the auto maker didn't distribute some of the $25 billion cash hoard it had built up after emerging from bankruptcy just a few years earlier.
DuPont early this year announced a $4 billion buyback program – on top of a $5 billion program announced a year earlier – to beat back activist investor Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund Management, which was seeking four board seats to get its way.
In March, Qualcomm Inc., under pressure from hedge fund Jana Partners, agreed to boost its program to purchase $10 billion of its shares over the next 12 months; the company already had an existing $7.8 billion buyback program and a commitment to return three quarters of its free cash flow to shareholders.
And in July, Qualcomm announced 5,000 layoffs. It's hard to innovate when you're trying to please a hedge fund.
CEOs with a long-term outlook and a focus on innovation and investment, rather than financial engineering, come under intense pressure.
"None of it is optional; if you ignore them, you go away," Russ Daniels, a tech executive with 15 years at Apple and 13 years at HP, told Reuters. "It's all just resource allocation," he said. "The situation right now is there are a lot of investors who believe that they can make a better decision about how to apply that resource than the management of the business can."
Nearly 60% of the 3,297 publicly traded non-financial US companies Reuters analyzed have engaged in share buybacks since 2010. Last year, the money spent on buybacks and dividends exceeded net income for the first time in a non-recession period.
This year, for the 613 companies that have reported earnings for fiscal 2015, share buybacks hit a record $520 billion. They also paid $365 billion in dividends, for a total of $885 billion, against their combined net income of $847 billion.
Buybacks and dividends amount to 113% of capital spending among companies that have repurchased shares since 2010, up from 60% in 2000 and from 38% in 1990. Corporate investment is normally a big driver in a recovery. Not this time! Hence the lousy recovery.
Financial engineering takes precedence over actual engineering in the minds of CEOs and CFOs. A company buying its own shares creates additional demand for those shares. It's supposed to drive up the share price. The hoopla surrounding buyback announcements drives up prices too. Buybacks also reduce the number of outstanding shares, thus increase the earnings per share, even when net income is declining.
"Serving customers, creating innovative new products, employing workers, taking care of the environment … are NOT the objectives of firms," sais Itzhak Ben-David, a finance professor of Ohio State University, a buyback proponent, according to Reuters. "These are components in the process that have the goal of maximizing shareholders' value."
But when companies load up on debt to fund buybacks while slashing investment in productive activities and innovation, it has consequences for revenues down the road. And now that magic trick to increase shareholder value has become a toxic mix. Shares of buyback queens are getting hammered.
Citigroup credit analysts looked into the extent to which this is happening – and why. Christine Hughes, Chief Investment Strategist at OtterWood Capital, summarized the Citi report this way: "This dynamic of borrowing from bondholders to pay shareholders may be coming to an end…."
Their chart (via OtterWood Capital) shows that about half of the cumulative outperformance of these buyback queens from 2012 through 2014 has been frittered away this year, as their shares, IBM-like, have swooned:
Mbuna, November 21, 2015 at 7:31 am
Me thinks Wolf is slightly barking up the wrong tree here. What needs to be looked at is how buy backs affect executive pay. "Shareholder value" is more often than not a ruse?
ng, November 21, 2015 at 8:58 am
probably, in some or most cases, but the effect on the stock is the same.
Alejandro, November 21, 2015 at 9:19 am
Interesting that you mention ruse, relating to "buy-backs"…from my POV, it seems like they've legalized insider trading or engineered (a) loophole(s).
On a somewhat related perspective on subterfuge. The language of "affordability" has proven to be insidiously clever. Not only does it reinforce and perpetuate the myth of "deserts", but camouflages the means of embezzling the means of distribution. Isn't distribution, really, the only rational purpose of finance, i.e., as a means of distribution as opposed to a means of embezzlement?
Jim, November 21, 2015 at 10:42 am
More nuance and less dogma please. The dogmatic tone really hurts what could otherwise be a fine but more-qualified position.
"Results of all this financial engineering? Revenues of the S&P 500 companies are falling for the fourth quarter in a row – the worst such spell since the Financial Crisis."
Eh, no. No question that buybacks *can* be asset-stripping and often are, but unless you tie capital allocation decisions closer to investment in the business such that they're mutually exclusive, this is specious and a reach. No one invests if they can't see the return. It would be just as easy to say that they're buying back stock because revenue is slipping and they have no other investment opportunities.
Revenues are falling in large part because these largest companies derive an ABSOLUTELY HUGE portion of their business overseas and the dollar has been ridiculously strong in the last 12-15 months. Rates are poised to rise, and the easy Fed-inspired rate arbitrage vis a vis stocks and "risk on" trade are closing. How about a little more context instead of just dogma?
John Malone made a career out of financial engineering, something like 30% annual returns for the 25 years of his CEO tenure at TCI. Buybacks were a huge part of that.
Perhaps an analysis of the monopolistic positions of so many American businesses that allow them the wherewithal to underinvest and still buy back huge amounts of stock? If we had a more competitive economy, companies would have less ability to underinvest. Ultimately, I think buybacks are more a result than a cause of dysfunction, but certainly not always bad.
NeqNeq, November 21, 2015 at 11:44 am
One aspect that Reuters piece mentions, but glosses over with a single paragraph buried in the middle, is the fact that for many companies there are no ( or few) reasons to spend money in other ways. If capex/r&d doesn't give you much return, why not buy out the shareholders who are least interested in holding your stock?
Dumping cash into plants only makes sense in the places where the market is growing. For many years that has meant Asia (China). For example, Apple gets 66% (iirc) of revenue from Asia, and that is where they have continued investing in growth. If demand is slowing and costs are rising, and it looks like both are true, why would you put even more money in?
Dumping money into R&D is always risky, although different industries have different levels, and the "do it in-house" risk must be weighed against the costs of buying up companies with "proven" technologies. Thus, R&D cash is hidden inside M&A. M&A is up 2-3 years in a row.
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economistsview.typepad.com
RGC, December 02, 2015 at 06:09 AM
Larry Summers and the Subversion of EconomicsBy Charles Ferguson October 03, 2010
The Obama administration recently announced that Larry Summers is resigning as director of the National Economic Council and will return to Harvard early next year. His imminent departure raises several questions: Who will replace him? What will he do next? But more important, it's a chance to consider the hugely damaging conflicts of interest of the senior academic economists who move among universities, government, and banking.
Summers is unquestionably brilliant, as all who have dealt with him, including myself, quickly realize. And yet rarely has one individual embodied so much of what is wrong with economics, with academe, and indeed with the American economy. For the past two years, I have immersed myself in those worlds in order to make a film, Inside Job, that takes a sweeping look at the financial crisis. And I found Summers everywhere I turned.
Consider: As a rising economist at Harvard and at the World Bank, Summers argued for privatization and deregulation in many domains, including finance. Later, as deputy secretary of the treasury and then treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, he implemented those policies. Summers oversaw passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed Glass-Steagall, permitted the previously illegal merger that created Citigroup, and allowed further consolidation in the financial sector. He also successfully fought attempts by Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Clinton administration, to regulate the financial derivatives that would cause so much damage in the housing bubble and the 2008 economic crisis. He then oversaw passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned all regulation of derivatives, including exempting them from state antigambling laws.
After Summers left the Clinton administration, his candidacy for president of Harvard was championed by his mentor Robert Rubin, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who was his boss and predecessor as treasury secretary. Rubin, after leaving the Treasury Department-where he championed the law that made Citigroup's creation legal-became both vice chairman of Citigroup and a powerful member of Harvard's governing board.
Over the past decade, Summers continued to advocate financial deregulation, both as president of Harvard and as a University Professor after being forced out of the presidency. During this time, Summers became wealthy through consulting and speaking engagements with financial firms. Between 2001 and his entry into the Obama administration, he made more than $20-million from the financial-services industry. (His 2009 federal financial-disclosure form listed his net worth as $17-million to $39-million.)
Summers remained close to Rubin and to Alan Greenspan, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve. When other economists began warning of abuses and systemic risk in the financial system deriving from the environment that Summers, Greenspan, and Rubin had created, Summers mocked and dismissed those warnings. In 2005, at the annual Jackson Hole, Wyo., conference of the world's leading central bankers, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Raghuram Rajan, presented a brilliant paper that constituted the first prominent warning of the coming crisis. Rajan pointed out that the structure of financial-sector compensation, in combination with complex financial products, gave bankers huge cash incentives to take risks with other people's money, while imposing no penalties for any subsequent losses. Rajan warned that this bonus culture rewarded bankers for actions that could destroy their own institutions, or even the entire system, and that this could generate a "full-blown financial crisis" and a "catastrophic meltdown."
When Rajan finished speaking, Summers rose up from the audience and attacked him, calling him a "Luddite," dismissing his concerns, and warning that increased regulation would reduce the productivity of the financial sector. (Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and Alan Greenspan were also in the audience.)
Soon after that, Summers lost his job as president of Harvard after suggesting that women might be innately inferior to men at scientific work. In another part of the same speech, he had used laissez-faire economic theory to argue that discrimination was unlikely to be a major cause of women's underrepresentation in either science or business. After all, he argued, if discrimination existed, then others, seeking a competitive advantage, would have access to a superior work force, causing those who discriminate to fail in the marketplace. It appeared that Summers had denied even the possibility of decades, indeed centuries, of racial, gender, and other discrimination in America and other societies. After the resulting outcry forced him to resign, Summers remained at Harvard as a faculty member, and he accelerated his financial-sector activities, receiving $135,000 for one speech at Goldman Sachs.
Then, after the 2008 financial crisis and its consequent recession, Summers was placed in charge of coordinating U.S. economic policy, deftly marginalizing others who challenged him. Under the stewardship of Summers, Geithner, and Bernanke, the Obama administration adopted policies as favorable toward the financial sector as those of the Clinton and Bush administrations-quite a feat. Never once has Summers publicly apologized or admitted any responsibility for causing the crisis. And now Harvard is welcoming him back.
Summers is unique but not alone. By now we are all familiar with the role of lobbying and campaign contributions, and with the revolving door between industry and government. What few Americans realize is that the revolving door is now a three-way intersection. Summers's career is the result of an extraordinary and underappreciated scandal in American society: the convergence of academic economics, Wall Street, and political power.
Starting in the 1980s, and heavily influenced by laissez-faire economics, the United States began deregulating financial services. Shortly thereafter, America began to experience financial crises for the first time since the Great Depression. The first one arose from the savings-and-loan and junk-bond scandals of the 1980s; then came the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, the Asian financial crisis; the collapse of Long Term Capital Management, in 1998; Enron; and then the housing bubble, which led to the global financial crisis. Yet through the entire period, the U.S. financial sector grew larger, more powerful, and enormously more profitable. By 2006, financial services accounted for 40 percent of total American corporate profits. In large part, this was because the financial sector was corrupting the political system. But it was also subverting economics.
Over the past 30 years, the economics profession-in economics departments, and in business, public policy, and law schools-has become so compromised by conflicts of interest that it now functions almost as a support group for financial services and other industries whose profits depend heavily on government policy. The route to the 2008 financial crisis, and the economic problems that still plague us, runs straight through the economics discipline. And it's due not just to ideology; it's also about straightforward, old-fashioned money.
Prominent academic economists (and sometimes also professors of law and public policy) are paid by companies and interest groups to testify before Congress, to write papers, to give speeches, to participate in conferences, to serve on boards of directors, to write briefs in regulatory proceedings, to defend companies in antitrust cases, and, of course, to lobby. This is now, literally, a billion-dollar industry. The Law and Economics Consulting Group, started 22 years ago by professors at the University of California at Berkeley (David Teece in the business school, Thomas Jorde in the law school, and the economists Richard Gilbert and Gordon Rausser), is now a $300-million publicly held company. Others specializing in the sale (or rental) of academic expertise include Competition Policy (now Compass Lexecon), started by Richard Gilbert and Daniel Rubinfeld, both of whom served as chief economist of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division in the Clinton administration; the Analysis Group; and Charles River Associates.
In my film you will see many famous economists looking very uncomfortable when confronted with their financial-sector activities; others appear only on archival video, because they declined to be interviewed. You'll hear from:
- Martin Feldstein, a Harvard professor, a major architect of deregulation in the Reagan administration, president for 30 years of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and for 20 years on the boards of directors of both AIG, which paid him more than $6-million, and AIG Financial Products, whose derivatives deals destroyed the company. Feldstein has written several hundred papers, on many subjects; none of them address the dangers of unregulated financial derivatives or financial-industry compensation.
- Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the first George W. Bush administration, dean of Columbia Business School, adviser to many financial firms, on the board of Metropolitan Life ($250,000 per year), and formerly on the board of Capmark, a major commercial mortgage lender, from which he resigned shortly before its bankruptcy, in 2009. In 2004, Hubbard wrote a paper with William C. Dudley, then chief economist of Goldman Sachs, praising securitization and derivatives as improving the stability of both financial markets and the wider economy.
- Frederic Mishkin, a professor at the Columbia Business School, and a member of the Federal Reserve Board from 2006 to 2008. He was paid $124,000 by the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce to write a paper praising its regulatory and banking systems, two years before the Icelandic banks' Ponzi scheme collapsed, causing $100-billion in losses. His 2006 federal financial-disclosure form listed his net worth as $6-million to $17-million.
- Laura Tyson, a professor at Berkeley, director of the National Economic Council in the Clinton administration, and also on the Board of Directors of Morgan Stanley, which pays her $350,000 per year.
- Richard Portes, a professor at London Business School and founding director of the British Centre for Economic Policy Research, paid by the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce to write a report praising Iceland's financial system in 2007, only one year before it collapsed.
- And John Campbell, chairman of Harvard's economics department, who finds it very difficult to explain why conflicts of interest in economics should not concern us.
But could he be right? Are these professors simply being paid to say what they would otherwise say anyway? Unlikely. Mishkin and Portes showed no interest whatever in Iceland until they were paid to do so, and they got it totally wrong. Nor do all these professors seem to make policy statements contrary to the financial interests of their clients. Even more telling, they uniformly oppose disclosure of their financial relationships.
The universities avert their eyes and deliberately don't require faculty members either to disclose their conflicts of interest or to report their outside income. As you can imagine, when Larry Summers was president of Harvard, he didn't work too hard to change this.
Now, however, as the national recovery is faltering, Summers is being eased out while Harvard is welcoming him back. How will the academic world receive him? The simple answer: Better than he deserves.
While making my film, we wrote to the presidents and provosts of Harvard, Columbia, and other universities with detailed questions about their conflict-of-interest policies, requesting interviews about the subject. None of them replied, except to refer us to their Web sites.
Academe, heal thyself.
EMichael said in reply to RGC...Yeah, after an economist has had one job in the government; one job in the banking system; and one teaching job he should be required to stop working as an economist.RGC said in reply to EMichael...I think it is interesting that Summers led the financial deregulation efforts of the Clinton administration and then made a bundle on Wall Street. I think that should be taken into account when evaluating his discussions of economics.EMichael said in reply to RGC...Of course it should.At the same time this is not taking anything into account, this is about "subverting" economics.
Can you make a case that the only reason Summers made a "bundle" working on Wall Street is because of the financial deregulation efforts he made? Last time I looked he did not have a vote on the legislation.
RGC said in reply to EMichael...I think this is especially troubling for the economics profession:"Over the past 30 years, the economics profession-in economics departments, and in business, public policy, and law schools-has become so compromised by conflicts of interest that it now functions almost as a support group for financial services and other industries whose profits depend heavily on government policy. The route to the 2008 financial crisis, and the economic problems that still plague us, runs straight through the economics discipline. And it's due not just to ideology; it's also about straightforward, old-fashioned money."
EMichael said in reply to RGC...Cause no economists actually believed in any of the policies that caused all of those things nor did any economist fail to vote for the policies adopted.RGC said in reply to EMichael...Upton Sinclair:"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Tom aka Rusty said in reply to RGC...
As Hemingway and F. SCott Fitzgerald exchanged in their writings (the reputed face-to-face conversation may not have happened):The rich are different.
Yes, they have more money.
Combine elite and rich and you get a toxic combination.
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Economist's View
reason: December 01, 2015 at 07:27 AMEMichael said in reply to reason... December 01, 2015 at 07:34 AMSanjait
I think it is perfectly clear that a secular policy of increasing private indebtedness is not indefinitely extendable. Sure, if we had printed money in the past and kept monetary policy relatively tight (or otherwise managed the international financial system so that large persistent balance of payments deficits were not tolerated) we wouldn't have got in the mess we are in. But once we are there just trying to get over-indebted people to take on more debt doesn't seem like a winning strategy.
reason: December 01, 2015 at 07:36 AMI see no real increase in private indebtedness.
The problem with the financial system is what lies behind lending.
reason:Avraam Jack Dectis
Not bad.
But1. asset taxes are tricky things to run (many assets aren't traded and the prices of other assets are very volatile). And there is the problem of offshore ownership and offshore assets, so it requires international co-operation.
2. This takes a very closed economy view of things - the trade deficit might end up affecting the trade balance and hence the flow of assets into and out of the country, and eventually also the terms of trade. You should think through how such a policy would work in say - Luxembourg.
EMichael
You see no increase in private indebtedness - when do you mean? If you mean now - then yes - that is exactly why the economy is so sluggish. Where is the increase in demand going to come from if the country is running a trade deficit, is not increasing its borrowing and is committed to reducing its government deficit?
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Nov 30, 2015 | Economist's View
DrDick said...
"then more growth will simply lead to even more inequality."
Which is exactly what we have seen for the past 40 years, Great analysis here. I can only add, that our economic system already redistributes income upward to capital and management, whose contribution to productivity is far below what they are paid.
ikbez -> DrDick...
"then more growth will simply lead to even more inequality."
That's the idea of neoliberal transformation of society that happened since 80th or even earlier. Like John Kenneth Galbraith noted "Trickle-down theory is the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows"
And another relevant quote:
"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil." John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929
anne -> likbez...
"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil." John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929
[ Perfect. ]
Dan Kervick, November 30, 2015 at 11:12 AM
likbez -> Dan Kervick...Just as was the case with his work on financial instability, Hyman Minsky's analysis of the problems of poverty and inequality in a capitalist economy, as well as his understanding of the political dysfunctions that would result from treating these problems in the wrong way, were prophetic. See this piece by Minksy's student L. Randall Wray, especially Section 2: http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_515.pdf
The centerpiece of Minsky's preferred approach was based on a government commitment to "tight full employment". He believed that neither human capital investment, economic growth, nor redistribution would be sufficient on their own to address the problem.
As part of the critique of the human capital approach, Minsky argued that:
"it is unjust to tell the poor that they must change before they will be entitled to work-whether it is their skills set or their character that is the barrier to work... Minsky always argued that it is preferable to "take workers as they are," providing jobs tailored to the characteristics of workers, rather than trying to tailor workers to the jobs available before they are allowed to work (Minsky 1965, 1968, 1973)."
Minsky accurately foresaw the way in which a welfare approach to poverty, as opposed to a full employment approach, would politically divide working people among themselves:
"Further, NIT (and other welfare programs) would create a dependent class, which is not conducive to social cohesion (Minsky 1968). Most importantly, Minsky argued that any antipoverty program must be consistent with the underlying behavioral rules of a capitalist economy (Minsky no date, 1968, 1975a). One of those rules is that earned income is in some sense deserved."
"With the perspective of the 1980s and 1990s now behind us, it is hard to deny Minsky's arguments-President Reagan successfully turned most Americans against welfare programs and President Clinton finally "eliminated welfare as we know it." According to Minsky, a successful antipoverty program will need to provide visible benefits to the average taxpayer."
We can note that this political problem has only gotten worse, as can be seen from the deepening ugliness of our domestic politics, and the poll results that MacGillis cites.
Minsky also understood the unhealthy political and economic dynamics of an undirected aggregate demand approach to poverty, and promoted, following ideas of Keynes, a measure of socialized investment and direct job creation:
"Minsky feared that using demand stimulus to reduce poverty would necessarily lead to "stop-go" policy. Expansion would fuel inflation, causing policy makers to reverse course to slow growth in order to fight inflation (Minsky 1965, 1968). Because wages (and prices) in leading sectors would rise in expansion, but could resist deflationary pressures in recession, there would be an upward bias to rising wages in those sectors. However, in the lagging sectors, wage increases would come slowly-only with adequate tightening of labor markets -- and could be reversed in recession. Hence, Minsky argued that a directed demand policy would be required-to raise demand in the lagging sectors and for low wage and unemployed workers. For this reason, he concluded that a direct job creation program would be required."
All this adds up to a more activist role for the government sector.
My impression is that "human capital" is one of the most fundamental neoliberal myths. See, for example What Exactly Is Neoliberalism by Wendy Brown https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/booked-3-what-exactly-is-neoliberalism-wendy-brown-undoing-the-demos
As for people betraying their own economic interests, this phenomenon was aptly described in "What's the matter with Kansas" which can actually be reformulated as "What's the matter with the USA?". And the answer he gave is that neoliberalism converted the USA into a bizarre high demand cult. There are several characteristics of a high demand cult that are applicable. Among them:
- "The group is preoccupied with making money."
- "Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished."
- "Mind-numbing techniques (for example: meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, debilitating work routines) are used to suppress doubts about the group or its leader(s)." Entertainment and, especially sport events in the US society serves the same role.
- "The group's leadership dictates – sometimes in great detail – how members should think, act, and feel." Looks like this part of brainwashing is outsourced to economy departments ;-)
- "The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members (for example the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity)."
- "The group has a polarized, "we-they" mentality that causes conflict with the wider society."
- "The group's leader is not accountable to any authorities (as are, for example, clergy with mainstream denominations)."
- "The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means (for example: collecting money for bogus charities) that members would have considered unethical before joining."
- "The group's leadership induces guilt feelings in lower members for the lack of achievement in order to control them."
- "Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group."
- "Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members."
It is very difficult to get rid of this neoliberal sect mentality like is the case with other high demand cults.
cm -> likbez...
What has any of this to do with human capital? "Capital" is basically a synonym for productive capacity, with regard to what "productive" means in the socioeconomic system or otherwise the context that is being discussed.
E.g. social or political capital designates the ability (i.e. capacity) to exert influence in social networks or societal decision making at the respective scales (organization, city, regional, national etc.), where "productive" means "achieving desired or favored outcomes for the person(s) possessing the capital or for those on whose behalf it is used".
Human capital, in the economic domain, is then the combined capacity of the human population in the domain under consideration that is available for productive endeavors of any kind. This includes BTW e.g. housewives and other household workers whose work is generally not paid, but you better believe it is socially productive.
likbez -> cm...
"Human capital, in the economic domain, is then the combined capacity of the human population in the domain under consideration that is available for productive endeavors of any kind. This includes BTW e.g. housewives and other household workers whose work is generally not paid, but you better believe it is socially productive."
This is not true. The term "human capital" under neoliberalism has different semantic meaning: it presuppose viewing a person as a market actor.
See the discussion of the term in http://www.jceps.com/wp-content/uploads/PDFs/10-1-07.pdf
kthomas
"...it's driven be resentment..."
No, its driven by racism. White trash will take with one hand, then walk right into a voting both and screw themselves because they think they sticking it to blacks, mexicans, gays, etc.
Syaloch -> kthomas...
Racism is certainly part of it, but it's really more fundamental than that.
"This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages."
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
cm -> kthomas...
What is racism if not an expression of resentment?
bakho said...
This misreads the politics. People who are disconnected from the job market very easily get disconnected from the political process. They don't vote. The people who do have jobs and are worried about keeping them and being paid too little are voting against the "losers" who they see as parasites. Never mind that the Malefactors of Great Wealth are the true parasites. Elections in the US are won or lost on voter turnout.
The Rage said...
I guess it depends on what kind of economy you want.
Growth of all kinds is not good. The 2001-2007 "growth" was badly constructed. I think America itself is in a bad rut....and has been since 1974. That itself will not be popular. The consensus belief was everything was rosy up until 2001. That is lie. They used to have a saying "nothing really happens on the X-files anymore". It really applies to America since 1974. It goes beyond "inequality".
I mean, we could have 3% wage growth in 2016 and 4% wage growth in 2017. That doesn't mean a damn thing for a economy's health. The infrastructure is bad. It shows up in pop culture apathy.
pgl -> The Rage...
"The 2001-2007 "growth" was badly constructed."
Glenn Hubbard might quarrel with this. He was well constructed for George W. Bush's base - rich people.
On the whole - great comment!!!
cm -> The Rage...
The Y2K/dotcom boom unraveled in 2000, but not all at once. It is difficult to impossible to disentagle the boundary between dotcom bust, 9/11 and the prolonged reaction to it, and the start of the Bush presidency (and the top policymaking figures that came with that, I don't want to necessarily tie it to Bush himself).
At the same time, the global rollout of the internet, telecommunication, (start of) commodity videoconferencing, broadband and realtime data exchange, etc. enabled the outsourcing and offshoring of large and growing segments of blue and white collar jobs, and much increased fungibility of variously skilled labor altogether.
On that foundation, a lot of things will appear as badly constructed. Or from a different angle, given that foundation, how would you arrange for things to be well constructed?
likbez -> cm...
I would view 9/11 as a perfect cure for dot-com bust. Soon after invasion of Iraq stock market returned to almost precrash levels. War is the health of stock market. And since probably 1998 nobody cared about real economy anyway.
Also housing boom started around this period as conscious, deliberate effort of Fed to blow the bubble to cure the consequences of the crash at all costs and face the day of reckoning later (without Mr. Greenspan at the helm)
reason said...
The problem in thinking here is the equilibrium paradigm. Equilibrium NEVER exists. If there is a glut the price falls below the marginal cost/revenue point, if the seller is desperate enough it falls to zero! Ignoring disequilibrium dynamics means this obvious (it should be obvious) point is simply ignored. The assumption of general equilibrium leads to the assumption of marginal productivity driving wages. You are not worth what you produce, you are worth precisely what somewhat else would accept to do your job.
Lafayette -> reason...
I could not agree more. A Market-Economy is a dynamic in constant disequilibrium, changing positively and negatively around a mean. The mean is very rarely an "equilibrium".
likbez -> reason...
Never say never. There some stationary points at which equilibrium probably exists for a short period of time. But as the whole system has positive feedback loop built-in and is unstable by definition. So you are right in a sense that disequilibrium is the "normal" state of such a system and equilibrium is an exception.
reason said...
And the problem is more growth, is more growth is a trick we cannot always do in a finite resource technologically sophisticated world. (At least not growth as it is currently seen.) We need to start thinking in much longer term time scales. Saying that we have enough oil for 30 years, is not optimistic - it is an imminent crisis - or do we want our grandchildren to see the end of the world?
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Nov 28, 2015 | Safehaven.com
Mr. Long stated that the credit cycle is now changing, taking its signals from the business cycle. This was agreed upon by Mr. Laggner who in his own words said:
"We're at the end of the credit cycle, the whole mal-investment in shale oil...tens of billions of dollars in lost wealth"
For the future, Mr. Laggner anticipates a massive series of defaults, resulting from huge deflationary pressures and a tightening by the market place, which is basically an unintended result of constant intervention. We are looking at corporate bond defaults, sovereign defaults which will send shockwaves into the currency system.
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November 29, 2015 | Crooked Timber
In my last post on private infrastructure finance and secular stagnation, I suggested a bigger argument that
The financialization of the global economy has produced a hugely costly financial sector, extracting returns that must, in the end, be taken out of the returns to investment of all kinds. The costs were hidden during the pre-crisis bubble era, but are now evident to everyone, including potential investors. So, even massively expansionary monetary policy doesn't produce much in the way of new private investment.This isn't an original idea. The Bank of International Settlements put out a paper earlier this year arguing that financial sector growth crowds out real growth. But how does this work and what can be done about it? I'm still organizing my thoughts on this, so what I have are some ideas rather than a fully formed argument.First, if the financial sector is unproductive, how can it be so large and profitable in a market economy?
There are a few possible explanations
(a) As in the official theory of efficient markets, the financial sector is actually earning its keep by allocating capital to the most productive investments, and by spreading and managing risk. I don't see how anyone can argue this with a straight face in the light of the last 20 years of bubbles and busts.
(b) Tax evasion: the global financial sector allows corporations to greatly reduce their tax liabilities. Most of the savings in tax is captured in the financial sector itself, but the amount flowing to corporations is sufficient to offset the high costs of the modern financial sector, relative to (for example) old-style bank finance and simple corporate structures financed by debt and equity
(c) Volatility: the financialization of the economy has produced greatly increased volatility (in exchange rates, asset prices and so on). The financial sector amplifies and profits from this volatility, partly through regulatory arbitrage, and partly through entrenched and systematic fraud as in the LIBOR and Forex scandals.
(d) Political capture: The financial sector controls political outcomes in both traditional ways (political donations, highly revolving door jobs for future and former politicians) and through the ideology of market liberalism, which is perfectly designed to support policies supporting the financial sector, while discrediting policies traditionally sought by other parts of the corporate sector, such as protection for manufacturing industry. The shift to private finance for infrastructure, discussed in the previous post is part of this. The construction part of the infrastructure sector (which was always private) has suffered from the reduced flow of projects, but the finance part (previously managed through government bonds) has benefited massively.
The result of all this is that the financial sector benefits from an evolutionary strategy similar to that of an Australian eucalypt forest. Eucalypts are both highly flammable (they generate lots of combustible oil) and highly fire resistant. So eucalypt forests are subject to frequent fires which kill competing species, and allow the eucalypts to extend their range.
dsquared 11.29.15 at 1:24 pm
Surely the answer is "risk transfer". The biggest economic policy decision of the last thirty years has been the decision to de-socialise a lot of previously socially insured risks and transfer them back to the household sector (in their various capacities as workers, homeowners and consumers of healthcare). The financial sector was obviously the conduit for this policy decision. Their role is to provide insurance to the rest of society and this is what they did – in fact, they provided too much of it, with too little capital which is why they went bust, and why their bankruptcy was so disastrous (there's nothing worse than an insurer bankruptcy, because it hits you with a big loss at exactly the worst time). I think c) above is particularly unconvincing, as the biggest stylised feature of the period of financialisation was the Great Moderation – in fact, the financial sector stored up volatility that would otherwise have been experienced by other people, including the intermediation of some genuinely historically massive imbalances associated with the industrialisation of China, and stored it up until it couldn't hold any more and exploded.I also don't think LIBOR and FX fit into that pattern at all very well either. Financial systems have two kinds of problem, which is why they often have two kinds of regulators. They have prudential problems and conduct problems. Both LIBOR and FX were old-fashioned profiteering and cartel arrangements, which could happen in any industry (hey let's talk about drug pricing and indeed university tuition some time). In actual fact, as I wrote a while ago, it's only LIBOR that can really be considered a scandal – FX was very much more a case of customers who wanted the benefits of tight regulation but didn't want to pay for them, and were lucky enough to find a political moment in which the time was right for an otherwise very unpromising case.
In other words, the answer to all your questions is "leverage". That's why financial systems grew so fast, that's why they're associated with poor economic performance, and that's why they tend to show up in periods of secular stagnation – a secular stagnation is almost defined as a period during which people try to maintain their standard of living by borrowing. Of course, if the financial sector had been required to hold enough equity capital in the first place, it would never have grown so big in the first place, and we could all be enjoying the thirteenth year of the post-dot-com bust[1] in relative contentment.
[1] I am never going to shut up about this. The real estate bubble was a policy-created bubble. It was blown up in real time and intentionally, by a Federal Reserve which wanted to cushion the blow of the tech bust. If the financial sector had refused to finance it, the financial sector would have been trying to run a monetary policy directly opposed to that of the central bank.
John Quiggin 11.29.15 at 1:55 pm 2
I agree that risk transfer is a big deal. On the other hand, it's not obvious that the financial sector did a lot to insure households against most of the additional risk, or that the Great Moderation corresponded to a reduction in the volatility faced by households. On the first point, despite massive financial innovation since 1980, the set of financial instruments easily available to households hasn't changed all that much. Most obviously, there's no insurance against bad employment and wage outcomes and home equity insurance hasn't really happened either.Is what you're saying here is that, by extending a lot of credit, the financial sector allowed households to maintain consumption in the face of a permanent decline in income (at least relative to expectation)? That's an important part of the story, I agree.
The secular stagnation framing of the question leads me to think more about why investment hasn't responded to monetary policy rather than directly about households.
Eggplant 11.29.15 at 2:04 pm, 3
(e) Principle-agent problem.
(f) Implicit government backing allowing the underpricing of risk.dsquared 11.29.15 at 2:32 pm. 4
Yeah, that's my point – the massive extension of credit to households was the financial sector's role in the big policy shift. At the end of the day, although we might with the benefit of hindsight agree that "subprime mortgages with no income verification at teaser rates" were a pretty stupid product that should never have been offered, they were a brand new financial product that had never been offered to households before! Even the example you mention – "insurance against bad employment and wage outcomes" – was sort of sold, albeit that what I'm referring to here is Payment Protection Insurance in the UK, which sort of underlines that it wasn't done well or responsibly.I guess my argument here is that it's the combination of deregulation and stagnation that was necessary to create the 2000s policy disaster. But if we hadn't had the bad products we got, we'd have had something else go wrong, probably outside the regulated sector. Because the high debt levels were a policy goal (or at least, were the inevitable and forseeable consequence of trying to do demand management without fiscal policy), and as I keep saying in different contexts, you can't get to a stupid debt ratio by only doing sensible things.
The secular stagnation framing of the question leads me to think more about why investment hasn't responded to monetary policy rather than directly about households.
Isn't the answer to this just the definition of a Keynesian recession? Investment hasn't responded to monetary policy because there's no interest rate at which it makes sense to produce goods that can't be sold.
DrDick 11.29.15 at 2:32 pm 5
Capital generally, and the FIRE sector in particular, are parasitic on the economy. They provide some minimal benefits if kept strongly in check, but quickly become destructive if allowed to grow unchecked, as they have now.Eggplant 11.29.15 at 2:37 pm 6
(g) Rising inequality leading to an ever increasing savings glut, providing the financial industry with a target-rich environment.yastreblyansky 11.29.15 at 3:22 pm, 7
Dumb outsider thought, turning Eggplant @6 upside down: What about r > g? Perhaps financialization isn't so much a thing-in-itself as the mechanism through which wealth concentrates in periods of slow growth?T 11.29.15 at 3:31 pm, 8
"But if we hadn't had the bad products we got, we'd have had something else go wrong, probably outside the regulated sector."A more sophisticated version of the widely debunked theory that Fannie and Freddie blew up the housing sector by giving loans to poor people. Rule 1: It's never ever the bankers' fault. Rule 2: see Rule 1. At least d-squared has been consistent…
Or maybe there has been a systematic continuous effort to use political influence to garner rents by gutting both the regulatory and judicial constraints on their behavior. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/30/us/politics/illinois-campaign-money-bruce-rauner.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
yastreblyansky 11.29.15 at 3:35 pm, 9
Or rather through which rent-claimers concentrate wealth (@t) bringing long-term low growth.bjk 11.29.15 at 3:43 pm, 10
Which direction is financialization heading? It looks to be decreasing. The mutual fund industry is in terminal decline, losing market share to ETFs. There are fewer financial advisors today than in 2008, yet the number of millionaires has increased. Stock trading has broken a 40 year trend of increasing volumes. Electronic and exchange trading of bonds and derivatives is increasing, driving down margins. Bots have driven human traders out of jobs (Dark Pools has a good account of this). Banks are earnings low single digit returns in their trading divisions, which suggests they will be shut down if things don't improve. It looks like finance is doing a good job of shrinking itself, with a little help from Elizabeth Warren.T 11.29.15 at 4:50 pm, 16
There were several issues and arguments posed in the OP. I'm addressing this:"First, if the financial sector is unproductive, how can it be so large and profitable in a market economy?
There are a few possible explanations(a) As in the official theory of efficient markets, the financial sector is actually earning its keep by allocating capital to the most productive investments, and by spreading and managing risk. I don't see how anyone can argue this with a straight face in the light of the last 20 years of bubbles and busts."
D-squared response is of course it's the risk transfer. That flat out contradicts JQ, but d-squared is a master of the straight face. And then he proceeds - "there has been a decision to desocilaize"; "the financial sector was obviously the conduit for this policy decision"; and "the real estate bubble was a policy-created bubble."
So JQ, here's your answer of FIRE's ascendancy from an insider: You know me and my friends were standing around just doing nothin' and then these policy guys come around. Next thing ya know, we've doubled our share of GDP and put our bosses in the top 0.01%. Who woulda known? Crazy shit, huh? Hey and if anyone asks, tell 'um "risk transfer." And if they press, tell 'um "secular stagnation." In fact, tell 'um frickin' anything. It just wasn't our fault.
Rakesh Bhandari 11.29.15 at 4:51 pm, 17
I know that I shall have to read John Kay's Other People's Money at some point. I am wondering what people make of the old the then Marxist Hilferding's concept of promoters' profit as a way to understand some financial sector activity. I posted this here a few years back.Aaron Brown 11.29.15 at 5:43 pm. 18Here's his example, and I am trying to figure out to the extent that it throws light on the recent activity of Wall Street.
Start with an industrial firm with a capital of 1,000,000 marks that makes a profit of 150,000 marks with the average profit of 15 percent.
With an interest rate of 5% straight capitalization of income of 150,000 marks will have an estimated price of 3,000,000 marks (150,000/.05=3,000,000 marks)
A deduction of 20,000 marks for the various administration costs and directors fees would make the actual payment to shareholders 130,000 rather 150,000 marks
A risk premium of, say, 2% would be added to a fixed safe rate of interest of 5% in estimating the actual stock price
So what, then, is the stock price (130,000/.07)? 1,857,143 or roughly 1,900.000 marks
This 900,000 is free after deducting the initial investment of 1,000,000 marks
The balance of 900, 000 marks appears as promoters' profit which arises from the conversion of profit-bearing capital into interest bearing capital.
In 1910, Hilferding called this promoters profit, an economic category sui generis; it is earned by the promoter by selling of stocks or the securitizing of income on the capital market.
For Hilferding the investment bank, which promotes the conversion of profit-bearing to interest-bearing capital, claims the promoters profit.
The analysis seems pertinent to the securitization process today, and I would love to hear Henwood's and others' thoughts about this.
As Roubini and Mihm have pointed out, we have seen the securitization of mortgages, consumer loans, student loans, auto loans, airplane leases, revenues from forests and mines, delinquent tax liens, radio tower loans, boat loans, state revenues, the royalties of rock bands!
We have seen, in their words, an explosion in the selling of future income of dependable projected revenue streams such as rents or interest payments on mortgage payments as securities.
That securitization been driven by investors' quest for yield lift given the low rate of interest, itself the result of the global savings glut and Fed policy.
And it seems that Wall Street, with the connivance of the credit agencies, was able to appropriate value from the purchasers of securities by understating the risk premia.
The risk premium and promoters' profit are inversely correlated so there is a strong incentive to understate the former. This is what Hilferding did not say, but seems worth emphasizing today.
I sincerely do not understand your point here. I'm not arguing, just asking for clarification:(a) As in the official theory of efficient markets, the financial sector is actually earning its keep by allocating capital to the most productive investments, and by spreading and managing risk. I don't see how anyone can argue this with a straight face in the light of the last 20 years of bubbles and busts.
For one thing, I don't see that the two bubbles and one bust of 1996 – 2015 are self-evidently worse than the more numerous bubbles and busts of 1976 – 1995. You might say the 2008 brush with Great Depression outweighs the hyperinflation and multiple deep recessions of the earlier era, but certainly the Internet and housing bubbles w
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Its a generational thing. Right after WW2, many of the elite had just that epiphany that unless they have the common people behind them, they are toast. But now they are dead or dying, and their grandkids are basically once more thinking that they can go it alone. This because they have not had the required experiences that help develop the wisdom.
What Marx saw long ago, we can see today, and without relegating ourselves to his analysis, come to our own conclusions. Contradictions, summed up well by Lincoln as a house divided against itself cannot stand is just as true today. Millions of guns to protect the citizenry from tyranny have only resulted in a 1/4 million murders and 5 times as many shootings since Jan 1, 2000, some placing people in wheel chairs and other crippling gunshot afflictions, and more and more institutionalized state oppression, economic exploitation and miserable lives propped up in an alcoholic haze until the liver or brain gives out. We have more food than we know what to do with so we throw away almost as much as we eat. And we have eaten ourselves into morbid obesity, diabetes and heart disease. The contradictions abound from the kitchen table to the kitchen cabinet of the White House where there seems to be nothing passed so freely as bad advice.
The Welfare State arose from the sacrifices of the population in giving their sweat, blood and tears to defend their nation during war, to be rewarded for their sacrifices, rewards which were demands for power sharing and more in the paycheck, more benefits and more time to enjoy the life spent in a more prosperous world. It seems to me that Obamacare is not simply in death spiral all of its own making, but even more so, because it is the best attempt capitalism can produce in an America that is the most capitalist of societies down to the marrow its bones. Little competition from the Church or the social relations between nobles and subjects set for in the laws that were disestablished to free markets for commodification and money making. Money making enterprises structured the laws from slavery, to the voting franchise with little from the state to cushion any of the hardships of life in America.
Health care is the largest industry we have. It is approaching 20% of the GNP. I remember the great national freak out in the late 1970s when congress realized it was approaching 10%. Nothing seems to be stopping the costs from spiraling upward and onward. No risk of deflation here where nothing is spared to save a life, operate on some poor little afflicted child, or buy a piece of equipment the size of an office building that shoots a proton beam at cancer, one cancer cell at a time.
When Obama Care becomes a clear burden to even the democrats who can point to it now as some sort of accomplishment, and it is an accomplishment for the people who finally get to see a doctor, get into a hospital, get that operation or diagnosis that saves their lives, when even those accomplishments number in the millions, it will be part of a health care industry for which $Trillions of dollars can no longer be justified or even funded. As that financial collapse approaches, it would be better for politicians to declare the defeat of a program better rolled into one universal single payer system currently operating as Medicare, than try to reform, shore up or the old tried and true public lie, get rid of its waste and corruption.
Declare victory with Medicare as the solution and put everyone into it. The only paper work left should be each person's medical history with diagnosis and healing as the happy ending to the story.
There is a fundamental error in perception in the Western world that is so pervasive that people can't even see it. As a most basic component of a healthy society people need to be able to survive at a local community level without outside support. Only after that is taken care of should people concern themselves with luxuries, inter-community and international relations.
Welfare–not to mention other government services–can appear to have positive impacts if one only looks at their effects in isolation, however I think there is a devastating and pernicious impact on people's ability to form community bonds and have local resilience with things like welfare.
Also, let's also not forget that Americans consume far more of the earth's precious resources than any other group in the world. Welfare etc are social services that can only be funded through the world-wide looting operation of the American empire. Do these recipients of empire benefits have a moral right to share in the loot of empire? Perhaps instead of domestic welfare it would be more ethical for the American empire to provide social benefits for the indigenous peoples who are forced from their lands to work like slaves for the empire's benefit. Although admittedly if the American empire used it's loot for the benefit of the foreign peoples whose lives it destroyed then there'd probably be nothing left to spread around to the military, or to pacify and police the domestic population. So I suppose that's not a serious proposal.
Welfare etc are social services that can only be funded through the world-wide looting operation of the American empire
This is obviously not true. Unless every social democratic country in the world is considered as a piece of the American empire. And even then, I would argue that we can easily afford a generous welfare state with a small shift in priorities away from (globally destabilizing) defense spending to social productive spending on human development.
Obvious to who? America lavishes so much money on its military not only because of corruption, but also because it has the world reserve currency and is a guarantor of the safety of international shipping. These facts are inextricably linked to the America's status as the world hegemon. The empire provides order and structure, and enforces the extraction of resources from the periphery to the center. The bread and circuses are inextricably linked to the empire's military activities and trying to tease them apart will only lead to collapse of the entire system sooner than it will otherwise happen.
"Social Democratic"–now that's an interesting phrase. Did you know that Syria is a democracy, and was an extremely prosperous and well-education nation prior to 2011?
Here's a telling paragraph from the Wikipedia article about Syria:
[Dec 27, 2015] The Sneaky Way Austerity Got Sold to the Public Like Snake Oil
Notable quotes:
"... When children don't get good educations, the production of knowledge falls into private control. Power gets consolidated. The official theoretical frameworks that benefit the most powerful get locked in. ..."
"... Not only were the politicians worried about votes but also the welfare state was a way to head off a left wing revolution. ..."
"... the change began in 1976 with the election of Rockefeller-funded Jimmy Carter, who immediately launched an austerity program. Support for Keynesian economics was further eroded by the 70's stagflation which we now know was caused by Mid East oil but at the time the "left" were like deer in the headlights, with no clue what to do. ..."
"... The final nail in the coffin was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR, discrediting communism. After that, "there was no alternative" to corporate capitalism. Or more accurately, the left was slow to formulate an alternative and to this day is still struggling with an alternative as we have observed with Syriza. It's not enough to oppose austerity, you have to have a constructive plan to fix things. ..."
[Dec 24, 2015] In 2012, Greek pension funds, which were obliged under Greek law to own government bonds were hit by debt write-down and lost about 10 billion euros or roughly 60 percent of their reserves