I’ve argued that the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill does not end “too-big-to-fail”, that is the belief that certain companies are implicitly backed by the government because policy-makers are unlikely to let said institutions actually fail. By naming some companies as ”systemically important” — as required by Dodd-Frank — the government is actually sending a signal as to who is likely to be bailed out.

As evidenced by regulators’ behavior during the financial crisis, the prime beneficiaries would be the creditors of these companies, as even when shareholders and management suffered, creditors generally did not. This should allow such firms to borrow at a cost lower than firms not deemed systemically important.

Given this funding advantage, it would seem natural that firms would want to be included as systemically important. Sure they might be examined by bank regulators more often, but that’s hardly a large cost compared to the funding advantage.

Congressman Frank has attempted to refute that there are any benefits from being deemed “systemically important” by the fact that ”so many financial institutions have lobbied against being designated in this way.” What his argument misses, or chooses to ignore, is that these benefits are not the same for all institutions. It is companies that rely heavily on debt market financing, such as banks, that have the most to gain. And under Dodd-Frank, the largest banks are automatically included. They have no opportunity to lobby to be in or out. The firms that are not automatically in, the most important of which are insurance companies, do not fund themselves primarily via the debt markets. Insurance companies get most of their funding from the premiums paid by their policyholders. And those premiums must be sufficient to cover expected losses, which have little to do with funding costs in the debt markets. Other non-bank financial companies, such as hedge funds and private equity, do not gain to the same extent that banks do because they have traditionally been a lot less leveraged than banks.

So the answer to Mr. Frank’s point is that those who have the most to gain from being ”systemically important” are already included, those with the least the gain are the very ones lobbying against being included. The real perversity is that once they are included, they will have a strong incentive to shift their business models toward more debt funding, making them riskier and more likely to fail (debt markets are far more fickle than insurance policy-holders). We are left relying solely on the judgment of the regulators to avoid this outcome, the same regulators who were asleep at the wheel as the housing bubble expanded.

Who Wants To Be ‘Too-Big-To-Fail’? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

MIT Professor Simon Johnson recently argued that Bill Daley’s appointment as Obama’s Chief of Staff signals that “too big to fail,” as it relates to our largest financial institutions, is here to stay.  Personally I never thought it was in doubt.  With Geithner at Treasury and Dodd-Frank further codifiying “too big to fail,” its been clear for some time that the bailout net is larger than it’s ever been, and is not being pulled back. 

That said, Professor Johnson’s focus on Daley distracts from the real issue, which is changing our bank regulatory structure to end bailouts.  The focus on Daley has the potential to lead us down that path of “if we just had the right people in government…”  We shouldn’t be designing our regulatory structures with the “right” people in mind, but rather with the rule of law in mind.  In fact, one of the benefits of the Obama administration is that it serves as a great test of the “right people” hypothesis of government.  One is unlikely to see a more left-leaning White House than this one, so if this one gets captured by special interests, including Wall Street, than it’s a safe bet that any future administration will as well. 

Since I believe most of us actually want to end “too big to fail,” the real question is how to do it.  It strikes me that we have three options:  regulate the largest institutions to death (or competitive disadvantage), break them up, or credibly impose losses on their creditors.  Ultimately I think the regulation approach is bound to fail, if for no other reason than regulatory capture.   (Even Elizabeth Warren seems to get this: “Regulations, over time, fail. I want to see Congress focus more on a credible system for liquidating the banks that are considered too big to fail.”)  Breaking them up might sound attractive in theory, but I have a hard time seeing how it truly works in practice.  After all, few in Washington viewed Bear Stearns as “too big to fail.”  Accordingly, I believe the best approach would be to force creditors to take losses or be converted into equity.  To make this credible, we must bind the hands of the regulators.  As long as the Fed, Treasury, or the FDIC can inject money, then bailouts are always on the table.    

Sadly, what the Daley appointment reminds us is that any attempt to end “too big to fail” will likely have to wait until the next administration.  Not only is this one wed to bailouts, the President would likely veto any bill that really tied the hands of the Fed.

Bill Daley and ‘Too Big To Fail’ is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

On the surface the failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would appear to have little connection to the fiscal crisis in Greece, outside of both occurring in or around the time of a global financial crisis.  Of course in the case of Fannie and Freddie, primary blame lies with their management and with Congress.  Primary blame for Greece’s problems clearly lies with the Greek government. 

Neither Greece or Fannie would have been able to get into as much trouble, however, if financial institutions around the world had not loaded up on their debt.  One reason, if not the primary reason, for bailing out both Greece and the US’s government sponsored enterprises is the adverse impact their failures would have on the banking system.

Yet bankers around the world did not blindly load up on both Greek and GSE debt, they were encouraged to by the bank regulators via the Basel capital standards.  Under Basel, the amount of capital a bank is required to hold against an asset is a function of its risk category.  For the highest risk assets, like corporate bonds, banks are required to hold 8%.  Yet for those seen as the lowest risk, short term government bonds, banks aren’t required to hold any capital.  So while you’d have to hold 8% capital against say, Ford bonds, you don’t have to hold any capital against Greek debt.  Depending on the difference between the weights and the debt yields, such a system provides very strong incentives to load up on the highest yielding bonds of the least risky class.  Fannie and Freddie debt required holding only 1.6% capital.  Very small losses in either Greek or GSE debt would cause massive losses to the banks, due to their large holdings of both.

The potential damage to the banking system from the failures of Greece and the GSEs is not the result of a free market run wild.  It was the very clear and predictable result of misguided and mismanaged government policies meant to create a steady market for government borrowing.

Fannie Mae and Greece’s Problems Enabled by Basel is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

If someone asked you what’s wrong with a planned economy, your first answer might not be “privacy.” But it should be. For proof, look no further than the financial regulation bill the Senate is debating. Its 1,400 pages contain strong prescriptions for a government-micromanaged economy—and the undoing of your financial privacy. Here’s a look at some of the personal data collection this revamp of financial services regulation will produce.

The “Office of Financial Research” (sec. 152) will have a “Data Center” (sec. 154) that requires submisson of data on any financial activity that poses a threat to financial stability.

Use your noggin, now: Will government researchers know in advance what might cause financial instability? Will they home in on precisely that? No.

This is government entrée into any financial activities federal bureaucrats suspect might cause instability. It’s carte blanche to examine all financial transactions—including yours. (Confidentiality rules? The better view is that privacy is lost when the government takes data from your control, but we’ll come back to confidentiality.)

The Office of Financial Research is also a sop to industry. Morgan Stanley estimates that it will save the company 20 to 30 percent of its operating costs. The advocates for this bureaucracy want to replace the competitive environment for financial data with a uniform government data platform. Students of technology will instantly recognize what this data monoculture means: If the government’s data and assumptions are bad, everyone’s data and assumptions are bad, and all players in the financial services system fall together. The Office of Financial Research itself poses a threat to financial stability.

But all that’s about money. On with privacy…

The “Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection” (sec. 1011) in the bill is another beetle boring into your personal financial life. Among its mandates is to “gather information . . . regarding the organization, business conduct, markets, and activities of persons operating in consumer financial services markets” (sec. 1022(c)(4)).

In case you’re wondering, the definition of “person” includes “an individual” (sec. 1002(17)). The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection can investigate your business conduct and activities.

Come now. All this private data gathering can’t possibly be what they mean to do, can it?

Section 1071(b) requires any deposit-taking financial institution to geo-code customer addresses and maintain records of deposits for at least three years. Think of the government having its own Google map of where you and your neighbors do your banking. The Bureau may “use the data for any other purpose as permitted by law,” such as handing it off to other bureaus, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Still, that’s really not what the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection is supposed to be about, is it? It can’t be!

It’s not. Nor was the Social Security number about creating a uniform national identifier that facilitates both lawful (excessive) data collection and identity fraud. The construction of surveillance infrastructure doesn’t turn on the intentions of its builders. They’re just giving another turn to the wheels that crush privacy.

Promises of confidentiality and “de-identified” data are not reassuring. It’s getting harder and harder to collect data that are not personally identifiable. Latanya Sweeney’s 2002 “k-anonymity” paper is best known for establishing how anonymous data can be “re-identified,” unraveling promised confidentiality and privacy.

Just a few “anonymous” data points can pick out individuals. Data-driven triangulation on individuals will get easier as data collection grows society-wide. Confidentiality rules in the bill will tend to fail over time, if they’re not simply reversed when some future exigency demands it. If we’re to maintain privacy, government data collection should be shrinking, not growing.

How do you manage an economy from the top? You collect data. Thanks to computing and communications, there are lots of data available nowadays. Maybe the failed Progressive-Era dream of “scientific government” has been revitalized by the idea that data can shore up regulation’s natural defects.

My colleague Mark Calabria has investigated and drawn into question whether it was a lack of consumer protection that caused the financial crisis. But Washington, D.C. has determined that Washington, D.C. should manage the financial services industry. Your personal and private financial affairs will be managed there too.

Planned Economy, Privacy Problems is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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:

1. 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?
2. 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.”

Lehman’s Failure Taught Us Nothing is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The former Soviet Republic of Georgia is a late economic reformer, having started such liberalization after the Rose Revolution in 2004. But it is one of the most successful post-Soviet reformers, and it may be the country that has implemented the largest range of serious market reforms in the shortest period of time. Its growth rate from 2004 through 2008 averaged 7.6 percent per year (which includes the comparatively low 2.1 percent rate of 2008 that resulted from the global financial crisis and the war with Russia).

Last month, the government submitted a draft act to Parliament that calls for amending the country’s constitution so that it would safeguard various elements of economic freedom. The amendments would put caps on public debt, spending and deficits; and ban any kind of price controls, state ownership of banks and financial institutions and restrictions on currency convertibility, and any kind of control over the movement of capital. New taxes or increases in tax rates would require approval through a national referendum.

With the possible partial exception of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, I’m not aware of any other constitution that explicitly enshrines economic freedom. I’m told by Georgian colleagues that prospects for passage of the law looks good, with the constitution being amended as early as next month.

A Georgian Constitution of Economic Liberty is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

As could be expected, the effects of the financial crisis — and people’s reaction thereto — are starting to make their way to the least political branch of government, the judiciary.  The Supreme Court this term will be hearing several cases that could have serious repercussions on our economic recovery, one of which led us to file an amicus brief.  Here’s the situation:

The Investment Company Act of 1940 places on investment advisers a fiduciary duty with respect to the compensation they receive for the services they provide their clients. In the case of Jones v. Harris Associates, shareholders in various mutual funds contend that their adviser fees were excessive and violated the ICA. The Seventh Circuit, the federal appellate court based in Chicago, affirmed the judgment of the district court that the fees were not excessive but also expressly disapproved of the  methodology for evaluating such claims used by the Second Circuit (based in New York). Judge Frank Easterbrook’s opinion explains that the ICA creates a fiduciary duty but does not act as a rate regulator, and that judicial price-setting does not accompany fiduciary duties. Judge Richard Posner, writing for five judges, dissented from the denial of an en banc rehearing. The Supreme Court agreed to review the case to settle the circuit split.

Our brief supports the investment adviser and makes three arguments:

1. All persons have a fundamental human right to whatever compensation their contracting partners freely and honestly choose to pay them.
2. Courts have no power to second-guess the reasonableness of any salary or compensation agreement honestly and freely signed by both contracting parties.
3. The ICA’s fiduciary duty requires only fair dealing, not any particular outcome.

Thanks to Cato adjunct scholar Tim Sandefur for spearheading this effort, and to Cato legal associate Matthew Aichele for helping with much of the attendant busywork.

What Is ‘Unreasonable’ Compensation? And Who Gets to Decide? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Mark Calabria notes how the form of salary scheme at financial institutions played no apparent role in sparking the financial crisis.  But that hasn’t stopped the federal pay czar from boasting about his power, even to regulate compensation set before he took office.

Reports the Martha’s Vineyard Times:

Speaking to a packed house in West Tisbury Sunday night, Kenneth Feinberg rejected the title of “compensation czar,” but he also said said his broad and “binding” authority over executive compensation includes not only the ability to trim 2009 compensation for some top executives but to change pay plans for second tier executives as well.

In addition, Mr. Feinberg said he has the authority to “claw back” money already paid to executives in the seven companies whose pay plans he will review.

And, he said that if companies had signed valid contractual pay agreements before February 11 this year, the legislation creating his “special master” office allowed him to ask that those contracts be renegotiated. If such a request were not honored, Mr. Feinberg explained that he could adjust pay in subsequent years to recapture overpayments that were legally beyond his reach in 2009.

This isn’t the first time that federal money has come with onerous conditions, of course.  But it provides yet another illustration of the perniciousness of today’s bail-out economy.

The Pay Czar at Work is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Jeffrey A. Miron explains in Reason why a government bail-out of most everyone was neither the only option nor the best option:

When people try to pin the blame for the financial crisis on the introduction of derivatives, or the increase in securitization, or the failure of ratings agencies, it’s important to remember that the magnitude of both boom and bust was increased exponentially because of the notion in the back of everyone’s mind that if things went badly, the government would bail us out. And in fact, that is what the federal government has done. But before critiquing this series of interventions, perhaps we should ask what the alternative was. Lots of people talk as if there was no option other than bailing out financial institutions. But you always have a choice. You may not like the other choices, but you always have a choice. We could have, for example, done nothing.

By doing nothing, I mean we could have done nothing new. Existing policies were available, which means bankruptcy or, in the case of banks, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation receivership. Some sort of orderly, temporary control of a failing institution for the purpose of either selling off the assets and liquidating them, or, preferably, zeroing out the equity holders, giving the creditors a haircut and making them the new equity holders. Similarly, a bankruptcy or receivership proceeding might sell the institution to some player in the private sector willing to own it for some price.

With that method, taxpayer funds are generally unneeded, or at least needed to a much smaller extent than with the bailout approach. In weighing bankruptcy vs. bailouts, it’s useful to look at the problem from three perspectives: in terms of income distribution, long-run efficiency, and short-term efficiency.

From the distributional perspective, the choice is a no-brainer. Bailouts took money from the taxpayers and gave it to banks that willingly, knowingly, and repeatedly took huge amounts of risk, hoping they’d get bailed out by everyone else. It clearly was an unfair transfer of funds. Under bankruptcy, on the other hand, the people who take most or even all of the loss are the equity holders and creditors of these institutions. This is appropriate, because these are the stakeholders who win on the upside when there’s money to be made. Distributionally, we clearly did the wrong thing.

It’s too late to reverse history.  But it would help if Washington politicians stopped plotting new bail-outs.  At this stage, most every American could argue that they are entitled to a bail-out because most every other American has already received one.

Why Promiscuous Bail-Outs Never Was a Good Idea is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

One of the most pernicious public policies aggravating the financial crisis is that of “too big to fail.” The doctrine states that some banks (now financial institutions generally) are so large that their failure would incur “systemic risk” for the financial system. That sounds terrible and it is intended to. Financial services regulators and Treasury secretaries use it to frighten small children and congressmen. How can an elected official vote to incur systemic risk? He must vote to approve the bank bailout of the day. In fact, people who use the term cannot even agree among themselves as to what it means, much less what causes it and, therefore, what the appropriate response would be. I suggest the reader substitute the phrase “too politically connected to fail” whenever he sees “too big to fail.” What follows will then be rendered intelligible.

Too Big to Fail is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

By proposing to eliminate the Federal Family Education Loan Program, President Obama has raised a pretty big ruckus in the relatively staid world of higher education policy. For the uninitiated, FFELP uses taxpayer dollars to essentially guarantee profits to participating financial institutions, and to keep student loans cheap and abundant. 

Since neither corporate welfare nor rampant tuition inflation are really good things, getting rid of this beast would be a welcome move. Unfortunately, the president wants to replace FFELP with direct-from-Washington lending and to plow the savings into Pell Grants, so there’ll be no savings for taxpayers and probably very little beneficial effect on college prices. 

As I wrote on NewMajority.com in May, no one should expect big lenders to get kicked off the federal gravy train:

[T]he Obama administration is saying they’d keep private companies as servicers of loans to maintain quality customer service. Of course, this could very well be worse than the status quo: It will likely keep at least the biggest current lenders (read: Sallie Mae) at the political trough, but Washington will be THE lender for all students.

Right I was! Or, at least, signs of my prescience keep getting brighter:  Despite Obama promising to go to war against an ”army” of lenders’ lobbyists, the U.S. Department of Education just awarded Sallie Mae and three other big lenders lucrative contracts to service federal loans. So while smaller leeches could very well be removed from their supply of taxpayer blood, the biggest will keep on sucking!

The Biggest Leeches Always Live is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

There are lots of reasons Washington should not bail out the automakers.  Whatever the justification for saving financial institutions — the “lifeblood” of the economy, etc., etc. — saving selected industrial enterprises is lemon socialism at its worst.  The idea that the federal government will be able to engineer an economic turnaround is, well, the sort of economic fantasy that unfortunately dominates Capitol Hill these days.

One obvious problem is that legislators now have a great excuse to micromanage the automakers.  And they have already started.  After all, if the taxpayers are providing subsidies, don’t they deserve to have dealerships, lots of dealerships, just down the street?  That’s what our Congresscritters seem to think.

Observes Stephen Chapman of the Chicago Tribune:

The Edsel was one of the biggest flops in the history of car making. Introduced with great fanfare by Ford in 1958, it had terrible sales and was junked after only three years. But if Congress had been running Ford, the Edsel would still be on the market.

That became clear last week, when Democrats as well as Republicans expressed horror at the notion that bankrupt companies with plummeting sales would need fewer retail sales outlets. At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., led the way, asserting, “I honestly don’t believe that companies should be allowed to take taxpayer funds for a bailout and then leave it to local dealers and their customers to fend for themselves.”

Supporters of free markets can be grateful to Rockefeller for showing one more reason government shouldn’t rescue unsuccessful companies. As it happens, taxpayers are less likely to get their money back if the automakers are barred from paring dealerships. Protecting those dealers merely means putting someone else at risk, and that someone has been sleeping in your bed.

The Constitution guarantees West Virginia two senators, and Rockefeller seems to think it also guarantees the state a fixed supply of car sellers. “Chrysler is eliminating 40 percent of its dealerships in my state,” he fumed, “and I have heard that GM will eliminate more than 30 percent.” This development raises the ghastly prospect that “some consumers in West Virginia will have to travel much farther distances to get their cars serviced under warranty.”

Dealers were on hand to join the chorus. “To be arbitrarily closed with no compensation is wasteful and devastating,” said Russell Whatley, owner of a Chrysler outlet in Mineral Wells, Texas.

Lemon socialism mixed with pork barrel politics!  Could it get any worse?  Don’t ask: after all, this is Washington, D.C.

Should You Vote on Keeping Your Local Car Dealership? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Yes, I know.  It’s hard to believe.  Fannie Mae continues to lose money and, even more surprisingly, isn’t likely to ever pay taxpayers back for all of the billions that it already has squandered.  Rather, it says it will need more bail-out funds — probably another $110 billion this year alone.

Reports the Washington Post:

Fannie Mae reported yesterday that it lost $23.2 billion in the first three months of the year as mortgage defaults increasingly spread from risky loans to the far-larger portfolio of loans to borrowers who have been considered safe.

The massive loss prompts a $19 billion investment from the government to keep the firm solvent, on top of a $15 billion investment of taxpayer money earlier this year.

The sobering earnings report was a reminder of the far-reaching implications of the government’s takeover in September of Fannie Mae and the smaller Freddie Mac. Losses have proved unrelenting; the firms’ appetite for tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer aid hasn’t subsided; and taxpayer money invested in the companies, analysts said, is probably lost forever because the prospects for repayment are slim.

But the government remains committed to keeping the companies afloat, because it is relying on them to help reverse the continuing slide in the housing market and keep mortgage rates low.

Even as the government bailout of banks appears to be leveling off, the federal rescue of Fannie and Freddie is rapidly growing more expensive. Fannie Mae said that the losses will continue through at least much of the year and that it “therefore will be required to obtain additional funding from the Treasury.” Analysts are estimating that the company could need at least $110 billion.

Freddie Mac, which has been in worse financial shape than Fannie Mae and has obtained $45 billion in taxpayer funding, will report earnings in coming days.

The response of policymakers in the administration and Congress to this fiscal debacle?  Silence.  No surprise there, since many of them helped create the very programs that continue to bleed taxpayers dry.

Alas, this isn’t the first time that the federal government has promoted a housing boom and bust.  Instead, writes Steven Malanga in Investor’s Business Daily:

This cycle goes back nearly 100 years. In 1922, Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover launched the “Own Your Own Home” campaign, hailed as unique in the nation’s history.

Responding to a small dip in homeownership rates, Hoover urged “the great lending institutions, the construction industry, the great real estate men … to counteract the growing menace” of tenancy.

He pressed builders to turn to residential construction. He called for new rules that would let nationally chartered banks devote a greater share of their lending to residential properties.

Congress responded in 1927, and the freed-up banks dived into the market, despite signs that it was overheating.

The great national effort seemed to pay off. From mid-1927 to mid-1929, national banks’ mortgage lending increased 45%. The country was becoming “a nation of homeowners,” the Times exulted.

But as homeownership grew, so did the rate of foreclosures, from just 2% of commercial bank mortgages in 1922 to 11% in 1927.

This happened just as the stock market bubble of the late ’20s was inflating dangerously. Soon after the October 1929 Wall Street crash, the housing market began to collapse. Defaults exploded; by 1933, some 1,000 homes were foreclosing every day.

The “Own Your Own Home” campaign had trapped many Americans in mortgages beyond their reach.

Financial institutions were exposed as well. Their mortgage loans outstanding more than doubled from the early 1920s to 1930 — $9.2 billion to $22.6 billion — one reason that about 750 financial institutions failed in 1930 alone.

The only serious option is to close down all of the money-wasting federal programs  and laws designed to subsidize home ownership.  A stake through the hearts of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Federal Housing Administration, and Community Reinvestment Act, to start.  Otherwise the cycle is bound to be repeated, again to great cost for the ever-suffering  taxpayers.

Shocking News: Fannie Mae Is Losing More Money is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

At the New York Times Economix blog, economist Nancy Folbre of the University of Massachusetts writes:

The libertarian Cato Institute often emphasizes the issue of corporate welfare, but it’s remained remarkably quiet so far on the topic of bailouts.

Excuse me?

Since she linked to one of our papers on corporate welfare, we assume she’s visited our site. How, then, could she get such an impression? Cato scholars have been deploring bailouts since last September. (Actually, since the Chrysler bailout of 1979, but we’ll skip forward to the recent avalanche of Bush-Obama bailouts.) Just recently, for instance, in — ahem — the New York Times, senior fellow William Poole implored, “Stop the Bailouts.” I wonder if our commentaries started with my blog post “Bailout Nation?” last September 8? Or maybe with Thomas Humphrey and Richard Timberlake’s “The Imperial Fed,” deploring the Federal Reserve’s help for Bear Stearns, on April 14 of last year?

Cato scholars appeared on more than 90 radio and television programs to criticize the bailouts during the last quarter of 2008. Here’s a video compilation of some of those appearances.

Folbre complains that some people seem more concerned about welfare — TANF, in the latest federal acronym — than about welfare for bankers — TARP. Google says that there are 138 references to TANF over the past 13 years or so on the Cato website, and 231 references to TARP in the past few months.

Now she has a legitimate point. Welfare for the rich is at least as bad as welfare for the poor. And as much as welfare for the poor has cost taxpayers, the new welfare for banks, insurance companies, mortgage companies, and automobile industries is costing us more. Samuel Brittan of the Financial Times has written that “reassignment,” an economic policy that changes individuals’ ranking in the hierarchy of incomes, is far more offensive than a policy of redistribution, which in his idealized vision would merely raise the incomes of the poorest members of society. By that standard, taxing some businesses and individuals to subsidize the high incomes of others is certainly offensive. Of course, Brittan underemphasized the harm done by welfare to people who become trapped in dependency. But there’s good reason to oppose both TANF and TARP, and Cato scholars have done both.

Lest the good work of Cato’s New Media Manager Chris Moody go under-utilized, here’s a probably incomplete guide to Cato scholars’ comments on the bailouts of the past few months. (Note that it doesn’t include blog posts, of which there have been many.) Quiet? I don’t think so:

Articles:

September 9, 2008, “Fannie/Freddie Bailout Baloney,” Gerald P. O’Driscoll Jr., New York Post.

September 18, 2008, “Why Bailouts Scare Stocks,” Alan Reynolds, New York Post.

September 17, 2008, “Bailout-Mania,” Jagadeesh Gokhale and Kent Smetters, Forbes.com.

October 1, 2008, “The Bailout’s Essential Brazenness,” Jay Cochran, Cato.org.

October 3, 2008, “The Big Bailout – What’s Next?” Warren Coats, Cato.org

October 13, 2008, “Should Taxpayers Fund the American Dream?,” Daniel J. Mitchell, Los Angeles Times.

October 20, 2008, “Is the Bailout Constitutional?,” Robert A. Levy, Legal Times.

November 11, 2008, “There’s Nothing Wrong with a “Big Two”,” Daniel J. Ikenson, New York Daily News.

November 21, 2008, “Don’t Bail Out the Big Three,” Daniel J. Ikenson, The American.

November 5, 2008, “Is it Constitutional?,” Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

December 14, 2008, “Consequences of the Bailout,” Richard W. Rahn, Washington Times.

December 5, 2008, “Bail Out Car Buyers?,” Daniel J. Ikenson, Los Angeles Times.

December 3, 2008, “Big Three Ask for Money — Again,” Daniel J. Ikenson, Los Angeles Times.

December 10, 2008, “Dissecting the Bailout Plan,” Alan Reynolds, Wall Street Journal.

January 14, 2009, “Bailing out the States,” Michael New, Washington Times.

February 28, 2009, “Stop the Bailouts,” William Poole, The New York Times.

Papers:

“Bailout or Bankruptcy?,” by Jeffrey A. Miron (Cato Journal, Winter 2009)

“Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae: An Exit Strategy for the Taxpayer,” by Arnold Kling (September 8, 2008)

“Financial Crisis and Public Policy,” by Jagadeesh Gokhale (March 23, 2009)

“Bright Lines and Bailouts: To Bail or Not To Bail, That Is the Question,” by Vern McKinley and Gary Gegenheimer (April 20, 2009)

On Television and Radio:

Dan Ikenson discusses auto bailout

September 30, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses the failed bailout on NPR Affiliate KPCC’s “The Patt Morrison Show”

September 29, 2008 Peter Van Doren discusses government bailouts on WTTG FOX 5.

September 29, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses the failed bailout on NPR Affiliate KPCC’s “The Patt Morrison Show”

September 26, 2008 Jagadeesh Gokhale discusses the bailout on BNN (CANADA)

September 26, 2008 Steve H. Hanke discusses the bailout on BBC Radio’s “Have Your Say”

September 25, 2008 Patrick Basham discusses the bailout on Radio America’s “The Michael Reagan Show”

September 24, 2008 William A. Niskanen discusses government bailouts on WUSA 9

September 24, 2008 William Poole discusses government bailouts on NPR DC Affiliate WAMU’s “The Diane Rehm Show”

September 23, 2008 William A. Niskanen discusses government bailouts on CNBC’s “Closing Bell”

September 23, 2008Bert Ely discusses government bailouts on WOR’s “The John Gambling Show”

September 22, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses government bailouts on the CBS “Early Show”

September 22, 2008 William Poole discusses government bailouts on Bloomberg Live.

September 22, 2008 William A. Niskanen discusses government bailouts of financial institutions on Bloomberg TV

September 22, 2008 Steve H. Hanke discusses government bailouts of financial institutions on Bloomberg Radio’s “On the Money”

September 19, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses government bailouts on Federal News Radio

September 18, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses the AIG bailout on KTAR’s “Ankarlo Mornings”

September 17, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses the AIG bailout on WTTG FOX 5

September 17, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses the AIG bailout on FOX’s “America’s Election HQ”

September 10, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses a proposed bailout for the auto industry on Marketplace Radio.

October 24, 2008 Gerald P. O’Driscoll Jr. discusses the fallout of the bailout on FOX Business Network’s “Cavuto”

October 15, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses the bailout on Federal News Radio

October 14, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses the financial crisis on CNN’s “American Morning”

October 14, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses the banking crisis on BBC World

October 14, 2008 Gerald P. O’Driscoll Jr. discusses the banking crisis on WBAL Radio. (Baltimore, MD)

October 13, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses the financial crisis on the FOX Business Network

October 9, 2008 Jim Powell discusses the economy on FOX Business

October 9, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses the current treasury plan on Reuters TV.

October 9, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses the bailout on the WIBA’s “Upfront w/Vicki McKenna” (Madison, WI)

October 2, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses the bailout bill on WRVA’s “Morning Show” (West Virginia)

October 1, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses the bailout plan on CNBC’s “On the Money.”

October 1, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses the bailout plan on CNBC’s “Power Lunch”

October 1, 2008 William Poole discusses the bailout on KMOX’s “The Charlie Brennan Show” (St. Louis, MO)

October 1, 2008 Daniel J. Mitchell discusses the failed bailout on WTOP Radio (Washington, D.C.)

Cato and the Bailouts: A Correction for the NY Times ‘Economix’ Blog is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

G-20 Summit Agrees to International Spending Plan

The Washington Post reports, “Leaders from more than 20 major nations including the United States decided Thursday to make available an additional $1 trillion for the world economy through the International Monetary Fund and other institutions as part of a broad package of measures to overcome the global financial crisis.”

Cato scholars Richard W. Rahn, Daniel J. Ikenson and Ian Vásquez commented on the London-based meeting:

Rahn: “President Obama of the U.S. and Prime Minister Brown of the U.K. will be pressing for more so-called stimulus spending by other nations, despite the fact that the historical evidence shows that big increases in government spending are more likely to be damaging and slow down recovery than they are to promote vigorous economic expansion and job creation.”

Vásquez: “The push by some countries for massive increases in spending to address the global financial crisis smacks of political and bureaucratic opportunism. A prime example is Washington’s call to substantially increase the resources of the International Financial Institutions… There is no reason to think that massive increases of the IFIs’ funds will not worsen, rather than improve, their record or the accountability of the aid agencies and borrower governments.”

Ikenson: “Certainly it is crucial to avoid protectionist policies that clog the arteries of economic recovery and help nobody but politicians. But it is also important to keep things in perspective: the world is not on the brink of a global trade war, as some have suggested.”

Ikenson appeared on CNBC this week to push for a reduction of trade barriers in international markets.

With fears mounting over a global shift toward protectionism, Cato senior fellow Tom Palmer and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation are circulating a petition against restrictive trade measures.

Obama Administration Forces Out GM CEO

President Obama took an unprecedented step toward greater control of a private corporation after forcing General Motors CEO  Rick Wagoner to leave the company. The New York Post reports “the administration threatened to withhold bailout money from the company if he didn’t.”

Writing for the Washington Post, trade analyst Dan Ikenson explained why the government is responsible for any GM failure from now on:

President Obama’s newly discovered prudence with taxpayer money and his tough-love approach to GM and Chrysler would both have more credibility if he hadn’t demanded Rick Wagoner’s resignation, as well. By imposing operational conditions normally reserved for boards of directors, the administration is now bound to the infamous “Pottery Barn” rule: you break it, you buy it. If things go further south, the government is now complicit.

Wagoner’s replacement, Fritz Henderson, said Tuesday that after receiving billions of taxpayer dollars, the company is considering bankruptcy as an option. Cato scholars recommended bankruptcy months ago:

Dan Ikenson, November 21, 2008: “Bailing out Detroit is unnecessary. After all, this is why we have the bankruptcy process. If companies in Chapter 11 can be salvaged, a bankruptcy judge will help them find the way. In the case of the Big Three, a bankruptcy process would almost certainly require them to dissolve their current union contracts. Revamping their labor structures is the single most important change that GM, Ford, and Chrysler could make — and yet it is the one change that many pro-bailout Democrats wish to ignore.”

Daniel J. Mitchell, November 13, 2008:  ”Advocates oftentimes admit that bailouts are not good policy, but they invariably argue that short-term considerations should trump long-term sensible policy. Their biggest assertion is that a bailout is necessary to prevent bankruptcy, and that avoiding this result is critical to prevent catastrophe. But Chapter 11 protection may be precisely what is needed to put American auto companies back on the path to profitability. Bankruptcy laws specifically are designed to give companies an opportunity — under court supervision — to reduce costs and streamline operations.”

Dan Ikenson, December 5, 2008: “The best solution is to allow the bankruptcy process to work. It will be needed. There are going to be jobs lost, but there is really nothing policymakers can do about that without exacerbating problems elsewhere. The numbers won’t be as dire as the Big Three have been projecting.”

Cato Links

• Is Portugal an example for the future of drug policy? Cato released a new case study this week by Salon writer Glenn Greenwald entitled, “Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies.”

• As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization celebrates its 60th birthday, there are signs of mounting trouble within the alliance and increasing reasons to doubt the organization’s relevance regarding the foreign policy challenges of the 21st century. In a new study, Cato scholar Ted Galen Carpenter argues that NATO’s time is up.

• Should immigration agents target businesses knowingly hiring illegal immigrants? Cato scholar Jim Harper weighs in on a Fox News debate.

• Cato scholar Gene Healy warns, “Beware of the Cult of Obama,” in this week’s Washington Examiner column.

• Sign up today for  Cato University 2009: Economic Crisis, War, and the Rise of the State.

Week in Review: ‘Saving’ the World, Government Control and Drug Decriminalization is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Bloomberg News (March 25, 2009) reported a speech by San Francisco Fed president Janet Yellen in which she called for authority for the central bank to issue its own debt. The request must have most people perplexed, especially since her rationale was delivered in Fed-speak. “Issuing such debt would reduce the volume of reserves in the financial system and push up the funds rate without shrinking the total size of our balance sheet,” Yellen said.

Actually, Yellen, who is also an economist, is addressing a very serious issue. It is one that critics of current Fed policy have been raising for some time.

The Fed is loading up its balance sheet with illiquid assets, including many dubious assets taken in as collateral for loans of money and Treasury securities to financial institutions. In the process, the Fed has an ever diminishing supply of highly liquid (and safe) Treasury securities on its own balance sheet.

Critics like economic historian Anna J. Schwartz and former Fed attorney Walker F. Todd have pointed out that the Fed will have a technical problem if it wants to start sopping up all the liquidity it has created. In a 2008 paper in International Finance, Schwartz and Todd wrote that “it is fair to ask what the Fed intends to do if it decided that it would tighten monetary policy by raising interest rates.” Without a sufficient supply of highly liquid assets to sell in the markets, the Fed would need to dispose of its illiquid assets at losses. That would possibly drive up interest rates more than desired.

Yellen’s call for the power to issue Fed debt signals a number of things. First, the Fed, contrary to recent happy talk from other officials, is worried about inflation. Second, its critics are correct that the Fed has painted itself into a corner by taking illiquid assets onto its balance sheet. Third, the Fed wants to hold those dubious assets to maturity (hence Yellen’s point about not “shrinking the total size of our balance sheet”).

Yellen’s trial balloon drew a “no comment” from the Fed’s Washington headquarters. The issue will not go away.

The Fed Is Now Scared is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has finally unveiled details about his bailout plan. Not surprisingly, he plans on propping up insolvent (but politically influential) financial institutions. Even worse, there is no effort to shut down — or even reform — the two government-sponsored enterprises that deserve the lion’s share of the blame for the financial crisis. Yet as Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute explains in this new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are at the epicenter of the housing bubble and subsequent damage to financial markets.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: The Toxic Duo is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The G-20 Summit in London on April 2 will feature politicians from around the world jockeying to promote bad ideas. Thankfully, there is a silver lining to this dark cloud since the United States and Europe do not agree on which bad idea deserves the most prominence. As the Wall Street Journal explains, the United States wants more nations to squander money of Keynesian-style schemes (see here to understand why bigger government is not stimulus). The Europeans, meanwhile, want to persecute tax havens and give the Keystone Cops at the IMF more money:

The U.S. will press world leaders to boost emergency government spending to lift the global economy, risking a rift with European nations more concerned with revamping financial regulation. In President Barack Obama’s first foray into economic diplomacy, Washington will urge the shift at a summit next month in London, U.S. officials say, as markets look for a unified plan of action from the world’s most economically powerful nations. Washington’s focus is at odds with France, Germany and other European nations that want the Group of 20 summit on April 2 to focus on rewriting rules governing financial markets. … U.S. officials, who could receive support from China and other countries with big stimulus programs, contend additional government spending is needed to reduce the depth and length of the downturn. Britain also may have an easier time seeing eye-to-eye with the U.S. than other European countries because both London and Washington are concerned that tighter financial regulation could harm their financial centers. Administration officials also say the G-20 isn’t ready to put new regulations in place, so focusing in that area would be counterproductive. … Even if the U.S. gets its way, the G-20 won’t ignore financial regulation. The G-20 has approved the concept of regulating the world’s largest financial institutions through international “colleges” of regulators.

The International Herald Tribune has more details on the misguided European proposals. At no point, though, is there any explanation of why the global economy would benefit from a bigger and more powerful IMF. The IMF certainly did not correctly predict the current financial turmoil. Nor has the IMF either correctly identified the government policy mistakes that caused the crisis or proposed policies that would help resuscitate the global economy. So why reward the bureaucrats with more money and power? The attack against tax havens is even more dubious. Desperate politicians like Gordon Brown are seeking scapegoats to distract voters, but it is unclear why tax havens should be blamed for asset bubbles caused by weak monetary policy and housing subsidies in “onshore” nations:

European finance ministers intend to push for a doubling of resources for the International Monetary fund to $500 billion, and to back the use of sweeping new sanctions against tax havens, according to a draft document. Confronted by a deepening global economic crisis, the top financial officials in the 27 European Union member countries are expected to agree in principle Tuesday to provide additional temporary funding for the IMF if necessary, and to support significant tightening of financial regulation. At a meeting in Brussels, the EU finance ministers are due to endorse a draft document, already approved by senior officials from national capitals, that will align the positions of European governments before the meeting of the heads of the Group of 20 developing and emerging economies in London next month. “It is essential,” the document says, “that the IMF has the appropriate financial means to assist countries particularly affected by the current crisis. EU member states support a doubling of IMF resources and are ready to contribute to a temporary increase if needed.” … The draft document…calls for the definition of a set of criteria by which to judge those that do not comply with international standards. “A tool box of sanctions” would be used to deal with such tax havens, the draft adds. These would include “the capacity to prohibit sales of financial products generated in these jurisdictions and the capacity to restrict companies’ operations into and from these jurisdictions.”

Gridlock generally is a good thing in Washington. If Republicans and Democrats are fighting, it slows the pace of legislation – which almost always protects liberty and prosperity. On the international level, where politicians scheme to set up cartels for the benefit of governments, gridlock is even more desirable.

The Joys of Global Gridlock is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog