The Wall Street Journal in an August 4 article entitled What is a 'Windfall' Profit? exposes the economic lunacy of imposing a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Although it had huge revenues in 2007, Exxon's profit margin in 2007 was only 10% -- less than the average margins in the chemicals, computers, electronics, and pharmaceuticals industries.
The Journal implies that Senator Obama's proposal for such a tax is demagoguery rather than rank economic ignorance. Although the proposal is clearly politically motivated and economically counterproductive, there is a deeper, darker problem with it: It is founded on the unspoken premises that Exxon's investors are not entitled, exclusively, to whatever profits the company's efforts produce and that society has a claim on the fruits of their labor and capital.
These politicians have no understanding of why the Soviet Union failed and why the United States by following the same philosophy risks going down the same path to oblivion. If they adopt "to each according to his need," they will have to identify where the "from each" will be expropriated. If the ideals of freedom, including the right to property, that formed the original uniqueness of the United States are dismissed as obsolete, the productive people will find another home. The loss of Budweiser is just one example.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Monday, August 4, 2008
Political Predators
Paul Gigot, head of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, has written a hair-raising piece describing the government's attempts, for years, to silence the Journal regarding the Fannie/Freddie mess. You need to read it. See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121677050160675397.html.
A history of the Journal's articles on the subject appears at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121599777668249845.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
A history of the Journal's articles on the subject appears at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121599777668249845.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
Monday, July 21, 2008
How Can they Do This??!!
There was once a move to create a new punctuation mark called the interabang. It was the combination of an exclamation mark superimposed over a question mark and was intended to be the punctuational equivalent of an exclamatory question such as WHAT THE HECK??!!
The question of the day needs to be punctuated with an interabang.
In a former life I was company counsel to middle market manufacturers. Honest capitalists. In-the-trenches sales guys. Make-a-profit or die people. Periodically, one of them would come into my office with some burdensome government regulation in hand that made no sense and would ask, "How can they do this to us??!!" Doing my best not to weep, in my most professional manner, I would respond, "For thousands of years it has been the same, and it is no different now: the government is the group of guys with the most guns, or spears, or rocks. They can do it because they can and in our democracy they can because we let them." Then I would get on my soap box and preach about laissez faire capitalism, limited government and the ethical value of trade, and the freedom to trade versus government coercion – and how the ideals of the Declaration of Independence (which I kept hanging on my wall) had been corrupted. Not that it did much good.
You might ask today, knowing that you will foot the bill through taxes or inflation for every bailout that the government and Federal Reserve undertakes, "How can they do this to us??!!" After all, you were taught in your civics classes in the 1950s (they didn't teach it much later) that we are supposed to have a limited government that protects and respects our rights to life, liberty and equal treatment under the law. The answer is that they can do it because we (meaning the electorate) let them.
James Grant has written a great article in the Wall Street Journal entitled, "Why No Outrage?" You should read it in its entirety but the following comments jumped out at me:
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Fannie/Freddie bailout will cost $25 billion. Others, who question the CBO's assumptions, put the top number at $1 trillion.
It is depressing to think that you might not complain loudly, visibly and bitterly that the "heavy governmental hand" will now extract from you the cost, the great cost, of the failures of other people -- some poor and some very rich -- in order to preserve a fascist economic model that exploits you and has proved itself to be morally flawed. Unless you complain, you will continue to be a professional victim, one of the "sheeple."
In his essay, "Alienation" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Dr. Nathaniel Branden ended with a pointed comment on a poem by A. E. Housman:
If you carefully evaluate what the politicians in charge of the government have done, you will see that they will always take the power that you have given them, line the pockets of their friends, and find new ways to control the masses. And this time they very well may have ruined us all. (Henry C K Liu has written an excellent, detailed, fact-filled article on the Fannie/Freddie debacle, for example.) In the 20th Century, the USA had begun to develop a strong, stable middle class that was growing in affluence and size. That positive socioeconomic development, to say the least, is at risk if not over, having given way to the politics of envy and avarice.
Don't be the kind of populist that uses the government to control and take money from your neighbors. Identify and follow the philosophy that understands such abuse to be morally corrupt. Be the kind of "populist" that wants the government to get out of the people's way, to protect them from fraud and violence, and otherwise to leave them to make it on their own.
The question of the day needs to be punctuated with an interabang.
In a former life I was company counsel to middle market manufacturers. Honest capitalists. In-the-trenches sales guys. Make-a-profit or die people. Periodically, one of them would come into my office with some burdensome government regulation in hand that made no sense and would ask, "How can they do this to us??!!" Doing my best not to weep, in my most professional manner, I would respond, "For thousands of years it has been the same, and it is no different now: the government is the group of guys with the most guns, or spears, or rocks. They can do it because they can and in our democracy they can because we let them." Then I would get on my soap box and preach about laissez faire capitalism, limited government and the ethical value of trade, and the freedom to trade versus government coercion – and how the ideals of the Declaration of Independence (which I kept hanging on my wall) had been corrupted. Not that it did much good.
You might ask today, knowing that you will foot the bill through taxes or inflation for every bailout that the government and Federal Reserve undertakes, "How can they do this to us??!!" After all, you were taught in your civics classes in the 1950s (they didn't teach it much later) that we are supposed to have a limited government that protects and respects our rights to life, liberty and equal treatment under the law. The answer is that they can do it because we (meaning the electorate) let them.
James Grant has written a great article in the Wall Street Journal entitled, "Why No Outrage?" You should read it in its entirety but the following comments jumped out at me:
Wall Street is off the political agenda in 2008 for reasons we may only guess about. Possibly, in this time of widespread public participation in the stock market, "Wall Street" is really "Main Street." Or maybe Wall Street, its old self, owns both major political parties and their candidates. Or, possibly, the $4.50 gasoline price has absorbed every available erg of populist anger, or -- yet another possibility -- today's financial failures are too complex to stick in everyman's craw.
I have another theory, and that is that the old populists actually won. This is their financial system. They had demanded paper money, federally insured bank deposits and a heavy governmental hand in the distribution of credit, and now they have them. The Populist Party might have lost the elections in the hard times of the 1890s. But it won the future.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Fannie/Freddie bailout will cost $25 billion. Others, who question the CBO's assumptions, put the top number at $1 trillion.
It is depressing to think that you might not complain loudly, visibly and bitterly that the "heavy governmental hand" will now extract from you the cost, the great cost, of the failures of other people -- some poor and some very rich -- in order to preserve a fascist economic model that exploits you and has proved itself to be morally flawed. Unless you complain, you will continue to be a professional victim, one of the "sheeple."
In his essay, "Alienation" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Dr. Nathaniel Branden ended with a pointed comment on a poem by A. E. Housman:
“The proper answer to the question—The essay (and the book, which also includes Alan Greenspan's now famous article on the gold standard) is well worth reading in its entirety.
And how am I to face the odds
of Man’s bedevilment and God’s?
I, a stranger and afraid
in a world I never made.
—is: Why didn’t you?”
If you carefully evaluate what the politicians in charge of the government have done, you will see that they will always take the power that you have given them, line the pockets of their friends, and find new ways to control the masses. And this time they very well may have ruined us all. (Henry C K Liu has written an excellent, detailed, fact-filled article on the Fannie/Freddie debacle, for example.) In the 20th Century, the USA had begun to develop a strong, stable middle class that was growing in affluence and size. That positive socioeconomic development, to say the least, is at risk if not over, having given way to the politics of envy and avarice.
Don't be the kind of populist that uses the government to control and take money from your neighbors. Identify and follow the philosophy that understands such abuse to be morally corrupt. Be the kind of "populist" that wants the government to get out of the people's way, to protect them from fraud and violence, and otherwise to leave them to make it on their own.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Inflation?
In 1929, with a $20 bill, you could buy a very nice tailor-made suit, a fine dress shirt and tie, a good pair of shoes and a belt. You could also take the bill to the bank and exchange it for a double-eagle, a $20 coin containing one ounce of gold. The bill stated on its face, “This certifies that there have been deposited in The Treasury of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Twenty Dollars in Gold Coin Payable to the Bearer on Demand.” Take a look at today’s $20 bill. It is a Federal Reserve note. You can take it to the bank and exchange it for, well, another $20 Federal Reserve Note. Today, a very nice tailor-made suit, a fine dress shirt and tie, a good pair of shoes and a belt could easily cost you around $900, or about forty-five $20 Federal Reserve Notes. Or you could go to a coin dealer or the U.S. mint and buy a one-ounce gold coin for the same forty five $20 bills. In gold money, the price of a suit and such has stayed roughly the same. But the value of the dollar has shrunk. And it continues to shrink.
In a 2002 address to the Economic Club of New York City Alan Greenspan said something he knew very well when he first became Chairman of the Federal Reserve two decades ago:
Although the gold standard could hardly be portrayed as having produced a period of price tranquility, it was the case that the price level in 1929 was not much different, on net, from what it had been in 1800. But, in the two decades following the abandonment of the gold standard in 1933, the consumer price index in the United States nearly doubled. And, in the four decades after that, prices quintupled. Monetary policy, unleashed from the constraint of domestic gold convertibility, had allowed a persistent overissuance of money. As recently as a decade ago, central bankers, having witnessed more than a half-century of chronic inflation, appeared to confirm that a fiat currency was inherently subject to excess.
Do you remember when your father called you aside and tried to explain the value of compound interest? Well, here is a picture that will bring the image back to you. It is an inverse picture of what the government has allowed to happen to the value of your money. Mostly mild increases in prices year over year, but the cumulative picture is startling. In later posts I will show you some other startling, even hair raising, pictures.
Rising price levels might be tolerable if the value of all things in dollar terms rose together and in the same proportions – in other words, if it were just an accounting issue. But folks, that’s not the name of the game. Some things keep up with rising prices and some things don’t. The name of the game is to be in line to benefit first. Be an oil producer, a defense contractor, a bank pumping out CDOs and SIVs, a hedge fund dealing in credit default swaps, or a mortgage broker pushing easy money on someone who can’t afford it. Don’t be the person who is behind the curve, or under it – a retiree or a little old lady on a fixed income or someone down the line who needs to run a trucking company or airline. And don't be someone whose dollars are just sitting in a bank account. Inflation is a zero sum game of redistribution of wealth from those in the back of the line to those in the front.
Unfortunately, when one hears about the decline of the dollar today, it is a reference to the Dollar’s value relative Euros or some other paper currency, not to the value of tailor-made suits or groceries or gold. Euros, Dollars, Yen and the like are all going down in relation to tangible value, so today’s talk about the decline of the dollar merely means that the Dollar is dropping in real value faster than the other currencies. Neither is good.
The mainstream media are only recently beginning to worry about inflation and, generally clueless, they are looking for a cause, seeking to blame greedy oil companies, speculators, etc. All the while they are ignoring the simple fact that all currencies are now fiat (i.e., not redeemable in gold or anything else – backed by no more than the promise of the government that you can use the paper to pay your bills) – and that such a system, in Greenspan’s words, is “inherently subject to excess.” Most MSM reporters implicitly adopt “an increase in prices” as the definition of inflation. So they miss the point – and the culpable party.
Austrian school economists define inflation as an increase in the supply of money and credit. That increase eventually, but not always immediately, results in prices being higher than they otherwise would have been. Tinkering with the supply of money and credit to achieve government policy goals is a very dangerous game that throughout history without exception has been lost.
Lord William Rees-Mogg wrote an interesting article on inflation last week entitled “Inflation: ‘Destroying Governments Since 1789’” giving a concise history of inflation in the West since the French Revolution. Murray Rothbard wrote a simple explanation in his monograph, “What has the Government Done to Our Money?” I commend it to your reading. Alan Greenspan also described the problem quite well in his essay, “Gold and Economic Freedom” in Capitalism the Unknown Ideal. It’s tragic that Greenspan did not use his last position and the bully pulpit to bring a renewed education on the topic to the public. His squandered opportunity may very well have been the last clear chance for economic freedom and stable growth to gain a foothold in today’s world.
In any event, you will be totally bumfuzzled if you think of inflation as price increases. The latest inflation was the vast increase in the amount of money and credit that fueled the real estate bubble. The consequential rise in the price of real estate assets provided a phantom base for other credit and a false impression of wealth, both of which fueled a home-equity line of credit (HELOC)/credit card consumer economy based on borrowed money secured by something that wasn’t secure at all.
It’s over. And we are now suffering the consequences.
Why are people only now screaming so loud about higher prices when the price of food and energy have been going up for a few years. It’s because the false impression of wealth has now disappeared, HELOCs are drying up, and credit cards are getting ugly.
Without credit one normally would pay as you go. If fuel prices go up, you drive less or find a cheaper mode of transportation. You fly less or not at all. If the cost of groceries goes up, you try to shop smarter and eat cheaper, cut out the soda and paper towels entirely. And you start to look everywhere for ways to not spend. This will take its toll on prices. The supply/demand curve loses a certain amount of price elasticity without freely available credit. When a seller’s price increases cause people to stop buying, the market is telling him it’s time to stop raising prices. If the supply of money and credit is not there, the rising prices will ultimately stop.
Unless, that is, someone makes money and credit freely available again. Fed Chairman Dr. Ben Bernanke is an academic expert on the mistakes the Fed made following the crash in 1929 that (in his view) prolonged the last great depression. Here is how he proposed in 2002 to address the threat of a deflation:
“The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services. We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.”
Unfortunately, increasing the number of dollars in circulation or credit available to banks will not and is not doing the trick. The Fed has made the money available to the banks, but they are running scared. They are not lending. A massive deflation is now underway in the credit and financial markets. (Read Michael “Mish” Shedlock’s “Is the Inflation Scare Over Yet?” Almost everything he writes is well worth reading.) The credit and credit derivatives markets are so huge that they dwarf the capability of the Federal Reserve or United States to control them. The bursting of the real-estate bubble and resulting deflation in those markets has caused credit and real estate asset prices to nosedive. And the financial markets and consumer economy built on home equity lines of credit, credit cards, and misperceptions of wealth are going down with them. If the Federal Reserve makes new injections of money and credit, they could create yet another bubble somewhere else and will likely sustain the continued “elasticity” (increases) in the prices of food and energy.
Each person’s financial situation is unique and it doesn’t work very well for me to offer advice to other people without knowing their circumstances. But here is what I do for myself that I would recommend anyone do.
- Try to stay out of debt. Anything more than an 80% mortgage and a car loan is a risk; and, these days it is better to have a 50-75% mortgage or none at all. Too many people are now faced with owing the bank lots of money if they want to sell their home.
- Live frugally and don’t waste money. This is going to be very hard for the X Box/iPod generation. Figure out a process for determining how to decide whether it’s something you want or something you need, and use the process in every purchasing decision you make. And, I can't say it more simply: don't spend more than you can ever hope to pay off.
- Strive for personal excellence: work hard at your job and be the best at what you do. A rise in unemployment is a strong possibility and you want to be the last person out the door. If you are an entrepreneur, know that investment capital is scarce and investors will put their money behind only the best.
- Be very aware of where your savings and investments are. In coming posts I will describe how fragile the banking system is and will identify some types of securities that were thought to be safe and liquid but are no longer.
- Educate yourself two ways. Gather as much knowledge about the economy and the markets as you possibly can – and do not stop, because they change and develop every minute. If you are young, invest in yourself and pursue as much higher education as you can use in your chosen career. Government mismanagement and misfortune cannot take that away from you.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Crash in the Stock and Credit Markets?
This past week (the last full week in June 2008) the stock market was described as having its worst June since 1930. The week before, London Telegraph reported that the Royal Bank of Scotland “advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyses the major central banks. … ‘A very nasty period is soon to be upon us - be prepared,’ said Bob Janjuah, the bank's credit strategist.”
The RBS statement was only one of the latest pronouncements from a cacophony of doomsayers. That is not to say that these people don’t have anything useful to say. They are sounding an alarm that at a minimum should make you curious about something that could affect you personally. And you owe it to yourself to try to understand what is going on.
In the posts that follow, I will attempt to educate you in the history, the philosophy and the economic developments that brought us to the point where responsible institutions have become so strident in their warnings. Meanwhile, consider these facts about commodity price increases in the past year, compliments of Jim Sinclair:
- Crude oil up 42.5%
- Ethanol up 20.7%
- Heating oil up 43.9%
- Natural gas up 76.5%
- Unleaded gas up 39.5%
- Cattle up 1.0%
- Corn up 58.8%
- Soy beans up; 26.4%
- Coffee up 5.9%
- Aluminum up 32.7%
- Copper up 25.7%
- Platinum up 33.4%
- Gold up 6.0%
- Silver up 13.4%.
Pollyanna versus Chicken Little
The meltdown in the financial markets that became manifest in earnest last summer has generated an incredible variety of commentary -- from Pollyanna to Chicken Little. Where the economy is headed is important to all of us. I will devote extensive space in the coming months to all sides and all aspects of the raging debate, and I will contribute my own evaluation. But it is important to study how these opinions are developed: what are the facts (actual occurrences and things) and are all relevant facts included, what is the context, what is the logic (the validity of the reasoning), and are the conclusions warranted in light of the foregoing?
The economic news and commentary is fast and furious, coming at a rate and volume that is almost impossible to digest. Furthermore, most commentators speak from their own perspectives and are rarely self-critical. Those who own gold mines obviously would like to see the price of gold rise. Financial advisers would like to sell you their services. Newspeople want to improve their stature in their corner of the news industry. Stockbrokers want you to buy stocks and bonds. Et Cetera. So it is all the more important to be skeptical and study the facts to verify any conclusions that are presented to you.
As for myself, I am retired, own my modest home outright and have retirement savings that probably are not near enough to sustain my pre-retirement standard of living to the end of my life expectancy. So my financial self-interest is not much different from the ordinary prudent middle class retiree.
While economics itself is fairly simple, the economic superstructure is extraordinarily complex. For example, one of the largest threats to your personal economic well-being is the stability of the multi-trillion dollar market in over-the-counter credit derivatives that is larger than the annual gross domestic product of the United States. Even more complex are the strictures that governments have placed on the free markets. These strictures distort rather than eliminate market forces, making it difficult to forecast the short term direction of the economy. I will attempt to make these complexities somewhat understandable.
The economic news and commentary is fast and furious, coming at a rate and volume that is almost impossible to digest. Furthermore, most commentators speak from their own perspectives and are rarely self-critical. Those who own gold mines obviously would like to see the price of gold rise. Financial advisers would like to sell you their services. Newspeople want to improve their stature in their corner of the news industry. Stockbrokers want you to buy stocks and bonds. Et Cetera. So it is all the more important to be skeptical and study the facts to verify any conclusions that are presented to you.
As for myself, I am retired, own my modest home outright and have retirement savings that probably are not near enough to sustain my pre-retirement standard of living to the end of my life expectancy. So my financial self-interest is not much different from the ordinary prudent middle class retiree.
While economics itself is fairly simple, the economic superstructure is extraordinarily complex. For example, one of the largest threats to your personal economic well-being is the stability of the multi-trillion dollar market in over-the-counter credit derivatives that is larger than the annual gross domestic product of the United States. Even more complex are the strictures that governments have placed on the free markets. These strictures distort rather than eliminate market forces, making it difficult to forecast the short term direction of the economy. I will attempt to make these complexities somewhat understandable.
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