War leads to prosperity!…Think again.

Analysis & Commentary, Back to the basics, Deficit Death Spiral, Deflation-Inflation-Stagflation, Deleveraging, Dismal Science-Ignorant Scientists?, Economic Analysis Isn't Science, Insolvency, Integrity and Responsibility, Is The Market Rally Real?, It Is Nice To Be Part of the Elite!, It Is Supposed to be a Republic!, It starts with a foundation, Let's Call What It Is - DEPRESSION, Moral Hazard, Negative Cash Flow, Obama Bingo, Obama's Hypocrisy, Our phony middle class, Patience is a virtue...Delusion is a vice, Political Chaos, Small Business-Bedrock of America, Smaller Can Be Better, Socialism, TARP fruit loops, Taxes, Taxes and Taxes, The American Financial Oligarchy, The Arrogance of Power, The Consequences of Greed, The Democrats Blew It Again, The End of American Capitalism As We Know It? - Discuss, The excellent adventures of Ben Bernanke, The Importance of Strategic Planning, The Inherent Disorder of Empires, The Intrusion of UNLAWFUL Authority, The New American Socialism, The Obama OMG magic factory, The Sorry State Of American Manufacturing, The Suffering Poor, Unemployment Catastrophe, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors, Unintended Consequences, US Trade Imbalance, USA Is the New Japan, Wage Deflation, Watch The China Market, We Are All Cooked, We Have Become Beggars To The World, Who Guarantees the Guarantor?-You Do!, Who owns Congress-Still! No Responses »

Sep 122010

The Nobel Prize committee has never withdrawn a prize. It might want to consider it. In Tuesday’s New York Times, prizewinner in economics, Paul Krugman reveals either that he knows nothing about economics…or that there is nothing worth knowing in it. We’re beginning to think it’s the latter.

“From an economic point of view,” he writes, “World War II was, above all, a burst of deficit-financed government spending, on a scale that would never have been approved otherwise. Deficit spending created an economic boom – and the boom laid the foundation for long-run prosperity….”

In the 1938 US elections, voters showed what they thought of the New Deal; Democrats lost 70 seats in the House. Then as now, the public had lost faith in public spending, says Krugman. Nearly two out of three of those polled said they were opposed to stimulus efforts. Roosevelt buckled under the pressure; he drew back from further spending to fight the slump.

Thank God for WWII! No one opposes military spending in time of war. Krugman made his position clear in 2008 in his New York Times blog.

“The fact is that war is, in general, expansionary for the economy, at least in the short run. World War II, remember, ended the Great Depression.”

According to this line of thinking, the best form of stimulus spending is money spent on the military. It creates consumer demand without creating consumer supply. Consumer prices rise; people spend. The slump is soon over.

But if WWII helped the US economy, think what it must have done for Japan; proportionally, its stimulus efforts dwarfed those of the US…and began much earlier. Just this week, Ichiro Ozawa, running for prime minister of Japan, vowed to take “every measure” to lower the yen and promised a stimulus package more than twice as big as the current program. He was just following in the footsteps of Japan’s leaders from the ’30s. It was “economic security” they said they were after. And they thought they could get it by central planning and government spending. Military spending rose from 31% of the budget in the early ’30s to nearly 50% five years later. By the early ’40s it was around 70% and nearly 100% later on. Deficits and debt soared.

Did that create a boom? You bet it did. Japan was the first nation to get out of the global slump. It boomed…and boomed…and ka-boomed. When it came to warships, planes, and soldiers, Japan was soon among the richest nations in the world. Yes, Americans had more electric fans, automobiles, central heating, aspirin, ice cream, and the rest of the paraphernalia of civilized life at the time. In the mid-’30s, the US produced 40 times as many autos per person as did Japan. Even during the Great Depression, the US out-produced Japan by a factor of 7 and its workers earned 10-times as much money.

Economists can’t even measure real prosperity, let alone fiddle it. So they put on the GDP and employment numbers the way a bald man puts on a cheap wig. It makes him look ridiculous and fraudulent, but it’s the best he can do. Unemployment disappears in a war economy. Japan put a million men in uniform. Two million more were part-time reservists. Those who weren’t in the army were put to work building tanks and planes. By 1941, Japan could produce 10,000 planes a year. If you were a swallow you wouldn’t want to build your nest in Japan’s factory chimneys; they belched smoke night and day.

And talk about fiscal stimulus! Krugman would have loved it – stimulus unfettered by real money or even a casual regard for real prosperity. Takahashi Korekiyo was known as the “Japanese Keynes.” Gillian Tett notes in The Financial Times that he was assassinated in 1936 after he came to his senses and tried to bring state finances under control. He was done in by army officers who did not want the stimulus to stop. Not that we’re being judgmental about it. As far as we know, the quality of central banking could probably be improved by an occasional assassination.

Takahashi wasn’t the first. Before him Junnosuke Inoue had held out for the gold standard and balanced budgets. He was out of office by 1931 and out of luck in 1932, when he was murdered. The gold-backed yen was abolished the day he left office. Then, public spending, deficits, central planning, debt, and inflation ran wild. By 1939, the Japanese were spending $5 million a day on their war with China – a huge sum for the Japanese at the time.

Was the economy improved by all this spending? No, it was perverted…hammered into a grotesque imposter – a parody of a real economy. Most of the nation’s resources were put to work building things almost no one wanted. Then, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the stimulus efforts were redoubled. Rations were reduced further. Working hours were extended. What few consumer items were available were three times as expensive at the end of the war as they had been when it began. Men were conscripted into factories and the army. Women were expected not only to make the tanks, but to join the home-guard and prepare themselves to repulse the American invaders with sharpened bamboo sticks. What a marvelous economy – operating at full capacity and full employment until General MacArthur finally put it out of its misery.

You say Obama; I say Ozawa! You say boom; I say ka-boom!

By Bill Bonner

The Committee to Defraud the World

A Moral Question - Not A Political One, A Shareholder-Not Just a "Stakeholder", A Time To Repent, AIG and all that....., Analysis & Commentary, Bilderbergers 1 USA 0, Collateral Damage, Coming Social Unrest, Consumption Ran the Old Economy, Coup d'etat in America, Death of the Dollar, Deflation-Inflation-Stagflation, Devaluation, Did they ever hear of GAAP?, Dismal Science-Ignorant Scientists?, Economic Analysis Isn't Science, Even the Terminator Can't Help California, Goldman: Underwriter or Undertaker?, Greenspan is kind of stupid, Insolvency, It Is Supposed to be a Republic!, Jacksonian Democracy, Let's Call What It Is - DEPRESSION, Moral Hazard, No Bank Is Indispensable, Obama's Hypocrisy, Our phony middle class, Patience is a virtue...Delusion is a vice, Small Business-Bedrock of America, Smaller Can Be Better, Social Security Time bomb, Socialism, TARP fruit loops, The American Financial Oligarchy, The Arrogance of Power, The Consequences of Greed, The End of American Capitalism As We Know It? - Discuss, The excellent adventures of Ben Bernanke, The Financial Elite, The Importance of Strategic Planning, The Inherent Disorder of Empires, The Intrusion of UNLAWFUL Authority, The Judeo-Christian Political Coalition, The New American Socialism, The Obama OMG magic factory, The Sorry State Of American Manufacturing, The Suffering Poor, Those Quarky Accounting Rules, Time For A New Third Party, Truth In Charity, Unemployment Catastrophe, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors, Unintended Consequences, USA Is the New Japan, Wage Deflation, We Have Become Beggars To The World, Who Guarantees the Guarantor?-You Do!, Who owns Congress-Still! No Responses »

Aug 012010

To say now that ‘No one knew’ or ‘I was mistaken’ or ‘I was just doing as I was told’ is another in a series of lies and deceptions that have supported one of the greatest frauds in the history of the world.

But this is not history. This episode of fraud is still playing itself out now. And to fail to understand the depth and breadth of this madness is to place oneself in peril, and in the power of those who are twisting the Western economic and political system even now to satisfy their lust for wealth and power. You are only successful if you can keep what you kill.

Glass-Steagall fell after a decade long campaign involving hundreds of millions in lobbyist money spread lavishly around the Congress, led by Sanford Weil of Citibank, supported by key banking and political figures in the Congress and at the Fed. It involved Senator Phil Gramm, who helped to put a stake in the heart of the financial regulatory process under the Reagan free markets banner, and who recently said the problem is that the middle class were a bunch of whiners. As did his wife Wendy, who as the chairperson of the CFTC had exempted Enron from regulatory oversight, and then left to take a position there on its board of directors.

Like the Mortgage Backed Securities scandal it involved surprisingly few principal players, like Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, who used their power and influence to silence and ostracize critics, and promote a climate of reckless disregard for the public trust under the meme of ‘efficient markets’ and deregulation. This might have been an innocent policy error if it did not involve premeditated theft on a massive scale, followed by cover ups, denials, and a control fraud that exists even today.

But it also involved literally thousands of collaborators and enablers, from mainstream media people, economists, analysts, and other thought leaders to politicians and regulators who saw that it was to their advantage to at least passively support this scheme which they knew very well was a fairy tale, a fraud, class warfare by a new name, but were able to hide their own guilty consciences behind self-serving rationalization and the shield of plausible deniability.

History, and hopefully the justice system, will sort this all out. It is difficult, even now, to get one’s mind around the enormity of it. This is its most powerful weapon. Who could be such monsters, so amoral, so destructively sociopathic? Future generations will regard it as an episode of madness, driven by a few people in a tight circle of self-reinforcing thought, people with remarkably similar cultural and educational backgrounds, driven by a consuming lust for power, that were able to dupe and delude an entire nation made vulnerable by propaganda, a co-opted press, and apathy.

In the meanwhile all the great mass of people can do is to watch, and wait, and seek to protect themselves from these ravening wolves grown increasingly desperate, as their arrogance comes to a tragic fall. They can vote out incumbents, but the parties choose the candidates, and too often they resemble competing crime families of special interests more than pillars of a representative government, saying one thing to get elected and doing another thing once in office.

This is the approach of trouble when hubris is at its height, and the few feel they have everything to gain and nothing to lose, if only they can gain more power, and necessarily become more ruthless. They are trapped in a cycle of fear and greed. The fear provokes the lies and the cover ups, but the greed promotes the extension of the fraud and the theft, requiring even more lies and cover ups. The operative word is ‘over reach,’ in a classic late stage Ponzi scheme. This will undoubtedly add to the confusion as the truth is assaulted by the big lie.

The last vestiges of polite society are often shed as the downfall reaches it final conclusion, at the end, when all is revealed, at last. And so there will be great danger.

Jesse’ s Cafe http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2010/07/committee-to-defraud-world.html

Damning Evidence

AIG and all that....., Unindicted Co-Conspiritors No Responses »

Jul 012010

The New York Times has unearthed a damning tidbit about the bailout of AIG:

When the government began rescuing it from collapse in the fall of 2008 with what has become a $182 billion lifeline, A.I.G. was required to forfeit its right to sue several banks — including Goldman, Société Générale, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch — over any irregularities with most of the mortgage securities it insured in the precrisis years.

Time to Investigate Blankfein and Paulson (More AIG Shenanigans Edition)

Jun 052010

I’ve seen some eye-poppin’, credulity-stretchin’ accounts in my time. The report “The Budgetary Impact and Subsidy Costs of the Federal Reserve’s Actions During the Financial Crisis,” just released by the Congressional Budget Office, ranks with the most extreme. It claims that the budgetary cost (which corresponds roughly to expected losses) of the Fed rescue facilities launched during the financial crisis is approximately $21 billion. Moreover, its peculiar formulation (”fair value subsidies”) conveys the misleading impression that this was the extent of the central bank’s support to the financial services industry.

In a (weak) defense to the CBO, my understanding (and readers are welcome to correct me) is that the office is tasked to execute analyses as they are framed. In other words, if the CBO is asked to opine on a particular matter, it has to deal with only the questions posed to it. It is not permitted to tweak the inquiry or broaden the focus to provide more insight.

The closest thing to a statement of scope and objectives comes in the Preface and it is remarkably thin. The most important remark:

The report also presents estimates of the risk-adjusted (or fair-value) subsidies that the Federal Reserve provided to financial institutions through its emergency programs.

CBO Issues Fed-Flattering Propaganda

Howdy, Neighbor!

A State of Distress, A Time To Repent, Collateral Damage, Coming Social Unrest, Coup d'etat in America, Greenspan is kind of stupid, Insolvency, Let's Call What It Is - DEPRESSION, Our phony middle class, Patience is a virtue...Delusion is a vice, Political Chaos, Ron Paul Stands Tall, Stress Test Mess, Subsidiarity, TARP fruit loops, The Austrian School of Economics, The Consequences of Greed, The Democrats Blew It Again, The Economics of Schumpeter, The End of American Capitalism As We Know It? - Discuss, The excellent adventures of Ben Bernanke, The Financial Elite, The Geithner Resignation Watch, The Inherent Disorder of Empires, The Intrusion of UNLAWFUL Authority, The New American Socialism, Those Quarky Accounting Rules, Unemployment Catastrophe, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors, We Are All Cooked, We Are All Guilty, We Have Become Beggars To The World, Who owns Congress-Still! No Responses »

Apr 102010

When asked what advice he would give to residents of Ashtabula County Ohio because of cutbacks in official law enforcement budgets, Judge Alfred Mackey said they should:

“arm themselves. Be very careful, be vigilant, get in touch with your neighbors, because we’re going to have to look after each other.”

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2010/04/ohio-judge-tells-residents-to-arm.html

There is a thesis that the banks are in control of the Fed and as a result have gained control over the issuance of the currency of the United States. This thesis is based on the fact that the shares of the Federal Reserve Bank are held by these private banks. Does that mean that the private banks own the Fed?

The short answer is yes, but it is a hollow ownership with very restricted rights. This ownership basically exists to give credence to the claim that the fed is independent. It is appropriately described as follows in the Fed’s own publication “Federal Reserve System Purposes & Functions”:

The holding of this stock, however, does not carry with it the control and financial interest conveyed to holders of common stock in for-profit organizations. It is merely a legal obligation of Federal Reserve membership, and the stock may not be sold or pledged as collateral for loans. Member banks receive a 6 percent dividend annually on their stock. (p. 12)

This is exactly the manner in which Special Purpose Vehicles (or Special Purpose Entities) are created in the corporate world. There is usually a promoter who does not wish to be seen to own an entity but who wishes to derive some benefit from the existence of such an entity. Usually, overt ownership would adversely impact the presentation of the promoter’s financial reporting.

The authorities and regulators, including the Fed, are very aware of these Special Purpose structures, as is the accounting profession. Rules have been devised and implemented to assess any such arrangement in order to establish its true nature. It is therefore appropriate to assess the Fed’s independence — or, alternatively, interdependence — according to the very rules that it uses to assess Special Purpose Entities. First, let’s draw the simple ownership structure.

Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of accounting principles would know that ownership of an entity without control over that entity requires further investigation. Consolidation of a group of companies can become complex when ownership and control are split. The GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) method in this case disregards ownership and focuses on control.

For example, a right to appoint the majority of the board of directors even in the absence of ownership would trigger a consolidation of that entity. Thus the controller and the entity would be seen as part of a group and collectively as a single interdependent consolidated entity. It follows that the simple structure of the Federal Reserve Banks drawn above is a split structure, where “ownership” is of limited significance and “control” must be established. Control will tell us whether the entities are independent or interdependent.

All regulation targets “control,” not just the legal form of ownership. Accounting principles of consolidation have evolved from Special Purpose Vehicles, to Special Purpose Entities, and very lately — with the revision in June 2009 for implementation in January 2010 of Financial Accounting Standard 46(R) (“FIN 46(R)”) — they have evolved into the concept of a “Variable Interest Entity.”

In effect, the test of whether one organization is a “Variable Interest Entity” controlled by another organization is similar to a DNA test to determine whether two people are members of the same family. FIN 46 (R) defines a “variable interest” as follows:

The enterprise with a variable interest or interests that provide the enterprise with a controlling financial interest in a variable interest entity will have both of the following characteristics:

a. The power to direct the activities of a variable interest entity that most significantly impact the entity’s economic performance

b. The obligation to absorb losses of the entity that could potentially be significant to the variable interest entity or the right to receive benefits from the entity that could potentially be significant to the variable interest entity. (par. 1A)[1]

The first test is to check for “the power to direct the activities.” Who exactly holds that power?

Here we turn to the Federal Reserve Act, which instructs the Regional Federal Reserve Banks to each elect their own board of directors, of which the chairman and vice chairman of the regional board will be appointed by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The regional boards must have nine directors in three classes of three each (A, B and C directors): three A directors chosen by the stockholders; three B directors to represent the “public”; and three C directors to be appointed by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System will appoint the chairman and vice chairman from the ranks of the three C directors.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System seems to have powers that could indicate “control,” including the appointment of the power positions of chairman and vice chairman. However, we must also ask whether the regional boards have the independent powers normally associated with ownership and control, or if their powers are restricted and controlled in any manner.

The answer again lies in the Federal Reserve Act:

Said board of directors shall administer the affairs of said bank fairly and impartially and without discrimination in favor of or against any member bank or banks and may, subject to the provisions of law and the orders of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, extend to each member bank such discounts, advancements, and accommodations as may be safely and reasonably made with due regard for the claims and demands of other member banks, the maintenance of sound credit conditions, and the accommodation of commerce, industry, and agriculture. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System may prescribe regulations further defining within the limitations of this Act the conditions under which discounts, advancements, and the accommodations may be extended to member banks. (section 3, par.

The regional boards are limited in their ability to perform the primary functions of the Regional Federal Reserve Bank by the terms of the act and by the control of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. It is clear from the Federal Reserve Act that control does not rest in the Regional Federal Reserve Boards, nor are they independent, but they take instruction and are controlled by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

It is now appropriate to update the simplified structure drawn above, in order to add these two steps of control.

The question of who has control is not yet resolved; the nature of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System must be investigated next. Is the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System an independent body or beholden to another entity?

The “Purposes & Functions” document describes the nature of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System:

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is a federal government agency. The Board is composed of seven members, who are appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The Chairman and the Vice Chairman of the Board are also appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The nominees to these posts must already be members of the Board or must be simultaneously appointed to the Board. (p. 4)

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is a federal government agency. The power to appoint its members, chairman, and vice chairman is vested in the president of the United States, with the Senate having a veto power over any appointment.

The first requirement for a “variable interest,” “the power to direct the activities” is fulfilled: the federal government at the presidential level holds “the power to direct activities.”

The final version of the structure of control is as follows:

The next requirement that must be met for a “variable interest” is either an “obligation to absorb losses” or a “right to receive benefits.”

I would argue that the Fed’s right to create currency, together with the vested interests of federal government, are more than sufficient to infer an “obligation to absorb losses.” The Federal Reserve Act adds a complication to this argument by holding the shareholders responsible to the extent of their stockholding for the liabilities of the Regional Federal Reserve Banks. However, the “obligation to absorb losses” is not a requirement that needs to be met so long as the alternative, the “right to receive benefits” requirement, is met. Since the obligation is not clear cut, it is better to concentrate on the right. Note that neither the obligation nor the right need to be absolute.

Again we can turn to the two sources, the Federal Reserve Act and the Fed publication “Federal Reserve System Purposes & Functions” for guidance.

Federal Reserve Act:

Dividends and Surplus Fund of Reserve Banks

(a)

After all necessary expenses of a Federal reserve bank have been paid or provided for, the stockholders of the bank shall be entitled to receive an annual dividend of 6 percent on paid-in capital stock.

The entitlement to dividends under subparagraph (A) shall be cumulative.

That portion of net earnings of each Federal reserve bank which remains after dividend claims under subparagraph (1)(A) have been fully met shall be deposited in the surplus fund of the bank.

(b) Transfer for fiscal year 2000.

The Federal reserve banks shall transfer from the surplus funds of such banks to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for transfer to the Secretary of the Treasury for deposit in the general fund of the Treasury, a total amount of $3,752,000,000 in fiscal year 2000.

Of the total amount required to be paid by the Federal reserve banks under paragraph (1) for fiscal year 2000, the Board shall determine the amount each such bank shall pay in such fiscal year.

During fiscal year 2000, no Federal reserve bank may replenish such bank’s surplus fund by the amount of any transfer by such bank under paragraph (1). (section 7)

“Federal Reserve System Purposes & Functions”:

The income of the Federal Reserve System is derived primarily from the interest on U.S. government securities that it has acquired through open market operations. Other major sources of income are the interest on foreign currency investments held by the System; interest on loans to depository institutions; and fees received for services provided to depository institutions, such as check clearing, funds transfers, and automated clearinghouse operations.

After it pays its expenses, the Federal Reserve turns the rest of its earnings over to the U.S. Treasury. About 95 percent of the Reserve Banks’ net earnings have been paid into the Treasury since the Federal Reserve System began operations in 1914. (Income and expenses of the Federal Reserve Banks from 1914 to the present are included in the Annual Report of the Board of Governors.) In 2003, the Federal Reserve paid approximately $22 billion to the Treasury. (p. 11)

The statement that “about 95% of the Reserve Banks’ net earnings have been paid into the Treasury since the Federal Reserve System began operations in 1914″ says it well enough. It is an irrefutable fact that the federal government possesses the overwhelming “right to receive benefits.”

The outright, indisputable conclusion is that the Fed, when tested against GAAP as the Fed itself uses it in the Fed’s assessments of those it regulates, is a Special Purpose Entity of the federal government (or, according to the latest definition, is a Variable Interest Entity of the federal government). The rules of consolidation therefore apply, and the Fed must be seen as controlled by federal government, making it indivisibly part of the federal government. The pretence of independence is no more that that, a pretence.

There is, however, no denying that the banks have tremendous vested interest in influencing the policies of the Fed, nor that the power being so narrowly vested in the president makes him a special target for influence. Still, the power to control the Fed is not in the hands of its “owners” but firmly in the hands of the federal government and the president of the United States.

Sarel Oberholster is a South African living in Johannesburg, Gauteng province. He is an economist by training, a specialist financial engineer by craft, and an inquisitive spirit by nature. He has been involved in banking for over 30 years. His quest for understanding complex economic phenomena is his muse for writing and he shares his insights on his blog.

Notes

[1] Financial Accounting Standards Board of the Financial Accounting Foundation; Connecticut, No 311; June 2009, Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No 167.

Richard Smith, a London-based capital markets information technology manager, was kind enough to provide an advance copy of his review for the book ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism by Yves Smith, the author of the well-known financial blog Naked Capitalism.

Mr. Smith (real name, and no relation to Yves) helped in the proofing of the copy and fact searches, so he was already well familiar with the text. Perhaps this makes him a not entirely dispassionate source, given the regard that even copy editors can obtain for their associated works. But I thought it was a very nice summary of many of the salient points, and that you would enjoy having the opportunity to read it.

I intend to read the book in order to both learn something, and to be entertained as well. I love reading accounts of this period of time that are both authoritative and well-written, and understandable by the non-expert. Given the author’s performance on her blog, and her detailed industry knowledge and experience, it looks to be a ‘must read’ for those following the financial crisis and its associated developments.

Reading ECONned
By Richard Smith

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2010/03/guest-post-econned-book-review.html

Why Some People Are Poorer

The Intrusion of UNLAWFUL Authority, The Joy of Being A Bank, The Judeo-Christian Political Coalition, The New American Socialism, THEY ARE ALL THE SAME, Time For A New Third Party, Truth In Charity, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors, We Are All Guilty, Who Guarantees the Guarantor?-You Do!, Who owns Congress-Still! No Responses »

Dec 052009

In recent months, there has been a good deal of discussion of change in the United States. Sadly, over the last two centuries, the direction in which this country has been changing seems to be away from liberty and towards more control. The present changes are hardly unprecedented and certainly not unforeseen. In this essay I will examine two authors, Hilaire Belloc and F.A. Hayek, who present a useful analysis of our present situation.

In 1912, Hilaire Belloc published The Servile State, in which the Englishman prophesied that the world was moving to a reestablishment of slavery. This book made quite an impression on a number of thinkers, including F.A. Hayek. Hayek makes favorable mention of Belloc’s work in The Road to Serfdom, which depicts the modern world as reversing its advance from slavery to liberty.[1]

Belloc defines the Servile State as “that arrangement of society in which so considerable a number of the families and individuals are constrained by positive law to labor for the advantage of other families and individuals as to stamp the whole community with the mark of such labor.”[2] Belloc notes that “the servile condition remains … an institution of the State”[3] and that

the free man can refuse his labour and use that refusal as an instrument wherewith to bargain; while the slave has no such instrument or power to bargain at all, but is dependent for his well being upon the custom of society, backed by the regulation of such of its laws as may protect and guarantee the slave.[4]

Throughout history, until about the middle of the 18th century, mass poverty was nearly everywhere the normal condition of man. Then came capitalism. read more…

Another Stimulus?

Analysis & Commentary, Our phony middle class, Political Implications, Politicians, Positive Cash Flow, Regulatory Failures, Residential Market, Risk Management Strategies, The Arrogance of Power, The Consequences of Greed, Unemployment Catastrophe, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors, USA Is the New Japan, We Are All Cooked, We Have Become Beggars To The World No Responses »

Nov 212009

By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns.

A reader at Naked Capitalism asked us to respond to a recent article from the Christian Science Monitor asking Does US need a second stimulus to create jobs?

Marshall Auerback has already done some heavy lifting – and taken all of the heat in the comments. He says emphatically yes.

Now I want to take a crack at this. My short answer is no. But before I go into this, as an aside, I wanted to mention Marshall’s new smiling, happy picture up at the great blog New Deal 2.0 where he now writes. Earlier, when Credit Writedowns was hosted at Blogger, he used a picture best described as a mug shot in his profile, but he has changed that one too (although he smiles there a little less). He thinks we haven’t noticed this sleight of hand. Well I have! Once upon a time, Marshall wrote with a man I called all bearish, all the time this summer. Take a look at that post; you don’t see him smiling now do you? We have Lynn Parramore, New Deal 2.0’s editor to thank for making Marshall Auerback into an optimist.

The Apparatchiks

A Growing List Of One Term Presidents, A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words, A State of Distress, AIG and all that....., Back to the basics, Bilderbergers 1 USA 0, Jacksonian Democracy, Libertarianism - the Debate, Monetary Policy - Discussion, No Bank Is Indispensable, Obama's Hypocrisy, Our phony middle class, Politicians, Ron Paul Stands Tall, Socialism, TARP fruit loops, The Arrogance of Power, The Consequences of Greed, The Democrats Blew It Again, The Economics of Schumpeter, The End of American Capitalism As We Know It? - Discuss, The excellent adventures of Ben Bernanke, The Financial Elite, The Geithner Resignation Watch, The Inherent Disorder of Empires, The Intrusion of UNLAWFUL Authority, The Judeo-Christian Political Coalition, THEY ARE ALL THE SAME, Time For A New Third Party, Unemployment Catastrophe, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors, Wage Deflation, We Are All Cooked, We Are All Guilty, We Have Become Beggars To The World, Who Guarantees the Guarantor?-You Do!, Who owns Congress-Still! No Responses »

Nov 212009

The Big Government Boss isn’t going away

A Growing List Of One Term Presidents, A Shareholder-Not Just a "Stakeholder", A State of Distress, AIG and all that....., Analysis & Commentary, “the Greenspan doctrine”, Coming Social Unrest, Commercial Real Estate Bust, Deflation-Inflation-Stagflation, Is Goldman Sachs Evil?, It starts with a foundation, IT'S ALL ABOUT POWER AND MONEY, No Bank Is Indispensable, Obama's Hypocrisy, Our phony middle class, Political Chaos, Regulatory Failures, Small Business-Bedrock of America, Smaller Can Be Better, Socialism, TARP fruit loops, The Arrogance of Power, The Consequences of Greed, The Democrats Blew It Again, The End of American Capitalism As We Know It? - Discuss, The excellent adventures of Ben Bernanke, The Financial Elite, The Geithner Resignation Watch, The Habits of Hedge Funds, The Importance of Strategic Planning, The Inherent Disorder of Empires, The Intrusion of UNLAWFUL Authority, The Joy of Being A Bank, The New American Socialism, Unemployment Catastrophe, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors, Wage Deflation, We Have Become Beggars To The World, Who Guarantees the Guarantor?-You Do!, Who owns Congress-Still! No Responses »

Nov 212009

“Hindsight is a wonderful thing,” said Timothy W. Long, the chief bank
examiner for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. “At the height of
the economic boom, to take an aggressive supervisory approach and tell people to
stop lending is hard to do.” Post Mortems Reveal Obvious Risks at Banks, NY Times

Morality vs. Material Interests

Analysis & Commentary, Bilderbergers 1 USA 0, The Arrogance of Power, The Financial Elite, The Inherent Disorder of Empires, The Intrusion of UNLAWFUL Authority, The Judeo-Christian Political Coalition, The New American Socialism, Time For A New Third Party, Truth In Charity, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors, We Are All Guilty, Who owns Congress-Still! No Responses »

Nov 142009

Myths of Our Times

By Paul Craig Roberts

Humanity has endeavored for millennia to control evil with morality. In the American “superpower,” this effort has collapsed and failed. Continue

One of the federal government’s most opaque methods for bailing out the banking system allowed a handful of giant institutions to save up to $25 billion on their borrowing costs, a Congressional panel estimated on Friday.

Seven companies received about 82 percent of those benefits, the panel estimated. General Electric Capital was able to reduce its borrowing costs by about $1.9 billion, while Goldman Sachs saved an estimated $606 million. The other big beneficiaries were Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo & Company.

The savings came in the form of federal guarantees on more than $300 billion of bonds issued by banks and other financial institutions, and they were merely one component of a $4.3 trillion safety net of guarantees orchestrated last year by the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

In one of the first systematic efforts to analyze the maze of guarantees and hidden subsidies, the Congressional panel that oversees the Treasury’s $700 billion rescue program said the guarantees had provided a cheap but risky tactic for fighting the financial crisis last year.

The good news for taxpayers, the panel said, is that the government has actually turned a profit thus far on the guarantees. The government has collected $9 billion in fees for guaranteeing bonds issued by the big financial institutions and a total of $17 billion in fees for all its emergency guarantees. Thus far, it has lost only about $2 million.

At the height of the financial crisis late last year, the government provided guarantees to financial institutions, from money-market funds to expanded deposit-insurance for banks and $300 billion in troubled assets held by Citigroup. By providing guarantees instead of direct loans, the Treasury could avoid spending money upfront.

But Elizabeth Warren, director of the oversight panel, warned that the guarantees also exposed taxpayers to potentially huge costs and had created new risks by encouraging financial institutions to count on future bailouts and take bigger risks.

“The guarantees, when they work, provide big market stability at very low cost,” Ms. Warren said. “But they come with a very high risk to the taxpayer and a powerful distortion of market pricing and moral hazard.”

The panel’s most striking finding was about the size of the effective subsidy that G.E. Capital and Wall Street giants like Goldman reaped in the form of below-market borrowing costs.

The panel estimated that the federal guarantees lowered those firms’ borrowing costs by about 39 percent. Using two different approaches to measure the value of the subsidy, the panel said the savings ranged from $12.8 billion to $25 billion.

The oversight panel said it found “no significant flaws” in how Treasury officials and banking regulators designed the guarantees. But Ms. Warren warned that they were a “dangerous tool,” adding that “next time we may not be so lucky.”

Big Breaks for Companies in Bailout’s Fine Print – New York Times

Did “Smart Guys” Destroy Wall Street?

It Is Nice To Be Part of the Elite!, IT'S ALL ABOUT POWER AND MONEY, Risk Management Strategies, The Consequences of Greed, The Danger of Volume Trading, The End of American Capitalism As We Know It? - Discuss, The Financial Elite, The Importance of Strategic Planning, The Inherent Disorder of Empires, THEY ARE ALL THE SAME, Time For A New Third Party, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors, We Are All Cooked, We Are All Guilty, We Have Become Beggars To The World, What Is An Investment Asset?, Who owns Congress-Still! No Responses »

Oct 312009

I think Calvin Trillin–or at least his bar-room companion–is really on to something here:

“The financial system nearly collapsed,” he said, “because smart guys had started working on Wall Street.” …

I reflected on my own college class, of roughly the same era. The top student had been appointed a federal appeals court judge — earning, by Wall Street standards, tip money. A lot of the people with similarly impressive academic records became professors. I could picture the future titans of Wall Street dozing in the back rows of some gut course like Geology 101, popularly known as Rocks for Jocks. …

“Two things happened. One is that the amount of money that could be made on Wall Street with hedge fund and private equity operations became just mind-blowing. At the same time, college was getting so expensive that people from reasonably prosperous families were graduating with huge debts. So even the smart guys went to Wall Street, maybe telling themselves that in a few years they’d have so much money they could then become professors or legal-services lawyers or whatever they’d wanted to be in the first place. That’s when you started reading stories about the percentage of the graduating class of Harvard College who planned to go into the financial industry or go to business school so they could then go into the financial industry. That’s when you started reading about these geniuses from M.I.T. and Caltech who instead of going to graduate school in physics went to Wall Street to calculate arbitrage odds.”

I’d put it just slightly differently (and I realize Trillin is only about three-quarters serious): The key change on Wall Street was more sociological than intellectual. That is, it wasn’t so much that the smart guys went to Wall Street–though the intellectual caliber of the financial sector certainly increased with all those quants running around. The relevant change was that a lot of “outsiders” suddenly came to Wall Street, which had previously been dominated by insiders.

Was Wall Street Safer in the Hands of Stodgy WASPs? Noam Scheiber

Robbing Peter to pay Paul

A State of Distress, The Democrats Blew It Again, The Inherent Disorder of Empires, The New American Socialism, The Suffering Poor, THEY ARE ALL THE SAME, Time For A New Third Party, Truth In Charity, Unemployment Catastrophe, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors, We Are All Cooked, We Are All Guilty, We Have Become Beggars To The World, Who Guarantees the Guarantor?-You Do!, Who owns Congress-Still! No Responses »

Oct 312009

As political pressure has reduced the price tag of expanding coverage to below $1 trillion over ten years, many observers assumed Democrats would react by trimming financial assistance for the middle class–that is, people making between twice and four times the poverty line, or between $44,000 to $88,000 for a family of four.

The assumption was that if Democrats had to make tough choices about what to cut, they’d protect the the poor and most vulnerable. After all, they’re Democrats.

But now it appears that assumption may be wrong–or, at least, not entirely right.

Are Democrats Taking Money From the Poor to Help the Middle Class?! Jonathan Cohn

At the height of the financial panic last fall Goldman Sachs became a bank holding company, which enabled it to borrow directly from the Federal Reserve. It also became subject to supervision by the Federal Reserve Board (with the NY Fed on point) – hence the brouhaha over Steven Friedman’s shareholdings.

Goldman is also currently engaged in private equity investments in nonfinancial firms around the world, as seen for example in its recent deal with Geely Automotive Holdings in China (People’s Daily; CNBC). US banks or bank holding companies would not generally be allowed to undertake such transactions - in fact, it is annoyed bankers who have asked me to take this up.

Would someone from the NY Fed kindly explain the precise nature of the waiver that has been granted to Goldman so that it can operate in this fashion? If this is temporary, is it envisaged that Goldman will cease being a bank holding company, or that it will divest itself shortly of activities not usually allowed (and with good reason) by banks? Or will all bank holding companies be allowed to expand on the same basis. (The relevant rules appear to be here in general and here specifically; do tell me what I am missing.)

Increasingly, the issue of “too big to regulate” in the public interest is being brought up – an issue that has historically attracted the interest of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division in sectors other than finance. Should Goldman Sachs now be placed in this category?

Given that the Fed has slipped up so many times and in so many ways with regard to regulation over the past decade, and given the current debate on Capitol Hill, now might be a good time to get ahead of this issue.

In addition, there is the obvious carry trade (borrow cheaply; lend at higher rates) developing from cheap Fed dollar funding to the growing speculative frenzy in emerging markets, particularly China. Are we heading for another speculative bubble that will end up damaging US bank balance sheets and all American taxpayers?

By Simon Johnson

A Short Question For Senior Officials Of The New York Fed Baseline Scenario

An Inside Look at How Goldman Sachs Lobbies the Senate, by Matt Taibbi: …Later on this week I have a story coming out in Rolling Stone that looks at the history of the Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers collapses. The story ends up being more about naked short-selling and the role it played in those incidents than I had originally planned…, but it turns out that there’s no way to talk about Bear and Lehman without going into the weeds of naked short-selling…

It’s the conspicuousness … that is the issue here, and the degree to which the SEC and the other financial regulators have proven themselves completely incapable of addressing the issue seriously, constantly giving in to the demands of the major banks to pare back (or shelf altogether) planned regulatory actions. There probably isn’t a better example of “regulatory capture” … than this issue.

In that vein, starting tomorrow, the SEC is holding a public “round table” on the naked short-selling issue. What’s interesting about this round table is that virtually none of the invited speakers represent shareholders or companies that might be targets of naked short-selling, or indeed any activists of any kind in favor of tougher rules against the practice. Instead, all of the invitees are either banks, financial firms, or companies that sell stuff to the first two groups.

In particular, there are very few panelists — in fact only one, from what I understand — who are in favor of a simple reform called “pre-borrowing.” Pre-borrowing is what it sounds like; it forces short-sellers to actually possess shares before they sell them.

It’s been proven to work, as last summer the SEC, concerned about predatory naked short-selling of big companies in the wake of the Bear Stearns wipeout, instituted a temporary pre-borrow requirement…

The lack of pre-borrow voices invited to this panel is analogous to the Max Baucus health care round table last spring, when no single-payer advocates were invited. So who will get to speak? Two guys from Goldman Sachs, plus reps from Citigroup, Citadel (a hedge fund that has done the occasional short sale, to put it gently), Credit Suisse, NYSE Euronext, and so on.

In advance of this panel and in advance of proposed changes to the financial regulatory system, these players have been stepping up their lobbying efforts… Goldman Sachs in particular has been making its presence felt.

Last Friday I got a call from a Senate staffer who said that Goldman had just been in his boss’s office, lobbying against restrictions on naked short-selling. The aide said Goldman had passed out a fact sheet about the issue that was so ridiculous that one of the other staffers immediately thought to send it to me. When I went to actually get the document, though, the aide had had a change of heart.

Which was weird, and I thought the matter had ended there. But the exact same situation then repeated itself with another congressional staffer, who then actually passed me Goldman’s fact sheet.

Now, the mere fact that two different congressional aides were so disgusted by Goldman’s performance that they both called me on the same day — and I don’t have a relationship with either of these people — tells you how nauseated they were.

I would later hear that Senate aides between themselves had discussed Goldman’s lobbying efforts and concluded that it was one of the most shameless performances they’d ever seen from any group of lobbyists, and that the “fact sheet” … was, to quote one person familiar with the situation, “disgraceful” and “hilarious.” …

Fed Rejects Geithner Request for Study of Governance, Structure

Monetary Policy - Discussion, Ron Paul Stands Tall, The Arrogance of Power, The Democrats Blew It Again, The excellent adventures of Ben Bernanke, The Financial Elite, The Geithner Resignation Watch, The Inherent Disorder of Empires, The Intrusion of UNLAWFUL Authority, The New American Socialism, Time For A New Third Party, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors No Responses »

Sep 232009

Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve Board has rejected a request by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for a public review of the central bank’s structure and governance, three people familiar with the matter said.

The Obama administration proposed on June 17 a financial- regulatory overhaul including a “comprehensive review” of the Fed’s “ability to accomplish its existing and proposed functions” and the role of its regional banks. The Fed was to lead the study and enlist the Treasury and “a wide range of external experts.”

Some top central bank officials, after agreeing to the review, saw a potential threat to Fed independence after the Treasury released the proposal, two of the people said. The Obama plan said the Treasury would consider recommendations from the review and “propose any changes to the Fed’s governance and structure.”

“It is not obvious at all why that is a Treasury responsibility or even appropriate why the Treasury would undertake that kind of study,” said Robert Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors Inc. in Vineland, New Jersey, and a former Atlanta Fed research director. “The Fed was created by Congress and it is not part of the executive branch.”

U.S. lawmakers have also called for a review of the Fed’s power and structure, saying Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke overstepped his authority as he bailed out creditors of Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc. while battling a crisis that led to $1.62 trillion in writedowns and losses at financial firms.

No Work Done

While the report requested by the Treasury hasn’t been formally scrapped, no work has been done on the project, which was due Oct. 1, the people said. Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams declined to comment, as did Fed spokeswoman Michelle Smith.

The central bank is performing its own reviews of possible operational changes following the financial crisis. Fed Governor Elizabeth Duke is leading an internal study of the roles of the directors that serve on each of the boards at regional Fed banks.

“The institution is trying to keep a low profile,” said Vincent Reinhart, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and the former director of Division of Monetary Affairs at the Fed Board. “To publish a report now invites comment on that report.”

‘Associated Costs’

The Senate passed 96-2 a nonbinding budget amendment in April supporting “an evaluation of the appropriate number and the associated costs” of the district banks. The measure was sponsored by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, and Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, the senior Republican on the panel.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, has also called for more scrutiny of the central bank, saying last year he aims to probe how the 12 regional Fed presidents are appointed and their role in setting interest rates. The Fed banks are semi-private entities, each overseen by a nine-member board of directors.

Legislation in both houses of Congress would allow for audits by the Government Accountability Office of the central bank’s monetary policy and other operations. Bernanke opposes the measure, which was introduced in the House by Representative Ron Paul of Texas, a Republican. Frank has scheduled a committee hearing on the issue for Sept. 25.

Lessons Learned

Along with the study by Duke, the Fed is reviewing how to overhaul supervision based on lessons learned from the financial crisis.

The Treasury interest in a Fed structural review partially stems from the administration’s proposal to make the central bank the lead regulator for the largest, most inter-connected financial institutions.

Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo, an Obama appointee, is working on changes to the supervisory process that are preparing the central bank for a larger role in tracking risks across the financial system.

Tarullo is focusing on bank-to-bank comparisons and quantitative scenario testing of bank portfolios. The Fed is currently examining the vulnerability of banks with assets under $100 billion to falling commercial real estate values.

Congressional leaders have balked at the notion of giving the Fed more power and are leaning toward vesting authority over capital, liquidity and risk-management practices of big banks in a council of regulators.

Supervisory Council

“There will be a council,” Frank told Bloomberg Television Sept. 14.

The review led by Duke followed the resignation in May of Stephen Friedman as New York Fed chairman because of ties to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Friedman is a director on Goldman Sachs’s board.

Goldman Sachs became a bank holding company in September 2008, a change that would have normally barred Friedman from continuing to serve in his New York Fed post. Officials gave him a waiver so he could remain in the job, which has mostly an advisory role.

Friedman, chairman of Stone Point Capital LLC, said at the time of his resignation that he had complied with all the Fed’s rules and his service on the board was “mischaracterized as improper.”

Some analysts said a Fed revision of the role of directors is overdue.

“Allowing local bankers to play a leading role in selecting reserve bank presidents is the most worrying aspect of the current system,” Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP LLC, wrote to clients in July.

District bank presidents are nominated by committees made up of people whose institutions the nominees may have supervised.

“The conflicts of interest inherent in the current system are glaring,” Crandall said.

Fed Rejects Geithner Request for Study of Structure – Bloomberg

The expansion of international “supply chains” from Asian factories to American consumers has certainly created global trade imbalances and international currency flows that are not necessarily sustainable over the long run. A readjustment of the world economy, not a slackening demand for inexpensive consumer products, strikes me as the greatest threat to the Wal-Mart business model. And, for its part, the chain is already adapting to new circumstances. In recent years, Wal-Mart has expanded well beyond the borders of North America into Europe, Mexico and Asia. It imports factory goods from China and also operates its own retail stores there. But the stores look very different from their American counterparts. In Kunming, near the border with Myanmar, Wal-Mart rents space inside its store to independent vendors, who pay $1.20 per day to hawk Yunnan coffee, tobacco bongs filled with local rice wine and condiments made from eggplant, soybeans and ginger. The atmosphere is “festival-like, even chaotic,” as vendors shout out their wares, sometimes through loudspeakers or while pounding on drums, and customers crowd a stall to fish pears out of a solution of sugar, salt and licorice root–”a Wal-Mart store sans Wal-Martism,” according to sociologist Eileen Otis. Another Chinese employee explains his loyalty to the company by suggesting that Sam Walton was, in fact, a student of Chairman Mao who “adopted the revolutionary strategy of ‘the countryside encircling the city.’&nthinsp;” And so the revolution continues.

How Wal-Mart’s Ruthlessness Led to Its Undoing – Jefferson Decker, Nation

Justice?

Collateral Damage, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors No Responses »

Aug 142009

In Judge Takes SEC and Bank of America Lawyers to Woodshed over Merril Bonus Settlement, Yves Smith covers the SEC-Bank of America hearing and considers the notion of Wall Street entitlement; their lawyers have ostensibly bought into this concept.

The Peking-Washington connection: is it real?

A Growing List Of One Term Presidents, China and the Treasuries - A Dependency Relationship, Global Trade, Obama's Hypocrisy, The excellent adventures of Ben Bernanke, The Geithner Resignation Watch, The Global Economy, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors, US Trade Imbalance, We Have Become Beggars To The World No Responses »

Jul 202009

Is there a clandestine understanding between the world’s two most powerful central banks, the Federal Reserve and the People’s Bank of China?

Naturally, no one can talk about it, let alone confirm or deny anything. But it’s not too difficult to make out the broad outlines of how Chinese-American monetary cooperation may be working.

People’s Bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan and other figures in the Chinese leadership seem to use every opportunity to broadcast finely calibrated skepticism over the dollar’s future. Such Jeremiahs feed on and — in turn — feed doubts about potential American inflation caused by the Fed’s quantitative easing and exploding budget deficits.

But both Washington and Beijing appear to recognize — whatever the saber-rattling — that large-scale shifts in the currency composition of Chinese currency reserves are more or less impossible. Roughly two-thirds of Chinese reserves of more than $2 trillion are thought to be held in the greenback.

Heavy Chinese sales, or even a deliberate policy of diverting export proceeds into Euro or yen by re-dominating sales contracts, would depress the U.S. currency and lower the value of Chinese reserves. It’s the well-known Beijing dollar trap. And it has to be said: the Chinese have maneuvered themselves into it of their own volition, and in full knowledge of the potential problem.

So Governor Zhou’s strictures are, to a certain extent, shadow boxing. However, in return for a tacit standstill agreement on the currency composition of reserves, the Americans have to acknowledge that the renminbi’s value will rise only moderately.

If the Chinese continue taking in dollars, logic tells us the Chinese currency can hardly revalue strongly. A signal of the U.S. authorities’ acceptance of this state of affairs is that the word “manipulation” for Chinese currency management now clearly is banned.

There is another, still more intriguing, side to Chinese currency pronouncements. The doubts voiced from Beijing on the dollar’s stability, far from unsettling the U.S. monetary authorities, are actually manna from heaven for the Federal Reserve. The Obama administration hardly can go in for years of reckless deficit spending when the country’s largest creditor is emitting so many warning signals.

More importantly, the Fed is getting a certain amount of cover from Beijing for its eventual “exit strategy” — a reversal of quantitative easing and a rise in interest rates as soon as economic recovery gets under way.

The Chinese even are giving a strong tailwind to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s bid for re-nomination after his initial four-year term ends in January. The reason? With the Chinese appearing to turn the knife through gloom-laden dollar prognostications, President Obama knows that appointing a heavily political successor to Bernanke would be fraught with great risks.

Any Fed chairman who looks less than squeaky-clean on currency stability is likely to send dollar holders heading for the exits — and could spark the full-scale currency collapse that Wall Street bears have been growling about for months.

So, if Obama wishes to replace Bernanke, he can do so only by bringing in a full-scale monetary hawk — a step that he must rule out on domestic political grounds. The conclusion is that the Chinese maneuverings leave Obama with no choice but to re-appoint Bernanke, whatever the doubts about his stewardship that have arisen in recent months.

When Bernanke a little later this year eventually is confirmed in a second term of office, what’s the betting that a laconic red-rimmed telegram from Governor Zhou will turn up in his in-tray?

The missive and its contents, of course, will remain secret. We can only guess at the possibility that the two men, just for a moment, will share the opportunity for a modicum of discreet self-congratulation.

David Marsh is chairman of London and Oxford Capital Markets. The Marsh on Monday column appears in German in the newspaper Handelsblatt.

A Deal Between the Fed and Bank of China? – David Marsh, MarketWatch

Nothing Changes

The Arrogance of Power, The Financial Elite, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors No Responses »

Jul 192009

When was this written?

*******
Under the surface of the governmental regulation of the securities market, the same forces that produced the riotous speculative excesses of the “wild bull market” of 1929 still give evidences of their existence and influence. Though repressed for the present, it cannot be doubted that, given a suitable opportunity, they would spring back into pernicious activity.

Frequently we are told that this regulation has been throttling the country’s prosperity. Bitterly hostile was Wall Street to the enactment of the regulatory legislation. It now looks forward to the day when it shall, as it hopes, reassume the reins of its former power.

That its leaders are eminently fitted to guide our nation, and that they would make a much better job of it than any other body of men, Wall Street does not for a moment doubt. Indeed, if you now hearken to the oracles of The Street, you will hear now and then that the money-changers have been much maligned. You will be told that a whole group of high-minded men, innocent of social or economic wrongdoing, were expelled from the temple because of the excesses of a few. You will be assured that they had nothing to do with the misfortunes that overtook the country in 1929-33; that they were simply scapegoats, sacrificed on the altar of unreasoning public opinion to satisfy the wrath of a howling mob blindly seeking victims.

These disingenuous protestations are, in the crisp legal phrase, “without merit.” The case against the money-changers does not rest upon hearsay or surmise. It is based upon a mass of evidence, given publicly and under oath before the Banking and Currency Committee of the United States Senate in 1933-1934, by The Street’s mightiest and best-informed men. . .

After five short years, we may now need to be reminded what Wall Street was like before Uncle Sam stationed a policeman at its corner, lest, in time to come, some attempt be made to abolish that post.

This week? No…

“Wall Street Under Oath”

Preface

Ferdinand Pecora

1939

H/T to Naked Capitalism

Robert Rubin: Whiz Kid?

It Is Nice To Be Part of the Elite!, The Arrogance of Power, The Financial Elite, Truth In Charity, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors No Responses »

Jul 172009

The death of Robert McNamara has confronted the architects of another massive national catastrophe with a challenge: Will they, like McNamara in his post-Vietnam agony, acknowledge their failings and confess the error of their ways? Will they come up with a list, as McNamara did, of what to do differently next time?

There has already been speculation aplenty about whether Donald Rumsfeld will ever reassess his performance in the Iraq war. But I’m not thinking about Rumsfeld or the other men who brought us the war in Iraq. I have in mind the architects — every bit as cerebral and self-certain as McNamara — of the financial world that imploded last year. The real latter-day McNamara may not be Rumsfeld but Robert Rubin, Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton.

In fact, the similarities between the men who crafted the Iraq war and the men who crafted Vietnam aren’t that strong. McNamara’s hubris was that of a hyper-rationalist. He and his whiz kids, his systems analysts and efficiency experts, stormed into an intellectually sleepy capital determined to subject what had been the haphazard realm of policy to scientific measurement. The Air Force flyboys may have wanted to bomb the bejesus out of the commies, but McNamara’s boys could tell you precisely what tonnage would destroy precisely what industrial capacity. Victory was just an equation or two away.

The hubris of the late and unlamented Bush presidency was of a different order. If it was McNamara’s math that made it hard for him to grasp how a peasant army could resist half a million American troops, it was a simple refusal to take seriously the utterly predictable consequences that Saddam Hussein’s removal would have on a fractured Iraq that led Bush and his crew to plunge us, and Iraq, into a needless war. As once the hyper-rationalists had failed to factor for human complexity, so too, four decades later, did the ideologues who disdained the reality-based community do the same. Brought low by the hubris of the brilliant, we were brought low again by the hubris of fools.

Our time is no stranger to the hubris of the brilliant, though. To find it, we need to look not to Washington but to Wall Street. The real successors to McNamara’s whiz kids are the economic geniuses, the “quants,” who figured out how to build a tower of investment on a dot of assets, arbitrage everything, and hedge any risk, except, of course, the ones that plunged us into a depression.

The devastation they wrought may not have reached the level of the Vietnam War, which embittered this nation for decades and cost the lives of tens of thousands of Americans and many times more Vietnamese. But considering that they were merely economists, bankers and their ideologues, the damage is impressive enough. It’s not just the millions of jobs lost, the retirement savings wiped out, the homes foreclosed on. It’s also the offshoring of American manufacturing and the concomitant creation of mountains of consumer debt (which the American people owed to Wall Street) so that their compatriots could continue to consume even though their incomes had stagnated. It’s the transformation of a nation that once invested in productive enterprise into a nation sustained by asset bubbles.

Will the creators of this crisis wander through an intellectual and moral desert as McNamara did for decades? As yet, the mea culpas have been few and, like McNamara’s, incomplete. Alan Greenspan did admit to a congressional committee that his belief in the rational behavior of financial institutions had been shattered. But the confessions of failure and assumptions of responsibility from Chicago School economists, leading Wall Street bankers and lax governmental regulators, all of whom assured us that the very profitable financial vehicles they had devised also reduced the risk to the rest of us, are almost nowhere to be found.

If there’s an analogous figure to McNamara in this mess, then, it’s probably Rubin — socially liberal, like McNamara; concerned with the world’s poor, like McNamara; architect, like McNamara, of a system perfected by the best minds of his time, a system that should have worked but that failed catastrophically. Rubin’s repentance is a private matter, but the lessons that his protégés Larry Summers and Tim Geithner derive from the failure of deregulated hypercapitalism are of the utmost public concern. Whiz kids themselves, do they still believe in the capacity of their fellow whizzes to concoct financial devices so mathematically sound that strong regulation would be superfluous? Their reluctance to tightly regulate credit-default swaps suggests that they haven’t really been disenthralled of their faith in self-regulating markets. If we’re lucky, the image of Bob McNamara calculating the war on his slide rule, and spending the subsequent decades trying to understand where he went wrong, may bring them to their senses. It certainly should do that for us.

meyersonh@washpost.com

Is Robert Rubin Today’s McNamara? – Harold Meyerson, Washington Post

Despite the administration’s aggressive and costly economic policy initiatives, there is trouble all around.

Barely six months in office, President Obama already finds himself in an economic box. For despite his aggressive and costly economic policy initiatives, the jobs market shows no sign of healing. At the same time, the housing market foreclosure crisis continues apace, while renewed questions are again surfacing about the soundness of the U.S. banking system. To complicate matters, financial markets are now starting to fret about the longer-run inflationary consequences of the unusually large budget deficits in prospect for as far as the eye can see.

In January 2009, on presenting its $780 billion fiscal stimulus package, the Obama administration assured the public that because of that stimulus package U.S. unemployment would not exceed 8 percent. Yet already by June 2009, unemployment had risen to 9.5 percent; including part-time workers, who would prefer to be working full time, unemployment rose to a staggering post-war high of over 16 percent. Worse still, the jobs market shows every sign of being far from bottoming out.

The degree to which unemployment has exceeded the administration’s forecasts has to raise basic questions about the appropriateness and coherence of President Obama’s economic policy approach.

The degree to which unemployment has exceeded the administration’s forecasts has to raise basic questions about the appropriateness and coherence of President Obama’s economic policy approach. These questions pertain not simply to the very poor design of the fiscal stimulus package. Rather they pertain to the adequacy of the measures aimed at stabilizing the housing market and at resolving the country’s most wrenching credit crisis in the post-war period.

At the most basic level, one has to question how much sense it made for President Obama to allow the fiscal package to become excessively back-loaded at time when the economy needed immediate large scale support. If a large fiscal stimulus was indeed needed, why has only $60 billion of that package been dribbled out by June? And why is less than a third of the package scheduled to come into effect in 2009, the year when the package is most sorely needed?

Similarly one has to wonder about the heavy price that the Obama administration paid for effectively outsourcing the package’s design to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic congressional leadership. Should it really have come as a surprise to us that the resulting stimulus package would be laden with pork and with expenditures that are going to be very difficult to roll back? Or should we now be shocked that the package fell sadly short of including fast acting and effective fiscal stimulus measures that might have gotten the most bang for the buck?

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Obama fiscal stimulus package is the serious way in which it compromises the country’s long-run public finances and fans long-run inflationary expectations. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Obama budget not only implies unusually large budget deficits over the next two years but it implies that, even when the economy eventually fully recovers, the deficit will remain in the region of between 4 and 6 percentage points of GDP. As a result, over the next decade, the public debt will rise in a manner that has never occurred before in peacetime, from around 41 percent of GDP in 2008 to 82 percent of GDP by 2019.

Over the next decade, the public debt will rise in a manner that has never occurred before in peacetime from around 41 percent of GDP in 2008 to 82 percent of GDP by 2019.

The rising tide of unemployment must also raise questions about the Obama administration’s efforts to stabilize the housing market, which the administration correctly views as a necessary condition for producing a meaningful economic recovery. One has to expect that a weaker job market will only exacerbate the country’s present foreclosure crisis, which is adding supply to an already glutted housing market. The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that 2.4 million homes could be in foreclosure in 2009 and as many as 8.1 million homes over the next four years. Yet, the Obama administration’s loan modification program announced earlier this year has to date only resulted in 190,000 offers at mortgage loan modification.

Rising unemployment also has to raise questions about whether the Obama administration is not being overly sanguine about the health of the U.S. banking system. For it would seem that unemployment will now well exceed the worst-case scenario in the bank stress test presented by the administration earlier this year. Yet, despite a weakening unemployment outlook that is sure to boost bank losses, the Obama administration is now cavalierly backing away from its earlier initiatives to reduce the toxic assets that remain on the banks’ balance sheets.

Less than six months into his term, President Obama already faces difficult economic policy choices. He can choose, as he now seems to be doing, to counsel patience and assure us that all is well at considerable cost to his credibility on economic policy management. Or he can own up to the facts that he misread the economy in January and that his economic team now needs to go back to the drawing board. For the sake of the U.S. economy, one has to hope that he has the courage to review the overall coherence of his policy approach before it is too late.

Desmond Lachman is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He was managing director and chief emerging market economic strategist at Salomon Smith Barney and a deputy director in the International Monetary Fund’s policy and review department.

Barney Frank, Chris Dodd Do Banking Back Flip

A Shareholder-Not Just a "Stakeholder", A State of Distress, AIG and all that....., Back to the basics, Coming Social Unrest, Coup d'etat in America, Deflation-Inflation-Stagflation, Truth In Charity, Unemployment Catastrophe, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors No Responses »

Jul 152009

July 15 (Bloomberg) — Congress can’t make up its mind. First, legislators pushed to let banks take a rosy view of the value of some hard-hit holdings. Now, two key committee chairmen claim banks aren’t being realistic enough about the values of some loans.

The allegation by House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank and Senate Banking Chairman Christopher Dodd that banks are holding some loans at “potentially inflated values” should trouble investors, since it came just days before institutions like JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. are due to report second-quarter results. If some loan values are “inflated,” that again calls into question the quality of banks’ results.

Why, after arguing for banks to have more leeway, is Congress now pushing back? Because many government responses to the financial crisis are more about manipulating prices — and behavior — than truly getting markets back on their feet.

Dressing up bank balance sheets was a first-quarter political priority. Now there is a push to get banks to modify more troubled mortgages. That effort is being stymied by a rosy view taken by many banks of the value of home-equity loans and second-lien mortgages.

Many banks have marked down these loans only by 3 percent to 4 percent, said Paul Miller, bank analyst at Friedman Billings Ramsey & Co. These loans in many cases would likely fetch about 40 cents on the dollar if sold in today’s market.

The losses are “a big part of the toxic asset issues facing banks,” Miller added.

Balk at Losses

A first mortgage on a house often can’t be restructured without the agreement of the holder of the second loan, which would entail writing it down in value. Banks have balked at doing that, due to the losses that would result. And why shouldn’t they? Congress, the Obama administration and regulators all told them earlier this year to hope for the best when it came to valuing their assets.

Let’s review. Congress this spring browbeat accounting rulemakers to make it easier for banks to ignore dour market prices for some holdings battered by the credit crisis. That was designed to help banks’ finances look better.

Without subsequent rule changes by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, earnings at 45 banks and financial companies would have been 42 percent lower than reported, according to a report last month by Jack Ciesielski, editor of The Analyst’s Accounting Observer.

The rule changes allowed companies to sidestep some impact of mark-to-market accounting on securities, many of them backed by mortgages, that have fallen in value for an extended period.

Saved From Losses

The “maneuver saved eight of the firms — Prudential Financial Inc., SI Financial Group Inc., First Commonwealth Financial Corp., National Penn Bancshares Inc., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Zenith National Insurance Corp., Sun Bancorp Inc. and American Equity Investment Life Holding Co. — from reporting first-quarter losses instead of net income,” Ciesielski wrote.

Another rule change allowed companies in some cases to ignore market values and use their own estimates for troubled assets. That helped Wells Fargo & Co. avoid what may otherwise have been a $4.5 billion hit to its capital.

This was all part of ongoing and often unsuccessful efforts to push prices in a particular direction.

Last fall, the Securities and Exchange Commission instituted a temporary ban on selling financial stocks short — or betting they would decline in value — to try and prop up the value of bank shares. Talk about reining in speculation in commodity markets, meanwhile, is designed to keep prices for oil and some foodstuffs from rising too high. And all arms of government have tried since the credit crunch began to keep home prices from falling.

Buyers Don’t Play

Efforts to direct prices usually fail because buyers aren’t willing to play along. Financial stocks continued to fall despite the short ban.

And the congressional flip-flop on how banks should value assets shows that such efforts can backfire.

The logjam in the drive to modify troubled mortgages is vexing the Obama administration. It is in some ways a problem of the government’s own making. To try and undo it, the House’s Frank and the Senate’s Dodd wrote late last week to banking regulators complaining about valuations of home-equity loans.

The chairmen said, “We are concerned that the loss allowances associated with these subordinated liens may be insufficient to realistically and accurately reflect their value.”

Fudging Confirmed

Throughout the crisis, investors have worried that banks are fudging their numbers. Now congressional leaders are confirming those fears.

Underlining the political nature of their request, Dodd and Frank didn’t call for an investigation of the supposedly “inflated” values.

That’s no reason for the SEC to stand pat. The agency needs to act, now that it has an allegation from top legislators that potential financial-reporting abuses are taking place at banks.

Failure to follow up will send a message that it is all right for banks to cook their books, so long as the resulting values are seasoned to suit the current political taste.

(David Reilly is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Barney Frank, Chris Dodd Do Banking Back Flip – David Reilly, Bloomberg

Older Entries Newer Entries

New Jersey CFO

War leads to prosperity!…Think again.

You say Obama; I say Ozawa! You say boom; I say ka-boom!

Damning Evidence

Time to Investigate Blankfein and Paulson (More AIG Shenanigans Edition)

CBO Propaganda

CBO Issues Fed-Flattering Propaganda

The Independence of the Fed

Dividends and Surplus Fund of Reserve Banks

Notes

ECONed: Sic Transit Gloria Americanus

Why Some People Are Poorer

Another Stimulus?

The Apparatchiks

Morality vs. Material Interests

Break for Companies in Bailout’s Fine Print

Did “Smart Guys” Destroy Wall Street?

Was Wall Street Safer in the Hands of Stodgy WASPs? Noam Scheiber

Robbing Peter to pay Paul

Are Democrats Taking Money From the Poor to Help the Middle Class?! Jonathan Cohn

A Short Question For Senior Officials Of The New York Fed

Goldman’s Pre-emptive Influence

Fed Rejects Geithner Request for Study of Governance, Structure

Operation Rollback: Wal-Mart’s World of Business

Justice?

The Peking-Washington connection: is it real?

Nothing Changes

Robert Rubin: Whiz Kid?

Analysis & Commentary