Minyanville Sat 2010-08-21 10:33 EDT

How Pimco Is Holding American Homeowners Hostage

David Stockman

...According to Bill Gross ...the American economy can be saved only through ``full nationalization'' of the mortgage finance system and a massive ``jubilee'' of debt forgiveness for millions of underwater homeowners...As overlord of the fixed-income finance market [Pacific Investment Management Co. (Pimco)] generates billions annually in effort-free profits from its trove of essentially riskless US Treasury securities and federally guaranteed housing paper. Now Pimco wants to swell Uncle Sam's supply of this no-brainer paper even further -- adding upward of $2 trillion per year of what would be ``government-issue'' mortgages...This final transformation of American taxpayers into indentured servants of HIDC (the Housing Investment & Debt Complex) has been underway for a long time, and is now unstoppable because all principled political opposition to Pimco-style crony capitalism has been extinguished...At the heart of the matter is the statist Big Lie trumpeting the alleged public welfare benefits of the home-ownership society and subsidized real estate finance...the congregates of the HIDC lobby -- homebuilders, mortgage bankers, real estate brokers, Wall Street securitizers, property appraisers and lawyers, landscapers and land speculators, home improvement retailers and the rest -- have gotten their fill at the Federal trough. But the most senseless gift -- the extra-fat risk-free spread on Freddie and Fannie paper -- went to the great enablers of the mortgage debt boom, that is, the mega-funds like Pimco...there isn't a shred of evidence that all of this largese serves any legitimate public purpose whatsoever, and plenty of evidence that the HIDC boom has been deeply destructive...there are upward of 15-20 million American households that can't afford their current mortgages or will be strongly disinclined to service them once housing prices take their next -- and unpreventable -- leg down. But Pimco's gold-coast socialism is exactly the wrong answer. Rather than having their mortgages modified or forgiven, these households should be foreclosed upon, and the sooner the better...

Holding American Homeowners Hostage; Minyanville; PIMCO.

naked capitalism Sun 2010-07-25 16:28 EDT

The Irish mess

Richard Smith

The Irish banks got in a big mess with duff RE loans. The government swapped discounted bad loans for government-issued bonds...the whole thing is the usual dump onto taxpayers...loans to no more than ten or a dozen of these developers account for EUR 20Bn of the EUR70Bn face value of the debts exchanged...The extra national debt incurred (so far) equates to EUR25,000 per taxpayer. And EUR6,500 of that goes to repair damage inflicted by just a dozen well-placed spivs. Then go for some fairly brutal austerity to sort out the new debt/GDP ratio (Irish unemployment was 13.5% the last time I looked). You will have some pretty discontented citizens, and the debt/GDP ratio will stay the same, or get worse, so you cut again...

Irish mess; naked capitalism.

Tue 2010-06-01 16:23 EDT

billy blog >> Blog Archive >> In the spirit of debate ...

Bill Mitchell

Readers of my blog often ask me about how modern monetary theory sits with the views of the debt-deflationists (and specifically my academic colleague Steve Keen). Steve and I have collaborated in the last few days to foster some debate between us on a constructive level with the aim of demonstrating that the common enemy is mainstream macroeconomics and that progressive thinkers should target that school of thought rather than looking within...hopefully, this initiative will broaden the debate and bring more people up to speed on where the real enemy of full employment lies...The modern monetary system is characterised by a floating exchange rate (so monetary policy is freed from the need to defend foreign exchange reserves) and the monopoly provision of fiat currency. The monopolist is the national government. Most countries now operate monetary systems that have these characteristics...the monetary unit defined by the government has no intrinsic worth...The viability of the fiat currency is ensured by the fact that it is the only unit which is acceptable for payment of taxes and other financial demands of the government.The analogy that mainstream macroeconomics draws between private household budgets and the national government budget is thus false. Households, the users of the currency, must finance their spending prior to the fact. However, government, as the issuer of the currency, must spend first (credit private bank accounts) before it can subsequently tax (debit private accounts)... Taxation acts to withdraw spending power from the private sector but does not provide any extra financial capacity for public spending...As a matter of national accounting, the federal government deficit (surplus) equals the non-government surplus (deficit). In aggregate, there can be no net savings of financial assets of the non-government sector without cumulative government deficit spending...contrary to mainstream economic rhetoric, the systematic pursuit of government budget surpluses is necessarily manifested as systematic declines in private sector savings...Unemployment occurs when net government spending is too low. As a matter of accounting, for aggregate output to be sold, total spending must equal total income (whether actual income generated in production is fully spent or not each period). Involuntary unemployment is idle labour unable to find a buyer at the current money wage. In the absence of government spending, unemployment arises when the private sector, in aggregate, desires to spend less of the monetary unit of account than it earns. Nominal (or real) wage cuts per se do not clear the labour market, unless they somehow eliminate the private sector desire to net save and increase spending. Thus, unemployment occurs when net government spending is too low to accommodate the need to pay taxes and the desire to net save...Unlike the mainstream rhetoric, insolvency is never an issue with deficits. The only danger with fiscal policy is inflation which would arise if the government pushed nominal spending growth above the real capacity of the economy to absorb it...government debt functions as interest rate support via the maintenance of desired reserve levels in the commercial banking system and not as a source of funds to finance government spending...there is no intrinsic reason for...

Billy Blog; blogs Archive; Debate; Spirit.

The Wall Street Examiner Sun 2010-05-09 09:58 EDT

The Minsky Cruise (part 2, Households)

...Now for the Minsky part. The theory above, in layman's terms, argues that over time, when an economy expands without serious contractions, finances will become increasingly risky. Minsky wrote of a shift from hedge finance (when debt, both principal and interest, can be serviced from cash flows) through speculative finance (when debt must be rolled over as only interest payments can be serviced from cash flows) and into Ponzi finance (when cash flows cannot cover interest payments and thus new debt must be added or assets sold). The idea in the Ponzi finance stage is that asset appreciation will compensate for the extra risk...I don't mean to suggest we (collectively) are broke, just that, as Minsky argued (and the data bears out) our balance sheets are increasingly betting on real estate and equity price appreciation with borrowed money...

Household; Minsky Cruise; Part 2; Wall Street Examiner.