Hoenig for FDIC
On July 8th, Sheila Bair will step down as Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). While I believe she’s gotten a lot wrong (such as not preparing the fund for the coming crisis), she has been about the only voice among senior bank regulators for actually ending too-big-to-fail. With her departure, we might lose that one voice. Later this year, Kansas City Fed President Tom Hoenig is also scheduled to leave his current position.
Hoenig has actually gone beyond Bair in trying to address too-big-to-fail, having called for the largest banks to be broken up. While I don’t believe that should be our first approach, having an advocate for both the taxpayer and the overall economy at the helm of the FDIC could make a significant difference.
Given that Section 2 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act requires the FDIC to have a bipartisan board, President Obama is faced with the choice of either appointing a non-Democrat or asking Vice-Chair Marty Gruenberg to leave. While I have no idea as to Hoenig’s politics, he’d likely be able to pass that test.
Hoenig has also been willing to publicly challenge Bernanke on a number of issues. Given the narrow group-think among regulators that contributed to the crisis, having a loud, credible, independent voice among bank regulators is solely needed. Hoenig again fits that bill. His appointment would also offer Obama a chance to show that he is not completely beholden to the Geithner “never seen a bailout I didn’t like” worldview.
Perhaps with Hoenig at the helm, we can actually begin a debate about reducing the moral hazard created by the Federal Reserve. While Bair was all too willing to see both insurance coverage and regulatory powers of the FDIC expanded, Hoenig strikes me as open-minded to the very real excess bank risk-taking that is encouraged by the existence of the FDIC.
Could Technical Default Today Save America from Greek-Style Fiscal Disaster in the Future?
There’s a lot of buzz about a Wall Street Journal interview with Stanley Druckenmiller, in which he argues that a temporary delay in making payments on U.S. government debt (which technically would be a default) would be a small price to pay if it resulted in the long-term spending reforms that are needed to save America from becoming another Greece.
One of the world’s most successful money managers, the lanky, sandy-haired Mr. Druckenmiller is so concerned about the government’s ability to pay for its future obligations that he’s willing to accept a temporary delay in the interest payments he’s owed on his U.S. Treasury bonds—if the result is a Washington deal to restrain runaway entitlement costs. “I think technical default would be horrible,” he says from the 24th floor of his midtown Manhattan office, “but I don’t think it’s going to be the end of the world. It’s not going to be catastrophic. What’s going to be catastrophic is if we don’t solve the real problem,” meaning Washington’s spending addiction. …Mr. Druckenmiller’s view on the debt limit bumps up against virtually the entire Wall Street-Washington financial establishment. A recent note on behalf of giant banks on the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee warned of a “severe and long-lasting impact” if the debt limit is not raised immediately. …This week more than 60 trade associations, representing virtually all of American big business, forecast “a massive spike in borrowing costs.” On Thursday Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke raised the specter of a market crisis similar to the one that followed the 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. As usual, the most aggressive predictor of doom in the absence of increased government spending has been Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. In a May 2 letter to House Speaker John Boehner, Mr. Geithner warned of “a catastrophic economic impact” and said, “Default would cause a financial crisis potentially more severe than the crisis from which we are only now starting to recover.”
Mr. Druckenmiller is not overly impressed by this hyperbole. The article continues with this key passage.
“Here are your two options: piece of paper number one—let’s just call it a 10-year Treasury. So I own this piece of paper. I get an income stream obviously over 10 years . . . and one of my interest payments is going to be delayed, I don’t know, six days, eight days, 15 days, but I know I’m going to get it. There’s not a doubt in my mind that it’s not going to pay, but it’s going to be delayed. But in exchange for that, let’s suppose I know I’m going to get massive cuts in entitlements and the government is going to get their house in order so my payments seven, eight, nine, 10 years out are much more assured,” he says. Then there’s “piece of paper number two,” he says, under a scenario in which the debt limit is quickly raised to avoid any possible disruption in payments. “I don’t have to wait six, eight, or 10 days for one of my many payments over 10 years. I get it on time. But we’re going to continue to pile up trillions of dollars of debt and I may have a Greek situation on my hands in six or seven years. Now as an owner, which piece of paper do I want to own? To me it’s a no-brainer. It’s piece of paper number one.” …”Russia had a real default and two or three years later they had all-time low interest rates,” says Mr. Druckenmiller. In the future, he says, “People aren’t going to wonder whether 20 years ago we delayed an interest payment for six days. They’re going to wonder whether we got our house in order.”
This is a very compelling argument, but it overlooks one major problem — the complete inability of Republicans to succeed in forcing fiscal reform using this approach.
Why Are Geithner and Bernanke Trying to Panic Financial Markets with Debt Limit Demagoguery?
By taking advantage of “must-pass” pieces of legislation, Republicans have three chances this year to restrain the burden of government. They didn’t do very well with the “CR fight” over appropriated spending for the rest of FY2011, which was their first opportunity. I was hoping for an extra-base hit off the fence, but the GOP was afraid of a government shutdown and negotiated from a position of weakness. As such, the best interpretation is that they eked out an infield single.
The next chance to impose fiscal discipline will be the debt limit. Currently, the federal government “only” has the authority to borrow $14.3 trillion (including bookkeeping entries such as the IOUs in the Social Security Trust Fund). This is a very big number, but America’s gross federal debt will hit that limit soon, perhaps May or June.
Republicans say they will not raise the debt limit unless such legislation is accompanied by meaningful fiscal reforms. The political strategists in the Obama White House understandably want to blunt any GOP effort, so they are claiming that any delay in passing a “clean debt limit” will have catastrophic consequences. Specifically, they are using Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke to create fear and uncertainty in financial markets.
Bernanke’s Soft-Core Keynesianism Is Even Worse than the Nonsensical Analysis of Hard-Core Keynesians
Earlier this week, the Washington Post predictably gave some publicity to the Keynesian analysis of Mark Zandi, even though his track record is worse than a sports analyst who every year predicts a Super Bowl for the Detroit Lions. The story also cited similar predictions by the politically connected folks at Goldman Sachs.
Zandi, an architect of the 2009 stimulus package who has advised both political parties, predicts that the GOP package would reduce economic growth by 0.5 percentage points this year, and by 0.2 percentage points in 2012, resulting in 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of next year. His report comes on the heels of a similar analysis last week by the investment bank Goldman Sachs, which predicted that the Republican spending cuts would cause even greater damage to the economy, slowing growth by as much as 2 percentage points in the second and third quarters of this year.
Republicans understandably wanted to discredit this analysis. But rather than expose Zandi’s laughably inaccurate track record, they asked the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, for his assessment. But this is like asking Alex Rodriguez to comment on Derek Jeter’s prediction that the Yankees will win the World Series.
Not surprisingly, as reported by McClatchy, Bernanke endorsed the notion that spending cuts (actually, just tiny reductions in planned increases) would be “contractionary.”
Bernanke was asked repeatedly about GOP proposals to trim anywhere from $60 billion to $100 billion in government spending during the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. These cuts would do little to bring down long-term budget deficits but would slow the economic recovery, he cautioned. “That would be ‘contractionary’ to some extent,” Bernanke said, projecting that “several tenths” of a percentage point would be shaved off of growth, and it would mean fewer jobs. …While Democrats got what they wanted out of Bernanke with that answer, he frowned on some of their projections that the spending cuts that are being debated could reduce growth by a full 2 percentage points.
Since he is not a fool, Bernanke was careful not to embrace the absurd predictions made by Zandi and Goldman Sachs. But that’s merely a difference of degree. Bernanke’s embrace of Keynesian economics is disgraceful because he should know better. And his endorsement of deficit reduction (at least in the long run) is stained by crocodile tears since Bernanke supported bailouts and endorsed Obama’s failed stimulus.
But while Bernanke is not a fool, I can’t say the same thing about Republicans. Bernanke has made clear that he either believes in the perpetual-motion machine of Keynesianism, or he’s willing to endorse Keynesian policies to curry favor with the White House. Republicans should be exposing these flaws, not treating Bernanke likes he’s some sort of Oracle.
Will the Federal Reserve’s Easy-Money Policy Turn the United States into a Global Laughingstock?
Early in the Obama Administration, there was an amusing/embarrassing incident when Chinese students laughed at Treasury Secretary Geithner when he claimed the United States had a strong-dollar policy.
I suspect that even Geithner would be smart enough to avoid such a claim today, not after the Fed’s announcement (with the full support of the White House and Treasury) that it would flood the economy with $600 billion of hot money. Here’s what my colleague Alan Reynolds wrote in the Wall Street Journal about Bernanke’s policy.
Mr. Bernanke…believes (contrary to our past experience with stagflation) that inflation is no danger thanks to economic slack (high unemployment). He reasons that if people can nonetheless be persuaded to expect higher inflation, regardless of the slack, that means interest rates will appear even lower in real terms. If that worked as planned, lower real interest rates would supposedly fix our hangover from the last Fed-financed borrowing binge by encouraging more borrowing. This whole scheme raises nagging questions. Why would domestic investors accept a lower yield on bonds if they expect higher inflation? And why would foreign investors accept a lower yield on U.S. bonds if they expect exchange rate losses on dollar-denominated securities? Why wouldn’t intelligent people shift their investments toward commodities or related stocks (such as mining and related machinery) and either shun, or sell short, long-term Treasurys? And if they did that, how could it possibly help the economy?
The rest of the world seems to share these concerns. The Germans are not big fans of America’s binge of borrowing and easy money. Here’s what Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble had to say in a recent interview.
The American growth model, on the other hand, is in a deep crisis. The United States lived on borrowed money for too long, inflating its financial sector unnecessarily and neglecting its small and mid-sized industrial companies. …I seriously doubt that it makes sense to pump unlimited amounts of money into the markets. There is no lack of liquidity in the US economy, which is why I don’t recognize the economic argument behind this measure. …The Fed’s decisions bring more uncertainty to the global economy. …It’s inconsistent for the Americans to accuse the Chinese of manipulating exchange rates and then to artificially depress the dollar exchange rate by printing money.
The comment about borrowed money has a bit of hypocrisy since German government debt is not much lower than it is in the United States, but the Finance Minister surely is correct about monetary policy. And speaking of China, we now have the odd situation of a Chinese rating agency downgrading U.S. government debt.
The United States has lost its double-A credit rating with Dagong Global Credit Rating Co., Ltd., the first domestic rating agency in China, due to its new round of quantitative easing policy. Dagong Global on Tuesday downgraded the local and foreign currency long-term sovereign credit rating of the US by one level to A+ from previous AA with “negative” outlook.
This development shold be taken with a giant grain of salt, as explained by a Wall Street Journal blogger. Nonetheless, the fact that the China-based agency thought this was a smart tactic must say something about how the rest of the world is beginning to perceive America.
Simply stated, Obama is following Jimmy Carter-style economic policy, so nobody should be surprised if the result is 1970s-style stagflation.
Lehman’s Failure Taught Us Nothing
Several commentators have reacted to Senator McConnell’s floor statement regarding the Dodd bill as a defense of “doing nothing”. And accordingly argue that such a position would be, in the words of Simon Johnson, both dangerous and irresponsible. This familiar canard is based upon the oft repeated assertion that the failure of Lehman proved that we cannot simply let large financial companies enter bankruptcy.
The simple, but important, fact is that we have no idea what would have happened had we let AIG and Bear go into bankruptcy proceedings. Nor do we know what would have happened if Lehman had been saved. Macroeconomics does not have the luxury of running natural experiments to determine the impact of a corporate failure. Scholars have an obligation to accurately reflect the uncertainties in the debate. Those that assert Lehman proved anything, are being at best disingenuous, and at worst, dishonest.
Let us, however, put forth a few things we do know:
- We know none of Lehman’s counterparties failed as a result of Lehman’s failures. Just as we know none of AIG”s counterparties would have failed if they did not get 100 cents on the dollar from their CDS positions. So where exactly is the proof of contagion?
- We know we had a nasty housing bubble. We were going to lose millions of jobs in construction and real estate regardless of what we did. We knew financial institutions heavily invested in housing would suffer. How exactly would saving Lehman have prevented any of that?
The debate over ending bailouts and too-big-to-fail will not progress, we will not learn a thing, if we let simple, empty assertion pass as fact. Much of the public remains angry at Washington because those responsible, such as Bernanke and Geithner, have never laid out a believable or plausible narrative for the bailouts. It always comes back to “panic.” If we are ever to hope to return to being a country governed by the rule of law, rather than the whims of men, then we need a lot more of an explanation than “panic.”
Bernanke’s Hollow Deficit Warning
Even though I’ve been in Washington almost 25 years, I am endlessly amazed at the chutzpah of people who support higher spending and bigger government while piously lecturing the rest of us about the need to control deficits. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is a good (though “bad” might be a better term) example of this hypocrisy. He was an avid supporter of bailouts and so-called stimulus, yet the Washington Post reports that he is now hectoring us to be fiscally responsible:
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned Wednesday that Americans may have to accept higher taxes or changes in cherished entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security if the nation is to avoid staggering budget deficits that threaten to choke off economic growth. “These choices are difficult, and it always seems easier to put them off — until the day they cannot be put off anymore,” Bernanke said in a speech. “But unless we as a nation demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal responsibility, in the longer run we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth.”
One Thing Greenspan Got Right and Bernanke Didn’t
While both Greenspan and Bernanke merit considerable blame for helping to inflate the housing bubble, it is worth mentioning what Greenspan did get right: bringing to the attention of Congress and the public the risk posed to our financial system from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
During Bernanke’s confirmation hearing last week, Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd criticized the Fed for not doing enough to warn Congress on systemic risks facing the economy. Given Dodd’s attendance record, both as Chair and before, he can perhaps be forgiven if he missed one of Greenspan’s many appearances before the Banking Committee.
To help remind us, on Feb. 24, 2004, Greenspan told the Banking Committee:
Concerns about systemic risk are appropriately focused on large, highly leveraged financial institutions such as the GSE’s…to fend off possible future system difficulties, which we assess as likely…preventive actions are required sooner rather than later.” In Greenspanspeak, that translates to “do something now.
Again on April 6, 2005, Greenspan warned the Banking Committee:
When these institutions were small, the potential for such risk, if any, was small. Regrettably, that is no longer the case. From now on, limiting the potential for systemic risk will require the significant strengthening of GSE regulation.
These are just a few of Greenspan’s many warnings to Congress on the risks posed by Fannie and Freddie. In addition, economists at the Fed published numerous studies, during Greenspan’s tenure, on the nature of Fannie and Freddie.
Sadly, upon taking over as Chair of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke scaled back these efforts. Gone was the published economic research on GSEs. Gone was the loud voice of authority from a Fed Chairman on GSE policy. Instead, Bernanke choose to appease the GSE’s protectors in Congress.
While the Federal Reserve does not maintain primary regulatory authority over Fannie and Freddie, the Fed has long been viewed as the most credible voice in Washington on issues of systemic risk. When faced with the choice of protecting the Fed, or protecting the financial system, by raising the pressure on GSE reform, Bernanke punted. How he can be trusted to find the courage to taken on the next “Fannie Mae” is beyond me.
Inflation Warning
In the last few days, we have witnessed an almost unprecedented chorus of warnings about inflation prospects by senior Fed officials. Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher said the Fed must be prepared to tighten monetary policy by raising short-term interest rates with “alacrity.” President Charles Plosser of Philadelphia had spoken of the need to raise interest rates before unemployment returns to normal in order “to prevent the Second Great Inflation.” The comments of the two Reserve Bank presidents reinforce those made by Fed Governor Kevin Warsh.
Financial markets are confused because the Fed’s policy-making committee (the Federal Open Market Committee) had just indicated its intention to keep interest rates low for an extended period. The inflation warnings represent an internal debate that has gone public. Formal dissents from the FOMCs policy directive have reportedly been discouraged. So Fed officials are in effect offering up virtual dissents in public speeches. Confidence in Chairman Bernanke’s policy is waning.
Most economic forecasters profess to see little inflation risk. They need to reconsider their forecasts in light of the inflation warnings from within the central bank.
Why Wall Street Loves Obama
Was it just me, or did there seem to be a whole lot of applause during Obama’s Wall Street speech? Remember this was a room full of Wall Street executives. The President even started by thanking the Wall Street execs for their “warm welcome.”
While of course, there was the obligatory slap on the wrist, that “we will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess,” but there was no mention that the bailouts were a thing of the past. Indeed, there is nothing in Obama’s financial plan that would prevent future bailouts, which is why I believe there was such applause. The message to the Goldman’s of the world, was, you better behave, but even if you don’t, you, and your debtholders will be bailed out.
The president also repeatedly called for “clear rules” and “transparency” – but where exactly in his plan is the clear line dividing who will or will not be bailed out? That’s the part Wall Street loves the most; they can all say we’ve “learned the lesson of Lehman: Wall Street firms cannot be allowed to fail.” At least that’s the lesson that Obama, Geithner and Bernanke have taken away. The truth is we’ve been down this road before with Fannie and Freddie. Politicians always called for them to do their part, and that their misdeeds would not be tolerated. Remember all the tough talk after the 2003 and 2004 accounting scandals at Freddie and Fannie? But still they got bailed out, and what new regulations were imposed were weak and ineffective.
As if the applause wasn’t enough, as Charles Gaspario points out, financial stocks rallied after the president’s speech. Clearly the markets don’t see his plan as bad for the financial industry.
It would seem the best investment Goldman has made in recent years was in its employees deciding to become the largest single corporate contributor to the Obama Presidential campaign. That’s an investment that continues to yield massive dividends.
Embracing Bushonomics, Obama Re-appoints Bernanke
In re-appointing Bernanke to another four year term as Fed chairman, President Obama completes his embrace of bailouts, easy money and deficits as the defining characteristics of his economic agenda.
Bernanke, along with Secretary Geithner (then New York Fed president) were the prime movers behind the bailouts of AIG and Bear Stearns. Rather than “saving capitalism,” these bailouts only spread panic at considerable cost to the taxpayer. As evidenced in his “financial reform” proposal, Obama does not see bailouts as the problem, but instead believes an expanded Fed is the solution to all that is wrong with the financial sector. Bernanke also played a central role as the Fed governor most in favor of easy money in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble — a policy that directly contributed to the housing bubble. And rather than take steps to offset the “global savings glut” forcing down rates, Bernanke used it as a rationale for inaction.
Perhaps worse than Bush and Obama’s rewarding of failure in the private sector via bailouts is the continued rewarding of failure in the public sector. The actors at institutions such as the Federal Reserve bear considerable responsibility for the current state of the economy. Re-appointing Bernanke sends the worst possible message to both the American public and to government in general: not only will failure be tolerated, it will be rewarded.
Gallup Poll: Federal Reserve Makes the IRS Look Good
A recent Gallup Poll surveyed the public’s impression of how various federal agencies were doing their job. Of the agencies evaluated, on the bottom was the Federal Reserve Board. Only 30 percent of the respondents rated the Fed’s performance as either excellent or good. I can understand now why Chairman Bernanke felt the need to take his act on the road. Even the IRS managed to get 40 percent of respondents to see its job performance as excellent or good. A majority of the public, 57 percent, sees the Fed’s current performance as either poor or fair.
The result is not just driven by a general public disdain for federal agencies; over a majority of respondents thought such agencies as the Center for Disease Control, NASA and the FBI were doing an excellent or good job.
Nor is the result driven by public ignorance or indifference to the Fed; only a few years ago, back in 2003, 53 percent of Americans said the Federal Reserve was doing an excellent or good job and only 5% called its job performance poor. But then, the Fed was also giving us negative real interest rates at that time as well. Perhaps there’s a good reason to insulate the Fed from short-term public and political pressures. Let’s hope Chairman Bernanke does not read these results as an excuse for repeating the Fed’s 2003 monetary policies.
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