Ban, tax, regulate – government vs. free market

Here we are again, back to the disturbing – but entirely unsurprising – war on the ‘free market’ (or whatever is left of it after decades of government interventionism).

The pattern of governments creating a mess and promptly laying the blame at the feet of the private sector is not at all new, so EU’s and Washington’s attacks on the markets and George Papandreou’s continuing threats against ‘evil speculators’ should not have caught anyone by surprise. In much the same manner, the coming (politically motivated) clampdowns and regulations of various market activities are being designed with the sole purpose of shifting blame – for excessive borrowing, overspending, harmful interventions and defective regulation – away from the policy makers.

Of course diversion of blame and responsibility is not a behavior exclusive to governments. It has come to characterize much of today’s society, and is largely responsible for the economic, social and moral decline we’re at present witnessing all around us. (More on that in an upcoming post.)

Let’s start with Greece. Prime Minister Papandreou has stepped up his rhetoric about his country being victimized and having problems servicing its debt, not as a result of irresponsible and fraudulent behavior over many years, but because of speculators’ bets to bring it down.

“Despite the deep reforms we are making, traders and speculators have forced interest rates on Greek bonds to record highs. Many believe there have been malicious rumors, endlessly repeated and tactically amplified, that have been used to manipulate normal market terms for our bonds.” He went on to say that as a result Greece was forced to borrow at rates almost twice as high as Germany, and that such ‘prohibitive’ interest rates would swallow all gains from the planned austerity measures.

Manipulate ‘normal’ market terms? ‘Prohibitive’ rates? Someone please show Mr. Papandreou the spread between Greek and German bonds pre-Maastricht Treaty – at multiples of what it is today! See for yourself in this astonishing chart: Club Med spreads (1992-2010).

Let’s not forget that the Greeks (and other fiscally shaky Southern European states) have only enjoyed – undeservedly – low rates thanks to the EMU. And, had Greece not lied about its finances, it would never have been admitted into the monetary union in the first place (it has never complied with the required fiscal discipline, preferring to falsify data). The current rates on Greek borrowing are more than appropriate (in fact, quite benevolent) for a country that carelessly jeopardized its own future by decades-long irresponsibility.

For a decade the markets have ignored the vast differences in fiscal policies between eurozone members; risk premiums on sovereign bonds were barely discernible. After the financial crisis investors started awakening to sovereign risk and spreads became far more aligned with reality. The bond markets are once again reflecting fiscal policies, as they should. Far from ‘market manipulation’, it’s simply a return of country risk.

Indeed the financial markets are now doing the job that politicians have failed at so miserably – forcing the countries to take measures that will lead to a return to fiscal sanity (or else face the consequences). It should also be obvious that any country’s funding costs will now increasingly reflect its own fundamentals, rather than those of say Germany, as investors are unlikely to be blinded by any implicit EMU guarantees again, at least for the foreseeable future.

The Greeks, who have over decades borrowed and squandered too much money, won’t admit that their 12.7% budget deficit (that being the official figure; the true deficit is estimated at 16%), 120% debt/GDP (135% estimate for 2011), out of control government spending (at over 50% of GDP), rampant tax evasion, among other problems, are the root-cause of their troubles and consequent risk pricing by the markets. (For an analysis of the Greek situation and possible solutions see recent article here.)

Given that Greece has defaulted on its debt 108 times in the last 200 years, showing no sign that it has learned fiscal responsibility, it is rather astonishing that the Greeks should be surprised at rising interest costs. Would any responsible lender extend credit to an over-leveraged borrower on the verge of bankruptcy, at extremely low rates?

Yet the Greeks appear to believe that threats and regulation will force the capital markets to supply them with unreasonably cheap credit. During a recent Washington visit to win President Obama’s support for the war against evil speculators, Mr. Papandreou said: “Europe and America must say ‘enough is enough’ to those speculators who only place value on immediate returns, with utter disregard for the consequences on the larger economic system not to mention the human consequences of lost jobs, foreclosed homes and decimated pensions.”

Therefore, investors should lend to Greece at ultra low rates, ignoring any default risk, in order to allow the Greek government and population to carry on with a spending binge, delaying the day of reckoning indefinitely. (Much like banks had been coerced by the US government into lending to unworthy borrowers with no deposits and insufficient income; and we know how that ended. But more on that later.)

The Greeks’ sense of entitlement to other people’s wealth, their perceived ‘right’ to borrow at low rates, is indeed quite disturbing. Though rather than being solely a Greek issue it appears to be a sign of our times.

But why the widespread hatred of market participants, be it speculators, traders or investors?

After all, it wasn’t speculators who had run up massive debts and a 13% deficit, but the Greek politicians (and population). Investors and traders have merely exposed the truth the Greeks, as well as EU authorities, would have preferred to keep hidden. It should be obvious that Greece only has itself to blame for not being able to borrow at the same rates as fiscally prudent Germany.

The much vilified short sellers, as well as CDS (credit default swap) buyers, perform a vital function by pointing to problems and deficiencies (whether in companies, industries or countries) and backing their opinion with their money. When they believe an entity may go bust, shouldn’t they be allowed to protect themselves and/or profit accordingly? When it comes to sovereign debt, if it wasn’t for the markets, politicians would never take the necessary action to put their house in order.

Papandreou’s argument that “unprincipled speculators are making billions every day by betting on a Greek default” misses the point entirely. If Greece’s fundamentals were less disastrous, anyone betting on a default would be losing billions. No speculators can bring down a healthy company, currency or country. In any case, there are always two sides to each trade. For everyone shorting Greek debt there is also someone on the long side.

As for the fallacy of speculators destabilizing the Greek bond market via CDS use: Germany’s financial regulator (BaFin) has found no evidence that CDS were used for large scale speculation against Greek government bonds, reporting (earlier this month) that the net volume of outstanding CDS contracts has barely changed since the beginning of the year. Some of the most active CDS traders are German and French banks, who happen to hold significant amount of Greek debt. If there were no CDS (essentially, insurance against default), who would take on the risk of financing Greek debt?

Ironically, it has just been uncovered that the biggest CDS speculator, holding 15% ($1.2 billion) of the total $8 billion of Greek CDS, has been the Greek state-owned Hellenic Post Bank! (Article here.)

And yet, despite his obvious delusion, Mr. Papandreou has been finding an attentive audience in other European leaders as well as President Obama. After all, Greece’s is not the only government that views the markets as a welcome scapegoat for their own mismanagement and incompetency.

Given bureaucrats’ readiness never to waste an opportunity to further restrict economic freedom, it isn’t particularly surprising that the European Commission is discussing regulation of the sovereign CDS market, and the US Justice Department has reportedly been looking into hedge funds’ short positions against the euro, to determine whether they colluded to drive down the value of the single currency.

European politicians, who have a long tradition of anti free market beliefs, have blamed speculators for the recent decline of the euro in the wake of the Greek crisis. They, much like the Greeks, feel entitled to low borrowing costs for EMU members and a stable euro, irrespective of the fiscal and economic mess of the EU.

Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, went as far as suggesting the use of anti-terrorism methods against financial speculators in order to protect the euro. He said the government might “set up surveillance of who is getting together with whom for which kinds of speculative processes, and where.”

What’s next? Will they start arresting traders for threatening ‘economic stability’ if they happen to dislike the fundamentals of a certain country or currency and vote against it with their money?

It would seem there is no better sign that an entity is in severe trouble than authorities starting to crack down on short bets against it. The truth is, if the euro was fundamentally sound, it would not have been ‘attacked’. (Not to mention that those who believe speculators have caused the euro to drop to unfairly low levels can always back their opinion by taking action in the forex market.)

What Greece and other nations need to learn is that one cannot go on indefinitely increasing government spending and borrowing without consequences. There comes a point when markets lose confidence in the country’s ability to pay and refuse to lend the money (at acceptable rates). That moment appears to be fast approaching for a number of countries.     

Of course when it comes to short term political gain, shifting the blame onto the private sector is an entirely valid strategy. We have seen its success in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis; the people have, without much questioning, accepted the official line: the crisis was caused by insufficient state intervention and regulation of the ‘free market’. Therefore, we have been told, a massive increase in government bureaucracy and regulation was necessary.

The threats against speculators in (Greek) sovereign debt are reminiscent of the attacks on banks, hedge funds and financial markets in general, over the last two years. Of course there was much that went wrong in the financial sector, but the blame game has been indicative of the failure of governments to admit their own mistakes.

Notice that any economic boom is always a result of ‘wise government policies’. When the inevitable collapse comes, a culprit must be found, fast, before anyone starts looking at possible policy makers’ faults. And so all crises are quickly declared to be a problem of the ‘free market’.

Such denunciations look particularly misplaced given the disastrous track record of public management, including the crucial role of the Fed and US policy makers in creating the recent crisis. It was the Fed’s loose monetary policy that had encouraged speculation and inflated a massive housing bubble, aided by vote grabbing policy makers’ interventions in the housing market (incl. coercing financial institutions into lending to unqualified, low income borrowers under such monstrosities as the Community Reinvestment Act).

And of course the government sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were by far the worst offenders, likely to end up costing the US taxpayer some $400 billion. (They remain an ‘off-balance sheet’ – or so the politically convenient fiction goes – dumping ground for the debris of the housing crisis.) But don’t hold your breath waiting for Obama et al. to acknowledge any of this; they’re too busy pounding on the banks.

Bizarrely, our political elites appear to fully ignore the fact that highly expansionary monetary policies – and resulting unprecedented indebtedness – have been largely responsible for the current mess. It’s nothing new; interventions into (what was once) the free market have always brought unintended negative consequences. And yet the link between low interest rates, excessive credit growth and asset bubbles appears to evade policy makers’ understanding.

The slashing of interest rates in 2001, and keeping them at record low levels for several years, has led to the credit and housing bubble. Spiraling debt contributed, in a large part, to the apparent prosperity of the last 15-20 years (much as it had in the 1920s, ending, equally disastrously, in the Great Depression). Greenspan and Bernanke acted as cheerleaders of debt, while policy makers were busy identifying new targets for lending, in the name of democratization of access to credit.

And let’s not forget the essential role of greedy housing market participants, millions of whom have knowingly taken on mortgages and loans they couldn’t afford to pay back, in order to satisfy their irresponsible craving for a lifestyle beyond their means. (In the past 25 years the amount owed by US families has risen more than sevenfold, from less than $2 trillion in 1984 to nearly $14 trillion, according to the Fed.) Inevitably, cheap credit has also created huge imbalances and fueled speculation in the financial sector.

And yet, shockingly, no lessons seem to have been learned. Central banks and governments – in particular in the US and UK, considering a painful period of readjustment (perhaps a short depression) to be politically unacceptable, have embarked on massive quantitative easing (in other words money printing) and huge stimuli to restore economic growth. In the process they have loaded their countries with an unprecedented mountain of debt.

Indeed, blind to the fact that easy credit and excessive debt created the crisis in the first place, the Fed and the Obama administration are happily running up higher and higher debts. In an unprecedented printing press exercise the Fed has purchased over $1.2 trillion of toxic agency (Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie Mae) mortgage backed securities (MBS), creating a floor for housing prices and so delaying necessary corrections. Hence the massive burden of toxic assets now weighs down not only the private financial markets but also the Fed itself.

Numerous other government support measures have been masking the fundamental sickness of the housing market, including tax breaks for home buyers and government-mandated loan modifications (the majority of which end up in default again within six months). The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), with its aim to make homes more affordable, has underwritten hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgages in the last two years alone. Its support for the housing market is expected to double again – growing to $1.5 trillion – over the next five years. FHA foolishly continues to require down payments as low as 3.5%, when it should be obvious that a 15-20% deposit would allow home owners to better withstand any future crisis. (Unsurprisingly, a record number of FHA-insured loans are delinquent.)

Speaking of loose monetary policy… rates have been fixed at near zero. The resulting boost to the price of securities held by banks, as well as what are, in effect, zero interest loans from depositors, have translated into strong revenues for the sector, allowing banks to ignore the bad loans still on their books. It is clear that the irrational monetary policy with artificially low interest rates, plus monetization of debt, will continue for quite some time. A certain recipe for the next bubble and crisis.

And of course the government has also embarked on an unprecedented fiscal stimulus, a consequence of which is a massive increase in public sector debt. (The US national debt now stands at over $12 trillion. But add the ‘off-balance sheet’ unfunded liabilities and the total public debt comes to an estimated $60 trillion – an amount that can clearly never be paid off. We’ve discussed the impact of extreme debt levels in a recent post here.)

Despite the shocking debt and deficit we’re unlikely to see any serious attempt at spending cuts any time soon; quite the opposite, there seems to be a new US spending bill proposed almost every week. Crucially, at a time when existing entitlement programs are bankrupt, the Obama administration saw it fit to create a monstrous new $2 trillion health care entitlement.

In spite of the alleged temporary nature of the public spending boom, the expansion of government will likely be permanent. The price to pay is obvious – high deficit, high taxes, slower economic growth and less wealth. Unless, that is, you agree with Mr. Obama and the ‘leading’ economists that government spending creates wealth.

The belief we can cure a debt crisis with even more debt would also be rather comical, if the situation, and consequences, weren’t so tragic.

So what then is the solution?

Instead of the government attempting to micromanage the financial markets (and any other private industries) via further interventions, regulation, punitive taxation, bans and growing bureaucracy, we should simply allow the free market to work. The finance industry as well as borrowers should be let to suffer the consequences of their actions (be it bad lending or irresponsible borrowing). They also need to be allowed to make commercial decisions without coercion or interference from policy makers. In the absence of government intervention – that only creates distortions and moral hazard – the markets would curb bad behavior via defaults and bankruptcies, resulting in suitable risk adjustment by other participants.

US home owners should also be liable for any outstanding mortgage balances (as is common in virtually every other country), instead of simply being allowed to walk away from underwater mortgages. Naturally such policies would mean fewer home buyers taking on mortgages they can’t afford to repay, and that goes against the government’s idea of home ownership being a near universal ‘right’ – a notion which, bizarrely, still appears to be alive and well in Washington. But until people return to a suitably affordable lifestyle (whether that be renting instead of home ownership, or a more modest home) we are only kicking the problems down the road for a little longer.

It is natural that in a crisis, recession or period of high unemployment people are angry; they need to externalize the enemy. The markets, speculators, or Wall Street are a highly convenient (and sometimes justified) target when it comes to diverting blame away from policy makers, central banks and general population. They also provide a welcome opportunity for governments to expand and to regulate more, tax more and interfere more in private sector activities.

However, if any lessons are to be learned at all, we must acknowledge that it was the culture of living on (cheap) credit and spending beyond our means – spurred by disastrous monetary policies and interventions - that led to record indebtedness, housing bubble and collapse, and resulting financial and economic hardship. Only then will we be able to recognize that the current policies are simply setting the stage for a much larger crisis a few years from now.

Tags: CDS, central bank, credit boom, credit default swap, European Commission, excess credit, Fannie Mae, Fed, FHA, Freddie Mac, free market, German bonds, Greek bonds, housing boom, interventionism, loose monetary policy, Obama, Papandreou, Regulation, Schaeuble

This entry was posted on March 22, 2010 at March 22, 2010 and is filed under Economy, Featured, Finance, Petra's View, Politics & Society, Regulation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.