Author: Simon Johnson

Ireland And An Unstable Europe, Again

According to Bloomberg (citing the RTE website), the Irish Prime Minister said in Toyko today that Ireland may need to call in the IMF if economic conditions continue to deteriorate. According to RTE (Ireland’s public broadcaster), correcting their earlier story, he said no such thing, at least in public.

The broader issue, of course, is that Ireland is not alone in facing economic difficulties – the risk of default, potential debt rollover issues, and credit ratings are likely to move together for a range of weaker countries in Europe’s eurozone. But the presumption has been that the IMF would not get involved in eurozone countries. Any change in this view would throw us back to thinking in terms of the 1970s (when the IMF lent to the UK and to Italy) or the 1930s (when IMF loans could have helped, but of course were not available). Unless you really intend to bring in the IMF for loan discussions, I would suggest it is a bad idea to use those three letters in any conversation, public or private.

Remember that in early October Ireland destabilized the eurozone by suddenly offering blanket bank deposit guarantees. The apparent lack of policy coordination within the eurozone continues to be worrying. These countries really need to start working together more closely.

Relatedly and consistent with my presentation last week, Greece’s sovereign credit rating from S&P was lowered today.

Policy Parallels: Eurozone and India

I’ve had a chance, over the past 10 days, to debate the details of what’s next for the macroeconomy with leading policymakers in both the eurozone/EU and India. I’m struck by some similarities. In both places, there is little or no concern that inflation will rebound any time soon. At least for people based in Delhi, there is as a result confidence that conventional policy can now act aggressively to cushion the blows coming from the global economy. In the eurozone, all eyes are on monetary policy and the same is true for India – both places have almost the exact debate about whether fiscal policy can do much more than it is already doing, given that government debt levels are already on the high side.

The discordant note comes from people based in Mumbai. They feel that Delhi does not fully understand that the real economy is already in bad shape. Sectors such as real estate and autos are hurting badly. Small businesses, in particular, seems to be bearing the brunt of the blow. The banking picture seems more murky, but is surely not good. And of course the Satyam accounting scandal could not come at a worse time.

Overall, my strong impression is that growth forecasts will need to be marked down for India and the eurozone. Both will likely cut interest rates further quite soon (and have space for additional cuts), but we should not expect much more from the fiscal side in either place. They will both start to look beyond standard macro policies – although India may make progress on this front sooner.

I also heard strong and reassuring opposition to protectionism – although, I must say the case against any kind of trade restriction comes through more clearly in India than in the eurozone.

What If You Only Had $350bn To Spend?

Larry Summers made a convincing case yesterday that Congress should release the remaining $350bn of the TARP. It’s good to see the Obama team emphasizing themes beyond the fiscal stimulus, including banks and housing. Stronger governance and greater transparency are timely commitments for this program, and who can object to limits on executive compensation in today’s environment? Some Congressional debate makes sense and could be productive, but it’s hard to see this request being turned down.

Still, what exactly should the money be spent on? I’m tempted to say: housing, because this continues to be a major unresolved problem that looms over both consumers and their balance sheets. Unfortunately, however, the banks remain a greater priority. The latest developments for both Citigroup and Bank of America suggest the banking situation is (again) seen by insiders as more desperate than we outsiders wished to believe.

The next round of bank recapitalization (again) needs to be big and bold, for example along the lines we have been suggesting for some time (but I’ll take another comprehensive plan, if you have one, with strong expected taxpayer value). The problem today is that we just don’t know if any major bank is well capitalized; there are too many black boxes that may contain toxic assets. At best, this is a brake on the positive effects that should come from the fiscal stimulus. At worst, we still have a major system issue on our hands.

And there is no reason to think that $350bn is enough to handle this problem. The original $700bn was obviously an arbitrarily chosen number, and the money has been spent so far in a rather unplanned manner. What we do next should not be constrained by the fact that there is a check for $350bn waiting to be picked up. We should design a systematic recapitalization program, figure out what it will cost, and get on with it. My working assumption, based on the published analysis of the IMF regarding losses relative to private capital raising, is that $1trn – properly deployed – should do the trick.

Then we should get to work on housing (yes, this needs more money).

Update: Ben Bernanke seems to be thinking aloud along similar lines.

Who’s Afraid of Deflation?

According to the Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) minutes, released on Tuesday, some members think inflation targetting would be a useful way to persuade people that prices will not fall, i.e., forestall deflationary expectations. WSJ.com seems to have the interpretation about right,

“The added clarity in that regard might help forestall the development of expectations that inflation would decline below desired levels, and hence keep real interest rates low and support aggregate demand,” according to the minutes.

In other words, a commitment to an inflation target, say annual growth of 1.5% to 2%, would help keep prices from falling outright and prevent the kind of economic chaos that plagued Japan in the 1990s and the U.S. during the Great Depression.

The Congressional Budget Office thinks there is still time to prevent deflation (or perhaps it is the new measures already in the works that will keep inflation positive). Their forecast for 2009 (see Table 1 in today’s testimony) predicts low inflation, e.g., the PCE price index is expected to be 0.6 percent for 2009 – but note that the CPI is seen as barely positive, at 0.1 percent, over the same period.

Meanwhile, the financial markets (e.g., inflation swaps) predict minus 4 percent inflation in 2009 (part of which is likely due to lower commodity prices) and then a small degree of deflation over the next few years. According to this view, we should next see today’s price level again in about 5 or 6 years.

Of course, the financial markets could well be wrong. It may be that the markets haven’t fully digested or understood the size of the fiscal stimulus, and it may be that further news about other parts of the Obama approach (including the directly on housing and banking) will significantly change inflation expectations.

But it is striking that financial market inflation expectations – e.g., over a five year horizon – have barely moved from their low/near deflation level since it became clear that Mr Obama would win the election or since we first realized that a massive fiscal stimulus would soon arrive (see slide 2 in my presentation from Sunday; the scale is hard to read, but the decline is from around 2% through the summer to around 0% currently). At least for now, whether or not we are heading for deflation remains the key open question.

Causes: Economics

We are not short of causes for our current economic crisis. The basic machinery of capitalism, including the process of making loans, did not work as it was supposed to. Capital flows around the world proved much more destabilizing than even before (and we’ve seen some damaging capital flows over the past 200 years.) And there are plenty of distinguished individuals with something to answer for, including anyone who thought they understood risk and how to manage it.

But perhaps the real problem lies even deeper, for example, either with a natural human tendency towards bubbles or with how we think about the world. All of our thinking about the economy – a vast abstract concept – has to be in some form of model, with or without mathematics. And we should listen when a leading expert on a large set of influential models says (1) they are broken, and (2) this helped cause the crisis and – unless fixed – will lead to further instability down the road.

This is an important part of what my colleague, Daron Acemoglu, is saying in a new essay, “The Crisis of 2008: Structural Lessons for and from Economics.” (If you like to check intellectual credentials, start here and if you don’t understand what I mean about models, look at his new book.) To me there are three major points in his essay. Continue reading “Causes: Economics” →

Overweight Fiscal? (The Obama Economic Plan)

Most of the current discussion regarding the Obama Economic Plan focuses on whether the fiscal stimulus should be somewhat larger or smaller ($650-800bn seems the current range) and the composition between spending and tax cuts. President Obama stressed on Tuesday that trillion dollar deficits are here to stay for several years, and it looks like part of the arguing in the Senate will be about whether this is a good idea.

There is at least one key question currently missing from this debate. Is this Plan too much about a fiscal stimulus and too little about the other pieces that would help – and might even be essential – for a sustained recovery? The fiscal stimulus may be roughly the right size (and $100bn more or less is unlikely to make a critical difference), but perhaps we should also be looking for more detail on the following:

1. Recapitalizing banks. Their losses to date have not been replaced by new capital and it is currently not possible to issue new equity in the private markets. If you think we can get back to growth without fixing banks, check Japan’s record in the 1990s.

2. Directly addressing housing problems, including moving to limit foreclosures and reduce the forced sales that follow foreclosures. There is apparently some form of the Hubbard-Mayer proposal waiting in the wings, but we don’t know exactly what – and this matters, among other things, for thinking about the debt sustainability implications of the overall Plan.

3. Finding ways to push up inflation, presumably by being more aggressive with monetary policy. Deflation is looming – according to the financial markets, despite all of the Fed’s moves and recent statements, prices will fall or be flat over the next 3 to 5 years. This fall in inflation, from its previous expected level around 2 percent per year, constitutes a big transfer from borrowers/spenders to net lenders/savers. The contractionary effect is likely to outweigh any fiscal stimulus that is politically feasible or economically sound. (We have more detail on this point on WSJ.com today, linked here.)

So perhaps the issue is not the absolute size or composition of the fiscal stimulus, but rather the role of the fiscal stimulus relative to other parts of the Plan. Hopefully, it’s a more evenly weighted package, and just we haven’t yet seen the details. Still, it’s odd that the presence and general contours of these other important elements have not yet been clearly flagged.

The Economic Crisis and the Crisis in Economics

The Economic Crisis

The global financial crisis of fall 2008 was unexpected. A few people had been predicting that serious problems were looming, and even fewer had placed bets accordingly, but even they were astounded by what happened in mid-September.

What did happen? There are many layers to unpeel, but let me begin with the three main events that triggered the severe global phase of the crisis. (See http://BaselineScenario.com for more on what came before, how events unfolded during fall 2008, and where matters now stand).

1. On the weekend of September 13-14, 2008, the U.S. government declined to bailout Lehman. The firm subsequently failed, i.e., did not open for business on Monday, September 15. Creditors suffered major losses, and these had a particularly negative effect on the markets given that through the end of the previous week the Federal Reserve had been encouraging people to continue to do business with Lehman.
2. On Tuesday, September 16, the government agreed to provide an emergency loan to the major insurance company, AIG. This loan was structured so as to become the company’s most senior debt and, in this fashion, implied losses for AIG’s previously senior creditors; the value of their investments in this AAA bastion of capitalism dropped 40% overnight.
3. By Wednesday, September 17, it was clear that the world’s financial markets – not just the US markets, but particularly US money market funds – were in cardiac arrest. The Secretary of the Treasury immediately approached Congress for an emergency budgetary appropriation of $700bn (about 5% of GDP), to be used to buy up distressed assets and thus relieve pressure on the financial system. A rancorous political debate ensued, culminating in the passing of the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), but the financial and economic situation continued to deteriorate both in the US and around the world.

Thus began a financial and economic crisis of the first order, on a magnitude not seen at least since the 1930s and – arguably – with the potential to become bigger than anything seen in the 200 years of modern capitalism. We do not yet know if the economic consequences are “merely” a severe recession or if there will be a prolonged global slump or worse.

The Crisis in Economics

Does this economic crisis constitute or imply a crisis for economics? There are obviously two answers to this question: no, and yes. Continue reading “The Economic Crisis and the Crisis in Economics” →

Causes: Hank Paulson

Eurozone Hard Pressed: 2% Fiscal Solution Deferred

One leading anti-recession idea for the moment is a global fiscal stimulus amounting to 2% of the planet’s GDP. The precise math behind this calculation is still forthcoming, but it obviously assumes a big stimulus in the US and also needs to include a pretty big fiscal expansion in Europe. (Emerging markets will barely be able to make a contribution that registers on the global scale.)

What are the likely prospects for a major eurozone fiscal stimulus? My presentation yesterday on this question is here. The main points are: Continue reading “Eurozone Hard Pressed: 2% Fiscal Solution Deferred” →

The G20: Gordon Brown’s Opportunity

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been trying to drum up support for some form of Bretton Woods Two, i.e., a big rethink regarding how the global economy is governed. So far, little support has materialized for any kind of sweeping approach to these issues.

Still, the chairmanship of the G20 affords him a great opportunity to make progress in other ways. (The G20 website still needs updating, as does the group’s Wikipedia entry; the key point is that this is now a forum for heads of government, rather than for ministers of finance/central bank governors. The chair was due to rotate to the UK in any case; the fact that it falls to Mr Brown in person is an amazing stroke of luck for him.)

The G20 focus in November, as you may recall, was largely on re-regulation and it remains to be seen how much of that agenda will be implemented by the next meeting on April 2nd. But that meeting was substantially under French auspices, despite taking place in Washington. Mr Sarkozy’s staff were jubiliant by the meeting’s end: “we have put the bell on the American cat” was the most memorable quote. The next meeting will take place in Britain, with a new US President at the table, and looks likely to be a much more serious affair. Continue reading “The G20: Gordon Brown’s Opportunity” →

French Car Wreck

The latest economic data from France look bad. The strategy of keeping official growth forecasts high (despite the evidence) is coming under increasing pressure and there may be substantial revisions to the outlook in the pipeline – once you break through to being more honest, there is some catching up to do.

Even more worrying are the plans apparently under preparation to support the French auto industry. Officially, these plans are still under development (AP). But from what we can see, including unofficially this week, the next phase of assistance could well be even more problematic than the support provided to the US auto industry which, so far, only got a bridge loan. Continue reading “French Car Wreck” →

Exit Strategy: Inflation

We know there is going to be a large fiscal surge in the US (the latest estimate is a stimulus of $675-775bn, which is a bit lower than numbers previously floated). This will likely arrive as the US recession deepens and fears of deflation take hold.

The precise outcomes for 2009 are, of course, hard to know yet – this depends primarily on the resilience of US consumer spending and whether large international shocks materialize. But we can have a sense of what happens after the fiscal stimulus has played out (or its precise consequences become clear). There are two main potential scenarios. Continue reading “Exit Strategy: Inflation” →

Too Small To Fail

By now you probably know all you need to know about Too Large To Fail (Citigroup), Too Interconnected To Fail (AIG), and Too Many Potential Job Losses To Fail Before A New Administration Takes Office (GM). Almost all the bailout cases we have seen recently were some combination of the above and they generally shared the characteristic of being large relative to the US and perhaps global financial system. We have become accustomed to bailout increments in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and to periodically reassessing how many trillions have been committed by the Federal Reserve and others.

Today we received confirmation of something quite different: a bailout package for Latvia. Latvia is a small country (2.2m people) and it is receiving a loan of just $2.35bn from the IMF. The loan is obviously tiny compared with other bailouts (Citigroup received at least 10 times as much in November), but it is big in relation to Latvia’s economy – in IMF parlance, the loan is 1,200 percent (or 12x) Latvia’s quota. Quotas are based on the size of your economy, among other things, and it used to be that 3x quota was a big loan and 5x quota really raised eyebrows. (Iceland recently broke some records in this regard (official numbers here), and perhaps we are now in a brave new world where borrowing over 10x quota becomes more standard.)

We can scrutinize the full details of the program when it becomes public, but the press release already makes the key point quite clear,

Continue reading “Too Small To Fail” →

German Finance Minister Confirms What We Have Been Saying

The Wall Street Journal’s Real Time Economics/Secondary Sources today juxtaposes:

1. Peer Steinbruck, the German Minister of Finance, saying that Germany will not engage in “extensive debt financed-spending or tax-reduction programs.”

2. My posting, from yesterday, which makes the point that a big fiscal stimulus in the US strengthens the incentive for our major trading partners to free ride, i.e., not to engage in their own extensive debt financed-spending or tax-reduction programs.

Looks like we are still on at least this part of our baseline.

What About Bank Capital?

The Obama team’s plans are big and bold on key dimensions. The fiscal stimulus will be one of the largest ever in peacetime. We don’t yet know how much support there will be for a housing refinance initiative, but there is no question that the proposal will be huge.

But in this mix the lack of serious discussion (yet) of the need for new capital in the banking system is striking. It could be, of course, that reports on the lack of capital have been greatly exaggerated. And it could also be that a detailed assessment of the capital injections so far might indicate they have had less effect than previously expected – although you have to think about the counterfactual, what would the situation be now without these capital injections?

Most likely, the strategic thinking is along three possible lines here.

1) No more capital is needed because the fiscal stimulus will be large enough to turnaround the economy, bringing back growth and gradually steepening the yield curve (so banks can go back to making money the good old-fashioned way; borrow short, lend longer). This is a plausible approach, but risky. There is a great deal that can go wrong or at least delay the positive effects of a big fiscal push, particularly in the current global economic environment – see my piece on Forbes.com today.

2) If more capital is needed at any point, it can be provided on the same sort of terms that Citigroup received in November. This seems dubious because I would expect a political backlash if there is an attempt to repeat or scale up this deal. The terms were simply too unfavorable to the taxpayer. And we should probably now move beyond relying on weekend rescues of major financial institutions; too much can go wrong under that kind of pressure.

3) If more capital is needed, there is a plan but it is secret for now. This might have some appeal, in the sense that any plan would be controversial and could distort incentives. But Congress would surely appreciate knowing at least the potential scale and strategic direction for bank recapitalization in advance – after all, Mr. Paulson’s surprise request to them in September did not go down well initially and did not work out well later. Any sensible plan would presumably involve the commitment of some hundreds of billions of dollars. This would be an investment on which the government can earn a good return, but more details in advance on potential deal structures could help us understand exactly the value proposition for the taxpayer.

Some proposals – after we saw what happened at Citigroup – for recapitalizing the banking system are here. Our approach may not be the answer, and I understand why many on Wall Street would prefer to do things differently. But I do think we need more debate around a plan for recapitalization contingencies, and this should be done sooner rather than later.