I have become increasingly concerned that some in the Obama administration are treating this economic crisis as a "black swan" event. That is a very rare, random and unpredictable event. The key thing about black swans is that because they are random and unpredictable you can’t stop them from happening, you can only create your systems so that they can handle them if they occur. A pandemic flu that killed tens of millions might be a black swan, and it’s one that we’re completely unprepared for, as we don’t have the excess medical capacity to handle it.
The most recent event which made me think of this is the news that Mary Schapiro, new chair of the SEC, doesn’t plan on reforming ratings agencies. Now, ratings agencies were one of the key actors in this mess—they certified mortgage backed securities and other toxic derivatives as AAA quality. If they had not done so, almost no one would have bought them. The ratings agencies are paid by the companies whose securities they rate.
I trust you see the problem?
If you think that the crisis is just random, a once in a century (or at least once every few decades) disaster, then you won’t think making major changes is necessary. Get through the problem, go back to how you were doing things before, and everything will be fine.
But, of course, the economic and financial crisis unfolding right now was not random. It was predicted by multiple people, and it was predicted because of policy steps taken by government and widely known private actions.
We could all read the charts showing a bubble in housing prices and sales. We could all see that derivatives were also in a bubble. We knew that leverage was out of control, ballooning to 30X or in many cases, even higher numbers. We knew that with financial deregulation firms had started being involved in multiple different types of businesses, putting retail banks at risk from their insurance or brokerage or investment banking arms. We all knew that the US savings rate had hit unsustainable lows and that the trade deficit was too high. We knew that the carry trade was introducing tons of hot money to the system (borrowing for nothing in Japan and using that money for leveraged plays elsewhere).
And, perhaps most importantly, we should have known that executives in the financial sector paying themselves huge bonuses were concentrating on short term gains and did not care about long term viability of their companies or even care about the honesty of what they were doing, because hey, by the time it all fell apart, they’d be rich, rich, rich and never need to work again.
All of which is to say the crisis was caused by a number of factors. It was not random. It was predictable and predicted. If we just muddle through this current meltdown—spend a lot of money bailing out the banks, throw some stimulus around—and don’t fix the fundamentally flawed incentives and structures of the system, it will likely happen again.
Alas, Mary Schapiro’s actions imply that there was nothing really fundamentally wrong with how business was done.
If the US does not, at the least:
- Reduce executive compensation—significantly,
- Bring all securities under regulation (i.e. Credit Default Swaps must be regulated as insurance including reserve requirements and the necessity to use government approved actuarial charts),
- Reduce overall leverage to 10X for everyone,
- Break financial companies back into functional firms (i.e. break brokerages and insurance companies and investment banks off of retail banks),
- Disallow financial innovation which is not expressly approved by regulators and is not then fully regulated,
- Fix its trade imbalances,
- Fix its savings rate,
- Move off of the oil economy,
- Ensure that lending is done responsibly and at relatively low markups from the Fed Funds rate, and
- Enact anti-usury laws,
then you can bet dollars to the donuts that they will no longer buy that this will not happen again in some form. This crisis is a structural problem, not a random mess caused by bad luck.
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The way to reduce executive compensation efficiently is to reimpose 90 percent marginal taxes on incomes above a million dollars, including a fair evaluation of stock options in that income. This would reduce the taste for risk with other people’s money.
Ian,
Thanks for this post. It reads like a mapped outline for a StrangeBedfellows campaign for the netroots to mobilize and be heard in regards to important if not vital, SEC changes.
I’m willing to sign-on.
Not a black swan!
Nor an event caused by the misbehavior of giraffes, alligators, zebras or fleas.
But, rather, a deliberate, intentional ‘effort’ of many.human beings, for of hubris and an uncouscionable sense of their own superiority and entitlement.
Oh, and the ‘unseen hand’ wasn’t envolved either. It NEVER is. Except as an ‘excuse’.
Excellent, Ian!!!
Excellent check list Ian. How about paying income tax on all percs, bonus, stock transfers, capital gains and “unearned” income???
Although, I like the Swedish laws irt executive and Board financial liabilities.
“out of hubris and an unconscionable …”
thank you! i was not one of the people who saw at the time all the particulars you’ve outlined – but there were people who did and what bothers me even more than the fact that none of them seem to be in the administration is that instead we have people like summers, geithner and schapiro who STILL don’t.
CNN is whining about trillions of dollars spent since Dec 2007 on the recession that is borrowed and will need to have the interest paid….. NOW they discover this…
What about the Bush first and second tax cuts?
What about the off budget Wars?
Standing here shaking my head……
As usual great post, Ian. It amazes me that you have the ability to sort this out so clearly but the elites who are in charge have such a difficult time being as clear as you are. Perhaps the elites running this place do not have the incentive to be as clear about the issues as you are!!!!
agreed. do you have any ideas on trade imbalances and savings rates?
oh i hate being such a ninny. ignore this at will to stick with Ian’s excellent post. However, if you google “black swan” and click “images” you’ll find they are quite common in Australia and thereabouts. But, then, everything “down under” is upside down anyway, right? *blush*
I’m all for rolling back to the Reagan tax cuts…… if someone cannot live on 3 million a year ….. then maybe they need a budget and priority review….
I work for a large “economic” consulting firm. We have as many PhD economists as anyone — includig from EVERY major university. No one here has a clue what is going on. When I inquired of one very senior academic member of the firm as to his opinions, he refered me to the Gary Becker – Richard Posner blog. In other words they don’t know or they can’t say. I think it is the former.
Hear Hear!
Hi Katymine. I hope you’re doing well today.
Ian, your list omits: criminal prosecution of the executives of the ratings agencies who knowingly abetted and engaged in fraud.
Super duper ….. 3 days left of my drug holiday and enjoying it…..
Thanks, Ian.
What might ‘it’ take to ‘incentive-ise’ the too-wise ‘to fail’ elites, slide?
‘Reality’ hasn’t gotten through …
Why do you suppose that ‘they’ are ‘in’, and Baker, and others (even including our own Ian, who can explain all of this ’stuff’ so clearly) are not?
Sure is perplexicating.
Note to American public: As regards future, self-help and then, mutual aid. Society (and survival) requires no less.
That is true, no point in regulation where there are no teeth waiting for those who skirt them….
Wonderful to hear. You’re always in our hearts, hon. ;->
Wow! Do you think those ‘possible’?
Remembering the ‘art’ of polly-ticks as practiced in our, most ‘exceptional’ land, wigwam.
Certainly would like to imagine such possumbilities, though …
DW
The sad and awful truth is that the trade imbalance will be resolved in the short-run by the precipitous decline in GDP, which in turn is being driven by an equally precipitous rise in the desired saving rate. This is not the place to go into the distinction between ex ante and ex post saving, but the bottom line is that the short-run consequence of households attempting to stave off financial disaster by reducing their current spending is deepening recession. When our economy contracts, our imports typically contract faster than our exports.
How this plays out in the longer term is much harder to judge. The standard economics used to predict outcomes assume a stable environment, which permits the application of standard equilibrium analysis. We are not currently in that environment, which means that small events can trigger bigger ones in unpredictable ways.
No one at this point can really say what the effects of the massive implosion and redistribution of wealth resulting from the current financial meltdown are going to be. This is untested territory. It is one of those times when we are going to have to hang togther, or as Benjamin Franklin observed, we will all hang separately.
If they referred you to Gary Becker or Posner, it’s a dead certainty they don’t have a clue as to what is going on.
Per this excellent NYT article on risk management:
I suspect what they did was to treat you defaulting on your mortgage and me defauting on mine as statistically independent outcomes. Paying on a small fraction of CDSs each year is no big deal, but losing a significant fraction of your CDS bet within two years, is disaster. It’s what safety engineers call “a common-mode failure” and always design against. Unfortunately, the so-called quants aren’t engineers.
Now THERE’s the rare animal! The Reagan thru bushco years have proved to me beyond the shadow of a doubt, there is absolutely NO line some goodly number of “haves” will not cross, if they feel they can get away with it sans dire penalty.
I want sensible regulations with razor-sharp teeth, if you please, Pres. Obama. ASAP.
Signed,
Suffering, rule-following, honest, straight-shooter and millions of others in the same leaky boat.
I seem to remember reading, probably at TPM, that Schapiro wasn’t exactly clean-handed when she was appointed. ISTR that she’s another Wall Street/investment banking insider, like Geithner and Summers.
These may be some of the smartest people in the room, but that doesn’t mean that they understand the problems they’re supposed to be dealing with. It also doesn’t mean that they can fix those problems (especially if they’re unwilling to do what’s needed when that means hurting ‘friends’).
Agree. This crisis is structural. It derives from deregulatory fever and intentionally running the federal government as if its sole purpose — after the re-election of Karl Rove’s clients — is to channel taxpayer dollars from the middle class to select private interests with as few questions asked as possible. Preferably without paper trails, as one or two per cent of that money is channeled back to the coffers of the politicians who sent it into private hands. Hence, they have enough money they can throw handfuls of it hopeless but sensationalist campaigns like Norm Coleman’s attempt to stop the Franken tide in Minnesota.
Government cannot regulate away greed any more than it can our taste for alcohol. It can expose it. It can penalize it directly and make it easier for private citizens to do the same. It can use criminal sanctions to punish those who refuse to temper their greed and let it run amok.
This neo-con view of government dominates, just as do “private equity’s” expectations of “reasonable” rates of return and their abuse of all resources needed to run an enterprise except “money”.
The Obama administration could try to overcome its tentativeness by adopting the guerilla tactic of attacking its opponents flanks. Those hit-and-run tactics might include more SEC disclosures and audits. It could close tax loopholes, end needless subsidies and stop encouraging companies that choose to put their headquarters here, but take and keep their profits offshore. If its data intrusions are legal, it could stop spying on reporters and spy on allegedly criminal corporate activity.
Businesses are herds. Globalization and outsourcing are prime examples, often thoughtless promoted and executed because “everyone’s doing it”. They ignore, skirt and break the laws — environmental, tax, lending, etc. — in part because the CheneyBush administration gave them free rein to do it. Mr. Obama, it’s time to take hold of the reins again, and stop this stagecoach from going off the cliff.
thanks. have not seen even hints of anything that suggests even a semi-sustainable way towards balanced trade so long as the dollar keeps it current reserve status (and all that entails). but i’m so far behind was just hoping it was one of those simple things i’d missed.
really, really like your sentiment re hanging together.
So, add the Humpty Dumpty Effect to your list of phenomena.
Isn’t that what’s wrong? The presumed smart, haughty little kewl kids have broken all the toys, and they haven’t the foggiest idea what to do to save their sorry hides. Further, they care not a whit for those of us who played by the rules.
it’s simply unbelievable that we’re not going to “reform” or regulate .. or somehow hold the “ratings raptors” to some new standard .. they were the crucial factor in pulling off this huge scam of bundling junk and then being able to peddle it as AAA instrumentalities …
not to mention the conflict of interest issues …
absolutely best description i’ve seen.
Watched and tried to hear Greenspan last night (abysmal acoustics wherever he was preaching to the hotshots).
Only message I caught, as he droned on and on and on:
Whatever the problems of today, he didn’t do it.
BAH HUMBUG!
Apologies. I tend to get too technical, sometimes.
From Schapiro’s wiki:
Schapiro has spent her whole career in regulation during a period when deregulation was the goal. LTCM, Enron, the dot com bubble, the housing bubble, and the financial meltdown happened on her watch. Is it really any surprise that this non-regulating regulator doesn’t want to regulate again? I mean look at her record. What could go wrong?
“…redistribution of wealth …” ?
Oh, you mean that we’re ‘redistributing” more wealth upwards, flood-like rather than trickle-ishing it downward?
Had me confusilated there, for a moment …
But I note that the ‘too big to fail’ crowd are still barricaded behind their sense of ‘entitlement’ to be doing much hobnobbing with the lesser folk who feel that they’ve been ‘hung’ out to ‘dry’ -up and go away …
Does your sense of ‘community’ require that the Wisdoms of Wealth actually join everybody else or is that a ‘euphemistic’ convenience?
Just wondering, Knut, just wondering …
Greenspan has adopted the Republic position: they didn’t do it either.
ACORN is looking for some help in keeping people in their homes
http://salsa.wiredforchange.co…..on_KEY=519
“This crisis is a structural problem, not a random mess caused by bad luck.”
Even if that statement were not true, it still makes complete and perfect sense to undertake major overhaul of the financial system on essentially every level. Accordingly, the question now becomes this:
Is it possible that those individuals pulling the levers of power can be this stupid and short-sighted? (That question was about half rhetorical, the other half being open for debate.)
Let’s see..worthless paper, derivatives were sold and guaranteed by greedy criminal insurance giants on the basis of criminal ratings, AAA mostly. If no civil laws were broken then what about prison for the criminally insane? I have heard the number 50 trilion dollars bandied about? If anyone thinks that the past economy was based only on trust what about now? How can this much economic damage be accidental?
Per this excellent Porfolio article by Michael Lewis:
In the words of Upton Sinclair, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” On the other hand, it is criminal malpractice for advisors to knowingly dispense bad advice, and anyone in the business had to know that subprime mortgages weren’t AAA.
And, she’s the Republicans’ go-to Democrat, so naturally she is Obama’s pick.
Thank you! This is the BEST analysis I have read! Thank you!
“And, perhaps most importantly, we should have known that executives in the financial sector paying themselves huge bonuses were concentrating on short term gains and did not care about long term viability of their companies….”
Just to pick one item from Ian’s recitation of the factors involved, I seem to recall first hearing about this kind of behavior in the corporate world back in the early eighties, at the height of the era of junk bonds and the decimation of America’s manufacturing base. Short-term profits vs. long-term gains isn’t a new phenomenon now and I doubt it was then, either. How come we rubes in Internetville can see this but our leading lights of government and economics can’t–or won’t?
Hi folks Good Mornimg
Ian mentions the “carry trade”, here is whar wiki has on it which is something I had wondered if you can borrow low in Japan what is the effect: the cost of the carry and the margins od profit to be considered are rather huge;
“According to Gary Dorsch of Global Money Trends, the yen carry is a “weapon of mass destruction” of $5.9 trillion, with yen loans another 1.2 trillion dollars on top of it, making Arabian oil wealth or Chinese reserves look small at $1.5 trillion and $1.9 trillion respectively.”
So Ian how would that be regulated? Will Japan agree? What control mechanisms are possible or do we just put it in the macro evaluation and reduce other risks to compensate? Forgive my ignorance.
What might ‘it’ take to ‘incentive-ise’ the too-wise ‘to fail’ elites, slide?
Jail, DW
might even be worse than that…. from a couple of weeks ago:
this entire breakdown is caused by deregulation, allowing banks to become casinos and allowing companies to have their capitol gains without forcing them to reinvest back into their company and our economy
Now, even Greenspan is recommending that the banks be nationalized: http://www.businessinsider.com/greenspan-2009-2
Charlie Rose had on a bloviating Larry Summers last night. He then had a panel discussion with Mark Zandi, Nina Easton, Fred Mishkin, and Nouriel Roubini.
Basically, Rose would talk to all of his guests at length who varied from missing the point to fully around the bend. He would then talk to Roubini briefly for a short respite of sanity and insight and then go back to those who had gotten it wrong and who still didn’t understand what was going on.
You didn’t have to be a quant to notice the outsized leverage ratios generated by these contracts. That’s why Warren Buffet called the stuff financial weapons of mass destruction.
Boom!
By Jove, I think you’ve got it, slide.
Wanna bet that the Political Cla$$ doesn’t (for some, completely un-explicable, rea$on)?
Do you think any problems arise when the P-Cla$$ is a bit too friendly with America’s Own Ari$tocracy?
Who could have, um,… what is that word? … Oh, yes … ‘imaginellated’, that’s it.
was thinking about that last night and i’m pretty sure what greenspan means by nationalization is that taxpayers become responsible for debt so that the bondholders are not touched.
Wanna bet that the Political Cla$$ doesn’t (for some, completely un-explicable, rea$on)?
Nope, DW. The Political Cla$$ is not touchable. Don’t believe me. Ask them!!!!
Well that’s the story we are being sold across the board with all of our elites. On the one hand we have Bush the worst and most destructive President in our history and on the other we have our elites which facilitated what Bush did on any subject I can think of. Now we are supposed to trust these same groups to clean up Bush’s messes, even though they did nothing to stop them and often were complicit in creating them. And of course what we are seeing is that they are incapable of doing it, for the very simple reason that they agreed with Bush more than they disagreed with him.
I defer to your deft wisdom and astute grasp of current political ‘reality’, slide.
You done called ‘it’, precisely.
;~DW
Most of what I have been hearing is that stockholders and bondholders are out of luck.
IIRC, even in nationalization-lite, i.e., an FDIC “intervention,” the stockholders lose their equity. But, then, Greenspan is a true believer in the laissez faire way, so any delusion is possible.
Hmmmm. Sounds simultaneously entertaining and infuriating.
amen.
Well, I’m still here in the corner wondering what the heck ‘leverage’ is when it’s at home. But anything that has to be strapped down to a ‘10X’ factor just smells bad from the outset, to me.
Maybe one of these days I ought to read a book. Or Wikipedia. Or something. Will I be happier if I do?
I think too that the narrative of the meltdown has been framed in such a way that whether we say it was a systemic event or a one off the idea is that those involved were caught up in it. Yes, it was predictable and predicted but they were all too close to it to see. I think this is completely wrong. What happened could not have happened without massive and willful fraud.
For me, the narrative is one of a physical event like an earthquake. It happened but no one could predict it or stop it. Failing that, there is the stupidity defense. These people should have seen it coming but they were too intellectually limited or rigid to realize what was happening. The more we see into the weeds on this though the clearer it is that this was a criminal enterprise of unparalleled proportions. This is what we have to start repeating over and over. This was fraud, not mistakes or misjudgments or bad luck, on an epic scale.
> Unfortunately, the so-called quants aren’t engineers.
Actually many of them were, the system was broken as designed. Governments have to provide safety more or less in the infinite case, or at least the very long term. Private companies wanted in on the action of providing the last dollar of insurance, at a price lower than governments could. It turned out that they could not provide it any cheaper than governments did. So they didn’t bother, but had ratings agencies bless all of this.
Ian’s right, the ratings agencies are a commanding height.
A pathway constructed to easy money at our expense. The demose of Sarbannes-Oxley is a great momentum creator in pushing into place these high risk systems. Repeal and replace with good law to regulate veverage and wil speculation.
Economics has a name for self-fulfilling prophecy, namely “adverse selection.”
Precisely.
foothillsmike and wigwam – shareholders are little people, they can go suck eggs. bond holders are a different story (see also greenspan & pimco) who are not to be trifled with.
seriously, didn’t the lehman debacle involve the bondholders taking a hit and isn’t that like a neoliberal heresy or something one can get burned at the stake for?
“adverse selection” seems so innocent, so human, so small, like selecting ’something’, at breakfast that disagrees with one’s tummy …
If being greedy and short-sighted becomes a crime, we may not have too many folks left in the financial industry. I seem to remember a time when it was called the “financial sector”. I guess maybe when the deregulation practices resulted in our loss of substantial portions of the manufacturing industry we had to have some form of “industry” left?
Well written peice Ian.
In the pantheon of the Divine Right of Money, “bondholders” are archangels, not the ’stuff’ of ashes and clay …
Pound ‘em, selise, politely and compassionately, if you must, as is your wont, but push this understanding, very hard.
Six years ago, one of my friends announced his theory that the entire agenda of Bush’s administration was to “hollow out” the American economy. It looks like he was right on.
but did not the system include massive incentives that, for a time at least, favored fraud while punishing the whistleblowers? and was not the system designed to do exactly this (intentionally or not)?
however, do not disagree with your framing. it is the most truthful and compelling i’ve seen and will attempt to use it from now on.
Well, Skilly, we are, still yet, industriously manufacturing weapons and anticipating worldwide ‘export’ and use of the same. It is highly profitable ‘business’.
Excellent post.
Would author be interested in posting at Change.org to get more exposure to a very critical change issue.
He’ll surely get my vote and many others I expect.
You and Hugh are nailing it down, very nicely, to ‘design’ and ‘intent’.
No black swans, just design and intent.
Clues have anti-clues, and attempts to put them in close proximity yields a flash of radiation and emptiness.
Eggzzaactly! Thanks Ian
Dig this like crazy
BIngo Sekise it’s Bail BAil Bail out the private sector or transfer payments to the oligarchy institutions. Corporate welfare by another name. Let the banks fail.
Yes, criminal fraud of massive proportions. I think that as more and more drips out, the masses – get educated at last – and very angry.
We are all herds following what we perceive to be generally believed. I’m reading “Nudge” by two authors whose names I don’t recall. Interesting book. One experiment has people choosing which line is longest. Though the result is obvious, nearly fifty percent are swayed when others pick an obviously shorter line. It’s like the husband caught in bed, asking his wife standing in the door way “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes.”
It should be obvious capitalists are greedy. If you’re not greedy, you don’t get far. I won’t explore where the greed comes from or its pointlessness-no matter how rich one gets you die anyhow. This isn’t the first bust, but with luck it could be the last. Regulation won’t cure the problem. Regulations put in place after 1929 were removed, but it’s doubtful they would have stopped what happened.
The bailouts are more of the same, a homage to greed. The only way to stop greed for good is to do something else.
No, you’ll be even more depressed as you come to appreciate the true magnitude of economic depravity which has been visited upon us. Or such has been my personal experience.
I don’t know enough to agree or disagree with “10X for everyone”. But, I agree some number that makes sense ought to be set.
Hmmm. Is there strong evidence that letting financial firms do multiple things has led to problems? I think it’s awfully easy to knee-jerk respond by over-regulating. So, on this, as with leveraging, I’d call for some actual numbers to show if or how bad the problem has been before calling for regulation to limit or stop it.
I tend to agree on all the other things.
Of special note is CEO compensation. I don’t think it’s a simple as allowing or disallowing it. Remember, they often get ‘paid’ with complex packages which are much more than just cash & options. I think there is something terribly wrong when they get paid for pushing their firm into a disaster, but I’m more willing to let stockholders waste their money on CEO comp if things are going well. It’s just hard to know how much that one person is responsible for. During good times an even mediocre CEO looks good and during bad times a great CEO can look bad.
They’re probably scared to offend corporations (sensitive souls that they are) for fear of losing business. It’s hard to make a person speak the truth when they’re paid not to.
Whether we need new regulations depends upon whether there were existing regs which simply weren’t upheld. It could be that a few prosecutions using existing regs would be what the doctor ordered.
Yep. An upside down tax policy lets people take money to of the financial arena and put it into (mostly) CEO pockets. Taxing individuals more highly than corporations would turn that around and tend to put the money back into corporations.
So, first, tax all income, whether earned or rent or interest or dug up in Switzerland. Second, make super high incomes painfully taxed (even if that only means 35%).
What was really crazy, and I failed to mention it in my first response to Ian’s post, is the leveraging on top of leveraging. The creation of multi-leveraged products made the net effect more like 200X. THAT is what definitely has to be stopped in it’s tracks.
The lead author is Cass Sunstein, Obama’s buddy and advisor, who advises against prosecution of members of the Bush administration, because that would be “criminalizing policy differences.” Not one of my favorite people.
In one sense you’re correct, Ian, in that much of what is occuring was to some degree predictable. Indeed, Nassim Taleb, the economic philosopher who popularized the term “Black Swan”, warned against many of the pitfalls that helped precipitate the current economic crises.
However, what makes the situation a potential Black Swan is that the economy of the United States has over the past several years become far more inextricably interwoven in a complex web with many other world economies, all of them affecting each other almost simultaneously via instant global communications.
A broken bubble in the US housing market sends almost immediate shock-waves throughout the rest of the economy and then around the world within weeks or even days and hours. It’s a completely unique situation, far different than the Great Depression or any other economic mini-crises ever faced.
The ramifications of this highly complex and volatile relationship is a lot more difficult to predict, and the potential of this being an outlier wave, a “once every 500 years”-type seismic shift (i.e. a complete overturning of the “normal” prevailing economic models which calls for a total “rebooting” of capitalism and perhaps other other societal systems) is not beyond the realm of possibility.
Taleb himself said a more accurate comparison to our current situation is not the Great Depression but the American Revolution.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/vi…..#038;seg=5
but but but cheney said no one could have forseen this coming
Yup.
AMEN!
I didn’t know that and you are right, we should prosecute the Bushies, but it is still an interesting read about collective thinking.
Good post, Ian.
In fact, very good post.