Federal Reservations

Angry Bear was started by its namesake in the latter part of 2003, and continued publishing through the editorial efforts of Mike Kimel and Dan Crawford over the last six years (see About page). 
Mark Thoma at Economist View approaches the role of econblogs through pointing to the disconnect between academics and public use of the language of economics in an article published by Academia and the Public Sphere titled New Forms of Communication and the Public Mission of Economics: Overcoming the Great Disconnect:

Fortunately, however, the “Great Disconnect”[3] with the non-academic community is being reversed with the development of new information technology. Economics blogs in particular have played a key role in turning things around.

Matt Stoller at Naked Capitalism suggests:

But something odd happened in 2008, during and in the wake of the crisis. Capitol Hill staffers and members of both parties began looking for expertise on how finance actually worked. And they began reading financial blogs. Lobbyists just didn’t or couldn’t help them understand how to deal with the massive systemic failures; they knew in some sense that the information they were getting was rigged. They just didn’t know how. The financial blogs began to tell them.


Over the course of the next few years, the financial blogs became a new alternative system which delivered one of the most valuable commodities that previously had been monopolized by financial lobbyists and institutions like the Fed – credible information. That’s why there was an actual debate during Dodd-Frank over reining in the size of banking institutions, and auditing the Fed. Instead of second order industry shills distributing information they have been fed by the PR departments of big banks, communities of end-users of finance began to talk directly to lawmakers through mediated forums on the internet.

Originally from Angry Bear

Tim Duy body-slams St. Louis FRB President James Bullard:

Estimates of potential GDP are not simple extrapolations of actual GDP from the peak of the last business cycles. They are estimates of the maximum sustainable output given fully employed resources. The backbone of the CBO's estimates is a Solow Growth model. So I don't think that Noah Smith is quite accurate when he says:

So, basically, what we have here is Bullard saying that the neoclassical (Solow) growth model - and all models like it - are wrong. He's saying that a change in asset prices can cause a permanent change in the equilibrium capital/labor ratio.

Bullard can't be saying the Solow growth model is wrong because he doesn't realize that such a model is the basis for the estimates he is criticizing. [first and last link in the original; Noah Smith link copied from elsewhere in the original post]

Go Read the Whole Thing. For those of you too lazy to do that without incentive, here's the conclusion:

Bottom Line: Bullard really went down an intellectual dead end last week. He criticized the focus on potential output, but revealed that he doesn't really understand the concept of potential output either empirically or theoretically. He then compounds that error by arguing against the current stance of monetary policy, but fails to provide an alternative policy path. And the presumed policy path, tighter policy, looks likely to only worsen the distortions he argues the Fed is creating. I just don't see where Bullard thinks he is taking us.

It's Worse Than You Think.

Originally from Angry Bear

Or: It’s The Velocity, Stupid.

I got quite a bit of blowback on my recent post suggesting that economists don’t understand accounting.

In response I give you Exhibit A: the almost-ubiquitous notion that more saving increases the supply of “loanable funds” — hence that more saving causes or at least allows more investment. (The absolute classic fallacy of the S=I accounting identity.)

On casual consideration, it seems like it would be right, right? You spend less than your income, so you have more money (stuffed in your mattress?), and you can lend it out.

Or more likely: you “put money in the bank” – deposit more than you withdraw — so the bank has more money; it can lend more.

It’s A Wonderful Life.

Here’s Mankiw in his textbook, saying exactly that:

You really have to wonder sometimes where economists get this stuff that they put in their textbooks.

Nick Rowe attempted to save this conceptual situation recently in a comment posted hereabouts (emphasis mine):

Suppose there’s an increased demand for financial assets by households (a rightward shift in the demand curve). Will that increased demand lead to an increased quantity of investment by firms and an increased quantity of financial assets sold to households (a movement along a supply curve)? It may do. That depends on the model. It’s a behavioural question, not an accounting question.

His questions in the middle, and the last statement, are completely on the money. But his explanation begins right in the midst of the conceptual confusion, putting the modeling cart before the behavioral horse. The behavior doesn’t “depend on the model”; the model’s accuracy and usefulness depends on its assumed human response to incentives and constraints.

Or perhaps, rather, he’s climbed aboard the wrong behavioral horse — one that is wandering off rather aimlessly.

The “desire to save” is a conceptual representation, a mini-model, if you will, of one aspect of the economic situation. I’m suggesting that that construct is outside of, peripheral and irrelevant to, the behavioral chain of cause and effect.

People might want to save more/spend less in aggregate for various reasons:

• Times are tough — GDP and employment are weak — and they’re worried about future ability to consumption.

• Times are good, and they’re satisfying all their consumption desires.

• Rich people have a larger proportion of income and wealth, and their lower marginal propensity to consume drags down aggregate spending, relative to income and wealth.

Or some other scenario. (As Keynes said — not looking up the exact quote here – all economic activity is driven by the desire to consume.)

In the second scenario banks will want to lend more — but not because people and businesses (want to) save more. If that were true, banks would also want to lend more in the first scenario — which is completely contrary to what actually happens. (The results in the third scenario seem uncertain.)

Here’s a syllogism to make this widespread confusion clearer:

More investment results in more prosperity.

More saving results in more investment.

More pessimism (or less-confident optimism) results in more saving. (I think monetarists will stipulate to this.)

So more pessimism results in more prosperity!

Mankiw’s conceptual confusion is inevitable, and arises from two causes:

1. He’s starting with snaky (and conceptually confused) assumptions about the sources of human behavior, and:

2. New but related subject: He’s trying to think about flows (and get tender young minds to think about flows) using static, of-an-instant models like the standard S/D and IS-LM diagrams. The problem, when you’re trying to think about “supply,” is that a flow can’t exist in an instant (only stocks can); it’s a meaningless, impossible concept. And since stocks in our discussion here are unaffected by saving, he’s in a pickle, cause it’s all about flows. (And no: “comparative-static” methods don’t solve the conceptual confusion; they arguably only contribute to it because they impart the illusion of time and dynamism.)

The only way (that I know of) to model “flow supply” in a conceptually coherent way – or even think or talk about it really, which is mental modeling — is using a dynamic simulation model. Of late I’ve been quite taken with the power grid as a good metaphor for a dynamic model of the economy — one that I’ll expand and expound upon in a future post.

For now I’ll leave you with this: Clower/Burshaw on the difference between “stock supply” and “flow supply,” or peruse the literature here. Nick also talks quite a bit about the largely forgotten old 70s notion of “nominal” (roughly: “potential”) supply and demand — though mainly regarding money, not real goods.

* I won’t even touch here on the widespread misconception among economists regarding bank lending, except to say that in practice bank lending is not constrained by deposits — banks lend most of their deposits then lend (much) more based on their excess capital (times X) — which, thus, is their effective constraint on lending. Not deposits.

Cross-posted at Asymptosis.

Originally from Angry Bear<

Robert Waldmann comments on the Freddie Mac story recently in the news (lifted from Stochastic Thoughts):

Freddster (noun): Fraudster who profits from conflict of interest at Freddie Mac (the knife).

Jesse Eisinger, pf ProPublica and Chris Arnold, of the public sector NPR News have the most interesting article about ruthless greedy uh socialism I guess at public sector Freddie Mac.
   
The idea is that Freddie Went long on the interest payments on mortgages and not the principal repayments. This means the harder it is to refinance, the better for Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac also has huge regulatory power to decide how hard it is to refinance Freddie Mac insured loans. The conflict of interest is clear.

Via Kevin Drum where commenter Andrew Sprung wrote

Could Einsinger and Arnold''s story have been prompted by an administration leak as a prelude to a recess appointment to replace DeMarco at FHFA?

I hope so, or rather I wish I had any hope that it is so. But at least it is a hint that someone in the White House has decided to put pressure on DeMarco.  I also look forward to testimony by the Freddie Mac CEO Charles Haldeman who I expect will have considerable trouble recalling details (see HR Block).
   
Here is a summary of the conflict of interest from Eisenger and Arnold with human interest and Freddie Mac efforts to respond to the accusation deleted.

Those mortgages underpin securities that get divided into two basic categories.
One portion is backed mainly by principal, pays a low return, and was sold to investors who wanted a safe place to park their money. The other part, the inverse floater, is backed mainly by the interest payments on the mortgages ... . So this portion of the security can pay a much higher return, and this is what Freddie retained.
In 2010 and '11, Freddie purchased $3.4 billion worth of inverse floater portions — their value based mostly on interest payments on $19.5 billion in mortgage-backed securities, according to prospectuses for the deals.

[skip]

It’s ... a big problem if people ... refinance their mortgages. That’s because a refi is a new loan; the borrower pays off the first loan early, stopping the interest payments. Since the security Freddie owns is backed mainly by those interest payments, Freddie loses.

[skip]

Restricting credit for people who have done short sales isn’t the only way that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have tightened their lending criteria in the wake of the financial crisis, making it harder for borrowers to get housing loans.
[skip]
just as it was escalating its inverse floater deals, it was also introducing new fees on borrowers, including those wanting to refinance. During Thanksgiving week in 2010, Freddie quietly announced that it was raising charges, called post-settlement delivery fees.
In a recent white paper on remedies for the stalled housing market, the Federal Reserve criticized Fannie and Freddie for the fees they have charged for refinancing. Such fees are “another possible reason for low rates of refinancing” and are “difficult to justify,” the Fed wrote.
A former Freddie employee, who spoke on condition he not be named, was even blunter: “Generally, it makes no sense whatsoever” for Freddie “to restrict refinancing” from expensive loans to ones borrowers can more easily pay, since the company remains on the hook if homeowners default.

Originally from Angry Bear

Matt Yglesias has a great post over at Moneybox (paragraph breaks added):

The need for regime change.

… The Depression discredited the gold standard and a whole set of related notions.

The Great Inflation discredited ideas about the Phillips Curve …

We had, until recently, the Great Moderation Consensus that … the Federal Reserve has the ability to stabilize the macroeconomy by fiddling with interest rates.

Well now here we are and the Federal Reserve can’t stabilize the macroeconomy by fiddling with interest rates.

That calls for the creation of a new regime.

I’ve dumbed it down a bit here. He also talks about employment, for instance, including this great line:

…if the government isn’t abandoning the idea of full employment then they have a mighty strange way of showing it.

But I think I’ve imparted the main question. We’ve been or are going through a paradigm-falsifying “moment.” (As always, some good thinking will be cast aside along with some bad.)

What will move into the vacuum left by the (at least partially) ravaged Great Moderation paradigm?

Courtesy of David Beckworth and The Kauffman Foundation (PDF), here’s how econobloggers would like that question to be answered (thanks, FTA, for the great question):

Personally, I fondly envision some coherent amalgam of the M&M gang: Market Monetarists (NGDPers) and Modern Monetary Theorists (with a decent dose of the Austrian’s insight into real-economy production and productivity). I’m guessing that some have already ventured (some parts of) this amalgamation, quite possibly in posts I’ve already read and since forgotten. Thoughts? Links?

(Even as I post this I find that vimothy, JKH, and Steve Randy Waldman are worrying productively at parts of this very question in the comments here.)

Cross-posted at Asymptosis.

Originally from Angry Bear

I just searched Harvard, U Chicago, and a few other top econ departments’ course offerings and major requirements. The string “account” barely appears.

Chicago says quite explicitly:

Courses such as accounting, investments, and entrepreneurship will not be considered for economics elective credit.

Much less requirements!

No wonder so many economists:

• Have such profound misunderstandings of the National Income and Product Accounts and the Fed Flow of Funds reports (and how they relate to each other). Nobody ever taught them how to read or understand the darn things.

• Have such crazy notions about how producers think when they’re setting prices.

Speaks volumes.

Cross-posted at Asymptosis.

Originally from Angry Bear

Freddster (noun): Fraudster who profits from conflict of interest at Freddie Mac (the knife).

Jesse Eisinger, pf ProPublica and Chris Arnold, of the public sector NPR News have the most interesting article about ruthless greedy uh socialism I guess at public sector Freddie Mac.

The idea is that Freddie Went long the interest payments on mortgages and not the principal repayments. This means the harder it is to refinance, the better for Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac also has significant regulatory power to decide how hard it is to refinance Freddie Mac insured loans. The conflict of interest is clear.

via Kevin Drum where commenter
Andrew Sprung wrote
"Could Einsinger and Arnold''s story have been prompted by an administration leak as a prelude to a recess appointment to replace DeMarco at FHFA?"

I hope so, or rather I wish I had any hope that it is so. But at least it is a hint that someone in the White House has decided to put pressure on DeMarco.
I also look forward to testimony by the Freddie Mac CEO Charles Haldeman who I expect will have considerable trouble recalling details (see HR Block)


After the jump I cut and paste a summary of the conflict of interest from Eisenger and Arnold with human interest and Freddie Mac efforts to respond to the accusation deleted.

Those mortgages underpin securities that get divided into two basic categories.

One portion is backed mainly by principal, pays a low return, and was sold to investors who wanted a safe place to park their money. The other part, the inverse floater, is backed mainly by the interest payments on the mortgages ... . So this portion of the security can pay a much higher return, and this is what Freddie retained.

In 2010 and '11, Freddie purchased $3.4 billion worth of inverse floater portions — their value based mostly on interest payments on $19.5 billion in mortgage-backed securities, according to prospectuses for the deals.

[skip]

It’s ... a big problem if people ... refinance their mortgages. That’s because a refi is a new loan; the borrower pays off the first loan early, stopping the interest payments. Since the security Freddie owns is backed mainly by those interest payments, Freddie loses.

[skip]

Restricting credit for people who have done short sales isn’t the only way that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have tightened their lending criteria in the wake of the financial crisis, making it harder for borrowers to get housing loans.

[skip]

just as it was escalating its inverse floater deals, it was also introducing new fees on borrowers, including those wanting to refinance. During Thanksgiving week in 2010, Freddie quietly announced that it was raising charges, called post-settlement delivery fees.

In a recent white paper on remedies for the stalled housing market, the Federal Reserve criticized Fannie and Freddie for the fees they have charged for refinancing. Such fees are “another possible reason for low rates of refinancing” and are “difficult to justify,” the Fed wrote.

A former Freddie employee, who spoke on condition he not be named, was even blunter: “Generally, it makes no sense whatsoever” for Freddie “to restrict refinancing” from expensive loans to ones borrowers can more easily pay, since the company remains on the hook if homeowners default.

Originally from Angry Bear

Richard Williamson asks a sensible and straightforward question: If, as Modern Monetary Theorists propose, banks’ reserve levels put no significant constraints on their lending, why don’t we have 100%-reserve banking — and presumably no runs on banks as a result?

First an explanation — I hope simple, clear, and generally accurate (if simplified):

Say you start your own bank. You take in $100 in checking-account deposits and lend it all out, holding no reserves. That’s not safe or even workable. You need some buffer so your depositor’s checks will clear.

So there’s a rule: you can only lend $90, and you leave $10 sitting in your “reserve account” at the Fed — essentially your bank’s checking account. When everybody’s checks clear each night through the Fed’s system, reserves get transferred between banks, and you’ve got enough on deposit so nothing bounces.

If the Fed says you need to hold 12% reserves instead of 10%, that means you can lend $88 instead of $90 — not exactly the massive asphyxiation of the “money multiplier” that many people imagine.

That multiplier is actually related not to your reserves, but to your bank’s capital — the money that you and others have invested. That capital is your bank’s buffer against losses from making bad loans. It’s your “skin in the game.”

The amount of capital limits how much you can lend (irrespective of 90%-lent deposits). If the allowed capital-to-loans ratio is 10%, you can lend $10 for every dollar in capital. Now that’s a money multiplier.

The reserve ratio and the capital ratio are completely different things.

So back to Richard’s question: if the Fed required 100% reserves, the banks couldn’t lend out all those checking-account deposits. The quantity of “loanable funds” would decline. But banks could still lend, 10-to-1 (or so), against their capital.

What do those numbers look like in practice? U.S. checking and savings deposits total about $6 trillion right now.

Circa 90% of that would be removed from the loanable funds market. Call it $5 trillion — sounds like a lot.

But total credit market debt outstanding is about $55 trillion.

That makes $5 trillion sound…not insignificant (and profound at the margin), but less onerous.

Which raises my question, one that I’m not knowledgeable enough to answer: Would 100%-reserve banking result in there being more bank capital available — more equity investments in banks — which via its money-multiplying power would offset or more than offset the otherwise decline in loanable funds?

Would we end up with roughly the same amount of credit market debt outstanding?

The answer, it seems to me, would depend on a whole lot of complex and interacting incentive effects. Anyone care to take a stab?

P.S. Like me, you’ve no doubt noticed that debt outstanding is in fact about ten times bank deposits. Does this put the big-picture lie to the MMTers’ claim that lending is not reserve-constrained? Is it just a coincidence? Other?

Cross-posted at Asymptosis.

Originally from Angry Bear

In case you are not aware, Bill Moyers is back and he doing his best work to date concentrating on our the changing of the rules regarding the economy. This episode where he interviews John Reed, former Citi Bank CEO and current MIT chair is most telling as it relates to the issue of why we as a nation need to do what is required by law: investigate and prosecute as the investigations dictate.

First, let me just say, you need to watch the interview. What is most telling for me is the denial that still exists in Mr. Reed. Sure, he acknowledges that it all went wrong, but it is done in the temperance of “mistake”: 

1. an error in action, calculation, opinion, or judgment caused by poor reasoning, carelessness, insufficient knowledge, etc.
2. a misunderstanding or misconception.

Here, in the interview is what puts the delusion of self preservation in applying the word “mistake” to the decisions that lead to what we have today, and I'm not just talking recession:

Setting up the question to Mr. Reed by showing a video clip, SENATOR BYRON DORGAN: (Speaking on Senate Floor) What does it mean if we have all this concentration and merger activity? Well, the bigger they are, the less likely this government can allow them to fail.
BILL MOYERS: Were you aware of the few senators who raised real concerns about removing Glass-Steagall, about what would happen?
JOHN REED: No one that I’m aware of it saw it clearly. You point out to some Senators and Congressmen who did, but somehow we described them peripheral. And I simply said, “They’re wrong.” Turned out they weren’t.
SENATOR BYRON DORGAN: (Speaking on Senate Floor) I think we will in ten years’ time look back and say, “We should not have done that, because we forgot the lessons of the past.”

The issue of calling it a “mistake” becomes even clearer when you watch the interview of Senator Dorgan which follows Mr. Reed. This is why you need to watch it. Mr Reed knows what happened. He knows why it happened. I am certain he knows where the culpability lays. But, as they say in our neck of the woods: He wouldn't say “shit” even if he had a mouthful.

What happened and what these people did was not a benign experience as the word “mistake” implies and as Mr. Reed is using it. It was intentional and wanton action taken on behalf of money. (See below: Where their heads were at)

Explaining Glass Steagall's importance beyond not letting commercial banking marry investment banking.

JOHN REED: Well, that and even more importantly, or equally importantly, since the FDIC came into existence at approximately a similar time where the government was guaranteeing deposits so that people didn't lose if a bank got into trouble.

But not only did they want to keep the banks from the business for reasons of not risking the money. They didn't want them to use the guarantee that the government provided for those deposits to leverage their position. Because, you know, if you have a deposit base that's guaranteed by the government, it sure puts you at a great advantage in terms of going into the market and playing around.

Regarding the take down of Glass Steagall

JOHN REED: When Sandy approached me on the merger [Travelers/Citi] I knew that it was right on the forefront of the legal thing. ... And what we basically were told was, "If you all want to do this within the two years we'll get the law changed."
BILL MOYERS: But you got the blessing in this two-year period of President Clinton, of the Fed, of--
JOHN REED: We had that blessing prior to.
JOHN REED: Yes. In other words, I went with Sandy to call on Chairman Greenspan. We told him we were contemplating this merger. But that it would required that the Fed would be prepared to grant us permission. And we were assured that they would.
We went and saw the Chairman of the House Banking Committee, the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. And we said we're talking about this merger but it could not take place if we were not assured that it would be approved at the Congressional level. We talked to the Secretary of the Treasury, I don't recall--
BILL MOYERS: Robert Rubin? He was the Secretary of the Treasury at the time.
JOHN REED: Yeah, we would've spoken to him, I'm sure. And had Bob Rubin said, "No, the Treasury feels this is wrong," we would've been careful. Because obviously, the Treasury recommends to the President on an issue of this sort. And there was no argument. No one said, “We’ll have to think about it.” And so a consensus built up. I don’t think it started in the Fed. I would guess it started in the industry, it certainly got into the Congress.

Regarding where their heads were at

JOHN REED: Which happened, yeah. I mean if you had asked me under oath, what probability I would have given that you would have gotten the whole group of Wall Street participants to get it wrong so to speak, I would have said zero.
BILL MOYERS: What do you think they saw that Wall Street didn't see?
JOHN REED: They simply didn't participate in the exuberance.
But I do think that, you know, this setting up the deck of cards so that we could produce what we currently are trying to withdraw from. Turns out to have been something that the word disaster is maybe not strong enough. (“Criminal” is the word we all know he is resisting.)
JOHN REED: We were carried away by the enthusiasm. And like everything else, you know, once you start you probably go a little further than you should have.
JOHN REED: Sandy Weil. I mean, his whole life was to accumulate money. And he said, "John, we could be so rich." Being rich never crossed my mind as an objective value. I almost was embarrassed that somebody would say out loud. It might be happening but you wouldn't want to say it.
JOHN REED: Yeah, Sandy Weil. And I sort of say, "Sandy, you know, we didn't do very well." And he's not comfortable with that conversation at all. I think he would still defend that it was a good merger, it just went off the tracks afterwards. I --

Regarding the economics of it

JOHN REED: No, no. It's not something you'd like to end your career with. That is for sure. No, look. We got carried away. It wasn't any small group, it was a consensus that reached the press, it reached the political world. It certainly had reached the intellectual world. I'm now, as you know, at MIT, and I say to some of my academic friends that the intellectual underpinnings of this was created at MIT and places like that, I mean—
BILL MOYERS: With the technology of the computers?
JOHN REED: Well, no. It's all of this mathematics of finance and the presumption in much of this mathematics that you can capture risk by looking at historical volatility and so forth and so on.
BILL MOYERS: Are you saying, suggesting that -- the chairman of the board of MIT's suggesting --that human intelligence no longer runs our financial system?
JOHN REED: Well, it's a little wisdom balance that judgment wouldn't hurt.

The Criminality of it (at least as I see it): See: Regarding the take down of Glass Steagall above

Showing an historical video clip, Mr. Reed speaking with Sandy Wiel

JOHN REED: Sandy called his friend the President last night and invited me to join in on the conversation and we had a good talk. So the President was in fact told last evening about what was going to happen.

JOHN REED: Well, they originated and sold into the marketplace things that should never have been originated.
BILL MOYERS: Derivatives, unregulated derivatives?
JOHN REED: Well, it was the excess mortgages, the no-doc, low-doc mortgages. And then the derivatives were a byproduct. Once you had those, then you could chop 'em up and so forth. And of course they had changed their mindset. They were in the business to make money, period.

The psyche that is protecting the conscience: Note his choice of words

JOHN REED: You're-- I mean, a consensus developed. The fact that we took it [regulation, Glass Steagall] out was a byproduct of this mistaken belief in this modern financial system that was, quote, "more efficient," was very lucrative for the United States and the U.S. economy in global terms.
And which was supposed to handle risk better. In fact, it handled risk worse. I mean, this is what the facts are because there was a much greater concentration of risk created. And so we got it wrong.
But the restraint of the government and it's agencies disappeared in the enthusiasm. (Yeah, just a “byproduct”)
And so it was this combination of the participants getting carried away, the normal checks and balances that should exist against participants.
And the thing that is astounding, frankly, and there's a lesson here that we probably haven't yet learned, is that the system can get it so wrong. It wasn't--
BILL MOYERS: So wrong?
JOHN REED: It wasn't that there was one or two or institutions that, you know, got carried away and did stupid things. It was, we all did. And then the whole system came down. You know, it became illiquid, the government stepped in. Had the government not stepped in, it really would have come to an end.

 

BILL MOYERS: But they left in place the very people who had driven the ship into the iceberg.
JOHN REED: I'm quite surprised at that. It clearly has not been a clean sweep. In other words, those of us who made mistakes, and so forth and so on, are still floating around the system. And--
BILL MOYERS: Floating it? You're running it.
JOHN REED: Well, I am not, but --
BILL MOYERS: You're not running it, they're running it.
JOHN REED: But there are many who are. I wasn't involved, obviously. I had retired in the year 2000. We're now talking 2008. So I was a knowledgeable spectator, but certainly not a participant. I was quite surprised because, frankly, the worst thing that can happen to a businessman is to go bankrupt. (Shades of Greenspan confessions?) That's the sign of ultimate failure. You ran a business and it was unable to succeed under the terms and conditions of private capital. Namely, you went bankrupt.
It's not a crime. But it certainly is a mistake. And these companies, even though they didn't have to file for bankruptcy, de facto went bankrupt. And so the managements and the boards and the regulators should have, in my mind stepped aside.
BILL MOYERS: Sounds to me like you're calling the Glass-Steagall Act back from the grave.
JOHN REED: I think I am. (At this point, he still could not say it “shit”.)

There is more in the interview. You need to see and hear it to understand. I think Mr. Reed is struggling with his conscience and wanting to clear it versus what I believe he feels is a real risk of getting tied up with the Justice Department. It has to be working on him. Though I interpret an air of feeling protected in Mr Reed do to his own wealth. As much as he knows wrong and not a mistake was done, he has no experience of the anxiety as what those in the labor economy are experiencing. He is still in denial to an extent which stops him from using his position to truly work to correct this wrong. Or maybe he just is not of the character to participate on the just side of the fight.
Mr. Reed does get one thing correct:

BILL MOYERS But when the financial community can buy the rules they want --
JOHN REED: Then you've got an unstable situation. That's an intolerable situation. I mean, obviously.

He knows.  He knows that regulation is a necessity. As the head of MIT, he could be doing so much more.
Common Mr. Reed, destiny is calling you.

Originally from Angry Bear

As (mis)conceived by most economists, money (which they confute here with currency) emerged as a solution to the time problem of barter economies: my spinach is ready now, but your apples won’t be ripe for months. How can we trade? Answer: you give me money for my spinach, and I give it back to you later for your apples.

That armchair-sourced fairy tale has been resoundingly debunked — that’s not how money (or even currency) emerged, and the Adam Smithian butcher/baker barter-exchange economy has never existed. Credit money — first embodied in tally marks on clay tablets — emerged and was in widespread use a couple of thousand years before coinage was invented (the latter largely to pay soldiers, whose itinerancy makes other methods problematic).

But the notion of barter economies lives on.

The whole system of national accounts (the NIPAs), in fact, was constructed by Simon Kuznets and company in the 30s as if we lived in a barter economy — with money being merely a time-shifting convenience, and with no accounting for financial assets at all. That accounting was only added a decade or so later, with publication of the Fed Flow of Funds accounts.

I’d like to suggest that this barter model for the real economy results in a great deal of confusion — including (especially?) among economists — largely because the NIPAs don’t usefully model the distinction between saving wheat (which can be consumed) and “saving” money (which can’t). By “useful” I mean “conceptually tractable, subject to consideration without logical error.”

I’m asserting that the barter model of the real economy results in lots of confusion and logical error. Viz: careful economic thinkers like Nick Rowe, Scott Sumner, and Andy Harless feeling the need/inclination to write lengthy think-pieces on that nature of “S.” Or the widespread misconception that “saving” (by whatever definition) “creates” “loanable funds.”

I’d even go so far as to say that those barter-model-induced logical errors pervade most thinking about economies and economics, both among economists and among the laity.

However: If you want to see a market that does operate as a barter economy, look no further than the market for financial assets. In this market, you trade your checking-account or money-market deposits for shares of Apple stock. Somebody else makes the opposite trade. The transaction is mutual and (effectively) instantaneous and simultaneous. It’s a barter.

In a very real and very counterintuitive sense, there is no money exchange in the financial markets. There are just barter swaps of financial assets.

A proleptic response to inevitable objections, and a definition of terms:

1. By “financial asset” I mean something that has exchange value — somebody will give you something in exchange for it — but that cannot be consumed (directly or through use or time/natural decay/obsolescence), providing actual human value — “utility” — in the process. (Things that can be so consumed, and do provide human utility — and derive their perceived value from that utility — are real goods/assets.)

2. “Money,” then, would be that exchange value as embodied (or metaphorically “stored”) in financial assets. Money cannot, in fact, even exist except as it is so embodied. Financial assets are money’s sines qua non – the things without which it does not exist.

Those financial assets (and the money they embody) can be tallied — represented — on clay tablets or in electronic accounting systems, in mental accounting ledgers (“You owe me”), or in physically exchangeable representations of those ledger tallies, such as dollar bills or stock certificates.

By this definition, a dollar bill or a deposit in a checking account is a financial asset, just as much as a share of stock or a government bond is. Which means that all exchanges of financial assets are swaps. Trades. Barters.

Exchanges for real goods, however, are different. When you buy or sell a real good, money (embodied in a financial asset) moves from one account to another, and — this is key — doesn’t disappear. It keeps getting passed on, exchanged. Real goods move the other way, and do disappear. You’re trading something that only has exchange value for something that can — will – be consumed. Conceptually: Financial assets travel in circles. Real goods travel in one direction only: from birth to death, production to consumption.

A physical metaphor may help: think of the financial system (including physical currency transactions) as a giant wheel, pushing along a conveyor belt of real goods.

But economists try to think about/model these very different situations as identical — as if “money” were being exchanged for bonds (and implicitly, as if those bonds will eventually be “consumed”). Since (mental) models for barter economies must be structured very differently from models for monetary economies,* modeling both of these as the same is problematic, confusing, and productive of logical errors — and perhaps even just plain wrong.

The gist of this thinking is not new — much of it reflects ideas floated long ago by circuitists, chartalists, modern monetary theorists, and other such (g)ists. But I’m hoping the formulation as presented here may be useful to others, as it is to me, in 1. forming mental/conceptual models of how economies work, and 2. evaluating the models bruited by others — notably the inherent validity of their underlying and often unstated assumptions.

I would point out in particular that as with my discussion here, the accounting-based modeling approach of Wynne Godley (and his predecessors, successors, collaborators, and parallel travelers) begins not where Kuznets did — with the interchange of real goods and services — but with the nuts and bolts of financial accounting. This approach imposes logical constraints on economists’ reasoning, constraints that seem sadly lacking in much barter-economy thinking.

As Godley says in the conclusion to his seminal paper:

In contrast to the standard textbook methodology, which starts by making very strong behavioural assumptions based on no empirical evidence at all (for example regarding the shape and role of an aggregate neo-classical production function), [this methodology suggests that] a different paradigm is indicated in which knowledge is gradually built up by empirical study, within the formidable constraints imposed by double entry accounting.

I’m not saying it’s impossible to think logically and coherently using the NIPA/Flow of Funds economic model, with the (confusing) barter and savings models embodied in the NIPAs. I’m saying it’s very difficult — especially since economists aren’t trained in financial accounting — and that as a result logical failures are widespread.

* Nick Rowe quoting Clower: “Hang on. In a Walrasian economy there is one big market where all n goods are exchanged; in a barter economy there are (n-1)n/2 markets where 2 goods are exchanged; and in a monetary economy there are (n-1) markets where 2 goods are exchanged, one of which is money.”

Cross-posted at Asymptosis.

Originally from Angry Bear