Saturday, October 13, 2007
Savings Glut Conundrum
If there is a global savings glut, why does capital get such a big share of the pie? If finance is so abundant, why is there not great competition for labor, bidding up wages?
Does Greg Mankiw Think the Long-run Budget Constraint is “Cute”?
In the comment box of this post, Greg Mankiw may have been the first to call this Angrybear cute. Why thank you! The point of Greg’s post is that the Federal income tax is quite progressive. My point is that talking about a subset of taxes is a bit disingenuous. Kevin Drum and the conservative Tax Foundation prefer to look at total taxes. My only complaint with their analyzes is that they did not factor in those deferred tax liability from George W. Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility. But then how could? This Administration is not telling us who will pay these deferred taxes. In their view, no one will.
Update: Greg took his graph from Chris Edwards who claimed:
So much malarkey, so little time. Chris and Greg know the following two things are true: (1) the long-run government budget constraint holds; and (2) Federal spending rose even as a share of GDP since George W. Bush took office. The implications are clear: George W. Bush has raised – not lowered – the tax bite. But Greg pretended he did not get my “cute” point at first. I find this truly amazing. After all – economists have been talking about deferred taxation ever since the 2001 tax deferral was signed into law.
Update: Greg took his graph from Chris Edwards who claimed:
The Bush tax cuts substantially reduced tax rates for people in every income group. Indeed, those at the bottom had the largest relative reductions in their tax rates … I’m for lower taxes for everyone, but I wish people would look at the actual data first before carping about the rich supposedly being specially favored by recent tax cuts.
So much malarkey, so little time. Chris and Greg know the following two things are true: (1) the long-run government budget constraint holds; and (2) Federal spending rose even as a share of GDP since George W. Bush took office. The implications are clear: George W. Bush has raised – not lowered – the tax bite. But Greg pretended he did not get my “cute” point at first. I find this truly amazing. After all – economists have been talking about deferred taxation ever since the 2001 tax deferral was signed into law.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Irony Alert: Stock Market Punishes American Airline for NOT Going Bankrupt
"During the industry downturn after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, American was one of the most frugal spenders and, in some areas, aggressive cost-cutters as Mr. Arpey avoided the easier path taken by rivals in bankruptcy-court proceedings. Now, investments to improve operations for the long haul, including better customer service and new aircraft interiors, are adding to the carrier's high costs. "They have a lot more work ahead of them than other names because of the fact that they haven't been through bankruptcy," said Standard & Poor's airline equity analyst Jim Corridore, who has a "hold" recommendation on the stock."
Whatever Happened to the Efficient Market Hypothesis?
The Wall Street Journal has a front page story today about the lack of transparency in securities. Remember, one of the great accomplishments of the market is to provide accurate information to allow for something akin to perfect efficiency. Milton Friedman would tell us that there will be inefficient speculators, but the market will ruthlessly purged them, leaving only the great ones who can guide the economy efficiently.
Financialization and securitization was supposed to distribute risk even more efficiently. Unlike most fairytales, I suspect this one will not have a happy ending. Well, here is the article:
Pulliam, Susan, Randall Smith and Michael Siconolfi. 2007. "U.S. Investors Face An Age of Murky Pricing: Values of Securities Tougher to Pin Down." Wall Street Journal (12 October): p. A 1.
"Since the invention of the ticker tape 140 years ago, America has been able to boast of having the world's most transparent financial markets. The tape and its electronic descendants ensured that crystal-clear prices for stocks and many other securities were readily available to everyone, encouraging millions to entrust their money to the markets. These days, after a decade of frantic growth in mortgage-backed securities and other complex investments traded off exchanges, that clarity is gone. Large parts of American financial markets have become a hall of mirrors."
"The hazards of this new age of uncertainty became clear at Dillon Read in March, when rising defaults by homeowners were hammering the value of mortgage securities. John Niblo, a hedge-fund manager at the firm, acted fast. He twice slashed his fund's valuation of securities tied to "subprime" mortgages, knocking them down by about 20%, or nearly $100 million, say traders familiar with the matter. But managers at UBS AG, Dillon Read's parent company, were irate. The Swiss banking giant was carrying similar securities on its books at a far higher price, the traders say. In conference calls, the UBS managers grilled Mr. Niblo on his move. "I'm marking to where I could reasonably sell them," Mr. Niblo responded during one call, according to the traders familiar with the conversations."
"Today, "way less than half" of all securities trade on exchanges with readily available price information, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst Daniel Harris. More and more securities are priced by dealers who don't publish quotes. As a result, money managers can no longer gauge with certainty the value of some assets in mutual funds, hedge funds and other investment vehicles -- a process known as marking to market. An official at the Securities and Exchange Commission said recently that some bond mutual funds might be using outdated or unrealistic prices to value their portfolios."
"Billionaire investor Warren Buffett advocates more transparency in pricing. "Some marks can be pretty imaginative," he says. "They call it 'marking to market,' but it's really marking to myth." He says that before funds publish financial statements, they should sell 5% of hard-to-value positions to gauge values."
"Some Wall Streeters have a motive to inflate marks: Their bonuses often are tied to the value of their holdings. A Lipper & Co. hedge-fund manager, Edward Strafaci, earned bonuses of $3.9 million between 1998 and 2001 based on improperly marked convertible bonds, according to the SEC. Mr. Strafaci overstated the value of the bonds he managed, despite warnings from his traders, according to a civil complaint charging securities fraud. The value of a $722 million Lipper hedge fund later was cut in half, and Mr. Strafaci pleaded guilty to criminal securities fraud."
Financialization and securitization was supposed to distribute risk even more efficiently. Unlike most fairytales, I suspect this one will not have a happy ending. Well, here is the article:
Pulliam, Susan, Randall Smith and Michael Siconolfi. 2007. "U.S. Investors Face An Age of Murky Pricing: Values of Securities Tougher to Pin Down." Wall Street Journal (12 October): p. A 1.
"Since the invention of the ticker tape 140 years ago, America has been able to boast of having the world's most transparent financial markets. The tape and its electronic descendants ensured that crystal-clear prices for stocks and many other securities were readily available to everyone, encouraging millions to entrust their money to the markets. These days, after a decade of frantic growth in mortgage-backed securities and other complex investments traded off exchanges, that clarity is gone. Large parts of American financial markets have become a hall of mirrors."
"The hazards of this new age of uncertainty became clear at Dillon Read in March, when rising defaults by homeowners were hammering the value of mortgage securities. John Niblo, a hedge-fund manager at the firm, acted fast. He twice slashed his fund's valuation of securities tied to "subprime" mortgages, knocking them down by about 20%, or nearly $100 million, say traders familiar with the matter. But managers at UBS AG, Dillon Read's parent company, were irate. The Swiss banking giant was carrying similar securities on its books at a far higher price, the traders say. In conference calls, the UBS managers grilled Mr. Niblo on his move. "I'm marking to where I could reasonably sell them," Mr. Niblo responded during one call, according to the traders familiar with the conversations."
"Today, "way less than half" of all securities trade on exchanges with readily available price information, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst Daniel Harris. More and more securities are priced by dealers who don't publish quotes. As a result, money managers can no longer gauge with certainty the value of some assets in mutual funds, hedge funds and other investment vehicles -- a process known as marking to market. An official at the Securities and Exchange Commission said recently that some bond mutual funds might be using outdated or unrealistic prices to value their portfolios."
"Billionaire investor Warren Buffett advocates more transparency in pricing. "Some marks can be pretty imaginative," he says. "They call it 'marking to market,' but it's really marking to myth." He says that before funds publish financial statements, they should sell 5% of hard-to-value positions to gauge values."
"Some Wall Streeters have a motive to inflate marks: Their bonuses often are tied to the value of their holdings. A Lipper & Co. hedge-fund manager, Edward Strafaci, earned bonuses of $3.9 million between 1998 and 2001 based on improperly marked convertible bonds, according to the SEC. Mr. Strafaci overstated the value of the bonds he managed, despite warnings from his traders, according to a civil complaint charging securities fraud. The value of a $722 million Lipper hedge fund later was cut in half, and Mr. Strafaci pleaded guilty to criminal securities fraud."
TURKEY-ARMENIA-KURDISTAN: THE GREAT UNRAVELING
If I were in Congress, I would have voted for the resolution to identify the Ottoman genocide of Armenians a genocide as a matter of principle. However, I share with Juan Cole (http://www.juancole.com/) the sense that out of the 92 years since that horrific event, this is probably the most inappropriate year to have passed such a resolution, even though it is totally bizarre that the Republic of Turkey does not simply agree that its corrupt predecessor did indeed engage in such a genocide and then move on. Cole points out that while Turkey has been a super good ally of the US in NATO, ranging from providing troops in the Korean War to its continuing provision of the crucial Incirclik Air base, the US has: a) promised a billion in aid after the 91 Gulf war, only to renege, b) invaded and overthrown Saddam against specific desires of Turkey, thereby increasing the threat of Salafist Sunnis and fundamentalist Shi'is (including in neighboring Iran) and also leading to c) the newly empowered Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) allowing bases for PKK guerrillas who have killed 28 Turkish soldiers in the last few weeks, leading to Turkey threatening to invade Kurdistan, and d) allowing the KRG to control the police in oil-rich Kirkuk and also Turkmen-inhabited Tal Afar, with possible full control passing to the KRG, including of the massive future oil revenues to come out of that area.
Speaking of the KRG, Ben Lando at http://www.iraqoilreport.com/ reports that the KRG has signed two more oil exploration agreements, with two more pending. The new deals are with Heritage Energy of Canada and Perenco S.A. of France. While the KRG has declared that this is "come and get it now or miss out" time, the big oil majors continue to hold back due to the continuing opposition of the central Iraqi government in Baghdad to all these deals. Oh, and btw, Lando also reports that contrary to previous public statements, apparently a rep of Hunt Oil did discuss their impending oil deal with the KRG with State Dept. reps (AID to be precise) in Irbil on Sept. 5.
Speaking of the KRG, Ben Lando at http://www.iraqoilreport.com/ reports that the KRG has signed two more oil exploration agreements, with two more pending. The new deals are with Heritage Energy of Canada and Perenco S.A. of France. While the KRG has declared that this is "come and get it now or miss out" time, the big oil majors continue to hold back due to the continuing opposition of the central Iraqi government in Baghdad to all these deals. Oh, and btw, Lando also reports that contrary to previous public statements, apparently a rep of Hunt Oil did discuss their impending oil deal with the KRG with State Dept. reps (AID to be precise) in Irbil on Sept. 5.
General Fund Deficit Tops $550 Billion for Fourth Year in a Row
My Angrybear post graphs and discusses the fact that total Federal debt has increased by more than $550 billion over the fiscal year – again! The White House will tout how the unified deficit has declined but since they will not tell you that this is because those Trust Fund surpluses are rising, I will. Please excuse my testiness in this AB post. It seems my old cave has been invaded by some of Karl Rove’s trolls.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Very Nice Interview about The Confiscation of American Prosperity
I just uploaded a copy of the first interview about my new book on our local NPR station.
http://www.archive.org/details/michael.perelman.KCHO_820
http://www.archive.org/details/michael.perelman.KCHO_820
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Free Trade: Bhagwati Takes on the Critics with Harsh Rhetoric
Dani Rodrik makes the following observation about a recent op-ed from Jadesh Bhagwati:
The passage that made Dani cringe seems to have been:
Something tells me that Alan Blinder can rise above this rough rhetoric. The specific passage that surprised me was the notion that the possibility that compensation might theoretically be possible cures all ills. Professor Bhagwati earlier had noted the 2004 paper by Paul Samuelson:
Bhagwati would correctly note that the Chinese likely gain more than the losers lose –so in theory – the Chinese winners could compensate the American losers. But seriously – when do we ever see such compensation taking place?
Jagdish Bhagwati is a sweet and courteous man in private, but his writing often makes me cringe. That is not because I frequently disagree with him, but because of the rhetoric he uses to attack his intellectual opponents. It's as if he has an evil twin that sometimes takes control of his writing hand.
The passage that made Dani cringe seems to have been:
But Mr Blinder seemed unaware of the fact that outsourcing via the internet was the mode of service transactions that the US lobbies were keenest about in the Uruguay round of trade negotiations: they saw that they would be the big winners, as no doubt they are. They hugely dominate transactions in high-skill and high-value services in architecture, law, medicine, accounting and other professions. Mr Blinder, when challenged, shifted ground to arguing that, as services became tradeable online, the number of jobs that would become “vulnerable” would rise pari passu, requiring adjustment assistance. However, there is hardly any serious trade economist who has objected to providing adjustment assistance. The first adjustment assistance programme in the US goes back to 1962. Virtually all trade legislation since has tried to improve on it. Many trade economists have written extensively on the subject. Mr Blinder, who started talking poetry, has therefore wound up talking prose. We free traders have no problem with him as he backs into our corner. But if he is to remain the new icon for those who oppose free trade, they have to be pretty desperate.
Something tells me that Alan Blinder can rise above this rough rhetoric. The specific passage that surprised me was the notion that the possibility that compensation might theoretically be possible cures all ills. Professor Bhagwati earlier had noted the 2004 paper by Paul Samuelson:
Autarky real per capita well being, does not deny that new technical Chinese progress in goods that America previously had competitive advantage in can, ceteris paribus, lower permanently measurable per capita U.S. real income. Nor does it deny that technical progress in China's export goods can, ceteris paribus, hurt permanently her own net measurable per capita real income itself when demand inelasticity prevails. Ergo, the winds of dynamic comparative advantage cannot be counted on to create in each region new net gains of the gainers assuredly greater than the new net losses of the losers. However, correct Ricardian theory does imply that worldwide real income per capita does gain net, so that winners' winnings will suffice worldwide to more than compensate losers' losings--some cold comfort in a scenario of many semi-autonomous nations.
Bhagwati would correctly note that the Chinese likely gain more than the losers lose –so in theory – the Chinese winners could compensate the American losers. But seriously – when do we ever see such compensation taking place?
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
The Obama Carbon Plan
2008 will be the year America debates climate change policy, hopefully without descending completely into election-year inanity. 2009 will be the year we get a policy. For an issue of this magnitude, that’s a fairly short time frame, so every turn of events counts.
Today Barack Obama has gone on record with his own approach. By my reckoning he got almost everything right, but there’s one huge missing piece. He is right on:
• setting a serious target: an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050 is the minimum we should aim for, if we take the scientific evidence seriously. We can get there only by starting soon and staying on course.
• capping carbon emissions: a cap is necessary if we are going to try to live within ecological limits, and it is far preferable to a carbon tax, as I’ve argued earlier on this august site.
• auctioning the permits: as Obama said, letting the cows out of the Barnes, “Businesses don’t own the sky, the public does...”
• rejecting offsets: he doesn’t even mention them.
• investing in a non-carbon future: we need basic R&D, infrastructure and other initiatives to turn our economy around.
The only element that’s lacking is a commitment to rebating most of the auction revenues back to the people on a per capita basis. Economically, this is necessary to protect real incomes and avoid a dangerous contraction of consumer demand. (The higher energy prices we will be paying under any reasonable cap will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.) Politically, it is necessary to win support for tough limits on carbon emissions. After all, if it is true that we own the sky, we should share in the income it generates. Finally, a per capita rebate would constitute the most progressive income redistribution program since the New Deal, a big consideration at a time of spiraling inequality.
So how do you finance those green investments if you give the money back? Answer: by ending pork barrel subsidies to the nuclear and fossil fuel mafias ($24B give or take a few) and rethinking national security, for starters. NB: if rebating the auction proceeds on an equal share basis is highly progressive, withholding a big chunk of it for other uses is highly regressive. Finance public investment out of taxes.
Today Barack Obama has gone on record with his own approach. By my reckoning he got almost everything right, but there’s one huge missing piece. He is right on:
• setting a serious target: an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050 is the minimum we should aim for, if we take the scientific evidence seriously. We can get there only by starting soon and staying on course.
• capping carbon emissions: a cap is necessary if we are going to try to live within ecological limits, and it is far preferable to a carbon tax, as I’ve argued earlier on this august site.
• auctioning the permits: as Obama said, letting the cows out of the Barnes, “Businesses don’t own the sky, the public does...”
• rejecting offsets: he doesn’t even mention them.
• investing in a non-carbon future: we need basic R&D, infrastructure and other initiatives to turn our economy around.
The only element that’s lacking is a commitment to rebating most of the auction revenues back to the people on a per capita basis. Economically, this is necessary to protect real incomes and avoid a dangerous contraction of consumer demand. (The higher energy prices we will be paying under any reasonable cap will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.) Politically, it is necessary to win support for tough limits on carbon emissions. After all, if it is true that we own the sky, we should share in the income it generates. Finally, a per capita rebate would constitute the most progressive income redistribution program since the New Deal, a big consideration at a time of spiraling inequality.
So how do you finance those green investments if you give the money back? Answer: by ending pork barrel subsidies to the nuclear and fossil fuel mafias ($24B give or take a few) and rethinking national security, for starters. NB: if rebating the auction proceeds on an equal share basis is highly progressive, withholding a big chunk of it for other uses is highly regressive. Finance public investment out of taxes.
Find me a lyrical economist
From a review in today's Times of a concert devoted to the work of Esa-Pekka Salonen:
(Salonen's music contains) "a recurring impulse to battle its own tendency towards lyricism, quashing a melodic passage in "Prologue," for instance, with a flatulent blat from the oboe."
I suppose "flatulent blat" is otiose - can there be a non-flatulent blat?- which just goes to show that non-otiosity (which may spell-checker says isn't a word) in writing isn't everything.
Would that we had economists with a tendency towards lyricism, to battle or not. Maybe some of Samuelson's history of thought papers would qualify, with elegant derivations undercut here and there with sly wit. Any other candidates?
(Salonen's music contains) "a recurring impulse to battle its own tendency towards lyricism, quashing a melodic passage in "Prologue," for instance, with a flatulent blat from the oboe."
I suppose "flatulent blat" is otiose - can there be a non-flatulent blat?- which just goes to show that non-otiosity (which may spell-checker says isn't a word) in writing isn't everything.
Would that we had economists with a tendency towards lyricism, to battle or not. Maybe some of Samuelson's history of thought papers would qualify, with elegant derivations undercut here and there with sly wit. Any other candidates?
Monday, October 8, 2007
A Tangled Web of the Old and the New Economy
Franklin, H. Bruce. 2007. The Most Important Fish in the Sea (Washington, DC: Island Press) tells the gruesome tale of the depredation of world's supply of menhaden, a fish that represents the basic feedstock for the carnivorous fish and which keep the overgrowth of algae in check. A single corporation, Omega, owned by Malcolm Glazer is the chief destroyer. Omega got the business from Zapata Oil, a company founded by Bush the First back in 1953. By 1961, Bush sold his stake in the company. By 1998, Zapata became one of the most ridiculous examples of the excess of the dot.com world.
Ofek, Eli and Matthew Richardson. 2002. "The Valuation and Market Rationality of Internet Stock Prices." Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 18: 3 (Autumn): pp. 265-87.
275: "As an example, consider our favourite illustration of Zapata corporation. Zapala was founded in 1953 by former US President George Bush as an oil and gas company. However, by early 1998, Zapata had transformed itself into a company, albeit still 'old economy', specializing in meat-casings and fish oil. On 27 April 1998, Zapata's management announced that it was going to form a new company to acquire and consolidate Internet and e-commerce businesses. Its first foray into this sector occurred in May when it bid for Excite, which was the second largest Internet search directory at the time. Zapata's bid was rejected by Excite's management for its 'complete lack of synergy', as quoted in Bloomberg at the time, covering Excite's press release. In July, Zapata made further announcements that it was purchasing about 30 Internet websites. As the market for Internet stocks deteriorated through summer and autumn of 1998, Zapata announced that it was re-evaluating its Internet business strategy and no longer purchasing the websites. On 23 December 1998 the company reversed course again. And stated that it was getting back into the internet business and would be forming the subsidiary, Zap.com. On this news, shares rose 98 per cent in New York stock-exchange composite trading. This type of example is not atypical and is representative of the Cooper et al. (2001) study." Cooper, Michael, Orlin Dimitrov, and P. Raghavendra Rau. 2001. "A Rose.com by Any Other Name." Journal of Finance, Journal of Finance, 56: 6 (June): pp. 2371-88.
[On 8 October 2007, Reuters reported, "Zap.Com is a public shell company that does not have any existing business operations. From time to time, Zap.Com considers acquisitions that would result in it becoming an operating company. Zap.Com may also consider developing a new business suitable for its situation.
http://stocks.us.reuters.com/stocks/fullDescription.asp?rpc=66&symbol=ZAP
More on Martin Feldstein
ProGrowth Liberal just posted interesting information about Martin Feldstein on Social Security. Here is an extract from my new book, The Confiscation of American Prosperity, regarding Feldstein's obsession with the subject.
Feldstein first came to national attention in 1974, the same year that Arthur Laffer produced his famous napkin. Feldstein published a model that "proved" that Social Security caused enormous losses for the US economy. According to Feldstein, Social Security was reducing personal savings by 30 to 50 percent. He estimated that if Social Security had not existed, the stock of plant and equipment in the United States would have been as much as 50 percent larger and total personal income 20 percent greater than the level in 1971 (Feldstein 1974). Since Social Security had only been functioning 24 years at the end of the time period that his data covered, Feldstein's article implies that the present effect of Social Security on total personal income today would be far higher ‑‑ perhaps almost 50 percent since the program has had another 35 years at the time of this writing.
The same Jude Wanniski, who popularized supply side economics, later recalled, "I came across a paper that a fellow at Harvard had written on Social Security, saying it was causing the national saving rate to decrease. And I thought, 'Great .... I've got to publish it'" (Bernasek 2004). In other words, because Feldstein's results were welcome, people of influence rushed to embrace him.
The only problem was that Feldstein's work was seriously flawed. A few weeks before the election of Ronald Reagan at the 1980 annual meeting of the American Economic Association in Denver and after Feldstein had already ascended to the head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, two less famous economists, Selig D. Lesnoy and Dean R. Leimer, reported that they were unable to replicate Feldstein's results (later published as Leimer and Lesnoy 1982). Upon analyzing Feldstein's work, they discovered that his results critically depended upon an elementary programming error. With that error corrected, Feldstein's data no longer had the disastrous effects Feldstein claimed. Instead, his model showed that Social Security could have actually had a positive impact on savings.
In all fairness, errors in economic model building are extremely common. In 1982, the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking began a project to replicate previously published articles. The results were unsettling to say the least. Sixty‑six percent of the authors were unable or unwilling to supply the materials necessary to rerun the model. The authors who responded did so after an average delay of 217 days. All but one of these articles had problems, including programming errors, such as Feldstein committed (Dewald, Thursby and Anderson 1986). This project was hardly likely to inspire confidence in the scientific rigor of economics.
Feldstein admitted his programming error. Undeterred, he soon rejiggled his model. By adding a few new assumptions, he was able to "prove" once again that Social Security was still destructive. Some years later, in 1996, Feldstein gave his own Richard T. Ely lecture. There, Feldstein regaled his audience with new data demonstrating one more time the harmful effects of Social Security. According to Feldstein, the present value of privatizing Social Security would be an astounding $20 trillion dollars ‑‑ about twice the GDP of the United States (Feldstein 1996, p. 12).
In a 2005 Wall Street Journal opinion piece, disingenuously entitled, "Saving Social Security," Feldstein returned once more to his bête noire. This time he was arguing in support of an unpopular piece of Republican legislation to mix Security and private accounts. Feldstein promised great benefits from this "reform": "A higher national saving rate would finance investment in plant and equipment that raises productivity and produces the extra national income to finance future retiree benefits" (Feldstein 2005b). So, Feldstein would rescue Social Security by gutting it.
Earlier in the year, the American Economic Association had given Feldstein a platform to renew his attack on Social Security in his presidential address. Here Feldstein adopted a new pitch. He protested that the program did too little to redistribute income from the rich to the poor. His argument was that because the rich live longer than the poor, they will have more opportunity to benefit from Social Security (Feldstein 2005a).
Without bothering to contest Feldstein's questionable calculations about the redistributional impact of Social Security, this last attack is especially notable for its unusual rhetorical turn. Not too long ago, the same Professor Feldstein discussed the question of inequality with the New York Times. Feldstein began as if he took the subject seriously, observing, "Why there has been increasing inequality in this country has been one of the big puzzles in our field and has absorbed a lot of intellectual effort." Feldstein's own intellectual effort in this debate left something to be desired. Rather than address the question of inequality seriously, he merely trivialized the question, responding to the reporter: "But if you ask me whether we should worry about the fact that some people on Wall Street and basketball players are making a lot of money, I say no" (Stille 2001).
This dismissal of the question of inequality was not some uncharacteristic, off‑hand remark. In an earlier article, entitled, "Reducing Poverty Not Inequality," Feldstein described the proper approach to an imagined increase in inequality occurring because a small number of affluent people received $1000 each at no cost to the rest of society. For Feldstein, only a "spiteful egalitarian" would not welcome such an improvement in society (Feldstein 1999, p. 34).
Of course, Feldstein and his fellow 'spiteful inegalitarians' have been adamant in their hostility to any redistribution of income toward the less fortunate. Such policies threaten to hinder the magical trickle down upon which all progress supposedly defends. Suddenly, however, when it gave credence to his attack on Social Security, Professor Feldstein refurbished himself as a populist advocate of redistribution of income from the rich to the poor by arguing that Social Security benefited the rich. Professor Feldstein never bothered to explain why the rich are so hostile to this program that benefits them so lavishly.
One might expect such a flurry of conflicting arguments from an unscrupulous salesman who wants to earn his commission from a confused customer, but not from one of the most prominent academic economists in the country. One might suspect that ideology rather than an objective search for the truth is at work.
Feldstein did not limit his political activism to Social Security. For example, he used the Wall Street Journal to publicize his work predicting that Clinton's economic taxes would harm the economy while raising little revenue (Feldstein 1993). Unlike his Social Security work, this article made a specific prediction. Unfortunately for Feldstein, his estimates turned out to be demonstrably false. The economy experienced a sudden burst of prosperity during the rest of the Clinton administration.
Alicia H. Munnell, a former student of Feldstein whom he thanked in the acknowledgements to his original Social Security paper and who later rose to become a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, offered this damning verdict in a Business Week article following the Denver meeting: "I get the feeling that the NBER does adopt a position on an issue ‑‑ explicit or implicit ‑‑ and then they go about generating research to support the position" (Anon. 1980). In light of Feldstein's later work, I see no reason to revise her evaluation.
Even if an economist avoids rudimentary programming errors and questionable procedures in handling the data, problems with economic models still remain. The economy is far too complex to reduce it to a mathematical equation or a computer model, even a very large and sophisticated one. As a result, such models necessarily rely on simplifying assumptions.
Although Feldstein proved nothing with his unrelenting attacks on government programs, he demonstrated how clever economists, armed with sophisticated mathematical and statistical techniques, along with the help of well‑trained graduate assistants, are capable of manipulating models to get whatever results they desire. As economists like to joke, that if you torture the data long enough they will confess. So, although economists such as Feldstein can give their work the appearance of scientific precision, their work must necessarily remain suspect.
For example, Social Security's presumably negative effect on saving was at the core of Feldstein's model, but saving has a contradictory effect on the economy. Some models assume that saving encourages investment, while others assume that saving depresses demand, which, in turn, holds back investment. No matter which assumption about the effect of saving economists choose, they can point to reputable theories and models that support them. Admittedly, as economists marginalized Keynesian theory, the models that show the positive influence of saving have become more common. That shift does not reflect an advance in knowledge, but rather a consequence of the right‑wing offensive.
Also, economists can pick and choose among various time periods and data sets, avoiding combinations that do not confirm what they want to find. While such models ‑‑ including many of the models to which I have referred in this book ‑‑ might suggest new lines of research or raise questions about previously accepted truths, they cannot constitute proof by any means.
So, economists may build their models and pundits or politicians can foist the results of these models on the unsuspecting public as if they were scientific evidence, but they are not grounded in science. For example, almost two decades after the errors in Feldstein's original model had been revealed, conservative ideologists, such as those at the Heritage Foundation, still continue to trumpet his long‑discredited calculation as serious evidence of the damage done by Social Security (see, for example, Mitchell 1998).
I believe that Social Security is one of the most effective government programs ever devised in the United States, but I can neither prove nor disprove that assertion with a computer model. In fact, Feldstein's results might possibly turn out to be correct after all, but nobody can know for certain. Different economists have come up with a wide range of estimates (see Lesnoy and Leimer 1985).
Unfortunately, the public rarely has the opportunity to hear about the full range of economic information. Ideological filters determine who gets hired or tenured in economics departments. Those economists who manage to defy the conventional wisdom face the added barrier of getting their work published in "reputable" journals. Even if such papers manage to find their way into journals, they lack the "megaphone" of powerful agencies, such as the Heritage Foundation, which give wide distribution to long‑discredited material without much fear of being exposed. So, ultimately what the public learns about how the economy works are those results that conform to the desires of the rich and powerful.
Feldstein first came to national attention in 1974, the same year that Arthur Laffer produced his famous napkin. Feldstein published a model that "proved" that Social Security caused enormous losses for the US economy. According to Feldstein, Social Security was reducing personal savings by 30 to 50 percent. He estimated that if Social Security had not existed, the stock of plant and equipment in the United States would have been as much as 50 percent larger and total personal income 20 percent greater than the level in 1971 (Feldstein 1974). Since Social Security had only been functioning 24 years at the end of the time period that his data covered, Feldstein's article implies that the present effect of Social Security on total personal income today would be far higher ‑‑ perhaps almost 50 percent since the program has had another 35 years at the time of this writing.
The same Jude Wanniski, who popularized supply side economics, later recalled, "I came across a paper that a fellow at Harvard had written on Social Security, saying it was causing the national saving rate to decrease. And I thought, 'Great .... I've got to publish it'" (Bernasek 2004). In other words, because Feldstein's results were welcome, people of influence rushed to embrace him.
The only problem was that Feldstein's work was seriously flawed. A few weeks before the election of Ronald Reagan at the 1980 annual meeting of the American Economic Association in Denver and after Feldstein had already ascended to the head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, two less famous economists, Selig D. Lesnoy and Dean R. Leimer, reported that they were unable to replicate Feldstein's results (later published as Leimer and Lesnoy 1982). Upon analyzing Feldstein's work, they discovered that his results critically depended upon an elementary programming error. With that error corrected, Feldstein's data no longer had the disastrous effects Feldstein claimed. Instead, his model showed that Social Security could have actually had a positive impact on savings.
In all fairness, errors in economic model building are extremely common. In 1982, the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking began a project to replicate previously published articles. The results were unsettling to say the least. Sixty‑six percent of the authors were unable or unwilling to supply the materials necessary to rerun the model. The authors who responded did so after an average delay of 217 days. All but one of these articles had problems, including programming errors, such as Feldstein committed (Dewald, Thursby and Anderson 1986). This project was hardly likely to inspire confidence in the scientific rigor of economics.
Feldstein admitted his programming error. Undeterred, he soon rejiggled his model. By adding a few new assumptions, he was able to "prove" once again that Social Security was still destructive. Some years later, in 1996, Feldstein gave his own Richard T. Ely lecture. There, Feldstein regaled his audience with new data demonstrating one more time the harmful effects of Social Security. According to Feldstein, the present value of privatizing Social Security would be an astounding $20 trillion dollars ‑‑ about twice the GDP of the United States (Feldstein 1996, p. 12).
In a 2005 Wall Street Journal opinion piece, disingenuously entitled, "Saving Social Security," Feldstein returned once more to his bête noire. This time he was arguing in support of an unpopular piece of Republican legislation to mix Security and private accounts. Feldstein promised great benefits from this "reform": "A higher national saving rate would finance investment in plant and equipment that raises productivity and produces the extra national income to finance future retiree benefits" (Feldstein 2005b). So, Feldstein would rescue Social Security by gutting it.
Earlier in the year, the American Economic Association had given Feldstein a platform to renew his attack on Social Security in his presidential address. Here Feldstein adopted a new pitch. He protested that the program did too little to redistribute income from the rich to the poor. His argument was that because the rich live longer than the poor, they will have more opportunity to benefit from Social Security (Feldstein 2005a).
Without bothering to contest Feldstein's questionable calculations about the redistributional impact of Social Security, this last attack is especially notable for its unusual rhetorical turn. Not too long ago, the same Professor Feldstein discussed the question of inequality with the New York Times. Feldstein began as if he took the subject seriously, observing, "Why there has been increasing inequality in this country has been one of the big puzzles in our field and has absorbed a lot of intellectual effort." Feldstein's own intellectual effort in this debate left something to be desired. Rather than address the question of inequality seriously, he merely trivialized the question, responding to the reporter: "But if you ask me whether we should worry about the fact that some people on Wall Street and basketball players are making a lot of money, I say no" (Stille 2001).
This dismissal of the question of inequality was not some uncharacteristic, off‑hand remark. In an earlier article, entitled, "Reducing Poverty Not Inequality," Feldstein described the proper approach to an imagined increase in inequality occurring because a small number of affluent people received $1000 each at no cost to the rest of society. For Feldstein, only a "spiteful egalitarian" would not welcome such an improvement in society (Feldstein 1999, p. 34).
Of course, Feldstein and his fellow 'spiteful inegalitarians' have been adamant in their hostility to any redistribution of income toward the less fortunate. Such policies threaten to hinder the magical trickle down upon which all progress supposedly defends. Suddenly, however, when it gave credence to his attack on Social Security, Professor Feldstein refurbished himself as a populist advocate of redistribution of income from the rich to the poor by arguing that Social Security benefited the rich. Professor Feldstein never bothered to explain why the rich are so hostile to this program that benefits them so lavishly.
One might expect such a flurry of conflicting arguments from an unscrupulous salesman who wants to earn his commission from a confused customer, but not from one of the most prominent academic economists in the country. One might suspect that ideology rather than an objective search for the truth is at work.
Feldstein did not limit his political activism to Social Security. For example, he used the Wall Street Journal to publicize his work predicting that Clinton's economic taxes would harm the economy while raising little revenue (Feldstein 1993). Unlike his Social Security work, this article made a specific prediction. Unfortunately for Feldstein, his estimates turned out to be demonstrably false. The economy experienced a sudden burst of prosperity during the rest of the Clinton administration.
Alicia H. Munnell, a former student of Feldstein whom he thanked in the acknowledgements to his original Social Security paper and who later rose to become a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, offered this damning verdict in a Business Week article following the Denver meeting: "I get the feeling that the NBER does adopt a position on an issue ‑‑ explicit or implicit ‑‑ and then they go about generating research to support the position" (Anon. 1980). In light of Feldstein's later work, I see no reason to revise her evaluation.
Even if an economist avoids rudimentary programming errors and questionable procedures in handling the data, problems with economic models still remain. The economy is far too complex to reduce it to a mathematical equation or a computer model, even a very large and sophisticated one. As a result, such models necessarily rely on simplifying assumptions.
Although Feldstein proved nothing with his unrelenting attacks on government programs, he demonstrated how clever economists, armed with sophisticated mathematical and statistical techniques, along with the help of well‑trained graduate assistants, are capable of manipulating models to get whatever results they desire. As economists like to joke, that if you torture the data long enough they will confess. So, although economists such as Feldstein can give their work the appearance of scientific precision, their work must necessarily remain suspect.
For example, Social Security's presumably negative effect on saving was at the core of Feldstein's model, but saving has a contradictory effect on the economy. Some models assume that saving encourages investment, while others assume that saving depresses demand, which, in turn, holds back investment. No matter which assumption about the effect of saving economists choose, they can point to reputable theories and models that support them. Admittedly, as economists marginalized Keynesian theory, the models that show the positive influence of saving have become more common. That shift does not reflect an advance in knowledge, but rather a consequence of the right‑wing offensive.
Also, economists can pick and choose among various time periods and data sets, avoiding combinations that do not confirm what they want to find. While such models ‑‑ including many of the models to which I have referred in this book ‑‑ might suggest new lines of research or raise questions about previously accepted truths, they cannot constitute proof by any means.
So, economists may build their models and pundits or politicians can foist the results of these models on the unsuspecting public as if they were scientific evidence, but they are not grounded in science. For example, almost two decades after the errors in Feldstein's original model had been revealed, conservative ideologists, such as those at the Heritage Foundation, still continue to trumpet his long‑discredited calculation as serious evidence of the damage done by Social Security (see, for example, Mitchell 1998).
I believe that Social Security is one of the most effective government programs ever devised in the United States, but I can neither prove nor disprove that assertion with a computer model. In fact, Feldstein's results might possibly turn out to be correct after all, but nobody can know for certain. Different economists have come up with a wide range of estimates (see Lesnoy and Leimer 1985).
Unfortunately, the public rarely has the opportunity to hear about the full range of economic information. Ideological filters determine who gets hired or tenured in economics departments. Those economists who manage to defy the conventional wisdom face the added barrier of getting their work published in "reputable" journals. Even if such papers manage to find their way into journals, they lack the "megaphone" of powerful agencies, such as the Heritage Foundation, which give wide distribution to long‑discredited material without much fear of being exposed. So, ultimately what the public learns about how the economy works are those results that conform to the desires of the rich and powerful.
Martin Feldstein on Social Security
Via Mark Thoma comes an op-ed by Martin Feldstein. Mark focuses on this:
Mark rebuts by turning the microphone over to Dean Baker:
Besides playing the shock figure nonsense, Martin Feldstein peddles the free lunch fallacy of privatization so let me focus on this:
I never bought into this increased risk argument, but the flip side of the same coin is that we should not false claim there is some overall increase in expected returns as I tried to explain here by quoting Andrew Abel:
Robert Barro and Gary Becker have made similar arguments. So why does Martin Feldstein think that this argument is incorrect?
As everyone now recognizes, the current 12.4% Social Security employer-employee payroll tax will not be enough to finance the benefits specified in current law as the population ages. Continuing to finance those benefits with a pure tax-financed system would require raising the payroll tax rate to more than 18%, or finding other ways to raise tax revenue.
Mark rebuts by turning the microphone over to Dean Baker:
The Congressional Budget Office's projections show that the program can pay all benefits, with no changes whatsoever, through the year 2046... The projected shortfall over the whole 75-year planning period is 0.4 percent of GDP, approximately 30 percent of the current cost of the war in Iraq
Besides playing the shock figure nonsense, Martin Feldstein peddles the free lunch fallacy of privatization so let me focus on this:
Unfortunately, Democratic critics argued that individual accounts would be "gambling" with the retirement savings of working men and women.
I never bought into this increased risk argument, but the flip side of the same coin is that we should not false claim there is some overall increase in expected returns as I tried to explain here by quoting Andrew Abel:
Some economists have argued that investing part of the Social Security Trust Fund in equity is simply a rearrangement of paper assets without any real allocational effects, and they have described such a policy as a “shell game.” The shell game argument is similar to the Ricardian equivalence proposition in public finance and macroeconomics and the Modigliani-Miller theorem in corporate finance. The argumentis that private investors will react to any rearrangement of the social security system’s portfolio in a way that completely neutralizes the effect of the portfolio change. For example, if the social security system sells a dollar of bonds and purchases a dollar of equity, private investors would buy a dollar of bonds and sell a dollar of equity.
Robert Barro and Gary Becker have made similar arguments. So why does Martin Feldstein think that this argument is incorrect?
Saturday, October 6, 2007
A Different Cost of Securitization
This article shows how securitization has enriched middlemen, while impoverishing lenders. The difference between mortgage rates and Treasury rates is now more than a half percentage point higher than in 1972-8.
Silva, Lauren and Martin Hutchinson. 2007. "The Cost of Complexity." Wall Street Journal (6 September): p. C 14.
"Well, one defense of all the complexity would be that it saved home buyers money -- but that doesn't seem to be the case. It looks like borrowers now pay more for this financial technology. Between 1972 and 1978, in the days when banks offered mortgages to their customers and held the loans, the average mortgage interest rate was 1.07 percentage points higher than Treasury bonds, according to Fed figures. Between 2000 and 2006, when most mortgages were securitized, the spread was 1.59. The figures don't include more expensive subprime loans. One-half percentage point is a big number in debt markets."
"While home buyers may wonder if they are getting their money's worth, financial institutions probably have no so such qualms about the change in the home-lending business over the past 30 years. Mortgage securitization, despite the slide in the subprime sector, has made Wall Street a lot of money."
Silva, Lauren and Martin Hutchinson. 2007. "The Cost of Complexity." Wall Street Journal (6 September): p. C 14.
"Well, one defense of all the complexity would be that it saved home buyers money -- but that doesn't seem to be the case. It looks like borrowers now pay more for this financial technology. Between 1972 and 1978, in the days when banks offered mortgages to their customers and held the loans, the average mortgage interest rate was 1.07 percentage points higher than Treasury bonds, according to Fed figures. Between 2000 and 2006, when most mortgages were securitized, the spread was 1.59. The figures don't include more expensive subprime loans. One-half percentage point is a big number in debt markets."
"While home buyers may wonder if they are getting their money's worth, financial institutions probably have no so such qualms about the change in the home-lending business over the past 30 years. Mortgage securitization, despite the slide in the subprime sector, has made Wall Street a lot of money."
Taxes and Employment Growth: How Stupid is Rudy Giuliani?
James Pethokoukis interviewed Rudy right after the “tax summit” in Manchester, N.H.
Really? See this post including the second update with Paul Krugman’s comments. Rudy continues:
I see Rudy is taking credit for the Clinton boom again. Tax rate cuts leading to more tax revenues - what a complete and utter idiot. Of course, Pethokoukis never challenged this complete and utter horseshit as he rather let Rudy babble some meaningless spin about cutting spending. Rudy notes some government employees will retire, which will likely mean their jobs will have to be filled with someone else. There was not a single serious discussion of what programs would be cut. And not a real follow-up question from Pethokoukis.
I do have a thank you for James Pethokoukis. You had the decency to stop emailing me these utterly worthless pieces of yours. Now if you’d cease from submitting them to U.S. News – maybe they’d hire a real business reporter.
The Democrats are going to say, "We raised taxes in the '90s, cut the deficit, and the economy boomed." Why not try and rerun the '90s instead of cutting taxes? Because we have actually done more job creation by lowering taxes than by raising taxes.
Really? See this post including the second update with Paul Krugman’s comments. Rudy continues:
The federal government is collecting 21 percent more revenues from the lower taxes than the higher taxes. And when they argue with me about this, most of them are arguing about theory - meaning the Democrats. They've never done it. They've sat in a legislature somewhere and debated. I actually did it. I actually did what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about this from the point of view of theory. I actually did it. I lowered taxes at a time in which we were in economic distress … The Kennedy tax cuts led to the same results of the Reagan tax cuts and the Bush tax cuts. One of the worse tax increases in the history of this country was by Herbert Hoover. They all got frightened with the stock market crash. Taxes got raised, tariffs got raised, and they took what could have been a cyclical problem and turned it into a long, 10-, 12-year problem.
I see Rudy is taking credit for the Clinton boom again. Tax rate cuts leading to more tax revenues - what a complete and utter idiot. Of course, Pethokoukis never challenged this complete and utter horseshit as he rather let Rudy babble some meaningless spin about cutting spending. Rudy notes some government employees will retire, which will likely mean their jobs will have to be filled with someone else. There was not a single serious discussion of what programs would be cut. And not a real follow-up question from Pethokoukis.
I do have a thank you for James Pethokoukis. You had the decency to stop emailing me these utterly worthless pieces of yours. Now if you’d cease from submitting them to U.S. News – maybe they’d hire a real business reporter.
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