Four papers i wanna write if I'm ever patient

Local Organizing in a Global World: The Marginalization of Bright-eyed Idealists
(Post-industrialization has largely worked itself through the developed world, this means more and more problems are driven by external forces fundamentally outside the control of communities or would be activists. An organizer in the Rust Belt today might do better to work in New Delhi. But what does this mean for the identity or prospects of the individual who wants to affect positive change?)

The Evolution of Real versus Derived Profits on Wall Street from 1970-2010
(This information is so proprietary- but I imagine the shift from primary to derived assets would be interesting. There is no normative judgment that derived or synthetic profits are bad, but it's a macro analysis I don't know that's been done. Additionally, a larger real asset base only potentially provides a broader base for structured income products. At some point though, productivity necessitates actually making something in the first place.)

Prisoners Just Want Community: Lessons in the Green Prisons Movement
(This idea of hardened criminals wanting to cut the pesticides out of the prison yard, or compost their food or install solar cells is very interesting. What motivates this? Boredom? Manipulation? Atonement? I assert that if prisoners had access to these programs in the first place they might never have committed crimes, as the green movement connects people profoundly not just with a broader purpose, but an entire community. Parole programs could incorporate these services into their programs as both service and therapy.)

Speed of Thought as Speed Bumps for Information Transmital
As the vectors of information delivery expand and accelerate now on a seemingly annual basis, the rate limiting step of our ability to celebrate or appreciate, yet alone digest, information may increasingly be our innate capacity to process such exposure. In 2005, the email checking and AOL searching of 2000 seemed pedestrian, and in 2010, the blogging and i-tuning of 2005 seems pedestrian compared to our tweeting and i-padding, and there's little to suggest it won't be the same in 2015- my guess would be in the direction of integrated devices reaching out to us, rather than passively responding to our requests, based on the many known preferences it has compiled from our routine requests, a sort of Amazon suggested purchases feature for all media across all platforms. Yet I find myself sometimes simply unable to make sense of everything I see before me, the children's book Where the Wild Things Are turned into a major motion picture turned into a digital dowload turned into an instant App on my i-pad, to watch on the side as I work an excel sheet and check my blog-feed. There is more that I want to watch and do, and am now capable of, than I could ever complete. In these moments the brain almost freezes akin to a hardrive. Which one to open? Which to prioritize? In other words, there may be a limit to how useful such devices may be, the rate limiting step being our thoughts patterns themselves.

P.s. - As Goldman Sachs testifies today, I have a hard time understanding the allegations and think the SEC's case is going to have a hard time (it was only voted out by 3-2). Goldman was selling income streams from insurance on mortgage debt (synthetic CDOs) to two global institutions that engaged in this all the time. Any transaction necessitates a buyer and a seller, the idea that these funds would go long by buying in assumes there is a counterparty that would go short. It's immaterial what Goldman thought of the deal, they are the market maker. The funds requested assets of a certain type to buy, Goldman obliged, and in the process consulted with individuals of varying perspectives. For someone to make money on long positions, there has to be another party willing to cover the positive spread if they are proven wrong, which would be the shorts. Our regulatory system is about 30 years behind the curve and needs to be upgraded, but this vilification of the bankers society collectively depends on for basic finance as well as investment finance can at times look like a modern day witch hunt, or the populist version of McCarthyism. I am no deep sympathizer with speculators, particularly in the non-deliverable commodities sector, but last time I checked people are innocent until proven guilty. Also, derivatives need to be regulated, but this can be done through registries, clearinghouses, or exchanges, or some type of self reporting. Why the fixation on exchanges? Most of these contracts don't even involve public entities, they should just report their balance sheet to the SEC/CFTC and be done with it, John Q. Public doesn't need to be able to Google their proprietary deals so we can hear a bunch of mindless quipping and potentially damaging adjustments to market confidence.)

The President's Financial Regulatory Proposal

About two days a week throughout the fall last year there would be a black suburban parked on the street I walk from the red line to work. On these days I’d walk a little slower to see Treasury Secretary Paulson walk from a giant office building into the waiting car. I saw him the day after Lehman failed, the only thing fresh looking about him was his suit- and the day after the inauguration, with 8 foot high metal cage-like fences spilled down Penn Avenue as far as the eye could see, tons of trash blowing surreally in the freezing wind- this time looking more relaxed in his basketball shorts and unbuttoned shirt. It was pretty surreal to wake up and read the Journal or Times chronicling the latest historical market failure and then cross paths with its leading financial firefighter. A year later I’m afraid the sense of urgency of those fall months is fast diminishing. A tragedy of the last year is a terrible thing to waste. From the ashes of a failed regulatory system, that cost 3 million people their jobs and nearly as many their homes, and $7 trillion in wealth, is the promise to build a sleeker, more common-sense, more responsive regulatory system. And here many people will stop me simply with the semantics, “regulation” is a terrible word- so call it what you will. The basic concept though holds true in essentially every aspect of life. We don’t get on a jet plane and just hope the proper safety checks have been done and the pilot isn’t drunk, we “regulate” it, we don’t trust a stranger to deliver our new baby at a whim, we “regulate” it. So those who would notionally dismiss regulation as a bad thing should maybe stop flying or stop having kids.

The legal zeitgeist of these times is the President’s Financial Regulatory Reform proposal (http://www.financialstability.gov/docs/regs/FinalReport_web.pdf). In a little over two short months this entire white paper has been translated to authorizing language and sent to the Hill, where as usual it was met with a startling sense of complacency and criticism without much constructive feedback. If this can pass in some form by 2010 my hypothesis of complacency is proved wrong. If not, a similar asset bubble and burst cycle and all of the capital contraction, income decline and job loss and capital loss (repeat) is not just possible but probable. The impetus to correct a clearly insufficient financial regulatory regime – one that forced the government to choose between catastrophic failure and chaos or injecting huge of amounts of taxpayer dollars- is otherwise lost. Critics can say what they like about the choices made last year, but with Bear, Lehman, AIG, WaMu- those were the options. Here are some core tenets of the President’s regulatory agenda.

1) Capital ratios. A working group is currently drafting the details due out in a couple months. When the banks’ experienced severe asset valuation shocks they were forced to liquidate and perpetuate the cycle. With better loan loss provisioning this cycle could have been prevented. In practical terms, probably means going from tangible common equity ratios of 4% to 8%.

2) Resolution authority. The FDIC can repossess and either break up or auction off bankrupt depository institutions. There is no similar authority for non-depositories or holding companies that own depositories. The Fed can loan money to anyone or anything so long as it is last resort and there is sufficient collateral. If there isn’t, then there is no way to protect innocent bystanders from the consequences of large bank failure. The President’s proposal would permit the Fed with Treasury consent, to seize and efficiently break up large failing firms.

3) Preventing regulatory arbitrage. Under current law, thrift holding companies (banks with a higher share of mortgages created to facilitate liquidity in the housing market), industrial loan companies (like GMAC or GE Capital), credit card banks, trust companies and grandfathered non-bank banks are exempt from most supervisory requirements, simply because they were left out of the BHC Act. Firms (like Bear, Lehman, AIG, WaMu) simply owned one of these entities and could simultaneously avoid regulation while having access to the Fed’s lending if they got into trouble. This gave the public no risk management function but sole responsibility should they encounter significant risk. Heads I win, tails you lose. Financial companies should not be able to escape consolidated supervision by technicality.

4) Systemic risk regulation. The proposal creates a new category of Tier 1 financial companies which will be overseen by the Federal Reserve. These would be firms whose failure threatened the entire market, and would be subject to coordinated and robust prudential regulation. Bank holding companies consist of so many separate entities that they can have a dozen separate regulators each and allows firms to arbitrage the differences to their advantage.

5) Consumer financial protection. A central catalyst of the ’08 recession was the set of uninformed and stupid decisions consumers made- like buying houses they couldn’t ever afford or signing up for credit cards with early payback penalties. The proposal observes correctly that finance and economics have a distinct world view, one that does not manage the cultural, psychological and communications challenges inherent in good consumer advocacy. There are bright lines that could be established, but it takes clear authority and communication otherwise it will likely die in the interagency process as it has for decades. Without clear responsibility for common-sense consumer protection there can be no accountability. There are consumer protections for seatbelts, kids toys and lawnmowers, it's time for some for households' budgets too.

6) Office of National Insurance Regulator. The U.S. regulates the insurance industry essentially entirely at the State level and is the only G-20 country without a national framework for insurance oversight. There is clear executive will to do so, now we need legislative consensus.

7) Office of National Bank Supervisor. This would consolidate the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (which regulates interstate banks) and the Office of Thrift Supervision to oversee all national banks. One office in Treasury would have sole authority for national banks and be able to provide consolidated prudential oversight rather than the current fragmented system.

8) Financial Services Oversight Council. This would force regulators to actually talk to each other and coordinate policy while closing gaps in regulation. In ’08 we saw a fundamentally ad hoc response among the Fed, FDIC, OCC, Treasury and others with predictable turf wars and inefficiencies. Before any major action, like designating a firm a Tier 1 Financial Holding Company or intervening in an institution’s distress, this council would meet to have an integrated approach. It would be a consensus building forum while avoiding the tenuous nature of decision by committee by giving the Treasury Secretary executive authority as the Chairman.

9) Central clearinghouse of derivatives. This would establish a central resolution, clearing and payment exchange for derivates. Most derivatives today are cleared by JP Morgan and Mellon Bank of New York, so creating a consolidated exchange would be eminently doable. By providing transparency in this market, it would not prevent dealmaking, hedging or economically valuable speculation, it would just provide basic information to inform the price discovery mechanism. It was a surprise to most of the world that AIG had a hedge fund grafted on top of it that had drunkenly bet the house on the U.S. housing binge. If people could have seen this, the asset valuation collapse could have been incorporate in prices in near real time and prevented a huge dis-equilibrium and subsequent quick collapse. Contrary to popular misconception, this proposal would not prohibit custom derivatives.

People on the Hill who have better ideas should put them forward, but a system that allowed the consequences of the last year is definitionaly in need of repair. Just ask a harried former Republican Treasury Secretary.

Stress Testing

Banks do stress tests all the time, you can’t plan for what you don’t understand or measure. And banking supervision is a full-time job. Balance sheets change in value daily, new assets come on the books daily, and the economy is fluid. Banks have full-time examiners who are continuously measuring their loan levels, estimating the potential loss exposure, and then requiring loss reserves accordingly. So the idea that these stress tests were rolled out as a big bold new policy, and then so publicly announced, seems off-base and represents an unnecessary policy risk.

One, the necessity of these “new" tests just show that the regulators failed to begin with, that they didn’t even know the basic exposure of the banks in the first place, and still didn’t. And two, the whole basis for the test is to prepare for contingencies, things that haven’t and very well may not happen. Like a “stress” case and a “worst” case. Chairman Bernanke characterized these cases as “unlikely”, yet they are the basis for requiring firms to raise more capital, either by selling off potentially valuable assets (like Citi did with its Japan brokerage), diluting existing shareholders by converting government loans to common stock, or by taking on more debt. All things that shouldn't be done simply because of unlikely assumptions. In addition, the tests created significant anxiety and hurtful market expectations for weeks preceding the tests. Once the results were leaked and it was clear the banks already had the ability to close the so called gap, the market cheered accordingly. But what if the gap was much larger, then this policy would have created a panic of sorts, causing many funds and investors to dump financials further- tangibly hurting the bank’s ability to raise capital, all because of hypothetical and “unlikely” assumptions about capital they might need should the situation deteriorate. Except that the reason for the deterioration could have been the anxiety created from the tests themselves. Thank goodness the banks had been stockpiling money for months anticipating this- if the gap had been larger this stress test would have just set back a huge rally by throwing its full weight behind assumptions and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. To minimize this risk, the tests should have been called simulations and been completely internal between the supervisors and banks, so regulators could know exactly how much capital to inject under worsening conditions, and the banks could come up with a plan to execute in such an event. Instead, by forcing the banks to raise the money automatically, and practically broadcasting every discussion with the world, it was akin to evacuating a theatre full of people just as the curtain starts to rise because, well there’s no fire- but there could be.

This policy was a big roll of the dice and continues to show the youth of Treasury Secretary Geithner. These sorts of tests should not be confused with reality, and should be routine functions of the supervisors, not spectacles we all hold our breath for. Additionally, why they used tangible common equity as the definition of capital and not Tier I has yet to be answered. The big banks have 10%+ of capital they could access, but only about a third of it is common stock (considered a safe liquid asset). So, these tests probably understated their true capital level by about 70%. I’m glad this turned out as well as it did. But it’s only because we lucked out and didn’t have a full stampede out the door when the government yelled “fire!” in a crowded room.

A Simmer Down Now

Nobel winning economist and liberal zeitgeist Paul Krugman suggested today with a straight face that we return to a financial system, as he put it “like the 60s” - pure depository institutions saving and lending with little to no securitization or hedging. He also seemed to half-heartedly pick a fight with Larry Summers. I hope Larry will put down his 17th diet Coke of the day for a moment and take 20 minutes to draft a response for next week’s Financial Times. It would be a debate we would all benefit from. But then again maybe Summers thinks Krugman’s argument is too much of a straw man, too weak and unthreatening to solicit a response.

Krugman’s general sentiment is dead on, in that the financial system of the future cannot replicate the one we’ve just had. But this does not mean we have to roll back all financial innovation in extremus. This doesn’t mean we need to purge Wall Street or banks of anything that is a little complicated. I think more than anything else it means we just need more checks and balances, or in some places the creation of them, like over the counter trading. And it means we need to “keep it simple stupid.” The experiences of the last 6 months are not so much about the creation of new or wildly complicated financial products, as it is a reminder that firms need at least 5% or so cash on hand and need to verify the information their loans are based on (e.g. mortgage applicants). If these two things had been in place we wouldn’t be here today, and Krugman would not have the bully pulpit to adopt his pseudo neo-Ludite financial perspective.

Look at it from the perspective of a newly graduated college student with a decent job, who wants to buy her first house. The ability of this person to get a loan, and the interest charged on it is directly related to the willingness of banks to provide it. A typical bank will have 90% of their portfolio seeking a return in some respect. A good deal of these will be wrapped in recourse debt instruments to provide diversity, and often produce a margin via selling. This diversity represents more risk control for the banks and thus confidence to lend, and this margin represents more money the bank can lend, and thus more favorable credit terms for our post-collegiate house owning aspirant. And the security is only unsustainable, only contributes to a bubble, if the face value is below the current value of the future cash flows – e.g. if significant numbers of those who borrowed the consumer debt that stands behind the security will not actually pay up. This risk can be prevented quite easily with accurate information about the borrowers. This is widely applied today in the government’s new housing plan, which won’t deal with potential borrowers above a 38% debt/income ratio. Of course, to determine this you have to actually record this information. A greasy-haired condo pusher in El Paso wasn’t always accurately reporting this information to banks, surprise surprise! and banks were eager to make the deal anyway to push it up the chain. But this little scheme does not mean securities cannot be properly valued. In fact it just means the Fed needs to require actual records of income to be reported, as they did in February. So, securities can actually be worth more than their market price, and it’s good for the investor who sees a profit, good for the banks who generate more financing, and good for our college grad who can afford a slightly better house on better terms. Krugman would have us, in one radical fell swoop, nix this whole concept. Dangerous idea.

The other part of his argument attacks the big spooky market of derivates, e.g. futures, options and swaps- concepts that have only been around for hundreds of years- from farmers wanting to protect their crops from future unpredictable weather to British spice traders who didn’t want their global deals to be subject to the volatility of foreign exchange currencies. Derivatives just allow risk control, and if you happen to control this risk yourself, an incentive to do so in the form of profit. And yes, rules need to be in place. Like the degree of leveraging and collateral, or who’s trading where- tracking all this is in the works. Yet high finance is not the only place where Lord of the Flies will play out if there aren’t basic rules, and this caveat is no reason to pick on Wall Street. The credit default swaps (you will swap money for my asset if it turns out to totally suck) fiasco with AIG was not a result of the derivatives or futures system, but because they invested in a bubble (quite happily) and didn’t have nearly enough cash on hand to meet their obligations. Options and swaps are banks’ insurance, and without them they will understandably lend a lot less. Which means Krugman’s argument hurts just about everyone who wants to ever use money for anything. We require insurance for a $2,000 Datsun with 270,000 miles, it's the law, why would we not have insurance on $1 billion in mortgage loans? Or 20 million barrels a day of crude that we import? Or pensions? Or… Risk control is paramount and lowers the costs of financing and increases the availability of productivity enhancing capital. Keep it simple stupid.

Squeezing the Triggers

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil talks in his book about how in 2001-2 he and Fed Chairman Greenspan preferred a “trigger” approach to the then proposed Bush tax cuts. They wanted to cut taxes in phases depending on the future growth of revenues relative to budget needs. There was a current account surplus at the time, and so they had no problem cutting revenues, but they wanted to do it in parts so that if a budget deficit opened again they could achieve some balance between future needs and tax reductions, by not pulling the trigger on the rest of the cuts. It was a good idea because it was extremely policy neutral. It did not oppose tax cuts at all, and would have let trillions of dollars of them go forward, just so long as they were real cuts, not just an intergenerational transfer. I think the same idea of triggers could have been useful with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Congress could have developed three $250 billion segments, with only the contents of the first chunk really spelled out in the legislation. The first segment would be spent immediately, and the President and his advisers would submit a plan to spend the other two when they needed them, allowing them to adapt as the economic situation evolves. This would have focused funds on the areas where they can be spent the fastest, made passing the bill even quicker, allowed an opportunity for “lessons learned” in the remaining two sections, allowed the nation to essentially test how well the stimulus worked (for instance by comparing White House job creation estimates to reality), given control over the amount added to the deficit by not spending the whole amount if the economy began significantly rebounding, and essentially improved the package over time by seeing where the most jobs are created for the least amount of money and where investments enhance productivity the greatest.

Now anyone in favor of the stimulus would surely point out that it was so big because the challenges are so big, and two, passing it once was no sure thing, so why repeat it. On the first point, in all actuality there are very real constraints on how fast that volume of money can be spent. Infrastructure grants typically take 5 years to administer, any job in an emerging field (like green energy) by definition has a scarce labor market and so there needs to be new technical training and certification, which can take years. Even just obligating the money, e.g. signing contracts to spend it, is subject to either a formulaic application process, competitive bidding, or the state legislative process – all of which takes time. And then often there is design work or studies that have to be done before people can even be hired. That’s why the White House estimates about 75% of the funds will be spent within 18 months. That’s quick, and about as quick as it could be reliably done, but it’s by no means particularly streamlined. So long as the three triggers are pulled within a year or longer, the funds will get out the door at the same rate as the consolidated version, and because of learning and technology, it might even become more efficient. Right now Energy Secretary Chu, a brilliant Nobel chemist, has over $150 billion in credit authority that he can place basically anywhere he thinks will advance green technology and create jobs. And understandably, he’s still trying to figure out the best way to do it. This inevitably involves wading through thousands of applications from mainly promising sounding companies who applied via their states for a piece of the action. Figuring out which ones to give money is tough. Figuring out how to make all those loans into a cohesive system is tougher. And knowing if you spent the money as well as could be done, for instance that you didn’t deny the next Google of energy, is probably impossible. If the money was spent in waves, and appropriated in triggers, they could adapt their lending based on real results in the field and be surer that they’re making the best investments for the economy and for the future. The worst situation would be to invest in an idea or project that becomes obsolete, then people are unemployed all the same once it’s built, but then are stuck with a less productive economy because of antiquated technology, and now will have to pay higher taxes to pay off the debt from the stimulus. A triggered approach would provide real-time information to make the soundest investments.

On the issue of passing three parts, one has to look no further than the Troubled Asset Relief Program. It had two parts, where the President had to request to use the second half of the funds and get a majority vote to receive the funds. Now I think the TARP has been very successful given its point. There was a clear and present risk of systemic failure of the credit markets in early October. In the course of a week there was a string of huge financial institutions failing, and each one lost weakened the remaining. Since TARP passed and the banks recapitalized, there have been no major failures and now that basically seems out of the question. The point wasn’t to create a boom or solve every firm’s problems (in fact you don't want to do that because it deflates the important value of risk appreciation), it was to ensure the continued operation of the capital markets, and it did. Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke had essentially a weekend to come up with a plan, and I think they did a brilliant job. And they structured it in a way that taxpayers will almost certainly see every dime back. So the stimulus could have been done in the same way, where the President has to submit a plan for spending the remaining section when he wants it, and then a 51% vote is required in Congress. Given the majority’s comfortable cushion, the request could be passed in an afternoon. Only the bill itself authorizing this structure would require 60%.

I also think that the stimulus bill could have been more creative, and not cheesy idealistic creative, but 21st century creative. Basic infrastructure is important. We need bridges and wastewater plants and sidewalks. States and localities already spend enormous sums on this every year and there are large revolving funds provided by the federal government annually in these areas. The stimulus needed $100 billion immediately going to the states to cover current deficits, and it needed money for basic infrastructure and schools and transportation. But how about incentives for new investments? What about a venture fund to invest in new research and companies? In a hyper-competitive and growing (on net over the 21st century the world will almost assuredly see the largest creation of wealth in history, China and India alone are on pace to pull almost half the world into the middle class) we must make long-term investments. As Friedman recently wrote, what about recruiting the best Ph.D’s from around the world by issuing more skilled worker visas, so they can build companies here and create new demand via buying surplus houses and supporting American businesses? The world becomes less brick and mortar every day, yet this bill seems to lay a lot of bricks. This stimulus is probably one of the greatest domestic policy achievements of a President in the first month in office ever. There is no perfect policy, yet this one is quite good. How good is very hard to know, unless you waited for some of the smoke to clear before pulling the trigger again.

Executive Compromise: The Contrarian View

There has been much populist celebration over President Obama’s recent freezing of bank executives’ salaries who receive federal money, and before that the freezing of his senior staff’s salaries. I’m not adamantly against this, but I don’t see how it accomplishes much of anything. So I’ll take the contrarian view – the usually more fun view. Firms already have every reason to avoid taking government money - because they’re not getting “bailed out” at all. They’re giving up huge stakes in their companies and the future profits that go with it, and assuming new debt to pay the government back. AIG gave up nearly 80% of its assets in the form of preferred stock and warrants. This means everyone who has parked money with them is now in the back of the line behind the federal government for dividends or shareholder privileges, experienced huge price dilution, and will likely see the government slowly and painfully liquidate their holdings. The shareholders don’t want that, the executives don’t want that, employees don’t want that, no one wants that – it’s a last resort. So the notion that they’re willing to basically give up the entire company so they can get their hands on public money just so they can get their holiday bonuses seems implausible. Also, Wall Street bonuses typically make up about a third of the NYC tax base in a given year. Without these bonuses, the city faces an even bigger budget gap, has to cut more services in a time where government purchases are needed to create demand, and ironically some of the very funds being loaned to banks in the first place.

And then there’s the whole issue of incentives. There are very few people who have the experience or capacity to run large financial institutions, let alone fix them when they are awash in problems, and it’s not like they have nothing better to do. The Jamie Dimons or Lloyd Blankfeins are not short on job opportunities. Cutting compensation 95%+ isn’t exactly the recipe for recruiting the best managers and thinkers in a time when they are most needed to sort through a menagerie of problems. The financial downturn was precipitated by a phenomenal disregard for basic due diligence. Most people put more effort into buying a used car than Citi did buying $100 billion of bonds, as Robert Rubin put it – “it was an afterthought.” Jamie Dimon largely protected JP Morgan in the summer of ’07 just by realizing he couldn’t really explain the slight uptick in defaults, and once they realized that they also realized they had no idea why the bonds were rated so high, so they divested. And diligence, as the word suggests, is not easy or particularly enjoyable. These firms will avoid further trouble only when they have executive committees that take their time and scrutinize their every step. If they’re not rewarded, if incentives are muted, it becomes less clear that they have a motivation to perform this diligence. Misaligned incentives (like in securities bundling or rumor-fueled short selling) got us into this situation; a system capable of preventing it will not emerge until these basic incentives are realigned. And last, the success or failure of these firms does not hinge on the value of their relatively meager salaries. President Obama has about 300 senior staff that earn about $180,000 a year and usually get a 5% annual pay increase. Assuming Obama keeps this freeze in place for 8 years this amounts to $24m in savings. The economic system is facing challenges on the order of millions of jobs and trillions of dollars. And during this time, good policy, and the hard-working men and women behind developing it, are more important than ever. Saving a few million bucks and cutting pay to the people you most rely on doesn’t seem to accomplish much.

What people really care about is “are they doing a good job”. People care about good decisions, good investments and good profits. If the firms were above water today, no one would raise a peep about their compensation. Targeting annual bonuses confuses the issue, which is ultimately one of bottom line performance, something that usually requires more compensation, not less.

Improving, not just saving, Social Security

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve heard it all before. Social security is not looking so secure, but why does it really matter? I think most people would probably say because it would certainly be nice to get that monthly check in the mail once they’ve retired, particularly when 7.5% of every paycheck is taken out for it. Who likes to pay something for nothing? After all, the current system is projected to take in less money than it pays out around 2017, which means it will eat up the budget, which means even tighter capital markets and higher future debt. And then of course it’s projected to go bankrupt in 2040. It’s all very boring.

But the bigger reason we should fix social security - and not just patch it up with a million clever little ideas, say by lowering the inflation index or pushing back the retirement age, which will succeed only in postponing insolvency and making people work harder for less, but not really improve anything - is because of the enormous… opportunity cost! I wish it could cut aluminum cans in half or something, but we’ll have to settle for opportunity cost. Think about the difference between every dollar of your paycheck that goes into the Social Security Trust Fund, and then is subsequently spent immediately and preserved in the form of debt, versus every dollar going going into a well balanced mutual fund and earning interest. And then multiply over, oh, say four decades. Say on average you make a real income of $50,000 a year for the next 40 years, and the standard 7.65% of this is contributed to payroll taxes, this is $153,000 in principal. When that money goes into the Trust Fund, the government at best will nullify the deleterious effects of inflation, and worse yet, may actually lose purchasing power depending on the spread of government bonds versus inflation, or still worse, may decide never to pay it.

On the other hand, pick any ten year period of the stock market, any 10 year performance period of Wall Street, and the average returns will never be below 7%. Not during the Great Depression, not during S & L or dotcom, not now, not ever. Business cycles are real, they happen, but the ups and downs average to a healthy trend. Saying something is reliable because it has never failed is all you can really go on. For instance, people banking on the Social Security Trust Fund paying them out around the middle of this century often cite how much more reliable a Government IOU is because the government has never defaulted on its debt. True, but then the rationale of the safety of Wall Street is no less reliable. The government has never defaulted on its obligations. And Wall Street has never produced less than 7% per decade in returns, let alone a loss. So say over the 40 years you’ve contributed that $153,000 to the government and the market just hits the bottom of that 7% return, you still turn that money into over $600k. Assuming the best, this is a 400% difference from what the government would pay out, a very steep opportunity cost. Now there are no guarantees. And if people would like to play the “more conservative card” of just paying into the fund and getting a government guarantee, they should be able to. But, just like U.S. Senators, people should have the choice to contribute their income into actual funds. The Regular ol’ Person system could be essentially the same design as the Senators’. There would be a pension board that oversees 5 or so broad investment plans, divided by their equity/fixed income ratio, but all diversified and managed by professionals and overseen to regulate leverage and risk (something missing since about 2004 when the SEC removed net capital holding requirements). The point is people couldn’t just invest wherever the mood struck them, there would be a small menu of balanced funds to choose from. And because of the simplicity of the rules - 5 plans, no more than 10:1 or so leveraging, it would be clear whether funds were being abused/Madoffed in any way.

I hope that any future modification to Social Security does not reflexively deny individuals a choice in how their earnings are used. I think this is the compromise that can be struck - people who like the current system (retooled with some painful actuarial adjustments) can stay with it. But not allowing individuals a choice to place their payroll earnings into a balanced fund seems to me to be denying people an awful lot, and for nothing but the concerns of other people who would be unaffected. It would have the added benefits of freeing the government up from a lot of debt and providing much needed private capital injections to our financial institutions. A lot of this could be used to do things like deploy clean energy, build smart grids, in short create good jobs. And of course there are details, there always are. When money from current workers is placed in an investment fund, and not siphoned towards current retirees, there will have to be bridge financing in the form of more debt. Yet so long as much of Asia has a 30% savings rate, and so long as there are sovereign wealth funds, there will be ample capital to absorb a few more government securities. Plus, paying these off in the future will be easier than waiting for the system to slide into debt and paying then, as the pension system will be more sustainable and profitable thanks to new productivity from deeper capital markets and decreased government retirement obligations - meaning a broader economic base. And there will have to be cut off points for when people can make the transition. And there will have to be a little bit of private earnings skimmed by the Board as reserves to provide insurance to people who might pick particularly unlucky times to retire – in this way they would be guaranteed a minimal payment not below the regular system. Bueller?

But the point is, legitimate debate about the system doesn’t have to ruin anything. Those who think the government is the best universal retirement planner and want that legal guarantee can have it. And those who would prefer to fund government managed private investments with their money can do that. Now this is bipartisanship This isn’t a parlor room discussion or a game of gotchya between editorialists (oh how Stiglitz, Krugman, Summers, Brooks et. al. love to seem the smartest guy in the room). It’s a very pragmatic day-to-day kitchen table decision. And I think given the choice, people should be given more opportunity, not less.

On another note, the CBO recently scored the House stimulus bill. It estimates 7% of the energy investments will be spent within 2 years and less than 50% of the transportation dollars spent in 4 years. This is too slow to provide immediate stimulus and generally conforms with what the Council of Economic Adviser's new chair Christina Romer has shown in her work. I think the second half of TARP ($150b to buy up worst assets, $150b for continued recapitalization and $50b for mortgage refinancing, which could save 1m+), combined with a more focused $100b stimulus could have great effect.