Giving Bear Stearns Bank a bailout was vital – otherwise the financial system and the thing that unkind people call the “credit/money bubble”, would have collapsed.
Bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was also vital – otherwise the financial system would have collapsed. Senator Dodd and and Senator Obama were not paid a fortune by Fannie and Freddie for nothing.
And bailing out AIG was vital to – otherwise, again, the financial system would have collapsed.
And now all the “bad housing debt” of all the financial services companies must be taken up by the government – otherwise the financial system will collapse.
And Paul Marks must be bailed out too. After all once one has spent a trillion Dollars, more Dollars than there are stars in the sky or cells in your hands, what is a few Dollars more? His judgements were no worse than that of the bankers and other such. In fact they were better – after all he did not take on a lot of housing loans without even knowing who the money had been loaned to or which people had a chance of paying the money back.
And Paul Marks did not play complex games with the housing loans – treating a debt as an “asset” (“normal banking practice” of course) on which a vast castle-in-the-air could be built. The endless “lower interest rates” by the Federal Reserve system and the Bank of England, i.e. the endless flow of new credit/money that created the mad lending and manipulation in the first place, are not enough. Paul Marks must have a proper bailout – and he must have it now. If Paul Marks does not have a bailout I can assure you that the credit bubble financial system will come to grief.
Of course a “bitter and cynical” person would say that the credit bubble financial system will come to grief even if Paul Marks gets his bail out.
But that did not stop all the other bailouts. Each bailout was supposed to “save the financial system” and clearly did not, but that did not stop all the other bailouts.
Now everyone is going to get a bailout, so Paul Marks must have one too!
Paul, it all started when John Maynard Keynes gave his most mind numbing response to his whole deficit financing philosophy- in the long run we are all dead. It was actually his only bit of common sense but that hasn’t deterred generations of Keynesian from economy mangling and strangling with government regulation.
Sorry Paul, but we really cant have one of Samizdatas most precious assets Nationalised.
So I’m afraid it’s the Workhouse for you young fella me lad!
Take your place in the queue, Paul 8-((
These politicians are presenting this as a stark choice between banks being bailed out/nationalised (huge costs to taxpayer) at on extreme or allowed to go bust (huge risk to economy) at the other.
Nonsense. There is a perfectly sensible middle way, known in the trade as a ‘debt-for-equity-swap’.
That’s that fixed.
The question is “Is Paul Marks too big to fail?”. Better start piling on those calories!
Without a doubt! Were he to be allowed to fail it would leave an intellectual black hole in space/time that would suck in all intelligent discourse, leaving only the undead lumpen shuffling numbly across the wasteland of reality TV shows and soap operas.
Bail out Paul Marks now! For pity sake, do for our future! Do it for the children!
I’m in!
All contributions greatfully accepted – unless they are taken by threat (taxation) or by fraud (the printing press – or the modern computer way of generating credit money).
In short nothing to do with Bush-brain, who was still demanding the bailout be passed an hour or so ago (I suppose he does not understand that a vote of 205 to 228 means that he has lost – 228 being a bigger number than 205).
“But the suffering will be terrible” – yes, but the bailout will not prevent the suffereing, it will only make it worse.
Republicans have suggested a less statist alternative – but Bush still has not supported it.
Time to dump Bush.
If John McCain does not understand that, he deserves to lose the election.
“But that means the Marxists win – and they will sign international agreements destroying freedom of speech and….”
I know that – I flatter myself that I know what Obama and the other Comrades will do better than anyone here (indeed they have already started doing it – with the Obama “truth unit” getting law enforcement folk to remove signs on private property if they consider them “misleading”).
But it will not be media bias, censorship, or even ACORN vote fraud that defeat John McCain.
People like Christopher Dodd, Barack Obama, Barney Frank (and all the rest of them) are worms – they are no threat if one attacks them boldly. Expose their corruption (for example the payments from Fannie Mae, the Community Reinvestment Act, the 150 ACORN organizations with their links to Barack Obama and other scum – and there links to subprime) and they collapse.
The man who looks like he is going to defeat John McCain is – John McCain.
He will not fight “dirty” (i.e. hard), and he turned down every chance to lead the charge against the RINO Bush and his bailout.
For the West (not just the United States) to be saved John McCain must change.
No one can change him – he must change himself.
And he is running out of time.
I would like a bailout. But not for me, for the greater good. I’ll be more efficient than any bank, I’ll not keep a penny for myself. I pump prime the bartender, the car dealer, the bookie, the younger women I alas have to shower with the goods, my doctor, the liquor store, my bartender again. Maybe a boatyard. They seem nice………
Yes – as Mille Woods pointed out, this is the “economics” of Lord Keynes.
Modern “economists” come to the same absurd conclusions (that increasing the money supply is good for the economy) – they just use more mathematics to hide the fact that their reasoning does not make sense.
At least Major Douglas was honest – he just wanted to print money and hand out to people (where upon this mystical “multiplyer” would come into play).
Whereas Lord Keynes supported all this bank fraud stuff.
Well, your post harmonizes with what I’ve been posting on the blogosphere in response to those who claim the bailout should go directly to homeowners.
Where’s my bailout? I paid off my debts and rented and saved up through all of this and I am not yet a homeowner. So I get zip.
This is teaching me that I should have blown off my debts and got a sub-prime zero down mortgage on a huge house in the best neighborhood and wait for the gravy train to come by.
Where’s my friggin’ bailout?
That’s why the American people overwhelmingly deluged Congress with threats to fire them come November 4. We (and that includes our children and grandchildren) don’t want to pay for the irresponsibly of other schmucks when we lived right and played by the rules.
Sell the shit on ebay and be done with it.
I’m waiting for the “fail” video on facebook.
I’d like to swoop in after the carnage and buy a nice house for cash. Circling vulture here.
There does seem to be a popular delusion amongst many people that we have to avoid recessions at all costs. This belief causes even many supposedly pro-free market commentators to back bailouts, nationalisations, ‘liquidity injections’ by central banks, and so on. The excuse always is that these are necessary to stop further rot. Yet the rot continues. These measures merely postpone a crash, and if anything, will make the recession longer and more painful.
I don’t think it is just Keynesians preaching the bullshit though. I have noticed some commentators, obviously influenced by Milton Friedman and the Chicago school, claiming that the central banks should flood the markets with tons of new money. What could be more idiotic?
And are you aware, Paul, that the true Major Douglas believers in Alberta are now the biggest exporters of fossil fuel energy to the United States. It goes without saying that they don’t need “funny money” anymore.
I know this post is a parody, but the bit about treating debt as an asset sounded like you were condemning it seriously, which means I have to reply.
Debt is not “treated as an asset” by banks, it is an asset. Somebody is paying me back money in the future, and the right to that flow of money is an asset with considerable value. There are, of course, difficulties in measuring it exactly – risk premiums, inflation compensations, and all that – but the fact that it has value is unquestionable.
For the same reason, using fractional-reserve banking to expand the effective money supply is not fraud. A bank having $10 in cash on hand and $90 in loans as their assets, and $100 in deposits as their liabilities, is committing no variety of fraud, even though they are expanding the supply of money by a factor of 10 compared to a full-reserve “bank”. It’d be like asserting that somebody is inflating your wood currency by their logging – even if you use wood as currency, you’re not allowed to complain about someone producing more of it. It’s a known property of how the stuff works.
Also, Millie, what Keynes was saying with his “in the long run, we’re all dead” was that asserting economic equilibrium over the long run is not sufficient to show that the market will balance in the short run – he was trying to say that even if it eventually stabilizes, it takes too long. I don’t agree with him, but it was not as obnoxious a statement as you seem to be suggesting.
Get in line, Paul.
Me? I sold a guitar last month. The ’77 LPC. I only played that thing for twenty-four years. I’d have to run the inflation numbers but I’m pretty sure that I made money on that deal.
{shrug}
Onward, through the Endarkenment.
Paul Marks may need a bailout, but did you know many of the fat cats who circulate from board to board and from job to job throughout the financial industry, are also members of the Bilderberg Group and or the Trilateral Commission? When someone takes your money and steals your car, it makes an impression. When they belong to such a secret political clique, it leaves an indelible impression. Many elected officials even belong to these cabals, hence the secrecy. When Bill Clinton eased banking restrictions, he dished out $8-billion dollars for community reinvestment loans. When the financing schemes fell through, as is their wont whenever 30-million Mexican nationals buy inflated properties and default, it left banks in the lurch. Hillary Clinton counted on the loan giveaways to buy votes. Interestingly enough, had Hillary secured the nomination; she, instead of Barack Obama would preside over the bailout. So, where’s that $8-bilion plus dollars? Where’s Hillary? Why the caveat in Section 8 of the bailout: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” The Global Initiative people (code speak for car thieves) took my money; they stole my car. If you or I did half the things these people have done, we’d be serving consecutive life sentences. Wise up, get angry, and let the bubble burst. Besides, Ben Stein says we’re going to be just fine. You have my word on it too. Gentlemen, I want my money back: http://theseedsof9-11.com
As I’m much more “foot loose and fancy free” than most everyone else here, I’d like my MTV(cable/satTV) along with my “stupid behaviour” mitigation check also, Thank you very much!
(oh, did I mention beer tax abatement, and, and, just give me a second, I’m sure it’ll come to me….ahhh, yes, porno-leave the hobbits at home if you please-franchise…yea, that works!)
somehow we got through today without the DJIA dropping 10% (up 485) even though we don’t have the super duper bailout.
the world will end tomorrow though I am sure.
Alsadius ,
I caught that liability thing but it did remind me of something that I never quite got comfortable with. In corporate double entry accounting as I learned it, there are assets/liabilities, income/expense and cash. But cash is considered to be on the liabilities and expense side of the balance sheet. As Andy Rooney would say, “Why is that?”
Also, fractional reserve is a fraud, but not in the way you are defending against. The problem is in the fractional reserve part replacing what was formerly dedicated deposits for lending. Fractional reserve lending generates a situation where a run on demand deposits can instantly cause a total loss of liquidity. With dedicated deposits, that can not happen. Not “won’t”, can not.
Fractional reserve interferes in the contract between the depositor and the bank by telling the banker that it is only necessary to be able to pay of 10% of demand depositors at any given time. In other words, “demand” means “demand for the first 10% then we lock the doors and pray”. I don’t care if they inflate the currency by an infinite amount as long as it is from deposits dedicated for lending. It is that whole ‘consent’ thing. Well, that and the fact that dedicated deposit lending is self regulating and doesn’t require government experts generating lending policy.
In order to allow 30 year fixed rate mortgages etc, speculators are introduced to gamble on interest rates in order to match up short term and demand deposits with long term fixed rate loans. I am all for speculators absorbing risk, but they are speculating on government policy! The fraud part is when a banker takes your demand deposit and promises to keep it safe and make it convenient for you to spend it in exchange for a small fee – but then goes to a different window and loans 90% of your money to somebody else. Before fractional reserve, they needed the depositor’s cooperation to lend out the depositor’s money. The fractional reserve system is just more ‘we know better than you’ government.
Hee hee! Linked!
Midwesterner, you certainly aren’t alone in this, but your agrument against “fractional reserve” banking doesn’t withstand even moderate scrutiny. By your description, if the bank lends even one dollar of your deposits it theoretically wouldn’t be able to honor your withdrawal request. The only way a bank makes money (and is able to pay you interest on your deposits) is to lend some of it out, keeping back only what it reasonably calculates it will need for ordinary withdrawals. You apparently want it to keep 100% of the deposits locked in the vault, available for immediate withdrawal. That’s not a bank; that’s a safety deposit box, a service for which you pay a fee (rather than receiving interest). Our modern economy simply couldn’t exist without the fractional reserve system.
I think what you (and others) are really objecting to is the “money multiplier” effect (one bank keeps 10% of its deposits in reserve and lends out the rest; the borrower deposits that 90% in another bank which sets aside 10% of that and lends out the rest; etc., etc.). However, the maximum amount of such a multiplier effect is simple to calculate and is directly correlated to the reserve requirement. Any central bank can (and does) manage it by controlling the reserve requirement and the amount of cash in circulation. A truly private banking system could do so too, albeit in less direct (and less precise) ways.
The entire argument is specious, and is getting tiresome. A non-fractional-reserve banking system could only work in a non-industrial economy, and a (necessarily) very poor society. Get over it.
Oh, and if Paul wants a bailout he’ll have to get in line behind Iowahawk.
Laird,
If I deposit money with you with the intent for it to be lent, then I say “you may keep it for x months and pay me x interest”. You then lend my money out for x months and x+profit interest. There is no need for any reserve on the amount dedicated to be lent. You make the ‘+profit’ for your efforts. Believe it or not, there was banking before fractional reserve was invented.
From what I’ve read, it started when the bankers who stored gold for customers discovered that they could lend it out on the side and as long as not too many reclaimed their gold at once, the racket worked.
The only difference between fractional reserve lending and dedicated deposit lending is that the banker actually has to get permission to lend your money to someone else. That is all. The system won’t break, the only thing that will happen is that runs will not be possible. You seem to be conceding that nobody in their right mind would give the banks permission to lend out their deposits in exchange for a cut. But they did once and they will again. Your (and many other’s) stories that letting depositors decide whether or not to lend their money will drive us back to horse drawn airplanes and square rigged oil tankers is getting equally tiresome.
I know all about the money multiplier. That is an intrinsic feature of all lending. In a dedicated deposit environment it causes no problems. It is only when loans are on a longer term than deposits that the multiplying effect becomes a dangerous hazard. And no, ending it will not mean the end to long term loans, it will mean the formation of self governing mutual banks offering competing terms to depositors. Hint, that’s a good thing.
Yes! And the Illuminati! And the Masons! And Knight Templar! And the Mont Pelerin Society! And most of them are really shape shifting reptiles I tell you! And the don’t forget the Joooooooooss!
One good way to write long loans would be to incorporate a big bundle of 30 year loans that pay dividends on stock shares until they are payed off. ‘Depositors’ would sell shares to make a withdrawal. Share prices would float according to the market.
There are very many more ways the market can do this that are better than Greenspan, Bernanke and Paulson.
Banking is not the one single exception to things that the market does better than government bureaucrats, especially not at this point in an election cycle.
BTW, did ya like my ‘horse drawn airplanes‘? 🙂
Yes, I did like your “horse drawn airplanes.”
BTW, when you deposit money in a bank you do give them authority to lend it to someone else. That’s what a bank is for. If you don’t like it, use your safety deposit box. Or your matress.
Oh, and your idea of selling “shares” in a bundle of loans has already been done. It’s called “securitization”, and the only reason it fell on hard times is that everyone stopped paying attention to what was being put into the “bundle.” It’s still a very useful tool, and will come back into its own eventually.
Laird,
I think it was Ray Meyer, the late coach of the DePaul Blue Demons, that after a particularly ‘physical’ game was asked if he didn’t let his players get a little rough. His reply was that you have to play by the rules that are being enforced, not the ones you think should be enforced.
The national government has commandeered the banking system. By subsidizing banks with FDIC etc, (my not-freely-given money) competition is quashed. The same thing happened in agriculture when they subsidized corn. Telling farmers they didn’t have to take government money and strings was eq to telling them ‘sell out or go bankrupt’.
I hope you don’t think that the Fed system arriving almost arm in arm with the 16th amendment (income tax) was random chance, do you?
I am amazed that you are so determinedly opposed to the free market in just this special case. And those ‘private’ Federal Reserve Notes are in fact a government forced monopoly. Every time anybody tries to compete with that ‘private’ system, well … bad things happen to them. Believe me, any thing the Fed system can do, the free market could, given a chance, do better. Well, except tax everybody’s incomes. That is the most compelling argument I can think of for keeping the Fed system.
Paul is not alone.
I’m reminded of this snippet from The Simpsons (episode, “The PTA Disbands”), parodying It’s a Wonderful Life:
I suspect that most people have only a superficial knowledge of industrial-age banking, and so would wrongly conclude that banks must lend all deposits out without regard for the timeframe of the demand for withdrawal.
There are several problems with fractional-reserve banking, both before the Federal Reserve debased the dollar down to a cent or two. One is that the conversion of credit to money is eventually revealed to be an unsustainable investment (presuming there to be a rational expectation of payback, which there wasn’t in a good part of the recent mortgage mess), with a consequent recession/depression. Another is that there is a transfer of wealth, from those who get the money sooner to those who get it later.
Suppose the current panic-driven bailout maniacs really are trying to address the contraction of the money supply due to the multiplier effect. I haven’t yet seen anything close to a coherent explanation of their aims, but this seems worth addressing. There ought to be a way for the level of the money supply to be sustained/restored while allowing careless investors to take the hit that we/they deserve. The money could perhaps be injected so as to benefit responsible investors.
Maybe giving Paul Marks his bailout is the right thing to do.
Yes, for god’s sake. Do it quickly! FOR THE CHILDREN!
Midwesterner, how about a bit of freedom in the other direction? The reserve requirement is a pretty arbitrary threshold, set up by central banks to easier control money supply and nudge the economy in the direction they (or more often, the governments they are quasi-independent of) consider necessary. The requirement is not only an extremely blunt instrument of monetary policy (and thus rarely adjusted in developed economies), but it also removes from depositors the need to check how solvent their bank is. In a normal situation, a Citigroup or HSBC probably can do fine with much lower than 5% reserves; a Florida bank with 2 branches and heavy exposure to the local economy on both the asset and liability side probably would be prudent to have 20+%.
My point is, the reserve requirement is not needed, it removes good incentives and creates bad ones. A much smarter way to regulate the banking system would be to let banks have any reserves they choose to, but charge them FDIC insurance fees based not only on size, but also on risk measures – reserves/deposits is one such measure, but by far not the only one and/or the best one.
Regards.
Plamus,
There are two separate problems that need to both be addressed. One is the difference between the length of deposit’s guaranteed availability and the loan’s maturity. This is where the money multiplier can create problems even for a bank that has no bad debt at all on the books, it is simply unable to return to the depositor’s money that it has lent out. As long as the depositor agrees to however that lag is addressed prior to their deposit, then buyer beware, I’m fine with it. Lending money against deposits held in unrestricted checking accounts is always a bad idea. In my part of Wisc, the General Motors assembly plant is shutting down after having been manufacturing Samson and General Motors products since WWI. We are getting less than a year’s notice. This sort of event causes a huge up tick in M1 and M2 withdrawals and would make local banks become totally illiquid with out the national market to work from. If we had a nation wide down turn, what should have been a simple and brief correction and redeployment of assets would (is) become a heavily monitized effort to maintain liquidity.
With depositor consent assumed as a stipulation, your plan is a good one with one friendly amendment. Make the banks purchase FDIC equivalent insurance on the open market (not from popularly elected politicians and their appointees using taxpayer funds) or else disclose to their depositors that there is no insurance.
I go on rants from time to time about ‘brittle’ economics versus liquidity. In my opinion, brittleness is totally a product of the discrepancy between the length of time deposits are dedicated for and the length of time loans run for. There are an infinite number of ways that the markets in financial services could address this. Turning control of the financial system over to political appointees is probably about the worst.
There are a number of reasons why the system will never change short of an economic cataclysm destroying it first. The biggest reason is the central banks and treasuries are skimming a huge amount. Just put a dollar value on 3% inflation on treasurys, etc and you will realize the magnitude of just one method they are using to skim. Another is politicians will not only never give up a tax or revenue stream, they will never give up control of anything. They can control the economy and use it to their ends. This was demonstrated Monday with Pelozi’s little speech. A panic helps The One, let’s feed the fire. A more subtle manipulation is using structural inflation to cause tax bracket creep. There are a plethora of little nasties built into the system.
Paul
From what you have written you appear to believe that the sub-prime crisis was caused solely by irresponsible banking, and not (at least partly) by dodgy legislation i.e. the Community Reinvestments Acts (CRA), which basically incentivised banks to lend money to bad credit risks. From what I can gather the CRA and in particular Bill Clinton’s tweaking of it can be held responsible for the problems at Fannie Mae to a good degree.
If this is the case, that bad State legislation and regulation has caused banks to suffer, is it not incumbent on the said State to bail the banks out of the mess?
I’d be interested to know:
1. What your take on the role of the CRA has been in this crisis?
2. Whether you feel that this crisis has been caused as much by bad/excessive regulation as by individual and collective greed, and
3. The question I asked above.
Granted, if you feel the CRA is a red herring and you feel that state regulation has little to do with it, the American taxpayer has no business bailing these people out whatsoever.
The Simpsons reference reminds me of a Mary Tyler Moore episode I used to use in one of my B-school classes. Mary wants to cash in a bank certificate
saying she wants her money to buy a car. But it’s not your money the bank exec tells her patiently it’s our money.
As for the course I was teaching itself – basically it had as its theme the road to success is sincerity – once you learn to fake that everything else is easy.
Alsadius.
“Debt is an asset”.
It is an investment – that may come off or MAY NOT.
If I lend someone some money to build a factory and the business works out and he pays me the money plus interest – well fine.
But I can not take his I.O.U. and build a castle-in-the-air upon it.
Accept I can if I am a bank.
There is no honest way of taking 100 Dollars of real savings (physical Dollars in the vault) and turning it into 101 Dollars of loans. And once the 100 Dollars has been lent out IT IS NOT THERE ANY MORE (till WHEN AND IF it is paid back) – one can not take the I.O.U.’s and declare them “money” which one can lend out again (and again and again…..).
“But that is free enterprise”.
Is it now – then why does it need government bailouts.
For example Tim Congdon (the high priest of the fractional reserve bankers – who pay him well) wrote in the Times (of London) today that the Bank of England had gone into the market “many times” (over the years) and “bought all the securities in sight” with its credit money.
He wrote that as if it was something good – rather than something that showed that modern banking was based on false principles. But whatever it is, endless government subsidies and bailouts are not “free enterprise”.
By the way if Tim Congdon was really a “monetarist” he would be calling for LESS money supply expansion (not bailouts or “zero interest rates” or all the other stuff he is calling for) – as Chicago School people (like Irving Fisher of old) only believe in more credit money if the “price level” is going down – not every time the fractional reserve bankers are going bankrupt. Oh dear the credit bubble is going pop so we are having “debt deflation” which “caused the Great Depression”.
No your holy bubble caused the crash – you nonenity.
And the reaction to the crash (the tax increases, the trade war, and the wage fixing) turned the crash into the Great Depression. Which it may again under Comrade Obama.
But to get back to origins of the present situation.
It was worse than “just” I.O.U.s being used as if they were money – and then being sent off for malinvestment (building factories that should not be built and other such).
The money (Fed generated or bank generated) that was loaned out was not mostly for investment in building factories or other business enterprises.
It was mostly for CONSUMPTION – for buying houses, for car loans and for other such.
There was never any chance that the money (the money the pyramid scheme of debt was built on) was going to get paid back – because the people who borrowed the money were not, for the most part, using it to build business enterprises.
Of course some lending for consumption is fine – but when most lending is for consumption (and a pyramid of debt is built on it – and traded round the world) then this is not fine.
Of course there was a massive surge of credit money from the Federal Reserve (and from the Bank of England) but the bankers knew what was going on and that “easy money” was a fool’s game – but they carried on playing it. AND WOULD DO SO AGAIN – AS SOON AS THEIR BALANCE SHEETS ARE CLEAR.
And what does Bush-brain want to do?
He wants to “free up credit” again so that people can “buy homes, buy cars and send their children to college”.
Spend, spend, spend – as if the entire population were lottery winners. No one has to do any work or produce anything – just spend. The “multplyler” will do the work for them.
He knows nothing and learns nothing from experience – that is why I call him a moron.
Social Credit.
Yes Millie Woods – although they lost power in 1971 the dream of Social Credit people is now true, Alberta has no government debt.
But as you know all the oil money had a bit to do with that.
Although the judgement of the various “Progressive Conservative” govenrments of Alberta to use the money to pay off debt (rather than on social workers and other such) has been proved correct.