Wall Street Likes Romney

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Cartoon: Congress and Wall Street

Cartoon: Wall Street

Cartoon: Wall Street Protesters

Cartoon: Wall Street Greed

Cartoon: Wall Street

Cartoon: The Economy

Myth of a Free Market

Joel Bowman writes:

One of the more pervasive myths, perpetuated – either ignorantly or maliciously – by the mainstream media, is that the market tumult witnessed over the past few years is somehow a result of the free market having “run wild.”

The argument, as you are surely familiar with it, goes something like this…

Until recent and heroic intervention by the Feds, the world had been aimlessly bobbing about on a sea of unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism. Adrift in the cold, harsh, dog-eat-dog seascape, where rules were callously discarded and government vigilance eschewed, we clueless individuals simply made our way as best we could. Of course, it wasn’t long before we lost sight of the horizon. Then, the clouds of capitalist deceit obscured our view of the stars, by which we had previously been navigating our way across the perilous oceans. Sensing our vulnerability, the greedy capitalists stealthily moved in under the cover of “free market anarchism” to rock the markets and capsize our tiny, unguarded vessel.

What followed – around 2007-08 – was the painful aftermath of a great era of free market irresponsibility. Lessons were to be learned. Regulators, it was said, had failed to protect us (mostly from ourselves). The markets had been allowed to “run wild,” fleecing all and sundry of their earthly wares. The whole system was in danger of collapsing under the weight of its own free reigns and pundits from every corner of the boat were soon crying out for some form of central guidance, some direction, some calm. This, we were told, and not without a wag of the finger, is what happens to modern, mixed-market economies when they become adulterated by the blinding whims of free market capitalism.

And it would be a nice story, with a presumably easy remedy…if only it were true. Alas…

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Cartoon: Wall Street Graffiti

Cartoon: Investment Banking

Sheldon Richman on Dodd-Frank Financial Legislation

President Obama has signed the financial industry regulatory overhaul – officially, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Predictably, what he said about it cannot possibly be true.

For example: “[T]hese reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history. And these protections will be enforced by a new consumer watchdog with just one job: looking out for people – not big banks, not lenders, not investment houses – looking out for people as they interact with the financial system.”

And: “[B]ecause of this law, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes. There will be no more tax-funded bailouts — period. If a large financial institution should ever fail, this reform gives us the ability to wind it down without endangering the broader economy. And there will be new rules to make clear that no firm is somehow protected because it is ‘too big to fail,’ so we don’t have another AIG.”

Note that Obama did not promise to spare the taxpayers from having to foot the bill for the government’s mistakes. He and the members in Congress know better than to make that howler of a promise. Nevertheless, the magnitude of the whoppers being told about this law is astounding.

The government cannot deliver on pledges to protect consumers in the financial markets and to shield taxpayers from bailouts. In the first instance — consumer protection — financial instruments are inherently complex and government attempts to shelter less-sophisticated investors and borrowers from all danger would either require control of products to the point of prohibiting things people want or inundating them with information until they ignore all of it because of the sheer volume. Alas, what the new law will provide consumers is a false sense security – and that’s worse than none at all...

Most generally, the new law exhibits the standard governmental hubris. Who truly believes that an army of necessarily myopic bureaucrats can ever know enough to 1) anticipate a systemic crisis and 2) do something intelligent about it in a timely way? The more centralized the power the more vulnerable we average taxpayers are. Mistakes are system-wide. The virtue of a freed market is not that it’s unregulated (it’s not) but that its radically decentralized...

It’s Dodd, by the way, who said of his bill, “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.” And Frank is ready to submit new legislation to fix any mistakes in the law. We’re about to have a laboratory experiment of the law of unintended consequences.

Obama said: “For years, our financial sector was governed by antiquated and poorly enforced rules that allowed some to game the system and take risks that endangered the entire economy.” The implication is now we have up-to-date rules that will be vigorously enforced. But he can’t possibly know that. Why not? Because in writing the law, Congress did not write the rules. It merely handed that job off to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in a variety of agencies.

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Cartoon: Financial Reform

Financial Reform and the Briar Patch

In 1971 George Stigler published his “Theory of Economic Regulation” in which he hypothesized that regulatory agencies tend to be “captured” by the organizations they are regulating, so that the regulated organizations benefit at the expense of the general public.

Stigler’s capture theory of regulation is playing itself out again in the financial market regulation that is currently being considered by Congress.

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Cartoon: Wall Street Bailouts

Cartoon: Wall Street Reform

Cartoon: Wall Street Reform

Cartoon: Pay Czar

Cartoon: Too Big to Fail

Tyler Cowen on Politics and the Economy

Tyler Cowen's When Politics Don't Belong

FOR years now, many businesses and individuals in the United States have been relying on the power of government, rather than competition in the marketplace, to increase their wealth. This is politicization of the economy. It made the financial crisis much worse, and the trend is accelerating...

But we are now injecting politics ever more deeply into the American economy, whether it be in finance or in sectors like health care. Not only have we failed to learn from our mistakes, but also we’re repeating them on an ever-larger scale.

Lately the surviving major banks have reported brisk profits, yet in large part this reflects astute politicking and lobbying rather than commercial skill...

President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the birth of a military-industrial complex. Today we have a financial-regulatory complex, and it has meant a consolidation of power and privilege.

We’ve created a class of politically protected “too big to fail” institutions, and the current proposals for regulatory reform further cement this notion. Even more worrying, with so many explicit and implicit financial guarantees, we are courting a bigger financial crisis the next time something major goes wrong.

We should stop using political favors as a means of managing an economic sector...

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Barry Ritholtz comments on Cowen's essay

The large banks and brokers lobbied for special treatment and got it; they manipulated government legislation for their own ends; They asked for and received special treatment. This is a unique dispensation that almost no other businesses have enjoyed — certainly nowhere near the degree the finance sectors has received. Instead of earning their way via market place competition, these financials were uniquely treated in terms of regulation, legislation and tax policy.

Indeed, many people still seem wed to the wrong belief — it was not too much regulation that caused the problems. Rather, it was the special exemptions from regulation that in reality led to the crisis. From leverage to derivatives to lending standards to interest rates, the government acquiesced to the wants of the banking sector.

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My thoughts: Ritholtz likes to talk of "radical deregulation." This is not what we have. Deregulation would apply across the board to all players. Ritholtz correctly points out that "these financials were uniquely treated in terms of regulation, legislation and tax policy." This is exactly what Cowen point out when he states, "Today we have a financial-regulatory complex, and it has meant a consolidation of power and privilege." This disagreement is more about terminology that facts.

Big Banks: TARP and Bonuses

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