The Vanishing American Consumer and the Coming Trade War
by ilene - July 10th, 2010 10:29 pm
The Vanishing American Consumer and the Coming Trade War
Courtesy of Robert Reich
President Obama has vowed to double U.S. exports within the next five years. That’s because exports are critical for rebooting the American economy. It’s clear American consumers can’t get the economy going on their own. They can’t restart the jobs machine. They’ve run out of money and credit.
It’s not just that one out of four Americans is unemployed or underemployed (working part-time, overqualified, or at a lower wage than before). More significantly, the Great Recession burst the housing bubble that had let American consumers turn their homes into ATMs. Now the cash machines are closed.
So the Administration figures foreign consumers will have to fill the gap.
Problem is, most other economies also relied on American consumers. Remember the trade gap? Americans used to be the world’s biggest and most reliable customers – sucking in high-tech gadgets assembled in China, car parts from Japan, shirts and shoes from Southeast Asia, and precision instruments from Germany.
With American consumers pulling back, these other economies have also been slowing down. Their unemployment is rising.
Last week I attended a conference with global business executives. When I asked them where they expected to find new customers to replace Americans who are pulling back, they all said China and India and quoted me the same number: 800 million new middle-class consumers from these and other fast-developing countries over the next decade.
Yes, but. As of now China and India are still relying on net exports to fuel their growth. Even if you think their middle classes will eventually become so big and rich they can buy everything these nations will be able to produce, that doesn’t mean they’ll also buy what the rest of the world produces.
Yes, global companies will do wonderfully well. General Motors is well on the way to selling more cars in China than it does in the U.S. But American workers won’t get the jobs, and nor will workers in Europe, Japan, or the rest of the world. GM makes the cars it sells to Chinese consumers in China.
Meanwhile, the productive capacities of China and India will continue to grow: More workers, more factories, more high-tech equipment, more offices. The buying power of their middle classes will have to expand rapidly just to catch up with what these nations will be able…
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DiggObama’s Address to the Nation: A Missed Opportunity to Tell It Like It Is
by ilene - June 16th, 2010 9:19 pm
Obama’s Address to the Nation: A Missed Opportunity to Tell It Like It Is
Courtesy of Robert Reich
With the sound on, his words hung in the air with all the force of a fundraiser for your local public access TV station. Everything seemed to be in the passive tense. He had authorized deepwater drilling because he “was assured” it was safe. But who assured him? How does he feel about being so brazenly misled? He said he wanted to “understand” why that was mistaken. Understand? He’s the President of the United States and it was a major decision. Isn’t he determined to find out how his advisors could have been so terribly wrong?
Tomorrow he’s “informing” the president of BP of BP’s financial obligations. “Informing” is what you do when you phone the newspaper to tell them it wasn’t delivered today. Why not “directing” or “ordering?”
The President distinguished what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico from a tornado or hurricane because they are over quickly while the leak is an ongoing crisis, lasting many weeks and perhaps months more. He likened it to an “epidemic.” But the real difference has nothing to do with time. Tornadoes and hurricanes are natural disasters. Epidemics occur because germs mutate and spread. The spill occurred because of the recklessness and ruthlessness of a giant oil company in pursuit of profit.
And what has the nation learned from all this? The same lesson we’ve known for decades, according to the President. We must end our dependence on oil. But if we’ve known this for decades, why haven’t we done anything about it? The President endorsed the cap-and-trade bill that emerged from the House (without calling it cap-and-trade) but didn’t call for the only thing that may actually work: a tax on carbon.
I’m a fan of Barack Obama. I campaigned for him and I believe in him. I think he has a first-class temperament. I have been deeply moved and startled by his ability to speak about the nation’s most intractable problems. But he failed tonight to rise to the occasion. Is it because he’s not getting good advice, or because he’s psychologically incapable of expressing the moral outrage the nation feels?
Or is it something deeper?
Whether it’s Wall Street or health insurers or oil companies, we are approaching a turning point as a nation. The top executives…
Closing Tax Loopholes for Billionaires: A Billionaire Responds
by ilene - June 2nd, 2010 12:37 am
Closing Tax Loopholes for Billionaires: A Billionaire Responds
Courtesy of Robert Reich
The following from David Postman, who says he’s writing for Paul Allen:
“I work for Paul Allen. I’m writing to point out errors in your recent piece, ‘Closing Tax Loopholes for Billionaires.’ It is absolutely incorrect to say that Mr. Allen is ‘opposed to closing a tax loophole that allows hedge-fund and private equity managers to treat their earnings as capital gains.’”
“We have asked lawmakers to clarify their intent of the proposed language to make clear that it does not include individual investors like Mr. Allen, who are purely investing, not offering advice or management services. Democrats have been clear that they did not intend to include individual investors. We believe that individual investors – not hedge funds or private equity — should be able to continue to receive capital gains investment treatment.”
My apologies to Mr. Allen if I misstated his purpose in seeking to influence pending legislation. Evidently his only goal is to continue to pay 15 percent of his earnings in federal taxes on the grounds that he is an investor rather than an advisor.
Forgive me, though, if I still have doubts about the wisdom of treating his earnings this way. One of the most basic principles of taxation is known as “tax equity,” whereby two people drawing the same income should be treated the same for tax purposes.
Assume that Mr. Allen earns $200 million this year from his investments. (This is a conservative estimate since Mr. Allen’s personal wealth is estimated to be $13.5 billion, with earnings also from Vulcan Inc., his private asset management company, and a multi-billion dollar investment portfolio including stakes in Digeo, Kiha Software, real estate holdings, and more than 40 other technology, media, and content companies. Allen also owns three professional sports teams: the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League, the Portland Trail Blazers of theNational Basketball Association, and the Seattle Sounders FCfranchise in Major League Soccer.)
Mr. Allen evidently believes most or all of this income should be taxed at 15 percent.
But suppose a high-tech entrepreneur (as Mr. Allen used to be) earns $200 million in income this year from a $10 million salary and $190 million bonus. The salary and bonus would be…
Obama’s Regulatory Brain
by ilene - May 24th, 2010 3:17 pm
Introduction by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge:
We have long claimed that any financial reform, determined by the Senator from Countrywide and the Rep from Fannie (thank you Cliff Asness), is worthless, and any debate over it is completely useless as it will achieve absolutely nothing. Sure, it fills blog pages and editorials but at the end of the day, the only thing that can save the financial system is, paradoxically, its destruction. There are just too many vested interests in the status quo, that absent a full blown implosion and subsequent reset of the system, it is all just smoke and mirrors. Luckily D-Day is approaching. We present an opinion by Robert Reich which validates our view that FinReg, and any debate thereof, is a joke. Robert Reich On Why The Finance Bill Won’t Do Anything.
Obama’s Regulatory Brain
Courtesy of Robert Reich
The most important thing to know about the 1,500 page financial reform bill passed by the Senate last week — now on he way to being reconciled with the House bill — is that it’s regulatory. If does nothing to change the structure of Wall Street.
The bill omits two critical ideas for changing the structure of Wall Street’s biggest banks so they won’t cause more trouble in the future, and leaves a third idea in limbo. The White House doesn’t support any of them.
First, although the Senate bill seeks to avoid the “too big to fail” problem by pushing failing banks into an “orderly” bankruptcy-type process, this regulatory approach isn’t enough. The Senate roundly rejected an amendment that would have broken up the biggest banks by imposing caps on the deposits they could hold and their capital assets.
You do not have to be an algorithm-wielding Wall Street whizz-kid to understand that the best way to prevent a bank from becoming too big to fail is preventing it from becoming too big in the first place. The size of Wall Street’s five giants already equals a large percentage of America’s gross domestic product.
That makes them too big to fail almost by definition, because if one or two get into trouble – as they did in 2008 – their demise would shake the foundations of the financial system, even if there were an “orderly” way to liquidate them. Because traders and investors know they are too big…
The White House Should Stop Pandering to the Street and Support Three Critical Banking Reforms
by ilene - May 8th, 2010 6:07 pm
The White House Should Stop Pandering to the Street and Support Three Critical Banking Reforms
Courtesy of Robert Reich
The White House opposes three important financial reforms that have drawn bi-partisan support in the Senate. It should reverse course.
1. Require the Fed to disclose the entities it lends to. There’s no reason the public should be kept in the dark about who benefits when the Fed departs from its traditional interest-setting role and chooses to provide credit (or in Fed parlance, “open its discount window”) to particular companies or entities. To the contrary, a well-functioning capital market and a well-functioning democracy depend on full disclosure about who the Fed picks for such special treatment and why.
Senator Bernard Sanders, Independent of Vermont, pushed an amendment requiring that the Fed be subject to a public audit that reveals which specific companies and entities the Fed is supporting with extra loans. The measure drew support on both sides of the aisle, including conservative Republicans like David Vitter of Louisiana. But Sanders’s amendment met stiff opposition from the White House and the Fed. Both argued that it would undermine the Fed’s independence. That’s a red herring. Fed’s independence is important when it comes to basic decisions about monetary policy and short-term interest rates, but not about which companies and entities get special treatment.
Bowing to the pressure, Sanders has agreed to alter his proposal. He says his new amendment would still force the Fed to disclose many of its steps to bail out banks. But what why shouldn’t all of the Fed’s special machinations be disclosed? And why limit disclosure only to the banks that the Fed supports and not other firms or entities? Sanders shouldn’t retreat on this.
2. Require big banks to spin off their derivative businesses. Derivatives got us into the mess and Wall Street’s biggest banks are still wielding them like giant poker games. That’s because they’re enormously lucrative for the banks. But they’re also dangerous to the economy because bad bets can lead to meltdowns, especially if they’re backed only by flimsy promises to pay up rather than real capital. The credit default swap business continues to be out of control. To this date, no one knows how big it is, where it is, and who has promised what.
Senator Blanche Lincoln, Democrat of Arkansas, has pushed an…
Apple Isn’t the Problem. Wall Street’s Big Banks are the Problem.
by ilene - May 8th, 2010 1:47 pm
Yellow highlighting mine, reminds me of my student days, only neater. – Ilene
Apple Isn’t the Problem. Wall Street’s Big Banks are the Problem.
Courtesy of Robert Reich
Why is the Federal Trade Commission threatening Apple with a possible lawsuit for abusing its economic power, but not even raising an eyebrow about the huge and growing economic (and political) muscle of JP Morgan Chase or any of the other four remaining giant banks on Wall Street?
Our future well being depends more on people like Steve Jobs who invent real products that can improve our lives, than it does on people like Jamie Dimon who invent financial products that do little other than threaten our economy.
Apple’s supposed sin was to tell software developers that if they want to make apps for iPhones and iPads they have to use Apple programming tools. No more outside tools (like Adobe’s Flash format) that can run on rival devices like Google’s Android phones and RIM’s BlackBerrys.
What’s wrong with that? Apple says it’s necessary to maintain quality. If consumers disagree they can buy platforms elsewhere. Apple was the world’s #3 smartphone supplier in 2009, with 16.2 percent of worldwide market share. RIM was #2, with 18.8 percent. Google isn’t exactly a wallflower. These and other firms are innovating like mad, as are tens of thousands of independent developers. If Apple’s decision reduces the number of future apps that can run on its products, Apple will suffer and presumably change its mind.
On the other hand, the four largest U.S. financial institutions are so big and the rest of the economy so dependent on them that if one of them makes a bad decision it can take us all down. Between them they hold more than $7 trillion in assets, over half the size of the entire U.S. economy.
So why is the FTC nosing around Apple and not around Wall Street? Because the Federal Trade Commission Act allows the agency to stop “unfair methods of competition” almost anywhere in the economy except in the financial sector. Banks are explicitly excluded.
Another reason for financial reform.
And how are we doing on that front? Senate Dems and Republicans have just agreed to jettison a $50 billion fund in the financial reform bill that would have been used to wind down operations of a failing bank. Republicans had created a smokescreen by…
Break Up The Banks
by ilene - April 6th, 2010 2:22 am
Break Up The Banks
Courtesy of Robert Reich
A fight is brewing in Washington – or, at the least, it ought to be brewing – over whether to put limits on the size of financial entities in order that none becomes “too big to fail” in a future financial crisis.
Some background: The big banks that got federal bailouts, as well as their supporters in the Administration and on the Hill, repeatedly say much of the cost of the giant taxpayer-funded bailout has already been repaid to the federal government by the banks that were bailed out. Hence, the actual cost of the bailout, they argue, is a small fraction of the $700 billion Congress appropriated.
True, but the apologists for the bailout leave out one gargantuan cost — the damage to the economy, which we’re still living with (witness the latest unemployment figures). Leave it to the Brits to calculate this. Andrew Haldane, Bank of England’s Financial Stability Director, figures the financial crisis brought on by irresponsible bankers and regulators has cost the world economy about $4 trillion so far.
So while the bailout itself is gradually being repaid (don’t hold your breath until AIG and GM repay, by the way), the cost of the failures that made the bailout necessary totals vast multiples of that.
Needless to say, the danger of an even bigger cost in coming years continues to grow because we still don’t have a new law to prevent what happened from happening again. In fact, now that they know for sure they’ll be bailed out, Wall Street banks – and those who lend to them or invest in them – have every incentive to take even bigger risks. In effect, taxpayers are implicitly subsidizing them to do so. (Haldane figures the value of that implicit subsidy to be about $60 billion a year for each big bank.)
Congress and the White House tell us not to worry because financial reform legislation will contain what’s called a “resolution” mechanism allowing regulators to wind down any big bank that gets into trouble. (Think bankruptcy with more safeguards against runs by bank by creditors wanting to get their money out right away.) By virtue of this resolution authority, they say, future bank creditors will have to price in the possibility of the bank being allowed to fail. Hence, the implicit subsidy for…
Reich Levels Broadside at Greenspan, Rubin, and Summers, and Phony Financial Reform
by ilene - April 4th, 2010 8:43 pm
I posted this article earlier, but now Jesse writes a great intro. – Ilene
Reich Levels Broadside at Greenspan, Rubin, and Summers, and Phony Financial Reform
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
Robert Reich is exactly correct. Back in 1999 I started questioning what Robert Rubin might have said to Alan Greenspan in a private meeting in 1997 to reverse his policy bias after his famous "irrational exuberance" speech and embrace the monetary easing that led to the tech bubble, and to join the fight against regulation, resulting in the repeal of Glass-Steagall in which the Fed was absolutely instrumental.
PBS Frontline – The Warning: The Roots of the Financial Crisis
This was no accident, in my opinion. This was no misplaced belief in ‘the efficient market hypothesis.’ This was not the culmination of the neo-liberal fascination with a mythology of human nature that would make Rousseau blush in its unthinking naiveté. And for Greenspan to say now, I am sorry, I guess I was mistaken, is more prevarication from the master dissembler.
There were plenty of enablers to this financial fraud. There always are many more people who do not act out of principle, or inside involvement and knowledge, but out of their own selfish bias and greed or craven fear that compels them to ‘go with the flow.’
And there is little better example of this than the many people who are even now turning a willful eye away from the blatant government manipulation of the stock and commodity markets, in particular the silver market. They do not wish to believe it, so they ignore it, and even ridicule it depending on how deeply it affects their personal interests. But the overall body of evidence is compelling enough to provoke further investigation, and the refusal to allow audits and independent investigation starts to become an overwhelming sign of a coverup. I am not saying that it is correct, or that I know something, but I am saying to not investigate it thoroughly and to air all the details, is highly suspicious and not in the interests of the truth. I did not know, for example, that Madoff was conducting a Ponzi scheme, but the indications were all there and a simple investigation and disclosure would have revealed the truth, one way or the other.
"Fiat justitia ruat caelum." Let justice be done though the heaven’s fall. This is the principle…
No Jobs Recovery
by ilene - April 4th, 2010 1:06 am
No Jobs Recovery
Courtesy of Robert Reich
The US economy added 162,000 jobs in March. Great news until you look more closely. In March, the federal government began hiring census takers big time. These are six-month temp jobs, and they tell us nothing about underlying trends in the labor market. It’s hard to gauge precisely how many were hired — probably between 100,000 and 140,000, although some estimates put the hiring as low as 48,000. Almost a million census workers will need to be hired over the next few months. Subtract these, and today’s job numbers are good but nothing to write home about.
There are some positive signs. Manufacturing payrolls expanded a bit, heath care employers added 27,000 jobs, and about 40,000 private-sector temp jobs were added. But payrolls continue to be slashed in financial services and the information industry.
Two big things to bear in mind:
First, government spending on last year’s giant stimulus is still near its peak, and the Fed continues to hold down interest rates. Without these props, it’s far from clear we’d have any job growth at all.
Second, since the start of the Great Recession, the economy has lost 8.4 million jobs and failed to create another 2.7 million needed just to keep up with population growth. That means we’re more than 11 million in the hole right now. And that hole keeps deepening every month we fail to add at least 150,000 new jobs, again reflecting population growth.
A census-taking job is better than no job, but it’s no substitute for the real thing.
Bottom line: This is no jobs recovery.
***
CORRECTION: In my March 30 posting, “Fraud on the Street,” I stated that a whistle-blower who’d alerted Ernst & Young to fraud had been fired by Ernst & Young. It’s actually worse than that. The whistle blower was from Lehman Brothers itself, and he was fired by Lehman when he tried to blow the whistle. Apologies to Ernst & Young. Even bigger condemnation of Lehman.
The Fed in Hot Water
by ilene - April 1st, 2010 6:18 pm
Don’t you think the Fed is the last quasi-private-government-who-knows-what agency that should be given greater authority to do anything? Geez. – Ilene
The Fed in Hot Water
Courtesy of Robert Reich
The Fed has finally came clean. It now admits it bailed out Bear Stearns – taking on tens of billions of dollars of the bank’s bad loans – in order to smooth Bear Stearns’ takeover by JPMorgan Chase. The secret Fed bailout came months before Congress authorized the government to spend up to $700 billion of taxpayer dollars bailing out the banks, even months before Lehman Brothers collapsed. The Fed also took on billions of dollars worth of AIG securities, also before the official government-sanctioned bailout.
The losses from those deals still total tens of billions, and taxpayers are ultimately on the hook. But the public never knew. There was no congressional oversight. It was all done behind closed doors. And the New York Fed – then run by Tim Geithner – was very much in the center of the action.
This raises three issues.
First, only Congress is supposed to risk taxpayer dollars. The Fed is not part of the legislative branch. Its secret deals, announced almost two years after they were done, violate the democratic process, if not the Constitution itself. Thomas Jefferson put a stop to Alexander Hamilton’s idea of a powerful central bank out of fear it would be unaccountable to the public. The Fed has just proven Jefferson’s point.
Second, if the Fed can secretly bail out big banks, the problem of “moral hazard” – bankers taking irresponsible risks because they know they’ll be rescued – is far greater than anyone assumed after Congress and the Bush and Obama administrations bailed out the banks. Big banks will always be too big to fail because they know the Fed will secretly back them up if they get into trouble, even if Congress won’t do it openly.
Third, the announcement throws a monkey wrench into the financial reform bill now on Capitol Hill, which gives the Fed additional authority by, for example, creating a consumer protection bureau inside it. Only yesterday, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) blasted the Dodd bill for expanding the Fed’s authority “even as it remains shrouded in secrecy.”
The Fed has a big problem. It acts in secret. That makes it an odd duck in a democracy. As long as…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
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