FAQ on the current financial crisis

Q1. Why isn't the financial crisis on Wall Street palpable on Main Street? Although financiers, journalists and politicians have been warning of a major financial crisis, as big as the Great Depression, since August 2007 (some economists have been warning for several years now), normal economic activity seems unaffected, or at least the common man does not seems to feel any impending doom. Why is this so?

A. To a large extent, the current financial crisis does not involve the working capital of the American economy. The funds available with the commercial banks, community credit unions and credit card companies have been sufficient to keep business investments, payrolls and consumer spending going on in the near-term. Sure enough, the persistent gloomy predictions on the economy seen in the newspapers and television channels, throughout the year 2008, would have had a negative effect on the confidence of the consumers and the business entrepreneurs. This would have led to cutbacks in production plans, tightening of credit, mark-down of inventories and penny-pinching of family budgets. But, on the whole, the real economy has shown unexpected and prolonged resilience. No doubt the action of the US Federal Reserve Bank to pump over one trillion dollars into the economy for over-night and short-term lending has also eased the flow of money. But, the main reason for the disconnect between Main Street and Wall Street is that the financial crisis is concerned with the accumulated capital (as opposed to working capital) of the American economy.

The term accumulated capital refers to the capital held by (i) pension funds which hold the life-time savings of Americans, (ii) reserve funds which hold the accumulated profits of large corporations and private companies, (iii) mutual funds and money-market funds, which hold savings of individuals that are in excess of mandatory life-time savings like social security, and are more freely invested in the markets expecting a better return than from treasury bonds, (iv) endowment funds, held by private trusts, which are collected through charities and donations, (v) hedge funds and private equity, (vi) any other entity that holds capital that has accrued through the savings of individuals, or the profits of private organizations, or the surplus of state, local and federal governments, and is not needed as immediate investment for the day-to-day functioning of the economy.

To provide a perspective on accumulated capital, one may note that the financial wealth in the American economy is estimated to be $40 trillion (ref: Wall Street Journal Oct 1, 2008 article by Professor Edmund Phelps). Wikipedia states that the world-wide value of all pension funds are in excess of $20 trillion; mutual funds total more than $26 trillion. Please note that it is possible that some of the pension funds are invested in mutual funds. Also, I am not aware of what is the exact total sizes of pension funds, mutual funds and other constituents of accumulated capital within America per se, but I would assume that they add up at least to $10 trillion (which, I suppose, is included in the $40 trillion quoted above). In additions, hedge funds have about $1.5 trillion under their management totally, all of which is investments from individuals of high net worth.


Q2. Aren't saving for retirement, insurance and pension systems old phenomena? Why did they bring down Wall Street this time?

A. Yes, pension and insurance systems were already well-developed in the industrial economies of 19th century Europe. There are two major differences this time around. Demographically, the senior citizens of 19th century Europe retained close ties to the younger generations because of genetic, ethnic and racial homogeneity. As a result, the pension amounts received by the retired people were substantially supplemented by contributions from inter-generational and intra-family transfers of wealth. If we go back a hundred or more years, old people lived with their families and helped to bring up their grandchildren. Moreover, hereditary transfer of wealth was still as important as creation of new wealth in the industrial economies of the 19th century. These factors served as economic incentives for the working adult population to provide old-age care for their parents, which supplemented the parents' income from pension. The second difference is that the dichotomy between an empire and a democracy was far more prominent among the nations of 19th century Europe. People felt assured that the social infrastructure provided by an empire would safeguard their standard of living through their old age. Examples of the social infrastructure of an empire during 19th century Europe are the establishment of universal heath care, the administration of the pension and life insurance systems, and subsidized public transport and postal systems. As an aside, it may also be mentioned here that the development of the modern university was pioneered in Germany during the 19th century.

Thus the fundamental reason for the current financial crisis is the time value of money. To maintain the standard of living that people who are close to retirement or have already retired would expect, the income from their pensions have to be substantially larger, in view of the reasons discussed above, than what a senior citizen in 19th century Europe would have received, even after adjusting for inflation and GDP growth. This enhanced pension income would have to come from interest on investments, because the senior citizens who receive them could not possibly compensate for this income with active work. Thus the managers of pension funds found it imperative to look for high returns on their investments. At the same time, since these funds were so huge and so critical to the lives of many millions of people, their investment strategy had to exercise the utmost caution. Diversification served as the compromise in this situation. The managers of these huge funds would invest the major part of their portfolio safely, for example, in treasury securities. A smaller part would be put under the stewardship of the Wall Street firms for more risky investments in the expectation of high returns. Over a period of two or three decades, such unreasonable expectations on Wall Street to keep generating high returns on capital took its toll.


Q3. How exactly did unreasonable expectations bring down Wall Street?

A. When one refers to Wall Street, it is important to keep two types of people in mind. The first type is the senior executives who have gained their credentials through many years of involvement in the traditional roles of investment banking, beginning in the 1950s or later. The conventional wisdom among these people places a lot of importance on trust-worthiness, reputation, people-skills and management techniques as the path to career-success. Advising industrial firms in mergers & acquisitions, underwriting the issuance of company stocks and bonds to the public, helping the government finance a deficit through the purchase of treasury securities for their clients, and trading in securities on behalf of their clients were the main activities of Wall Street firms before the 90s. We note that all these activities required trust-worthiness primarily, and moreover they didn't require much of the firms' own capital. The second type is the smart, innovative PhDs who have arrived on Wall Street starting from the 1980s. These people have helped build the massive computational infrastructure on Wall Street along with the development of financial innovation. Their most valued skills are quantitative and they are quite tech-savvy. On the downside, many of the senior executives making up the first type have come to exercise a lot of political influence which could be illegitimate sometimes. For their part, the tech-savvy 'quants' of the second type have grown-up with post-modern, anti-heroic sensibilities that has no use for honor or reputation, as defined conventionally. However, in spite of their differing attitudes towards reputation and the 'word on the street', when it comes to compensation, both the types would like to cash in on their professional worth right away with large bonuses.

The advent of computers transformed the industrial economy into an information-based economy. This meant that smart people who could devise intelligent strategies to take quick advantage of the flow of information could expect to make large profits, especially from financial investments. Thus, starting in the early 80s, Wall Street investment banks began to make huge profits, aided by their large investments in computers and their new army of smart PhDs. Over the course of the 80s and 90s, the capital in the 'bulge-bracket' investment banks grew from a few tens of millions to one or two dozen billions dollars. The capital in the smaller investment banks and hedge funds on Wall Street produced similar returns. Thus Wall Street turned into a sleek and mean money-making machine. It was for its massive returns on capital that the managers of pension funds and other sources of accumulated capital had been turning steadily to Wall Street. The boom in the technology stocks during the 90s turned the trickle of capital to Wall Street from these fund-managers into a flood. Now, as history would have it, the technology sector went bust in 2000 with the NASDAQ composite index losing more than 60% of its value between 2000 and 2003. This drastic loss of wealth exposed an inability of modern finance theory to figure out how to determine the proper economic value of technological progress. There was a big question about how Wall Street could continue to churn out its massive profits. It was in this scenario, that the smart PhDs on Wall Street stumbled on the great innovation to direct the huge sources of accumulated capital in America and the rest of the world towards solving the long-term demographic incongruities in America. This was how Wall Street came to trade in mortgage-backed securities. In the process, they found a way to keep the money-machine that is Wall Street hum along smoothly for another 8 years.

Now, the smart PhDs that form the second type came up with a lot of innovations to carefully control the risk involved in turning a housing mortgage loan into a hierarchy of claims on payments, called tranches. For their part, the senior executives that form the first type, who had built up a reputation for trust-worthiness over several decades, could borrow money from the pension funds and other sources at leverage ratios of 25 to 30 -- far in excess of the reserve ratios expected from the commercial banks under the regulations of the Glass-Steagal act. This unlikely marriage of old wise-heads and smart innovators on Wall Street was sanctified by the Federal Reserve which kept interest rates low to avoid a slowdown in economic activity, given the tragedy of 9/11. However, from 2007 onwards, cracks in the marriage began to appear one by one, and it became apparent that the party had gone on too long. The smart PhDs had not take into account that the process of securitization separates the property rights on mortgaged homes from the investments on mortgage securities. The home-owner lives under the threat of foreclosure. So, his/her property rights are compromised. The security-owner bears liquidity risk and credit risk. So, his/her income is uncertain. It is plausible that left to themselves the smart PhDs would have, in due course of time, overcome their error by devising a market-based solution that would mutually alleviate the grievances of the home-owner and the security-owner. However, the Wall Street money-machine was on high-gear by then, and it was not designed to slowdown for any eventuality. The senior executives, who were more comfortable with people-to-people communications rather than arcane finance theory, ran to their long-established connections in the political establishment and the media. Moreover, these senior executives decided to play smart. They used the very same unreasonable expectations that society had placed on Wall Street as a bargaining chip to hold society to ransom. Their constant chants were "Bail-out Wall Street, for otherwise there is the 'systemic risk' of a financial meltdown". "It's going to be armageddon, so raise FDIC insurance to $ one million" (CNBC's Jim Cramer). "We're going to see a repeat of the Great Depression's bank runs". Unfortunately, the long saga of bail-outs starting with Bear Stearns in March 2008, then Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG in September 2008 and finally the $700 billion bill passed now have not stemmed the financial crisis, and the reputation of Wall Street is in tatters. Thus Wall Street was brought down by unreasonable expectations.


Q4. So what about the billions of losses due to mark-to-market accounting rule? Could these losses lead to financial meltdown? Also, why is de-leveraging cited as a reason for the huge losses? Why is re-capitalization of the banks necessary?

A. In view of the explanations above, it is far simpler to think of the situation as follows. The 'bulge-bracket' Wall Street investment banks (that have now been converted into bank-holding companies or have gone bankrupt) had about $20 to $30 billion of capital each. Wall Street was so used to annual returns of 20% or more on capital before the collapse of the technology sector in 2000. To maintain this high rate of return after 2000, the investment banks resorted to leverage ratios of 25 to 30 in their investments on mortgage securities. This means that each of them borrowed about $750 to $900 billion from the pension funds and other sources. The reader might ask what is the collateral for this borrowing? The investment banks would purchase mortgage securities with this borrowing and submit these same mortgage securities as collateral to the pension funds. The payments received from the home-owners on these mortgage securities would be used to first pay the interest on the borrowings from the pension funds, and the rest would be the profits of the investment bank. In view of the leverage ratio of 25 to 30, a net difference of only about 0.8% in the interest rate received from the home-owner and the interest rate paid to the pension funds would ensure a rate of return of 20% or more for the investment bank. However, the problem with this scheme is that the pension funds only had the trust-worthiness of the investment bankers and the mortgage securities as assurance against the money they lent out. Of course, they also had the enticement that only the Wall Street money-machine could provide them the rate of return adequate to keep up with their large pension payments to senior citizens.

With a fall in the house prices, there would be a corresponding fall in the mortgage securities due to the risk of foreclosures. Moreover, these mortgage securities were structured in such a way that foreclosures of mortgaged homes would be reflected in increasing degrees as one went lower down the tranches. Thus the lowest tranches would lose value very quickly in the event of a fall in house prices. So, the pension funds and mutual funds would need to assess the value of the mortgage securities in their accounting books periodically, say once every quarter, to safeguard their interests. For this, they would need refer to the market value of these securities (mark-to-market), and to request the investment bank to replenish the collateral, if there is a drop in the market value of the mortgage securities. Unfortunately, since the leverage was so high, an average drop of 3% in the market value of the mortgage securities could mean that after the pension fund's collateral was replenished, the whole amount of the capital of the investment bank ($20 to $30 billion) would have to be replaced. This was what led to the bankruptcy of some of the large investment banks. The story with smaller investment banks and the hedge funds is similar. Now, if the pension funds simply didn't insist on mark-to-market accounting, then the investment banks would receive regular payments on the mortgage securities from the home-owners. Over time, the pension funds would recover the full amount of their investment along with the rate of interest that the they had expected, with the only risk being that of foreclosures. There would be no risk that the prices of the mortgage securities would fall due to illiquidity in the markets. Thus financial meltdown would be avoided, with or without the existence of the Wall Street firms.

However, this argument turned out to be the Achilles' heel of the investment banks. Working in their old trust-based mentality, they thought they could ride through this financial crisis if they simply convinced their creditors to rescind the mark-to-market rule and give them more time. They didn't find it necessary to sell off the risky mortgage securities and cut their losses, nor were they seriously looking to raise new capital. And they were caught by surprise when the end came. For the same reasons cited above, the investment banks and hedge funds that survived found that their capital had been seriously eroded by this need to replenish their creditors' collateral. Hence the banks need to be re-capitalized. However, it is not clear that the government should do this re-capitalization through its $700 billion bill. Moreover, the surviving investment banks and hedge funds have realized that such high leverage ratios are not sustainable. So they would like to sell off the mortgage security and pay off some of their borrowings to the pension funds. But since they are all looking to sell off in the short-term, the prices of the mortgage securities are lower, which again requires further de-leveraging. This phenomenon is called the 'paradox of de-leveraging'. However, the real economy on Main Street need not wait for Wall Street to de-leverage. As I mentioned above, the financial meltdown would be avoided with or without the existence of the Wall Street firms. De-leveraging is solely Wall Street's problem, and it is highly unprofessional for Wall Street executives to keep sending out predictions of impending doom in the media.


Q5. Why have the markets for mortgage securities continued to remain illiquid?

A. The main reason that the markets for mortgage securities have been illiquid for a prolonged period of time is that the home-owner who is the only party with a credible and serious interest as a buyer of the mortgage securities has been shut out of the market. Instead of directly involving the home-owner, Wall Street has been peddling bizarre theories about risk management that has resulted in this huge mis-allocation of this $700 billion recently. By providing the information for a direct match-up of the home-owners on Main Street and the security-owners on Wall Street, the government could implement a low-cost eBay-type bidding system that would enable the home-owners to bid for the various tranches in the mortgage securities issued on their homes -- those tranches that the banks want to get rid of. This way the home-owners stand to benefit from a reduction in their debt obligations. The security-owners gets a floor on the prices of the mortgage securities and because of the decent prices, their capital gets replenished. Moreover, the home-owners' debt reduction can be structured in a way that encourages good behavior, and timely re-payment of the rest of the mortgage loan. This process would cost less than $1 billion for the government and achieves the objectives of liquidity and re-capitalization stated in the $700 billion bill. In addition, this direct match-up plan reduces foreclosures by reducing the home-owner's debt. Professor Martin Feldstein has also proposed a plan to reduce foreclosures. In his plan the government re-negotiates the home-owners' loans to provide debt reduction through low-interest loans, in return for enhanced claims on the home-owner. In my plan, the government's role is solely to provide reliable information.


Q6. What exactly is this great innovation of directing accumulated capital towards solving demographic problems that Wall Street has achieved?

A. Throughout history poor people have lived in subsistence conditions. Due to shorter life expectations than exist today, a poor man would have had to work for a living all his life. As mentioned above, the industrial economies of the 19th century Europe enabled the rise of a broad middle class with the means of hereditary wealth transfer and of supporting retired lifestyles. Contemporary times have raised the possibility that this access to wealth of a middle class standard could be further broadened to the whole of the population. Over the course of the 20th century, home-ownership had come to be a fundamental middle class aspiration throughout the world. In his "Lectures on Economic Growth", Professor Robert Lucas cites the travails of the characters in Sir V. S. Naipaul's "A House for Mr. Biswas" as the model for growth and development. Of course, I should also mention that Professor Lucas is more directly concerned with developing human capital rather than with home-ownership in his lectures quoted above.

Historically, massive accumulations of capital that are unrequited, have always been problematic. In addition, accumulation of capital has also resulted in the military-industrial complex. Professor Jeffry Frieden's "Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century" is an excellent narration of how promises of global capitalism at the beginning of the 20th century quickly unraveled into the two World Wars. Thus matching the culturally and racially homogeneous retirement age population with the more diverse and younger home-owner population finds a gainful investment for the accumulated capital.


Q7. If Wall Street has been achieving all these great feats, where did it go wrong?

A. When concerns about the mortgage securities surfaced last year, many Wall Street investment firms claimed to be safe because they had not invested in sub-prime mortgages. This created a fear psychosis whence people began to consider these sub-prime mortgages as 'toxic'. The prime mortgage is one which meets the eligibility criterion for purchase by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This includes a 20% down payment and good credit score. Those mortgages that don't meet this criterion were called sub-prime. Gradually, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also began to deal with these sub-prime mortgages. So, it didn't make sense to be denigrating sub-prime mortgages. Wall Street wasted a lot of time in late 2007 and early 2008 trying to discredit the sub-prime mortgages. In the modern economy, every single participant is beset with economic insecurity. So, the distinction between the prime and the sub-prime borrower, while it exists, is not really that great. Moreover, it is the sub-prime borrower who stands to gain the most by way of the development of human capital that Professor Lucas discusses in his "Lectures on Economic Growth". So, the sub-prime borrower would be the most willing, in the long-term, to highly value the inter-generational trade of wealth to support the senior citizens. Thus to discredit the sub-prime borrower has been the single major mistake that led to the financial crisis on Wall Street.


Q8. What are the lessons that can be drawn from the current financial crisis for government involvement?

A. Government's role is very important for avoiding crises, like the current one, in the future. The government should ensure that public transportation is available from home-owner colonies to their places of work. Most of the new single family homes are built in colonies of 100 or so, with whole neighborhoods of new homes developed together. These new home colonies form suburban communities around cities and they are the symbols of affluence near towns. Because of their distance from the business districts, millions of these new home-owners drive their own cars to work. For example, it is not uncommon for software engineers and other professionals living near the Washington beltway to spend two or three hours on the road every working day, by way of commuting to work. Many of these new home colonies do not have frequent public transportation service. If the government would ensure that convenient and timely public transportation to their places of work is available, then this would save billions of dollars in oil expenses for America. Moreover, this way, the automobile would be seen as a luxury product, to be used in the evenings and in the weekends for entertainment, rather than as a necessity to get to work. This way the market for higher-end automobiles would benefit.

For people buying new homes, the government should ensure that they are fully informed about the economic and financial aspects of their investment. Equally importantly, they should not be overloaded with irrelevant, unreliable and unnecessary information. The best step would be ensure that the new home buyers are aware of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. Currently this index is available only for 20 major American cities, and the data is collected for repeat sale homes, not new homes. But, being aware of this index is the best way new home-owners can be equipped for making financial decisions about their homes. The government should assist the managers of this price index financially so that they can gather empirical data for the prices of homes in all residential communities in America, not just on the 20 major cities. Apart from this, the government should ensure that low income people who are vulnerable to predatory lending are properly educated about the risks involved in sophisticated financial products, like adjustable rate mortgages.


Q9. What is the role of the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank in finding a solution for this crisis?

A. As far as the Federal Reserve Bank is concerned, the most important and pressing need, at present, is for its Chairman, Professor Benjamin Bernanke to give a well-thought public speech that demonstrates that he understands the problems he is encountering in the markets. (I am still studying his speech given at National Association of Business Economists today. I would have more to say after I have studied his speech carefully). He has done a good job in injecting more than $1 trillion into the economy by way of short-term funds to provide liquidity. Moreover, I had given him high marks for his speech at Jackson Hole in August 22, 2008 in my "Update 3: Fire-sales, Bazookas and Hospitals" (dt. 8 Sep., 2008). It still seems that he is the only person in government who is thinking seriously about the current crisis. However, it appears that he has let himself be sidelined by the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, who has exacerbated the crisis to global proportions through his Bazooka theory. The best service that Professor Bernanke can do for America is to recommend to the United States Congress that the spending of the $700 billion be postponed by three months.

The Federal Reserve would be well advised to restrict its actions solely to providing liquidity in the global financial system. In particular, changes in the Fed's interest rate are not advisable until a new government is sworn in. In this respect, one should note that one explanation for the persistent spread between the treasury yields and the inter-bank lending rates (TED spread) could be that the private banks, unlike the Fed, are not willing to lend money at real interest rates that are negative. This is a legitimate point, and it suggests that in fact it could be the Federal Reserve that has read the interest rate situation wrong. Then again, buying of commercial paper, as announced today (October 7) is ill-advised. More importantly, it is nearly a dereliction of duty to have approached the United States Congress for permission to spend $700 billion six weeks before a Presidential election. Professor Benjamin Bernanke had disassociated himself from this plan during his Congressional testimony, in fact, going to the extent of saying that he is just a college Professor, and has not worked on Wall Street and does not have any personal connections in the finance industry. The consensus among academic economists (as expressed by Professor Kenneth Rogoff) seems to be that the United States has a lot of money to spend, perhaps referring to the fact that countries in the rest of the world had their currencies seriously devalued in comparable situations like the East Asia crisis, the Russian crisis, Mexican crisis and the Latin American crisis. But, I should point out that $700 billion is about 5% of the annual GDP of the United States.


Q10. What is really ailing the American financial system? Doesn't the government need to intervene to salvage the situation?

A. The real problem is that the common man and the individual investor expect an honest and trust-worthy functioning of government. As I mentioned in my "Update 3: Fire-sales, Bazookas and Hospitals" (dt. 8 Sep., 2008), 'What the taxpayers (and the voters) within the United States, along with investors all over the world, most need to see, at this moment, is that there is a functioning legal (and legitimate) framework within which the financial markets play the role of enabling the process of economic decision-making towards optimal allocations of scarce resources'. At present, decision making at the government level has been taken over by vested interests. Both the Presidential candidates have promised to curtail the greed on Wall Street. The democrats have been complaining about executive compensation for many years now, and they have proposed government regulations of the finance industry in the future. The Republican candidate, Senator John McCain has openly called for the firing of the SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, and for prosecuting any fraudulent activities on Wall Street. This situation has given great jitters to Wall Street. So, the power mandarins on Wall Street have figured that they need to get the most they can before the current administration goes out of office at the end of the year. This seems to be the most credible explanation for their political activities of the last two months. However, I am no expert in political science, and I am just making my own conclusions based on my reading the news. The reader should consult a Political Science Professor on this question. My own point is that the government authorities have very little credibility, especially after the hilarious testimony to the US Congress two weeks ago. What is really ailing the American financial system, it seems to me, is a vacuum in the political leadership. Thus the role of the government in the current financial crisis should be minimized as much as possible until a new government is sworn in. The world runs on democratic principles much more than it does on fear of bazookas.


(Continued on October 9, 2008)

Q11. What about the co-ordinated rate cut of 1/2 percentage point that the US Federal Reserve carried out along with several European banks announcing rate cuts all at the same time on Wednesday, October 8, 2008? Was it a good idea? What about the IMF/World Bank meeting this weekend of October 10 - 12, 2008, and the G7/G8 Finance Ministers' meeting on this Friday, October 9, 2008? Should they decide to take joint action?

A. As I have already mentioned in my answer to Q9, there is no further role for the US Federal Reserve in this crisis. I do recognize the crucial contribution made by the Federal Reserve to provide liquidity in the global financial system. However, the crisis is no longer a financial one. Throughout 2007 and the first half of 2008, people talked about a Mortgage Crisis. Then sometime during this summer, the focus shifted to a Financial Crisis. But now, it is clear that the experts in modern finance would not be able to solve this crisis. It is now an Economic Crisis. However, it is definitely important for the Federal Reserve to consult and communicate with the central banks in the rest of the world. But, to go beyond professional consultations and to try to cut rates in a co-ordinated fashion is quite ill-advised. The main reason for this is that the current crisis is hitting the global financial system at varying degrees at different times. So the same response at the same time from all the central banks would be spreading the resources at their disposal very thin. They definitely need to consult with each other to keep themselves informed about how the shock in the financial system is spreading across the globe, but they would have to figure out their responses individually.

Regarding the G7/G8 Finance Ministers' meeting, there is a group of 18 financial economists who have written a 38-page document (http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/2327) asking the finance ministers to take joint action like (1) quick bank re-capitalization with global co-ordination, (2) guarantee of deposits and/or loans with global co-ordination, (3) co-ordinated macro-economic stimulus. This is just very bad advice. I hope that respected economists would come forward to advise against this recipe for unmitigated disaster. As I said before, this crisis can no longer be solved by modern finance theory. There are no quick-fix solutions with rate cuts and reverse auctions. In this regard, there was a perception that a two-pronged strategy to address the short-term and the long-term should be employed. Unfortunately, this well-meaning approach has played into the hands of the loose canons, who proposed a $700 billion plan for the short-term. It is very encouraging to see that highly respected economists have weighed in that the doomsday predictions are wrong, and that there are no easy, quick-fix solutions (ref: Wall Street Journal articles, "We're Not Headed for a Depression" on October 7, 2008 by Professor Gary Becker and "There's No Easy Way Out of the Bubble" on October 9, 2008 by Professor Vernon Smith. Also, Professor Joseph Stiglitz had expressed dissatisfaction with the design of the $700 billion dollar bill and has called for its revision after its passing in the US Congress into an Emergency act). As I have explained in my answer to Q1, we have to look at macro-economic phenomena, like accumulated capital and time value of money, to come up with the proper solution for this crisis. And indeed, from a macro-economic perspective, this current crisis is quite within manageable proportions. To illustrate this point, I quote from Professor Edmund Phelps' Wall Street Journal article of October 1, 2008, "Among most economists, it came as a surprise that the banking industry, and, indeed, most of the financial sector, was so devoted to houses. ... ... And we didn't foresee that a trillion or two of losses in an economy with $40 trillion of financial wealth could bring high anxiety and, two weeks ago, near panic".


Q12. Why are you so much against the further involvement of the US Federal Reserve Bank and of the US government in solving this crisis that you want to call an Economic Crisis? Just because you think that the $700 billion plan was a bad idea, do you want to conclude that nothing should be done in the short term? Also, there are frequent reports that the losses in the stock markets and in the house prices amount to several trillions of dollars of loss in wealth. Shouldn't the government do something to stem these losses?

A. Well, first of all, no serious mathematician would pretend to know any theory that explains the day-to-day price changes in the stock markets. Moreover, I have already expressed my disappointments in my "Update 3-2: A Mathematician's Apology" (dt. September 21, 2008) about the failure of mathematical theories of economics to adequately capture the subtle issues in the economic reality of the day. That said, I would like to point out the much bigger losses in having an out-of-control Treasury Department and a dysfunctional Federal Reserve -- their misguided and arbitrary meddling in the functioning of the markets have effectively nullified a century's worth of intellectual capital. Price theory, Growth theory, Economic of Asymmetric Information, Econometrics and Behavioral Psychology are all areas of modern economics that have many deep insights to make about the current financial crisis. However they have all been rendered ineffective, because of the treasury's buffoonry -- it has been claiming expertise in pricing mortgage securities that no one knows how to price.

The main issue to note is that in spite of all that has been written about this current financial crisis and the earlier mortgage crisis, it is still not clear why there was a bubble in the house prices. Professor Robert Shiller's "Irrational Exuberance" is the classic reference for the tech bubble of the late 90s. The methods of econometrics and psychology employed in this book provide a convincing explanation for the tech bubble. The valuations of the tech stocks were very arbitrary and each tech stock could rise or fall by 100% or more within a week during the euphoric times of the late 90s. However, it is not completely transparent why there was a housing bubble during 1998 -- 2006. A convincing explanation of this phenomena would take years in my judgment. So, it is not advisable to skirt or short-circuit the political process to rush through quick-fix proposals that would supposedly solve the crisis.


(Continued on Thursday, October 16, 2008)

Q13. You had mentioned in your answer to Q9 that "as far as the Federal Reserve Bank is concerned, the most important and pressing need, at present, is for its Chairman, Professor Benjamin Bernanke to give a well-thought public speech that demonstrates that he understands the problems he is encountering in the markets." The Federal Reserve Chairman has indeed been giving public speeches on the current financial crisis during the last few days. On October 7, he spoke at the conference of the National Association of Business Economists (NABE). Yesterday (October 15), Professor Bernanke spoke at the Economic Club of New York and held a Q & A session after that. Does Professor Bernanke's speeches provide some assurance about his expertise in being able to deal with this financial crisis?

A. Yes, I have transcribed Professor Bernanke's speech and his Q & A session held yesterday at the Economic Club in New York. I have carefully considered his remarks in his opening address and his answers in the Q & A session. I have to say, with great reluctance and some sadness, that Professor Bernanke does not possess sufficient understanding of the current crisis in the financial markets. This is all the more worrisome because Professor Bernanke seems to have earnestly consulted his academic colleagues throughout this crisis in a bipartisan manner. One good aspect about Professor Bernanke's stewardship of the Federal Reserve is that right from the beginning of his term, he has functioned within a rational and logical policy framework which had been derived from current academic scholarship of the Great Depression. Let me explain the broad outlines of his policy framework here. For more details, the reader should refer to the transcripts of yesterday's speech given by Professor Bernanke (a copy of the transcripts is attached to this mail):

To quote Professor Bernanke (from yesterday's speech), "The crisis we face in the financial markets has many novel aspects largely arising from the complexity and sophistication of today's financial institutions and instruments, a remarkable degree of global financial integration that allows financial shocks to be transmitted around the world at the speed of light". Professor Bernanke also made some comments about the positive geo-political reality that enables the Federal Reserve to work in close coordination with the central banks of Japan, England and Europe, in contrast to the protectionist economic policies of the industrial countries during the Great Depression. But for these novel aspects, it would seem, from listening to Professor Bernanke's speech and his Q & A, that the current crisis situation can be handled with tools and techniques developed from past experiences, particularly the Great Depression. Lastly, expressing a firm "we will not stand down", as the Chairman did yesterday would, I suppose, contribute towards managing the expectations of market participants about the future.

The first lesson of the Great Depression is that the government authorities (the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, the Congress and the President) should act early and act quickly because waiting too long could mean that many financial institutions are already insolvent. The next lesson is that the central bank should provide liquidity in the financial system by keeping interest rates down and by extending large amounts of credit to the banks by way of short-term lending. Beyond this liquidity provision, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the FDIC should take precautions to prevent the collapse of a large number of banks through bank-runs, as happened during the Great Depression. Moreover, the systemic risk should be monitored continuously and any large financial institution whose failure is too risky for the whole financial system should be directly assisted in avoiding bankruptcy. At some point in this crisis-prevention program, the central bank would find itself out of resources, i.e., monetary policy alone would not be sufficient to prevent the escalation of the crisis. At that point or well before that, Congress and the Administration should step in with fiscal assistance. The intellectual basis for this role for government's intervention has been long established by the great British economist John Maynard Keynes during the Great Depression. Government intervention could take the form of deficit financing, higher taxation and (partial) nationalization. While all this assistance is going on, the central bank should use its mathematical models for gauging inflationary expectations to make sure that inflation does not get out of control. It may be noted in passing that this inflationary-expectations-modelling, a body of knowledge that has evolved from the collective contributions of monetary theory, behavioral psychology and econometrics, is one of the great achievements of 20th century economic theory.

This then is the broad outline of the policy framework that the Federal Reserve has been following during the tenure of Professor Bernanke as its Chairman. The practical implication of this policy framework is that the Federal Reserve provides broad intellectual support to the Treasury's actions in this crisis. In particular, the government take-over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in early September and the 700 billion dollar Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) passed in the US Congress in early October are given theoretical justification under the Keynesian prescription for government intervention. So far, so good. Now, regarding the future, the Keynesian tradition would advocate regulating the financial markets to prevent excessive risk-taking, and injecting equity into financial firms to prevent insolvency. The moneratist tradition would insist, I suppose, on a role for the Federal Reserve in providing liquidity and the thawing of the credit freeze. The libertarian tradition would provide assurance to the finance firms that the government's involvement is only for their own benefit. Unfortunately, this policy framework does not take into account some crucial aspects of today's economic reality. Hence, I am forced to express doubts about Professor Bernanke's understanding of the current financial situation. With all due respect, I have to give Professor Bernanke a mild thumbs-down.


Q14. In what ways are the current economic situation different from the Great Depression?

A. To my knowledge, academic literature in economics does not take into account that the Great Depression fell between the two World Wars of the 20th century. As a result, the lessons of the Great Depression for today are usually specified as abstract policy prescriptions without taking into account the particular details of the political and economic reality that existed at that time. The single major difference between the American economy during the Great Depression and the contemporary one is the massive accumulation of capital, a phenomenon which I have explained in detail in my answer to Q1 above. Before World War I, the most advanced industrial nations with well-developed pension and life-insurance systems, and universal health care were in Europe. World War I wiped out the accumulated capital of these countries. America was beginning to experience the first blushes of affluence during the Jazz age of the 20s, just before the onset of the Great Depression. Thus there were no sizable accumulations of capital anywhere in the world. In contrast, the pension funds and mutual funds that hold the lifetime savings of today's workers all over the world amount to anywhere between 20 trillion to 50 trillion dollars. One should compare this figure with the fact that the annual GDP of the United States is of the order of 14 trillion dollars.

The second major difference is geo-political reality, which Professor Bernanke alluded to in his speech. During the Great Depression, countries were pursuing protectionist economic policies and severe restrictions on the flow of capital across the world. In contrast, global flow of capital, goods, labour are growing rapidly today. Moreover, nations are increasingly adopting democracy as the form of government. This has resulted in a much friendlier, co-operative geo-political environment at the global level. The third major difference is the advent of technology. The use of computers has ensured that communication is more quantitative, reliable and accurate. In this way, the flow of information which is crucial for economic decision making has vastly improved.


Q15. Why are the lessons drawn from the Great Depression inadequate for dealing with the current financial crisis?

A. One can easily see that when one takes the massive accumulations of capital today into account, then the most helpful policy prescriptions for dealing with the current crisis would try mostly to enable the private sector, which holds these vast quantities of capital, to function freely. The possibility that capital does not flow freely but is clogged up temporarily calls for an active policy of providing liquidity. But other than that direct government intervention to adjust the capital structure of the finance firms is evidently quite destructive. In short, the cures that Milton Freedman prescribed for avoiding the Great Depression, namely, ample liquidity and minimal government, seem to make the best policy for the current financial crisis. Keynesian policy recommendations might come useful, if and when the economy actually experiences a contraction in output. Moreover, it appears that the credit freeze that has come under intense focus among the economists of late was, in fact, caused by the loss of confidence in the credit markets due to the government's arbitrary intervention in the functioning of the markets, going back at least to the take-over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in early September. One should also note that the term 'credit freeze' is quite misleading. There does not appear to be an actual unavailability of credit on Main Street. Credit freeze seems to refer to the high rates of interest that banks charge for lending to themselves, far in excess of the yield in the Treasury securities, and the high rates of mortgage loans. But, again, the reason for this could be that government is the 800-pound gorilla that is causing a lot of uncertainty in the credit markets by its arbitrary meddling in the functioning of the private sector. Also, inflation could be creeping up, and banks may be unwilling to lend at real interest rates that are negative, unlike the willingness of the Federal Reserve to keep cutting its interest rates. Lastly, the fact that private banks could be charging interest rates much higher than the Fed might help to attract money from the hedge funds and mutual funds which are looking for safer investments than stocks and mortgage securities. Thus it is not entirely a bad thing since it enables the free flow of credit.