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Three New Books For March

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February 24, 2010

The month of March brings us three new books about the financial crisis.  The authors are not out to make apologies for anyone.  To the contrary, they point directly at the villains and expose the systemic flaws that were exploited by those who still may yet destroy the world economy.  All three of these books are available at the Amazon widget on the sidebar at the left side of this page.

Regular fans of the Naked Capitalism blog have been following the progress of Yves Smith on her new book, ECONned:  How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism.  It will be released on March 2.  Here is some information about the book from the product description at the Amazon website:

ECONned is the first book to examine the unquestioned role of economists as policy-makers, and how they helped create an unmitigated economic disaster.

Here, Yves Smith looks at how economists in key policy positions put doctrine before hard evidence, ignoring the deteriorating conditions and rising dangers that eventually led them, and us, off the cliff and into financial meltdown.  Intelligently written for the layman, Smith takes us on a terrifying investigation of the financial realm over the last twenty-five years of misrepresentations, naive interpretations of economic conditions, rationalizations of bad outcomes, and rejection of clear signs of growing instability.

In eConned (sic), author Yves Smith reveals:

–why the measures taken by the Obama Administration are mere palliatives and are unlikely to pave the way for a solid recovery

–how economists have come to play a profoundly anti-democratic role in policy

–how financial models and concepts that were discredited more than thirty years ago are still widely used by banks, regulators, and investors

–how management and employees of major financial firms looted them, enriching themselves and leaving the mess to taxpayers

–how financial regulation enabled predatory behavior by Wall Street towards investors

–how economics has no theory of financial systems, yet economists fearlessly prescribe how to manage them

Michael Lewis is the author of the wildly-popular book, Liar’s Poker, based on his experience as a bond trader for Solomon Brothers in the mid-80s.  His new book, The BigShort: Inside the Doomsday Machine, will be released on March 15.  Here is some of what Amazon’s product description says about it:

A brilliant account — character-rich and darkly humorous — of how the U.S. economy was driven over the cliff.

*   *   *

Michael Lewis’s splendid cast of characters includes villains, a few heroes, and a lot of people who look very, very foolish:  high government officials, including the watchdogs; heads of major investment banks (some overlap here with previous category); perhaps even the face in your mirror.  In this trenchant, raucous, irresistible narrative, Lewis writes of the goats and of the few who saw what the emperor was wearing, and gives them, most memorably, what they deserve.  He proves yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times.

Our third author, Simon Johnson, recently co-authored an article for CenterPiece with Peter Boone entitled, “The Doomsday Cycle” which explains how “we have let a ‘doomsday cycle’ infiltrate our economic system”.  The essay contains a number of proposals for correcting this problem.  Here is one of them:

We believe that the best route to creating a safer system is to have very large and robust capital requirements, which are legislated and difficult to circumvent or revise.  If we triple core capital at major banks to15-25% of assets, and err on the side of requiring too much capital for derivatives and other complicated financial structures, we will create a much safer system with less scope for “gaming” the rules.

Simon Johnson is a professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.  From 2007-2008, he was chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.  With James Kwak, he is the co-publisher of The Baseline Scenario website.  Johnson and Kwak have written a new book entitled, 13 Bankers:  The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown.  Although this book won’t be released until March 30, the Amazon website has already quoted from reviews by the following people:  Bill Bradley, Robert Reich, Arianna Huffington, Bill Moyers, Alan Grayson, Brad Miller, Elizabeth Warren and others.  Professor Warren must be a Democrat, based on the affiliation of nearly everyone else who reviewed the book.

Here is some of what can be found in Amazon’s product description:

.  .  .  a wide-ranging, meticulous, and bracing account of recent U.S. financial history within the context of previous showdowns between American democracy and Big Finance: from Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson, from Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  They convincingly show why our future is imperiled by the ideology of finance (finance is good, unregulated finance is better, unfettered finance run amok is best) and by Wall Street’s political control of government policy pertaining to it.

As these authors make the talk show circuit to promote their books during the coming weeks, the American public will hearing repeated pleas to demand that our elected officials take action to stop the mercenary financial behemoths from destroying the world.  Perhaps the message will finally hit home.

If you are interested in any of these three books, they’re available on the right side of this page.



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Rethinking The Stimulus

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February 22, 2010

On the anniversary of the stimulus law (a/k/a the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — Public Law 111-5) there has been quite a bit of debate concerning the number of jobs actually created by the stimulus as opposed to the claims made by Democratic politicians.  For their part, the Democrats take pride in the fact that John Makin of the conservative think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute, recently published this statement at the AEI website:

Absent temporary fiscal stimulus and inventory rebuilding, which taken together added about 4 percentage points to U.S.growth, the economy would have contracted at about a 1 percent annual rate during the second half of 2009.

A few months ago, I had a discussion with an old friend and the subject of the stimulus came up.  My beefs about the stimulus were that it did not offer the necessary degree of immediate relief and that a good chunk of it should have gone directly into the hands of the taxpayers.

I recently read a blog posting by Keith Hennessey, the former director of the National Economic Council under President George W. Bush, which expressed some opinions similar to my own on what the stimulus should have offered.  Although Mr. Hennessey preferred the traditional panacea of tax cuts as the primary means for economic stimulus, he made a number of other important points.  With so much fear being expressed about the possibility of a “double-dip” recession, our government could find itself in the uncomfortable position of considering another stimulus bill.  If that day comes, we have all the more reason to look back at what was right and what was wrong with the 2009 stimulus.

Keith Hennessy began with this statement:

Unlike many critics of the stimulus law, I think that fiscal policy can increase short-term economic growth, especially when the economy is in a deep recession.  In other words, I think that fiscal stimulus is a valid concept.  This does not mean that I think that every increase in government spending, or every tax cut, (a) increases short-term economic growth or (b) is good policy.

At the end of his second paragraph, he got to the part that was music to my ears:

If the Administration had instead put $862 B directly into people’s hands, you would have seen more immediate spending and economic growth than we did, even if people had saved most of it.

In contrast, government spending is powerful but painfully slow.  If the government spends $1 on building a road, eventually that entire $1 will enter the economy and increase GDP growth.  Your bang-for-the-deficit-buck is extremely high.  The problem is that bang-for-the-buck doesn’t help us if that bang occurs two or three or four years from now.

*   *   *

I would instead prefer that people be allowed to spend and save the money how they best see fit.  My preferred path also has less waste and bureaucracy.

A bit later in the piece, Hennessey said some things that probably caused a good number of the CPAC conventioneers reach for the Tums:

I agree with the Administration that last year’s stimulus law increased economic growth above what it otherwise would have been.  I agree that employment is higher than it would have been without a stimulus.

Of course, Hennessey complained that “The law was poorly designed and inefficient” — in part because the money was funneled through federal and state bureaucracies — another valid point.  Then, he got to the important issue:

Given a decision last year to do a big fiscal stimulus, I would have preferred, in this order:

1.  putting all the money into a permanent reduction in income and capital taxes;

2.  putting all the money into a temporary reduction in income and capital taxes;

3.  putting all the money into transfer payments;

4.  what Congress and the President did.

Given the policy preferences of the President, his team’s big policy mistake last year was to let Congress turn a reasonable macroeconomic fiscal policy goal into a Congressional spending toga party.  Given his policy preferences, the President should have insisted that Congress put all the money into (2) and (3) above.  He would have had a bigger macro stimulus bang earlier.

In case you’re wondering what “transfer payments” are — you need to think in terms of “wealth transfer”.  In this case, it concerns situations where the government gives away money to people who aren’t rich.  A good example of this was the stimulus program that took place under President Bush.  Individuals with incomes of less than $75,000 received a $300 “stimulus check” and households with joint incomes under $150,000 got $600.

My own stimulus idea would involve a “tax rebate” program, wherein the taxpayers receive a number of $50 vouchers based on the amount of income tax they paid the previous year.  The recipients would then be instructed to go out and buy stuff with the vouchers.  So what if they spent it on imported merchandise?  The American retailers and shipping companies would still make money, finding it necessary to hire people.  The vouchers would display the person’s name and address.  In order to use the vouchers, identification would be needed, so as to prevent resale.  The maximum amount of cash change one could get back from a voucher-funded purchase would be $10.

Hopefully, we won’t need another stimulus program.  However, if we do, I suggest that the government simply give us vouchers and send us shopping.



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More Super Powers For Turbo Tim

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February 18, 2010

I shouldn’t have been shocked when I read about this.  It’s just that it makes no sense at all and it’s actually scary — for a number of reasons.  On Wednesday, February 17, Sewell Chan broke the story for The New York Times:

The Senate and the Obama administration are nearing agreement on forming a council of regulators, led by the Treasury secretary, to identify systemic risk to the nation’s financial system, officials said Wednesday.

They’re going to put “Turbo” Tim Geithner in charge of the council that regulates systemic risk in the banking system?  Let the pushback begin!  The first published reaction to this news (that I saw) came from Tom Lindmark at the iStockAnalyst.com website:

Only the Congress of the United States is capable of this sort of monumental stupidity.  It appears as if the responsibility for running a newly formed council of bank regulators is going to be delegated to the Treasury Secretary.

Lindmark’s beef was not based on any personal opinion about the appointment of Tim Geithner himself to such a role.  Mr. Lindmark’s opinion simply reflects his disgust at the idea of putting a political appointee at the head of such a committee:

The job of overseeing our financial system is going to be given to an individual whose primary job is implementing the political agenda of his boss — the President of the US.

Regulation of the banks and whatever else gets thrown into the mix is now going to be driven by politicians who have little or no interest in a safe and sound banking system.  As we know too well, their primary interest is the perpetuation and enhancement of their own power with no regard for the consequences.

So there you have reason number one:  Nothing personal — just bad policy.

I can’t wait to hear the responses from some of my favorite gurus from the world of finance.  How about John Hussman — president of the investment advisory firm that manages the Hussman Funds?  One day before the story broke concerning our new systemic risk regulator, this statement appeared in the Weekly Market Comment by Dr. Hussman:

If one is alert, it is evident that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury have disposed of the need for Congressional approval, and have engineered a de facto bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, at public expense.

What better qualification could one have for sitting at the helm of the systemic risk council?  Choose one of the guys who bypassed Congressional authority to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with the taxpayers’ money!  If Geithner is actually appointed to chair this council, you can expect an interesting response from Dr. Hussman.

Jeremy Grantham should have plenty to rant about concerning this nomination.  As chairman of GMO, Mr. Grantham is responsible for managing over $107 billion of his clients’ hard-inherited money.  Consider what he said about Geithner’s performance as president of the New York Fed during the months leading up to the financial crisis:

Timothy Geithner, in turn, sat in the very engine room of the USS Disaster and helped steer her onto the rocks.

Mr. Grantham should hardly be pleased to hear about our Treasury Secretary’s new role, regulating systemic risk.

The coming days should provide some entertaining diatribes along the lines of:  “You’ve got to be kidding!” in response to this news.  I’m looking forward to it!



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Plagiarism 101

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February 15, 2010

There has been plenty of excitement recently concerning the resignation of Gerald Posner from The Daily Beast as a result of a plagiarism scandal.  Here’s how Posner described it in his own words:

Last Friday, Jack Shafer in Slate ran an article pinpointing five sentences from one of my stories in The Daily Beast, which I admitted met the definition of plagiarism and I accepted full responsibility for that error, an incident I called “accidental plagiarism.”  On Monday, he had found other examples, and although I disagreed with some of his characterizations, I again accepted full accountability.

When The Daily Beast had asked me last Friday if there were any more problems than the five original sentences highlighted by Shafer, I had confidently told them, “No.”  It was not because I had subjected my own articles to so-called plagiarism software, or because I was in denial about any deliberate plagiarism.

*   *   *

This afternoon I received a call from Edward Felsenthal, the excellent managing editor of The Daily Beast.  He informed me that as part of the Beast’s internal investigation, they had uncovered more instances in earlier articles of mine in which there the same problems of apparent plagiarism as the ones originally brought to life last Friday by Shafer.  I instantly offered my resignation and Edward accepted.

This event created quite a stir in the blogosphere, where plagiarism is commonplace.  Although most bloggers follow the “fair use” standard, which allows for quoting a limited portion of published material only when identifying the original publisher of that material (attribution), a good number of bloggers are more than sloppy about it.  In the case of the Associated Press, they don’t want you quoting anything.  This is due to the nature of their business model.  There is no single publication called “The Associated Press” nor is there any single Associated Press website that runs all of its stories.  The AP makes its money by selling its stories to media outlets for republication under an AP byline.  I recently adopted a policy of simply pointing out that “Jane Doe did a story for the Associated Press concerning XYZ” with a link to the story.

Gerald Posner admitted that Jack Shafer of Slate exposed what Posner described as “accidental plagiarism”.   On February 11, Shafer responded by presenting an argument that Posner is a “serial plagiarist”.  Shafer went on to explain how plagiarism not only causes harm to the author of the poached writing — it also causes harm to the readers:

In an essay published by Media Ethics (fall 2006), Edward Wasserman attacks the wrong of plagiarism at its roots.  Most everybody concedes that plagiarism harms plagiarized writers by denying them due credit for original work.  But Wasserman delineates the harm done to readers.  By concealing the true source of information, plagiarists deny “the public insight into how key facts come to light” and undermines the efforts of other journalists and readers to assess the truth value of the (embezzled) journalistic accounts.  In Wasserman’s view, plagiarism violates the very “truth-seeking and truth-telling” mission of journalism.

From The Atlantic Wire website, John Hudson implied that Jack Shafer didn’t have any particular vendetta against Posner; Shafer was simply sticking to his mission of exposing lapses in media ethics:

Shafer has made a habit of pushing journalists to be more accurate and responsible from his post at Slate’s Press Box, a column devoted to media criticism.  Voices like his are increasingly crucial as journalistic mores shift, with Shafer both demonstrating and explaining how Web writing can work.

Nothing beats a good scandal — but when the scandal involves a scandal-breaker, there seems to be a bit of karma happening.

At the ScienceBlogs website, Razib Kahn characterized the Posner situation as more a problem of being pathologically dumb than being a pathological plagiarist:

The Ben Domenech case actually shows that yes, internet-age plagiarists can be pathologically dumb.  There are plenty of cases of small-time plagiarists; my friend Randall Parker of FuturePundit was pointed to another blogger who was copying his posts almost verbatim.  Small potatoes.  But if you’re a professional journalist, you’re going to get caught if you have any prominence if people can compare the text on the internet.

I think catching people plagiarizing like this is a good sign that there are some mental peculiarities at work here; cognitive biases if you will.  This isn’t cheating on college papers, unethical as it is, this is being unethical for short-term gains when there’s a very high probability that you’ll be caught and humiliated in public in the long-term.

Being called unethical is something that Posner had probably been expecting — but being called dumb has to really hurt!



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An Early Favorite For 2010

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February 11, 2010

It appears as though the runner-up for TheCenterLane.com’s 2009 Jackass of the Year Award is well on his way to winning the title for 2010.  After reading an op-ed piece by Ross Douthat of The New York Times, I decided that as of December 31, 2009, it was too early to determine whether our new President was worthy of such a title.

Since Wednesday morning, we have been bombarded with reactions to a story from Bloomberg News, concerning an interview Obama had with Bloomberg BusinessWeek in the Oval Office.  In case you haven’t seen it, here is the controversial passage from the beginning of that article:

President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay.

The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.”

“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday.  “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth.  That is part of the free-market system.”

Many commentators have expounded upon what this tells us about our President.  I’d like to quote the reactions from a couple of my favorite bloggers.  Here’s what Yves Smith had to say at Naked Capitalism:

There are only two, not mutually exclusive, conclusions one can reach from reading this tripe:  that Obama is a lackey of the financiers, and putting the best spin he can on their looting, or he is a fool.

The salient fact is that, their protests to the contrary, the wealth of those at the apex of the money machine was not the result of the operation of  “free markets” or any neutral system.  The banking industry for the better part of two decades has fought hard to create a playing field skewed in their favor, with it permissible to sell complex products with hidden bad features to customers often incapable of understanding them.  By contrast, one of the factors that needs to be in place for markets to produce desirable outcomes is for buyers and sellers to have the same information about the product and the objectives of the seller.

Similarly, the concentrated capital flows, often too-low interest rates, and asymmetrical Federal Reserve actions (cutting rates fast when markets look rocky, being very slow to raise rates and telegraphing that intent well in advance) that are the most visible manifestations of two decades of bank-favoring policies, are the equivalent of massive subsidies.

And that’s before we get to the elephant in the room, the massive subsidies to the banksters that took place during the crisis and continue today.

We have just been through the greatest looting of the public purse in history, and Obama tries to pass it off as meritocracy in action.

Obama is beyond redemption.

At his Credit Writedowns website, Edward Harrison made this observation:

The problem is not that we have free markets in America, but rather that we have bailouts and crony capitalism.  So Americans actually do begrudge people this kind of monetary reward.  It has been obvious to me that the bailouts are a large part of why Obama’s poll numbers have been sinking.  It’s not just the economy here — so unless the President can demonstrate he understands this, he is unlikely to win back a very large number of voters who see this issue as central to their loss of confidence in Obama.

Is it just me or does this sound like Obama just doesn’t get it?

Victoria McGrane of Politico gave us a little background on Obama’s longstanding relationship with The Dimon Dog:

Dimon is seen as one of the Wall Street executives who enjoys the closest relationship with the president, along with Robert Wolf, head of the American division of Swiss bank UBS.  A longtime Democratic donor, Dimon first met Obama in Chicago, where Dimon lived and worked from the late 1990s until 2007.

And both Dimon and Blankfein have met with the president several times.  In their most recent meeting, Obama invited Dimon to Washington for lunch right before the State of the Union, according to a source familiar with the meeting.

Some commentators have expressed the view that Obama is making a transparent attempt to curry favor with the banking lobby in time to get those contributions flowing to Democratic candidates in the mid-term elections.  Nevertheless, for Obama, this latest example of trying to please both sides of a debate will prove to be yet another “lose/lose” situation.  As Victoria McGrane pointed out:

But relations between most Democrats and Wall Street donors aren’t as warm this cycle as the financial industry chafes against the harsh rhetoric and policy prescriptions lawmakers have aimed at them.

As for those members of the electorate who usually vote Democratic, you can rest assured that a large percentage will see this as yet another act of betrayal.  They saw it happen with the healthcare reform debacle and they’re watching it happen again in the Senate, as the badly-compromised financial reform bill passed by the House (HR 4173) is being completely defanged.  A bad showing by the Democrats on November 2, 2010 will surely be blamed on Obama.

As of February 11, we already have a “favorite” in contention for the 2010 Jackass of the Year Award.  It’s time for the competition to step forward!



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Senator Cantwell Stands Tough

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February 8, 2010

Back in June of 2008, when it became obvious that Hillary Clinton would not win the nomination as the Democratic Party’s Presidential candidate, Clinton’s despondent female supporters lamented that they would never see a woman elected President within their own lifetimes.  At that point, I wrote a piece entitled, “Women To Watch”, reminding readers that “there are a number of women presently in the Senate, who got there without having been married to a former President (whose surname could be relied upon for recognition purposes).”  One of those women, whom I discussed in that essay, was Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington.  Since that time, Senator Cantwell has proven herself as a defender of her constituents and an opponent of Wall Street.  Her bold criticism of the Obama administration’s handling of the economic crisis as well as her vocal opposition to the influence of lobbyists, motivated me to write a second piece about Senator Cantwell in November of 2009.  More recently, she voted against the confirmation of Ben Bernanke’s nomination to a second term as Federal Reserve chair and on February 2, Reuters reported that she was taking a stand against loopholes in proposed financial reform legislation.

On February 7, Les Blumenthal of the McLatchy Newspapers saw fit to highlight Senator Cantwell’s efforts at backing-up with real action, her tough stand against Wall Street:

To hear Sen. Maria Cantwell talk, another economic bubble is building as Wall Street banks — backed by taxpayer bailouts — continue to play the high-risk derivatives markets rather than extend credit to struggling businesses on Main Street.

Cantwell says that Congress and the Obama administration are just watching it happen.

*   *   *

“We are trying to keep the focus on what needs to be done to get credit flowing and avoid another bubble,” Cantwell said in an interview.  “Do I wish the White House team was more attuned to these issues?  Yes.”

*   *   *

White House officials have, at least twice, backed off commitments they made to her that they’d push for tougher regulations, Cantwell said.

“Their economic team is not living up to what they said they would,” Cantwell said.

Her criticism of the financial regulatory reform bill passed by the House — as being “riddled with loopholes” — was reminiscent of the widespread reaction to the disappointing failure of the Democrats to pass any significant healthcare reform legislation:

If the bills emerging from committees aren’t tough enough, Cantwell vowed a floor fight.  She said she had support from half a dozen senators, including Democrats Dianne Feinstein of California, Tom Harkin of Iowa, and Carl Levin of Michigan.

“People are going to have to ask themselves what’s better — a weak bill or no bill?” she said.

At a time when her peers are busy selling out to lobbyists, Senator Cantwell is continuing to reinforce her image as a reformer.  Her February 4 exchange with “Turbo” Tim Geithner, during his appearance before the Senate Finance Committee, was an example of the type of challenge that other Democrats are afraid to publicly vocalize when addressing members of the administration.  Cantwell emphasized that the President has the authority to act on his own (by issuing an Executive Order) to make $30 billion available to community banks, rather than waiting for Congress to pass legislation for such a rescue.  Her home state’s Lake Stevens Journal discussed that moment:

“If we don’t implement change right now, we are going to lose more jobs,” Cantwell told Geithner.  “Do not wait for legislation.  Come to terms with the community banks on reasonable terms that they can agree to — and I think that that we will be well on our way to getting Americans back to work.”

Maria Cantwell continues to exhibit a (sadly) unique toughness in standing up to those forces bent on preserving the destructive status quo.  As disgruntled supporters of Hillary Clinton wonder whether her intention to step down as Secretary of State in 2012 could signal another opportunity to elect America’s first female President —  they would be well-advised to consider Senator Cantwell as their best hope for reaching that historic milestone.



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Beyond The Banks

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February 4, 2010

I recently saw the movie Food, Inc. and was struck by the idea that there are some fundamental problems that span just about every situation where government corruption and ineptitude have facilitated an industry’s efforts to crush the interests of consumers.  At approximately 36 minutes into the film, Michael Pollan explained how government efforts to prevent abuses in the food industry are undermined by the fact that the government always relies on the “quick fix” or “band-aid” approach, rather than a strategy addressed at solving a systemic problem.  In other words:  government prefers to treat the symptoms rather than the disease.

As I thought about Michael Pollan’s remark, I was immediately reminded of our financial crisis.  In that case, the solution was to bail out the “too big to fail” financial institutions.  As legislative proposals are introduced to address the systemic problems and prevent a recurrence of what happened in the fall of 2008, the lobbyists have stepped in to sabotage those efforts.

There were two other factors discussed in Food Inc. as presenting roadblocks to effective consumer-protective legislation:  the revolving door between the industry and Washington, as well as “regulatory capture” — a situation where government regulators are beholden to those whom they regulate.

We have seen the impact of these two factors in the financial area and they have been well-documented.  The “revolving door” was the subject of two recent essays by John Carney at The Business Insider website.  Carney discussed “The Banking Blob” as a secret club of Senate staffers and Wall Street lobbyists:

Staffers on the powerful Senate banking committee are part of what is known as “The Banking Blob,” a person familiar with the matter told us.  The Banking Blob is made up of current banking committee staffers and former staffers who are now bankers or lobbyists.  They frequently socialize together, often organizing happy hours and parties.

“They move in a pack.  They socialize together,” the person says.  “Hell.  They even inter-marry.”

The Blob is made up of both Republican and Democratic staffers.  Outsiders tend to think the Blob members view themselves as “cooler” than other Capitol Hill staff members.  Often a job on the banking committee leads to a well-paying job for a Wall Street firm or a position at a K-Street lobbyist law firm.

Carney had previously discussed the problem of Senate banking committee staffers who see their job as simply a stepping stone to a lucrative banking job:

The allure of banking is hardly a mystery.  The money is better.  Far better than the government wages paid to Capitol Hill staffers.  After years of toiling in government service, many staffers dream of a better life in one of the leafy neighborhoods that are so posh you cannot get there on DC’s Metro.     . . .

“Everyone talks about people going from Goldman to government.  But the problem is the other way.  Too many staffers go from Capitol Hill to banking.  And even more aspire to make that move.  It corrupts the process,” the staffer told us.

The third problem  — “regulatory capture” — is best epitomized in the person of “Turbo” Tim Geithner.  Joshua Rosner recently dissected Turbo Tim’s often-repeated claim that he has always worked in “public service”.  Rosner demonstrated that the only sector that has been “serviced” by Geithner was the banking industry:

Secretary Geithner can keep repeating his assertion he has worked in public service his whole life.  Never mind that this calls into question his tangible market experience, this claim begs the question:  How does he define working in the public service?

Geithner’s last job, as the President of the New York Fed highlights that question.

*   *   *

The New York Fed is not government-owned.  Most people fail to recognize this fact.  Simply, the Federal Reserve Board (responsible for monetary policy, with a dual mandate of full employment and price stability) is an independent part of the federal government, while the New York Fed is a shareholder-owned or private corporation.  In other words, where the Federal Reserve Board is www.frb.gov, the District Bank is www.newyorkfed.org. Historically, the New York Fed has been among the most profitable shareholder-owned corporations in the world.  Yet it keeps the details of its shareholders’ ownership information private.  What we do know is that its owners include precisely those institutions it is tasked to regulate and supervise and those it has obviously failed to adequately supervise.  Unlike the other District Banks of the Federal Reserve system, which have overseen their banks quite well, the New York Fed’s concentration of the largest banks, coupled with its unique role of managing the market operations of the entire Fed system, has built a culture where it sees itself as a market participant and peer to those firms it regulates.

The President of the NY Fed is chosen by, paid by and reports to the private shareholders of that private institution.  Only three of the nine Directors of the Board of the New York Fed are chosen by the Federal Reserve Board and, until this year, the NY Fed’s Chair — chosen by the Federal Reserve Board in Washington — was a former Chairman of Goldman Sachs who still sits on Goldman’s Board.

*   *   *

In truth, Geithner’s ineffectiveness in his role as NY Fed President and his current political posturing — without any policy substance to directly address too-big-to-fail or the Fed’s flawed powers to bailout firms — seems to have resulted from design rather than accident.

*   *   *

If being a public servant is funneling unreasonable amounts of taxpayer capital, without market discipline, to the largest and most poorly managed banks, then Geithner’s selection as Secretary of Treasury makes sense.

One important lesson to be learned from our government’s inability to do its job regulating the financial sector, is that this failure is primarily caused by three problems:

  • An unwillingness to address a systemic problem by choosing, instead, to focus on “quick fixes”;
  • A revolving door between government and industry;
  • Regulatory capture.

Legislators, consumer advocates and commentators should focus on these three problem areas when addressing any situation where our government proves itself ineffective in preventing abuses by a particular industry.



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The Outrage Continues

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February 1, 2010

The news reports of the past few days have brought us enough fuel to keep us outraged for the next decade.  Let’s just hope that some of this lasts long enough for the November elections.  I will touch on just three of the latest stories that should get the pitchfork-wielding mobs off their asses and into the streets.  Nevertheless, we have to be realistic about these things.  With the Super Bowl coming up, it’s going to be tough to pry those butts off the couches.

The first effrontery should not come as too much of a surprise.  The Times of London has reported that Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein (a/k/a Lloyd Bankfiend) is expecting to receive a $100 million bonus this year:

Bankers in Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF) told The Times yesterday they understood that Lloyd Blankfein and other top Goldman bankers outside Britain were set to receive some of the bank’s biggest-ever payouts.  “This is Lloyd thumbing his nose at Obama,” said a banker at one of Goldman’s rivals.

Blankfein is also thumbing his nose at the American taxpayers.  Despite widespread media insistence that Goldman Sachs “paid back the government” there is a bit of unfinished business arising from something called Maiden Lane III — for which Goldman should owe us billions.

That matter brings us to our second item:  the recently-released Quarterly Report from SIGTARP (the Special Investigator General for TARP — Neil Barofsky).  The report is 224 pages long, so I’ll refer you to the handy summary prepared by Michael Shedlock (“Mish”).  Mish’s headline drove home the point that there are currently 77 ongoing investigations of fraud, money laundering and insider trading as a result of the TARP bank bailout program.  Here are a few more of his points, used as introductions to numerous quoted passages from the SIGTARP report:

The Report Blasts Geithner and the NY Fed.  I seriously doubt Geithner survives this but the sad thing is Geithner will not end up in prison where he belongs.

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Please consider a prime conflict of interest example in regards to PPIP, the Public-Private-Investment-Plan, specifically designed to allow banks to dump their worst assets onto the public (taxpayers) shielding banks from the risk.

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Note the refutation of the preposterous claims that taxpayers will be made whole.

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TARP Tutorial:  How Taxpayers Lose Money When Banks Fail

My favorite comment from Mish appears near the conclusion of his summary:

Clearly TARP was a complete failure, that is assuming the goals of TARP were as stated.

My belief is the benefits of TARP and the entire alphabet soup of lending facilities was not as stated by Bernanke and Geithner, but rather to shift as much responsibility as quickly as possible on to the backs of taxpayers while trumping up nonsensical benefits of doing so.  This was done to bail out the banks at any and all cost to the taxpayers.

Was this a huge conspiracy by the Fed and Treasury to benefit the banks at taxpayer expense?  Of course it was, and the conspiracy is unraveling as documented in this report and as documented in AIG Coverup Conspiracy Unravels.

Mish’s last remark (and his link to an earlier posting) brings us to the third disgrace to be covered in this piece:  The AIG bailout cover-up.  On January 29, David Reilly wrote an article for Bloomberg News (and Business Week) concerning last Wednesday’s hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  After quoting from Reilly’s article, Mish made this observation:

Most know I am not a big believer in conspiracies.  I regularly dismiss them.  However, this one was clear from the beginning and like all massive conspiracies, it is now in the light of day.

David Reilly began the Bloomberg/Business Week piece this way:

The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter.  After this week’s congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all.

Wednesday’s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.

That “secretive group” is The Federal Reserve of New York, whose president at the time of the AIG bailout was “Turbo” Tim Geithner.  David Reilly’s disgust at the hearing’s revelations became apparent from the tone of his article:

By pursuing this line of inquiry, the hearing revealed some of the inner workings of the New York Fed and the outsized role it plays in banking.  This insight is especially valuable given that the New York Fed is a quasi-governmental institution that isn’t subject to citizen intrusions such as freedom of information requests, unlike the Federal Reserve.

This impenetrability comes in handy since the bank is the preferred vehicle for many of the Fed’s bailout programs.  It’s as though the New York Fed was a black-ops outfit for the nation’s central bank.

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The New York Fed is one of 12 Federal Reserve Banks that operate under the supervision of the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, chaired by Ben Bernanke.  Member-bank presidents are appointed by nine-member boards, who themselves are appointed largely by other bankers.

As Representative Marcy Kaptur told Geithner at the hearing:  “A lot of people think that the president of the New York Fed works for the U.S. government.  But in fact you work for the private banks that elected you.”

The “cover-up” aspect to this caper involved intervention by the New York Fed that included editing AIG’s communications to investors and pressuring the Securities and Exchange Commission to keep secret the details of the bailouts of AIG’s counterparties (Maiden Lane III).  The Fed’s opposition to disclosure of such documentation to Congress was the subject of a New York Times opinion piece in December.  The recent SIGTARP report emphasized the disingenuous nature of the Fed’s explanation for keeping this information hidden:

SIGTARP’s audit also noted that the now familiar argument from Government officials about the dire consequences of basic transparency, as advocated by the Federal Reserve in connection with Maiden Lane III, once again simply does not withstand scrutiny.  Federal Reserve officials initially refused to disclose the identities of the counterparties or the details of the payments, warning that disclosure of the names would undermine AIG’s stability, the privacy and business interests of the counterparties, and the stability of the markets.  After public and Congressional pressure, AIG disclosed the identities of its counterparties, including its eight largest:  Societe Generale, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank AG, UBS, Calyon Corporate and Investment Banking (a subsidiary of Credit Agricole S.A.), Barclays PLC, and Bank of America.

Notwithstanding the Federal Reserve’s warnings, the sky did not fall; there is no indication that AIG’s disclosure undermined the stability of AIG or the market or damaged legitimate interests of the counterparties.

The SIGTARP investigation has revealed some activity that most people would never have imagined possible given the enormous amounts of money involved in these bailouts and the degree of oversight (that should have been) in place.  The bigger question becomes:  Will any criminal charges be brought against those officials who breached the public trust by facilitating this monumental theft of taxpayer dollars?



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