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Monday, June 18, 2012

Quote of the Day

...also, blog entry of the year.

Deirdre McCloskey at Bleeding Heart Libertarians:

How do I know that my narrative is better than yours? The experiments of the 20th century told me so. It would have been hard to know the wisdom of Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman or Matt Ridley or Deirdre McCloskey in August of 1914, before the experiments in large government were well begun. But anyone who after the 20th century still thinks that thoroughgoing socialism, nationalism, imperialism, mobilization, central planning, regulation, zoning, price controls, tax policy, labor unions, business cartels, government spending, intrusive policing, adventurism in foreign policy, faith in entangling religion and politics, or most of the other thoroughgoing 19th-century proposals for governmental action are still neat, harmless ideas for improving our lives is not paying attention.


Read the whole thing.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Roughly 1200 words on how government intervention and regulation, NOT capitalism, caused the financial crisis of 2008


The following is a little synopsis of how government intervention caused the financial crisis. None of this is new. I’ve just synthesized several ideas into a one story, that I think captures and explains the main elements of the crisis.

The conventional story of the financial crisis is that it is an example of capitalism gone awry. Large corporate bonuses created a moral hazard problem whereby the people who ran large investment firms cared more about short term profits than the long term viability of their organizations and therefore made a bunch of risky decisions. In this story, the other players, home buyers, investors, creditors of large institutions were unable to take care of their own money and so, for some reason, the normal checks and balances of a market failed. Both mechanisms lead, logically, to the conclusion that more oversight and government regulation of banking and finance is required to prevent future crises. This is a coherent story, but it’s not accurate. It is, in fact, the unintended consequences of government regulation and intervention into the economy and the world of finance that are largely responsible for the Financial Crisis of 2008.

In order to account for the causes of the crisis, there are two key questions that we have to answer. First, what caused housing prices to skyrocket during the late 1990s and early 2000s? Second, what factors help explain why commercial mortgage originators, government sponsored entities (GSE’s), and larger investment and commercial banks and their creditors made bad/risky decisions involving the purchase of mortgage backed securities. In other words, what forces were responsible for funnelling these investments into the banking system?


The Housing Bubble

The housing bubble, unsustainably high housing prices, was caused by an increase in the demand for homes. This demand was fed by two government policies: first, the National Home Ownership Strategy that actively sought to use government policy to increase homeownership, especially among the poor. In the late 1990s, the democrats decided that poor people should get houses. They leaned on government sponsored entities (GSEs), Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, to buy loans from commercial lenders that gave mortgages to poor people; even if the recipients were not the most credit worthy individuals. They did. And this allowed lots more people to enter into the housing market, which drove up the price of housing. The GSE’s not only bought mortgages, but they sold securities to investors of various sorts. The security was, basically, that investors who bought MBS’s were protected from the potential downside (to some degree), because the GSe’s would take back mortgages that went bust. Second, the low interest rate policy undertaken by the U.S. Federal Reserve: this basically made credit cheaper, and so more people could afford houses, and also bigger houses. Of course, the price of credit was lower than the market price for credit, there was a shortage and this caused interest rates to rise – and a lot of investments (especially housing) became way more expensive.



These two factors combined to massively increase the demand for housing, and therefore, the price of housing. It was a bubble because the price increases were sort of based on artificial factors: poor people who should not have had mortgages AND a price ceiling in the market for loanable funds, which led to a credit shortage and massive interest rate hike, and eventual correction in the housing market.


Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) and the Banking System

Why were mortgage assets funnelled into the banking system in such a manner as to cause a large scale crisis?

The first reason is capital control regulations. Basel I internationalized and standardized capital regulations, which specified a bank’s regulatory capital level by the ratio of capital divided by the risk adjusted value of a bank’s assets. Risk adjustment was performed by grouping assets into various categories, each of which were rated differently. Really safe assets like gold and government bonds were assigned a 0 percent weight; GSE obligations were weighted at 20 percent; mortgages were 50; and all other assets were weighted at 100 percent. Under this scheme, a bank originated mortgage would count as 50 percent; but if it was securitized, it would be worth 20 percent; holding securitized mortgages, which held a high return, would also have the advantage of freeing up; significant capital which could then be used to make more investments. If bankers didn’t care about risk, then they could have held assets with lower ratings that would have yielded higher returns; the main goal of buying MBS’s, then, was not safety, or yield, but capital relief. This was, in turn, a function of the regulatory structure of the financial system at the time.

In other words, the main reason that banks bought lots of MBS was in order to comply with a capital requirement regulations set down by the Basel I accords. These regulations essentially funnelled the overvalued capital created by the housing bubble into the banking system.




Government intervention also led to moral hazard issues that exacerbated the risky borrowing and lending practices of key actors, although this was probably not a decisive cause of the crisis. Commercial mortgage initiators also had an incentive to make risky loans. Because of government housing policy, they could sell bad mortgages to the GSEs. The GSE’s bought mortgages and then packaged and sold them as securities to banks and other investors. This had the effect of “offsetting” the risk associated with these loans, and it essentially answers the question of why mortgage lenders would make such terrible lending decisions.
But investment banks also bought lots of MBS. And they bought them with borrowed money, and their creditors continued to lend them money: the question is not so much why investment banks would buy these securities. They were basically encouraged to by the capital regulations under Basel 1, which had the effect of pushing the housing bubble into the financial system. The bigger puzzle is: why would creditors, who gained NOTHING from the risky behaviour, continue to make loans to these highly leveraged institutions?




This is where the “too big to fail” policy comes into effect. The U.S. government had repeatedly rescued creditors to the tune of 100 cents on the dollar. There is some evidence to suggest that creditors knew this in advance.

Conclusion

Was it all about “large bonuses”? Probably not. If that was the case, we’d expect banks to act more risky – purchasing lower rated assets that yielded higher returns. However, bankers clearly had a preference for capital relief, not yield.

Was it about irrationality? Yes and no. Uncertainty is a regular part of economic life. Unregulated investors who were not bailed out did by MBS. But, overall the regulators did a worse job than the private sector in picking winners. We can see this by comparing the regulated and unregulated sectors of investment and finance. “U.s commercial banks chose the safest, lowest yielding MBs-agency bonds- twice as often as AAA-rated private label MBS, which paid higher yields; and nearly ten times as often as even higher yielding AAA CDO”. This clearly shows that bankers were not sacrificing safety for revenue.

Overall, the lesson of the Financial Crisis is that well intentioned government policies have unintended consequences. The government’s desire to give poor people houses created a bubble – that was ultimately unsustainable. It may have been a relatively minor event had not these assets been pushed into the banking system by other well intentioned policies, namely, capital regulations. Finally, by subsidizing risk at various levels, government policies countered the natural market checks and balances that might have otherwise mitigated or tempered the decisions of private sector groups that ultimately led to the crisis.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Tax the Rich?





Interesting “Ted Talk”: should we tax the rich

The speaker argues that, yes, we should. He really attacks the theory that the rich are job creators by advancing a pretty simple Keyensian argument: that what really matters in an economy is aggregate demand. When consumers demand things, then businesses can hire people, which in turn feeds consumer demand. The rich don’t spend that much, they mostly save, and so it would be better to put this money either into the pockets of poorer people, or into public services that benefit poor and middle class Americans. He argues that this isn’t going to reduce “jobs” because more people will be spending, and that will induce businesses to hire more.

A few comments.
1. This is not even close to a remotely new idea. Why not have an actual economist like Paul Krugman on TED? For some
reason, Keynes seems more risqué when coming from the mouth of a capitalist, I guess.


2.The big problem here is that It assumes that “low aggregate demand” is the cause of unemployment. That is just a theory. There are lots of economists who argue unemployment is caused by structural factors: a mismatch between the skills in the economy and the technology that is out there. In the structural story, you need entrepreneurs to come along and use this new labour for something. Jobs are not created, but “discovered”. And, in this climate you don’t want high taxes on capital gains to deter potential investors. You want to make it easier for business people to do business.

3. It assumes that fiscal policy can increase demand, and therefore jobs. Once again, there is tones of economic literature on this and it’s not clear that things work this way in practice.

4. Ignores many “micro” effects of taxation on peoples behaviour.

5.Assumes the government will act in a benign manner. But governments are not perfect and they respond to political incentives.

Overall, the talk does a good job of conveying the idea in 5 minutes. But it’s an overly simplistic idea, it’s not new or really that innovative, and it’s not without its problems.


Sunday, May 6, 2012

Why don’ t we tax bad behaviour? (as opposed to good behaviour?)




Taxation has a redistributive function, namely to pay for government operations, programs, transfers among people; but, it can be used as policy tool to curb bad behaviour and reduce ‘negative externalities’. Taxes on alcohol and tobacco are examples of taxation designed, partially, to mitigate bad behaviour. The first use of taxation is something that left wingers generally support. The second is one that those on the right tend to find more acceptable. A sensible general heuristic for government taxation is as follows: if you want more of a good or service than the market will provide, then you subsidize it; if you want less, tax it. The first is more concerned with generating revenue; the second, with ensuring that policies don’t disrupt market-based incentives.


Can we somehow combine this heuristic with the need to pay for the costs of government? If so, it makes no sense to tax income. Income is the result of hard work, education etc.. Therefore, an income tax is a tax on a ‘good behaviour, namely, ‘working’. We shouldn’t punish desirable behaviour with taxation because, we'll get less of it. Why not just replace income taxes, which punish good behaviour, with excise taxes on socially and economically undesirable activity. So, instead of taxing income and investment (capital gains), we heavily tax a wide range of undesirable behaviours with negative externalities such as pollution, carbon emissions, religion, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, liberal-arts degrees, sugar, cable TV, celebrity magazines, meat etc… I’m sure we can think of more. This would have the advantage of reducing the prevailance of costly bad behaviour. We would also stop discourging good behaviour (working), and because there are lots of bad things we could potentially tax, it might also generate enough revenue to pay for the costs of government.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

The Car ...

In defense of the automobile:
I am making a strong claim. Automobility is not just something for which people in their ingenuity or idiosyncrasy might happen to hanker. Rather, automobile transport is a good for people in virtue of its intrinsic features. Because automobility is a mode of extending the scope and magnitude of self-direction, it is worthwhile. Moreover, the value of automobility is strongly complementary to other core values of our culture, such as freedom of association, pursuit of knowledge, economic advancement, privacy, even the expression of religious commitments and love. If these contentions are even partially cogent, then opponents of the automobile must take on and surmount a stronger burden of proof than they have heretofore acknowledged; for they must show not only that instrumental costs of marginal automobile usage outweigh the benefits, but they also must additionally establish that these costs outweigh the inherent good of the exercise of free mobility. That heightened burden will be difficult indeed to satisfy.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Who is afraid of a little debate?

Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth’s private member’s motion, proposing a committee that would re-examine when Canadian foetuses ought legally to become “human,” is being held up as evidence of Stephen Harper’s secret plan to curtail women’s reproductive rights. This story sort of bugged me. The “liberals” are massively overreacting. The politics seem pretty obvious. Harper wants to appease his social conservative base. He isn’t going to reopen the abortion debate, as he has said repeatedly. It would be a really bad move politically, and this is all he cares about. Harper’s “secret agenda” is not that secret: to be Prime Minister. Now, is this debate about the status of the foetus some attack on the “abortion argument”? No. Is a foetus "alive"1 second before its birth? Of course. How about 1 minute? 1 hour? 1 day? 1 week? ... 2 weeks? Where is the line? I don’t know, but I do know that “birth” just makes no sense. Full disclosure: I'm pro-choice. That is, I am in favour of letting women kill their unborn children, who are, in some instances, actually "alive" by any biological definition. If you find that unpalatable, maybe you shouldn't be pro-choice. If your argument for pro-choice rests on this, then you better rethink your position; and it wouldn't hurt you to listen to some debate on the subject. Also, I find it refreshing that our politicians want to discuss philosophy and bioethics. In short, lefties, clam the f*ck down please.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Thoughts on Taxation

Well said, Mr. Krauthammer:
The Buffett Rule redistributes deck chairs on the Titanic, ostensibly to make more available for those in steerage. Nice idea, but the iceberg cometh. The enterprise is an exercise in misdirection — a distraction not just from Obama’s dismal record on growth and unemployment but, more importantly, from his dereliction of duty in failing to this day to address the utterly predictable and devastating debt crisis ahead.
The Buffett rule is just a cleverly disguised capital gains tax. Good politics; bad economics. The term "fairness" as applied to taxation is also interesting. Clearly, people have differing conceptions of the term "fair". The fact that it is completely subjective makes it analytically vacuous, conceptually meaningless, and even dangerous. As Krauthammer points out, this latest attempt to tax the rich is a poor substitute for genuine tax reform, which is what is needed in the United States.