Michael McLaren from 2GB speaks with Benjamin Herscovitch, Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies, who discusses the dangerous growth of the welfare state in Australia.
The CIS has launched a TARGET 30 campaign to restrict government spending — currently 35 percent of GDP — to 30 percent.
This abstract from a 2010 paper by Martin Hellwig sums up the debate about overhauling the financial system:
Whereas the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision seems to go for marginal changes here and there, the paper calls for a thorough overhaul, moving away from risk calibration and raising capital requirements very substantially. The argument is based on the observation that the current system of risk-calibrated capital requirements, in particular under the model-based approach, played a key role in allowing banks to be undercapitalized prior to the crisis, with strong systemic effects for deleveraging multipliers and for the functioning of interbank markets. The argument is also based on the observation that the current system has no theoretical foundation, its objectives are ill-specified, and its effects have not been thought through, either for the individual bank or for the system as a whole. Objections to substantial increases in capital requirements rest on arguments that run counter to economic logic or are themselves evidence of moral hazard and a need for regulation.
The bipartisan bill, Terminating Bailouts for Taxpayer Fairness Act, sponsored by senators Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, and David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, is a courageous attempt to address the undercapitalization that led to the global financial crisis. Abruptly raising bank capital requirements would lead to a credit contraction if introduced in isolation, but the Fed is quite capable of adjusting monetary policy to offset this and a suitable phase-in period would give banks time to adjust. What is important is that we get to the point where banks are properly capitalized to deal with any future instability.
Read the full paper at Capital Regulation after the Crisis: Business as Usual? | Martin Hellwig, July 2010.
Richard Koo is the first speaker on this video
Click [ ] to view full screen.
This is a show-down between Wall Street and the voting public. Gretchen Morgenson at NY Times writes:
THERE’S a lot to like, if you’re a taxpayer, in the new bipartisan bill from two concerned senators hoping to end the peril of big bank bailouts. But if you’re a large and powerful financial institution that’s too big to fail, you won’t like this bill one bit.
The legislation, called the Terminating Bailouts for Taxpayer Fairness Act, emerged last Wednesday; its co-sponsors are Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, and David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican. It is a smart, simple and tough piece of work that would protect taxpayers from costly rescues in the future.
This means that the bill will come under fierce attack from the big banks that almost wrecked our economy and stand to lose the most if it becomes law.
For starters, the bill would create an entirely new, transparent and ungameable set of capital rules for the nation’s banks — in other words, a meaningful rainy-day fund. Enormous institutions, like JPMorgan Chase and Citibank, would have to hold common stockholder equity of at least 15 percent of their consolidated assets to protect against large losses. That’s almost double the 8 percent of risk-weighted assets required under the capital rules established by Basel III, the latest version of the byzantine international system created by regulators and central bankers.
This change, by itself, would eliminate a raft of problems posed by the risk-weighted Basel approach……
The outcome is far from clear. The financial muscle of Wall Street can buy a lot of influence on the Hill. But my guess is that they are too smart to incense voters by meeting the bill head-on. Instead they will attempt to delay with amendments and eventually turn it into an unwieldy 1000-page unenforcable monstrosity that no one understands. Much as they did with Dodd-Frank.
If they win, the country as a whole will suffer. Maybe not today, but in the inevitable next financial crisis if this bill does not pass.
Read more at Two Senators Try to Slam the Door on Bank Bailouts – NYTimes.com.
Reproduced with kind permission from Lars Christensen at The Market Monetarist:
History is fully of examples of massive monetary policy failure and today’s policy makers can learn a lot from studying these events and no one is better to learn from than Swedish monetary guru Gustav Cassel. In the 1920s Cassel tried – unfortunately without luck – to advise Danish and Norwegian policy makers from making a massive monetary policy mistake.
After the First World War policy makers across Europe wanted to return to the gold standard and in many countries it became official policy to return to the pre-war gold parity despite massive inflation during the war. This was also the case in Denmark and Norway where policy makers decided to return the Norwegian and the Danish krone to the pre-war parity.
The decision to bring back the currencies to the pre-war gold-parity brought massive economic and social hardship to Denmark and Norway in the 1920s and probably also killed of the traditionally strong support for laissez faire capitalism in the two countries. Paradoxically one can say that government failure opened the door for a massive expansion of the role of government in both countries’ economies. No one understood the political dangers of monetary policy failure better than Gustav Cassel.
Here you see the impact of the Price Level (Index 1924=100) of the deflation policies in Denmark and Norway. Sweden did not go back to pre-war gold-parity.
While most of the world was enjoying relatively high growth in the second half of the 1920s the Danish and the Norwegian authorities brought hardship to their nations through a deliberate policy of deflation. As a result both nations saw a sharp rise in unemployment and a steep decline in economic activity. So when anybody tells you about how a country can go through “internal devaluation” please remind them of the Denmark and Norway in the 1920s. The polices were hardly successful, but despite the clear negative consequences policy makers and many economists in the Denmark and Norway insisted that it was the right policy to return to the pre-war gold-parity.
Here is what happened to unemployment (%).
Nobody listened to Cassel. As a result both the Danish and the Norwegian economies went into depression in the second half of the 1920s and unemployment skyrocketed. At the same time Finland and Sweden – which did not return to the pre-war gold-partiy – enjoyed strong post-war growth and low unemployment.
Gustav Cassel strongly warned against this policy as he today would have warned against the calls for “internal devaluation” in the euro zone. In 1924 Cassel at a speech in the Student Union in Copenhagen strongly advocated a devaluation of the Danish krone. The Danish central bank was not exactly pleased with Cassel’s message. However, the Danish central bank really had little to fear. Cassel’s message was overshadowed by the popular demand for what was called “Our old, honest krone”.
To force the policy of revaluation and return to the old gold-parity the Danish central bank tightened monetary policy dramatically and the bank’s discount rate was hiked to 7% (this is more or less today’s level for Spanish bond yields). From 1924 to 1924 to 1927 both the Norwegian and the Danish krone were basically doubled in value against gold by deliberate actions of the two Scandinavian nation’s central bank.
The gold-insanity was as widespread in Norway as in Denmark and also here Cassel was a lone voice of sanity. In a speech in Christiania (today’s Oslo) Cassel in November 1923 warned against the foolish idea of returning the Norwegian krone to the pre-war parity. The speech deeply upset Norwegian central bank governor Nicolai Rygg who was present at Cassel’s speech.
After Cassel’s speech Rygg rose and told the audience that the Norwegian krone had been brought back to parity a 100 years before and that it could and should be done again. He said: “We must and we will go back and we will not give up”. Next day the Norwegian Prime Minister Abraham Berge in an public interview gave his full support to Rygg’s statement. It was clear the Norwegian central bank and the Norwegian government were determined to return to the pre-war gold-parity.
This is the impact on the real GDP level of the gold-insanity in Denmark and Norway. Sweden did not suffer from gold-insanity and grew nicely in the 1920s.
The lack of reason among Danish and Norwegian central bankers in the 1920s is a reminder what happens once the “project” – whether the euro or the gold standard – becomes more important than economic reason and it shows that countries will suffer dire economic, social and political consequences when they are forced through “internal devaluation”. In both Denmark and Norway the deflation of the 1920s strengthened the Socialists parties and both the Norwegian and the Danish economies as a consequence moved away from the otherwise successful laissez faire model. That should be a reminder to any free market oriented commentators, policy makers and economists that a deliberate attempt of forcing countries through internal devaluation is likely to bring more socialism and less free markets. Gustav Cassel knew that – as do the Market Monetarists today.
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My account of these events is based on Richard Lester’s paper “Gold-Parity Depression in Denmark and Norway, 1925-1928″ (Journal of Political Economy, August 1937)
The euro is consolidating between $1.30 and $1.32. Upward breakout is more likely and would test the high of $1.37. Reversal below $1.30 would warn of another decline, to around $1.24*. In the long-term, breakout above $1.37 would signal a primary advance to $1.50. A 13-week Twiggs Momentum trough at the zero line would reinforce this.
* Target calculation: 1.28 – ( 1.32 – 1.28 ) = 1.24
Pound sterling surprised with a reversal above resistance at $1.53. Follow-through above $1.54 would suggest an advance to around $1.58, while retreat below $1.52 would signal a down-swing to $1.43*. Declining 13-week Twiggs Momentum, below its 2011 lows, strengthens the bear signal.
* Target calculation: 1.53 – ( 1.63 – 1.53 ) = 1.43
The Aussie Dollar rallied off primary support at $1.015. Narrow fluctuation of 63-day Twiggs Momentum around zero suggests a ranging market. Respect of support suggests another test of $1.06.
Canada’s Loonie found support above $0.97 against the greenback, suggesting another test of $0.99. Breach of the rising trendline, however, would indicate another down-swing.
The greenback is testing resistance at ¥100 against the Japanese Yen. The 30-year down-trend of the dollar is over. Breakout above ¥100 is likely, and would suggest an advance to the 2007 high at ¥125*.
* Target calculation: 100 – ( 100 – 75 ) = 125
The Fed, ECB and BOJ are all printing money and debasing their currencies. The US dollar, although taking on water, is viewed as the safest — because it is sinking slower than the others. There are signs the Fed is likely to slow quantitative easing in the next 6 to 12 months.
Ed Yardeni highlights that a surge in dividends and share buybacks is driving the current bull market:
Most importantly, during the current earnings season, US corporations continue to announce dividend increases and more share buybacks. Previously, I’ve shown that this corporate cash flow into the stock market–which totaled $2.1 trillion for the S&P 500 since stock prices bottomed during Q1-2009 through Q4-2012–has been driving the bull market since it began.
I have one concern: is this surge sustainable or was it precipitated by an increase in marginal tax rates for top income-earners and likely to slow along with earnings?
View chart at Dr. Ed's Blog: Dividends, Buybacks, & the Bull Market (excerpt).
TheMoneyIllusion highlights this common mistake by central banks:
Despite the fact that our mainstream textbooks tell us that low rates don’t mean easy money, most central bankers cannot shake the suspicion that low rates do mean easy money, and that the current relatively low rates are a danger to the economy. This irrational bias is driving policy failure in much of the world. Even central banks at the zero bound (like the Fed) are inhibited in their push for unconventional stimulus by this cognitive illusion.
Read more at TheMoneyIllusion.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard attacks euro-zone austerity:
Britain’s public debt was 260pc of GDP in 1816 at the end of near perma-wars: Seven Years War, American War of Independence, and the Napoleonic Wars. This was whittled down to 24pc over the next century by the magical compound effects of economic growth. The debt reached 220pc in 1945, the price for defeating fascism. This was certainly a drag on the post-War recovery, but it did not stop debt falling to 36pc by the mid-1990s.
Britain twice recovered from massive debt through a combination of growth and inflation — not necessarily in that order — but they had control of their own currency. The states of Europe are strait-jacketed by a currency dominated by the austerity-minded Bundesbank.
Read more at Debunking austerity claims makes no difference to Europe's monks and zealots – Telegraph Blogs.
Paul Krugman argues for a return of capital controls:
In the last decade America, too, experienced a huge housing bubble fed by foreign money, followed by a nasty hangover after the bubble burst. The damage was mitigated by the fact that we borrowed in our own currency, but it’s still our worst crisis since the 1930s.
Japan and China amassed more than $2 trillion in US Treasuries in their attempt to halt, or at least slow, appreciation of their currencies against the Dollar. US manufacturers suffered, both in domestic and export markets, laboring at a huge competitive disadvantage because of the artificial exchange rate.
Trade agreements should cap capital flows between countries, setting a limit on the net capital in/outflow in any one year and offsetting measures to be taken if the cap is exceeded.
Read more at Hot Money Blues – NYTimes.com.
