Category: Economics – General

Meltdown continues at the Oz

John Quiggin70 Comments

The Australian has long since ceased to be a serious newspaper. Its opinion pages are devoted to recycling talking points from the US-centred rightwing parallel universe (some more serious conservatives have described it as the “conservative cocoon”, a term coined by conservative blogger Ross Douthat, recently elaborated here). Its political writers, who straddle the gap between news and commentary have long been in the tank for the conservative parties or for particular conservative politicians. Its war on science (Tim Lambert is now up to instalment XXII and he’s not comprehensive) has long passed beyond the point of absurdity.

Even so, I don’t think I’ve seen a front page headline as brazenly defiant of the facts as today’s. Having claimed, falsely, that the Reserve Bank opposed the government’s deposit guarantee, and been put down, mildly but firmly, by RBA Governor Glenn Stevens, the Oz doubles down and announces a “backflip” on the basis of the marginal adjustments discussed here yesterday.

For the correct story, you have to go the Fin (paywalled unfortunately). While the Fin is just as rightwing as the Oz on most issues, its readership consists primarily of businesspeople who need accurate information, not delusional rightwingers who need their prejudices confirmed. From the Fin it is clear that the Bank pushed for an unlimited guarantee (for much the same reasons as given here) and that it was Treasury that initially wanted the silly $20 000 limit.

The Oz is now essentially worthless as a source of information. Some individual journalists are still pretty good, and articles with their bylines are worth reading. But if their weather report predicted sunshine, I’d pack an umbrella, just in case.

Update The Oz goes for the trifecta, despite their claim that the RBA opposed an unlimited guarantee now being denied outright by both Glenn Stevens and Ken Henry. They have a document showing that the RBA wants to charge wholesale depositors directly for the guarantee and using the term “cap” to describe the amount that would be used to distinguish between wholesale and retail. This kind of ex post tweak is unsurprising, but still news and if the Oz had stuck to that a couple of days ago, they (and the Opposition) would be in less trouble now. Instead they have beaten it up into a full-scale war with the Government, Treasury and RBA which is going to cost them a lot in the long run.

To restate the point, the original announcement said nothing (at least nothing I saw) to indicate that the government guarantee would be free, and deposit insurance schemes normally involve a premium. In due course, I expect that the government will charge the protected institutions for the guarantee. It’s turned out to be necessary to move more quickly at the wholesale level, but this is a step in the right direction. The silly pointscoring of the Opposition (and its representatives in the press) is grossly irresponsible.

Asset price bubbles

John Quiggin30 Comments

As the various asset price bubbles of the past decades or so inflated, and in some cases burst, there was vigorous debate about what, if anything should be done about them. The two main camps were those who advocated doing nothing, on the grounds that monetary policy should be focused solely on inflation, and those who thought that the settings of monetary policy should take asset prices into account. The first group won the debate at the time, at least as far as actual policy was concerned, with consequences we can all see. Most proponents of the do-nothing viewpoint have conceded defeat

In a paper in the (institutionalist) Journal of Economic Issues, which came out in 2006, Stephen Bell and I took a different view of the debate. We argued that there was little scope to respond to asset bubbles by changing the settings of existing monetary policy instruments, and that “any serious attempt to stabilize financial market outcomes must involve at least a partial reversal of deregulation.” Among other things, we pointed out the fact that given a presumption in favour of financial innovation, asset prices bubbles were inevitable, and that ‘In the absence of a severe failure in the financial system of the United States, it seems unlikely that ideas of a ‘new global financial architecture’ will ever be much more than ideas.’

You can read the full paper
Bell, S. and Quiggin, J. (2006), ‘Asset price instability and policy responses: The legacy of liberalization’, Journal of Economic Issues, XL(3), 629-49.

here

Krugman wins Economics Nobel

John Quiggin86 Comments

Paul Krugman has been awarded the 2008 Nobel prize for economics[1]. The rules of the prize, honoured more in the breach than in the observance in economics, say that it is supposed to be given for a specific discovery, and Krugman is cited for his groundbreaking work in the economics of location done from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.

The reality, though, is that economics prizes are awarded for careers. Krugman’s early work put him on the list of likely Nobelists, but his career took an unusual turn around the time of the 2000 election campaign. While he has still been active in academic research, Krugman’s career for the last eight years or more has been dominated by his struggle (initially a very lonely one) against the lies of the Bush Administration, its supporters and enablers. Undoubtedly, the award of the prize in this of all years, reflects an appreciation of this work on behalf of truth in economics and politics more generally.[2]

The crew at Crooked Timber, of which I’m part, have a more parochial reason for cheering this outcome. Paul has generously agreed to take a part in a CT seminar on the work of Charles Stross, which should be published in the next month or so. Without giving too much away, there are some Nobel-related insights in his contribution.

fn1. Strictly speaking, the Bank of Sweden prize in Economic Sciences in honour of Alfred Nobel, or something like that.
fn2. Doubtless, Republicans will complain about being implicitly identified, yet again, as enemies of science and of truth. But they’ve made their bed and must lie in it (in both senses of the word).

We are all socialists now

John Quiggin47 Comments

A couple of days ago, I thought my call for full-scale nationalisation of the banking sector would remain beyond the pale of political acceptability for at least a week. But in today’s paper I read the following, very sensible assessment

Inevitably, the US, Britain and Europe are going to end up with nationalised banking systems in one form or another, and with governments guaranteeing not only their deposits but probably all their liabilities. The nationalisation will be a temporary emergency measure. But for some time at least the systemically important banks effectively are going to be public utilities and must be regulated accordingly.

This taxpayer rescue of banking systems opens up a new and potentially very important avenue for unfreezing bank lending and restoring the flow of credit. If governments effectively control the banks, what is to stop them from demanding that they start lending again?

And what wild-eyed socialist wrote this? Alan Wood in the Australian.

Meanwhile, calls for a guarantee of bank deposits are gaining force.

Of course, none of this constitutes a shift to socialism in any meaningful sense of the term. But it does mean, for quite some time to come, the end of neoliberalism (or free-market liberalism or whatever you want to call the set of ideas centred on the proposition that markets can do a better job than governments in managing risks of all kinds). The question of what will replace neoliberalism has come up so suddenly, and in such chaotic circumstances, that no-one has a clear answer. I’m confident that the response must be broadly social democratic, but there are a lot of details that need to be filled in.

Note The spam filter has been rejecting comments because of the ci*lis problem in the post title. I’ve fixed that, but commenters will probably need to asterisk the S word (Soci*lism) to avoid the filter.

State capitalism on the instalment plan

John Quiggin67 Comments

With the financial meltdown accelerating in the wake of the US bailout, and the recognition that many more failing banks will have to be nationalized, the British government is moving to get ahead of the game by offering equity injections across the board. But already this seems inadequate. Now that the taboo on nationalization has been broken, wouldn’t it make better sense to for the UK (and others) to nationalize the whole sector? With full control, governments could then ensure the resumption of interbank lending at least among their own banks. This would provide a feasible basis for co-operative moves to re-establish international markets.

For this week at least, such an idea is beyond the range of political acceptability. But it’s striking to look back a month and realise that in that period the US government has become the main mortgage lender, the guarantor of the short term money market, the effective owner of the world’s largest insurance company, the potential future owner of much of the banking sector and now the purchaser of last resort for commercial paper. Since the reluctance of banks to buy commercial paper must reflect a significant probability of default, it seems inevitable that some of this commercial paper will end up being converted into claims on the assets of defaulting issuers, extending the scope of nationalisation beyond the finance sector and into business in general.

This kind of instalment-plan nationalisation seems to offer the worst of all worlds. At some point, a more systematic approach will have to be adopted, and given the rate at which markets are plummeting, the sooner that point comes the better. This isn’t the return of socialism, but it certainly looks like the end of the kind of financial capitalism that has prevailed for the last few decades.

Iceland

John Quiggin9 Comments

A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece in the Fin about the precarious economic situation in Iceland, a small country with a massive current account deficit. Now it appears, the full-scale implosion I talked about has come to pass. Rather startlingly, Iceland is looking to Russia for a bailout. Among the implications noted by Felix Salmon, the fall of the S&P index below the 1000 level it first reached back in 1997.

As I say in the article, Australia is much less vulnerable than Iceland. Still, it is now clear that the consenting adults theory of current account deficits has its limits. We’ll just have to hope that we are within those limits, and that we can turn the recent trade surplus into the beginning of a sustained reduction in our net foreign debt.

The decline of the dollar

John Quiggin45 Comments

So many bizarre things are happening in global financial markets that it’s impossible even to keep up with the critical events (today for example, more European countries guarantee deposits, 1 per cent cut in interest rates, US Fed starts buying commercial paper), so I’ll focus on one thing that has struck me. A few months ago, the Australian dollar was close to parity with the US. Since then it’s become apparent that the US financial sector is essentially insolvent, and that the US government is relying on the printing press to meet its obligations, while, by any reasonable standard of comparison, the Australian economy looks remarkably sound. So, in their infinite wisdom the financial markets have sold off the Australian dollar (as of today, it’s worth about $US0.72).

In the current environment, a big devaluation is probably beneficial for the Australian economy. It more than offsets the decline in ($US-denominated) commodity prices we’ve seen so far.

Still, on any reasonable assessment, the movement in the market exchange rate is plain crazy. At this point, the claim (essential to the efficienct markets hypothesis) that market-determined asset prices represent the best available estimate of future values, and therefore that capital markets are the best available method of allocating scarce resources for investment can only be sustained on the basis of the kind of dogmatic belief that asserts that humans and dinosaurs shared the earth 6000 years ago.