The Economic Populist Mon 2010-09-20 19:16 EDT

"There Is No Economic Justification for Deficit Reduction" Galbraith to Deficit Commission

James K. Galbraith

...Your proceedings are clouded by illegitimacy. In this respect, there are four major issues. First, most of your meetings are secret, apart from two open sessions before this one, which were plainly for show. There is no justification for secret meetings on deficit reduction... Second, there is a question of leadership. A bipartisan commission should approach its task in a judicious, open-minded and dispassionate way...Senator Simpson has plainly shown that he lacks the temperament to do a fair and impartial job on this commission...Third, most members of the Commission are political leaders, not economists. With all respect for Alice Rivlin, with just one economist on board you are denied access to the professional arguments surrounding this highly controversial issue...Conflicts of interest constitute the fourth major problem. The fact that the Commission has accepted support from Peter G. Peterson, a man who has for decades conducted a relentless campaign to cut Social Security and Medicare, raises the most serious questions...You are plainly not equipped by disposition or resources to take on the true cause of deficits now and in the future: the financial crisis. Recommendations based on CBO's unrealistic budget and economic outlooks are destined to collapse in failure. Specifically, if cuts are proposed and enacted in Social Security and Medicare, they will hurt millions, weaken the economy, and the deficits will not decline. It's a lose-lose proposition, with no gainers except a few predatory funds, insurance companies, and such who would profit, for some time, from a chaotic private marketplace...

deficit Commission; deficit reduction; economic justification; economic populist; Galbraith.

Mon 2010-09-20 18:49 EDT

What happened to US interbank lending in the financial crisis?

Gara Afonso, Anna Kovner, Antoinette Schoar

Many commentators have argued that interbank lending froze following the collapse of Lehman Brothers. This column presents evidence from the fed funds market that, while rates spiked and loan terms became more sensitive to borrower risk, mean borrowing amounts remained stable on aggregate. It seems likely that the market did not expand to meet additional demand for funds.

Financial Crisis; happened; Interbank Lending.

naked capitalism Fri 2010-09-17 19:42 EDT

Auerback: TARP Was Not a Success -- It Simply Institutionalized Fraud

Marshall Auerback

...the only way to call TARP a winner is by defining government sanctioned financial fraud as the main metric of results. The finance leaders who are guilty of wrecking much of the global economy remain in power -- while growing extraordinarily wealthy in the process. They know that their primary means of destruction was accounting ``control fraud'', a term coined by Professor Bill Black, who argued that ``Control frauds occur when those that control a seemingly legitimate entity use it as a `weapon' to defraud.'' TARP did nothing to address this abuse; indeed, it perpetuates it. Are we now using lying and fraud as the measure of success for financial reform?...Money was ``repaid'', not because the banks were accumulating massive profits as a consequence of their revival, but largely as an outgrowth of the accounting tricks sanctioned by Congress and the White House in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis...When we lie about accounting and leave zombie banks in the hands of those that looted them and caused trillions of dollars of losses we eviscerate our integrity and our efforts at economic recovery...

Auerback; naked capitalism; Simply Institutionalized Fraud; Success; TARP.

Thu 2010-08-26 09:23 EDT

Jingle mail in Jersey from Hyatt Hotels ... | footnoted.com

If you're in Princeton, New Jersey, anytime soon, swing by the Hyatt Regency Princeton. With the Hyatt Hotels (H) quarterly report filed yesterday, it has become a symbol of the financial crisis... Like households across the country, one of Hyatt's subsidiaries ``did not have sufficient cash flow to meet interest payment requirements under its mortgage loan'' on the property, in this case a 347-room hotel with a restaurant, bar and comedy club, just a mile from [Princeton University]....``When hotel cash flow became insufficient to service the loan,'' the company said in the filing, ``HHC notified the lender that it would not provide assistance.'' In other words, Hyatt decided to walk away -- the equivalent of ``jingle mail''...

com; Footnote; Hyatt hotel; Jersey; Jingle Mail.

naked capitalism Tue 2010-08-24 20:02 EDT

Boston Fed's New Excuse for Missing the Housing Bubble: NoneOfUscouddanode

It is truly astonishing to watch how determined the economics orthodoxy is to defend its inexcusable, economy-wrecking performance in the runup to the financial crisis...From the Wall Street Journal Economics blog: Should economists and policy makers have identified the housing market bubble before it burst? The answer is most likely no, says the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, because economic theory was not up to the challenge... Yves: This recitation is truly embarrassing, in that the writers clearly see this abject failure as completely reasonable, as opposed to compelling evidence that the discipline is not qualified to provide policy advice. What could be more damning than admitting that economics was incapable of seeing the blindingly obvious?...

Boston Fed's New Excuse; housing bubble; missing; naked capitalism; NoneOfUscouddanode.

Thu 2010-08-19 16:04 EDT

The AIG Bailout Scandal

William Greider

The government's $182 billion bailout of insurance giant AIG should be seen as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the financial crisis and its costly aftermath. The story of American International Group explains the larger catastrophe not because this was the biggest corporate bailout in history but because AIG's collapse and subsequent rescue involved nearly all the critical elements, including delusion and deception. These financial dealings are monstrously complicated, but this account focuses on something mere mortals can understand--moral confusion in high places, and the failure of governing institutions to fulfill their obligations to the public. Three governmental investigative bodies have now pored through the AIG wreckage and turned up disturbing facts--the House Committee on Oversight and Reform; the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which will make its report at year's end; and the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which issued its report on AIG in June. The five-member COP, chaired by Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, has produced the most devastating and comprehensive account so far. Unanimously adopted by its bipartisan members, it provides alarming insights that should be fodder for the larger debate many citizens long to hear--why Washington rushed to forgive the very interests that produced this mess, while innocent others were made to suffer the consequences. The Congressional panel's critique helps explain why bankers and their Washington allies do not want Elizabeth Warren to chair the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau...

AIG bailout scandal.

Sat 2010-08-07 19:40 EDT

The biggest lie about U.S. companies

Brett Arends' ROI - MarketWatch

You may have heard recently that U.S. companies have emerged from the financial crisis in robust health, that they've paid down their debts, rebuilt their balance sheets and are sitting on growing piles of cash they are ready to invest in the economy...It's a crock...their debts have been rising, not falling. By some measures, they are now more leveraged than at any time since the Great Depression...gross domestic debts of nonfinancial corporations now amount to 50% of GDP. That's a postwar record...net leverage is nearly 50% of corporate net worth, a modern record...

biggest lie; U.S. companies.

Tue 2010-08-03 14:34 EDT

Rajiv Sethi: The Economics of Hyman Minsky [2009-12-03]

There has been a resurgence of interest in the economic writings of Hyman Minsky over the past few years, and for good reason...Minsky's theoretical framework combines a cash-flow approach to investment with a theory of financial instability...expectations of financial tranquility are self-falsifying. Stability, as Minsky liked to put it, is itself destabilizing...An essential feature of Minsky's financial instability hypothesis is that a long period of sustained stability gives rise to changes in financial practices which are not conducive to the persistence of stable growth...A sustained period of stability gives rise to optimistic expectations and a rise in speculative financing...if a large number of investments which are prompted by the availability of speculative finance are found to be inept, so that immediate cash flows are significantly lower than expected, then the need for short-term refinancing becomes acute while at the same time banks are less willing to roll over existing debt. A sharp rise in short-term interest rates occurs which can lead to present value reversals, a rush towards liquidity, a plunge in the prices of illiquid assets, both real and financial, and a corresponding drop in new investments...described as a credit crunch, a state of financial distress, or a financial crisis...

2009-12-03; economic; Hyman Minsky; Rajiv Sethi.

New Deal 2.0 Sun 2010-07-25 16:08 EDT

Marriner S. Eccles: Keynesian Evangelist Before Keynes

Henry C. K. Liu

...From direct experience, [1930s Federal Reserve chairman Marriner S. Eccles] realized that bankers like himself, by doing what seemed sound on an individual basis, by calling in loans and refusing new lending in hard times, only contributed to the financial crisis. He saw from direct experience the evidence of market failure. He concluded that to get out of the depression, government intervention, something he had been taught was evil, was necessary to place purchasing power in the hands of the public. In the industrial age, the mal-distribution of income (which was hugely unequal) and the excessive savings for capital investment always lead to the masses exhausting their purchasing power, unable to sustain the benefits of mass production that such savings brought...By denying the masses necessary purchasing power, capital denies itself of the very demand that would justify its investment in new production. Credit can extend purchasing power but only until the credit runs out, which would soon occur without the support of adequate income...Eccles, who never attended university or studied economics formally, articulated his pragmatic conclusions in speeches a good three years before Keynes wrote his epoch-making The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936)....Eccles' transformation from a businessman, brought up to believe in survival of the fittest, to his belief in government spending on the neediest can teach us many lessons today...The solution is to start the money flowing again by directing it not toward those who already have a surplus, but to those who have not enough. Giving more money to those who already have too much would take more money out of circulation into idle savings and prolong the depression...Eccles promoted a limited war on poverty and unemployment, not on moral but on utilitarian grounds.

0; Keynes; Keynesian Evangelist; Marriner S. Eccles; new dealing 2.

naked capitalism Fri 2010-07-23 17:08 EDT

Deficits Do Matter, But Not the Way You Think

L. Randall Wray

In recent months, a form of mass hysteria has swept the country as fear of ``unsustainable'' budget deficits replaced the earlier concern about the financial crisis, job loss, and collapsing home prices. What is most troubling is that this shift in focus comes even as the government's stimulus package winds down and as its temporary hires for the census are let go. Worse, the economy is still -- likely -- years away from a full recovery. To be sure, at least some of the hysteria has been manufactured by Pete Peterson's well-funded public relations campaign, fronted by President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform -- a group that supposedly draws members from across the political spectrum, yet are all committed to the belief that the current fiscal stance puts the nation on a path to ruinous indebtedness...[however] the notion of ``fiscal sustainability'' or ``solvency'' is not applicable to a sovereign government -- which cannot be forced into involuntary default on debts denominated in its own currency...If we can get beyond the fears of national insolvency then there are many issues that can be fruitfully discussed. While inflation will not be a problem for many years, price pressures could return some day. Impacts of exchange rate instability are important, at least for some nations. Unemployment is a chronic problem, even at business cycle peaks. Aging does raise serious questions about allocation of resources, especially medical care. Poverty and homelessness exist in the midst of relative abundance. Simply recognizing that our sovereign government cannot go bankrupt does not solve those problems, but it does make them easier to resolve...

Deficit; matter; naked capitalism; Think; way.

naked capitalism Thu 2010-07-22 16:19 EDT

Decoding the NY Fed on Shadow Banking

Richard Smith

NY Fed: We document that the shadow banking system became severely strained during the financial crisis because, like traditional banks, shadow banks conduct credit, maturity, and liquidity transformation, but unlike traditional financial intermediaries, they lack access to public sources of liquidity, such as the Federal Reserve's discount window, or public sources of insurance, such as federal deposit insurance.

decoding; naked capitalism; NY Fed; Shadow banks.

Wed 2010-07-21 10:26 EDT

Professor Jamie Galbraith's testimony to Deficit Commission | Angry Bear

1. Clouds Over the Work of the Commission. ... 2. Current Deficits and Rising Debt were Caused by the Financial Crisis. ... 3. Future Deficit Projections are Generally Based on Forecasts which Begin by Assuming Full Recovery, but this Assumption is Highly Unrealistic. ... 4. Having Cured the Deficits with an Unrealistic Forecast, CBO Recreates them with Another, Very Different, but Equally Unrealistic Forecast. ... 5. The Only Way to Reduce Public Deficits is to Restore Private Credit. ... 6. Social Security and Medicare "Solvency" is not part of the Commission's Mandate. ... 7. As a Transfer Program, Social Security is Also Irrelevant to Deficit Economics. ... 8. Markets are not calling for Deficit Reduction; Now or Later. ... 9. In Reality, the US Government Spends First & Borrows Later; Public Spending Creates a Demand for Treasuries in the Private Sector. ... 10. The Best Place in History (for this Commission) Would be No Place At All.

Angry Bear; deficit Commission; Professor Jamie Galbraith's testimony.

Fri 2010-07-16 18:36 EDT

Tremble, Banks, Tremble

James K. Galbraith

The financial crisis in America isn't over. It's ongoing, it remains unresolved, and it stands in the way of full economic recovery. The cause, at the deepest level, was a breakdown in the rule of law. And it follows that the first step toward prosperity is to restore the rule of law in the financial sector...

bank; trembling.

New Deal 2.0 Fri 2010-07-16 18:16 EDT

The G20 Plan for Prosperity: Rubber Bullets and Shredded Social Safety Net

Paul Jay

The Toronto G-20 summit sent a message to poor and working people in Europe and North America. ``You will pay for the global financial crisis through cuts to your social safety nets. There will be no taxing of those who actually caused the crisis and made fortunes in the various bubbles over the last decades.'' ...This was bad enough. But there was another message, too, sent through the Canadian police: ``If you don't like it, how about a rubber bullet?'' It looks like G-20 countries will deal with opposition to their plans through martial law and police brutality...

0; G20 planned; new dealing 2; prosperity; rubber bullets; Shredded Social Safety Net.

Fri 2010-07-16 18:09 EDT

A Blistering Ride Through Hell: Key Property Charts to Make Sense of This Week's Housing Numbers and This Year's Financial Crisis - Michael David White -- Seeking Alpha

Michael David White

Housing inventory rising, housing price versus housing inventory may imply dramatic price falls; deleveraging is a myth; mortgage bubble; negative equity; forecasts total fall in property prices about half over, another 20% to go.

Blistering Ride; hell; Key property charts; make sense; Michael David White; Seeking Alpha; Week's Housing Numbers; year's financial crisis.

naked capitalism Wed 2010-07-07 14:29 EDT

Face to Face With Polished Wall Street Psychopathy (SEC Says that ICP Stole from My Old Company Edition)

Tom Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive

When the financial crisis hit, I was in the direct line of fire. My company blew up very early in the crisis, giving me the dubious opportunity to see how bad things were going to get long before most of the rest of the world, including other banks, insurers, investors, administration officials or Federal Reserve members, were able to perceive the trajectory of the crisis...much of what I thought I knew was based on things that weren't really true...While many of the failings of the structured credit market were due to unsound reliance on historical data, some were not mistakes in judgment but were the result of bad actors, misinformation and wrongdoing...

Faces; ICP Stole; naked capitalism; Old Company Edition; Polished Wall Street Psychopathy; SEC says.

Mon 2010-05-24 10:55 EDT

The Root Cause Of Recurring Global Financial Crises

Henry Liu

Severe global financial crises have been recurring every decade: the 1987 crash, the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2007 Credit Crisis. This recurring pattern had been generated by wholesale financial deregulation around the world. But the root causes have been dollar hegemony and the Washington Consensus...The Washington Consensus has since been characterized as a ``bashing of the state'' (Annual Report of the United Nations, 1998) and a ``new imperialism'' (M Shahid Alam, ``Does Sovereignty Matter for Economic Growth?'', 1999). But the real harm of the Washington Consensus has yet to be properly recognized: that it is a prescription for generating failed states around the world among developing economies that participate in globalized financial markets. Even in the developed economies, neo-liberalism generates a dangerous but generally unacknowledged failed-state syndrome.

Recurring Global Financial Crises; root cause.

The Money Game Sat 2010-05-22 21:47 EDT

The Root Cause Of Recurring Global Financial Crises

Henry Liu

Severe global financial crises have been recurring every decade: the 1987 crash, the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2007 Credit Crisis. This recurring pattern had been generated by wholesale financial deregulation around the world. But the root causes have been dollar hegemony and the Washington Consensus. -- The Case of Greece --Following misguided neo-liberal market fundamentalist advice, Greece abandoned its national currency, the drachma, in favor of the euro in 2002. This critically consequential move enabled the Greek government to benefit from the strength of the euro, albeit not derived exclusively from the strength of the Greek economy, but from the strength of the economies of the stronger Eurozone member states, to borrow at lower interest rates collateralized by Greek assets denominated in euros. With newly available credit, Greece then went on a debt-funded spending spree, including high-profile projects such as the 2004 Athens Olympics that left the Greek nation with high sovereign debts not denominated in its national currency...

Money game; Recurring Global Financial Crises; root cause.

Sat 2010-05-22 21:13 EDT

EconPapers: An Alternative View of Finance, Saving, Deficits, and Liquidity

L. Randall Wray

This paper contrasts the orthodox approach with an alternative view on finance, saving, deficits, and liquidity. The conventional view on the cause of the current global financial crisis points first to excessive United States trade deficits that are supposed to have "soaked up" global savings. Worse, this policy was ultimately unsustainable because it was inevitable that lenders would stop the flow of dollars. Problems were compounded by the Federal Reserve's pursuit of a low-interest-rate policy, which involved pumping liquidity into the markets and thereby fueling a real estate boom. Finally, with the world awash in dollars, a run on the dollar caused it to collapse. The Fed (and then the Treasury) had to come to the rescue of U.S. banks, firms, and households. When asset prices plummeted, the financial crisis spread to much of the rest of the world. According to the conventional view, China, as the residual supplier of dollars, now holds the fate of the United States, and possibly the entire world, in its hands. Thus, it's necessary for the United States to begin living within its means, by balancing its current account and (eventually) eliminating its budget deficit. I challenge every aspect of this interpretation. Our nation operates with a sovereign currency, one that is issued by a sovereign government that operates with a flexible exchange rate. As such, the government does not really borrow, nor can foreigners be the source of dollars. Rather, it is the U.S. current account deficit that supplies the net dollar saving to the rest of the world, and the federal government budget deficit that supplies the net dollar saving to the nongovernment sector. Further, saving is never a source of finance; rather, private lending creates bank deposits to finance spending that generates income. Some of this income can be saved, so the second part of the saving decision concerns the form in which savings might be held--as liquid or illiquid assets. U.S. current account deficits and federal budget deficits are sustainable, so the United States does not need to adopt austerity, nor does it need to look to the rest of the world for salvation. Rather, it needs to look to domestic fiscal stimulus strategies to resolve the crisis, and to a larger future role for government in helping to stabilize the economy. [MMT]

alternative view; Deficit; EconPapers; finance; liquidity; save.

Sat 2010-05-22 20:00 EDT

"Drop Dead Economics": The Financial Crisis in Greece and the European Union

Michael Hudson

Financial lobbyists are using the Greek crisis as an object lesson to warn about the need to cut back public spending on Social Security and Medicare. This is the opposite of what the Greek demonstrators are demanding: to reverse the global tax shift off property and finance onto labor, and to give labor's financial claims for retirement pensions priority over claims by the banks to get fully paid on hundreds of billions of dollars of recklessly bad loans recently reduced to junk status. The Greek bailout should be thought of as a TARP for German and other European bankers and global currency speculators. Almost $1 trillion is being provided by governments (mainly Germany, at the cost of its own domestic spending) into a kind of escrow account for the Greek government to pay foreign bondholders who bought up these securities at plunging prices over the past few weeks. They will make a killing, as will buyers of hundreds of billions of dollars of credit-default swaps on the Greek government bonds, speculators in euro-swaps and other casino-capitalist gamblers. (Parties on the losing side of these swaps now will need to be bailed out as well, and so on ad infinitum.) This windfall is to be paid by taxpayers -- ultimately those of Greece (in effect labor, because the wealthy have been untaxed) -- to reimburse Euro-governments, the IMF and even the U.S. Treasury for its commitment to predatory finance. The ³sanctity of debt -- sacrificing the economy to pay bondholders -- is to be used as an excuse to slash Greek public services, pensions and other government spending...

Drop Dead Economics; European Union; Financial Crisis; Greece.

Jesse's Café Américain Tue 2010-05-18 15:10 EDT

The US Intelligentsia and Middle Class Are In the Firm Grip of Fear, Fraud and Denial

Jesse

The lie is comfortable, an illusion easy to live with, familiar, and safe. Writing from the 'disgraced profession' of economics, James K. Galbraith speaks of the unspoken, the many frauds and deceptions underlying the recent financial crisis centered in the US...``the country faces an existential threat. Either the legal system must do its work. Or the market system cannot be restored. There must be a thorough, transparent, effective, radical cleaning of the financial sector and also of those public officials who failed the public trust. The financiers must be made to feel, in their bones, the power of the law. And the public, which lives by the law, must see very clearly and unambiguously that this is the case...''

denial; fears; firm grip; fraud; intelligentsia; Jesse's Café Américain; middle class.