MacroEconomic Malpractice

If the U.S. economy was a patient, I’m sure we all would be talking medical malpractice by now. After having 8 years of nothing to lecture on during the Clinton years other than, yes Keynesian economics works, we are now on our 9th year of wtf? (Feel sorry for my poor undergrads.) We’re still dealing with the spinning of the complete failure of Voodoo Economics, Trickle-down economics, Reaganomics or Supply Side economics from the free spending, tax dollar giveaway as success story with no real point other than supporting faith based economic hypotheses and the rights of the ultrarich to stay that way in to something it was not. I simply cannot believe that any REAL democratic administration with some roots in the Clinton years could possibly be choosing to continue the failed policies of the right.

So, since I’ve been on a populist rant over Wall Street Bonuses, let me just fuel the fire some more with this little piece in the Washington Post website today with the unsurprising title “Bailout Overseer Says Banks Misused TARP Funds”. No kidding cupcake. Why do you suppose the same risk happy folks that got their bonuses last year are getting big ones this year? We might as well funded a national road trip to Vegas.

Many of the banks that got federal aid to support increased lending have instead used some of the money to make investments, repay debts or buy other banks, according to a new report from the special inspector general overseeing the government’s financial rescue program.

The report, which will be published Monday, surveyed 360 banks that got money through the end of January and found that 110 had invested at least some of it, that 52 had repaid debts and that 15 had used funds to buy other banks.

So, we’re basically funding a real time game of monopoly. Okay, Republicans, let me just explain this to you ONE more time. MONOPOLY is the antithesis of market capitalism. It isn’t Socialism. Socialism is NOT an economic concept any more than GOD is a Buddhist one. It’s the difference between, I buy houses in Houston and I buy All the houses in Houston. We actually prove markets are efficiently working by comparing competitive markets to centrally planned ones and find the same result when they are. However, that’s IFF (if and only if) things in both circumstances are perfect (which they NEVER are). We live in a land of frictions and 30 years of research shows that we’ve just about got as much chance of having the Pure Capitalist dream as we do the Pure Marxist dream. Zip, Zilch, nada, no way! Our lives our lived in imperfect markets where government sometimes steps in to make things worse, and some times steps in to make things better. We’re basically in the search for the middle path.

Right now, we’re funding and sustaining a financial market structure that perpetuates extraordinary profits for the capital owners, less products available to the market, and higher prices for every one. It is also well-researched that bigger institutions do not bring efficiencies of scale to the market so how is this a good thing? Just pick up any basic microeconomics book and study market structures. The bottom line is a welfare loss for the market as resources will be inefficiently used, quantities will be reduced, prices will be higher, and the demand side of the market will experience a loss of welfare. (Sorry, I keep having to remind myself I have the summer away from theory, but I’m an old dog and that’s a new trick for me.) The empirics on this have supported these theories for hundreds of years!

So, here are some details of your bailout dollars at work.

The Treasury has required 21 of the nation’s largest banks to file public reports each month showing the dollar volume of their new lending.

The government so far has invested more than $200 billion in more than 600 banks under a program that began in October with investments in nine of the largest banks. Some banks have started to repay the aid even as others continue to apply for it.

Officials said the program intended to increase the capital reserves of healthy banks, allowing them to make more loans. From the beginning, however, the government invested in troubled banks — most prominently Citigroup — that had publicly announced intentions to reduce lending.

The government has also used the money to encourage mergers, such as Bank of America‘s acquisition of Merrill Lynch and PNC’s deal for National City.

The report provides the most comprehensive look to date at how banks have used the money, based on voluntary responses to a March survey. Banks were asked to describe how they used the money, but they were not asked to break down the amounts.

One response, which the report described as typical, said the money had been used “to make loans to credit worthy customers, and to facilitate resolution of problem assets on our books.”

So, have we experienced any policy change on this front? Hell, no! We just keep playing on as the cheap source of money in Merger and Acquisition land. Warren Buffet managed to get in on this at a better than market rate of return. What about us? Well, that depends on when they banks tell us we can cash in our chits. Can you imagine going to a poker game and the dealer tells you at what point you can cash out? Welcome, to poker, Wall Street and K Street Style. Read the report here via NPR.

Meanwhile, over in the wing of the White House in charge of overly rosy scenarios, we have glossed over budget woes. The AP reports that the White House is putting off its release of the budget update. I can ascribe a bunch of motives to this one and most of them come under the heading of nefarious.

The White House is being forced to acknowledge the wide gap between its once-upbeat predictions about the economy and today’s bleak landscape.

The administration’s annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama’s budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his signature health care and global-warming proposals through Congress.

The release of the update – usually scheduled for mid-July – has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town on its August 7 summer recess.

The administration is pressing for votes before then on its $1 trillion health care initiative, which lawmakers are arguing over how to finance.

The White House budget director, Peter Orszag, said on Sunday that the administration believes the “chances are high” of getting a health care bill by then. But new analyses showing runaway costs are jeopardizing Senate passage.

“Instead of a dream, this routine report could be a nightmare,” Tony Fratto, a former Treasury Department official and White House spokesman under President George W. Bush, said of the delayed budget update. “There are some things that can’t be escaped.”

So, we’ve had plunging economic indicators since then, the White House is trying to push through a Health Care plan that will enrich third party payers. Try studying that market structure for the components of efficiencyand welfare. Buyers and Sellers in markets with third party payers (like insurance companies, real estate brokers, and stock brokers) both get screwed! Why are we perpetuating market inefficiencies and frictions? I have to say it’s the K Street gang because there is no good economic reason for it.

Standard & Poor’s chief economist David Wyss said part of the problem with the administration’s earlier numbers is that “they were just stale,” essentially put together by budget number-crunchers at the end of last year, before the sharp drop in the economy.

Wyss, like many other economists, says he expects the recession to last at least until September or October. “We’re looking for basically a zero second half (of 2009). And then sluggish recovery,” he said.

Orszag, making the rounds of Sunday talk shows, insisted the economy at the end of last year, which the White House used for its optimistic budget forecasts, “was weaker at that time than anyone anticipated.” He cited a “sense of free fall” not fully recognized at the time.

Okay, didn’t we discuss how all the derivatives in the series were bad bad bad starting about 9-10 months ago? I may have not used the word ‘free fall’ but I’m pretty sure I said that the most economic series that matter look like we were straight off the cliff? I also know that I wasn’t the only one that noticed that because I borrowed the graphs from other economist sites. So, give us a break! Why the continual story spinning along the Bush lines of “every one expected there to be weapons of mass destruction”? From my vantage point, the most significant recent evidence said that weapons of mass destruction wouldn’t be found (via the inspectors on the ground) and that this is not, was not, and will not be a garden variety recession (via the fundamentals). You can’t hope us out of a depression!

Based on the infamously reliable and historically proven Google leading indicator of searches on the word “depression”, our chief white house economic propagandist adviser has made this pronouncement.

“If we were at the brink of catastrophe at the beginning of the year, we have walked some substantial distance back from the abyss,” said Lawrence Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser.

Now don’t you just feeling friggin’ bitter better about everything now?

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