Category: Economics

Two approaches to American governance–The case of higher education financing

Hillary Clinton deserves credit for setting out her positions on individual policy issues so that we can have an intelligent discussion of their pros and cons. She is nothing if not a tireless policy wonk. Think of her exhaustive but failed effort to “fix the provision of health care in America” during her husband’s presidency. While the Clinton’s are Democratic Party centrist, they still embrace a top down government/regulatory approach to dealing with many of societies challenges/problems. Mrs. Clinton’s plans to make college affordable provide a recent example of this approach. It is thoughtful and balanced from a left of center, regulatory approach perspective. I prefer a difference, right of center, more market oriented approach.

I have not read Mrs. Clinton’s detailed proposal and rely completely on the following Washington Post summary: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/08/10/clinton-proposes-a-350-billion-plan-to-make-college-affordable/

Background

Americans believe in equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcomes. We are not egalitarians. There is nothing we can do about the fact that each person is born with different predispositions and capabilities. But it has been a long-standing, broadly shared principle that everyone should have access to the education she is capable of. We have lived up to this goal very imperfectly. Tuition vouchers and school choice are moving us closer to this goal for K-12 by making the state’s financial contribution to education more equal for each student and subjecting schools to greater competition in producing good results. Unlike primary and secondary education, however, which in the United States is financed by the states (generally by municipalities), college is not for everyone. An important public policy issue is who should pay for higher education for those who do go.

When the government began to supplement private universities and colleges with state run, public ones, it generally funded the cost from tax payers charging only nominal tuitions, if any, to those attending. Milton Friedman and others pointed out that this resulted in a perverse redistribution of income from lower to higher income people. University graduates enjoy incomes two or three times the average of non-college graduates. In response to this criticism, state colleges and universities in recent decades have raised their tuitions in order to finance more of the cost of the education by its beneficiaries.

It is desirable for those from low-income families with the intelligence and desire to pursue careers requiring a college education to have that opportunity. This accords with our belief in providing an equal opportunity to all and increases our individual and national wealth by facilitating the maximum productivity of every citizen. But how can we best accomplish this goal without perversely redistributing taxpayers’ money to the better off? Along with higher tuitions, many universities offer financial assistance to such students in order to attract and graduate the best students. Having the best graduates enhances their reputations. A number of private organizations provide fellowship to promising low-income students. America is renowned for its extensive private charities. Many companies do the same, generally for the children of their employees. These have the substantial advantage over government bureaucrats of being closer to the beneficiaries of their largesse and thus better able to determine who in their communities will benefit the most from such assistance.

Determined students often work while studying and/or borrow from their families and friends (this was my approach). In business, future benefits from current investments are normally financed with borrowed money or by giving investors a stake in the outcome (selling shares in the hoped for profits). Unless they are family or friends, lending to someone with potential future human capital as collateral (i.e. lending to a student based on the expectation that she can repay out of higher future income) is a riskier proposition than, say lending to someone with a job to buy a car or a house (both of which can be use as collateral). So bank lending to college students was rather limited and expensive (interest rates high enough to cover the higher risks to the lender) until the government began to guarantee such loans.

Solutions

To address this problem, and building on the experience with financing college for veterans of World War II in the “GI Bill” of 1944, Congress adopted what became known as Pell Grants, financial aid to low-income students in undergraduate college programs, in the Higher Education Act of 1965. This Act also provided limited government loans, which over time expanded in various ways to include students from middle-income families (Middle Income Student Assistance Act of 1978) and studies at graduate and professional schools. Over time the scope and terms of government assistance continued to expand. Grad PLUS was added by that spend thrift George W Bush in 2006 to help finance graduate education. “For the first time, it gave professional and graduate-school students unlimited access to below-market-rate loans from the government, which, of course, borrows the money to begin with.”[1]

This has enabled more American’s to go to college– a potentially good thing. The increased demand for places in colleges is likely to increase the cost of supplying more (higher salaries for college professors in order to attract more into teaching), but hardly justifies what has happened. According to The Economist “Tuition fees have doubled in real terms in the past 20 years. Student debt has trebled in the past decade, to $1.2 trillion.” Seventeen percent of these loans are now in default or seriously delinquent. Many of these students have dropped out of school or not found the jobs they were trained for.

The government (Secretary of Education Arne Duncan) has established a number of programs to help and Hilary Clinton “proposes capping the repayment of college loans at a maximum of 10% of income over 20 years. If a loan is not paid off by then the government will pick up the tab. The estimated bill for her scheme…, comes to $350 billion over ten years.”[2] This may be sensible within the context of government aid. But this top down government approach suffers from a number of weaknesses. One is the propensity for such programs to grow as different special interests succeed in getting added to the list: “Despite all the talk about the government’s $1.1 trillion student loan portfolio, and the burden it represents for college students, some 40 percent of the money is owed by graduate and professional school students — who make up only 16 percent of all student-loan borrowers.”[3] Another is the inferior ability of government bureaucrats, with no financial stake in the outcome, to evaluate the appropriateness of each individual loan or grant. A third is the limited incentive for government to find new innovative ways to deal with the problems that invariably arise.

The policy challenge in my view is to bring more effective competitive pressure on colleges and universities to deliver more for less, to facilitate more careful and better informed decisions by potential students of what education they need and will benefit from and the best place for them to get it, and insuring at the same time that initial poverty does not prevent them from getting it.

Leaving the GI Bill aside as a special case, the arrangements for financing college and advanced degrees that existed prior to the Federal government’s involvement worked pretty well. Those of us needing financial assistance paid a great deal of attention to the cost and value of the educations we sought. We were also more careful about whether and what sort of higher education would benefit us. I have no doubt that the incipient revolution of on-line courses, perhaps supplemented with class room discussions, will dramatically reduce the cost of higher education without significantly sacrificing its quality. Everyone’s professors can be the best that exist. Universities will be forced by such competition to exploit these new technological tools to dramatically reduce the costs of their offerings. The very best students will still pay the premium to attend the University of Chicago’s of the world (pardon my bias). Hopefully they will be the best and not just the wealthiest.

Market based financing innovations are also more likely to come from basically private funding of education. The suggestion made by Milton Friedman in 1955[4] and repeated in Capitalism and Freedom in 1962 for sharing the risk of investing in higher education between the borrowing student and the lender is now being explored in the private sector. “Enter income-share agreements ( ISAs ), which are essentially equity instruments for human capital. Investors finance a student’s college education in return for a percentage of their future income over a fixed period. ISAs are not loans and there is no outstanding balance. If students earn more than expected, they will pay more, but they also will pay less—or nothing—if their earnings do not materialize.”[5] Sharing the risk in this way insures a financial interest by both borrowers and lenders that collage choices maximize the expected return to both. A lender, (especially loans made or guaranteed by the government) is not well placed to determine the career intentions of the borrower leading to what economists call adverse selection. Income sharing agreements overcome this problem because the student being financed has a large stake in making the best choices.

Government always has an important role to play. The issue is what the nature of that role should be. Private contracts such as loans or the ISAs described above require a legal framework of enforcement. Such framework for ISAs is currently rather unclear. Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Rep. Tom Petri (R., Wis.) recently introduced the Investing in Student Success Act, which would set basic standards for ISA contracts. In addition their bill would provide for the collection and publishing of information on the cost and average earnings of graduates of different colleges and fields, which would help students choose where and how to invest in their futures.

Clinton’s and Rubio’s approaches represent very different concepts of how government can most constructively contribute to our flourishing. I prefer the approach of a more limited, legal framework role for government.

[1] Charles Lane, Washington Post Aug 26, 2015 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-student-loans-help-keep-expensive-schools-in-business/2015/08/26/e7d7f83a-4c11-11e5-902f-39e9219e574b_story.html

[2] The Economist, August 22, 2015.

[3] Charles Lane op. cit.

[4] Milton Friedman, “The Role of Government

in Education,” in Economics and the Public Interest ,

  1. Robert Solo, (Rutgers: Rutgers University

Press, 1955).

[5]   Miguel Palacios And Andrew P. Kelly, “A Better Way to Finance That College Degree” WSJ April 13, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303456104579485801253355622

Cayman Financial Review, Q3 2015

Dear Friends,

The Third Quarter issue of the Cayman Financial Review is now available on the web: http://www.compasscayman.com/cfr/. I am on the Editorial Board and have two articles in this issue that might interest you. The first discusses the continued decline of U.S. world leadership exemplified in the case of the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank located in China: http://www.compasscayman.com/cfr/2015/08/19/US-leadership-and-the-Asian-Infrastructure-Investment-Bank/

The second is the final installment of my series on the Kabul Bank scandal. The failure of Kabul Bank in Afghanistan was probably the biggest bank failure and fraud in history on a per capital basis.  As this final article looks at some of the legal issues and developments in recovering stolen assets held abroad and Afghanistan’s uneven struggle to strengthen its criminal justice system, Gary Gegenheimer, a lawyer who also worked in Afghanistan, joined me to write this third installment: http://www.compasscayman.com/cfr/2015/08/19/The-Kabulbank-scandal–Part-III/

I hope that you enjoy them.

Best wishes,

Warren

Greece: What should its creditors do now?

Following Sunday’s NO vote in Greece, what ever that might have meant, it is tempting to tell Greece to get lost and be done with them. Aside from the unseemly lack of compassion for our suffering fellow man, the further collapse of the Greek economy and society that would likely follow Grexit (the Greek exit from the Euro and introduction of its own currency) would open unknown and potentially very dangerous risks to the rest of Europe from its southern periphery. However, any new deal between Greece and its creditors should be mutually beneficial for Greece and the EU in the long run and achievable and practical in the short run. What are the key elements needed for such an agreement?

Greece’s second bailout program with its creditors (the EU, ECB, and IMF) expired June 30 after a four-month extension without disbursing the final installment of around $8 billion dollars. It cannot be resurrected. Thus any further discussions between Greece and its creditors will concern a third bailout program.

Greece’s recently replaced and unmissed Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis’, stock speech said basically that Greece does not need or want more loans because it is bankrupt rather than illiquid. In short, it wants debt forgiveness. In fact, many European officials have acknowledged the possible need to write off (reduce the present value one way or another of) existing Greek debt but insisted that any such consideration be put off for a new program. Discussion of a new program has now arrived.

The foundation of any financial assistance program with the IMF is its assessment that the borrowing country can repay the loan. This assessment is contained in the IMF’s “Debt Sustainability Analysis.” This analysis imbeds the agreed (or assumed) level of government spending and estimated tax and other government revenue and of the level of economic activity (GDP growth) upon which it depends in a forecasting model of the deficit and debt/GDP ratios expected from implementation of the agreed policies. The IMF was badly embarrassed by its acceptance of overly optimistic assumptions about income growth government revenue in its first bailout program in 2010 with the EU and ECB. Under political pressure from the EU and ECB, these assumptions allowed the IMF to conclude that Greece’s debt would be sustainable thus avoiding the need for some debt write off favored by the IMF but opposed by Germany and France, whose banks held large amounts of that debt. The second bailout program included a write off of about 70% of the privately held Greek debt. However, this came too late and the adjustment in the Greek government’s annual deficits required by the first program proved too severe causing a much larger and longer lasting contraction in the Greek economy than expected and assumed in the IMF Debt Sustainability Analysis at that time.

On June 26, 2015 (i.e. prior to Greece’s default on its $1.7 billion payment to the IMF and to the July 5 referendum) the IMF released a draft Debt Sustainability Analysis based on the information available at that time. It concluded that “If the program had been implemented as assumed, no further debt relief would have been needed under the agreed November 2012 framework…. At the last review in May 2014, Greece’s public debt was assessed to be getting back on a path toward sustainability, though it remained highly vulnerable to shocks. By late summer 2014, with interest rates having declined further, it appeared that no further debt relief would have been needed under the November 2012 framework, if the program were to have been implemented as agreed. But significant changes in policies since then—not least, lower primary surpluses and a weak reform effort that will weigh on growth and privatization—are leading to substantial new financing needs. Coming on top of the very high existing debt, these new financing needs render the debt dynamics unsustainable…. But if the package of reforms under consideration is weakened further—in particular, through a further lowering of primary surplus targets and even weaker structural reforms—haircuts on debt will become necessary.”

In short, the Greek economy was finally beginning to recover by the end of 2014 but the reversals by the new Syriza government of some of the policies contributing to that gain and the loss of market confidence in the muddled and amateurish behavior of the new government reversed the recovery and further increased Greek deficits. In addition, increasing capital flight has been financed by short-term emergency liquidity loans from the ECB, thus adding to Greece’s over all indebtedness. Capital flight per se should not reduce banks’ capital, as they lose the same amount of assets and liabilities, as long as they are able to liquidate sufficient assets by selling them or by using them as collateral for loans from the ECB or other banks. These loans and the process of transferring Euros abroad are described in the paper I presented in Athens May 19 at the Emergency Economic Summit for Greece: http://works.bepress.com/warren_coats/32/.

Under these circumstances it would be desirable (i.e. consistent with and/or required by a European desire to keep Greece in the Euro Zone while returning it to fiscal balance and sustainability over a reasonable, if somewhat longer, period of time) for Greece’s creditors to forgive some of the debt held by the ECB and IMF and to lower the structural fiscal surpluses initially required in a follow on program for the next few years (this latter element had already been offered by the creditors before the referendum). In short, by reducing Greece’s debt service payments and lowering its primary fiscal surplus, it would endure less “austerity.” Former Finance Minister Varoufakis actually proposed a sensible risk sharing form of refinanced Greek debt indexed to the economy’s economic performance. Creditors would do better than expected on their concessional loans if the economy performed better than forecast and would suffer losses if it did worse. This would give both sides a financial incentive to get the pace and balance of fiscal adjustment right (growth maximizing). While Europe’s political leaders sort out the details, the ECB should continue to provide liquidity credit to the extent that, and as long as, Greek banks can provide realistically valued collateral.

The purpose of these adjustments by the creditors should not and must not be to throw more good money after bad allowing a continuation of decades of corruption, rent seeking and government inefficiency. Long before it joined the Euro Zone, Greece suffered poor government services by a bureaucracy overstaffed by friends and supporters of the government in power at the time. Not receiving expected government services, many Greeks have decided not to pay for what they are not getting. Hence tax evasion and a large underground economy added to Greece’s deficits. Quoting from Bret Stephens’ July 6 column: “Greeks retire earlier and live longer than most of their eurozone peers, which means they spend close to 18% of GDP on public pensions, compared with about 7% in Ireland and 5% in the U.S…. As of 2010, Greek labor costs were 25% higher than in Germany. [As a result of internal devaluation since then, this is no longer true.] A liter of milk in Greece costs 30% more than elsewhere in Europe, thanks to regulations that allow it to remain on the shelf for no more than a week. Pharmaceuticals are also more expensive, thanks to the cartelization of the economy…. Greece wanted to be prosperous without being competitive. It wanted to run a five-star welfare state with a two-star economy. It wanted modernity without efficiency or transparency, and wealth without work. It wanted control over its own destiny—while someone else picked up the check.”

Changing this behavior by Greek governments and the Greek public will not be easy if it is possible at all. The still very strong support by the Greek public for keeping the Euro suggests a strong awareness of the need for some restraints and discipline of its government’s spending. But is the desire for a truly better deal (from their own government) strong enough to overcome the resistance of the entrenched and favored interests, who would lose from liberalizing the economy and cleaning up the patronage mess and tax non compliance, etc.? The best hope is the formation of a unity government that strongly endorses a well balance program of gradual further fiscal adjustment and the continuation of the structural reforms so badly needed. Close monitoring by the creditors of Greek compliance with its promises and the phasing of financial assistance tied to such performance benchmarks, is the IMF’s standard approach to enforcing compliance with the measures the government agrees to. There are risks in agreeing to a third program and risks in not doing so and thus Grexit.

Grexit, even with total default on all external debt, will surely force more austerity on Greece than would any program now contemplated, even before taking account of the almost certain collapse of all of Greece’s already “temporarily” closed banks. The Greek government will hardly be in a position to bailout its banks suffering a surge of non-performing loans. Depositor bail-ins will need to cut all the way into “insured” deposits. The pain will be largely felt only in Greece, and unfortunately mostly by the ordinary Greek citizen.

Greece—how could they?

Today Greece is voting whether its government should accept the conditions required by the “Institutions” (EU/ECB/IMF) for the final installment of its second “bailout” package—a yes vote, or to reject them—a no vote. No one is quite sure what it all means. The program to which these conditions and the final installment of $8 billion applied expired on June 30 and those funds are no longer on offer. A yes vote would presumably indicate support by the majority of Greek voters for accepting the conditions (a modest primary budget surplus by the Greek government in coming years and structural reforms to improve the quality of government services and the productivity of Greece’s economy) likely to be offered for a third bailout program. The alternative—no more financial assistance from the Institutions—would force even greater “austerity” on the Greek government even after repudiating all of its external debt and thus saving the funds that it would otherwise needed to pay to service it. If Greek tax payers won’t cover the cost of the government’s promises and the market will no longer lend the shortfall, the government is likely to resort to augmenting its Euro tax income with IOU claims on Euros, i.e. introducing and inflating its own currency.

What were the Greek government and the Greek people thinking when they borrowed all that money in the first place, and it must be added, enjoyed spending it on an inflated, unsustainable lifestyle rather than investing it in a more productive future? But Greek politicians (and public) are hardly the only ones in the world to ignore future costs when making current promises they have no way to keep.

Take the United States, for example. For decades, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office has forecast ever-increasing deficits from American entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) as expenditures increasingly outstripped revenue. This reflects both the growth in the generosity of these programs and demographics (increasing life expectancy and the baby boomer bulge in retired people relative to those working to pay for them—anyone who still thinks that the retired are receiving what they paid in while working just hasn’t been paying attention). I have written about this from time to time such as four years ago in: https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/thinking-about-the-public-debt/

The future unsustainability of Social Security promises has been the subject of public debate for at least fifty years. The “future” retirement of the WWII baby boomers and their pension expectations has been known since the end of WWII. But one congress after the other has kicked the ball down the road. Seven years ago I outlined the issues and the relatively simple solutions to Social Security deficits in: https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/saving-social-security/ Since then Medicare and Medicaid promises have only increased.

President Obama established the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (the so called Simpson-Bowles Commission) in early 2010 to develop bipartisan proposals for reducing future entitlement driven deficits. He ignored their modest proposals made in the Commission’s final report on December 1, 2010.

The Economist magazine last week reported that the assets available to cover U.S. public sector pensions covered only 75% of their obligations. In fact, the short fall is much greater than that because they are computed assuming a 7.6% return on their assets, which greatly overstates the actual experience of recent years. Private pensions are in much better shape. “But if public plans used the same discount rate as private ones, the deficit would increase to $3.9 trillion and the funding ratio fall to 45%.”

So what are our elected representatives thinking? “Deficits have eventually to be closed. That means lower benefits for the retired, bigger contributions from existing employees (a pay cut) or higher contributions from the employer—which means tax increases for state or city residents, or cuts to other services.

Why is it that our political representatives have such shorter policy horizons than does the public in general? The Economist provides a reasonable summary for the U.S..

“No wonder that no one is getting to grips with the problem. Unions do not like to draw attention to the deficits, for fear benefits will be cut. Politicians do not want to pick a fight with the unions, or increase taxes and annoy voters. Instead, states and cities tend to hope that rising markets will make the problem disappear.”

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21656202-betting-equities-has-not-eliminated-americas-pension-deficit-wishful-thinking?frsc=dg%7Ca

Baltimore—Saving a City

Few serious problems have a single explanation or cure. The decay of large parts of Baltimore is no exception. An interesting article in the Washington Post explores the diligent efforts of its former mayor, later the governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley to fix it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/baltimores-blight-puts-omalley-on-defensive-in-bid-for-presidency/2015/05/29/9dffe1d0-0541-11e5-8bda-c7b4e9a8f7ac_story.html. The Baltimore mayor depicted in the TV series The Wire, Tommy Carcetti, was inspired by O’Malley. (I was surprised after watching five seasons of the Game of Thrones to learn that the actor who played Carcetti in The Wire, Aidan Gillen, is Littlefinger in the Game of Thrones. His O’Malley character in The Wire was much more interesting.)

O’Malley went after the usual suspects, improving transportation and other infrastructure, improving education, etc. – all of the things we look to government to provide in the name of equal opportunity for all. He also instituted tough policing inspired by the “Broken Windows” theory first expounded by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in 1982. This introduced the intensive use of “stop, question, and frisk” of recent controversy in NYC. In retrospect, the approach alienated the police from the communities they were supposed to protect, and was much in the news when 25 year old African-American Freddie Gray died in April from injuries received while in police custody. His funeral in Baltimore was followed by riots that did much damage to the already impoverished neighborhood in which he lived.

What was almost totally missing from the Post article was the need for jobs. While the over all unemployment rate for metropolitan Baltimore is only slightly above the U.S. average (5.7% compared to 5.6%), black unemployment is dramatically higher. “For young black men between the ages of 20 and 24, the unemployment rate was an astounding 37% in 2013, according to the most recent data available from the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s compared with 10% for white men of the same age.” (CNN Money) Much of the city’s heavy industry and the jobs they provided (steel processing, shipping, auto manufacturing, and transportation) left Baltimore decades ago. Many workers moved with those jobs but some stayed. The increase in service economy jobs of recent years employs workers with different and generally higher level skills than did the lost manufacturing jobs. Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital are now Baltimore’s largest employers. Baltimore’s population peaked at around 950,000 in 1950 and dropped to 622,000 in 2013. Improving Baltimore’s infrastructure for those who have stayed is pointless if they can’t find jobs.

It is not that infrastructure and education are not important. They are important both for the quality of life and for attracting enterprises that provide jobs. But they are only part of the package companies consider when deciding where to locate. The cost of providing and maintaining them relative to their quality is important as well, and education needs to be relevant for the jobs potentially attracted. Taxes, both state and local are an important port of the cost of doing business. When companies evaluate where to locate new facilities they will want the best bang for their buck. Maryland is an expensive state (35th from the top in CNBC’s list of the best states for doing business). During his term as governor of Maryland O’Malley:
• Raised the top personal income tax rate from 4.75 to 5.75 percent. With local taxes on top, Maryland’s top rate is 8.95 percent.
• Raised the corporate tax rate from 7.0 to 8.25 percent.
• Raised the sales tax rate from 5 to 6 percent and expanded the sales tax base.
• Raised the sales tax rate on beer, wine, and spirits by 50 percent.
• Raised the gas tax by 20 cents over four years, almost doubling the rate from 23.5 cents.
• Doubled the cigarette tax from $1 to $2 per pack.
• Imposed higher taxes on vehicle registration.
• Imposed a storm water mitigation fee on property owners, or a “rain tax.”
(Chris Edwards: Cato)

The quality of government services in Maryland, however, is also fairly high. Last year I incorporated my consulting business in Maryland as an LLC. It took me 30 minutes on line sitting in my office from start to finish, including the email delivery of the signed and sealed document of incorporation. In addition, the cost of property and labor in Baltimore is low. This is a natural market reaction to the loss of industry and residence. The city’s efforts to revive its poorer neighborhoods also need to focus on improving its competitive advantage as a place for businesses to locate.

Crony capitalism and the Export Import Bank

An important and fundamental principle of the rule of law is that laws should have wide or universal applicability to everyone. This principle is generally violated when governments subsidize specific activities. These subsidize might take the form of tax breaks, loans at preferential interest rates or even grants to favored enterprises or activities. The Export Import Bank is a government program for granting such favors in the name of promoting exports.

If the EX-IM Bank only provided information to American firms that helped them satisfy foreign requirements for selling their products abroad or to connect with services available for marketing such produces—following the model of the Small Business Administration or the Agricultural Extension Services provided by many states—their continued existence might be defensible. However, like so many government intrusions into the private sector, it provides huge subsidize to a limited number of customers (about 30% of the total to Boeing to subsidize the sale of its planes to foreign carriers) at the expense of others. American carriers like Delta complain that EX-IM Bank subsidies to Boeing benefit their foreign competitors, who are able to buy Boeing planes more cheaply than they are. “The Airline Pilots Association of America estimates that the bank’s subsidizing of Boeing airline purchases abroad has forced our domestic airlines to cut about 7,500 jobs – decreasing the airline workforce by almost 2 percent.” (The Blaze, May 29, 2015)

While the cost of the EX-IM Bank to U.S. taxpayers is trivial, it is one more drop in the growing pond of crony capitalist connections to the government. Boeing moved its headquarters from Seattle, where most of its production was traditionally located, to Chicago and has diversified its production and suppliers around the country precisely to have more representatives in congress with an interest in its well being. Like many other large companies seeking government favors, it has hired key people from government such as Kevin Varney, former chief of staff at the Ex-Im during Obama’s first term. The stakes for Boeing are large so you can be sure it is spending a lot of money one way or another to protect its interests. This is the nature of crony capitalism, which gradually diminishes real market competition and chokes productivity.

Creating programs that grant favors also creates strong incentives for less subtle and more overt, traditional style corruption. “For example, Johnny Gutierrez, an Ex-Im Loan Specialist, pled guilty on April 22, 2015 of accepting up to $78,000 in bribes in return for recommending the approval of unqualified loan applications to the bank, among other misconduct. During this period, Ex-Im gave Gutierrez nearly a 20 percent pay hike and paid-out thousands in performance bonuses. “ (Adam Andrzejewski, Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2015/05/31/the-export-import-bank-and-the-art-of-picking-losers/ )

The Ex-Im Bank and dozens of programs like it are economically unsound and wasteful and politically corrupting. It and others like it should be killed when ever possible. Here is a rare case where congress can do good by doing nothing (i.e. by not renewing the Bank at the end of this month).

Emergency Economic Summit for Greece

I just returned from a conference in Athens on the Greek economy. Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s controversial Finance Minister, gave the (almost) final presentation to the 500 attendees making his usual point that Greece is insolvent not illiquid, meaning that its unsustainable debt should be written off (partially at least). While he is surely correct in that assessment, as usual he failed to discuss or even mention the structural reforms Greece needs to make to improve its productivity and thus lift its standard of living, which are also part of the conditions of the existing assistance program with the IMF/EU/ECB. He wants Greece’s creditors to forgive its debts first with reforms (which the new government says it wants to revers to some extent anyway) to come after. As past Greek behavior has destroyed any trust by its creditors and potential investors, the Troika (IMF/EU/ECB) is unlikely to agree to the Minister’s demands. The highlight of the conference was the critic of the Minister’s remarks by Nobel Prize economist Tom Sargent given immediately after and providing the actual concluding remarks for the day.

Here is an article on the conference that includes a short TV interview that I gave on the side.  http://fnf-europe.org/2015/05/20/fnf-greece-emergency-economic-summit-for-greece-stirs-up-unprecedented-media-coverage/

A video of the full conference and my presentation with be on the Atlas Network website later. https://www.atlasnetwork.org/news/article/how-greece-can-escape-from-economic-crisis?utm_source=AtlasNetwork+World10%3A+Highlights+from+the+global+freedom+movement&utm_campaign=a14b0b99fb-World10_5_6_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d4bce382cb-a14b0b99fb-26641201

The paper that I prepared for the conference can be found at: http://works.bepress.com/warren_coats/32/

All the best,

WarrenGreece EESG

The Cayman Financial Review

I have three articles in the latest issue of the quarterly Cayman Financial Review, on whose editorial board I serve. The first is the Letter from the Editorial Board, which explores my thoughts on restoring more market discipline of bank risk taking rather than piling on more government regulations: http://www.compasscayman.com/cfr/2015/04/22/Changing-direction-on-bank-regulation/ The second is the second installment of The Kabul Bank Scandal series, http://www.compasscayman.com/cfr/2015/04/22/The-Kabulbank-Scandal–Part-II/   And the third is my review of Martin Wolf’s new book, “Shifts and Shocks.”   http://www.compasscayman.com/cfr/2015/04/22/%E2%80%9CThe-Shifts-and-the-Shocks%E2%80%9D-by-Martin-Wolf/ If any of these topics interest you please click on its link.

Economics Lesson: Is deflation bad?

Fortunately the key insights about inflation or deflation are fairly intuitive and easy to understand. Stable prices—i.e., zero inflation—is best, fully anticipated inflation (or deflation) is second best, and inflation/deflation surprises are bad. If you would like a bit more detail, read on.

Inflation refers to the rate at which the value of money (average prices usually measure by a consumer price index—CPI) changes over time. Zero inflation, constant purchasing power of a currency over time in its local market (e.g. the value of the US dollar in the US), is best because all of the other factors impacting the supply and demand for individual goods that potentially change their prices relative to other goods and services can be expressed in terms of a constant unit account, a constant measuring rod. This makes comparing prices stated in that unit of account, especially over time, much easier. Imagine if the length or weight of something had to be expressed in units of weights and measure that themselves were always changing. Economic resources are better allocated to the satisfaction of public demand when the relative scarcity of each good and service can be clearly discerned. Decisions about the allocation of resources (whether to build a new factory to produce a new product or more of an old one and/or to hire more workers, etc.) are necessarily forward looking. The entrepreneurs’ question is what will people pay for something next year and the year after and what will it cost to produce it and how does this compare with producing something else. This is more difficult to do when the forecast of prices need to mix in the changing value of the currency in which they are stated.

However, a decent second best is a rate of inflation (positive or negative) that is steady and predictable. The inflation target of 2 percent chosen by many central banks, if reliably achieved, provides an example. If the inflation rate is fully and correctly anticipated, whether positive or negative, all other relative prices, including interest rates and wage contracts, can and will take the anticipated rate into account when setting prices in contracts for the future (e.g., a wage contract). If borrowers and lenders are willing to contract for a loan for five years at 3% per year with zero inflation in the value of the money borrowed and repaid, they would both be willing to undertake the same loan at 5% if they both expected inflation of 2% per year over those five years. If that expectation were rather uncertain, a suitable risk premium would need to be added to the interest rate. If everyone expected with certainty a 2% deflation over the same period, the loan would carry a 1% nominal rate. In both of these examples, the so-called real rate of interest—the rate adjusted for inflation—would be 3%. Thus, modest deflation does no harm if everyone fully and correctly anticipates it.

As an aside for the more advanced students, Milton Friedman explained why a fully anticipated, mild deflation was actually good because it would reduce or eliminate the opportunity cost of holding money and thus encourage people to hold larger cash balances on average without any cost to themselves or society. The money we hold in our wallets or nightstands or in our checking accounts at the bank is like any other inventory of goods that shop keepers keep on their shelves. Without an adequate inventory of what they sell, they would occasionally run out and miss some potential sales. But it cost money to hold an inventory of something. The cost can be measured by the interest you could have earned investing the money you spent to acquire the inventory (called “opportunity cost” by economists), plus any storage costs. Deflation reduces the opportunity cost of holding money by generating a real return from holding it (it is worth more in the future).

Unanticipated inflation, however, is bad because contracts written in dollar terms (so called “nominal” terms) will turn out to have a different real value than was expected. Normally a voluntary contract benefits both parties to it; it is win win. But when the inflation outcome was not anticipated, it will produce unexpected winners and losers. Debtors benefit from unanticipated inflation and creditors lose. More to the point in our current, over indebted environment, a deflation that was not anticipated when the money was borrowed, will increase the real value of the money that must be repaid. Lenders will benefit from the unexpected windfall only if borrowers actually repay their loans. But the unexpected increase in the real value of the debt being repaid may result in a larger number of defaults. So central banks are trying to avoid deflation, or more accurately are trying to achieve their inflation targets (generally 2%) in order to avoid making the economy’s excessive indebtedness even worse.

The above discussion concerns the value of a currency in its own country. But given the very extensive commerce across borders and the fact that most countries use their own currencies, cross border payments require exchanging one currency for the other. If the exchange rates of all currencies were fixed and never changed, the above analysis would apply globally as well. However, the exchange rates of many currencies, such as the USD/Euro rate, vary continuously and sometimes very significantly. The USD/Euro rate has fallen (i.e., the dollar has appreciated) 30% in the last 12 months (on April 9, 2015). This represents an enormous and very disruptive shock to the value of US trade with Europe, increasing the cost of our exports and reducing the cost of imports from Europe by very large, unpredicted amounts. Following the collapse of the gold standard, which fixed the exchange rates of most currencies, in the early 1970s, a costly financial market of insurance against exchange rate movements has developed. The total daily value of FX related transactions (spot, forwards, swaps, options) are estimated at around 4 trillion US dollars. Yes, that is daily and yes, that is trillions. These added costs of international trade would be eliminated if all or most countries returned to credibly fixed exchange rates or better still one globally used currency. The enormous gains in the standard of living from this trade could be extended even further.

The world is now “blessed” with a variety of monetary policy regimes. All of them aim in one way or another to deliver stable value for their currency either domestically or relative to another currency. The major industrial countries generally target inflation domestically and allow the exchange rates of their currency to float against other currencies. Many smaller countries fix or target the exchange rate of their currency to the US dollar or the Euro or the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) thus causing the domestic values of their currencies to reflect the inflation rates of the currency to which they are fixed.

Two major reforms would establish a global monetary system with stable money (zero inflation). The first would be to change the IMF’s international reserve asset, the SDR, from a currency whose value is determined by a basket of key currencies (the USD, Euro, UK pound, and Japanese Yen) and allocated on the basis of political decisions, to a currency whose value is determined by a basket of real goods that is issued on the basis of market demand in accordance with currency board rules. These reforms are explained in more detail in earlier articles such as https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/the-u-s-dollar-and-the-sdr-as-international-reserve-currencies/ and https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/a-hard-anchor-for-the-dollar/. The above reforms in the SDR would include an international agreement to replace the US dollar and Euro in international pricing and payments with the reformed SDR, which I call the Real SDR.  http://works.bepress.com/warren_coats/25/

The second reform would follow naturally given the greater stability of the Real SDR. Countries would fix the exchange rate of their national currencies to the Real SDR or replace them all together with the Real SDR (the equivalent of dollarization). If all or most countries did this, the world would enjoy the benefits described above of a global currency with a completely predictable and stable value relative to a “typical household consumption basket” across the globe. It is worth fighting for.

Economics Lesson: Income Inequality

French economist Thomas Piketty’s bestselling book on wealth inequality, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” has become the focus of a debate over increasing income inequality in the US and many other countries. I have not read the book, which apparently presents lots of interesting data, the use and interpretation of which is also being debated. A recent paper on Piketty worth reading is by a young PhD candidate at MIT: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/19/meet-the-26-year-old-whos-taking-on-thomas-pikettys-ominous-warnings-about-inequality/

The issue that interests me in this note is the great divide in attitudes toward inequality and thus the policies proposed to address it. Some people think income inequality, or at least too much of it, is bad per se. Thus taxing the rich and redistributing the proceeds to middle and lower income families is the solution. For me, and many others, the issue is whether the wealthy (to simplify) earned their income fair and square (to be explained below) and is thus a just reward for their contributions to the economy providing an important incentive for their efforts. To the extent that they have not (monopoly power, government favors, etc.) the solution is to attack and remove the policies and impediments to competitive markets that made their exorbitant incomes possible.

If it is not desirable (fair) for some people to be wealthy when others are not, the collateral damage from income redistribution may be a price worth paying. This collateral damage is well known. If the wealthy cannot keep the income they get from their efforts and/or from their investments in innovative technology, miracle drugs, or the companies that produce what we want and provide our jobs, they will reduce their efforts and investments, thus reducing the income available to us all and available to redistribute. At the other end—recipient—of the redistribution, if the programs through which middle and lower income families receive such income are not well designed they will reduce incentives to work and or misallocate resources further reducing the income available to redistribute. The policy issues become how to design such programs and what is the optimal balance between the “good” effect of more equal income distribution and the bad effects of lower income.

In my book of moral principles, disapproval of the higher incomes of others per se is due to envy, and envy is not a virtue and should be resisted. There is some evidence that many people care both about their absolute income and their income relative to others. Such envy should be discouraged in my view. My standard of morality in this area is that people deserve what they fairly earn but this requires an understanding and agreement on what income is fair. Economists have a straightforward definition of “fair” income. Profits (revenue in excess of costs) earned without artificial government help (subsidies, regulations that keep out or discourage competitors, or state sanctioned monopolies) are fair because they are the (ultimately) competitive return on providing something people value. With competition, profits will be normal, what economists call a normal rate of return on investment.

Unless the government interferes, excessive profits (those above a normal rate of return) will ultimately be competed away as others enter the field to grab some of the high return. While the inventor and developer of a new technology or product may enjoy a quasi monopoly return initially, as long as there are no artificial impediments to competition, i.e. as long as the monopoly is contestable, returns will ultimately become normal. George Will provides some relevant and interesting cases drawn from a new book by John Tamny. “With the iPod, iPhone and iPad, unique products when introduced, Jobs’ Apple created monopolies. But instead of raising their prices, Apple has cut them because ‘profits attract imitators and innovators.’ Which is one reason why monopolies come and go.” “Since 2000, the price of a 50-inch plasma TV has fallen from $20,000 to $550.” “Henry Ford doubled his employees’ basic wage in 1914, supposedly to enable them to buy Fords. Actually, he did it because in 1913 annual worker turnover was 370 percent. He lowered labor costs by reducing turnover and the expense of constantly training new hires.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-income-inequality-benefits-everybody/2015/03/25/1122ee02-d255-11e4-a62f-ee745911a4ff_story.html

There are many examples of profits that are not normal or contestable, which by definition are unfair. Those on my side of this issue would look for the government favors or interferences that made them possible and seek to remove them. There is no doubt, for example, that US monetary and regulatory policies have made possible lopsided returns from one-sided risk taking by Wall Street (the moral hazard of tax payer bail outs when excessive bank risk taking goes wrong). These policies need to be reformed in order to make the economy fairer and more efficient. See my Letter from the Editorial Board in the next issue of the Cayman Financial Review.

A very large political/policy battlefield in America today is between those who wish to redistribute income to make it more equal and those who want to make income distribution more equal by reducing or removing the economic rents generated by excessive and inappropriate government regulations and subsidies. They are each motivated by dramatically different philosophies and conceptions of what is fair and what is good. We might call these positions “egalitarianism” and “capitalism.” The motivation of an egalitarian to redistribute income from the rich to the poor is dramatically different than the desire of virtually all American’s to provide what Ronald Reagan called an adequate social safety net for the truly disadvantaged and those who have fallen off the ladder. I am on the side of capitalism.