White Schools Bernanke on Basic Economics → Washingtons Blog
White Schools Bernanke on Basic Economics - Washingtons Blog

Friday, March 5, 2010

White Schools Bernanke on Basic Economics


William White - former head BIS economist, currently chair of the OECD's Economic and Development Review Committee - is again schooling Ben Bernanke on economic fundamentals.

In an article published in the December-January OECD Observer, White wrote:

The proliferation of financial markets and the relative decline of intermediated credit in recent years have turned the focus to underlying systemic questions. Indeed, we now know that surface indicators of good financial health can be seriously misleading. If market participants are hit by the same shocks, are similarly vulnerable and react similarly as well, the implications for the financial system as a whole and the real economy it underpins can be devastating.

So, financial stability is necessary. However, similar to the earlier failure of price stability to deliver macroeconomic stability, financial stability is also not sufficient to achieve that objective. While “booms” similar to the one we had lived through since the 1990s are ultimately driven by an excess of credit, the imbalances to which they give rise go well beyond unjustified asset price increases and a potentially weakened financial sector. One particular contributor to the severity of the “bust” is debt. In fact, in Japan through the 1990s and beyond, it was not the weakened banking sector that forestalled recovery, but the efforts of the Japanese corporate sector to reduce debt after the excesses of the 1980s. A similar challenge may now be in store for the US, UK and a number of other countries, as consumers and businesses reflect on the state of their balance sheets.

But even this broader set of balance sheet effects fails to account fully for the imbalances generated by excessive credit growth. Perhaps most important is a misallocation of real resources, which then weighs heavily on the economy during the subsequent downturn. In a number of economies, not least the US, the combination of consumption and housing investment rose to unprecedented levels as a proportion of GDP. In China, there was a corresponding upsurge in capital investment. These two developments combined suggest that Asia is now all geared up to produce export goods that the traditional purchasers can no longer afford to buy. And to add to the difficulties ahead, it seems clear that, during the boom, there was a buildup of excess global capacity in a whole range of industries–cars and trucks, banking, wholesale distribution, construction and steel, among many others.

It will take a significant amount of time for the underlying resources (labour and capital) to be either written off or shifted into more profitable and sustainable endeavours. During that time, aggregate production potential will be diminished and structural unemployment will rise. Credit-driven “boom and bust” cycles touch all parts of the economy.

If it is not obvious that White is saying that Bernanke (and most other central bankers) are using inaccurate economic theories, and that we need to learn about the danger of bubbles from Austrian economics, listen to what White recently said at a talk at India's central bank:

  • Everyone knows that excessive credit was at the heart of the "big mess" we're in
  • The Fed has set up a straw man against the argument that central banks should act to moderate bubbles while they are being blown. Specifically, Bernanke says that you can't lean against asset prices, because it's not clear how to measure asset price bubbles or which asset prices to target
  • But the proper question is whether we lean against the credit bubble itself and its underlying symptoms. Specifically, if credit is the underlying problem, it manifests itself in various imbalances in asset prices, crazy spending patterns like we've seen in the U.S., or crazy investing patterns as we've seen in China. That's easy to spot
  • Economists have no insight into the effect of the unprecedented monetary easing measures recently undertaken
  • The Fed says that it is always possible to clean up a bubble after it bursts, because it worked in the past (in 1987, 1991, 1997- 1998, and 2001-2003). But underneath it all, there is a "growing headwind of debt". This works for a while, but then it won't work forever.
  • Economists have to learn that things work differently than we've been taught. The ideas that the economy is self-stabilizing and follows rational expectations are wrong
  • Economists and central banks need to incorporate Austrian economic theory on supply side economics
White slammed the Fed in 2008 for blowing bubbles and then "using gimmicks and palliatives" which "will only make things worse":

In a pointed attack on the US Federal Reserve, it said central banks would not find it easy to "clean up" once property bubbles have burst...

Nor does it exonerate the watchdogs. "How could such a huge shadow banking system emerge without provoking clear statements of official concern?"

"The fundamental cause of today's emerging problems was excessive and imprudent credit growth over a long period. Policy interest rates in the advanced industrial countries have been unusually low," he said.

The Fed and fellow central banks instinctively cut rates lower with each cycle to avoid facing the pain. The effect has been to put off the day of reckoning...

"Should governments feel it necessary to take direct actions to alleviate debt burdens, it is crucial that they understand one thing beforehand. If asset prices are unrealistically high, they must fall. If savings rates are unrealistically low, they must rise. If debts cannot be serviced, they must be written off.

"To deny this through the use of gimmicks and palliatives will only make things worse in the end," he said.

For background, see this, this, this, this , this, this and this.

3 comments:

  1. The ugly problem is -credit-, because the excesses of credit always must eventually be settled by -political- decisions.

    Hence the sudden and dramatic rise of political pressure to effect all-the-very-many government bail-out programs being managed today, mostly disguised and hidden from public view.

    The problem is NOT -this- simple, as follows here, but it is illustrative -if we look at the problem -this way-

    Paying commissions to brokers to write mortgages that fail creates a sort of deficit. Paying commissions to brokers of bundles mortgages, many of which fail, creates a similar but even larger deficit.

    Covering, hiding and disguising these sorts of deficits, as has been done with the purchase of mortgages by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is only a politically expedient sleight hand.

    In a rising market this expediency weighed against a growing "deficit" problem -can be hidden from view (for a while) as the marketplace is calmed with political statements about "making housing -more- affordable".

    But in a falling market, which eventually must come to pass as the rising market caused by credit-based pricing peaks-and-breaks, -suddenly- all the sleight of hand disguise of these deficits overwhelms the bookkeeping in glaring red ink problems.

    It's more complicated than this, because many other facets of the economy get built upon all the false prosperity being fostered by what is essentially a fraudulent valuation system, the credit economy.

    The credit economy valuation system -allows consumers to pay more for a product (such as a house or a car) than that product is worth.

    The price a credit-consumer pays is more than the product is worth, -because without credit, he -could not- pay so much. In the end, we find -the credit consumer could not pay so much either way. Poverty is increased in a credit economy because the price of everything rises.

    This also brings about market crashes and the cyclical bursting of bubbles.

    Then -in a market such as we have-, HOLDERS of all the now-quite-apparently bad debt, use their political clout to get the government to shift the burden of their losses, so they can find their end of the moral hazard -has a happy ending, -ostensibly because in a Hank Paulson way -the world would end, and it just wouldn't be fair to see so many people lose so much money because the system breaks down every once in a while.

    So then, to take care of this monetary easing, we then raise taxes on the poor and burden the youth and unborn of the nation with further debt -they clearly did not incur themselves.

    Here in an article written today, - we find Representative Barnie Frank waffling on exactly the problem I have described here-

    http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/frank_retreats_on_debt_QxHdyBmAR3nEcGXEzg5JnK

    Barnie Frank is waffling because -now that the big banks have gotten their bail-outs, and even as others are screaming in turn for theirs-, -eventually the political clout of those already bailed-out exceeds the political clout of those still trying to get their own bail-out, and the political landscape shifts.

    Predictably in a political sense, the important thing will suddenly no longer be -not seeing so many people lose so much money. The important problem will become instead, preventing inflation, which would be the result of bailing-everyone-out of the mess caused by the credit economy.

    Credit is categorically immoral because such a system focuses political power into the hands of those who cause the economic problems. They in turn enforce a tyranny over everyone else through a political system that guarantees their profit, -and saddles the rest in society with debt in order to pay the cost.

    Again, Categorical Knowledge, -that credit is categorically immoral-, addresses the problem succinctly.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Speaking of thises, don't miss this

    http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_07_3_scott.pdf

    either.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mainstream economics is totally ignorant of Austrian Business Cycle Theory, unfortunately. However, many people in finance do understand it as an observed reality of life.

    ReplyDelete

→ Thank you for contributing to the conversation by commenting. We try to read all of the comments (but don't always have the time).

→ If you write a long comment, please use paragraph breaks. Otherwise, no one will read it. Many people still won't read it, so shorter is usually better (but it's your choice).

→ The following types of comments will be deleted if we happen to see them:

-- Comments that criticize any class of people as a whole, especially when based on an attribute they don't have control over

-- Comments that explicitly call for violence

→ Because we do not read all of the comments, I am not responsible for any unlawful or distasteful comments.