Economic Dreams - Economic Nightmares

To the Streets: Occupy Wall Street moves to Main Streets

The "Occupy Wall Street" movement is moving to Main Streets across the globe. It's about time. But I fear that the movement will be captured by the far left, just as the TEA party movement has been captured by the far right. If Occupy Wall Street will evolve to represent the case of the 99% against the 1% we will have a chance for needed social/institutional change here in the US.

'Occupy Wall Street/Main Street' made it to my home base Ogden, UT last weekend. As I've argued here before, it is past time that people protest the growing US-led kleptocracy (a corrupt form of government where governing bodies aid in the transfer of wealth from ordinary citizens to the upper class). I went to the rally, adding one small voice to this important issue.

I found a little 4-minute video (embedded below) that captures the essence of the problem. It is titled "Why Occupy Wall Street? Four Reasons," by D.C. Douglas (hat tip: Sam Glover: The Cycle of Financial Crisis). Below are my four reasons to protest the oligarchic dominance of the American economy and politics. You can boil them down to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis' timeless admonition: "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."

My Four Reasons to Occupy Wall Street

• The Robber Barons (Wikipedia) are back, but must NOT be allowed to stay in power! The distribution of wealth in the US is now as skewed toward the top 1% even beyond where it stood in 1929. One percent of this country now owns 40% of the wealth.
• The rich are NOT entitled to take everything, in a democracy underwritten by publicly-financed education, transportation, defense, and much more. A recent Congressional Budget Office report show that "for the 1 percent of the population with the highest income, average real after-tax household income grew by 275 percent between 1979 and 2007." Add this: "In the 1970s, corporate chief executives earned 30 times as much as the average worker. Ten years ago, CEO compensation was 116 times the average. CEOs now earn close to 300 times as much as the average worker."
• The rich are NOT entitled to buy elections. A recent Supreme Court ruling "Citizens United" allows the rich to buy elections. The Koch brothers are rumored to be planning to spend $250000000 (one quarter BILLION) of their personal money on political agendas in 2012. How much influence will that buy?
• Houses of Finance big and small will NOT self-govern in the interest of either their shareholders or in the public interest. Large financial organizations need to be governed by effective regulation—a 21st century "Glass Steagall", among other regulatory apparatus.

I shared Jared Diamond's warnings against kleptocracy some years back. They are worth a relook. One snip:

The difference between a kleptocrat and a wise statesman, between a robber baron and a public benefactor, is merely one of degree: a matter of just how large a percentage of the tribute extracted from producers is retained by the elite, and how much the commoners like the public uses to which the redistributed tribute is put.

Finally here is the Why Occupy Wall Street video, featuring Elizabeth Warren, among others:

The video suggests four resolutions that differ at wee bit from mine:

• Reinstate Glass-Steagall
• Audit the Fed
• Reverse "Citizens United"
• Overhaul the Corporate Tax Code

I'm in favor of better disclosure from the Fed. So is Ben Bernanke. I too support reversing "Citizens United" by Legislative action, most likely by publicly financing all elections. Of course, such financing would not only disallow super-PAC election manipulation, but would also disallow billionaires from manipulation elections with their own money. Finally, like 99.9% of US citizens, I support overhauling the entire US Tax Code, simplifying it, and restructuring it for economic fairness in part by requiring the wealthy few to shoulder more of the tax burden.

Note: I used the term kleptrocacy (Wikipedia) in part to add flair and controversy. Plutocracy (Wikipedia) might have been a better choice. Louis Brandeis favored the term oligarchy (Wikipedia).

 

Fiscal Prudence or Union Busting?

One of my economic dreams, albeit implausible, is that governmental entities could learn to live within their means, and do so without the need for drama and crisis. Like many economists I see little harm in not balancing the budget in any given year, but see little good (and eventually much harm) in ever-increasing budget deficits year-on-year when measured in "real" dollars. This latter possibility I include in the nightmares realm.

Another recurrent economic nightmare is that somehow our politicians and captains of industry will so mess up our system that the United States will become an entrenched plutocracy (Wikipedia), better still kleptocracy (Wikipedia) — assuming that we are not there already. Note: All my chatter about power and corruption here.

Much of the talk this week about the budgetary plight of various states has oddly — likely by political calculation — been intertwined with talk of eliminating collective bargaining by state employee unions. Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin has been at the epicenter of the debate on the issue, with tens of thousands of protesters surrounding the state capital. Walker's steadfast refusal to budge on "collective bargaining" for pensions and health care — which he wants to deny, although with exceptions for police and firefighters — puts him at odds with organized labor and with liberals generally (NY Times, Steven Greenhouse; Huffington Post, Robert Reich). Notably, police and firefighters too are standing with their fellow state employees in protests.

Alarmingly Interestingly, two Darth Vaders of key players in American plutocracy, the Koch brothers (Wikipedia), showed up in a cameo role. The incident was popularized in a stunt (Huffington Post, Jason Linkins), a fake phone call from David Koch to Governor Walker. For more, and tiny bit less bias than I've used here, see "Who's Afraid of the Brothers Koch" (NY Times, Tobin Harshaw)

Reinstate Glass-Steagall: Roubini says yes

I have been keeping an eye on various proposals to "reinstate" Glass-Steagall for quite some time. Sometime I ought to post a more comprehensive list as to who is in favor (and in what sense) and who is opposed. Clearly the folks at New Economic Perspectives (from Kansas City and Beyond) are so inclined. So too Nouriel Roubini, as reported by Tech Ticker, 4/11:

Roubini supports the 'Volcker Rule' which would force banks to stop proprietary trading. "Why should you use taxpayer money to essentially subsidize risky prop trading?," he asks.

Roubini goes even further, saying Congress should reinstate Glass-Steagall which separated commercial banking from investment banking. "If Goldman Sachs wants to be a hedge fund, so be it, but there should be a level playing field," he argues. "Other hedge funds don't borrow at zero rate with the guarantee of the government."

For more on the "Volcker Rule", and financial reform: 5/13 CNN Money video featuring Senator Ted Kaufman, D-Del that is worth a look, and 5/11 link featuring Nouriel Roubini.

Paul Krugman's ideas seem to differ a bit, and seem to be where the Obama Administration is trying to lead Congress. Here's Krugman, Financial Reform 101, 4/1:

It's easy to see where concerns about banks that are "too big to fail" come from. In the face of financial crisis, the U.S. government provided cash and guarantees to financial institutions whose failure, it feared, might bring down the whole system. And the rescue operation was mainly focused on a handful of big players: A.I.G., Citigroup, Bank of America, and so on.

This rescue was necessary, but it put taxpayers on the hook for potentially large losses. And it also established a dangerous precedent: big financial institutions, we now know, will be bailed out in times of crisis. And this, it's argued, will encourage even riskier behavior in the future, since executives at big banks will know that it’s heads they win, tails taxpayers lose.

The solution, say people like Mr. Volcker, is to break big financial institutions into units that aren’t too big to fail, making future bailouts unnecessary and restoring market discipline.

It's a convincing-sounding argument, but I'm one of those people who doesn’t buy it.

Here's how I see it. Breaking up big banks wouldn’t really solve our problems, because it’s perfectly possible to have a financial crisis that mainly takes the form of a run on smaller institutions. In fact, that’s precisely what happened in the 1930s, when most of the banks that collapsed were relatively small — small enough that the Federal Reserve believed that it was O.K. to let them fail. As it turned out, the Fed was dead wrong: the wave of small-bank failures was a catastrophe for the wider economy.

The same would be true today. Breaking up big financial institutions wouldn’t prevent future crises, nor would it eliminate the need for bailouts when those crises happen. The next bailout wouldn’t be concentrated on a few big companies — but it would be a bailout all the same. I don’t have any love for financial giants, but I just don’t believe that breaking them up solves the key problem.

So what's the alternative to breaking up big financial institutions? The answer, I'd argue, is to update and extend old-fashioned bank regulation.

And this is exactly what the Senate is now doing. Sort of. Economics of Contempt (EoC) is generally OK with regulatory reform that doesn't get too bizarre. On the other hand, EoC is particularly against the Sen. Blanche Lincoln's "Section 106" proposal as per derivatives. To EoC, 5/8:

Bloomberg has an excellent story on the origins of Blanche Lincoln's disastrous swaps proposal (the infamous "Section 106") — Bloomberg: How ‘Hard to Fathom’ Derivatives Rule Emerged in U.S. Senate. Short version:

The idea arose from a mix of policy debate, campaign politics and personal relationships -- and little consideration of the business or economic implications, according to interviews with Senate aides, administration officials and industry lobbyists.

Read the whole article. Oh by the way, Paul Volcker has now also come out against Section 106. Sheila Bair penned a letter to Lincoln sharply criticizing Section 106 last week, and the Fed circulated a memo on the Hill a couple weeks ago arguing that Section 106 should be deleted. …

The whole point is that Section 106 doesn't distinguish between prop trading and market-making. It bans banks from doing both. [Robert] Reich clearly has no clue what Lincoln's Section 106 proposal is even about — and yet he's already declared that failing to support it would be "pandering to Wall Street."

Look, this isn't difficult. Swaps are a critical part of modern banking. Just like normal commercial lending requires banks to serve as intermediaries between savers and borrowers, the swaps market also requires intermediaries (known as dealers, or market-makers). These intermediaries borrow short and lend (through swaps) long; they are susceptible to runs; and their disorderly failure can cause severe collateral damage to the real economy. Pretending that swap dealers aren't engaged in an important banking function by refusing to call them "banks" is not just delusional, it's also dangerous. And yet this is what Blanche Lincoln's Section 106 proposal aims to do.

Maybe Section 106 won't last long. According to one source, 5/12 "Reuters was reporting Monday that … Section 106, is going to get excised, perhaps this week."

Financial Regulatory Reforms: Neither easy nor politically palatable

Months ago I promised to keep tabs on financial regulatory reform measures. Well, I've tried but it is not easy — and I've been distracted (and generally depressed by American US culture and politics).  Today I begin anew, and renew my promise by referring readers via "snips" to two of my favorite bloggers. Steve Randy Waldman explains why financial reform efforts are not going to be easy, and The Epicurean Dealmaker reiterates and expands his proposal for reform. To Waldman, Capital Can't Be Measured (4/3/2010):

Simon Johnson and James Kwak are absolutely right. Sure, "hard" capital and solvency constraints for big banks are better than mealy-mouthed technocratic flexibility. But absent much deeper reforms, totemic leverage restrictions will not meaningfully constrain bank behavior. Bank capital cannot be measured. Think about that until you really get it. Large complex financial institutions report leverage ratios and "tier one" capital and all kinds of aromatic stuff. But those numbers are meaningless. For any "large complex financial institution" levered at the House-proposed limit of 15×, a reasonable confidence interval surrounding its estimate of bank capital would be greater than 100% of the reported value. In English, we cannot distinguish "well capitalized" from insolvent banks, even in good times, and regardless of their formal statements.

Lehman is a case-in-point. On September 10, 2008, Lehman reported 11% "tier one" capital and very conservative "net leverage". On September 25, 2008, Lehman declared bankruptcy. Despite reported shareholder's equity of $28.4B just prior to the bankruptcy, the net worth of the holding company in liquidation is estimated to be anywhere from negative $20B to $130B, implying a swing in value of between $50B and $160B. That is shocking. For an industrial firm, one expects liquidation value to be much less than "going concern" value, because fixed capital intended for a particular production process cannot easily be repurposed and has to be taken apart and sold for scrap. But the assets of a financial holding company are business units and financial positions, which can be sold if they are have value. Yes, liquidation hits intangible "franchise" value and reputation, but those assets are mostly excluded from bank balance sheets, and they are certainly excluded from "tier one" capital calculations. The orderly liquidation of a well-capitalized financial holding company ought to yield something close to tangible net worth, which for Lehman would have been about $24B.

So Lehman misreported its net worth, right? Not according to the law. . . .

So, for large complex financials, capital cannot be measured precisely enough to distinguish conservatively solvent from insolvent banks, and capital positions are always optimistically padded. Given these facts, and I think they are facts, even "hard" capital and leverage restraints are unlikely to prevent misbehavior. Can anything be done about this? Are we doomed to some post-modern quantum mechanical nightmare wherein "Schrodinger's Banks" are simultaneously alive and dead until some politically-shaped "measurement" by a regulator forces a collapse of the superposition of states into hunky-doriness?

Yes, we are doomed, unless and until we simplify the structure of the banks. When I say stuff like "confidence intervals surrounding measures of bank capital are greater than 100%, what does that even mean? Capital does not exist in the world. It is not accessible to the senses. When we claim a bank or any other firm has so much "capital" we are modeling its assets and liabilities and contingent positions and coming up with a number. Unfortunately, there is not one uniquely "true" model of bank capital. Even hewing to GAAP and all regulatory requirements, thousands of estimates and arbitrary choices must be made to compute the capital position of a modern bank. There is a broad, multidimensional "space" of defensible models by which capital might be computed. When we "measure" capital, we select a model and then compute. If we were to randomly select among potential models (even weighted by regulatory acceptability, so that a compliant model is much more likely than an iffy one), we would generate a probability distribution of capital values. That distribution would be very broad, so that for large, complex banks negative values would be moderately probable, as would the highly positive values that actually get reported. If we want to make capital measurable in any practical sense, we have to dramatically narrow the range of models, so that all compliant models produce values tightly clumped around the number we'll call capital. But every customized derivative, nontraded asset, or unusual liability in a bank's capital structure requires modeling. The interaction between a bank holding company and its subsidiaries requires multiple modeling choices, especially when those subsidiaries have crossholdings. A wide variety of contingent liabilities — of holding companies directly, of subsidiaries, of affiliated or spun-off entities like SIVs and securitizations — all require modeling choices. Given the heterogeneity of real-world arrangements, no "one-size-fits-all" model can be legislated or regulated to ensure a consistent capital measure. We cannot have both free-form, "innovative" banks and meaningful measures of regulatory capital. If we want to base a regulatory scheme on formal capital measures, we'll need to circumscribe the structure and composition of banks so that they can only carry positions and relationships for which we have standard regulatory models. "Banks’ internal risk models" or "internal valuations of Level 3 assets" don't cut it. They are gateways to regulatory postmodernism.

Regulation by formal capital has a proud and reasonably successful history, but has been rendered obsolete by the complexity of modern financial institutions. The assets and liabilities of a traditional commercial bank had straightforward, widely acceptable book values. For the corner bank, discretionary modeling mattered only in setting credit loss reserves, and the range of estimates that bank officers, external auditors, and regulators would produce for those reserves was usually pretty narrow (except when all three colluded to fake and forbear in a general crisis). But model complexity overwhelms and destroys regulatory capital as a useful measure for large complex financial institutions. We need either to resimplify banks to make them amenable to the traditional approach, or come up with other approaches more capable of reigning in the brave new world of banking.

So what is to be done? The Epicurean Dealmaker gives us fleeting hope in Poachers Turned Gamekeepers (3/16/2010), but there may be a political flaw in his reasoning. The problem is that the proposed solution requires very highly paid, highly skilled, 'seasoned' regulators. That may not fly in the US where we expect our "civil servants" to be moderately paid as per the usual GS pay-scale or even the moderately higher Senior Executive Service pay-scale. Still, his ideas of general regulatory rules that allow for regulatory discretion (by competent government regulators) seems much better than overly complex government legislative and/or administrative "rules". I wish that the highly debated healthcare reform could have been effected that way.  To the "dealmaker":

. . . [I]nspired by readings among several of the more rational and composed voices in said bloggy peanut gallery, including David Merkel, Mike Konczal, and Felix Salmon. . . .

Like Felix, I agree with David that "dumb regulation"—or, in less pejorative language, simple and relatively inflexible regulation—is far more likely to do the trick than the kind of complex, encyclopedic, tick-all-the-boxes regulation exemplified by the bloated pig currently wending its way through the legislative python in Congress. But I also agree with Felix (and, so it would seem, with David) that simple regulation will only work if it is overseen, enforced, and modified as necessary by extremely intelligent and motivated regulators.

I have argued in these pages before that delivering regulations which are comprehensive, detailed, and complex only encourages the institutions being regulated to immediately try to engineer their way around them. Simple, broad-brush regulations have a much better chance to operate as a set of principles which are well understood by both regulator and regulatee alike. But having such principles-based regulation is not enough. They must be enforced, as financial collapse in the face of a decidedly principles-based regulatory regime in the United Kingdom amply demonstrated. Not only does this mean, in Felix's example, that regulators must have the authority to make up rules, tests, and procedures on the fly on behalf of preserving systemic stability, they must also have the balls to take that phone call from Dick Fuld. And, moreover, to tell him in no uncertain terms to go fuck himself if he doesn't like it. . . .

[R]egulators [should] get hired from Wall Street banks, big law firms, and elsewhere. An effective wholesale financial regulator ¹ should be comprised of forensic accountants, corporate and securities lawyers, investment bankers, derivative structurers, and the like. They should all be paid market rates for their services, which will make their compensation much, much closer to that of the people they regulate. They should be prohibited from accepting positions in private financial industry—and, most especially, at any individual firm they ever directly or indirectly regulated—or firms working for financial firms (law firms, accountancies, etc.) for a minimum of at least three years after they leave government service. Five would be preferable.

While individually expensive, I don't believe you would need to hire many such people to make this kind of regulatory regime work. Given that you really only need high-powered regulators for the very biggest institutions, I am guessing you could get away with fewer than 100 to start. In fact, it might be less, because you really only need these people to direct and train their junior staff, and to interface directly with senior executives of the regulated entities. Fully loaded, I imagine you could fund a financial regulatory SWAT team like this for less than $150 million per year. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the financial losses these supposedly regulated institutions have already inflicted on the American taxpayer, not to mention in comparison with the normal run rate of your average stodgy, inefficient, and ineffective government bureaucracy.² Even better, you could fund such an agency with a levy indexed to the size of each financial institution under its jurisdiction. The larger and more complex a bank, the more fire-breathing, table-throwing, nail-spitting investment bankers and lawyers you could afford to throw at it. Talk about an incentive to shrink your balance sheet.

* * *No plan is without its drawbacks, however, and I knew I could rely on my intelligent and well-meaning interlocutors on Twitter to supply some. Among the more cogent of these, Graeme Hein noted that "Smart regulators can always make more money in [the] private sector." This has always been true, and always will be so, but my plan could be structured to minimize this defect. For one thing, you do not need "the best" investment bankers, traders, or lawyers—whatever that's supposed to mean—on the regulatory case. All you really need is good ones, and there are plenty of those. A certain doggedness, and a commitment to preserve systemic stability and enforce rules and regulations regardless of the wealth, prestige, or lung power of their charges would be necessary as well. Remember, you are not looking for the best traders, or the best M&A advisors, or the best derivatives structurers out there; you are looking for people who can understand what those people do and who can stand up to their counterparts across the negotiating table.³

For another, while pay should be very attractive, and likely many multiples of current front-line regulators' salaries, it does not need to equal that of industry practitioners. It can be paid 100% in cash, which dramatically shrinks the gap with nominally much bigger pay packets stuffed to the gills with unvested, restricted funny money. It can also be far less volatile than industry pay, since it should not depend on the vagaries of market performance the way real investment bankers do. Add to that the psychic compensation from working at a powerful, elite organization which generates fear and respect among its regulatees, and you will have a potent package. You might just be surprised how many top flight industry professionals apply for the job.

Now some people might object to the prospect of a federal agency staffed with lots of employees pulling down half a million dollars or more a year, as loadeddice observed. But the answer here is simple: for socially critical functions, money has never been an object when it comes to government spending. Just look at the military. By the same token, I would find it very easy to argue that the cost of a several dozen government employees earning more than the President of the United States is a very reasonable price to pay for financial and economic security. Unlike the military, however, you don't need to spend millions or billions on hardware to do the job. Instead, you spend millions on the software walking around in wingtips and Gucci loafers.

The most frequent objection among those who deigned to comment, however, was simply that—regardless of the attractiveness of my proposal—such a radical change "would never happen." Perhaps these naysayers are right. It certainly would ruffle a lot of feathers, both in the finance industry itself and in Washington, D.C. But I tend to think that is a good thing, and a reliable indicator of the value and importance of the plan, rather than a defect.

At the end of the day, I do believe most Americans actually prefer their government bureaucrats to be slow, bumbling, and ineffective. It reassures them they can stay one step ahead of City Hall, which, as we all know, you ordinarily should not try to fight. Smart, aggressive, and committed government employees terrify most people, because they have so many natural advantages without such personal qualities. The only solution to this, of course, is constant oversight, which is a sine qua non of my proposal.

¹ "Wholesale" means big commercial, investment, and universal banks, and any other systemically important financial entity. As opposed to retail oriented firms, which should be regulated by the CFPA or whatever bastardized, emasculated entity the political meat grinder decides to come up with. My focus here is on institutions which can bring the system down, not on the ones trying to screw Grandma out of her last $50,000.
² Even less in comparison to the tens of billions of dollars in compensation the systemically important financial institutions pay their own employees. A pittance, I tell you.
³ Sadly, given the revelations coming out of the Lehman examiner's report and other sources, this may actually be a very low bar. Perhaps we need regulators who are better than the "best" investment bankers.

Necessary Evils: Government, Markets

Around 1980 I went to work for the US federal government, the US Forest Service to be specific. I was then a libertarian economist (Austrian School). Many people I knew were puzzled as to why I chose the Forest Service over private industry. The answer was simple and personal: I believed then that the financial collapse that happened in 2007 (or 2001 depending on perspective) was imminent. I also believed that the government might be a better safe-haven than private industry during a financial hurricane. And I loved the public lands, which was a chink in my libertarian armor.

During my early years in the Forest Service I adjusted my ideology, drifting left. I was never a fan of government bureaucracy, but I came to view government as a necessary evil. Despite being embedded within bureaucracy I continued (and continue now in retirement) to rail against bureaucratic bungling (e.g. here, here, here).

After thirty years studying markets and market mechanisms, I believe that capitalism (Wiki link) too is a necessary evil, at least for the foreseeable future. Capitalism is necessary because it is the best way to deliver the type and amount of "goods" people desire. It is evil because it is "cruel, unjust, and turbulent", as noted long ago by Joan Robinson. My dream is that someday (distant "Star Treck" future) we will be able to transcend capitalism, but that is only a dream. We would at minimum, have to find a means (read "incentives") to unleash the creative innovations that market mechanisms now unleash, and to transfer effective "price signals" and other signals that market mechanism now transfer when markets function effectively.

I also believe both government and markets to be necessary and good. That is, when functioning well they both serve necessary functions in society.

But both government and capitalism tend toward abuses of power, sometimes intertwined, that lead to evil. This is particularly true when we fail to recognize this tendency. Crony capitalism (Wiki link) is only one of these. Our challenge is to find means to thwart evil tendencies in both government and capitalism, and to find means to enhance the good in each — in both. Our challenge it to quit thinking "either, or" and start to face the reality of "both, and".

Capitalism's Fatal Flaws

In The Worldly Philosophers, Robert Heilbroner tells us that all the great economists foresaw a time when capitalism would come to an end. In Stabilizing an Unstable Economy (1986), Hyman Minsky outlines an agenda for ending capitalism as we've know it (what Heilbroner called "Capitalism as a Regime" in Behind the Veil of Economics). Minsky suggests that we replace laissez-faire capitalism (Wiki link) with a less-flawed version of Capitalism that allows for much better automatic stabilizers than found in our current system.

Minsky, following his reading of Keynes, tells us that modern financial institutions (with inherent tendencies toward monopoly) inevitably will turn into predators on other economic subsystems. Minsky also tells us that most economic theories, with emphasis on "equilibrium" while allowing only for occasional shocks to the system, are ill-equipped to deal with the systemic problems stemming from stability that breeds instability. Minsky (p.280):

In a world with capitalistic finance it is simply not true that the pursuit by each unit of its own self-interest will lead an economy to equilibrium. The self-interest of bankers, levered investors, and investment producers can lead the economy to inflationary expansions [including asset inflation] and unemployment-creating contractions. Supply and demand analysis—in which market processes lead to an equilibrium—does not explain the behavior of a capitalist economy, for capitalist financial processes mean that the economy has endogenous destabilizing forces. Financial fragility, which is a prerequisite for financial instability is, fundamentally, a result of internal market processes. …

Institutions such as the Federal Reserve, which were introduced in an effort to control and contain disorderly conditions in banking and financial markets, are now slaves of an economic theory that denies the existence of such conditions.

The "stability breeds instability" process is now well-know to complex systems theorists. As systems age, newly emergent systems first gain, then lose redundancy and therefore resilience—they become fragile, brittle, or tightly-coupled. At some point a shock to the system will cause catastrophic failure (if the system just doesn't get stuck in a "poverty trap"), setting the stage for rebirth of that system or newly emergent systems that arise in the wake of the old. (See, e.g. adaptive cycle, or more generally: Resilience Alliance.)

Minksy's dream is a hard sell in the American culture, with our new-found American values. Minsky's agenda is to relegate market mechanisms to relatively minor roles. Minsky's "solutions" which he offered up humbly, are for bigger government, smaller banking institutions, and an elimination of "welfare" via a government-sponsored "employment strategy". It is an agenda that is still being pitched by some of Minsky's disciples, although there is dissension among the disciples as is always the case with economists. Minsky also advocated for a "balanced budget" — balanced not every year, but over a reasonable time-frame so as to avoid hyper-inflationary possibilities.

Time will tell whether Capitalism will survive (and if it does, In what form?). In the meantime we all watch and wait, cuss and discuss.

For more on Minsky and more on the bankster crisis, see:
Economic Perspectives from Kansas City.
For more on monetary complex systems thought, see:
Macroeconomic Resilience

Making Sense of Economics

[Updated Mar. 7— Draft: in flux!]

Not too long ago a friend asked how to make sense of economics. After my laughter subsided, I recommended two books by Robert Heilbroner: The Worldly Philosophers:The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (Wiki Link) and Behind the Veil of Economics: Essays in the Worldly Philosophy (NY Times Books). I said, "Start with these, and then we can talk more." If my friend had been more inclined toward Financial Economics I might have added Peter Bernstein's Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (my assessment) to the list.

To effectively make sense of economics one must realize that Economics is both a history of technology and development, and a study of how people in societies provide for their sustenance. Neither of these two studies necessarily relies on money, although in most cultural practice money is near center stage.

Since money is center stage in most economic chatter, it proves useful to better understand both the contributions and the blindspots in the various "schools of thought" that make up what we call economics.

Blind Men and the Elephant

Consider "the blind men and the elephant" metaphor as applied to economists. Austrians (Wiki Link) (and Neo-Austrians) emphasize market mechanisms and market cycles. Unfortunately, they tend to overemphasize the importance of markets and under-emphasize the role of government. At least they are accused of such by other economists. Often there is outright hatred of government (sometimes with the exception of National Defense) apparent in their writing.

Monetarists (Wiki Link, NS Link) focus on the role of the "money supply" on national output and longer-term price trends. Monitarists tend to focus too narrowly on money and its supposed ability to heal all social problems. At least they are accused of such by other economists.

Keynesians (Wiki Link) (and Post-Keynesians, and Chartalist cousins) emphasize the role of government in setting up mediums of exchange (currency, monetary accounting systems, credit systems, taxation, etc.) and in moderating market behavior when things get too wild. Unfortunately, Keynesians seem too often to err on the government side of the cultural power balance between government and markets. And some Keynesians, like there monetrist antagonists are prone to overplay the "money card" when faced with economic problems. At least they are accused of such behaviors by other economists.

Complexity-theory economists (Wiki Link), focus on "complex systems" and the complexity of human interaction that is sometimes framed as "wicked problems". They are accused by other economists of bringing too much information into their frames of reference, thereby disabling predictive capabilities that theories/methods from other schools of thought enable. Complexity theorists, like other economists, are often so caught up in the mathematics of their vision quest that they are accused of methodological blindness.

Behavorial economists (Wiki Link) bring psychology to center stage in talking through behavior of individual and group actors. I was particularly glad to see them emerge — so too complexity theorists —to move economics thought forward.

Information economists (Wiki Link) put information and information transfer at center stage. Some emphasize the importance of "information asymmetry" as power in both markets and government.

Finally Institutional economists (Wiki Link) focus on "institutionalist political economy", affording much space for politics and political theory in the study of economics.

But we can't stop here. These few hints just begin to explain the various schools of economic thought. See also: Heterodox Economics, which includes the "schools" where I spend much of my time.
  [ Notes: The word "hate" as used above is probably too strong. Alternates include: despise, belittle, "can't stand", etc. Also, there are practitioners in all of the economic schools of thought who are much better than the caricatures I present. Still, when I wander through the blogs, I'm struck by how nearly the term "hate" fits. I should mention that there is a strong tendency toward turf protection among economists — many spend much time dishing dirt on other schools of thought, and on prominent economists not from their school. This is understandable, since economics sits just behind much of the power money in the world today.]

Too often economists fail to adequately embed political and psychological reasoning into their arguments. In every case they so fail, their reasoning ought to fall on deaf ears. But it doesn't. Witness the mess we are in today and the impact too-blind economic reasoning — pontificating really — has had. Audiences listen too well to half-blind (or worse) economic reasoning. Such arguments are amplified by the media, and continue to befuddle and enrage. This proves true whether we look to the so-called general public or to the halls of legislative, administrative and judicial governments around the world.

Learning from Economists

Despite the chaos of economics, the nastiness of politics, and the aberrant nature of the human psyche, there is much we can learn from economists. Austrians help us to better understand the creative destruction (Wiki Link), to use Schumpeter's words, of market cycles. They help us understand information theory: the use and transmission of knowledge via market mechanisms. [ What else? both here and in other schools] They also help us to be wary of moral hazard (Wiki Link) . Keynesians help us better understand important roles for automatic stabilizers (Wiki Link when market cycles tend toward "irrational exuberance" and "irrational pessimism". Monetarists help us better understand that if we are going to base a social system around money, we had better damn well understand the plumbing of the system. Institutionalists help us better understand that we had better understand much beyond money when we are dealing with political economy. Behavioralists and information theorists help us better understand that there are bounds on individual and group rationality (Wiki Link). Complexity theorists help us better understand the chaos/order balance of the world we live in — i.e. complex systems — and the added individual and group psychological "systems effects" that are inherent in social system.

Other schools of thought add spice, nuance, and sometimes insight to discussions within any school. And remember that many economists don't fit well within any "school".

Policy makers need to better understand the ideological/methodological roots of economics reasoning. They need to better understand, as do we all, the "frames" that economists use to bound their discussions — frames that sometimes blind those who work and talk within them.

[Need to add something about The Shock Docrtine, The Wrecking Crew, etc. and the havoc that half-blind ideology and power can unleash.]

US Oligarchs and their Minions

Simon Johnson, former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund and co-author of The Baseline Scenario takes American oligarchs to task in The Quiet Coup, Atlantic Monthly, May 2009. Johnson believes, going forward, that we should seek smaller, better-regulated banking/finance houses incapable of doing systemic damage, and overseen by a different set of oligarchs (Wiki link). Maybe? Or maybe we'll find a way to regulate bigger entities effectively? Or maybe we'll just set the stage for the next big mess? Who knows?

In any case we certainly need to find something to hope for. Burning existing oligarchs at the stake is likely out. So maybe just replacing them, rewriting regulatory rules, and starting over is the best we can hope for. Somehow I think that is where Team Obama will ultimately attempt to take us. In any case, read Simon's thought provoking, controversial article. Here is a somewhat-lengthy excerpt:

Becoming a Banana Republic
In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets): South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia and Argentina (time and again). In each of those cases, global investors, afraid that the country or its financial sector wouldn't be able to pay off mountainous debt, suddenly stopped lending. And in each case, that fear became self-fulfilling, as banks that couldn't roll over their debt did, in fact, become unable to pay. This is precisely what drove Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy on September 15, causing all sources of funding to the U.S. financial sector to dry up overnight. Just as in emerging-market crises, the weakness in the banking system has quickly rippled out into the rest of the economy, causing a severe economic contraction and hardship for millions of people.

But there's a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.

Top investment bankers and government officials like to lay the blame for the current crisis on the lowering of U.S. interest rates after the dotcom bust or, even better—in a "buck stops somewhere else" sort of way—on the flow of savings out of China. Some on the right like to complain about Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or even about longer-standing efforts to promote broader homeownership. And, of course, it is axiomatic to everyone that the regulators responsible for "safety and soundness" were fast asleep at the wheel.

But these various policies—lightweight regulation, cheap money, the unwritten Chinese-American economic alliance, the promotion of homeownership—had something in common. Even though some are traditionally associated with Democrats and some with Republicans, they all benefited the financial sector. Policy changes that might have forestalled the crisis but would have limited the financial sector's profits—such as Brooksley Born's now-famous attempts to regulate credit-default swaps at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in 1998—were ignored or swept aside.

The financial industry has not always enjoyed such favored treatment. But for the past 25 years or so, finance has boomed, becoming ever more powerful. The boom began with the Reagan years, and it only gained strength with the deregulatory policies of the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Several other factors helped fuel the financial industry's ascent. Paul Volcker's monetary policy in the 1980s, and the increased volatility in interest rates that accompanied it, made bond trading much more lucrative. The invention of securitization, interest-rate swaps, and credit-default swaps greatly increased the volume of transactions that bankers could make money on. And an aging and increasingly wealthy population invested more and more money in securities, helped by the invention of the IRA and the 401(k) plan. Together, these developments vastly increased the profit opportunities in financial services.

Not surprisingly, Wall Street ran with these opportunities. From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. In 1986, that figure reached 19 percent. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21 percent and 30 percent, higher than it had ever been in the postwar period. This decade, it reached 41 percent. Pay rose just as dramatically. From 1948 to 1982, average compensation in the financial sector ranged between 99 percent and 108 percent of the average for all domestic private industries. From 1983, it shot upward, reaching 181 percent in 2007.

The great wealth that the financial sector created and concentrated gave bankers enormous political weight—a weight not seen in the U.S. since the era of J.P. Morgan (the man). In that period, the banking panic of 1907 could be stopped only by coordination among private-sector bankers: no government entity was able to offer an effective response. But that first age of banking oligarchs came to an end with the passage of significant banking regulation in response to the Great Depression; the reemergence of an American financial oligarchy is quite recent.

Financial Regulation – Principles

This morning I am watching CSPAN's coverage of US Treasury Secretary Geithner at a House Committee on Financial Services hearing on financial regulation and systemic risk. Watch Geithner's opening statment here (via Yahoo! News).

Yesterday, over at Mother Jones Kevin Drum laid out some principles to guide new financial regulation. Drum suggested three and asked readers for more:

- Firmer Regulation Over Leverage, wherever and however it occurs. [To increase] capital adequacy ratios, … lead to similar oversight of hedge funds; ̷ overhaul how capital and assets are calculated; [regulate] effective leverage embedded in complex derivatives; [add] rules about off-balance-sheet vehicles; and so forth.

- Stronger Commitment to Act Countercyclically. …to force the Fed to keep an eye on asset inflation as well as goods inflation; a dedication to limiting credit expansion as well as credit destruction; capital adequacy rules that weren't merely stronger, but that tightened during expansions and loosened during contractions; and stronger down payment requirements for mortgage loans.

- A recognition that the global financial system could stand to have a little more sand in its gears. Something to slow it down just a little bit, … like a small transaction tax [Iverson here: e.g. a Tobin Tax (Wiki link) -- that could act in part as an insurance premium to tax payers against the risk that the tax payer will be required to bail them out]; exchange trading for credit derivatives; and stronger transparency rules.

Here is a combined "Eight Regulatory Principles" list, edited slightly:

• Firmer Regulation Over Leverage, (wherever and however it occurs, e.g. higher capital and margin (leverage) requirements that might be even higher for very large firms/entities that pose potential systemic risk)
• Stronger Commitment to Act Countercyclically (to lean against the wind during both "irrational exuberance" and "irrational pessimism", including adding "asset bubbles to diagostic toolkit)
• Better Control of Cross-border Capital Flows
• Better Firewalls Between Financial Businesses
• Holding Credit Rating Agencies and Auditors Accountable for their Judgments
• Making Financial Transactions as Transparent as Possible (like making them exchange traded, or having adequate clearing houses outside exchanges)
• Better Means to Discourage Speculative-runs-to-ruin (on corporations that show signs of relative weakness during market breakdowns)
• Reformed Incentives for Financial Executives, large in-house traders, etc. (e.g. require some bonuses to be paid in restricted stock that can only be liquidated in say 10 years.)
  

One of Drum's reader suggested three tactical moves. I'll add a fourth:

- Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act in its final form (prior to repeal)
- Repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
- Repeal Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which enabled unregulated market in credit default swaps, among other things
- Develop more flexibility in"Fair Value Accounting", mark-to-market accounting (e.g. to disallow entities to appear ever-more-wounded during bear raids)

From written testimony and verbal responses to questions, it looks to me like Geithner and Co. intend to cover most if not all the bases outlined in the principles above. But intentions must turn to action! We need to keep watch, as well as to add voice to make for better regulation, better action, and better oversight not only of government but of the private entities entrusted with our money.

PS. In March 23 WSJ online, George Soros offers insight into "Means to Discourage Speculative-runs-to-ruin" by regulating Credit Default Swaps.

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Update, 3/19/2011: Today, in Stop Killing Messengers, I added two more:

• Protecting Rewarding Whistleblowers
• Hiring High-power Talent

Finally, I'll add that I really don't support reinstating Glass-Steagall, but instead creating a modern version of it.

Why I Still Believe in Team Obama

For quite some time I have been giving Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner passes, every bit as much as I did not give passes to Alan Greenspan. I believe that Team Obama—Larry Summers, Christina Romer, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner—see the error of their past ways, AND are savvy enough to guide us, in concert with others, however painfully into the next era of regulated finance.

I am not yet ready to declare capitalism dead. Still, I am very glad to see the gleeful "free market screech-monkey" chatter quieted.

But I just watch this stuff. I'm no expert. I glean advice and seek wisdom from post-Keynesian and other economists, from financial historians, and from those who dabble in complex system theory. I am first to recognize that what I hope to be true will likely not be—In this case trusting my (and your) fate to Team Obama.

If Paul Krugman is right, then I'm wrong to trust in Team Obama. If Jamie Galbraith is right, then I will be most certainly proven wrong if only for this reason:

…The most likely scenario, should the Geithner plan go through, is a combination of looting, fraud, and a renewed speculation in volatile commodity markets such as oil. Ultimately the losses fall on the public anyway, since deposits are largely insured. There is no chance that the banks will simply resume normal long-term lending. To whom would they lend? For what? Against what collateral? And if banks are recapitalized without changing their management, why should we expect them to change the behavior that caused the insolvency in the first place?

End Note on Free Market Fundamentalism: While looking for a good source on Free Market Fundamentalism, I found this note (5/23/2007) I dropped into Yves Smith's naked capitalism:

[W]e Americans have gravitated to a faith-based society/culture. And a big part of that "faith" transfers directly from religious fundamentalism to free-market fundamentalism (Wiki link): Government sucks, markets do it best/right.

If that thesis is correct, then American politicians (whether pandering to the religious right or themselves "true believers" in free-market fundamentalism) tend to shy away from redistributive policies/practices.

What will shake the faith, I don't know. I've been a believer for quite some time that we've got a hell of a problem here in the US with theological Millennium fever. Free-market fundamentalism is symptomatic of the bigger problem.

See also Market Fundamentalism v. Sustainable Development and my Economic Fundamentalism: Too Many False Prophets.

{Update, 3/24/07}: Better Still, read Steve Keen's recent Neoclassical Economics: Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know