Author: Matthew G. Saroff

IMF Economist Compares US to Argentina and Russia

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Desmond Lachman, former deputy director of the International Monetary Fund’s Policy and Review Department writes an OP/ED in the Washington Post todaysays what I have been saying for some time, that we are not tossing out the incumbents who created the mess, and that we are treating an solvency crisis as a liquidity crisis.

Mr. Lachman, a fellow at the right wing American Enterprise Institute (!) basically says that both Paulson and Geithner are handling the situation in a manner consistent with the most corrupt 3rd world nations.

Your mouth to Barack Obama’s ear, dude.

New EU Scraps Net Neutrality

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It appears that the new EU telecommunications rules are likely to scrap network neutrality completely.

The big incumbent Telcos there are very much in support of this, because milking money out of their monopoly is really their only skill, same as in the good old USA, and the regulators believe that the market will cure everything, “This approach is backed by the European Commission, which argues that if consumers feel their content is somehow being compromised, they will switch to other providers.”

Because competition in such matters has worked so well in the most free market telco environment in the industrialized world, where the speeds are the slowest, and the rates are highest, and ISPs lie about their policies.

Tell Me How This is Not Fraud and Theft of Services

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It appears that the senior managers at AIG’s Paris division of AIG’s Financial Products, Banque AIG, wrote $234 billion in derivatives contracts so that they would likely be technically be in default if they left the firm:

The executives at Paris-based Banque AIG, Mauro Gabriele and James Shephard, have resigned in recent days but have agreed to stay on for a transition, according to people familiar with the matter. In the wake of their resignations, AIG must replace them to the satisfaction of French banking regulators.

If they don’t, French regulators may appoint their own designee to manage the bank — an outcome that could trigger defaults under the bank’s derivative contracts. The private contracts say that a regulator’s appointment of a manager constitutes a change in control, according to a person familiar with the matter; the provision is often included in derivative contracts where parties want to preserve a way out if something about their counterparties changes.

Seriously, this is fraud. They essentially cooked to books to maximize the possibility that, if they left, there was a real risk of the a technical default.

We need to start throwing these folks in jail by the hundreds, and not a “white-collar resort prison,” they should be going to a, “POUND ME IN THE ASS prison,” to quote Office Space.

Why Cap and Trade Sucks

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Because if there is a sign that a regulatory strategy is ill conceived, it is when you end up paying farmers not to grow crops, and this appears to be one of the new cash crops for the American farmers.

This is a fraud foisted on the American consumer and the environment, much like the construction of unneeded hydroelectric plants in China for carbon credits on the European cap and trade system is a fraud on the European consumer and the environment.

The solution, which is cheaper for the consumer, and keeps the Wall Street types from gaming the system, is the straight carbon tax.

Economics Update

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So, the US economy contracted at a revised 6.3% annual rate in the 4th quarter of 2008 and initial jobless claims rose to 652,000 from 640,000 last week, with continuing claims jumped to 5.56 million, another record.

Additionally, we saw New York City’s jobless rate jump by 1.2% in February, from 6.9% to 8.1%.

On the other hand, truck tonnage rose in February, which implies that the requirements for goods and services increased, and the 30 year fixed mortgage rates dropped again.

Meanwhile, in energy, retail gasoline broke $2/gal for the first time this year, and oil hit a 4 month high of $54.34/bbl.

In currency, the dollar rose today.

White House “Happy” that EFCA is Dead?

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I would offer the the caveat that one of the contributors to MSNBC’s “First Read” is Chuck Todd, who can be one of the stupidest muthf%$#ers in the White House press room,* but there is a report that the White House is “happy to have this debate out of the way” because, “sticking a finger in business’ eye wasn’t something the White House was looking forward to.”

This is about the most politically opportune time to do this, with the public attitude toward businesses being rather low, AIG is a symptom, not the trend.

I cannot for the life of me think of anyone in the White House who would even hold this opinion, except for economic adviser, and poster child for sex without partners, Lawrence Summers, who is on record saying that unions cause unemployment,† but even he isn’t stupid enough to mouth off to a reporter, or for that matter a co-worker, about this.

I’ll call bullsh%$ on this for now.

*Cases in point were his questions at the first two press conferences, would Obama veto something that doesn’t get any Republican votes in the interest of bipartisanship, and how Americans should sacrifice to address the financial meltdown (like millions of people out of work and losing their homes isn’t enough) because he does not understand the difference between a foreign war and a domestic economic downturn.
†Yeah, I know, with “Democrats” like him, who needs Republicans.

Jake DeSantis, Go Cheney Yourself

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Mr. Desantis used to work for AIG, but quit, and published his letter or resignation in the New York Times.

So, why am I down on the gentleman? Because anyone who writes such a self-important letter, then goes about having it published in the most influential publication in the United States, and wants us to feel sorry for him, despite the fact that, “I received a payment from A.I.G. amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes,” something in the range of $1.2 million pre-tax, is simply an asshole.

AIG F#@$ed Up Yet Another Perfectly Good Business

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This time, it’s International Lease Finance Corp. (IFLC), the largest aircraft leasing operation in the world, which was fabulously profitable when they bought it from Stephen Udvar-Hazy in 1990, and it looks like they are angling for a government bailout, at that’s the subtext that I read into the article.

Isn’t the idea of successes in their own financial niche moving into areas in which they have no clue such a wonderful idea?

Whiners

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Specifically the New York Times reporters covering the press conference:

This was Mr. Obama as more enervating than energizing, a reminder of the way he could be in his early days as a presidential candidate, before he became defined by rapturous crowds.

Hmmm…I wonder why they are so down on the press conference>

He showed his usual comfort with a wide array of subjects, even as he excluded the nation’s big newspapers from the questioning in favor of a more eclectic mix.

Oh my God! He did not ask a New York Times reporter a question. We are masters of the universe! How dare he!

What a bunch of self absorbed pratts.

Larry Summers in a Nutshell

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CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS, the New York Times, November 5, 1999:

“Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,” Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. “This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.”

And folks who got it right:

“I think we will look back in 10 years’ time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930’s is true in 2010,” said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. “I wasn’t around during the 1930’s or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980’s when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.”

Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, said that Congress had “seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes.”

“Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,” Mr. Wellstone said. “Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.”

So, I’m so glad that Lawrence Summers’ astonishing brilliance and foresight are at the disposal of the President of the United States of America.

Economics Update

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Well, we have some good news today, with both durable goods orders and new home sales up in February on a monthly basis, though on a year over year basis, durable goods are still down 22%, and home sales are still down 41% year over year, so it may mean nothing, or it may be, to quote paraphrase Churchill, the end of the beginning as opposed to the beginning of the end.

The spike in mortgage applications may reinforce this news, or it may just be a lot of people refinancing their mortgages.

Certainly with California home prices down 41% year over year, this end game is likely to to be ugly anyway.

In the mean time, in the world of government finance, the Fed has started buying US treasuries to further push down interest rates, and across the pond, a U.K. bond auction has failed for the first time in 7 years.

There were not enough buyers there.

In energy, oil was down slightly, and in currency, the dollar was mixed against other major currencies.

Senator Whitehouse Shows Us Why It’s Better to Elect a Democrat Than the Best Republican

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Case in point, Lincoln Chaffee, defeated for the Senate by Sheldon Whitehouse in 2006, and now Whitehouse is putting forward a bill to protect consumers from abusive credit card companies.

Among its provisions in his Consumer Credit Fairness Act:

  • Lenders (not just credit cards, but also payday loans, auto loans, layaway, and overdraft charges) would be prohibited from making claims in bankruptcy if their interestrate were more than the yeild of the 30 year bond interest rate +15%.
  • The interest rate would be figured including all charges and penalty fees.
  • Removal of the means test for bankruptcy that was included in the 2005 “screw the consumer” bankruptcy law.

Electing Democrats make a difference.

OK, I May Be Wrong About Geithner

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Kevin Drum just raised an interesting point about what Geithner has been doing so far

If, several weeks ago, you had charged a task force with figuring out how to successfully nationalize a big bank, what do you think they’d say you had to do? Three things, at least: (1) you have to figure out a widely acceptable way to value the toxic assets on bank balance sheets, (2) you have to set up a fair and consistent test for evaluating bank solvency based on those values, and (3) you need to make sure you have the legal authority to take over a huge, multinational financial conglomerate in an orderly way. Is it just a coincidence that these are precisely the things Tim Geithner has set in motion over the past month? I wonder.

It’s an interesting point, and just today, while testifying before Congress, Geithner called for the power to place large bank holding companies into government receivership, backed up by Ben Bernanke.

So Mr. Drum’s thought that recent activities of Geithner and Bernanke, and by extension President Obama being a ploy is a possibility, though but I’m inclined to agree with Yves Smith the proprietoress of Naked Capitalism, whose beat is economics, and who knows more about economics, and the major players the economic community, than either Drum or me, and she thinks that the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS)already has the authority to place AIG in receivership, and already answers to him.

Additionally, she notes that his request for additional power does not include any request for a receivership protocol, and concludes that this request is actually an attempt to give him more power to shovel more taxpayer dollars to the financial industry.

I would also note that Geithner, and his mentor, Larry Summers, have a history that stretches back decades, and there is nothing in what they have done, or are doing now, which would indicate that they would be inclined to do this…ever!

So, while Kevin Drum has an interesting wheels within wheels theory, I am more inclined to go with Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, and simply say that Geithner’s plan is robbing US taxpayers.

But that’s my gut, and my sense that past is prologue.

The Upside of the Financial Meltdown: Mindless Imprisonment Edition

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It looks like the financial meltdown, and the reduction in tax revenues for local and state authorities have lead to a reevaluation of incarceration policies, which have led the US to have the largest prison population of any society in history: (Gulag nation)

For nearly three decades, most U.S. states have dealt with lawbreakers in two ways: Lock more of them up for longer periods, and build more prisons to hold them. Now many governments, out of money and buried under mounting prison costs, are reversing many of those policies and practices.

Some states, like Colorado and Nevada, are closing prisons. Others, like Kansas and New Jersey, have replaced jail time with community programs or other sanctions for people who violate parole. Kentucky lawmakers passed a bill this month that enhances the credits some inmates can earn toward release.

Obviously, it’s depressing that it’s taken a fiscal crisis to interject some sanity on the entire issue of over imprisoning our population, but I’ll take what I can get.

Hopefully this can make a dent in the “prison-industrial complex.”

Political Scabbing and Management Threats Against Labor

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So Arlen Spector has decided to cave, again, because of his fears of being primaried, and he has announced that he will vote against cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act, and Federal Express has said that it will cancel its contract to purchase Boeing aircraft if the EFCA passes.

I am not surprised at Spector, who has never seen a principled stance that he couldn’t weasel of, though I am surprised that FedEx, which has a long history of virulent and nasty anti-union activity, put a clause in their aircraft purchase contract that allowed them to cancel if unionizing there gets easier,* is a surprise.

Needless to say, if I need to send anything, I will use the use the US Post Office or UPS, rather than those C*cks*ck*rs.

*The EFCA would change how FedEx organizes, moving it from the National Railway Labor Act to the National Labor Relations Act, which means that parts of the company could unionize, as opposed to the whole company at once.