Posts filed under ‘Bailout / Financial Crisis’
In Praise of the US Auto Industry
| Peter Klein |
The proposed bailout of GM, Ford, and Chrysler overlooks an important fact. The US has one of the most vibrant, dynamic, and efficient automobile industries in the world. It produces several million cars, trucks, and SUVs per year, employing (in 2006) 402,800 Americans at an average salary of $63,358. That’s vehicle assembly alone; the rest of the supply chain employs even more people and generates more income. It’s an industry to be proud of. Its products are among the best in the world. Their names are Toyota, Honda, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes, Hyundai, Mazda, Mitsubishi, and Subaru.
Oh, yes, there’s also a legacy industry, based in Detroit, but it’s rapidly, and thankfully, going the way of the horse-and-buggy business.
I pulled these numbers from Matthew Slaughter’s fine piece in yesterday’s WSJ, “An Auto Bailout Would Be Terrible for Free Trade,” which points out that the US is one of the the world’s largest recipient of Foreign Direct Investment and that an auto industry bailout would surely reduce the flow of FDI, at the expense of the US economy. “Ironically, proponents of a bailout say saving Detroit is necessary to protect the U.S. manufacturing base. But too many such bailouts could erode the number of manufacturers willing to invest here.” Bailouts may also spur retaliatory actions by governments in US export markets, doing further damage to free trade. In short, what the Big Three and their supporters want is the most crass form of protectionism, a blunt demand that US taxpayers, consumers, and producers fork over the cash, now and in the future, to prop up an inefficient, failing industry.
NB: In 2001 I was part of a delegation of US officials visiting Singapore in advance of negotiations over a possible bilateral free trade agreement. The issue was Singapore’s Government-Linked Enterprises (GLCs), nominally private firms partially owned by the Singaporean government. Did these links constitute a trade barrier, putting US firms doing business in Singapore at a competitive disadvantage? We interviewed US executives based in Singapore and learned that the government did not seem to offer the GLCs special favors in input or output markets (though they did benefit from a lower cost of capital). Anyway, as I read Slaughter’s piece I imagined myself as a Singaporean official visiting the US, interviewing foreign executives in the financial-services and, perhaps, automobile industries, asking if they thought US companies got special government protection. To ask this question is to answer it.
Bailout Bingo
| Peter Klein |
You’re probably familiar with Buzzword Bingo. Let’s create a version to accompany news reports, editorials, and political speeches on the financial-market and other bailouts. Keep a card with you as you read the newspaper, watch or listen to broadcast news, visit with Barney Frank, or follow the conversation at your next hoity-toity dinner party. Check off each term as you hear or read it and shout “Bingo!” when you have five in a row, vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Here’s a sample card. Please add suggestions for additional words and phrases in the comments.
| Protecting jobs | Ripple effect | Necessary intervention | Can’t afford to do nothing |
Life blood of the economy |
| Corporate greed | Market failure | Temporary relief | Decisive action | Frozen markets |
| Nonpartisan solution | Maintain competitiveness | F R E E S P A C E |
Sit idly by | Domino effect |
| No fault of their own | Stability | Public investment | Congressional authority | Too big to fail |
| Head in the sand | Conservatorship | Critical industry | Creative solutions | Public-private partnership |
All Your Firm Are Belong to Us
| Peter Klein |
Time for a little O&M poll. Which US firms or industries will be bailed out and/or nationalized next? This year we’ve had investment banks, commercial banks, insurance companies, and (coming soon) the automobile industry. Who’s next? Another financial-sector player, like student-loan packagers and resellers? More insurance companies? The steel industry? Food processing? Healthcare? Boatmakers? Perhaps professional service firms? How about Olympics organizers? Take a guess, and feel free to provide additional suggestions too in the poll or in the comments. We’re pretty far down the slippery slope; what do you think the rest of the journey will look like?
The Impotence of the Economists, Part II
| Peter Klein |
The financial-market bailout is one thing. While most economists, rightly in my view, strongly opposed the Paulson plan, one can at least imagine intelligent arguments for it. The proposed auto-industry bailout is something else entirely. Does any economically literate person support it? Industry bailouts are textbook examples of the fallacy of composition, taught in every Econ 101 class. When I teach it I use exactly this kind of example (bailing out Chrysler in 1980, bailing out the airline and insurance industries after 9/11, etc.). Saving the X industry simply harms the Y and Z industries, while substituting the political process for the market in determining the allocation of resrouces. And yet, here we go.
Along these lines, here are some sentences to ponder from David Yermack, writing in today’s WSJ:
In 1993, the legendary economist Michael Jensen gave his presidential address to the American Finance Association. Mr. Jensen’s presentation included a ranking of which U.S. companies had made the most money-losing investments during the decade of the 1980s. The top two companies on his list were General Motors and Ford, which between them had destroyed $110 billion in capital between 1980 and 1990, according to Mr. Jensen’s calculations.
I was a student in Mr. Jensen’s business-school class around that time, and one day he put those rankings on the board and shouted “J’accuse!” He wanted his students to understand that when a company makes money-losing investments, the cost falls upon all of society. Investment capital represents our limited stock of national savings, and when companies spend it badly, our future well-being is compromised. Mr. Jensen made his presentation more than 15 years ago, and even then it seemed obvious that the right strategy for GM would be to exit the car business, because many other companies made better vehicles at lower cost. . . .
Over the past decade, the capital destruction by GM has been breathtaking, on a greater scale than documented by Mr. Jensen for the 1980s.
See also: Lynne Kiesling.
What Deregulation?
| Peter Klein |
We noted previously a major flaw in the “deregulation-caused-the-financial-crisis” meme spreading rapidly throughout the MSM: namely, there wasn’t any. If I can quote from the comment section of another blog, here’s Jerry O’Driscoll making the same point:
[T]here has been no deregulation of the financial markets since 1999 (Gramm-Bliley Leach). And that act did not repeal the Glass Steagall Act of 1933, . . . but amended it (Sections 20 and 32 of GS being repealed), and some other banking statutes. Mostly the act legitimized financial market developments already in place, and provided a new regulatory structure (so much for deregulation).
I recognize that policy lags are long and variable, but Sandy [Ikeda] cites events from 1992, 1997 and 1999 [as drivers of the crisis]. He can’t cite any later because there weren’t any. Affordable housing goals go back to the 1930s and, in contemporary form to 1968-70. Again, those are really long policy lags. . . .
Finanical services remains one of the most highly regulated indsutries, perhaps second only to health care. Non-existent deregulation can’t explain the current crisis.
The policy change that occurred in the relevant time frame was the easing of monetary policy by the Greenspan Fed. From a high of 6.5% in May 2000, the Fed Funds rate was cut down to 2% in Nov. 2001 and remained there or below for 3 years. For one full year, it was at 1%. The real rate was negative for approx. 3 years. Negative real interest rates are inevitably inflationary, often causing asset bubbles.
A Silver Lining
| Peter Klein |
As I mentioned in a recent talk, one good thing to come out of the bailout disaster is the diminished reputation of St. Alan the Wise. It was fun watching the same Congressional clowns who months earlier praised the “Maestro” as the greatest Fed chair in history slap him down for failing to prevent the housing bubble. Of course, Greenspan, like these clowns, ignored the issue of credit expansion, expressing regret only that he had put “too much trust” in market forces. Ha!
Now Paulson, never too popular in the first place, is suffering a similar fate, as he abandons the Troubled Asset Relief Program — the rationale for the bailout itself — and praises Congress for giving him the broad authority to do, well, whatever the hell he wants. Oh, please, let Bernanke be next!
BTW, Bob Higgs continues to offer some of the best commentary on the disaster — the political, journalistic, and educational disaster, I mean, not the supposed economic disaster. I hope his term, “Bailout of Abominations,” catches on.
Update: The Economist puts it this way: “One of the most humbling features of the financial crisis is its ability to humiliate policymakers who, thinking that they have a bazooka in their closet, soon discover that it is a mere popgun.”
Mises Quote of the Day
| Peter Klein |
Here is Mises on entrepreneurial “understanding,” a concept distinct from quantitative prediction according to a known model. You could even call it judgment. It’s particularly germane to current economic conditions and the phalanx of economic forecasters attempting to predict how the economy will do in the coming months and years. The source is a 1956 essay, “The Plight of Business Forecasting,” reprinted in Economic Freedom and Interventionism:
Economics can only tell us that a boom engendered by credit expansion will not last. It cannot tell us after what amount of credit expansion the slump will start or when this event will occur. All that economists and other people say about these quantitative and calendar problems partakes of neither economics nor any other science. What they say in the attempt to anticipate future events makes use of specific “understanding,” the same method which is practiced by everybody in all dealings with his fellow man. Specific “understanding” has the same logical character as that which characterizes all anticipations of future events in human affairs — anticipations concerning the course of Russia’s foreign policy, religious and racial conditions in India or Algeria, ladies’ fashions in 1960, the political divisions in the U.S. Senate in 1970; and even such anticipations as the future marital relations between Mr. X and his wife, or the success in life of a boy who has just celebrated his tenth birthday. There are people who assert that psychology may provide some help in such prognostications. However that may be, it is not our task to examine this problem. We have merely to establish the fact that forecasts about the course of economic affairs cannot be considered scientific.
Today’s Episode of “The Onion or Reality?”
| Peter Klein |
White House to banks: Start lending now
By Jennifer Loven, AP White House CorrespondentWhite House tells banks getting federal aid to quit hoarding money and start lending it
[ . . . ]
“What we’re trying to do is get banks to do what they are supposed to do, which is support the system that we have in America. And banks exist to lend money,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said.
Those silly banks; first they made too many loans, causing the subprime crisis, now they’re making too few! (Via Manuel Lora.)
Let’s review: Some banks made bad loans, and some banks bought securities tied to these loans. When the bad loans went sour, some banks failed. Instead of letting those banks fail, freeing up scarce resources to flow to other banks and financial institutions, the government tried to prop up the entire banking system. Now, when the propped-up banks decide to hoard their taxpayer-provided cash, the government wants to make them lend — to whom, it doesn’t matter. Just lend, baby, lend! A loan, you see, is just like any other loan. All investments are the same. All banks are the same. No need to separate the good ones from the bad ones. We Are the World!
A Billion Here, A Trillion There
| Peter Klein |
How expensive is the bailout? Where will the money come from?
Consider the numbers: $29 billion for the Bear Stearns mess; $700 billion to buy spoiled assets; $200 billion to buy stock in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; an $85 billion loan to AIG insurance; another $37.8 billion for AIG; and $250 billion for bank stocks. Hundreds of billions in guarantees to back up money market funds and to guarantee bank deposits. And who knows what expenses are still to come. . . .
How will the U.S. pay for it all? Answer: by borrowing — raising worries about how the country’s ballooning annual budget deficits and aggregating debt will affect the economy and financial markets. Some guidelines, such as interest rates and the ratio of debt and deficits to gross domestic product, suggest the new debt will be digested easily. But some experts think those guidelines are misleading, warning that obligations are piling up like tinder on a forest floor.
“This kind of accounting that the government does — if they did it in the private sector they would go to jail,” says Kent Smetters, a professor of insurance and risk management at Wharton.
From Knowldge@Wharton, which reminds us that there’s plenty more to come — a probable bailout of Chrysler and G.M., for instance. And who knows what else. Of course, the US government now has a $10.5 trillion national debt. “To economists, the most frightening fact is that the enormous cost of today’s financial rescues is just a drop in the bucket.”
Tooth-Fairy Economics
| Peter Klein |
Art Laffer offers this succinct summary of Bernankeconomics:
No one likes to see people lose their homes when housing prices fall and they can’t afford to pay their mortgages; nor does any one of us enjoy watching banks go belly-up for making subprime loans without enough equity. But the taxpayers had nothing to do with either side of the mortgage transaction. If the house’s value had appreciated, believe you me the overleveraged homeowner and the overly aggressive bank would never have shared their gain with taxpayers. Housing price declines and their consequences are signals to the market to stop building so many houses, pure and simple.
But here’s the rub. Now enter the government and the prospects of a kinder and gentler economy. To alleviate the obvious hardships to both homeowners and banks, the government commits to buy mortgages and inject capital into banks, which on the face of it seems like a very nice thing to do. But unfortunately in this world there is no tooth fairy. And the government doesn’t create anything; it just redistributes. Whenever the government bails someone out of trouble, they always put someone into trouble, plus of course a toll for the troll. Every $100 billion in bailout requires at least $130 billion in taxes, where the $30 billion extra is the cost of getting government involved.
If you don’t believe me, just watch how Congress and Barney Frank run the banks. If you thought they did a bad job running the post office, Amtrak, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the military, just wait till you see what they’ll do with Wall Street.
Want to Understand the Financial Crisis?
| Lasse Lien |
This clip will tell you what you need to know.
HT: Erik Døving
What Credit Crunch?
| Peter Klein |
I’ve talked before about the wild claims about credit markets being “frozen,” sound investment projects that can’t be funded, worthy borrowers who can’t get loans, and all the rest, claims that are totally unsupported by theory or empirical evidence. Nobody, least of all Paulson and Bernanke (or their ostensibly free-market supporters, such as Mankiw and Cowen), has bothered to provide any data to support these claims. A new paper by three Minneapolis Fed economists, “Four Myths About the Financial Crisis of 2008,” shows that the wild claims are virtually all false. The data show, for example, that despite a rise in inter-bank lending rates, actual lending between banks is about the same as before, and lending between banks and firms and individuals has risen, not fallen, during the crisis. (Loan volume is a better indicator than interest rates, which reflect default risk.) This analysis is based on publicly available data, the same sources I pointed to before. Why is nobody paying attention? (Thanks to Mike Moffatt for the link.)
Update: At least one Marginal Revolution blogger gets it.
Update 2: Bob Murphy writes (October 30):
I think the authors did a really bad job of it. Some other economists ridiculed it, and I think their criticism is valid. In particular, the Minn Fed paper shows charts that could just as well have come from Paulson showing why his interventions saved the day.
For example, see this at the Economist.com blog: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2008/10/analysis.cfm . . . .
So the problem is that the Minn. Fed authors didn’t do a very good job in picking their charts, I think. If you instead do year/year ones, then things look a lot better for the “there’s no crisis” argument: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/10/four-myths.html
Even though Mark Thoma (in the link above) doesn’t agree, I think if you look at the charts in his post, you’ll see some pretty amazing things. For example, even *real estate loans* have had yr/yr growth rates in excess of 5% this whole time. I.e. the “credit crunch” just meant a slowdown in their rate of growth.
Philosophy: Who Needs It?
| Peter Klein |
When Greenspan was appointed Fed chair in 1987 the New York Times Magazine ran a lengthy profile noting, among Greenspan’s other eccentricities, that he was a follower of Ayn Rand, generally regarded as a strong advocate of laissez faire. But Greenspan is doctrinaire only “at a high philosophical level,” wrote Leonard Silk, reassuringly. Murray Rothbard, who knew Greenspan in the 1950s, when both were friends with Rand, got a kick out of that line:
There is one thing, however, that makes Greenspan unique, and that sets him off from his Establishment buddies. And that is that he is a follower of Ayn Rand, and therefore “philosophically” believes in laissez-faire and even the gold standard. But as the New York Times and other important media hastened to assure us, Alan only believes in laissez-faire “on the high philosophical level.” In practice, in the policies he advocates, he is a centrist like everyone else because he is a “pragmatist.” . . .
Thus, Greenspan is only in favor of the gold standard if all conditions are right: if the budget is balanced, trade is free, inflation is licked, everyone has the right philosophy, etc. In the same way, he might say he only favors free trade if all conditions are right: if the budget is balanced, unions are weak, we have a gold standard, the right philosophy, etc. In short, never are one’s “high philosophical principles” applied to one’s actions. It becomes almost piquant for the Establishment to have this man in its camp.
Today Tyler Cowen, writing on Anna Schwartz’s very good interview with the WSJ, calls Bernanke a person “with libertarian sympathies,” which I find puzzling, since I can’t recall any evidence of this sympathy in Bernanke’s writings or policy actions. Perhaps he is a sympathetic libertarian “at a high philosophical level.”
Blame Basel, Not “Deregulation”
| Peter Klein |
Says Charles Calorimis in the Saturday WSJ. First, as Calorimis points out, there wasn’t any deregulation. (Jacob Weisberg, what part of this can’t you understand?) Indeed, by any reasonable measure, government has grown more under George W. Bush than under any administration since LBJ — after this month, perhaps since FDR. Specifically, Calomiris notes:
Financial deregulation for the past three decades consisted of the removal of deposit interest-rate ceilings, the relaxation of branching powers, and allowing commercial banks to enter underwriting and insurance and other financial activities. Wasn’t the ability for commercial and investment banks to merge (the result of the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed part of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act) a major stabilizer to the financial system this past year? Indeed, it allowed Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch to be acquired by J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America, and allowed Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to convert to bank holding companies to help shore up their positions during the mid-September bear runs on their stocks.
Even more to the point, subprime lending, securitization and dealing in swaps were all activities that banks and other financial institutions have had the ability to engage in all along. There is no connection between any of these and deregulation. On the contrary, it was the ever-growing Basel Committee rules for measuring bank risk and allocating capital to absorb that risk (just try reading the Basel standards if you don’t believe me) that failed miserably. The Basel rules outsourced the measurement of risk to ratings agencies or to the modelers within the banks themselves. Incentives were not properly aligned, as those that measured risk profited from underestimating it and earned large fees for doing so.
That ineffectual, Rube Goldberg apparatus was, of course, the direct result of the politicization of prudential regulation by the Basel Committee, which was itself the direct consequence of pursuing “international coordination” among countries, which produced rules that work politically but not economically.
Update: Here’s Larry White on the phantom deregulation.
The Impotence of the Economists
| Peter Klein |
My friends in sociology don’t like being ignored by politicians and by the general public. Well, one thing we’ve learned over the last several weeks is that academic economics, too, has virtually no influence on public policy. It’s increasingly clear that the majority of academic economists oppose, often strongly, the AIG rescue, the Paulson plan, the Fed’s move into the commercial-paper market, the Treasury’s acquisition of equity stakes in large banks, and the new round of financial-market regulations that’s just around the corner. Even Greg Mankiw, who sort-of favors the bailout, worries that his pal Ben hasn’t worked hard enough to convince his fellow academic economists.
What do we learn from all this? That economists are poor communicators? That economics is an inherently difficult subject? Or that politicians and special-interest groups willfully ignore what economics teaches about scarcity, tradeoffs, incentives, and the general welfare?
Surely the poor state of economics education plays some role. I’m not an admirer of Paul Krugman’s newspaper columns, but I respect the fact that he’s willing to write for the general public. (If only his columns had some economics in them!) Very few elite economists concern themselves with public education. Ultimately, however, the blame rests with politicians — that uniquely vile breed of humanity — and the special interests they serve. Maybe Albert Jay Nock had it right after all. Economists keep thinking, writing, and teaching, not because anybody in power is listening, but in hope that somewhere out there is a Remnant, however small, keeping the flame alive.
Today’s Bailout Links
| Peter Klein |
Ok, so let me get this straight. Credit got all constipated from banks’ misguided feast on crappy assets. My thought (see, especially, the most recent posts in this archive) was that maybe bank managers need better incentives.
I guess I must have been wrong, because the government is now putting a quarter trillion in non-voting stock. Well, that’s one way to fix the misalignment of manager-shareholder incentives — undermine the shareholders’ incentives too.
The Banks get below cost capital grants. Loans would cost 11 to 12 percent. The government gives them cash at 5 percent for five years and 10 percent thereafter with optional repayment; it is senior preferred stock. Large banks cumulate foregone dividends on the preferred; small banks do not. Existing shareholders still get dividends at past levels (no increases) and the government cannot vote any of its stock. Why ever pay it back? . . .
Lehman, J.P. Morgan and AIG look like AAA suckers. They paid dearly for their capital infusions. Greenberg, the ex-CEO of AIG and a major shareholder, is, sensibly, asking the government to renegotiate the AIG bailout package. The lesson for future crises? Stall, stall, stall.
Peter Schiff (via Karen):
After supposedly bailing out the fat cats on Wall Street, no politician wants to be accused of evicting struggling families. Once you understand this, all of your anxiety should melt away. Why pay your mortgage if foreclosure is off the table, and if you know that lower payments, and possibly a reduced loan amount, would result? A tarnished a credit rating is a small price to pay for such a benefit.
Unfortunately, this boon will not extend to those foolish individuals who either made large down payments or resisted the temptation of cashing out equity. The large amount of home equity built up by these suckers, I mean homeowners, means that in the case of default foreclosure remains a financially attractive option. As a result, these loans will be much less likely to be turned over to the government.
Humorous Headline of the Day
| Peter Klein |
OK, it’s bailout related, so the humor is macabre, but here goes, courtesy of the Financial Times:
Iceland in emergency talks to prevent bank meltdown
When even the ice is melting, it’s getting serious.
More Bailout Humor
| Peter Klein |
In dark times, sometimes all you can do is laugh.
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Strange Bedfellows
| Peter Klein |
One of the interesting aspects of this week’s House vote on the Paulson plan was the coalitions it generated. The Treasury Secretary, the Fed Chair, and leaders of both the Democratic and Republican sides stood hand-in-hand to urge lawmakers to support the bailout. Conservative Republican and liberal Democratic members joined forces to defeat it. What gives? Larry White points to ideology: “Republicans who voted no didn’t like the fact that $700 billion would be taken from taxpayers. . . . Democrats who voted no didn’t like the fact that it would be going to Wall Street.” Maybe, but I prefer Gordon Smith’s suggestion:
Anthony Ha uses the data at MapLight.org (a website dedicated to “illuminating the connection” between money and politics) to tell another familiar political story. Looking at this page, Anthony observes:
Overall, bailout supporters received an average of 54 percent more in campaign contributions from banks and securities than bailout opponents over the last five years. The disparity also held true if you look at individual parties. In fact, the 140 Democrats who voted for the bailout received almost twice as much money from banks and securities as the 95 Democrats who voted against it. (The difference was closer to 50 percent for Republicans.)
Does anybody have data that would permit some quick-and-dirty analysis, say a logistic regression of the House votes as a function of legislator and district characteristics, contributions from the commercial and investment banking industries, and other interest-group variables?
I’m From the Government, and I’m Here to Make You Some Money
| Peter Klein |
I’ve noted before how most commentators on the financial crisis are ignoring political economy. Virtually everyone, with the exception of the good folks at Mises.org, The Beacon, and a few other sites, treats Paulson, Bernanke, bank regulators, members of Congress, and other principals as the benevolent dictators of neoclassical welfare economics. (This is true even of people you’d think might know something about public choice.) But it’s impossible to analyze the current situation without reference to special interests — not only those whose actions are responsible for the current mess, but also those taking advantage of the situation to rewrite the rules and increase their authority.
One example: A particularly foolish (and dangerous) meme working its way through Washington and the surrounding punditocracy is the idea that the Paulson or modified Paulson plan isn’t really a $700 billion bailout. It’s an asset purchase, the argument goes, not a transfer payment; the Treasury buys $700 billion of bad securities, holds them, and sells them later, once market conditions improve. Maybe the Treasury can sell these assets for, say, $500 billion, so the net cost to the taxpayer is only $200 billion. Heck, if prices rise enough, taxpayers may even make money on the deal! (That’s what the junior senator from Missouri said today. Plenty of clever-silly people are saying this kind of thing too.)
The scenario is pure fantasy. Think of it this way. Treasury gets the $700 billion by borrowing (say, from the Chinese) or through increased tax revenue. Suppose the value of these assets really does rise to $500 billion, and the Treasury sells them back to investors. What will the US government do then — return the 500 billion to taxpayers? Does anyone seriously think Congress would cut taxes or offer rebates to give that money back? Not on your life. Congress will simply take that $500 billion and spend it on new programs. The Paulson plan represents an increase in government expenditures of $700 billion, period. Joe and Jane taxpayer will never get a penny of that $700 billion back, no matter what happens to asset prices.
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