Vivek Kaul
Some of the earliest banks started operating in Italy somewhere in the twelfth and thirteenth century. These banks were essentially banks of deposits. Merchants deposited their money in the form of gold and silver coins and bars with these banks for safekeeping. The bank in return issued a receipt against this deposit. The receipt could be shown when the coin money was to be withdrawn. Hence, the earliest banks were “banks of deposits” or “store houses of wealth”.
As time went by some banks developed a reputation for probity and honesty. This led to merchants who had accounts with these banks simply transferring receipts of these banks when they had to pay one another instead of going to the bank showing their receipt and withdrawing their gold or silver to pay each other.
Hence, these receipts started functioning as “paper” money. In sometime people running these banks also figured out that their depositors do not all come all on the same day asking for their deposits back. So in the intermittent period they could either lend out the gold/silver to others or simply print fake deposit receipts not backed by any gold or silver bars or coins, but which looked exactly like the original deposit
receipt. Of course they charged a fee for this.
A similar trend seems to have played out in London in the seventeenth century where merchants took to depositing money with the goldsmiths. This happened after King Charles I seized around £130,000 in bullion, deposited by the city merchants at the Tower of London in 1640.
Like the Italian bankers the London goldsmiths also figured out that they could keep lending the gold that was deposited or simply issue fake receipts, and make more money in the process. As Hartley Withers writes in his all time classic The Meaning of Money:
The original goldsmith’s note was a receipt for metal deposited. It took the form of a promise to pay metal, and so passed as currency. Some ingenious goldsmith conceived the epoch-making notion of giving notes, not only to those who had deposited metal, but to those who came to borrow it, and so founded modern banking.
This is how banks evolved from being just banks of deposit to being banks which gave out loans as well. And to this day they work in the same way. This change also gave bank a right to create money out of thin air, something only the governments could do till then.
Let’s try and understand how that happens. Let us say an individual/institution/government deposits $1000 with a bank. Let’s assume that the bank in turn keeps 10% of the deposits (for the ease of calculation) and lends out the remaining 90% or$900 in this case. It thus manages to create an asset from someone else’s money. So we also have a situation here were the money supply has increased by $1900 ($1000 money deposited with the bank + $900 loan given by the bank).
The $900 loan gets deposited with another bank which in turn lends $810 (90% of $900) and keeps $90 with itself. The $810 is deposited in another bank and leads to a loan of $729. So the banks can keep creating money out of thin air and the money supply can keep going up.
This ability of banks to create money out of thin air is believed to be behind the boom and bust cycles (also referred to as business cycle fluctuations) that the world economy has seen over the last three decades. As J write in The Chicago Plan Revisited, a research paper released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) “sudden increases and contractions of bank credit that are not necessarily driven by the fundamentals of the real economy, but that themselves change those fundamentals.” When banks feel optimistic, they create money out of thin air by lending it and in the process create the boom part of the business cycle. But when the banks feel pessimistic about economies they may call back their loans or not give out loans at all, and in the process create the bust part of the cycle.
The IMF authors feel that this ability of the banks to create money out of thin air needs to be reined in. The ability to create money should rest only with the government. For this to happen they have revisited The Chicago Plan. The plan was first proposed in the aftermath of The Great Depression of the 1930s.
“During this time a large number of leading U.S. macroeconomists supported a fundamental proposal for monetary reform that later became known as the Chicago Plan, after its strongest proponent, professor Henry Simons of the University of Chicago,” write Benes and Kumhof. Over the years Irving Fisher, who was America’s greatest economist of that era, also came to be closely associated with it.
This plan strikes at the heart of how conventional banking works. A bank raises money as deposits and lends it out as loans. The Chicago Plan separates the deposit and lending functions of the bank. So when $1000 is deposited with the bank, the bank will have to hold the entire money with it and act as a “bank of deposit”. It will not be able to lend this money out. So bank deposits cannot fund its loans. This also eliminates the chances of bank run totally. Even if all the customers of the bank come and demand their deposit from the bank at the same time, the bank can easily repay them.
The question that crops up here is that if the bank does not lend out its deposits how does t fund its loans? As per the Chicago Plan the loans will have to be funded separately from sources which are not subject to bank runs. Hence, loans would be funded out of retained earnings of the bank. They could also be funded out of the bank issuing more shares to investors. And a third source of funding, which is at the heart of the Chicago Plan, would come from the government.
The bank will have to borrow money from the government to fund its loans. The government can ‘print’ this money that it will lend to banks. Hence, this is the way the government can control money in the economy. When it wants to expand money supply it can lend more and vice versa. Banks cannot create money out of thin air because they are not allowed to lend their deposits.
“The control of credit growth would become much more straightforward because banks would no longer be able, as they are today, to generate their own funding, deposits, in the act of lending,” write the IMF authors.
Also, the government will lend against certain assets of banks. These assets can be included while calculating the net debt of the government and deducted from its total debt. The government can also buy back government bonds held by banks against the loans it will give to banks to fund their loans. Either ways the net debt of the government could come down dramatically.
The government could also use the same method to buy out private debt from these banks. It could buy back private bonds against cancellation of government loans to these banks. And why would the government do that? “Because this would have the advantage of establishing low-debt sustainable balance sheets in both the private sector and the government, it is plausible to assume that a real-world implementation of the Chicago Plan would involve at least some, and potentially a very large, buy-back of private debt,” write the IMF authors.
That’s the plan. But the bigger question that the plan does not answer is how much can governments be trusted when it comes to printing money?
A slightly shorter version of this article appeared in Daily News and Analysis on October 24, 2012.
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at [email protected])
http://money.msn.com/investing/no-debt-no-cuts-no-new-taxes
Financial Crisis
‘Warren Buffett does not practice what he preaches’
Satyajit Das is an internationally renowned derivatives expert. His works include the best-selling Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives. His latest book Extreme Money – Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk deals with the messy details of the 2008 financial crisis, the lessons from which have still not been learnt, feels Das. As he puts it, “We keep repeating the same mistakes over and over…The only lesson of history after all is that no one learns the lessons of history.”
In this freewheeling interview with Vivek Kaul, he talks about how investing is never going to be the same again, why financial TV is pornography, and that Warren Buffett does not practice what he preaches. The interview will be published in two parts. This is the first part.
Why do you call “financial TV” pornography?
Pornography is formulaic, explicit subject matter is depicted to sexually excite the viewer. Financial TV shares the characteristics of pornography — sleaze, intrusiveness and a desire to titillate and shock. It is a 24/7 Joycean stream of consciousness, a financial noise machine with the inevitability and repetition of all sexual congress. No one seriously relies on financial TV for deep insight. If it is on TV, then it’s already happened. It’s entertainment. Attractive men and women cater to all possible proclivities in the audience. It’s like wall paper or eye candy – pleasant but not essential. In dealing rooms, generally you don’t even have the sound on, so it is like pornography in another sense – dialogue is superfluous. The only time financial TV is interesting is when I am invited on to offer my money making insights – buy low, sell high etc.
Whatever his record as an investor, there are differences between Buffett’s pronouncements about the standard of conduct he requires of others and that he follows. Getty Images
You say that investment genius was always little more than a short memory and a rising market? You write that the assumed sophistication of finance and financiers is overrated. Why do you say that?
Investing is like captaining a cricket side – 90 percent luck and 10 percent skill, in the words of former Australian Test captain Richie Benaud. But as he said, don’t try it without the 10 percent! The last 30 years were an exceptional period of investment history which provided high returns for reasons which are unique to that period. The best investment strategy would have been to buy stock or real estate and leverage it up. Then go to sleep or play golf for 25 years. You would have been a rich man.
When people make money, they theorise too much about it – hence all the books about trading success. The latest fad is about explaining the trader’s personality via his biology. Some research suggests that male traders perform better when they have elevated testosterone levels. As prices increase and decrease, traders experience chemical changes. Euphoria caused by boosted testosterone levels from successful trades drives higher risk taking. Losses or reversals increase levels of the defensive steroid cortisone leading to risk-aversion. The experimental data is thin.
Could you elaborate on that?
If correct, you could take steps on banks and fund managers to manage risk. You could artificially manipulate the biology of traders and investment managers to improve performance. It is not hard to imagine a future where traders will need to have their supplements –uppers and downers (in the old parlance) — at hand to improve trading, similar to the experience of competitive sports where drugs have become relatively commonplace to improve performance. It is also not hard to imagine internal risk mangers and regulators insisting on regular monitoring of hormone levels as part of the compliance regime, with attendant cheating.
Isn’t that far fetched?
This is not far-fetched. Already, organisations are adopting unusual initiatives to gain a critical edge. A trader at Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital was allegedly forced by his boss to take female hormones and wear articles of women’s clothing at work, leading to a sexual relationship between the men, one of whom was married. The bizarre behaviour was to eliminate the trader’s aggressive male attitude, making him a more obedient and detail-oriented trader. How can you take an industry which actually does this seriously!
In this freewheeling interview with Vivek Kaul, he talks about how investing is never going to be the same again, why financial TV is pornography, and that Warren Buffett does not practice what he preaches. The interview will be published in two parts. This is the first part.
Why do you call “financial TV” pornography?
Pornography is formulaic, explicit subject matter is depicted to sexually excite the viewer. Financial TV shares the characteristics of pornography — sleaze, intrusiveness and a desire to titillate and shock. It is a 24/7 Joycean stream of consciousness, a financial noise machine with the inevitability and repetition of all sexual congress. No one seriously relies on financial TV for deep insight. If it is on TV, then it’s already happened. It’s entertainment. Attractive men and women cater to all possible proclivities in the audience. It’s like wall paper or eye candy – pleasant but not essential. In dealing rooms, generally you don’t even have the sound on, so it is like pornography in another sense – dialogue is superfluous. The only time financial TV is interesting is when I am invited on to offer my money making insights – buy low, sell high etc.
Whatever his record as an investor, there are differences between Buffett’s pronouncements about the standard of conduct he requires of others and that he follows. Getty Images
You say that investment genius was always little more than a short memory and a rising market? You write that the assumed sophistication of finance and financiers is overrated. Why do you say that?
Investing is like captaining a cricket side – 90 percent luck and 10 percent skill, in the words of former Australian Test captain Richie Benaud. But as he said, don’t try it without the 10 percent! The last 30 years were an exceptional period of investment history which provided high returns for reasons which are unique to that period. The best investment strategy would have been to buy stock or real estate and leverage it up. Then go to sleep or play golf for 25 years. You would have been a rich man.
When people make money, they theorise too much about it – hence all the books about trading success. The latest fad is about explaining the trader’s personality via his biology. Some research suggests that male traders perform better when they have elevated testosterone levels. As prices increase and decrease, traders experience chemical changes. Euphoria caused by boosted testosterone levels from successful trades drives higher risk taking. Losses or reversals increase levels of the defensive steroid cortisone leading to risk-aversion. The experimental data is thin.
Could you elaborate on that?
If correct, you could take steps on banks and fund managers to manage risk. You could artificially manipulate the biology of traders and investment managers to improve performance. It is not hard to imagine a future where traders will need to have their supplements –uppers and downers (in the old parlance) — at hand to improve trading, similar to the experience of competitive sports where drugs have become relatively commonplace to improve performance. It is also not hard to imagine internal risk mangers and regulators insisting on regular monitoring of hormone levels as part of the compliance regime, with attendant cheating.
Isn’t that far fetched?
This is not far-fetched. Already, organisations are adopting unusual initiatives to gain a critical edge. A trader at Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital was allegedly forced by his boss to take female hormones and wear articles of women’s clothing at work, leading to a sexual relationship between the men, one of whom was married. The bizarre behaviour was to eliminate the trader’s aggressive male attitude, making him a more obedient and detail-oriented trader. How can you take an industry which actually does this seriously!
Does Warren Buffett practice what he preaches?
Talking about Warren Buffett is like discussing the existence of God. He is either great or he is not (the minority view). I am an atheist. Whatever his record as an investor, there are differences between Buffett’s pronouncements about the standard of conduct he requires of others and that he follows. While he dispenses finely crafted criticism of derivatives as weapons of mass destruction, Berkshire Hathaway (Buffett’s holding company) makes extensive use of derivatives and invested in Salomon Brothers and General Reinsurance, both participants in derivative markets.
During the crisis, Buffett, a significant investor in Moody’s, was silent about the problems surrounding rating agencies. Having uncharacteristically declined an invitation to appear in June 2010, Buffett testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission under subpoena. Buffett emphasised that he knew little about the rating process other than its profit margins. He had never visited Moody’s offices, not even knowing where they were located. He also defended Moody’s not acknowledging any failure or complicity of the agencies in creating the bubble. When Goldman Sachs was indicted for alleged violations in structuring and selling CDOs (collateralised debt obligations, a kind of security backed by loans and bonds), Buffett, a major investor in Goldman, defended the firm, its actions and its CEO.
Satyajit Das.
Could you tell us a little more about this?
Critics have frequently pointed out anomalies in the firm’s corporate practices. Berkshire Hathaway’s dual-class share arrangement gives Buffett voting control whilst owning 34 percent of the equity. Until a decade ago, Berkshire Hathaway’s seven-person board of directors consisted of mainly insiders such as Buffett’s son. The new ‘independent’ directors include Bill Gates, a close friend of Buffett, and his regular bridge partner, as well as co-investor in the Gates Foundation. Critics also pointed to that fact Buffett’s partner Charlie Munger’s family owned a 3 percent stake in BYD, the Chinese electric battery maker, before Berkshire bought a stake in 2008.
As to his record as an investor, there are a number of interesting aspects. Firstly, what is the right benchmark to measure his performance against – it can’t be the broad market index. Secondly, the source of his investment success is not that complicated. His main source of investment capital is the premium income from his insurance businesses (cash received today against a promise to honour a future contingent claim). This provides him with effective economic leverage (at low interest cost) to buy low beta assets. The strategy worked well but whether it will continue to work is more difficult. The past, as they say, is “another country”.
In your book Extreme Money you write “Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” You paraphrase it to write “give me enough debt and I shall make you all the money in the world”. Can you elaborate?
Borrowing amplifies economic growth. Debt allows society to borrow from the future. It accelerates consumption and investment spending, as borrowed money is used to purchase something today against the promise of paying back the borrowing in the future. Spending that would have taken place normally over a period of years is accelerated because of the availability of cheap borrowing. In this way, debt generates economic growth. In financial markets, debt and leverage amplify returns.
Could you explain this through an example?
Assume an investor uses $20 of its own money – equity – and borrows $80 (80 percent of the value) to purchase an asset for $100. If the asset increases in value by 10 percent to $110, then the investor’s equity increases on paper to $30 ($110 minus the fixed amount of debt of $80). If the investor maintains its leverage at 5 times then it can buy $150 of assets (funded by $30 of equity and $120 of debt). If the investor can now leverage 6 times then it can buy $180 of assets (funded by $30 of equity and $150 of debt). The investor still only has his original $20 investment in cash, unless he sells the asset to realise paper gains, which can vanish.
But now, this $20 supports even more debt, as much as $160 (the $180 of assets that the investor can buy if it leverages six times less its original investment). The real leverage is around nine times, which means an 11 percent fall in the value of the asset purchased can wipe out the investor’s wealth entirely. Where the supply of assets does not increase as quickly as the supply of debt, the price increases allow the process to continue. In the period to 2007, the use of leverage, in different ways, to make money was rampant. Unfortunately, it was never real money. Of course, when prices start to fall the entire process operates in reverse.
The interview was originally published on www.firstpost.com on October 2o, 2012. http://www.firstpost.com/economy/warren-buffet-does-not-practice-what-he-preaches-496581.html
Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at [email protected]
Talking about Warren Buffett is like discussing the existence of God. He is either great or he is not (the minority view). I am an atheist. Whatever his record as an investor, there are differences between Buffett’s pronouncements about the standard of conduct he requires of others and that he follows. While he dispenses finely crafted criticism of derivatives as weapons of mass destruction, Berkshire Hathaway (Buffett’s holding company) makes extensive use of derivatives and invested in Salomon Brothers and General Reinsurance, both participants in derivative markets.
During the crisis, Buffett, a significant investor in Moody’s, was silent about the problems surrounding rating agencies. Having uncharacteristically declined an invitation to appear in June 2010, Buffett testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission under subpoena. Buffett emphasised that he knew little about the rating process other than its profit margins. He had never visited Moody’s offices, not even knowing where they were located. He also defended Moody’s not acknowledging any failure or complicity of the agencies in creating the bubble. When Goldman Sachs was indicted for alleged violations in structuring and selling CDOs (collateralised debt obligations, a kind of security backed by loans and bonds), Buffett, a major investor in Goldman, defended the firm, its actions and its CEO.
Satyajit Das.
Could you tell us a little more about this?
Critics have frequently pointed out anomalies in the firm’s corporate practices. Berkshire Hathaway’s dual-class share arrangement gives Buffett voting control whilst owning 34 percent of the equity. Until a decade ago, Berkshire Hathaway’s seven-person board of directors consisted of mainly insiders such as Buffett’s son. The new ‘independent’ directors include Bill Gates, a close friend of Buffett, and his regular bridge partner, as well as co-investor in the Gates Foundation. Critics also pointed to that fact Buffett’s partner Charlie Munger’s family owned a 3 percent stake in BYD, the Chinese electric battery maker, before Berkshire bought a stake in 2008.
As to his record as an investor, there are a number of interesting aspects. Firstly, what is the right benchmark to measure his performance against – it can’t be the broad market index. Secondly, the source of his investment success is not that complicated. His main source of investment capital is the premium income from his insurance businesses (cash received today against a promise to honour a future contingent claim). This provides him with effective economic leverage (at low interest cost) to buy low beta assets. The strategy worked well but whether it will continue to work is more difficult. The past, as they say, is “another country”.
In your book Extreme Money you write “Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” You paraphrase it to write “give me enough debt and I shall make you all the money in the world”. Can you elaborate?
Borrowing amplifies economic growth. Debt allows society to borrow from the future. It accelerates consumption and investment spending, as borrowed money is used to purchase something today against the promise of paying back the borrowing in the future. Spending that would have taken place normally over a period of years is accelerated because of the availability of cheap borrowing. In this way, debt generates economic growth. In financial markets, debt and leverage amplify returns.
Could you explain this through an example?
Assume an investor uses $20 of its own money – equity – and borrows $80 (80 percent of the value) to purchase an asset for $100. If the asset increases in value by 10 percent to $110, then the investor’s equity increases on paper to $30 ($110 minus the fixed amount of debt of $80). If the investor maintains its leverage at 5 times then it can buy $150 of assets (funded by $30 of equity and $120 of debt). If the investor can now leverage 6 times then it can buy $180 of assets (funded by $30 of equity and $150 of debt). The investor still only has his original $20 investment in cash, unless he sells the asset to realise paper gains, which can vanish.
But now, this $20 supports even more debt, as much as $160 (the $180 of assets that the investor can buy if it leverages six times less its original investment). The real leverage is around nine times, which means an 11 percent fall in the value of the asset purchased can wipe out the investor’s wealth entirely. Where the supply of assets does not increase as quickly as the supply of debt, the price increases allow the process to continue. In the period to 2007, the use of leverage, in different ways, to make money was rampant. Unfortunately, it was never real money. Of course, when prices start to fall the entire process operates in reverse.
The interview was originally published on www.firstpost.com on October 2o, 2012. http://www.firstpost.com/economy/warren-buffet-does-not-practice-what-he-preaches-496581.html
Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at [email protected]
Why you should be nice to your mom – and buy some gold
Vivek Kaul
So let me start this piece by admitting Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of United States (the American central bank) has proven me wrong.
I was wrong when I recently said that the Federal Reserve would not initiate a third round of quantitative easing (QE), before the November 6 presidential elections in the United States. (you can read about it here).
Bernanke announced late last night that the Federal Reserve would buy mortgage backed securities worth $40billion every month. This will continue till the job scenario in the United States improves substantially. The Federal Reserve will print money to buy the mortgage back securities.
I concluded that the Federal Reserve wouldn’t announce any QE till November 6, primarily on account of the fact that Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for the Presidential elections, has been against any sort of QE to revive the economy.
“I don’t think QE-II was terribly effective. I think a QE-III and other Fed stimulus is not going to help this economy…I think that is the wrong way to go. I think it also seeds the kind of potential for inflation down the road that would be harmful to the value of the dollar and harmful to the stability of our nation’s needs,” Romney told Fox News on 23 August. This had held back the Federal Reserve from initiating QE III.
But from the looks of it Bernanke doesn’t feel that Romney has a chance at winning and that he is more likely than not going to continue working with Barack Obama, the current American President.
This round of quantitative easing is going to help Obama and hurt Romney. Let me explain. The theory behind quantitative easing is that when the Federal Reserve buys mortgage backed securities (in this case) by printing dollars, it pumps in more money into the economy. With more money in the economy, banks and financial institutions it is felt will lend that money and businesses and consumers will borrow. This will mean that spending by both businesses and consumers will start to up. Once that happens the economic scenario will start improving, which will lead to more jobs being created.
But as I said this is the theoretical part. And theory and practice do not always go together. Both American businesses and consumers have been shying away from borrowing. Hence, all this money floating around has found its way into stock and commodity markets around the world.
As more money enters the stock market, stock prices go up and this creates the “wealth effect”. People who invest money in the market feel richer and then they tend to spend part of the accumulated wealth. This, in turn, helps economic growth.
As Gary Dorsch, an investment newsletter writer, said in a recent column, “Historical observation reveals that the direction of the stock market has a notable influence over consumer confidence and spending levels. In particular, the top 20% of wealthiest Americans account for 40% of the spending in the US economy, so the Fed hopes that by inflating the value of the stock market, wealthier Americans would decide to spend more. It’s the Fed’s version of “trickle down” economics, otherwise known as the “wealth effect.””
When this happens, the economy is likely to grow faster and hence, people are more likely to vote for the incumbent President. As Dorsch explains “Incumbent presidents are always hard to beat. The powers of the presidency go a long way…In the 1972 election year, when Nixon pressured Arthur Burns, then the Fed chairman, to expand the money supply with the aim of reducing unemployment, and boosting the economy in order to insure Nixon’s re-election.”
Bernanke is looking to do the same, even though he has denied it completely. “We have tried very, very hard, and I think we’ve been successful, at the Federal Reserve to be non-partisan and apolitical…We make our decisions based entirely on the state of the economy,” the Financial Times quoted Bernanke as saying. Given this, Romney has been a vocal critic of quantitative easing knowing that another round of money printing will clearly benefit Obama.
Other than Obama and the stock markets, the other big beneficiary of QE III will be gold. The yellow metal has gone up by around 2.2% to $1768 per ounce, since the announcement for QE III was made. In fact the expectation of QE III has been on since the beginning of September after Ben Bernanke dropped hints in a speech. Gold has risen by 7.3% since the beginning of this month.
This is primarily because any round of quantitative easing ensures that there are more dollars in the financial system than before. The threat is that the greater number of dollars will chase the same number of goods and services. This will lead to an increase in their prices. But this hasn’t happened till now. Nevertheless that hasn’t stopped investors from buying gold to protect themselves from this debasement of money. Gold cannot be debased. Unlike paper money it cannot be created out of thin air.
During earlier days, paper money was backed by gold or silver. When governments printed more paper money than the precious metals backing it, people simply turned up with their paper at the central bank and government mints, and demanded that paper money be converted into gold or silver. Now, whenever people see more and more of paper money being printed, the smarter ones simply go out and buy that gold. Hence, bad money (that is, paper money) is driving out good money (that is, gold) away from the market.
But that’s just one part of the story. The governments and central banks around the world, led by the Federal Reserve of United States and the European Central Bank, are likely to continue printing more money, in the hope that people spend this money and this revives economic growth. This in turn increases the threat of inflation which would mean that the price of gold is likely to keep going up. “Gold tends to benefit from easy-money policies as investors utilize the precious metal as a hedge against potential inflation that could ultimately result from the Fed’s policies,” Steven Russolillo, wrote on WSJ Blogs.
Market watchers have also started to believe that the Federal Reserve is now only bothered about economic growth and has abandoned the goal of keeping inflation under control. Growth and inflation control are typically the twin goals of any central bank.
“They are emphasizing the growth mandate, and that means they don’t care about inflation other than giving lip service to it,” Axel Merk, chief investment officer at Merk Funds, told Reuters. “The price of gold will do very well in the years to come,”he added.
Something that Jeffrey Sherman, commodities portfolio manager of DoubleLine Capital, agrees with. “The Fed’s inflationary behavior should be bearish for the dollar in the long run and drive investors to seek protection via the gold market,” he told Reuters.
Also unlike previous two rounds of money printing there are no upper limits on this QE, although at $40billion a month it’s much smaller in size. QE II, the second round of money printing, was $600billion in size.
Something that can bring down the returns on gold in rupee terms is the appreciation of the rupee against the dollar. Yesterday the rupee appreciated against the dollar by nearly 2%. This is happening primarily because the UPA government has suddenly turned reformist. (To understand the complete relationship between rupee, dollar and gold, read this).
In the end let me quote William Bonner & Addison Wiggin, the authors of Empire of Debt — The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis. As they say “There is never a good time to die. Nor is there a good time for a crash or a slump. Still, death happens. Be prepared. Say something nice to your mother. Offer a bum a drink. And buy gold.”
So be nice to your mother and buy gold.
Disclosure: This writer has investments in gold through the mutual fund route.
(The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on September 15,2012. http://www.firstpost.com/investing/why-you-should-be-nice-to-your-mom-and-buy-some-gold-456915.html)
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at [email protected])
The truth Obama didn’t tell his party: The US is broke
Vivek Kaul
When Manmohan Singh speaks he puts us to sleep.
When Barack Obama speaks the world listens. In his speech to accept the nomination to run for his second term as President, Obama touched all the right chords. The speech had the right amount of nostalgia, advise, self marketing and hope built into it.
His vision of future, as is the case with anyone asking for votes in a democracy, was optimistic, without getting into the specifics. The American dream is still on, despite the difficulties the country has faced over the last five years due to the financial crisis. That was the takeaway, one got from Obama’s speech.
“But as I stand here tonight, I have never been more hopeful about America. Not because I think I have all the answers. Not because I’m naïve about the magnitude of our challenges. I’m hopeful because of you,” said Obama
While hope is a good thing to have but then at times to hope we need to ignore the mess that we are in, in order to have some hope. And that precisely is my problem with Obama’s speech. There was a lot that he should have said, but did not.
The biggest problem in America today is not unemployment or slow economic growth but the unfunded liabilities like pensions, social security and medical care benefits that the government has promised to the citizens. .
As economist Laurence Kotlikoff wrote in a recent column “The 78 million-strong baby boom generation is starting to retire in droves. On average, each retiring boomer can expect to receive roughly $35,000, adjusted for inflation, in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits. Multiply $35,000 by 78 million pairs of outstretched hands and you get close to $3 trillion per year in costs. This is not a partisan issue. The dirty little secret that neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney is telling you is that our kids, who are being stuck with the bill, can’t afford it.”
The three trillion dollars that Kotlikoff is talking about is a lot of money. The current American yearly GDP is $15trillion. Hence, the costs Kotlikoff is talking about amount to nearly 20% of the annual American GDP. And it is unfunded.
Before we go further let’s try and understand what unfunded liabilities are. Let us say I plan to retire 10 years from now. I feel that Rs 16 lakh per year should be enough for me to sail through the year. But to earn that Rs16 lakh I would need to build a corpus of Rs 2 crore in 10 years time, and assuming that I am able to earn an interest of 8% on this corpus, 10 years from now (8% of Rs 2crore works out to Rs 16 akh).
In order to build a corpus of Rs 2 crore in 10 years time I will have to start saving and investing money regularly from now. If I don’t I will be in trouble ten years from now. Either I won’t be able to retire or if I retire I will have to borrow to meet my expenses.
The same logic at a very basic level works for governments as well. The government gives a pension to people when they retire. If a certain number of people are expected to retire ten years from now, then they would have to be paid a certain amount of pension. While estimating the exact amount is difficult, estimates can be made. But what we know for sure is that money is to be saved now so that citizens can be paid pensions later.
If governments don’t invest the right amount from now on, which a lot of them don’t including the US government, they will have to pay these citizens by borrowing money later. And if pensions and other commitments made to the citizens cannot be funded through the investments already made, they are said to be ‘unfunded’.
Mitch Feierstein in his book Ponzi Power – How Politicians and Bankers Stole Your Future writes “Using proper accounting methods…the true value of the state and municipal pension liability is at $5.2trilion. When you deduct the $1.94trillion of pension assets that have already been set aside, you get a net liability of $3.26trillion.”
Other than this the US government already has an existing debt of around $15trillion. Feierstein also points out that the social security programme of the US government is underfunded to the extent of $18.8trillion. The underfunding in Medicare, the health insurance programme, amounts to around $38.5trillion. So if you add all of this up the number comes to greater than $75 trillion and that is what Feierstein feels the US government owes to other governments and its own citizens.
And that’s just one estimate and a very conservative one. Kotlikoff’s estimate is scarier. As he wrote in a recent column “I recently calculated the fiscal gap…The fiscal gap measures the present value difference between all projected future federal expenditures (including servicing official debt) and all projected future taxes. The fiscal gap is thus the true measure of our government’s total indebtedness and the true measure of fiscal sustainability. How big is the fiscal gap? Brace yourself. It’s $222 trillion large!… In short, our government is totally broke. And it’s not broke in 30 years or in 20 years or in 10 years. It’s broke today.”
So how large is $222trillion? The annual GDP of the whole world is around $60trillion. The GDP of the United States of America is around $15trillion.
So what is the way out of this? “Here’s one way to wrap your head around our $222 trillion fiscal hole: closing it via tax hikes would require an immediate and permanent 64 percent increase in all federal taxes. Alternatively, the government could cut all transfer payments, e.g., Social Security benefits, and discretionary federal expenditures, e.g., defense expenditures, by 40 percent. Waiting to raise taxes or cut spending makes these figures worse,” writes Kotlikoff.
Another way out for the American government is to print money to meet its expenses (something which is it is already doing). As Kotlikoff puts it another column “The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills. Most likely we will see combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. This is an awful, downhill road to follow, but it’s the one we are on. And bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece.”
If America has to get out of this hole, the American way of life has to change. And that as Obama’s speech clearly points out is unlikely to happen.
(The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on September 8,2012. http://www.firstpost.com/world/the-truth-obama-didnt-tell-his-party-the-us-is-broke-448686.html)
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at [email protected])
Obama, Salman Khan, QE-3: Why we have to wait for 6 Nov
Vivek Kaul
Richard Nixon, who was the President of the United States between January 1969 and August 1974, appointed Arthur C Burns as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of United States (the American central bank) on January 30,1970. “I respect his (i.e. Burns) independence. However, I hope that independently he will conclude that my views are the ones that should be followed,” Nixon said on the occasion.
Burns did not disappoint Nixon and when it was election time in 1972. Since the start of 1972, Burns ran an easy money policy and pumped more money into the financial system by simply printing it. The American money supply went by 10.6% in 1972.
The idea was that with the increased money in the financial system, interest rates would be low, and this would encourage consumers and businesses to borrow more. Consumers and businesses borrowing and spending more would lead to the economy doing well. And this would ensure the re-election of Nixon who was seeking a second term in 1972. That was the idea. And it worked. Nixon won the second term with some help from Burns.
As investment newsletter writer Gary Dorsch wrote in a column earlier this year “Incumbent presidents are always hard to beat. The powers of the presidency go a long way….Nixon pressured Arthur Burns, then the Fed chairman, to expand the money supply with the aim of reducing unemployment, and boosting the economy in order to insure Nixon’s re-election…Nixon imposed wage and price controls to constrain inflation, and won the election in a landslide.” (you can read the complete column here)
History is expected to repeat itself
Something similar has been expected from the current Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. It has been widely expected that Bernanke will unleash the third round of money printing to revive the moribund American economy. Bernanke has already carried out two rounds of money printing before this to revive the American economy. This policy has been technically referred to as quantitative easing (QE), with the two earlier rounds of it being referred to as QE I and QE II.
The original idea was that with more money in the economy, banks will lend, and consumers and businesses will borrow and this in turn would revive the economy. But the American consumer had already borrowed too much in the run up to the financial crisis, which started in September 2008, when the investment bank Lehman Brothers went bust. The consumer credit outstanding peaked in 2008 and stood at $2.6trillion. The American consumer had already borrowed too much to buy homes and a lot of other stuff, and he was in no mood to borrow more.
The wealth effect
The other thing that happened because of the easy money policy of the American government was that it allowed the big institutional investors to borrow at very low interest rates and invest that money in the stock market. This pushed stock prices up leading to more investors coming into the market.
As Maggie Mahar puts it in Bull! : A History of the Boom, 1982-1999: What drove the Breakneck Market–and What Every Investor Needs to Know About Financial Cycles: “In the normal course of things, higher prices dampen desire. When lamb becomes too dear, consumers eat chicken; when the price of gasoline soars, people take fewer vacations. Conversely, lower prices usually whet our interest: colour TVs, VCRs, and cell phones became more popular as they became more affordable. But when a stock market soars, investors do not behave like consumers. They are consumed by stocks. Equities seem to appeal to the perversity of human desire. The more costly the prize, the greater the allure.”
As more money enters the stock market, stock prices go up. This leads to what economists call the “wealth effect”. The stock market investors feel richer because of the stock prices going up. And because they feel richer they tend to spend some of their accumulated wealth on buying goods and services. As more money is spent, businesses do well and so in turn does the economy.
As Gary Dorsch writes “Historical observation reveals that the direction of the stock market has a notable influence over consumer confidence and spending levels. In particular, the top-20% of wealthiest Americans account for 40% of the spending in the US-economy, so the Fed hopes that by inflating the value of the stock market, wealthier Americans would decide to spend more. It’s the Fed’s version of “trickle down” economics, otherwise known as the “wealth effect.”
Why Bernanke won’t launch QE III soon
Given these reasons it was widely expected that Ben Bernanke would start another round of money printing or QE III this year to help Obama’s reelection campaign. Bernanke has been resorting to what Dorsch calls “open mouth operations” i.e. dropping hints that QE III is on its way. In August he had said that the Federal Reserve “will provide additional policy accommodation as needed to promote a stronger economic recovery.” This was basically a complicated way of saying that if required the Federal Reserve wouldn’t back down from printing more money and pumping it into the economy.
But even though Bernanke has been hinting about QE III for a while he hasn’t gone around doing anything concrete about it. The reason for this is the fact that Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate against the incumbent President Barack Obama has gone to town criticizing the Fed’s past QE policies. He has also warned the Federal Reserve to stay neutral before the November 6 elections, says Dorsch. As Romney told Fox News on August 23 “I don’t think QE-2 was terribly effective. I think a QE-3 and other Fed stimulus is not going to help this economy…I think that is the wrong way to go. I think it also seeds the kind of potential for inflation down the road that would be harmful to the value of the dollar and harmful to the stability of our nation’s needs.”
Romney even indicated that he would prefer someone other than Bernanke as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. “I would want to select someone new and someone who shared my economic views…I want someone to provide monetary stability that leads to a strong dollar and confidence that America is not going to go down the road that other nations have gone down, to their peril.” With more and more dollars being printed, the future of the dollar as an international currency is looking more and more bleak.
Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan also echoed his views when he said “Sound money… We want to pursue a sound-money strategy so that we can get back the King Dollar.”
Given this it is highly unlikely that Ben Bernanke will unleash QE III before November 6, the date of the Presidential elections. And whether he does it after that depends on who wins.
Of Obama and Salman Khan
As far as pollsters are concerned Obama seems to have the upper hand as of now. But at the same time the average American is not happy with the overall state of the American economy. “According to pollsters, two thirds of Americans think the US-economy is still stuck in the Great Recession, and is headed in the wrong direction. Only 31% say it is moving in the right direction – the lowest number since December 2011. The dire outlook is explained by a recent analysis by the US Census Bureau and Sentier Research LLC, indicating that US-household incomes actually declined more in the 3-year expansion that started in June 2009 than during the longest recession since the Great Depression,” writes Dorsch.
But despite this Americans don’t hold Obama responsible for the mess they are in. As Dorsch points out “Although, Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the future, many voters don’t seem to be holding it against Democrat Obama. Instead, the embattled president is getting some slack because he inherited a very tough situation. In fact, Obama’s strongest base supporters are among also suffering the highest jobless rates and highest poverty rates in the country.”
Obama’s support is similar to the support film actor Salman Khan receives in India. As Manoj
Manoj Desai, owner of G7 theatres in Mumbai, recently told The Indian Express “Even when the fans are disappointed with his film, they never blame him. You will often hear them say, bhai se galat karwaya iss picture main. (They made Bhai do the wrong things in this movie)”
What’s in it for us?
Indian stock market investors should thus be hoping that Barack Obama wins the November 6 elections. That is likely to lead to another round of quantitative easing. As had happened in previous cases a portion of that matter will be borrowed by big Wall Street firms and make its way into stock markets round the world including India.
(The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on September 5,2012. http://www.firstpost.com/world/obama-salman-khan-qe-3-why-we-have-to-wait-for-6-nov-444474.html)
(Vivek Kaul is a Mumbai based writer and can be reached at [email protected])