Brown Shirts, commercial framing, and economic chaos

The kill-off-organic-and-home-farm bill is still moving along, as is the Brown Shirt bill. It is a really good idea for the Post Office to control our food supply.  Your visit to the farmer's coop will be different. Vendors will watch you warily, lest you are an inspector. (There is a penalty of up to $1 million and jail time if you don't do what the government tells you, like use Monsanto chemicals.)

Under the pending Brown Shirt bill, if a school takes federal money, it must include in all classes the Brown Shirt curriculum.  A group is set up to study the creation of a mandatory membership in the Brown Shirts. I think I read about that in the Constitution.

I hope you see how the government is nothing but a pusher - and it is using your money to hook you.

So what, the NCAA is on.  Who cares.  Right. You can always write a letter to you Congressperson after your grandchildren report to their teachers about your carbon use and unplusgood thoughts. 

Some light reading, for a change: 

Part I: Geithner's Plan "Extremely Dangerous," Economist Galbraith Says

Posted Mar 23, 2009 11:08am EDT by Henry Blodget in Investing, Newsmakers, Recession, Banking

Related: ^gspc, ^dji, c, bac, jpm, WFC

From The Business Insider, March 23, 2009:

Tim Geithner has finally revealed his plan to fix the banking system and economy. Paul Krugman, James Galbraith, and others have already trashed it.

[We spoke with noted economist Galbraith this morning. In the accompanying segment, he calls the Treasury Secretary’s plan “extremely dangerous.”]

Why?

In short, because the plan is yet another massive, ineffective gift to banks and Wall Street. Taxpayers, of course, will take the hit

Why does Tim Geithner keep repackaging the same trash-asset-removal plan that he has been trying to get approved since last fall?

In our opinion, because Tim Geithner formed his view of this crisis last fall, while sitting across the table from his constituents at the New York Fed: The CEOs of the big Wall Street firms. He views the crisis the same way Wall Street does--as a temporary liquidity problem--and his plans to fix it are designed with the best interests of Wall Street in mind.

If Geithner's plan to fix the banks would also fix the economy, this would be tolerable. But no smart economist we know of thinks that it will.

We think Geithner is suffering from five fundamental misconceptions about what is wrong with the economy. Here they are:

The trouble with the economy is that the banks aren't lending. The reality: The economy is in trouble because American consumers and businesses took on way too much debt and are now collapsing under the weight of it. As consumers retrench, companies that sell to them are retrenching, thus exacerbating the problem. The banks, meanwhile, are lending. They just aren't lending as much as they used to. Also the shadow banking system (securitization markets), which actually provided more funding to the economy than the banks, has collapsed.

The banks aren't lending because their balance sheets are loaded with "bad assets" that the market has temporarily mispriced. The reality: The banks aren't lending (much) because they have decided to stop making loans to people and companies who can't pay them back. And because the banks are scared that future writedowns on their old loans will lead to future losses that will wipe out their equity.

Bad assets are "bad" because the market doesn't understand how much they are really worth. The reality: The bad assets are bad because they are worth less than the banks say they are. House prices have dropped by nearly 30% nationwide. That has created something in the neighborhood of $5+ trillion of losses in residential real estate alone (off a peak market value of housing about $20+ trillion). The banks don't want to take their share of those losses because doing so will wipe them out. So they, and Geithner, are doing everything they can to pawn the losses off on the taxpayer.

Once we get the "bad assets" off bank balance sheets, the banks will start lending again. The reality: The banks will remain cautious about lending, because the housing market and economy are still deteriorating. So they'll sit there and say they are lending while waiting for the economy to bottom.

Once the banks start lending, the economy will recover. The reality: American consumers still have debt coming out of their ears, and they'll be working it off for years. House prices are still falling. Retirement savings have been crushed. Americans need to increase their savings rate from today's 5% (a vast improvement from the 0% rate of two years ago) to the 10% long-term average. Consumers don't have room to take on more debt, even if the banks are willing to give it to them.

The two charts below from Ned Davis illustrate the real problem: An explosion of debt relative to GDP. The first is Nonfinancial Debt To GDP. The second is Total Debt To GDP.

In Geithner's plan, this debt won't disappear. It will just be passed from banks to taxpayers, where it will sit until the government finally admits that a major portion of it will never be paid back.

For more coverage including charts, see The Business Insider.

Part II: Geithner, Obama Kowtowing to "Massively Corrupted" Banks, Galbraith Says

Posted Mar 23, 2009 12:07pm EDT by Aaron Task in Newsmakers, Banking

Related: XLF, FAS, SKF, C, BAC, JPM, ^DJI

Like it or not, many people seem to be resigned to the idea there's no alternative to the public-private investment fund scheme Treasury Secretary Geithner detailed this morning. (Click here for part one of our discussion of the plan.)

That's hogwash, says University of Texas professor James Galbraith, author of The Predator State. Of course there's an alternative: FDIC receivership of insolvent banks.

Aside from being legally proscribed, the upside of FDIC receivership is the banks are restructured and reorganized for potential sale (either in whole or parts), Galbraith says. Such was the fate in 2008 of, most notably, Washington Mutual and IndyMac.

Crucially, FDIC receivership also means new management teams for insolvent banks; and Galbraith notes new leaders will have no incentive to cover up the fraudulent or predatory lending practices of their predecessors. Given the entire system was "massively corrupted by the subprime debacle," the professor believes criminal prosecutions on par with the aftermath of the S&L crisis - when hundreds of insiders went to jail - is a likely (and necessary) outcome of the current crisis.

But don't expect to see many "perp walks" if Geithner's current plan comes to fruition. That's one reason Galbraith called the plan "extremely dangerous" in part one of our interview.

So why isn't the Obama administration pushing for FDIC receivership? "Political influence of big banks," the economist says.

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One Small Problem with Geithner's Plan: It Will Bankrupt the Banks

Posted Mar 25, 2009 09:54am EDT by Henry Blodget in Investing, Recession, Banking

Related: aig, c, bac, wfc, xlf, ^gspc, ^dji

From The Business Insider, March 25, 2009:

The big problem with Tim Geithner's plan to fix the banks is the same as it ever was: The gap between what banks say their assets are worth and what the market says they are worth.

When a bank says an asset is worth 60 cents and the market says it's worth 30 cents, someone has to cover that spread. The genius of Geithner's plan is that it pawns most of the cost (and most of the risk) off on the taxpayer without the taxpayer noticing.

But unless the taxpayer gets stuck with the entire spread, which is probably what Geithner is hoping, banks that sell assets will have to take massive writedowns. This will start the whole cycle of violence again.

This risk to the banks is particularly acute when dealing with whole loans that the banks currently say they have no plans to sell. These loans are often carried at 100 cents on the dollar, because loans classified as held to maturity don't have to be marked to market. Even subsidized buyers won't likely be willing to pay anywhere near 100 cents on the dollar for these loans. So, here, the writedowns could potentially be huge.

And then there's another problem:

If the banks go through the exercise of putting assets up for sale only to have the bids come in at, say, 40 cents instead of the 60 cents on the books, the banks' accountants and/or federal regulators might notice. So even if the banks recoil in horror and refuse to sell at 40 cents, someone somewhere might insist that assets now carried at 60 cents be written down to 40 cents (after all, they won't have the "temporary illiquidity discount" excuse anymore, will they?). This will blow another huge hole in the banks' balance sheets.

Given this, banks would probably be wise not to participate in Geithner's plan. Which is why the government is already talking about forcing them to:

FT: “The unspoken fear here is that selling off loan portfolios would lead to more government capital injections into major banks,” said an executive at a large bank...

Richard Bove, an analyst at Rochdale Research, wrote in a note to clients: “[The plan] will not happen because it would destroy bank capital. It might cause a bank to fail the new stress tests under way. Banks will not take this risk.”

But while banks in theory have discretion over whether to sell loans, Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, said this decision would be made “in consultation with regulators” – a sign that the authorities might put pressure on banks to sell toxic assets.

It's time to face the fact that we have already de facto nationalized the big banks--and that the way we've done it is worse than standard receivership and restructuring. The longer we remain in denial about this, the worse off we'll be. But that's another story...

For more coverage, see The Business Insider.