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Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Another clueless commentator gives her "explanations" for the recovery



Nina Easton is a conservative commentator. Here is an article that she wrote, which appeared online today. My comments are in italics.

Washington's inconvenient economic truths
By Nina Easton, Washington editor
On 10:35 am EST, Monday November 2, 2009

Now that we're officially (if barely) out of the Great Recession, it's time for our nation's elected officials to get down to serious business -- that of taking credit, assigning blame, and calling each other liars.

Barely? We're growing at nearly 4% and could be growing a lot faster if more economic stimulus were applied.

The $787 billion stimulus package signed by President Obama is the picked-over carcass in the middle, with the White House claiming credit for millions of jobs "saved" and the Republicans accusing Team Obama of playing fantasy foosball with hard economic data.

But the stimulus package is mostly beside the point -- at least so far -- which poses an inconvenient political truth for both President Obama and his GOP foes. The real credit for a rebounding economy goes to the Federal Reserve Board -- chaired by a Bush appointee, Ben Bernanke, whose term was just re-upped by Obama.

The Fed only sets interest rates; it cannot add to aggregate demand, which is is what has been so lacking. How does she support her claim that the real credit for the rebounding economy goes to the Fed?

Some credit for stabilizing the financial system can also be given to a wildly unpopular bank bailout launched by President Bush's Treasury Secretary and endorsed and sustained by President Obama's Treasury Secretary.

It could be argued that the bank bailout--in the form it was conducted, i.e. sustaining non-bank intermediaries--was counterproductive. If the Fed had understood its role and lent on an unsecured, unlimited basis to commercial banks, as is their directive, then the "financial system" would have been fine and we would have eliminated a lot of unecessary intermediation.

Try making those points to angry voters in next year's midterm elections.

No elected Democrat really wants to embrace TARP, no matter how much Tim Geithner has tweaked and re-tweaked the bank rescue program, and no matter how many billions banks have since returned, stapled with interest payments to U.S. taxpayers.

Tarp was an extravagant use of taxpayer money. One hundred times what is spent on food stamps, for no good reason.

Likewise, Republicans are painfully aware that last summer's "tea party" rebellions had as much to do with public anger over these Wall Street bailouts as they did with opposition to government-run health care.

Some economists, like Stanford University's John Taylor, think TARP was an unnecessary disaster. Others, like Allen Sinai, president of Decision Economics, say the government missed an opportunity to drive a real turnaround as we stared into a financial abyss.

Yes, there was no change. And Tarp sustained some of the very non-bank, speculative entities that contributed to the crisis.

Instead of injecting capital into banks who were unlikely to lend the money back out in such a dismal credit environment, Sinai argues the government should have supported housing prices -- the root of the crisis -- by directly intervening in the mortgage market.

That's one idea. How about supporting incomes via payroll tax cuts and giving money to cash-strapped states. In other words, you support the real economy and the banking crisis goes away.

Still, most economists credit TARP, followed by Treasury's requirement for the big banks to raise private capital, with stabilizing the financial sector -- a prerequisite to the 3.5% GDP growth for the third quarter that was reported last week. (Even Sinai credits TARP with a small but measurable role in last week's good news.)

The decision to force banks to raise capital was an admisssion by our policymakers that they don't understand our own banking system. Banks are already regulated as to their capital adequeacy. Ostensibly the FDIC and controller of the currency was doing that job.

Says the American Enterprise Institute's Alex Brill, former chief economist to the House Ways and Means Committee: "There is a lot of fair criticism about how TARP operated. But the banking system is the grease in our economy. As a result of TARP, we're in a much better place today." Even though, as Brill acknowledges, "TARP is scary for a lot of politicians and voters."

Banks are functionally agents of the government when it comes to lending and money creation, however, our leaders fail to recognize this. They also fail to recognize that banks make loans based on the ability of those loans to be paid back, which is a function of basic economic conditions. We still have 15 million people unemployed, yet our policymakers are scratching their heads as to why banks are not lending.

There is similar disagreement among economists over the impact of the $787 billion stimulus bill that a Democratic Congress passed and President Obama signed last February.

Sinai calculates that the tax and income supports, along with aid to states and cities, were responsible for about 40% of the 3.5 GDP growth rate reported last week. (Though Sinai and other economists include in their measurements the Cash for Clunkers program, which clearly caused an uptick in auto manufacturing. But that month-long trade-in program has ended, and wasn't even part of the original Obama stimulus bill.)

Yes, income supports via automatic stabilizers, like SS, Medicare and unemployment insurance. NOTHING was done proactively to help incomes rise. In fact, the Fed's zero-interest-rate policy actually has led to a decline in interest income, which is not an insignificant part of national income.

Brill argues that Obama's stimulus had very little impact on GDP because very little money is getting out the government door. "The bureaucracy and red tape in these projects is systemic," he says.

Agreed. Most of the "spending" went for Tarp (about $400 billion). When you remove Tarp from the deficit, the shortfall is about 7% of GDP, which seems wholly inadequate when you are dealing with the worst downturn since the 1930s.

And Stanford's Taylor argues in his blog that the Bureau of Economic Analysis tables released with last week's GDP numbers "make it very clear that the $787 billion stimulus package had virtually nothing to do with the improvement."

It had some, but not a lot. And much of the actual spending was in the second year, so the jury is still out on this.

What's harder to ignore in this improving economic picture is the role of the Fed, which has effectively bypassed an ailing banking system to pump credit into the economy. The Fed's interventions have been manifold: through the commercial-paper market and short-term loans to banks; through supports for loans to small business, auto buyers, credit-card holders and student-loan borrowers; and through a commitment to buy up $1.25 trillion in loans tied to home mortgages.

Despite interest rates being brought down to zero, total bank credit has declined by $400 billion in since last December. This woman has no clue about what she is talking about. Moreover, since hte gov't is a net payer of interest, zero-percent interest rates have resulted in an income cut to many people.

"Where you see that is in home sales and housing starts," says Sinai. "The GDP numbers showed a nice increase in residential construction. Also, home prices have bottomed out. That's a secondary effect of the Fed's actions."

No. It has to do with the fact that housing construction fell to unsustainably low levels.

Of course, Fed monetary policy, which has kept interest rates at effectively zero, has also "had a significant effect on the economy," says Sinai, producing a stock-market rally that caused wealth gains, and boosting investor confidence. And a lower dollar, he notes, has helped exports, which showed a healthy increase in last week's GDP figures.

The stock market's gains are felt more by people at the top--the highest income earners--and do little for folks at the bottom or in the middle. Moreover, achieving export growth in a highly competitive global export economy meant reducing the real terms of trade for Americans. Exports are a cost; imports are a benefit.

As the economy improves, economists will give a pat on the back to Bernanke -- even as they worry about inflation and what will happen when he takes his foot off the money accelerator. But don't look for 435 House members and 36 U.S. Senators seeking reelection next year to take to applause lines for Bernanke -- or his Federal Reserve Board.

The economists are wrong. Bernanke had nothing to do with this recovery if indeed it lasts, becausee the Fed has absolutely zero tools to deal with raising the level of aggregate demand.

The effect of TARP, the most widely publicized piece of last year's government response to the financial crisis, was to stir fierce populist sentiment. The Fed, a historically secretive and mistrusted agency, doesn't escape those passions. Libertarian Ron Paul of Texas, who has called for an end to the Fed, introduced a bill to audit the agency's monetary policy-making -- and 308 House members have since signed on.

Ron Paul is an idiot and his constitutents are idiots for keeping him in office.

This isn't a clean Republican-Democrat divide; it's a grass roots-elite divide. And the Fed's key role in America's economic recovery is one of those truths that just isn't convenient on any campaign trail right now.

The Fed has had zero role in this recovery. She's clueless.


10 comments:

  1. Couldn't most of this mess been avoided though by targeting nGDP at 5% since at least '06? And couldn't bank lending be spurred on by negative interest rates and/or penalities for keeping deposits with the Fed?

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  2. Mr. Sandifer,
    Lower interest rates spur credit APPLICATIONS. An example where we see this weekly is in mortgage lending. Each week Freddie Mac posts average 30 year fixed rates as reported the week prior. The media then passes this info to Main Street: Rates dropped and mortgage applications rose. OR; Rates were higher and the number of mortgage applications dropped.

    These are the only two scenarios and those of us in the mortgage industry laugh it off as sort of a blinding flash of the obvious.

    Today fewer people can qualify for the loans they apply for: Speaking in terms of mortgage lending I can tell you that there are a myriad of reasons for this but for the most part they alll boil down to:

    Income to debt ratio requirements are being tightened

    Tightened LTV (loan-to-value) guidelines.

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  3. Mike,

    Yes, it's called sustaining output and employment, which is something our policymakers don't seem to understand or want to do. The Fed can't do it, but the gov't can. What stands in the way is a belief system that precludes us from taking the proper measures.

    -Mike

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  4. Mike Norman, my company is laying-off workers left and right. Those of us that remain are days away from a pink slip. I was explaining to my coworkers how our government needs to increase spending and sustain output and employment. They called me a socialist. Their comments show how pervasive this false belief system is througout our country.

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. Yes, Joker, like I said...dangerous belief systems are like infections in the body. If they are not eradicated they kill the body.

    Your co-workers are quick to throw out the label, "Socialism," even though they; a)probably don't know what it means and; b) would prefer to live in poverty just to able to say they were living under capitalism?

    Moreover, ALL economic systems exist under a political system at the top, so by definition "the state" has a hand in economic activity and "the state" is also the monopoly issuer of the currency. Without the state providing ample quantities of the means of exchange, it rations wealth to only those at the top. This is bad for Democracy and eventually will lead to its collapse. I wonder if your co-workers realize that.

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  7. Hey Mikey ya watch this lately?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9087euswWo&feature=related

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  8. Mike, my co-workers are pencil-pushing-pinheads and I'm 99% sure they don't understand that the government creates aggregate demand and is the monopoly issuer of the currency.

    They believe government finances function like their personal finances. I've directed them to your blog, but they still don't believe what you're saying is true. They are just a lost cause.

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  9. Joker:

    Belief can alter observations; those with a particular belief will often see things as reinforcing their belief, even if it is not so.

    -Mike

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  10. Hey MDC

    Peter Schiff is an idiot.

    He may have said "there's a tsunami coming"

    but he did not get OUT of the way to higher ground.

    Peter Schiff went out to the sea floor exposed in the very low pre-tsunami tide watching the flopping the fish yelling "see i told you so" ( voice dub like a moron cretin ) - everyone get out of the USD and into other currencies and stocks - said Peter Schiffless.

    then the tsunami wacked his portfolio and ALL of his dooms day theory.

    the USD spiked - Schiff less
    the foreign stocks tanked - Schiff less

    It's a schiff without a boat !

    get it ? schiff is german for boat !

    frischberg is finally getting around to a caller ( probably a plant not real caller ) who mentioned Mike Norman.

    frischberg claims that Norman has a long history of being wrong, but i did some math and i now know why bizradio does not archive shows.

    the only show that was archived was Mike Norman - he has had nothing to hide !

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