GoldiSachs and the TBTF Banks

GoldiSachs and her friend MorganStanley were tired (of worrying about insolvency) so they went upstairs in the Banks' home and found a bed labeled TBTF that was just right. In contrast to the children's story, GoldiSachs and MorganStanley were welcomed into the club.

In March of 2008, years of poor investment decisions finally caught up to Bear Stearns, forcing the firm to accept a $2 per share bid (later revised to $10) from JPMorgan (financed by loans from the NY Fed). A once mighty financial firm which had survived the Great Depression was no more. Adding insult to injury, its final 5 year stock price chart, which depicted a dive from over $150 to the single digits could easily have been mistaken for that of a dead Tech firm which never generated a dime in profits.

Coincidentally, the Federal Reserve announced the creation of the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF) which allowed any Primary Dealer not already authorized to borrow at the Fed's Discount Window, to, in effect, enjoy the privilege of discounting their securities if they were cash poor.

Despite the new access to Fed liquidity, however, stock prices of Primary Dealers, who, inter alia, sell US government debt, were under assault within 6 months. Lehman Brothers did not survive the assault, declaring bankruptcy on September 15.

Perhaps due to the thinning ranks of Primary Dealers (in the previous 2 years, 5 Banks, ABN AMRO, CIBC, Nomura Securities, Lehman Brothers and the aforementioned Bear Stearns, had left the club or died) or some other reason (more on that in my next post) the Fed and Treasury made the hitherto unsaid policy of Too Big To Fail (TBTF), explicit, and welcomed GS and MS into the club (which, according to Simon Johnson and James Kwak, numbers 13), declaring the new entrants Bank Holding Companies (BHCs), for emphasis.

A recent check of the Fed's NIC (a wonderful resource on BHC data) demonstrates that GS and MS fit into the BHC club about as well as I fit into the crowd on my first visit to Beijing many years ago. Their source and use of funds are quite different as are their arenas of profit.  They are investment firms, more closely related to Hedge Funds than banks.  I'm all in favor of investment firms, however, I don't agree that, if TBTF is wise policy (which, at this stage, I doubt) they should be included in the protected group.

I still, on the topic of sticking out from the crowd, remember being asked to join a picture of a Chinese family during a visit to the Great Wall, because, I suspect, this rural family rarely saw white people and wanted to show the folks at home their great adventure.

Banks, as I recently argued, always and everywhere earn their money lending. As the table below demonstrates, however, the meaning of the term "bank" is being diluted at roughly the same pace as the US$.  Admittedly, the banks themselves, in their desire to be more like Hedge Funds, are helping the dilution of meaning.  This makes me wonder if the next GS to join the club will be George Soros. Perhaps if he becomes a primary dealer....

                   click for larger version

As you can see, GS and MS needed no help in provisioning against bad loans (one argument, with some merit, in favor of TBTF is that the banks provided more mortgage credit than they otherwise would have if the government wasn't promoting home ownership).  These investment houses earn money from, inter alia, Investment Banking, Brokerage and Proprietary Trading. 

Proprietary Trading is the arena one tends to find "rogue traders" like John Rusnak, Brian Hunter of Amaranth fame and this fellow from France.  A policy of TBTF might well bail out a "rogue bank"or the banks' creditors, perhaps it already has.  This isn't to suggest I'm against prop trading (it's one way I earn my keep) I just don't see the positives (if any) outweighing the negatives. 


A thoughtful reader at Seeking Alpha wanted a more explicit statement of TBTF effects which inspired the use of "scam" in my last post.

TBTF direct effects include, as he noted, creditors avoiding "haircuts" (reduction or total loss of investment), and, as I added, employees and owners equally avoiding "haircuts" (reduction in compensation and loss of investment).

I used the term "scam" in reference to the latter two effects.  Reductions in compensation and dividend outflow would go right to the bottom line, mitigating the need for equity and liquidity support.

TBTF rewards failure, which creates its own ill effects, and it will impose financial costs on families across the US as the effects of the changes in the Fed's System Open Market Account (latest data seen below) and growth in US Federal Debt manifest.  Further, supporting firms which failed to see the collapse coming, or minimally to adjust their exposure accordingly, removes from the list of positives the one social virtue of trading I needed to know to become licensed as a securities' dealer- price discovery.

While I agree with the reader that US financial authorities had trade-offs in mind (I didn't use "total" in my original title) when TBTF became explicit (some going beyond finance, as I'll discuss in my next post) some are taking advantage or "scamming" the public in the lax environment.

Take a good look at aggregated employee compensation in the first table.

The ultimate question of TBTF is not "if" it will end.  It will.  Such arrangements always end.  The Medici were known as God's Bankers, under the protection of the Vatican- the best shield going at the time- and they went under. Money, like water, eventually finds a way to flow around (or through) constraints. 

The question is, will we end TBTF or will it end us, in our current form?

TBTF isn't just Bad Policy, it's a Scam

Free money from the Fed, and bail-outs from various governments allowed US Bank employees to pull off a marvelous trick, thereby freeing them from the normal contraints of Capitalism. They paid out more in dividends than they made in each of the past 3 years: by $8B in 2007, $41B in 2008 and $30B in 2009. Net operating income (NOI) for the banks was $102B for 2007, $10B for 2008 and $17B for 2009. This is obviously unsustainable, and makes the crooks from the Tech Boom look like amateurs- while the Techies based their fraud on the greater fool theory, the Bankers simply paid off their owners, and gave themselves raises.

The streams here in the Northeast US today, following a solid 2 day rain, are akin to those of income enjoyed by US Banks- spilling over at record setting levels.

As promised yesterday when I detailed the obscene compensation of bank industry employees, today's musings will focus in more detail on US Banking sector incomes, expenses and the future of Too Big To Fail.

Banks always and everywhere make the bulk of their income from lending and the US sub-species is no exception to this rule. Bankus Americanus is, however, unique in a few regards. It is the only animal on the Endangered Species list whose dwindling numbers are a result of cannibalism. To wit, in just the past 15 years numbers have dropped from 12,604 to 8,012 but those that remain are fatter than ever. Additionally, (and somewhat more seriously) unlike most banks in history, in recent times non-interest income has risen to more than 50% of interest income, helped in part, by the termination of Glass Steagall restrictions.  Data: FDIC- all covered institutions, aggregated

Given the substantial compensation American Bankers receive one might expect the increased non-interest income to come via trading, investment banking or the recently allowed insurance and brokerage activities, but this is not the case. Service charges on deposit accounts earn US Banks more than trading, investment banking, insurance, or brokerage in every year for which I have data. The lowly paid back office workers, in other words, generate much more income than the highly paid traders.

Admittedly, as I learned at Chase, there are indirect benefits to having a trading desk (and other financial services). Trading, for example, requires a cash deposit which will not only generate its own set of fees but also increase lending by whatever multiple the bank deems prudent.

Regardless, in the aggregate, US bank trading profits (exclusive of employee expense) have never exceeded 10% of net interest income. And the banks haven't even begun to unwind their derivatives portfolios, an event which may well push the absolute value of trading income above that of interest income for a year or two. I suspect in the not too distant future the wisdom of bank trading will be seen as pure folly. The NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) movement which drove, e.g. chemical processing, off to foreign lands will soon, I believe, drive trading from Banks.

Moving on to larger streams, the biggest line item in the FDIC's breakdown of non-interest income is obscurely titled "additional non-interest income." The FDIC defines this as:

 All non interest income of the bank not required to be reported elsewhere, including (but exclusive to): 

1. Income and fees from the rental of safe deposit boxes;
2. Income and fees from the sale of checks, money orders, cashiers' checks, and travelers' checks;
3. Income and fees from the use of the bank's ATMs;
4. Income from performing data processing services for others;
5. Earnings on or other increases in the value of the cash surrender value of bank-owned life insurance policies;
6. Rent and other income from Real Estate Owned.

Chalk up another win for the back office, and, better still, the electronic office. An inquiry with the FDIC informed me that ATMs (and related services) were some of the biggest earners at US Banks. How clever of Bankus Americanus. The advent of the computer and internet age led to price reductions in most industries, inspiring the then Banker in Chief Greenspan to proclaim a productivity miracle. Bankers, by contrast, increased their income.

Pause for a moment. Can you imagine the outrage if ATMs were outlawed and tipping a teller a few dollars each time one made a withdrawal became mandatory? Can you imagine how many people would suddenly get the urge to be a bank teller? Banks would then have no problem staying open 24 hours a day, just like the ATMs- and we might all enjoy a human voice saying, "Thank you for banking with us."

There's a lesson to be learned here. The aggregate data strongly suggests that bankers aren't smarter than they were 30 years ago, they are just more protected. Protection of the sector allowed a relatively small group of people to pay themselves huge salaries (and huger bonuses) while the bulk of bank income was derived not from their efforts but from normal bank services spared the ravages of tech sector cost cutting. The high priced guys are the one's who have generated the problems.

Returning to cash flows, income isn't generated for free. The network of ATMs required development (but shouldn't the patent protection for this have expired like those for pharmaceuticals?), installation, and continued service. Profits accrue only when incomes exceed expenses. Banks must borrow funds more cheaply then they lend them.

As interest income is the bulk of bank income, you would expect that interest expense (i.e. cost of funds) is the bulk of bank expense. Up until the past few years, this was true. In 1994, interest expense was $145B (interest income was $321B) while employee compensation was $70B. In 2009, interest expense was $145B (interest income was $541B) while employee compensation was $163B. Amazingly, less than 2 million bankers (actually the problem is caused by the top 10%) paid themselves more than they paid the 100s of millions of depositors for the use of their funds. They even paid themselves more than they paid the bank owners.

If this (taking new equity capital to pay off previous investors and line their pockets) sounds like a Ponzi scheme that dwarfs that of Mr. Madoff, then I've made my point.

This brings us to the bottom line. If the Banks are truly TBTF and Bank employees truly indispensible, Capitalism is well and truly dead and Banking no longer a job, but a religion. In Capitalism, shareholders, not employees are the ultimate arbiters of business. Once net income goes to zero or below, the business, in its current form, is on borrowed time.

Free money from the Fed, and bail-outs from various governments allowed US Bank employees to pull off a marvelous trick, thereby freeing them from the normal constraints of Capitalism. They paid out more in dividends than they made in each of the past 3 years: by $8B in 2007, $41B in 2008 and $30B in 2009. Net operating income for the banks was $102B for 2007, $10B for 2008 and $17B for 2009. This is obviously unsustainable, and makes the crooks from the Tech Boom look like amateurs- while the Techies based their fraud on the greater fool theory, the Bankers simply paid off their owners, and gave themselves raises.

Yesterday Paul Volcker said TBTF was "moral hazard writ large". He was wrong. It's a hazard before it happens. This has been going on for 3 years.

As with the Tech Boom, something has to give. The real sector in the US isn't recovering, in part because credit is just circling round in the financial markets, as was the case in the early 90s, but on a much larger scale today. Real sector borrowing rates (adjusted for tighter credit conditions) are still too high. Thus the residential mortgage problem is not going away, and likely to worsen now that the Fed is out of the game (for the moment at least) and a commercial mortgage problem is looming.  Unlike the early 90s, there is no RTC set up to recover money for the banks, and there's that problem of who really owns the mortgages to be solved.

At current price levels it will be years before the banks are back to whatever constitutes normal these days, and I don't think we'll have that much time. Unlike the 90s, we have a government debt roll-over problem. If Banking sector NOI is roughly zero again this year, will shareholders be willing to accept zero dividends? I doubt it. Absent a sudden recovery in the real sector, US Banks, like the Irish Banks, will soon find they need more money.

Barring an unlikely substantial reduction in employee compensation (a solution I highly recommend, rolling salaries back to 1999 levels would free up roughly $70B A YEAR for loan loss provisions), the banks could dilute their own shares (but only for so long) or try to raise more overseas equity, but the amounts would be limited, in the case of foreign investment, to less than a controlling stake. I can't imagine the US population or government allowing China to hold a controlling interest in Citibank or any other big BHC.

A $ devaluation policy would alleviate the mortgage problem but the subsequent rise in interest rates would likely ignite another, much larger problem in the 200+ Trillion dollar derivatives portfolios, and our foreign creditors would be none too pleased. Sadly for them, the Germen option of forced liquidation is that least desired by the powers that be. Devaluation, I suspect, is the only option- it just has to appear to be an accident.

Regardless, we'll likely soon discover that TBTF isn't just bad policy, it's a scam- the Tech Boom on steroids.

A note on aggregation: Sometimes this process makes it easy to miss the trees for the forest-some banks might have profitable trading desks but they get lost. Goldman Sachs comes to mind. Yet, during the crisis of 2008, GS would have gone the way of LTCM (for the same reason) but for their transformation into a BHC and the bail-out of other institutions (notably AIG) which kept payments flowing.  GS isn't much of a bank in the usual sense but an investment house.  They should not, in my view, have gotten the protection of commercial banks. 

A note on trading: This essay might leave readers with the notion that I'm against trading. I'm not. I trade.  I simply believe that for trading to provide the promised price discovery benefits, they must stand on their own as private sector businesses.

It's Good to be a US Banker (for now)

I remember the first time I saw a fellow trader get fired from Chase Manhattan. Sitting down at my desk in front of the green screens (this was before the invasion of computer terminals) I had my coffee in one hand and a phone in the other when a buddy sitting behind me whispered, "check out the security guards."

I looked around and saw two guys in uniform standing at attention near the elevators. I hadn't noticed them when I arrived, as I was reading the newspaper. "What's up with that?," I asked.

"Someone's getting fired," he responded.

The 35th floor of Chase was very quiet, I suddenly noticed.

A few minutes later another trader walked in, nose buried in his newspaper, on the way to his desk. The guards, one of whom carried a cardboard box, followed him and just before he reached his desk told him to pack his things in the box and come with them. He reached for a phone but the guard was quicker. "No calls," he said, "pack your stuff and let's go."

It was a scary scene, but on reflection, as I still had a job (I was later to be on the other side of this issue), it made me feel as if banking (at least on the trading side) was a place where Capitalism reigned. Perform and you get very well paid. Screw up, and you're fired.

Or so I thought.

I've spent much of the past 2 days downloading data from the FDIC (more on those details in my next post) and was amazed to discover the best uptrend in the financial markets is banking salaries and employee benefits. One look at the graph below and I realized Lloyd Blankfein must be right. Bankers are doing God's work (or at least being compensated as if).

the data is skewed somewhat higher from the late 90s on by the repeal of Glass Steagall

You might think, if Bank employees are doing well, the owners must be doing even better. If these banks were more privately owned I would agree, but they aren't. It's apparently much better to work for a big bank (smaller banks don't pay even their top guys that well, as I found drilling down in the data) than to own it, just ask the gang at Goldman. The graph of cash dividends isn't nearly as pretty (but you can't argue with any dividend for 2008 or 2009, given the recent crisis, if you're an owner).

If you aren't a bank share owner but simply a taxpayer hoping the Fed won't let the currency in which you're remunerated shrink in value, you can argue plenty.

Recent news headlines proclaiming the wondrous profit (of $7B, not enough to pay salaries and bonuses of the top men at the big 5 US Bank holding companies) ready to be realized by the government with the sale of Citibank (brokered by these same bankers) miss the point. The Fed's balance sheet exploded to ensure that the Bankers who approved the loans which fomented the crisis could provision (inadequately, I suspect, as I'll discuss next time) against the losses and get paid handsomely for their shoddy work.

We'll all pay the price for that down the road and it may not be that far ahead.  Irish banks have gone back to their government for yet another infusion of capital.  Back here in the US, Elizabeth Warren of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel is warning of an impending commercial real estate loan crisis.

When the next crisis hits, (not too long now, I suspect) the Bankers won't need a TARP, they'll need some flak jackets.

As Paul Volcker said today, the banks must face a credible threat of closure.  Ultimately the failing firm should be liquidated or merged. In all... it is a death sentence, not a rescue at the hospital.

Capitalism is Dead: Keynesianism, Marxism and Communism are too!

The Obama administration is making final preparations to sell its stake in the New York bank (Citibank), according to industry and federal sources. At today's prices, the sale would net more than $8 billion, by far the largest profit returned from any firm that accepted bailout funds, and the transaction would be the second-largest stock sale in history.  WSJ

John Kenneth Galbraith was once asked what he thought Nixon meant when he said, "We're all Keynesians now." Galbraith responded, in part, "He probably didn't know himself."  This might have been a joke.

I'm no expert on his views, but here's my attempt to succinctly present Keynesianism: 1) Capital (the means of production) is not the ultimate driver of economic growth, Demand is. 2) Demand can be manipulated by changes in government taxing and spending. 3) Economic growth can (and should) be maintained, if necessary, by such manipulations.

This interpretation of Keynesianism contrasts with that of Capitalism, which, I believe, in an ideologically pure sense holds that privately owned Capital, regulated solely by adherence to hard money rules of profit, loss and bankruptcy, is the driver of economic growth. Within that perspective, "Supply Side-ism" (if you will, a "child" of Capitalism) adopts the latter two elements of Keynesianism- capital can and should be manipulated by government intervention.

Using those definitions, with which, I'm sure, many will disagree, Capitalism is a rarely seen model. Supply Side-ism seems the most prevalent model in the west historically, and, recently throughout the world. US so-called Capitalists at the turn of the last century are, due to protective tariffs, better termed, Industrialists.

Within the past 30 or so years, however, the long time model of Supply Side-ism (sometimes leavened with Keynesianism, more often not) has fallen into disfavor and a new model has become preeminent in the US-Speculationism.

I'll borrow from Friedrich Nietzsche to continue: Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: "I am looking for Capitalism! I am looking for Capitalism!"


As many of those who did not believe in Capitalism were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost it, then? said one. Did it lose its way like a child? said another. Or is it hiding? Is it afraid of us? Has it gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.


"Where has Capitalism gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed it - you and I. We are its murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Do we not smell anything yet of Capitalism's decomposition? Capitalisms too decompose. Capitalism is dead. Capitalism remains dead. And we have killed it. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto." (with slight modifications)

Nietzsche's madman ranted about God, but I think his form is useful in the current regard. For Nietzsche, God died because man stopped understanding the word (a pun for theologists) and believing in its intended sense. Those who followed after God's death would need some new more powerful (Nietzsche hoped to find something more fundamental, or was he just mocking the attempt, it's hard to tell sometimes) controlling idea or chaos would ensue.

While I feel Nietzsche's argument form seems quite apt for the purpose of this essay, I don't share his faith (if such was the case) that we will find any more powerful, fundamental, controlling idea....and thus chaos ensues.

Consider the opening news item. The government bought a corporation not with the idea of controlling it- i.e., contra right wing talk radio, Obama is no Marxist- but with the idea of profiting from the speculative purchase.

To paraphrase Nixon, "we're all Hedge Fund managers now."

Capitalism is dead. Long live Speculationism.

Speculationism is the belief that economic growth is a function of money flows- not the hard money of decades past but money of indeterminate value which allows its quantity to be increased almost endlessly. Like Keynesianism and Supply Side-ism, note the implicit coordination of the state's power to create money and the providers of economic growth, finance.

The above, as an aside, is but an observation, not a critique. I do, however, find it funny that in the same way US Industrialists, protected behind tariff walls, fancied themselves "capitalists" decades ago, so too do today's Speculationists, protected by the Fed's ability to create money. Who are they kidding?

To wit, the US seems increasingly comfortable allowing its capital to move where it will (and it seems to want to move away) so long as Speculators can profit, not by running the company- i.e. controlling the means of production- but by betting on changes in its "market set" value. In Speculationism the term widget can, in the new textbooks, apply equally well to the things produced and the means of producing them.  The term capital itself has morphed and is no longer a reference to the means of production but rather to the money (sometimes previously referred to as financial capital, but this became repetitious) which, presumably drives it. 

Economic growth in the US is less and less a function of what we make (and how efficiently we make it) and increasingly a function of speculative profit. Thus, argue the Speculationists, the foolishness of Volcker's idea of separating speculative activities from commercial banking: Industry is dying, commerce is a small thing. The business of America is Speculation.

And they are right. Whether this will prove wise in the future remains to be seen, but things don't look good from where I sit.  I think we will miss Capitalism, and the capital (in its old sense) which has moved away.

p.s. Yes I waxed hyperbolic and didn't do justice with my definitions. This is but an essay, a word which means, to try (in this case to throw some ideas into the internet ether)

Helping the Fed Solve the Problem of Excess Reserves

The key to the game is your capital reserves. You don't have enough, you can't pee in the tall weeds with the big dogs. - Gordon Gekko

Ben Bernanke and the brain trust at the Federal Reserve have been working overtime trying to solve the problem of excess reserves in the US banking system. "How," they wonder, "can we drain these reserves from the system without destabilizing the markets?" Their fears of destabilizing markets are, I believe, justified, which seems odd given that the Fed, in the past, has been able to drain reserves, although the quantity drained was admittedly much smaller.

To the extent there is no way to drain these reserves without upsetting the markets the solution to the problem might not be one of action, but of thought. As Norman Vincent Peale said, "Change your thoughts and you change your world." Instead of trying to drain the excess reserves let's admit that they are not, in fact, "excess", but rather, "prudent", or even, as I suspect, "insufficient."

How do we determine if reserve levels are prudent, excess or insufficient? The determination is a process of thought. If financial assumptions about the future are perfectly accurate, there is no need of reserves- correctly valued assets will, under that head, always generate income sufficient to pay liabilities.

Reserves, then, are a safety measure in the event assumptions about the future are inaccurate- if assets are, in fact, not correctly valued. The more inaccurate prior assumptions of future events prove to be the wiser it would have been to increase reserves before the inaccuracies come to light.

The apparently resolved crisis in Greece seems a case in point (as, it seems to me, was the US crisis of 2008). The Greeks didn't simply decide, out of the blue, to borrow an additional 50 or 100 billion Euros, they, at certain levels of government, knew their fiscal position. Why then the crisis?

Simple. They made poor assumptions about either the value of their assets relative to liabilities (what economists call the primary fiscal balance) or the duration of the deceit which, in part, allowed them to borrow in sufficient quantities at favorable rates. In their case the latter seems more of an issue, as tends to be the case when crises "suddenly" manifest.

Like the homeowner who lied about his income to get a home or the Ponzi schemer who claims to own more than he does, the Greeks had been living on borrowed time. The question in that case about a crisis is not if but when.

Deceit, of course, is a loaded term as it connotes intent. Bernie Madoff is in jail because he admitted to such. In other instances a more appropriate phrase would be willfully ignorant. Those in charge hope for an outcome more objective, but equally educated persons deem unlikely, or impossible. Traders call this, talking your book.

Regardless of intent, the effects are the same. Reserves bridge the gap between projected and actual income relative to liabilities whether the gap is a function of deceit or ignorance (willful or otherwise). Sufficiently higher levels of reserves (other things equal) would have kept Mr. Madoff out of jail and obviated the Greek crisis.

Gordon Gekko had it right.

Returning to the issue du jour- the proper level of reserves in the US banking system- the difficulty of imagining a plausible future scenario with the reserves drained strongly suggests to me that current levels are minimally prudent. That is, if draining reserves would cause rates to rise, decrease real sector activity, or some combination thereof such that bank incomes wouldn't cover required payments then they shouldn't be drained.

Why then does the Fed seem so intent on draining? Perhaps they aren't as intent on draining them as some might think. Perhaps their intent is simply to maintain the illusion that the reserves are considered excess. If they told the world the level of reserves was considered prudent this would likely send a message that the financial state of US banks is not as healthy as otherwise advertised. This, in turn, might exacerbate future gaps between bank income and outflow, requiring even higher levels of reserves than currently exist, or, as was the case in Greece and with Mr. Madoff, precipitate a crisis.

Perhaps the only way to keep the real sector operating such that bank assets perform is to increasingly dilute the currency (since any increase in reserves would most likely be "borrowed" from the Fed as happened during the last crisis). Perhaps Mr. Kinsley's nightmare scenario of impending substantial inflation and even hyper-inflation is much nearer that truth than the Fed or Mr. Krugman would have us believe.  Perhaps the classification of reserves as excess has more to do with what the Fed wishes others (i.e. those who lend money to the US) to assume than what they assume, which edges ever closer to Greek deceit.

The Fed could, of course, prove me wrong by draining the reserves deemed to be in excess without precipitating a crisis.

I won't, however, be holding my breath.

The Kins(l)ey Report (on Inflation)

One could, in a debate of US inflation prospects, discuss the virtues of issuing the currency in which your debt is denominated, and the ability of US political leadership to enact tough change counter-balanced, I think, by the magnitude of the debt in question relative to world GDP, and the actual history of US political leadership to enact tough change. But my aim is not (in this essay) a reasoned debate but a notice of the lack thereof.


If, like me, you're an official member of the pajama wearing blogger corps, you might be familiar with the recent debate over US inflation prospects between Michael Kinsley and Paul Krugman, et. al. If not, here's Kinsley's initial article, Krugman's rebuttal, Kinsley's retort, and Krugman's rebuttal of the retort.

Krugman's second rebuttal dripped with condescension, or so it seemed to me, recalling memories of school yard bullies. Those memories tempted me to begin this article with a quip about Krugman needing to pick on someone his own size......, but I'll use a different metaphor.

"Ouch!," you might be thinking, "that's a bit cruel."

True.

So's this line from Krugman to Kinsley: "I’m tempted to get into an argument about whether it’s “bullying” to suggest that if you’re going to write about an economic issue, you might want to study it first. But what I really want to do is..."

Don't you love the artful use of the non-statement statement?

Aside from my belief that future events are more likely to follow some variation of Kinsley's nightmare scenario than Krugman's Japan model (about which, more here), the element of the exchange that inspired this post was Krugman's nasty dismissal of an apparently serious inquiry from one who apparently admires his views.

Kinsley's initial article contains statements like: "am I crazy?", "Every economist I admire, from Paul Krugman and Larry Summers on down, is convinced that inflation will remain low for as long as we can predict", "I can’t help feeling that the gold bugs are right", and "My fear is not the result of economic analysis. It’s more from the realm of psychology."

These are the words of a humble student searching for wisdom to quell his fears.

The wise Professor Krugman begins his rebuttal with: "Mike Kinsley has an odd piece in the Atlantic in which he confesses himself terrified about future inflation, even though there’s no hint of that problem in the real world."

You can almost see the sneering Professor holding up the student's paper in front of the class as you read the words (at least I could).

Using the tried and true nasty Professor trick of tossing about a bit of relevant jargon and a counter-example, Krugman expects Kinsley to slink back into his seat.

To his credit, Kinsley doesn't flinch.... much. He almost falls for the Professorial misdirection (debating whether a sudden 100% inflation shock is better than a Weimar hyper-inflation is like debating whether losing both legs is better than getting killed- I see your point, but I'll take none of the above) but then gets back on point, telling the Prof (in effect), "you didn't answer my question."

Why not inflation?

As Kinsley argued, the 70s demonstrated the US is not immune to inflation and Gold has risen from $275 to over $1000 during the past decade. Perhaps Kinsley's main confusion lies in his focus on the future tense, instead of seeing it as an ongoing issue.

Kinsley's search for the truth on inflation reminds me of Alfred Kinsey's search for truth on human sexual habits, which led to the publication of two books on human sexuality known collectively as the Kinsey Reports. Like Kinsley (or so it seems to me) Kinsey's search for truth battled with popular conceptions of what should (in some views) be, but wasn't.

In a sense Kinsey reported on what everyone (collectively) knew, but was afraid to say. The fear (perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, somewhat justified) among then current opinion shapers was, in part, that open discussion would release the genie from the bottle. Hugh Hefner, of Playboy fame, credits Kinsey with opening his eyes to human sexual experience.

Krugman, in my view, is too smart an economist to dismiss outright the possibility of another significant inflation episode in the US, which may or may not be followed by hyper-inflation.

To use his phrasing, for those dismissing prediction of substantial US inflation, what is it about the US now that looks different to you from Thailand, Korea and Indonesia in say, 1997 (or Russia in 1998, or Iceland just recently)? Substantial public and private sector debt? Check. Huge expansion in the monetary base? Check. Large external debts and ongoing external deficits? Check. Increasing difficulties rolling over ever shorter term debt? Check. And yet each of those countries suffered, not multi-year hyperinflation, admittedly, but a sudden substantial (50-100% or more) inflation shock.

There are, admittedly, differences. As I wrote, I was using his phrasing and argument form. One could debate the virtues of issuing the currency in which your debt is denominated, and the ability of US political leadership to enact tough change counter-balanced, I think, by the magnitude of the debt in question relative to world GDP, and the actual history of US political leadership to enact tough change. But my aim is not a reasoned debate but a notice of the lack thereof.

Mr. Krugman might snidely respond to my snidely put question that the issue was hyper-inflation. I lived in Asia during their crisis and such shocks are worth worrying about even if hyper-inflation is avoided (besides, his use of Japan- a nation which self-finances, which seems to me a critical distinction- as counter-point suggests even moderate inflation is unlikely). Moreover, as Kinsley notes, who knows what policy makers will opt to do when the next crisis erupts. The history of the Bernanke Fed is not one of monetary restraint in a time of crisis.

I suspect that Krugman, not the economist, but the opinion shaper is, like those Kinsey battled, trying to keep the genie in the bottle- thus the Professorial dismissal instead of reasoned discussion of the issue. Inflation has both psychological and real world causes- when the two unite, the fireworks begin.

Perhaps, in a limited fashion, the Kinsley Report on Inflation will have a similar effect as Kinsey's, (then again maybe both should be seen as catalyst instead of cause) by bringing the debate into the open.

I wonder who the Hugh Hefner of Inflation will prove to be- perhaps Bill Murphy of GATA?

My advice to Kinsley is to have the courage of his convictions and buy some Gold, the price of which may have been as suppressed as reasoned open debate on US inflation prospects appears to be- both actions aim at the same effect.  I did (at $275 for Krugman's information) and I'm still holding.

US Industry, A Dim Bulb

Wang Jianwei, a graduate engineering student in Liaoning, China, was recently surprised to learn that he had been described as a potential cyberwarrior before the United States Congress due to a paper he published last spring- “Cascade-Based Attack Vulnerability on the U.S. Power Grid”.

My first thought on reading this news was that China would likely only resort to such a tactic in the event of actual war given that China and Asia in general generate (I couldn't resist) great profits from the US grid. Asian electronics exports wouldn't be of much use without a functioning grid in the US.

Further reflection on this topic recalled my days as emerging market economist; specifically one of the key bits of data in that field, electricity generation and consumption. Back then (the 90s) higher electricity consumption was seen as one of the few unalloyed goods in emerging economies- the more electricity an economy consumed the more it would grow.

Applying that view to the US, the graph below paints a picture of wonderful growth.

Yet, looks, in this case might be deceiving. While US electricity consumption has been growing it is being used to power a different mix of activities.

Until the mid 80s US Industry was the biggest consumer of energy, as the graphs below depict. Since the era of financial deregulation and industrial off-shoring (among other changes) Residential (all those new electronics exports from Asia) and Commercial (all those new office towers filled with people and computers in cubicles) use have continued to grow while Industrial use has lagged. US Industry uses roughly the same amount of power today as it used in the early 90s.

Meanwhile China's electricity consumption has been growing by leaps and bounds. The CIA's World Factbook lists China's electricity consumption as a close second to the US.

However, Chinese Industry currently uses, according to their Statistical Yearbook, almost 2.5 times as much electricity as US Industry. Current (2008) Chinese Industrial Electricity Consumption of some 2500B KwH is up from 883B KwH in 1999.

Suffice it to write that, if this data is a guide, the US is no longer the industrial workshop of the world.

Will the US sell Manhattan?

Those who face insolvency, Mr. Schlarmann, a senior member of Germany's Christian Democrats, said, must sell everything they have to pay their creditors. Thus, he said, Greece, given its debt problems, should consider selling some of its uninhabited islands to cut its debt.

The headline in the Bild newspaper took the argument a bit further, "Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks - and the Acropolis too!"

I guess we might call this the Andrew Mellon approach to sovereign debt crises- liquidate, liquidate, liquidate, on a national scale. It's a strategy which, if Niall Ferguson's argument-which contains the wonderful line, US government debt is a safe haven the way Pearl Harbor was a safe haven in 1941- that the US, and other western nations, may soon follow Greece into crisis, proves prescient, might inspire calls for the US to sell some islands, like Manhattan.

Perhaps selling the island outright might be a bit much. Yet, while the Chinese Government isn't a fan of the Dalai Lama it might appreciate the Karmic touch of leasing Manhattan from the US for, say, 99 years. Imagine the road signs, "Now Entering New Hong Kong."

In a sense, assuming Wall St. and the NY Fed were included in the lease, it would be the ultimate "pump and dump"- temporarily stabilize the financial system, in large part with money from Asia, and then dump it, and the derivatives portfolios contained therein, on China. Why wait for the next financial crisis to go hat in hand to Asia. Let's sell Citibank at $4 instead of waiting for it to fall under a buck.

The world might even benefit from such an arrangement. Yesterday, Paul Volcker told the House Financial Services Committee that regulators, like the NY Fed, are unlikely to rein in excessive Wall St. speculation. If the Chinese get the NY Fed, and thus oversight of financial markets, their no-nonsense approach to dealing with corruption, which includes the death penalty, might help finance get back on the "straight and narrow." I'd love to see Lloyd Blankfein testify to the Chinese Communist Party.

A man can dream, can't he? And who knows what the future will bring. I doubt the Ottoman, Mughal and Manchu Empires could have imagined that the West would take over administration of their territories.

Fortunately, at least for Wall Streeters wary of Chinese justice, the German proposal fell on deaf ears. Yet, the seemingly intractable problem of many western governments' unsustainable debt levels remains.

Niall Ferguson argues that the problem is the welfare state- perhaps he should take on Keynes with a new book, The Economic Consequences of the Welfare State. I suspect, however, improper- to the extent such policies are seen as wise means of avoiding social unrest- welfare state funding is but a symptom of an apparently widely held view by many in both public and private sector positions of power that, in the words of Dick Cheney, deficits don't matter. 

War finance and Wall St. bail-outs played at least as large a part as welfare spending in US Federal Debt doubling since 2001.   Those bail-outs, in turn, were made necessary by Wall St.'s take on Cheney's wisdom, which they express as, too big to fail.

Contra Mr. Cheney, deficits, which add up to debt over time, do matter.  Contra Wall St., no insitution is too big to fail.  Both views are, in my view, effects of a broader issue.  There is no agreed upon method, barring adoption of island sales, for sovereign debt resolution. In decades past when nations retained currency sovereignty devaluation was always an option, and fear of devaluation kept investors on their toes. The more recent desire for supra-national currencies turns countries like Greece into states like California with very limited options.

If current trends continue, nations like Greece and states like California might simply be absorbed into larger bodies. Greece could become a special administrative region of the EU and California could become a district of the US Federal Government. Yet this would simply buy time, making the ultimate sovereign debt problem that much harder to resolve.

If the world is ever to reform global finance it will need, first and foremost, to agree upon a method of debt resolution applicable to all large institutions, public and private.   So long as those running large institutions feel there are no consequences to deficits, debt problems will continue to mount.  If we are going to use money to drive the world, we need to take it seriously.

The Mask of Solvency

On reading the news of Goldman Sach's involvement in the Greek Government's heretofore successful plot to negatively obscure their fiscal position from the rest of the world (with the notable exception of Goldman Sachs, it seems worth noting) a vision sprang to mind. In it, a group of Greek Finance Officials are seated on one side of one of those over-long conference room tables found in the upper floors of modern office buildings facing two people from Goldman Sachs- Europe's Chief Institutional Derivatives Salesman and his mid 20s blond bombshell assistant.


After the obligatory pleasantries are completed the assistant distributes folders to the Greek Officials, bending over slightly in front of each man in the process. "As I was saying on the phone, Gentlemen," the GS salesman interjects, interrupting the not well concealed ogling, "we at Goldman Sachs can structure a portfolio of derivatives to hide your true fiscal position from both potential investors and the prying eyes of the European Central Government. We call it, 'The Mask of Solvency' portfolio."

Fade out.

What an interesting name, and notion; The Mask of Solvency- a means for the insolvent to appear to all but the most discerning observer as solvent as the best AAA credit, e.g. the US Government (irony intended).

The invented-but-still-possibly-accurate name of the GS ploy reminds me of a book on Psychopaths by Psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity. The depiction of Psychopathology seems to me a most useful prism through which to view current financial affairs.

To wit (from the book): It must be remembered that even the most severely and obviously disabled psychopath presents a technical appearance of sanity, often one of high intellectual capacities, and not infrequently succeeds in business or professional activities for short periods, sometimes for considerable periods.

More often than not, the typical psychopath will seem particularly agreeable and make a distinctly positive impression when he is first encountered. Alert and friendly in his attitude, he is easy to talk with and seems to have a good many genuine interests. There is nothing at all odd or queer about him, and in every respect he tends to embody the concept of a well-adjusted, happy person. Nor does he, on the other hand, seem to be artificially exerting himself like one who is covering up or who wants to sell you a bill of goods. He would seldom be confused with the professional backslapper or someone who is trying to ingratiate himself for a concealed purpose. Signs of affectation or excessive affability are not characteristic. He looks like the real thing. Very often indications of good sense and sound reasoning will emerge and one is likely to feel soon after meeting him that this normal and pleasant person is also one with high abilities. Psychometric tests also very frequently show him of superior intelligence. More than the average person, he is likely to seem free from social or emotional impediments, from the minor distortions, peculiarities, and awkwardnesses so common even among the successful.

The idea of a mask of solvency must have seemed like a stroke of genius to those whose masks of sanity had faded as far from conscious awareness as breathing. Successful arbitrageurs, after all, are well practiced in accepting the facsimile of a thing as the true thing itself. Thus, for most, the S&P 500 future is seen as identical to a portfolio of those 500 stocks, even though it only delivers (or takes) cash on settlement. As with the psychopath itself, only careful observation of behavior in all facets of life distinguishes the arbitraged facsimile from the true thing.

Usually, the distinguishing characteristics only manifest, i.e. the masks slips, as seems the case with Greek debt, when the damage has been done.

Or is damage done? Is there a difference in experience between merely the appearance of a thing, or quality, like solvency or sanity, and that thing or quality in truth?

It seems man has been pondering this question for Millennia, which is to write that it is a question each person apparently needs to answer for his or her self. In Plato's Republic Socrates asks if there is a difference between a man who appears Just but is not and a man who is truly Just. Athens too, it seems, had its share of Psychopaths in positions of influence inspiring such questions.

In our modern, financially centered system, Solvency, not Justice is the issue. Recasting Socrates' question, Is there a difference between a financial entity which appears solvent but is not, and one that is truly solvent? Would it not be better, as Socrates' listeners asked (about Justice) in the Republic, to enjoy the extra consumption afforded those who can mask their insolvency?

Socrates argued against such a view, while admitting that those so masked might reap temporary benefits. His reward for such truth-seeking views was death ordered by an Athenian Government which was in the process of devolution from the core of a great empire to a city with little sovereignty.

Whether the question has been answered accurately is up to everyone to individually decide.

One wonders if any of the Greek Finance Officials recalled Socrates' views when offered the Mask of Solvency. Regardless, I suspect Socrates' wisdom is now evident to them.

The Rising Fiscal Cost of Unemployment

Paraphrasing the old frat house saying about the party only getting started when something breaks- a financial crisis only truly gets going when the bond market starts to crash.

Sometimes a picture really is worth 1000 words.

click for bigger graph

The graph above depicts the 12 month moving average of the Federal Fiscal Deficit (in blue, left axis) and Non-Farm Payrolls (in red, right axis) since 1981. As you can see unemployment is becoming increasingly expensive.

When I first glanced at the data I was quite surprised. I wondered if the problem was more a function of expenditures, particularly War and Financial Bail-Out costs. While these play a significant part, the graph below shows that Federal Tax Receipts (in blue, left axis) are increasingly sensitive to changes in employment.

click for bigger graph

I'll be a very interested observer of the US Bond market in the coming months (who knows, things could get exciting today) to see if the normal "weak economy equals strong bond market" relationship doesn't shift into a "weak economy equals lower tax receipts, higher deficits, more bond supply and thus weaker bond market" relationship.

Paraphrasing the old frat house saying about the party only getting started when something breaks- a financial crisis only truly gets going when the bond market starts to crash.  After all it isn't much of a crisis if your lenders are willing to lend to you at lower rates then before the crisis, is it?

Full Disclosure: No position in US Bonds (but I'm thinking about it)

Feds Forget Bread Crumbs, Have No Exit Strategy

Early in the morning came the woman, and took the children out of their beds. Their bit of bread was given to them, but it was still smaller than the time before. On the way into the forest Hansel crumbled his in his pocket, and often threw a morsel on the ground until little by little, he had thrown all the crumbs on the path. Hansel & Gretel

This afternoon (thanks to the good fellows at Zero Hedge) I found my way to the Minutes of the Meeting of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee Of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

After debate on other issues, The Committee then turned to a presentation by one of its members on the likely form of the Federal Reserve's exit strategy and the implications for the Treasury's borrowing program resulting from that strategy.

The presenting member began by noting the importance of the exit strategy for financial markets and fiscal authorities...A critical issue will be the impact on the riskier asset classes as market interest rates move away from zero.

The presenting member then looked at the likely sequence of the Federal Reserve's exit strategy. The member acknowledged that the central bank must address the uncertainty and fragility of the economic recovery and the dependence of the housing market on low rates. It was suggested that the most likely sequence would be the draining of excess reserves from the banking system, the cessation of the mortgage-backed securities purchase program, and only then raising the Fed funds target rate.

There you have it, drain excess reserves, stop buying mortgage back securities and then raise Fed Funds.

Easy, right?

Not so fast.

Several members at this point asked why draining reserves before ending the MBS program made sense. The presenting member noted that the program was already set to expire, and other measures, such as a revival of the Supplementary Financing Program, could be utilized by the Federal Reserve at the same time.

The presenting member then addressed the options for draining reserves from the banking system. The problem of excess reserves could persist through the end of 2011 with up to one trillion in excess reserves remaining after liquidity facilities and on balance sheet securities have rolled off. One approach, raising the Fed funds rate to increase the opportunity costs of banks using their reserves, carries the attendant problems of increasing interest rates too soon in the economic recovery. A second option, taking in term deposits, lacks a clear mechanism for rate setting and bank use. Selling assets may run into difficulties if the public appetite for debt at that time is sated, especially considering the impact on the housing market and the major role the Federal Reserve currently plays in the market.

According to the presenting member, these less than optimal solutions leaves the Federal Reserve the option of reverse repurchase agreements (reverse repos) as the most likely option although the potential of the mechanism for draining reserves is unclear. If it is to undertake these reverse repos, the selection of counterparty is important. Depending on how the program is designed, whether it is made to work with dealers or money market funds or to pursue a TALF model with banks as agents, there will be different impacts on the scope of the program, the ease with which it can be set up, and the term of the contracts. In all cases, the program will compete with other short-term investments and put upward pressure on Treasury bill rates according to the presenting member. Moreover, draining excess reserves may dampen the demand for Treasury securities by banks given that banks are investing in securities – particularly Treasuries - in the absence of loan demand.

Several members noted the graph discussing net fixed income supply in 2009 and 2010, and how issuance will ramp up dramatically in 2010. Federal Reserve purchases have taken an enormous amount of supply out of the market this past year across fixed income markets, but next year, financial markets should expect even greater issuance with no support. Such an outcome could pressure rates.

"Pressure rates," now there's an understatement. 

It looks to me as if the Feds didn't consider an exit strategy before embarking on their journey into the liquidity swamp called Quantitative Easing. There seems to me to be no viable exit strategy that won't have severe implications for the real economy. Given that we will be having elections in 2010, and again in 2012, the odds of the liquidity swamp getting drained any time soon, which would surely sour the mood on incumbents seems quite small.
Tightening, I suspect, will be done by the markets, and, under that scenario, those excess reserve might come in handy. At least then the Feds will then have someone else to try to blame.
 
Alternatively, this meeting could be just a show to buy time before the US$ starts to really sink.
 
No wonder Mr. Buffett wants to get rid of his cash.

Whistling past the Depression

Ben Bernanke – for it was he, of course – has found himself in an even more privileged position to learn such lessons. As chairman of the Fed, his record already deserves more plaudits than those prematurely heaped upon his predecessor. How lucky for us that a Great Depression buff was running the Fed when a second Great Crash came along! For this time the contractionary forces have not been intensified, in the name of sound money. Instead, an active monetary policy has pursued a strategy of easing credit restraints on the real economy, and the threat of inflation has been rightly dismissed as a purely notional danger under present circumstances. FT

The Fed, according to a scan of the financial news, is currently debating the timing and method of an "exit strategy" from the zero-interest-rate-policy (ZIRP), which, according to the above view, saved the US from a repeat of the Depression. This may well prove to be true, and if so, would be, in my view, an example of the myopia inducing effects of unproved assumptions.

The assumption, in this case, is the belief that a good deal of the pain of the Great Depression could have been avoided by policies enacted after the Crash of '29.

This was Milton Freidman's assumption and, judging by Mr. Bernanke's academic work and recent speeches, his as well. Depressions, they think, can be "cured".  Most people have not studied the Great Depression but in many cases seem more than willing to whistle past the the idea of a Depression- uneasily perhaps, but unwilling to change course while, knowingly or not, willing to put their faith in conclusions similar to those in the opening paragraph.

Conclusions drawn from a study of any historic event will necessarily be colored by prejudice. Open minded people, without an axe to grind, might quickly lose those prejudices that seem inconsistent with the facts and theoretical bent, if any, while the less open minded, for whatever reason, will come away with their main prejudices confirmed.

Perhaps because I've studied the Depression without hopes of being an economist with a future at the Fed or of writing any policy-effecting book on the topic (I'm lucky to get 1000 page views on this site) but rather as a husband and father who merely wishes to muddle through without calamity, my read of that (and the preceding) period in US history is that there is no "cure". Perhaps in the event that Plato's Philosopher-Kings ran the world, Depressions might be avoided- although this would involve a system of political economy very different from ours- but never cured.

The reasoning behind this view is as follows. Depressions, in contrast to the more common financial or inventory overheated recessions, are caused by many years of what Austrian Economists call mal-investment- investment, and by consequence, education and employment patterns predicated on a view of the future radically inconsistent with the economic conditions that actually unfold.

Depressions are not, in my view, caused by the financial crises that tend to precede them.  Rather the financial crisis is the moment when the mal-investment is first revealed to the unsuspecting, usually without changing too many minds.

In the case of the Great Depression of the 30s, the view upon which mal-investments were based was that there would always be willing and able consumers to buy whatever the US manufacturing machine was capable of producing at a profit to their costs. In the event, US manufacturers discovered they had grossly over-estimated the willingness and ability of the world's consumers to buy their goods. Had the emergence of World War II not provided insatiable consumers, and provided a crisis-induced mental reboot of the population, if you will, I suspect the 40s would have been far grimmer in economic terms than it proved to be.

In our current situation, the mal-investment is, in a sense, reversed. Instead of believing that consumers are infinitely willing and capable of buying their goods, the US believes that suppliers are infinitely willing to accept US$s in exchange for goods, regardless of US official policy towards their currency. Instead of people trained to work in factories, and an infrastructure geared to manufacturing, people are trained to work in Dilbert style cubicles, and our infrastructure is geared for an endless supply of cheap oil.

In both cases, strong lobbies resist change. Manufacturers had their thumb on government for much of the 20th Century, only to find their position usurped by Finance, which it still retains. Long standing beliefs as to the virtues of such influence will be slow to change, as will the beliefs of many people who, in my view, are educating and training themselves for a world that won't manifest.

World War II, as earlier noted, provided a crisis that engendered a period when one could look at the world with fresh eyes. In the US families of farmers and laborers were able to dream of sending their children to college to become engineers, scientists, doctors and lawyers, or even to do this themselves.

I don't yet see such a catalysts for a mental reboot in the present period, although perhaps a US$ currency crisis might prove sufficient (and hopefully a war won't be necessary).

The thrust of my view is, to the extent I've correctly identified some of the causes of the Depression, the required mental changes in a good deal of the population, not to mention the manifestations thereof in education, training and investment will take years to unfold. If the US will no longer be able to set the terms of trade more or less unilaterally, we have a long way yet before our economy is ready to compete.  At a minimum the US population must accept that they will have to produce much more to enjoy the same standard of living, or deal with less.

In 2007, Fed Chairman Bernanke argued: Economic growth and prosperity are created primarily by what economists call "real" factors--the productivity of the workforce, the quantity and quality of the capital stock, the availability of land and natural resources, the state of technical knowledge, and the creativity and skills of entrepreneurs and managers. He then went on to highlight the crucial supporting role that financial factors play in the economy. I think he continues to place too much emphasis on the latter and not enough on the former in his views and the policies which emerge therefrom (on second thought he hasn't done a great job in getting finance to help the real sector either- leveraged bets on bond market capital appreciation doesn't seem like a cure for anything).

He, and many others may think they can whistle past a Depression as easily as they whistle past a graveyard, but in the case of a Depression, the Bogeyman is real.

Roubini Forgets the Riskiest Asset of All (the US$)

Since March there has been a massive rally in all sorts of risky assets – equities, oil, energy and commodity prices – a narrowing of high-yield and high-grade credit spreads, and an even bigger rally in emerging market asset classes (their stocks, bonds and currencies). At the same time, the dollar has weakened sharply , while government bond yields have gently increased but stayed low and stable.  Nouriel Roubini

Mr. Roubini, whose views I usually find most enlightening, was one of the few prominent economists who forecast the financial crisis of 2008.  Recently, however, perhaps due to a 2005 forecast of an unraveling of Bretton Woods II and sharp decline in the US$ that didn't pan out (at least so far), Mr. Roubini, judging by the above argument, assumes that the US$ is "here to stay" at least in the medium term. 

I disagree (and think he and Mr. Setser should have stuck to their earlier views- sometimes such things take time).

In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking relates the story below which is quite germane to a discussion of Mr. Roubini's view.
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever", said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

The question, on what belief(s) does your argument rest, gained increased importance ever since David Hume pulled the rug out from under those who assumed any "real-world" arguments were validly based on pure reason. Hume's argument, never refuted, at least to my knowledge, is that "always being followed by" is not the same as caused by. We might infer such, and certainly act on the view that what has happened in the past will happen again, but as we didn't make the rules of the universe, we don't really know. At best we can believe.

On what turtle does Mr. Roubini's view rest? It rests on the view that the US$ has intrinsic value. As he argues: First, the dollar cannot fall to zero and at some point it will stabilise; when that happens the cost of borrowing in dollars will suddenly become zero, rather than highly negative, and the riskiness of a reversal of dollar movements would induce many to cover their shorts.

I ask, why can't the value of the US$ fall to zero? From the long view of History, the odds of a currency of virtually no intrinsic value declining to that value is high, which might explain Voltaire's quote on paper money.

Perhaps, however, Mr. Roubini was speaking of the medium term, and using the value of the Japanese Yen as a "turtle" to support his argument. Alas, the US is not Japan. Despite their fiscal woes, Japan runs a current account surplus- last month's surplus came in at $13B. The world is not awash in Yen, on the contrary, Japan is awash in US$s, as are quite a few other nations- China comes to mind.

When the Yen was the carry trade vehicle of choice, the risk, which manifested from time to time, was of a sharp rally due to the lack of Yen in international markets. If Japan ran a current account deficit this risk would be much diminished. I suspect if Japan was running a C/A deficit when it opted for a zero-interest-rate-policy (ZIRP) the Yen would have quickly lost a good deal of its value.

The US has both a C/A deficit and a ZIRP. While I agree with Mr. Roubini that the US ZIRP is inspiring the mother of all carry trades, which can inspire sharp corrections, that risk is, in my view, more than offset by the mother of all long positions in the riskiest "asset" of all, the US$. The ZIRP makes holding US$s a losing proposition, as Mr. Roubini notes.

The turtle on which Mr. Roubini's view stands is the notion that the US$ is an asset, when, in my view, it is a liability. By statute there is no fixed exchange rate between the US$ and anything other than US$ debts.  Each time an adjustment arises such that there is a shortage of US$s, the Fed rides in to "add liquidity" because they are more interested in keeping the big banks afloat than the currency. Until that changes, the mother of all carry trades will, despite the odd setback, continue to grow.

Reflections on Soros' Reflexivity

I can state the core idea in two relatively simple propositions. One is that in situations that have thinking participants, the participants’ view of the world is always partial and distorted. That is the principle of fallibility. The other is that these distorted views can influence the situation to which they relate because false views lead to inappropriate actions. That is the principle of reflexivity. George Soros

The FT has most kindly provided excellent coverage of George Soros' recent CEU lectures on reflexivity and its relation to economics and finance. Both transcripts and video are available.

While reading his lectures I often found myself nodding in agreement. The man draws from an extremely eventful life with a gifted mind. If you opted to stop reading this blog now and "clicked" over to The Soros Lectures (instead of finishing my two cents worth now) you would only miss a small critique on his conclusions- a critique, however, which may have substantial ramifications.

For all his financial success, Mr. Soros strikes me as a man whose true calling was teaching. He has been pushing "his" Theory of Reflexivity for decades and remains somewhat baffled that it hasn't caught on. He suspects that the Financial Crisis of 2008 might be sufficiently negative feedback to inspire a broader examination of his theories in schools and use of his views in the formulation of public policy.

If I had a chance to offer Mr. Soros one sentence that might help him stop banging his head against the wall, it would be this: The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato- Alfred North Whitehead.

2400 years ago in a culture that had reached a pinnacle of success in its area of the globe, but had suffered some defeats Plato watched the Athenian Democracy put his teacher, Socrates, to death. He spent the rest of his life exploring human thought individually and collectively in light of Socrates teachings and death as well as those successes and defeats.

He too drew on an extremely eventful life with a gifted mind and left his teachings for any who wished to read (albeit subject to the availability of books, which was a large issue, up until Guttenberg). Judging from his analogy of the cave, I don't think Plato would be surprised that few now "see" the value in his work. Nor, I suspect, would he be surprised by Soros' views, although he might find the term "reflexivity" (the quantum mechanical word is "entanglement") interesting as he wrote of the effects of the observer on the observed, and vice versa.

In other words, as Whitehead noted, the observer-observed problem has been an issue for thousands of years. Soros' views on reflexivity aren't new, but rather, as William James called his Philosophy of Pragmatism, a new name for old ways of thinking. This isn't in any way to diminish their importance. Many of the most important lessons in life are timeless. I'll bet there are quite a few speculators who wished they took to heart the Biblical teaching about 7 fat years and 7 leans years- an oldie but a goody.

What does strike me as somewhat new in reflexivity is the increased number of people observing the action, and acting on their observations, thus creating that which will then be observed- economic and financial self-awareness is on the rise. One additional effect of increasing wealth, not studied by the Greenspan Fed, is an increase in economic and financial reflexivity which reminds me Keynes ruminations on the topic, recently well described by John Cassidy at the New Yorker: He [Keynes] compared investing to newspaper competitions in which “the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point of view.” If you want to win such a contest, you’d better try to select the outcome on which others will converge, whatever your personal opinion might be. “It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest,” Keynes explained. “We have reached the third degree, where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practice the fourth, fifth and higher degrees.

It's quite a tangle, as Soros found himself: Reflexive feedback loops have not been rigorously analyzed and when I originally encountered them and tried to analyze them, I ran into various complications. The feedback loop is supposed to be a two-way connection between the participant’s views and the actual course of events. But what about a two-way connection between the participants’ views? And what about a solitary individual asking himself who he is and what he stands for and changing his behavior as a result of his reflections? In trying to resolve these difficulties I got so lost among the categories I created that one morning I couldn’t understand what I had written the night before.

The harder you try to get concrete answers based solely on these reflexive feedback loops the more complex the issue becomes- a Mobius strip with no beginning and no end..........

In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine. - Ben Graham

This brings me to an Alexandrian moment before the Gordian Knot. Let's cut the complexity. If one is an investor, which I define as one who acts on the long view, the more Benjamin Graham's weighing machine comes into play. Reflexivity is more a function of action on the short view when Graham's voting machine is in play.

In my view, public policy should not make use of Soros' ideas, which are most suited for his Hedge Fund work, but rather should focus on the long view. That short run fluctuations threaten the system is to me more a sign that leveraged speculation has run amok. There's too much voting, which increasingly drives finance into the political TV talking heads frame of mind-which is as endless as that Mobius strip- and not enough weighing, due, in large part, to increased opportunities to leverage, as Soros noted.

One trend whose premise is false is that increased leverage has made the world's financial system more stable. Leverage tends to increase the importance of short term price fluctuations, and gets people increasingly involved in the endless feedback loop.  The amplitude of the boom-bust cycle increases when leverage is increased.  If financial market stability is a goal of public policy, reducing the amount of leverage seems a wise first step.

Propaganda "Gets" Everyone, Mr. Geithner, even you

I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris and Zurich, which arrived the day after publication, and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one's inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one's mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a cafe, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were.  William Shirer: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

In a recent interview US Treasury Secretary displayed- presumably the reason he was chosen for the job- the ability to hew to the party line. I wonder if he has considered the costs associated with that strategy.

As the opening quote attests, even when one might know "the truth," the effect of habitual repetition of propaganda is to accept that which is repeated and echoed publically, even when it conflicts. Goebbels view on the importance of repetition, which has an analog in education, springs to mind.

While in private Mr. Geithner might attest to believing different things, in public he sticks to the script- he repeats it, perhaps often enough that like Mr. Shirer, he comes to believe it.  Mr. Geithner promotes the view that the US$ is the final solution of currencies, and other such nonsense.

To wit, in the interview Mr. Geithner is asked:

Question: World Bank President Robert Zoellick recently said that the U.S. should not take for granted the dollar's preeminence. Would you expect, at some point, that the dollar will not be the world reserve currency?



Geithner: I wouldn't. But I think the dollar's role in the system requires us to do everything possible to keep inflation low and make sure we're getting our fiscal house in order.

This seems to me a silly statement. The question of the length of US$'s preeminent role is one of time. Eventually the US$ will be replaced and those who think otherwise, apparently like Mr. Geithner, exhibit ahistoric beliefs.

Of course, the propaganda continues:

Question: Here we are at Dow 10,000, and JPMorgan (JPM) and Goldman Sachs (GS) are once again reporting great numbers and paying record bonuses. And yet 10% of the country is unemployed. Some people out there are saying: "Did we get snookered again? Have we learned anything?"

Geithner: We're not going to let this financial system go back to where it was, and we're not going to let the practices reemerge that caused this crisis. That's very, very important, and the financial community has a huge interest in a more stable framework with better protections for the industry. The best-run firms were disadvantaged by the worst-run.

The financial system, contra Mr. Geithner's statement, is already back where it was. Financial sector profits aren't flowing from borrowing short and lending long, but leveraged bets on US rates staying low, else they would not be nearly so substantial.

The last sentence in his response was particularly expressive of the propaganda flowing from Big Finance- their errors were a function, not of incompetence, but the spill-over effects of "worse-run" firms. Speculative Capitalism, at least as I understand it, is all about correctly forecasting the financial future. If the supposedly best-run firms didn't bet on the liquidity draining knock-on effects of those duped by financial over-shoot (or worse, got duped themselves) they don't qualify as best-run. Unless you happen to be Mr. Geithner whose goal is, to quote George Bush the Younger, to catapult the propaganda.

The men who truly fix the financial system will not be spouting such nonsense.

It's Not The Size Of The Banks, Comrade Bernanke, It's...

Mr. Bernanke, speaking at a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston meeting Friday on Cape Cod, said [in response to question about "too big to fail"] he would prefer “a more subtle approach without losing the economic benefit of multi-function, international (financial) firms." WSJ

The players are laying their cards on the table at the Big Casino debates over regulation. On one side of the table we have Paul Volcker, and Alan Greenspan, Mervyn King et alios, who think that banks should be broken up (although with some difference between them on how that might be done). On the other side of the table we have current Fed Chairman (who obviously knows whom he speaks for ) Ben Bernanke who thinks that Bigger is still Better when it comes to banking.

To wit, in that Friday speech, Mr. Bernanke argued: First, recent experience confirms the value of supervision of financial holding companies--especially the largest, most complex, and systemically critical institutions--on a consolidated basis, supplementing the supervision that takes place at the level of the holding company's subsidiaries.

Leaving aside the rather obvious (to anyone but Big Bank CEOs and Ben Bernanke, it seems) point that recent experience only proves that that the value of supervision of financial holding companies was roughly nil, let's examine his argument more fully.

He continues: Second, our supervisory approach should better reflect our mission, as a central bank, to promote financial stability. The extraordinary pressure on financial firms last fall underscored how profoundly interconnected firms and markets are in our complex, global financial system. Thus, any effort to address systemic risks will require a more systemwide, or macroprudential, approach to the supervision of systemically critical firms. More generally, supervisors must go beyond their traditional focus on individual firms and markets to try to identify possible channels of financial contagion and other risks to the system as a whole.

A ha. In other words, Big Banks mean Big Regulations. According to Comrade Bernanke, it's the job of the Fed (or another even Bigger Brother) to to promote financial stability, whatever that might mean.

The thin edge of the wedge has pretty much split the log of Capitalism here. The Fed's job, at least before Humphrey Hawkins slid into obscurity, is to maintain price stability and foster as full an employment situation as is consistent with the first directive. Financial stability, under that head, is only important to the extent it impairs one of those directives.

If "Financial Stability" of Comrade Bernanke refers to the casino-derivative markets never being short of liquidity, that is a fool's dream- Big Finance will keep leveraging until they ex(im)plode. It also strikes me as anti-Capitalist. Bankruptcies, liquidity shortages, defaults and currency crises are part of the game- a self-correcting game if failure is allowed to extract its price.

Paul Volcker's "middle of the road" approach, echoed by Mervyn King, to "financial stability" is to separate the casino (he, being more genteel used, speculative) elements of finance from the utility elements. In other words, instead of "financial stability" we should aim for "commercial stability" and retain the "survival of the fittest" aspect of capitalism in the big stakes arena.

In that way, Comrade Bernanke might even get his way, although I suspect the virtues of economies of scale to which he refers are offset by the vices of complacency that flow from lack of competition. As olive branch perhaps we can separate the commercial banking departments of the Big 5 from the speculative elements and roll them into one or two big firms with some Banking Czar, like Comrade Bernanke, in charge. Not that I'll be banking there, I'm going to stick with my local bank.  Then we can see if the proprietary traders at the big banks are really worth the bucks without risking the commerical financial system in the process.

The problem, to which I alluded in the title, is not the size of the banks. It's Big Finance's use of key commercial banking aspects to shield them from speculative losses that would have sent any other not protected firm into bankruptcy. Even LTCM got wound down.  Trading is supposed to be about managing risk (at least if the intent is to allocate capital wisely), and if you can't go bust, there isn't much of that.

Of course, mine is but a lone opinion from the woods of Upstate NY. I'm eager to see how the battle progresses, assuming the debate doesn't become moot due to another crisis.