The report from the Federal Reserve yesterday was positive. The headline in the Wall Street Journal was typical: “Fed More Upbeat, but Keeps Lid on Rates.” In other Federal Reserve news we hear that the Fed is going to phase out the special facilities set up during the financial crisis.
So, what else is new? (http://seekingalpha.com/article/178117-federal-reserve-exit-watch-part-5)
Our fearless leader, Time’s Person of the Year, POTY, Chairman Benjamin Shalom Bernanke, was an avid supporter of Alan Greenspan and low, low interest rates earlier this decade, rates that spurred on the credit bubble in housing and elsewhere. In 2007, Chairman Bernanke was late in identifying the fact that the economy was slowing and that there was a looming financial crisis on the horizon. Then, Time’s POTY seemingly panicked after the bailout of AIG in September 2008 and this resulted in the rushed passage of TARP. (http://seekingalpha.com/article/106186-the-bailout-plan-did-bernanke-panic)
Once it was finally accepted that there was a financial crisis, POTY saw to it that just about everything that could be thrown against the wall, was...thrown against the wall. In this he has been deemed a savior. The balance sheet of the Fed ballooned from about $900 billion to roughly $2.1 trillion.
Now, POTY is seeing that the target rate of interest for the conduct of monetary policy can hardly be differentiated from zero and this target has been maintained since December 16, 2008.
WOW! The Fed’s zero target rate of interest was one year old YESTERDAY!
Excess reserves in the banking system have gone from about $2 billion to over $1.1 trillion!
And, what is the result?
Big banks are eating this up! There are two articles in the morning papers that attest to this. See the column by John Gapper in the Financial Times, “How America let banks off the lease”: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0ad195f8-ea7a-11de-a9f5-00144feab49a.html. Gapper writes, “As the FT reported on Wednesday, banks and hedge funds have made huge profits in distressed debt trading in the past year, aided by the Federal Reserve keeping short-term interest rates low. Meanwhile, the banks that turned out to be too big to be allowed to fail are bigger than ever.”
Next, the op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal by Gerald P. O’Driscoll, Jr., “Obama vs. the Banks”: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704398304574597910616856696.html#mod=todays_us_opinion. O’Driscoll states “that banks can raise short-term money at very low interest rates and buy safe, 10-year Treasury bonds at around 3.5%. The Bernanke Fed has promised to maintain its policy for ‘for an extended period.’ That translates into an extended opportunity for banks to engage in this interest-rate arbitrage.” He then asks, “Why would a banker take on traditional loans, which even in good times come with some risk of loss?” Seems like I have been arguing this point for at least six months now in assorted blog posts.
But, of even more importance is the attitude of the bankers toward financial innovation.
There is no better environment for financial innovation than the one that we are now experiencing. I would argue very strongly that financial innovation is taking place right now even though we may not see all the different forms the innovation is taking. And, the current round of financial innovation is coming at the expense of regular borrowing and lending. And, the financial innovation is benefitting the large, financially savvy financial institutions and not the small- and medium-sized organizations that don’t have the resources, or, the inclination, or, the freedom, since they still have plenty of questionable assets to deal with. Hail, Wall Street! See you later Main Street!
For the past fifty years or so, the government of the United States has basically followed an expansionary economic policy that has provided a safety-net to the financial system, and established an inflationary bias within the economy. There is no better environment for financial innovation than this!
The banks, the financial system, the non-financial system, and governments have innovated like mad during this time period.
The current federal government is just continuing to underwrite this practice at the present time.
POTY and the current administration are just exacerbating the situation they are so heavily criticizing.
And, as Gapper states, "the banks that turned out to be too big to be allowed to fail are bigger now than ever."
POTY and the current administration may win, politically, in the short run because the big bankers seem to have a deaf ear: See http://seekingalpha.com/article/178269-defining-the-banking-situation-as-a-political-issue.
In the longer run, the victory may go to another side. Paul Volcker seems to be taking the other side of the argument. See the article by Simon Johnson in The New Republic: “Is History on Paul Volcker’s Side?” http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-plank/history-paul-volckers-side.
The bottom line, however, is that Benjamin Shalom Bernanke doesn’t seem to get it…once again! Time after time, the Fed Chairman has seemed to miss the mark. Because of this record, one, I think, can seriously ask the question: “Why should we expect Bernanke to be correct this time?”
In nominating the Chairman for another term, President Obama seems to believe that Bernanke will be correct this time. More than anything else the president has done, even sending more troops into Afghanistan, his bet on the re-appointment of Chairman Bernanke may determine how his presidency is perceived by future historians. A lot is riding on Chairman Bernanke.
Showing posts with label Wall Street Journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wall Street Journal. Show all posts
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
AIG, an example of a bailout!
“If there is a single episode in this entire 18 months that has made me more angry, I can’t think of one other than AIG. AIG exploited a huge gap in the regulatory system.”
These words were spoken by Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in testimony on Tuesday, March 3, 2009 before the Senate Banking Committee. Bernanke expressed further anguish at the behavior of AIG on Sixty Minutes Sunday evening.
Professor, welcome to the real world!
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner echoed some of the same feelings in testimony on the same day before the House Ways and Means Committee when he stated that some areas of AIG were not under “adult supervision.”
Come on, Timmy, I try and stop people from making the same claim about the bank bailout plans of the Treasury Department.
Is the Obama team becoming so defensive about their program that they are beginning to resort to name calling to deflect criticism?
Did AIG exploit a huge gap in the regulatory system? Yes, they did. And that is what people do over and over again in the real world. It is called “responding to incentives.” The world is full of incentives…some positive incentives…some negative incentives…and so on. That is what the study of economics is all about! Give the people in the Obama administration a copy of “Freakonomics”!
I have been in the Federal Reserve System…I have worked for a cabinet Secretary in Washington, D. C….and I have run publically traded financial institutions…and one thing is especially clear…people respond to incentives.
Some of those incentives are to innovate in products and markets. And, what do economists tell potential innovators to look for? Missing markets. Incomplete Markets. Places that are not being served or regulated.
Why do you look in these areas? Well, because that is where a person…or a business…can find a place to achieve a competitive advantage. Being a “first-mover” or a “second-mover” into a market is a way to achieve exceptional returns…at least for a short time period. And, this is plenty of incentive to draw people into the effort.
It is a highly risky effort and a lot of people and businesses fail because it is so risky. But, the incentives are substantial enough that people are continually drawn into the exercise.
A competitive advantage may not last for a very long time. People that find opportunities to arbitrage markets…traders…may find segments in a market place to exploit for a period of time…but, over time competitive advantage does not seem to last for specific trading schemes…see Enron and Long Term Capital Management. In such cases, you need to keep coming up with something new. That is what businesses producing Information Goods do.
One of the games played in the financial services area…and I have experienced this in my professional life beginning in the 1960s…is to find the hole in the regulatory structure. It is a game that the regulators are always behind in. The private sector does something…the regulators close the gap with new regulations…the private sector finds a way around this…and the regulators have to close the gap again. And, the game goes on and on because the incentives are such that it is still worthwhile to the private sector to continue to innovate.
Furthermore, anything the government does sets up incentives. And that is why the Obama “recovery plan” is so important…it changes a lot of the incentives that exist within the economy…for better or for worse. Notice the long, long lines of governors, mayors, and other officials that have gathered with their hands out for funds from the “recovery plan”. I am not going to comment any further on the “recovery plan” at this time other than to just highlight the fact that this plan changes incentives…regardless of how much stimulus it provides.
But, to be an equal-opportunity critic, I must mention that the previous administration created incentives that resulted in the present financial crisis. Maintaining negative real rates of interest for at least 18 months created plenty of incentive to leverage and innovate in financial structures and instruments. This period of innovation has created a massive crisis with respect to asset values. (For more on this see my blog post “AIG and Our Core Economic Issue: Unknown Asset Values” http://seekingalpha.com/article/123867-aig-and-our-core-economic-issue-unknown-asset-values.) In my mind, there is going to have to be a resolution to the asset value problem before any stimulus package is going to have much of an effect on the economy.
Anytime the government attempts to impose its hand on the private sector “things happen.” The government is just not attuned to enter the very complex tangled web of the real world with simplistic plans to “set things straight.” Even within the government public officials have started pointing fingers at each other when events don’t go as desired. Last night I saw Barney Frank interviewed by Rachael Maddow. Frank made it very clear that we got into the AIG mess because “the Fed”, without coming to Congress, gave AIG $85 billion last September and this started off all the mess. And, the reason why this bonus thing and other events have occurred is that “the Fed” without the advice or consultation of Congress gave AIG the $85 billion with “no strings attached”!
Wow! Go figur’ that, will ya!
Now, the Wall Street Journal has the headline this morning…”Obama to Avoid Auto Bankruptcies.” The “experts” in the government, we are told, are going to restructure General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC outside of the bankruptcy courts. This, we are expected to believe, will give the taxpayers a better and more protected solution than will a court solution. We wait the conclusion…
The real world is tough. People don’t always do what you want them to do. Incentives matter. We must be careful about the incentives we are creating for the future, for one other fact from the field of economics is very clear: sometimes it takes a long time for the full effect of incentives to work their way through an economy. As a consequence, we can often lose sight of the cause of a problem because the incentives that created the problem are embedded somewhere in the distant past.
These words were spoken by Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in testimony on Tuesday, March 3, 2009 before the Senate Banking Committee. Bernanke expressed further anguish at the behavior of AIG on Sixty Minutes Sunday evening.
Professor, welcome to the real world!
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner echoed some of the same feelings in testimony on the same day before the House Ways and Means Committee when he stated that some areas of AIG were not under “adult supervision.”
Come on, Timmy, I try and stop people from making the same claim about the bank bailout plans of the Treasury Department.
Is the Obama team becoming so defensive about their program that they are beginning to resort to name calling to deflect criticism?
Did AIG exploit a huge gap in the regulatory system? Yes, they did. And that is what people do over and over again in the real world. It is called “responding to incentives.” The world is full of incentives…some positive incentives…some negative incentives…and so on. That is what the study of economics is all about! Give the people in the Obama administration a copy of “Freakonomics”!
I have been in the Federal Reserve System…I have worked for a cabinet Secretary in Washington, D. C….and I have run publically traded financial institutions…and one thing is especially clear…people respond to incentives.
Some of those incentives are to innovate in products and markets. And, what do economists tell potential innovators to look for? Missing markets. Incomplete Markets. Places that are not being served or regulated.
Why do you look in these areas? Well, because that is where a person…or a business…can find a place to achieve a competitive advantage. Being a “first-mover” or a “second-mover” into a market is a way to achieve exceptional returns…at least for a short time period. And, this is plenty of incentive to draw people into the effort.
It is a highly risky effort and a lot of people and businesses fail because it is so risky. But, the incentives are substantial enough that people are continually drawn into the exercise.
A competitive advantage may not last for a very long time. People that find opportunities to arbitrage markets…traders…may find segments in a market place to exploit for a period of time…but, over time competitive advantage does not seem to last for specific trading schemes…see Enron and Long Term Capital Management. In such cases, you need to keep coming up with something new. That is what businesses producing Information Goods do.
One of the games played in the financial services area…and I have experienced this in my professional life beginning in the 1960s…is to find the hole in the regulatory structure. It is a game that the regulators are always behind in. The private sector does something…the regulators close the gap with new regulations…the private sector finds a way around this…and the regulators have to close the gap again. And, the game goes on and on because the incentives are such that it is still worthwhile to the private sector to continue to innovate.
Furthermore, anything the government does sets up incentives. And that is why the Obama “recovery plan” is so important…it changes a lot of the incentives that exist within the economy…for better or for worse. Notice the long, long lines of governors, mayors, and other officials that have gathered with their hands out for funds from the “recovery plan”. I am not going to comment any further on the “recovery plan” at this time other than to just highlight the fact that this plan changes incentives…regardless of how much stimulus it provides.
But, to be an equal-opportunity critic, I must mention that the previous administration created incentives that resulted in the present financial crisis. Maintaining negative real rates of interest for at least 18 months created plenty of incentive to leverage and innovate in financial structures and instruments. This period of innovation has created a massive crisis with respect to asset values. (For more on this see my blog post “AIG and Our Core Economic Issue: Unknown Asset Values” http://seekingalpha.com/article/123867-aig-and-our-core-economic-issue-unknown-asset-values.) In my mind, there is going to have to be a resolution to the asset value problem before any stimulus package is going to have much of an effect on the economy.
Anytime the government attempts to impose its hand on the private sector “things happen.” The government is just not attuned to enter the very complex tangled web of the real world with simplistic plans to “set things straight.” Even within the government public officials have started pointing fingers at each other when events don’t go as desired. Last night I saw Barney Frank interviewed by Rachael Maddow. Frank made it very clear that we got into the AIG mess because “the Fed”, without coming to Congress, gave AIG $85 billion last September and this started off all the mess. And, the reason why this bonus thing and other events have occurred is that “the Fed” without the advice or consultation of Congress gave AIG the $85 billion with “no strings attached”!
Wow! Go figur’ that, will ya!
Now, the Wall Street Journal has the headline this morning…”Obama to Avoid Auto Bankruptcies.” The “experts” in the government, we are told, are going to restructure General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC outside of the bankruptcy courts. This, we are expected to believe, will give the taxpayers a better and more protected solution than will a court solution. We wait the conclusion…
The real world is tough. People don’t always do what you want them to do. Incentives matter. We must be careful about the incentives we are creating for the future, for one other fact from the field of economics is very clear: sometimes it takes a long time for the full effect of incentives to work their way through an economy. As a consequence, we can often lose sight of the cause of a problem because the incentives that created the problem are embedded somewhere in the distant past.
Friday, December 19, 2008
The Declining Dollar--Continued
Please note that today’s Wall Street Journal carries an editorial that makes exactly the same points concerning the decline in the value of the United States dollar that I made in my post yesterday. I refer to the comments made in “A Dollar Referendum” which can be found at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122965017184420567.html?mod=todays_us_opinion.
Let me just summarize the points made in the Wall Street Journal article.
First, after the dollar rose earlier in the fall due to the international flight to quality to invest in Treasury securities, the value of the United States dollar has fallen precipitously in December as a result of the recent Fed actions opening the gate to flood the world with dollars.
Second, why should international financial markets have any faith in the Federal Reserve to restore discipline to the markets when it “has proven that it is far better at adding liquidity than removing it”? The editorial then refers to the Fed record in maintaining exceedingly low target interest rates earlier in the 2001 to 2003 period.
Third, the editorial discusses the flow of new United States government debt that will be coming to the market…approximately $1.0 trillion…related to the proposed Obama stimulus plan. The implication is that the monetary thrust of the Fed will basically monetize this debt.
Fourth, the concern is expressed that measures of inflation, such as the consumer price index are lagging indicators, and do not capture the market’s lack of confidence in international financial markets that the Federal Reserve will be restore order once the “deflation” psychology has been defeated. The decline in the value of the United States dollar represents this expectation of market participants.
In the words of the Wall Street Journal editorial: “The dollar’s decline is a warning about the future. Mr. Bernanke’s decision to flood the world with dollars will no doubt succeed in preventing a deflation. What everyone wants to know is whether he also has the fortitude—or even the desire—to prevent a run on the world’s reserve currency.”
Let me just summarize the points made in the Wall Street Journal article.
First, after the dollar rose earlier in the fall due to the international flight to quality to invest in Treasury securities, the value of the United States dollar has fallen precipitously in December as a result of the recent Fed actions opening the gate to flood the world with dollars.
Second, why should international financial markets have any faith in the Federal Reserve to restore discipline to the markets when it “has proven that it is far better at adding liquidity than removing it”? The editorial then refers to the Fed record in maintaining exceedingly low target interest rates earlier in the 2001 to 2003 period.
Third, the editorial discusses the flow of new United States government debt that will be coming to the market…approximately $1.0 trillion…related to the proposed Obama stimulus plan. The implication is that the monetary thrust of the Fed will basically monetize this debt.
Fourth, the concern is expressed that measures of inflation, such as the consumer price index are lagging indicators, and do not capture the market’s lack of confidence in international financial markets that the Federal Reserve will be restore order once the “deflation” psychology has been defeated. The decline in the value of the United States dollar represents this expectation of market participants.
In the words of the Wall Street Journal editorial: “The dollar’s decline is a warning about the future. Mr. Bernanke’s decision to flood the world with dollars will no doubt succeed in preventing a deflation. What everyone wants to know is whether he also has the fortitude—or even the desire—to prevent a run on the world’s reserve currency.”
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