One almost feels sorry for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

He’s a punchline in his own country because he oversees the IRS even though he conveniently forgot to declare $80,000 of income (and managed to get away with punishment that wouldn’t even qualify as a slap on the wrist).

Now he’s becoming a a bit of a joke in Europe. Earlier this month, a wide range of European policy makers basically told the Treasury Secretary to take a long walk off a short pier when he tried to offer advice on Europe’s fiscal crisis.

And the latest development is that the German Finance Minister basically said Geithner was “stupid” for a new bailout scheme. Here’s an excerpt from the UK-based Daily Telegraph.

Germany and America were on a collision course on Tuesday night over the handling of Europe’s debt crisis after Berlin savaged plans to boost the EU rescue fund as a “stupid idea” and told the White House to sort out its own mess before giving gratuitous advice to others.German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble said it would be a folly to boost the EU’s bail-out machinery (EFSF) beyond its €440bn lending limit by deploying leverage to up to €2 trillion, perhaps by raising funds from the European Central Bank.”I don’t understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense,” he said.

All that’s missing in the story is Geithner channeling his inner Forrest Gump and responding that “Stupid is as stupid does.”

...at birth?

Separated...

This little spat reminds me of the old saying that there is no honor among thieves. Geithner wants to do the wrong thing. The German government wants to do the wrong thing. And every other European government wants to do the wrong thing. They’re merely squabbling over the best way of picking German pockets to subsidize the collapsing welfare states of Southern Europe.

But that’s actually not accurate. German politicians don’t really want to give money to the Greeks and Portuguese.

The real story of the bailouts is that politicians from rich nations are trying to indirectly protect their banks, which – as shown in this chart – are in financial trouble because they foolishly thought lending money to reckless welfare states was a risk-free exercise.

Europe’s political class claims that bailouts are necessary to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis, but this is nonsense – much as American politicians were lying (or bamboozled) when they supported TARP.

It is a relatively simple matter for a government to put a bank in receivership, hold all depositors harmless, and then sell off the assets. Or to subsidize the takeover of an insolvent institution. This is what America did during the savings & loan bailouts 20 years ago. Heck, it’s also what happened with IndyMac and WaMu during the recent financial crisis. And it’s what the Swedish government basically did in the early 1990s when that nation had a financial crisis.

But politicians don’t like this “FDIC-resolution” approach because it means wiping out shareholders, bondholders, and senior management of institutions that made bad economic choices. And that would mean reducing moral hazard rather than increasing it. And it would mean stiff-arming campaign contributors and protecting the interests of taxpayers.

Heaven forbid those things happen. After all, as Bastiat told us, “Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”

Tim Geithner: The Forrest Gump of World Finance is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Hoenig for FDIC is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Here’s a sure-fire prediction, assuming GOPers in the House actually are willing to engage in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with Obama on the debt limit.

• There will be lots of political drama.
• We will get to a point where the federal government exhausts its borrowing authority.
• At that point, either Geithner or Bernanke (or probably both) will make some completely dishonest statements designed to rattle financial markets.
• The establishment media will echo those statements.
• The stock market and/or bond market will have a negative reaction.
• Republican resolve will evaporate like a drop of water in the Mojave Desert.
• The debt limit will be increased without any meaningful fiscal reform.

For all intents and purposes, this is what happened with the TARP vote in 2008. There were basically two choices of how to deal with the financial crisis. The establishment wanted a blank-check bailout, while sensible people wanted the “FDIC-resolution” approach (similar to what was used during the savings & loan bailouts about 20 years ago, which bails out retail customers but wipes out shareholders, bondholders and senior management). Republicans initially held firm and defeated the first TARP vote, but then they folded when the Washington-Wall Street establishment scared markets.

I hope I’m wrong in my analysis, but I don’t see how Republicans could win a debt limit fight. At least not if they demand something like the Ryan budget. The best possible outcome would be budget process reform such as Senator Corker’s CAP Act, which would impose caps on future spending, enforced by automatic spending cuts known as sequestration. Because it postpones the fiscal discipline until after the vote, that legislation has a chance of attracting enough bipartisan support to overcome opposition from Obama and other statists.

Could Technical Default Today Save America from Greek-Style Fiscal Disaster in the Future? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Just a few days ago, for instance, the Treasury Secretary was fanning the flames of a financial meltdown, as noted by Bloomberg:

“Default would cause a financial crisis potentially more severe than the crisis from which we are only now starting to recover,” Geithner said. “For these reasons, default by the United States is unthinkable.”

The Fed Chairman also tried to pour gasoline on the fire. Here’s a passage from an article in the New York Times earlier this year:

Mr. Bernanke said the debt ceiling should not be used as a negotiating tactic, warning that even the possibility of the United States not being able to pay its creditors could create panic in the debt markets.

There are two problems with these statements from Geithner and Bernanke. First, it is a bit troubling that the Treasury Secretary and Fed Chairman are major players in a political battle. The Treasury Secretary, like the Attorney General, traditionally is supposed to be one of the more serious and non-political people in a  President’s cabinet. And the Fed Chairman is supposed to be completely independent, yet Bernanke is becoming a mouthpiece for Obama’s fiscal policy.

But let’s set aside this first concern and focus on the second problem, which is whether Geithner and Bernanke are being honest. Simply stated, does a failure to raise the debt limit mean default? According to a wide range of expert opinion, the answer is no.

Donald Marron, head of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, explained what actually would happen in an article for CNN Money.

Our monthly bills average about $300 billion, while revenues are about $180 billion. If we hit the debt limit, the federal government would be able to pay only 60 cents of every dollar it should be paying. But even that does not mean that we will default on the public debt. Geithner would then choose which creditors to pay promptly and which to defer. …Geithner would undoubtedly keep making payments on the public debt, rolling over the outstanding principal and paying interest. Interest payments are relatively small, averaging about $20 billion per month, and paying them on time is essential to America’s enviable position in world capital markets.

And here is the analysis of Stan Collender, one of Washington’s elder statesman on budget issues (and definitely not a small-government conservative).

There is so much misinformation and grossly misleading talk about what will happen if the federal debt ceiling isn’t increased that, before any more unnecessary bloodcurdling language is used that increases everyone’s anxiety, it’s worth taking a few steps back from the edge. …if a standoff on raising the debt ceiling lasts for a significant amount of time, the alternatives to borrowing eventually may not be enough to provide the government with the cash it needs to meet its obligations. Even at that point, however, a default wouldn’t be automatic because payments to existing bondholders could be made the priority while payments to others could be delayed for months.

The Economist magazine also is nonplussed by the demagoguery coming from Washington.

Tim Geithner, the treasury secretary, sent Congress a letter on January 6th describing in gory detail the “catastrophic economic consequences” such an event would entail. …Even with no increase in the ceiling, the Treasury can easily service its existing debt; it is free to roll over maturing issues, and tax revenue covers monthly interest payments by a large multiple. But in that case it would have to postpone paying something else: tax refunds, Medicare or Medicaid payments, civil-service salaries, or Social Security (pensions) cheques.

There are countless other experts I could cite, but you get the point. The United States does not default if the debt limit remains at $14.3 trillion. The only exception to that statement is that default is possible if the Treasury Secretary makes a deliberate (and highly political) decision to not pay bondholders. And while Geithner obviously is willing to play politics, even he would be unlikely to take this step since it is generally believed that the Treasury Secretary may be personally liable if there is a default.

The purpose of this post is not to argue that the debt limit should never be raised. That would require an instant 40 percent reduction in the size of government. And while that may be music to my ears (and some people are making that argument), I have zero faith that politicians would let that happen. Instead, my goal is to help fiscal conservatives understand that Geithner and Bernanke are being dishonest and that they should not be afraid to hold firm in their demands for real reform in exchange for a debt limit increase.

Last but not least, with all this talk about the debt limit, it’s worth reminding everyone that deficits and debt are merely symptoms of too much government spending. As this video explains, spending is the disease and debt is merely one of the symptoms.

By the way, the final chance this year to impose spending restraint will be around October 1, when the 2011 fiscal year expires and the 2012 fiscal year begins. But I won’t be holding my breath for anything worthwhile if Republicans screw up on the debt limit just like they failed to achieve much on the CR fight.

Why Are Geithner and Bernanke Trying to Panic Financial Markets with Debt Limit Demagoguery? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

There will be several pivotal fiscal policy battles this year and the fight over the debt limit may be the most crucial.

This is a “must-pass” piece of legislation, so it will be a rare opportunity for fiscal conservatives in the House to impose some much-needed spending restraint.

But it’s also a high-stakes game. If Obama (or Reid) refuses to accept the fiscal reforms approved by the House and there is a stalemate, the federal government ultimately would lose its ability to borrow from private credit markets. And while that notion has some appeal for many of us, it almost certainly would require more fiscal discipline than the political system is willing to accept (i.e., actual deep cuts rather than just restraining the growth of spending).

In a bit of reckless demagoguery, the Treasury secretary even says it would mean default — which could cause instability in financial markets.

To preclude that possibility, Senator Toomey of Pennsylvania has a proposal to protect the “full faith and credit” of the United States by requiring the federal government to make interest payments a top priority. Writing for Bloomberg, I opine about the Senator’s proposal.

…the federal government is expected to collect more than $2.1 trillion of tax revenue this year, while interest payments on the publicly held debt will only be about $200 billion. So even without an increase in the debt limit, the Treasury Department will have more than enough revenue to cover its interest obligations and avoid a default. That being said, financial markets are sometimes spooked by uncertainty. And since Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner began making some irresponsible statements about the risks of default, there is growing interest in legislation by Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican of Pennsylvania, to alleviate the market’s fears. Quite simply, Toomey’s bill would require the federal government to fulfill obligations to bondholders before making any other disbursements. …If the Toomey legislation is adopted, fiscal reformers will have a powerful weapon at their disposal. Secure in the knowledge that default no longer is a possibility, they can be much tougher in their negotiations with the politicians who favor the status quo. This explains the attacks against the Toomey plan. Some even argue that the law requires the government to pay Chinese bondholders (gasp!) before it pays Social Security recipients. This is demagoguery. The federal government will collect more than enough revenue to finance the majority of budgeted outlays. Social Security checks will be disbursed, unless the Treasury secretary decides otherwise. In any event, the attack is rather hollow since it’s almost always made by people who say that default would be a cataclysmic event. What they really mean, it seems, is that deficits, debt and default are bad, and only higher taxes are the solution. That’s what this debate is all about. We have a fiscal crisis caused by too much spending, not too little taxes. Restraining the size and scope of government is contrary to the interests of the iron quadrangle of politicians, interest groups, lobbyists and bureaucrats who benefit from ever- expanding government.

Senator Toomey’s Legislation Would Protect Financial Markets During a Debt Limit Showdown 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

The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of this year, which means a big tax increase in 2011. Tax rates for all brackets will increase, the double tax on dividends will skyrocket from 15 percent to 39.6 percent, the child credit will shrink, the death tax will be reinstated (at 55 percent!), the marriage penalty will get worse, and the capital gains tax rate will jump to 20 percent. All of these provisions will be unwelcome news for taxpayers, but it’s important to look at direct and indirect costs. A smaller paycheck is an example of direct costs, but in some cases the indirect costs — such as slower economic growth — are even more important. This is why higher tax rates on entrepreneurs and investors are so misguided. For every dollar the government collects from policies targeting these people (such as higher capital gains and dividend taxes, a renewed death tax, and increases in the top tax rates), it’s likely that there will be significant collateral economic damage.

Unfortunately, the Obama Administration’s approach is to look at tax policy only through the prism of class warfare. This means that some tax cuts can be extended, but only if there is no direct benefit to anybody making more than $200,000 or $250,000 per year. The folks at the White House apparently don’t understand, however, that higher direct costs on the “rich” will translate into higher indirect costs on the rest of us. Higher tax rates on work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship will slow economic growth. And, because of compounding, even small changes in the long-run growth rate can have a significant impact on living standards within one or two decades. This is one of the reasons why high-tax European welfare states have lost ground in recent decades compared to the United States.

When the economy slows down, that’s not good news for upper-income taxpayers. But it’s also bad news for the rest of us — and it can create genuine hardship for those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. The White House may be playing smart politics. As this blurb from the Washington Post indicates, the President seems to think that he can get away with blaming the recession on tax cuts that took place five years before the downturn began. But for those of us who care about prosperity more than politics, what really matters is that the economy is soon going to be hit with higher tax rates on productive behavior. It’s unclear whether that’s good for the President’s poll numbers, but it’s definitely bad for America.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner took the lead Sunday in continuing the Obama administration’s push for extending middle-class tax cuts while allowing similar cuts for the nation’s wealthiest individuals to expire in January. …The tax cuts, put in place between 2001 and 2003, have become an intensely political topic ahead of the congressional elections this fall. Republicans have argued that extending the full spectrum of tax cuts is essential to strengthening the sluggish economic recovery. Geithner rejected that notion, telling ABC’s “This Week” that letting tax cuts for the wealthiest expire would not hurt growth. …On Saturday, the president used part of his weekly address to chide House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) and other Republicans who oppose the administration’s approach, saying the GOP was pushing “the same policies that led us into this recession.”

The White House Has Declared Class War on the Rich, but the Poor and Middle Class Will Suffer Collateral Damage 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 back story behind the Citizens United free speech case. (Or if you don’t have time to read about it, this short video clip explains it all.)

• RomneyCare: Obama’s OTHER Massachusetts problem.

• Tim Geithner’s lifelong love of bailouts.

• How substantial and meaningful change can be brought to Haiti.

• Podcast: “Supreme Court Affirms First Amendment” featuring John Samples.

Thursday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

This is the last week to buy presents, so for those of you who can’t find zhu zhu pets, here are a couple of options sure to bring a smile. The first option is a long-sleeved t-shirt honoring the Secretary of the Treasury.

If t-shirts are not high on the list for your friends and family, here’s something everyone can use. There are more than 70,000 pages of tax law and IRS regulation, and although there are not that many squares in this roll, all taxpayers will enjoy creating their own “performance art” with this gift (sadly, does not include a grant from the NEA).

Last Minute Christmas Shopping? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Perhaps the biggest problem with the Obama plan to “reform” our financial system is the impact it would have on the market perception surrounding “too big to fail” institutions.  In identifying some companies as “too big to fail” holders of debt in those companies would assume that they would be made whole if those companies failed.  After all, that is what we did for the debt-holders in Fannie, Freddie, AIG, and Bear.  Both former Secretary Paulson and Geithner appear under the impression that moral hazard only applies to equity, despite debt constituting more than 90% of the capital structure of the typical financial firm.

Geithner believes he’s found a way to solve this problem – he’ll just tell everyone that there isn’t an implicit subsidy, and there won’t be a list of “too big to fail” companies.  Great, why didn’t I think of that.  After all, the constant refrain in Washington over the years that Fannie and Freddie weren’t getting an implicit subsidy really prepared the markets for their demise.

Even more bizarre is Geithner’s assertion that the government can force these institutions to hold higher capital, maintain more liquidity and be subjected to greater supervision, all without anyone knowing who exactly these companies are.  Does the Secretary truly believe that these companies’ securities disclosures won’t include the amount of capital they are holding?  Whether there is an official list or not is besides the question, market participants will be able to infer that list from publicly available information and the actions of regulators. 

One has to wonder whether Geithner spent any of his time at the NY Fed actually watching how markets work.  Before we continue down the path of financial reform, maybe it would be useful for our Treasury Secretary to take a few weeks off to study what got us into this mess.  We’ve already been down this road of denying implicit subsidies and then providing them after the fact. Maybe it’s time to try something different.

Geithner Ignores Bailout History is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The FDIC’s insurance fund, which it uses to pay off despositors in failed banks, is getting low. One way it can bolster its reserves is to draw on a $100 billion line of credit from the Treasury. Instead, however,

Senior regulators say they are seriously considering a plan to have the nation’s healthy banks lend billions of dollars to rescue the insurance fund that protects bank depositors. That would enable the fund, which is rapidly running out of money because of a wave of bank failures, to continue to rescue the sickest banks.

A brilliant scheme to avoid another taxpayer bailout? Not really.

The banks are willing to lend because the FDIC will pay them a good interest rate. Repayment is virtually guaranteed because the FDIC can always draw on its line of credit. Thus the banks are getting a better deal than they would in the marketplace (that’s why they are doing this), so the scheme is a backdoor way of further bailing out the banks.

Why go through this charade? Apparently, using the Treasury credit line

is said to be unpalatable to Sheila C. Bair, the agency chairwoman whose relations with the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, have been strained.

“Sheila Bair would take bamboo shoots under her nails before going to Tim Geithner and the Treasury for help,” said Camden R. Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers. “She’d do just about anything before going there.”

Instead, the FDIC will con the taxpayers. The FDIC has no choice under existing policy, of course, but to pay off depositors of failing banks. They should just be honest about how who is paying for it.

C/P Libertarianism from A to Z

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Why Wall Street Loves Obama is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Embracing Bushonomics, Obama Re-appoints Bernanke is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

As reported in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner called fellow bank regulators, included Fed Chair Ben Bernanke and FDIC Chair Sheila Bair, over for an obscenity-laced rant about their audacity in raising questions about his scheme to fix our financial system.

Reportedly the Secretary told regulators that “enough is enough” and that they’ve been heard, so the time for debate is over.  This sounds eerily like the President’s previous comments about including Republicans in the talks over the stimulus – you’ve been heard, so you were “included,” now shut up.   The shouting down of debate is becoming all too much a signature of this Administration.

The Secretary apparently also told the regulators in attendance that it was the administration and the Congress that sets policy.  Perhaps next he’ll tell us that the power of the purse lies with the Treasury and the Congress.  Secretary Geithner has no more constitutional authority to set policy than do any of the bank regulators.  It is the job of Congress to make laws, not the Treasury Secretary’s.  He can offer his opinion, just as they can, and should, offer theirs.

Of course, Secretary Geithner’s frustrations are understandable, given that his regulatory proposals have hit a brick-wall with both Congress and the Public.  He has made no effort to explain to either Congress or the public how exactly his plan will stop future bailouts.  Instead, any reasonable read of his proposal would lead to the conclusion that we will have more bailouts, rather than less, under the Obama-Geithner plan.  Instead of directing his energies at anger, he should put them toward coming up with solutions that actually increase the stability of our financial system.

We were all told during his confirmation process that we must overlook such facts as his failure to pay taxes, because Tim Geithner was the “boy-wonder” who would save our financial system.  As his recent out-bursts demonstrate, “boy-wonder” is only half-right.

Timmy Throws a Temper-Tantrum is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

More than 250 economists have signed an “Open Letter to Congress and the Executive Branch” calling upon them to “defend the independence of the Federal Reserve System as a foundation of U.S. economic stability.”

Allan Meltzer is not a signatory to the petition and he has explained why not.  The Fed has frequently not shown independence in the past, and there is no reason to expect it to do so reliably in the future.  Professor Meltzer has just completed a multi-volume history of the Fed and knows all-too-well of the Fed’s willingness to accommodate the policies of administrations from FDRs to Lyndon Johnson’s. 

I would add that the Fed’s behavior under Chairman Bernanke breaks new ground in aligning the central bank’s policy with Treasury’s.  Much of what the Fed has done, first under Bush/Paulson, and now under Obama/Geithner, involves credit allocation.  Since that ultimately involves the provision of public money for private purpose, it is pre-eminently fiscal policy.  Central bank independence is a fuzzy concept.  If it means anything, however, it is that monetary policy is conducted independently of Treasury’s fiscal policy.

In short, it is not the critics of the Fed who threaten its independence, but the Fed’s own actions.  Its intervention in the economy is unprecedented in size and scope. It is inevitable that those actions would lead to calls for further Congressional oversight and control.  The Fed is a creature of Congress and ultimately answerable to that body. 

The petition raises legitimate concerns about whether the Fed will be able to tighten monetary policy when the time comes, and exit from its interventions in credit markets.  But it is precisely the Fed’s own recent actions that raise those problems.  Critics of recent Fed policy actions have for some time complained that the Fed has no exit strategy.  Apparently the critics are now going to be blamed for the Fed’s inability to extricate itself from its interventions.

Cross-posted at ThinkMarkets

What Fed Independence? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Fed Chairman Bernanke’s term as Chair ends in January 2010. So far President Obama has offered Bernanke praise for his performance, but little else. After last week’s House Oversight Committee hearing focusing on Bernanke’s role in Bank of America’s purchase of Merrill Lynch, it is now readily apparent that the Chairman has few supporters on Capitol Hill. While his nomination will not be subject to the approval of the House of Representatives, or any of its Committees, the Senate Banking Committee’s reaction to Treasury Secretary Geithner’s plan to extend the Fed’s power serves as a useful proxy in gauging that Committee’s view of the Fed’s recent performance.

Several recent polls show President Obama to be broadly popular with the American public, while the public holds some concern over the scope and cost of his policies. His policy that garners the least support has been his bailout and support for the auto industry. It is no secret that the American public was not enthusiastic about the bailouts at the time, and is even less so now. With Hank Paulson having left the stage, Bernanke is now the public face of corporate bailouts. While having Bernanke around may offer President Obama a convenient target for the public’s anger over bailouts, re-appointing Bernanke would finally force Obama’s hand — so far he’s managed to support the bailouts with little fallout, as Bush and others have taken the blame. Re-appointing Bernanke makes him Obama’s pick.

In addition to political risk to President Obama, one can assume that many Senate Democrats are not looking forward to having to vote for the man who bailed out AIG. It is a fair bet that many Republican Senators would not vote for Bernanke’s re-appointment, leaving it up to the Democrats to secure his re-appointment.

Whatever the merits, or flaws, in his performance as Federal Reserve Chair, support for Bernanke’s re-appointment is becoming a proxy for one’s support, or opposition, to corporate bailouts.

Beginning of the End for Bernanke is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

At Capitol News Connection, brought to you each morning by your tax dollars, they reported this morning:

With more than a trillion tax dollars tied up in the Troubled Asset Relief Program and stimulus spending, Congress is trying to figure out how to account for every penny.

Uh-huh. Congress is always on top of our federal dollars.

Coincidentally, just hours after the CNC report, the Government Accountability Office released a report warning about the lack of oversight procedures in the kitchen-sink stimulus bill. And a few days earlier the inspector general for the TARP program reported that Treasury has no real details on how TARP funds are being spent. In fact, IG Neil Barofsky told Congress that there were 20 criminal investigations into possible TARP fraud already underway.

Two months ago Barofsky and the comptroller general had warned of the likelihood of waste in huge new government programs:

Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, told a House subcommittee that the government’s experiences in the reconstruction of Iraq, hurricane-relief programs and the 1990s savings-and-loan bailout suggest the rescue program could be ripe for fraud…

Gene Dodaro, acting comptroller general of the U.S., told the subcommittee that a reliance on contractors and a lack of written policies could “increase the risk of wasted government dollars without adequate oversight of contractor performance.”

One of Greg Mankiw’s readers worked on the new Department of Homeland Security and reported recently:

[Y]ou cannot juice up a government agency’s budget by tens of billions (or in the case of the stimulus package, hundreds of billions) and expect them to be able to process the paperwork to contract it out, much less oversee the projects or even choose them with any kind of hope for success. It’s like trying to feed a Pomeranian a 25 lb turkey. It’s madness. It was years before DHS got the situation under control and between the start and when they finally assembled a sufficiently capable team of lawyers, contracting officials, technical experts and resource managers, most of the money was totally wasted.

Linda Bilmes, coauthor with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, analyzes the massive problems in three somewhat smaller government projects — the Iraqi reconstruction effort, Hurricane Katrina reconstruction, and the Big Dig artery construction in Boston — and finds that “in any organization that starts to increase spending very rapidly there are risks of waste, fraud and inefficiency.”

Milton Friedman summed up the basic problem with government waste back in 2002:

When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it. When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else’s money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but doesn’t care at all how much he spends. And when a man spends someone else’s money on someone else, he doesn’t care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that’s government for you.

Members of Congress can make all the speeches they want about their commitment to ferreting out waste and fraud, but waste and fraud are inevitable in government spending and inevitably large in such massive programs. Some people think that’s fine. At least they’re realistic. But reporters shouldn’t fall for politicians promising to spend unprecedented sums of other people’s money quickly and wisely.

Waste, Fraud, and Stimulus is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

I happen to own shares in Bank of America, so I’ve just received a proxy statement for the upcoming annual meeting. The Board of Directors recommends that I authorize them to vote my shares FOR an uncontested slate of candidates for the board. Usually I go along with such proxy requests.

But this time I thought: Why should these people get something like $250,000 a year to take orders from President Obama and Secretary Geithner? It’s become pretty clear that the Obama administration intends to use the bailout money to control private companies. He intends to tell companies what cars to make, how much to lend, how much to charge for credit cards, what to pay their executives, what kinds of bonuses are acceptable, and other crucial management decisions.

So I decided to write in “Barack Obama” for all 18 positions on the Board of Directors. However, neither the paper ballot nor the online ballot allowed for write-ins. I guess the official slate will win. But make no mistake. Obama’s the boss.

The Joys of Stock Ownership is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Government-backed equity was offered to adequately capitalized banks in order to remove the “stigma” from banks receiving TARP funds, and the management of these institutions took the bait and accepted the money.

Surprise, surprise: now they discover that the money came with strings.

Some banks want to pay back the TARP money to extricate themselves from government restrictions on compensation and pressure to make loans the banks view as unprofitable. Treasury Secretary Geithner has made it clear that the decision to pay back the funds early won’t be left to the banks, but to the Treasury: “My basic obligation is to make sure the system as a whole … has the ability to provide the credit that recovery requires.”

The banking system has thus become a tool for the government to further its policies. And the bankers themselves put their institutions in that position. While taxpayers may understandably feel the bankers got their comeuppance, there are at least two major problems with the Bush/Obama policy.

First, Mr. Geithner has misdiagnosed the problem.

We are in recovery from the effects of the bursting of a massive housing and finance bubble funded by debt. That boom in turn financed a consumption binge of monumental proportions.

The only resolution of a spending binge is restraint in the form of saving. Recovery requires not more credit and another boom, but a dose of economic sobriety.

Individuals and firms know that and are de-leveraging – unwinding what they now realize is excessive debt. That will take the rest of this year and the better part of 2010. Overall, credit is down because demand is down.

Second, and even more disturbing: it appears that the Obama Administration wants to control the financial sector in order to gain control over what Lenin called the “Commanding Heights” of the U.S. economy: the major industries and sources of employment. The auto industry is a prime example, and one in which the administration has involved itself directly. It is also pressuring major recipients of TARP funds to ease the terms of the loans they have made to firms such as Chrysler. Treasury is attempting to use the banks to conduct fiscal policy through credit allocation.

The bankers taking TARP funds got their firms into a mess and deserve no sympathy. Anyone believing in free markets, however, must oppose this power grab by the Obama Administration.

Let the banks pay the funds back and let it be a lesson for CEOs and their stockholders: If you take government funds, you have taken on an unreliable business partner.

Tarred by TARP is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog