Tuesday, January 17, 2012

The Fed Capitulates to Populism


Another example of macro confusion was evidenced in some of the responses to the Labor Department’s recent employment release. Apparently employment went up more than expected (200,000 jobs) and unemployment went down more than expected (to 8.5%). So what was the response? The US stock market declined and one expert said the market was not impressed by the progress. The expert went on to tell us how many jobs had been lost since 2007. Another response quoted Fed officials who said that this was evidence that the Fed ought to do more to assist housing. Apparently we need even lower mortgage rates to make sure the economy recovers.

This reveals one of two things. Either these experts live on the moon or medical marijuana is more prevalent than I thought. I hear Joe Biden is promoting legislation that would give any recipient of a new handicapped parking sticker a year’s worth of naturally grown weed. Apparently seventeen red states, including Pakistan have now indicated a willingness to commit to the Obama ticket.

As a practitioner of the arcane metaphysical enterprise called macro, I am offended by all this nonsense. Is it not possible that good news could actually be taken as good news? Of course, it was not great news but keep in mind that the employment report DID NOT say that employment tanked by 100,000 jobs and it DID NOT say that all American manufacturing jobs have moved to Haiti. It said we had a decent run of the employment numbers in December. Keep in mind that these numbers are seasonally adjusted so a decent run does not mean that Christmas came in December. It means that Christmas came as usual on December 25th and that employment growth was higher than it usually is in December. So smile a little bit. Let’s have a little toast to jobs in December.

Okay I admit that I am always ready to toast whether the employment news is good or bad. But let’s not exaggerate. This news is sort of like me announcing to my wife that I lost 5 pounds on my latest low JD diet.  Losing 5 pounds does not mean that I can eat obscene amounts of ribeye steaks at Little Zagreb’s steak restaurant. And it does not mean that I have succeeded in restoring my body to the svelte 200 pounds I weighed when I was in Mrs. Montgomery’s fifth grade class in Coconut Grove Elementary School. But let’s face it – 5 pounds is 5 pounds and it calls for a little cheese cake and JD.

No one in their right minds expected employment to increase by 400,000 jobs and no one thinks the US economy is healed of its 40 years of economic orgies. But lighten up guys. The increase in December supports a view that the US economy is slowly mending. As such it indicates that the US is a little less vulnerable to outside shocks. Our banks are better prepared to withstand Europe’s wake and our firms are poised to expand should these new growth sprouts continue spread and continue to take hold.

The other part of this has to do with the Fed making noises about the jobs report showing that the Fed needs to do something about housing. First and foremost please make note that the Fed’s job is not to affect housing – or outdoor grills or electric cars or litter boxes. The last time I checked it was classified as a central bank whose job it is to produce a stable inflation and unemployment rate. It essentially has one tool called money growth to accomplish these macroeconomic goals. It is true that Mr. Bernanke and his buds have added some new tools lately in the crisis environment but most of those were still aimed at macro indicators and goals. If you follow the idea – not mine – that the Fed should bail out housing why be so inefficient? Why not just admit that democratic government via Congress and the Executive Branch has failed us in the US and let’s crown Bernanke macro-czar and have him direct controls that will allow him to order companies to hire workers.

You think old Lar is either trying to be funny or that he is well into the JD. But the truth is that when we ask the Fed to focus on housing it is no different from asking them to focus on manufacturing workers or refrigerators or pee pee pumps. The Fed’s charter gives the Fed no real power to focus on sectors and as such it will fail if it tries. Think of what they are suggesting the Fed do. First, some experts want the Fed to buy mortgage securities or derivatives so as to push down the interest rate on mortgages. Please – do banks not have piles of money lying around? I think so. And have you checked mortgage rates lately? Do you really think banks want to lend at even lower rates? Do you think there are families sitting around counting their money (imagine Scrooge McDuck in his cash vault) just waiting for mortgage rates to drop from 3.9% to 3.8%? No No No. Even if the Fed rams more money into mortgages and even if rates fall further they will have accomplished exactly nothing. They will have not solved the problem of the housing market that took at least a decade to create and produced a whole big enough for to drive a new Equus through.

The other thing they want the Fed to do is make it easier for people to get loans. Apparently we live in a world of only extremes. In 2006 any animal, including homosepiens, could slither into a bank and be shown the mortgage vault. Hi there, want some money? Promise to repay?  No crossing your fingers behind your back! Okay, here’s the money. Aw heck – here’s a little more money for your next cruise. Enjoy your new mansion. Then somehow after the crisis banks started asking really mean and unrealistic questions like – Do you have a job? Do you have a means to repay this loan besides prayer? So now we want the Fed (or somebody) to find a way to return to the good old days when people had the right to have loans just because they were able to spell or otherwise mouth the word “gimme”.

It is truly amazing how brazen our Fed has become. It pretends that good news is bad. And then it continues to avoid real solutions to housing problems in favor of lame and ineffective worn out inappropriate solutions. Another round of quantitative easing; another reduction in long-term interest rates; another invitation to create leverage and high risk are only going to make things worse. But the real solutions are hard and involve a little pain. It used to be that we could count on the Fed to offer sensible advice. Apparently now the Fed has become one more institution that caters to populist nonsense. 

8 comments:

  1. Great one, 'Lar' ... looking forward to your visit to Sanibel

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  2. Whew! That was a diatribe. OK lets look at the issues one at a time:
    1. Housing. If there is no equity or little equity then personal wealth is diminished. ( so is spending) Equity comes from several places but the primary two are property value and investments portfolios....both have tanked and housing or property has stayed more tanked than portfolio investments. What to do? Feds do not make housing better or portfolios better. But if neither gets better real soon the consumer cannot spend as much and the economic growth will not occur. If anyone has an idea to change this please send a letter to the Feds called " i have an idea". I think one idea was to have Fanny or Freddy absorb the negative equity for qualified (economically) home owners...thereby establishing a bottom floor for value and putting the homeowner (one who has paid on time)in a position ti begin to have confidence in the economy and grow some equity. Does this sound outside of the free market system...maybe but can someone really verify that our market system is really free. Give me an example. OK at least it is more free than Pakistan and maybe it is the freest system in the world. Then again while all of the other economies are semi or totally manipulated...I ask...how is it possible to play a global game with different rules for each player?
    2. Jobs are part and participle of manufacturing and the need for those products and services which accompany it. Any service outside of this is a service that are living off false or unsupported needs...similar to those invented in the last spending spree upturn where everyone was cheering about all of these services taking over manufacturing. Products that are made by US companies somewhere else but imported back to the US consumer only offer a portion of the dollar turn (7 minimum) needed to support sustainable growth. This leaves gap which must be filled with either more domestic products or services. Without filling it the mission of increasing employment cannot be accomplished. There are other issues like a mismatch between needed skills and available skills which relates back to education.

    In summary it is a never ending circle.

    3. Christmas Numbers: Yes the numbers were adjusted for the season and some more people were hired than last year. Yes last year sucked and so did the year before and that is analogous to Dr. D's loss of 5 pounds ..big deal if that 5 pound loss was not sustainable or was not the last 5 pounds prior to meeting your stealthy 200 pound goal. The structure of the new employment gain was not given.....low income service, high income service, manufacturing, public works (very temporary) and institutional? Which of these would yield the biggest bang for long term employment growth?

    The data I get shows the highest job creation has been in mining and grant writing...wonder what was funding the grants. mining is for the export of minerals and other raw material to developing countries.

    BTW can I get that deal Joe Biden was offering?

    Seriously: The US needs a plan and with the execution of the plan all of the other lose ends will disappear. All we have is attack adds where some of the Republicans are sounding like Socialist and conservative social issues..although important will not solve this Country's problems.

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  3. Lar, take a look at this article. Allison is former chairman and CEO of BB&T, not a huge banking establishment but one of respectably nice size. It's his take of the cause of all of this mess. Probably not unlike many analyses we've already heard, but he writes in a way that is easy for a former DT who suffered 5 bell-ringings to understand without causing a migraine. I fully expect you to blow JD out your nostrils when you read the comment about the gold standard, but Hey, it works better than a Netti pot, I'm told. Just burns a little more. But better than trying to exhale kimshi through the nose.

    http://www.cato.org/pubs/catosletter/catosletterv10n1.pdf

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  4. Big Al,

    There is some truth to what he says about regulation and monetary policy...and philosophy. But he has no real plan or suggestions. Get rid of the Fed. I don't think that is going to happen. 3% money growth is an idea that's been around along time and it has never happened...

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  5. All of the "plans and suggestions" seem to fall on deaf ears, anyway. It appears that the only plan that matters is the one to turn the US into a socialist European state. Do you think the Euro will still be viable when that happens?

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  6. Al,

    Did you mean the euro or the dollar?

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  7. Uuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh....both.

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  8. Makes sense! I suspect that since you cannot expect much in the way of good policy from the EU or the US, they will do just enough to appear to be doing something and the two currencies will limp along. Which currencies appear to be the weak one for the day will mostly depend upon the bond vigilantes and which currency they are focusing on that day.

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