What Is An Investment Asset?

I have said it a few times but it bears repeating: If you march down to the government with your paper IOU with $100 printed on it to demand your money, the government will simply hand you another paper IOU with the exact same amount printed on it. As the British ten pound note says, “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of [fill in the blank sum][fill in the blank fiat currency].” All US government obligations are substantially identical promises to repay a specific amount of the currency unit of account backed by nothing but taxing authority.

So, Treasury bonds don’t ‘fund’ anything. If the Treasury were allowed to run overdrafts at the central bank, the US government could stop issuing bonds altogether and credit bank accounts with keystrokes. As I see it, in a fiat money environment, the first function of the Treasury bonds is to serve as a vehicle to add or subtract reserves in the system to help the Federal Reserve hit a target Fed Funds rate. The second is to give holders of government obligations a return on their investment. After all, bank notes or bank reserves don’t pay much if anything.

But what about currency revulsion, you ask? What if government deficit spends out of control?

Well, that’s the confidence trick of fiat currency. If confidence in the currency erodes, tax evasion will rise, citizens will begin surreptitiously using other media of exchange to transact and inflation and currency depreciation will spiral out of control. Notice, however, I mention currency depreciation and inflation instead of national solvency.

Currency Revulsion by Edward Harrison

While it’s useful to think of the ratings agencies as incompetent, or as greedy, it’s important to remember that they have an actual policy agenda. They weren’t just wrong in rating subprime tranches of toxic dreck AAA. They were also pivotal in actively creating the policies that led to the financial crisis.

In the early 2000s, several states attempted to rein in an increasingly obvious predatory mortgage lending wave. These laws, pushed by consumer advocates, would have threatened the highly profitable mortgage securitization pipeline.

S&P used its power to destroy this threat. Josh Rosner and Gretchen Morgenson told the story in Reckless Endangerment.

Matt Stoller: Standard & Poor’s Predatory Policy Agenda

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

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

Some view the issue from the standpoint of protecting free markets. Is constraining speculation in commodities any different than controlling investment in stocks and bonds? However, commodities are not traditional investment assets and their markets need governance that differs from that of the capital markets. We readily accept limitations in capital market transactions: prohibitions on insiders trading, for example. Commodity markets have different but equally important rules, rules meant to ensure that speculators can’t overwhelm efficient market pricing. It’s time for our regulators to enforce them.

Why Commodity Speculation Is Different – Jeff Korzenik, Financial Times

New Jersey CFO

Currency Revulsion

Standard & Poor’s Predatory Policy Agenda

ECONed: Sic Transit Gloria Americanus

Did “Smart Guys” Destroy Wall Street?

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

Is commodity “speculation” different?

Analysis & Commentary