Can Government Prevent Disasters?

I am disheartened by the news of the recent bus tragedy in Benguet whereby some 41 people died when the Bus fell into the ravine.

Yet we hear some sectors intuitively propose government to intervene, in the assumption that government can indeed forestall disaster. Again “romancing the government” without examining the cost benefit tradeoffs.

Here is why I think government can’t help in preventing disasters, (even if you install a communist government)

1. Government officials don’t know and can’t tell the future.

2. Government officials don’t know and can’t tell ALL the ongoing changes in the environment.

3. Government officials don’t know and can’t tell ALL the spontaneous actions of tens of millions of people.

4. Government officials don’t know and can’t tell ALL the conditions of the vehicles that people use.

5. Government officials don’t know and can’t tell ALL the impact of the interactions of the people, the vehicles and the environment.

In short, it will ALWAYS BE A KNOWLEDGE problem.

So unless, someone can enlighten me on the supposed omniscience of government, from such premises, no matter what the government does, they won’t be able to prevent disasters.

At worst, they could enhance it.

How?

First, every government intervention entails a bureaucracy.

Two, every bureaucracy comes with financing charged to taxpayers. So if the government plans to reduce accidents by having people NOT to travel by imposing onerous taxes, then this would be the way to go. That’s because people will be too poor to travel. Yet quality of life can be associated with impact of disasters (Think Haiti)

Three every regulations will benefit one group at the expense of the other.

A great example of this would be the Philippine Maritime industry.

Out of the world’s 176 worst maritime disaster, the Philippines owns 6 of them and has the inglorious status of having the worst, the MV Dona Paz.

Well, it’s NOT that the maritime industry has been lacking regulation. The fact is the opposite the industry have SATED with regulations.

As I previously wrote,

It is a peculiar development why despite the repeated accidents by the same shipping company, consumers continue to patronize such private entity. The answer is the lack of choice.

None in the media has brought out the fact that the domestic shipping industry is a very tightly regulated industry.

Imagine, aside from 5 agencies that directly supervise the industry; namely, Maritime Industry Authority, Philippine Ports Authority, Bureau of Customs Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the Philippine Shippers Bureau, there are another twenty six (26) other agencies directly or indirectly regulate the inter-island freight shipping industry (NEDA’s Philippine Institute for Development Studies). Incredible red tape!

THIRTY ONE Agencies regulating the Shipping Industry yet the repeat disasters?! Why?

Because the bureaucratic red tape has served as a substantial barrier from competition to the benefit of the incumbent industry players.

And when consumers have been left with no choice, they will be forced to patronize even when the services offered are inferior or when their lives are put to risk. Ergo, the repeat disasters.

Another, there is such a thing called “regulatory capture”. It’s when the interests of the industry have “captured” the regulators, or when regulators and the protected industry dance the proverbial tango.

In many instances, regulators find their career outside public service in the industry which they once regulated. In short, the interest of the regulators tends to align with the interest of the regulated for personal motives such as career or otherwise. (As I said regulators are HUMAN Beings and look after their personal interest FIRST). Thus, by keeping chummy they open the doors for laxity in supervision and risk of disasters.

Four, regulators are obsessed with rules and NOT with pleasing the consumers. Yet rules don’t and won’t incorporate everything that is known for the benefit of society. The fundamental premise of which anew is the Knowledge problem and of the interest of diverse groups involved in shaping the laws.

So instead of looking for the welfare of their clients or the consumers, industry providers will be forced to pay attention FIRST to comply with the web of laws.

And the cost of compliance is the obverse side of disaster, industry players tend to stick by the standards (regulations) and ignore the cost of a potential disaster from a black swan or a random event.

Remember life is dynamic, new technology, environmental changes and evolving consumer patterns among others contribute to “randomness”. Even new laws contribute to changes in people’s behaviour, which add to randomness or life’s complexities.

At the end of the day, if an accident from a black swan event happens, then the industry players can go scotch free since they are outside the ambit of government imposed standards.

Of course, unless consumers are deemed to be so dumb, then always the excuse for government intervention.

But in contrast to this, consumers can always be empowered to render discipline on the providers, if given the chance.

That is if they allow competition to determine their cost-benefit tradeoffs relative to the price, quality and safety of the product they use or consume.

It’s funny and an irony how we tend to TRUST the people to make the “right” choices about the leadership in elections, yet degrade their capabilities when they account to choose for their own self-interest which they have a direct stakeholding, when dealing with personal needs and wants. It’s a reasoning gone backwards.

Another, outside regulations and the consumers, the other source of discipline are tort laws. If the judicial system will be facilitative into rendering judicious resolution and indemnity to the aggrieved parties, then obviously no business interests would in the right mind NOT to seek the interest of the consumers because they will and can be sued out of existence.

In short, you don’t need more government intervention, what you need is more competition and judicious facilitation of tort laws.

___
Update:

I’d like to thank Nonoy Oplas for his most valued input (see comment section).

Nevertheless, let me clarify that the Jeepney industry can’t be classified as an open competition but a regulated competition. As an analogy, if you have (x number of) pets in a cage and throw food into it, your pets will “compete” for the food you throw. There is “competition” but the competition is limited by your actions (as pet owner), or in the case of the Jeepney, the government.

Jeepneys are essentially covered by a slew of regulations, these includes franchise restrictions, territorial coverage, allowable fees to charge (public tolls), vehicle type and engine specifications, road use, traffic regulations—the latter, of which are vacillatingly implemented, and perhaps many more (this would need to be researched and a topic for another day).

Thus, I wouldn’t generalize that discourteousness of many Jeepney drivers as a result of “competition” but from a combination of many of these regulations which has skewed the behaviour of drivers towards “incivility”.

One shouldn’t forget the uneven application and occasional boorish behaviour of the implementing officers and notwithstanding the “palakasan” attitude as a result of political dependence could also be contributing factors. So there are many many many factors influencing the Jeepney industry.

Since buses have “higher barriers to entry”, one might say they seem more professional in competition. But I have my reservations. This needs more research before making any conclusions. Some like Victory Liner which has been a favourite of mine seem to respond to “competition”.

The transport sector is more a regulated competition than a free market competition. Hence, the beneficial effects from competition may NOT be apparent, since they are suppressed.

Of course, in agreement with Nonoy's suggestion, open competition, the abolishment of government agencies, facilitation of the tort laws, and the rule of law should matter most. One can use the this experiment as example.

Cartoon of the Day: Tax on Education

The following enlightening caricature from Heritage Foundation underscores how taxes impact the cost of education.

I just hope that there would be a Philippine version for this.

The Power Of Slow Change: The Rise Of Asian Consumers (Beer Drinkers)

China’s and the emerging market story can be seen in many aspects.

And part of these story that we seem to be seeing is the empowerment of Asian Consumers as signified by the surge in beer economics.

This from the Economist,

CHINA'S remarkable growth is as apparent in beer consumption as it is in more formal economic indicators. In the space of a couple of decades the country has gone from barely touching a drop to become the world's biggest beer market, a considerable distance ahead of America. And beer drinking in China is growing fast, by nearly 10% a year according to Credit Suisse's World Map of Beer. This might seem like good news for the four big firms that dominate global brewing. Between them ABI, SABMiller, Carlsberg and Heineken have nearly half the world market. But unlike America and other hugely profitable mature markets where beer drinking has levelled off or is in decline, China's drinkers provide slender profits. Still it remains a market with huge potential, though foreign brewers must now be rather tired of hearing that.

Trends like this are easy spot once you open your mind, but for many these changes would seem hard to grasp.

Nevertheless there are many possible ramifications here: some that come to my mind is that they provide windows of opportunity for investments, they give an insight on how many people in Asia are spending their money (cultural shift), they also reveal changes in trends that also have geopolitical and domestic political and economic implications and etc...

Interesting.

Has The Welfare State Peaked?

As Economist Herb Stein used to say, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

The welfare state which basically picks from one pocket and gives it to another is an unsustainable program. It works for as long as there are enough pockets to pick on to give to others.

Yet could we be seeing the peak of the welfare state?

This from the New York Times, (all bold highlights mine)

For years, Denmark was held out as a model to countries with high unemployment and as a progressive touchstone to liberals in the United States. The Danes, despite their lavish social welfare state, managed to keep joblessness remarkably low.

But now Denmark, which allows employers to hire and fire at will while relying on an elaborate system of training, subsidies for those between jobs and aggressive measures to press the unemployed into available openings, is facing its own strains. As a result, it is beginning to tighten up.

Struggling to keep its budget under control after the financial crisis, the government in June cut into its benefits system, the world’s most generous, by limiting unemployment payments to two years instead of four. Having found that recipients either get work right away or take any job as their checks run out, officials are also redoubling longstanding efforts to move Danes more quickly out of the safety net.

The New York Times, being a liberal in the conventional sense, ends up defending the welfare programs. However, the lesson seems quite clear.

As former chancellor of West Germany Ludwig Wilhelm Erhard wrote to remind us, (bold emphasis mine)

Just as a people cannot consume more than it has first produced, so the individual cannot gain more real security than we, the whole people, have gained as a result of our efforts. This basic truth cannot be concealed by attempts to veil it with collective schemes. It is for just these well-intentioned ventures that a high price has to be paid. Efforts to free the individual from too much state influence and too much dependence on the state are thus brought to naught; the tie with collectivism becomes stronger. The apparent security, granted to the individual by the state or by any other group, has to be bought dearly. Whoever wants protection of this kind must first pay in cash.

At the end of the day, the basic laws of economics prevails.

Austerity Equals Deflation? Not In The Eurozone

If you read mainstream analysis, their mantra seems to be ‘austerity equates to deflation’. (Because B follows A, B is the cause of A-post hoc analysis)

Yet when applied to the Eurozone, this seems NOT to be happening.

This from the New York Times, (bold highlights mine)

Higher energy prices drove inflation in the euro area to an annual rate of 1.7 percent in July, the highest level in 20 months but still within the range considered acceptable by the European Central Bank.

Excluding energy prices, inflation increased by 1.1 percent in July when compared with the previous year. That was up from 0.9 percent in June, Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office, said Monday.

The rise in overall prices, from a rate of 1.4 percent in June, was not considered alarming by economists, who generally expect price pressures to remain in check as growth slows in most of Europe.

“We need to see convincing signs of an upturn in domestic demand, and we’re not seeing that just yet,” said Nick Matthews, an economist at Royal Bank of Scotland. “Underlying domestic price pressures are still quite contained.”

But the European Central Bank could have problems finding a monetary policy that is right for all 16 euro area members if prices continued to rise in some countries while holding stable or even falling in others.

This chart from Tradingeconomics.com

Additional observations:

1. The above development goes to show that inflation is always relative. Some areas experience more and some experience less. In short, money is never neutral.

2. If inflation has been rising in spite of weak domestic demand as alleged by the expert quoted, then obviously it isn’t domestic demand that is the root of inflation. So the expert failing to account for the recent rise likewise fails to look at genuine drivers or the bigger picture.

3. One should note that the inflation dynamics in the Eurozone doesn’t suggest that this is a one time event or random walk, but seemingly a momentum trend on an upswing.

4. This also shows why listening to the ideas of the mainstream seems to be like placing a noose around one’s neck.

The Power of Slow Change: The China-Emerging Market Story

We learned yesterday that China has surpassed Japan as the second largest economy in the world.

But this isn’t much news to us since, as an example of the power of slow change, China has been creeping towards economic outperformance in many areas such as banking (see our 2009 post A Tectonic Shift In The Global Banking Industry!) to finally catch up with OECD nations.

Nevertheless this has been a dead giveaway—as manifested in the markets for a long time. All that is needed is to open one’s eyes to see this coming.

China’s stock market performance today isn’t at all sterling. It’s been in consolidation after the boom bust cycle of 2008.

Chart from Bloomberg

Year to date China is way down about 19%.

However over the past years, China’s gains have basically outclassed the OECD economies, even if her stock market has stagnated. Of course, most of the world followed a similar boom bust dynamic, including the Philippines.

Yet, Bespoke Invest has a great presentation of this massive paradigm shift.

Bespoke writes,

Japan's stock market capitalization is currently 7.97% of world market cap. China ranks second at 6.89%. Five years ago, Japan accounted for 10.34% of world market cap, while China accounted for just 1.10%. Back in 2005, China ranked just 17th in terms of market cap, behind countries like Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, South Korea, Taiwan, India, and the Netherlands. Now with the world's second biggest economy and third biggest stock market, it's hard to classify China as an emerging market, but it is indeed still emerging in terms of growth.

The context has to be seen in the light NOT confined to China, as the gains have been made mostly by Asia and emerging market economies.

Instead, what you are seeing is a paradigm shift of growth mostly away from developed economies to emerging markets.

No, this isn’t about cheap labor.

This is about a menagerie of factors as demographics, savings, debt burdens, urbanization and etc... all founded upon the foundations of deepening of free trade, economic freedom and globalization.

So the China-powered emerging market growth story seen in the stock market and economic performances merely epitomizes this power of slow change.

Unless there would be structural political-economic factors that would reverse engineer globalization, I won’t dare bet against this paradigm shift.

Quote of the Day: The Power Of Slow Change

Seth Godin, my favorite marketing guru, recommends that we need to watch the power of slow change,

``Cultural shifts create long terms evolutionary changes. Cultural shifts, changes in habits, technologies that slowly obsolete a product or a system are the ones that change our lives. Watch for shifts in systems and processes and expectations. That's what makes change, not big events.”

Take Facebook.

Facebook only emerged barely 6 years ago, now it has over 500 million active users. It’s a slow, but massive change.

In the same context these changes will certainly affect almost every aspect in people’s lives, i.e. people’s way of conducting commerce, personal relationships and even laws and regulatory regimes.

The point is people who value the conditions of the present without putting into perspective the underlying paradigm shifts in the system will underestimate change. They will be left behind the curve.

I am not like them, are you?

The UNwisdom Of The Crowd

``What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

The Follies of Groupthink

Groupthink is when people substitute the opinion of the consensus or the group for their own. It is a product of group cohesion, which leads to a deterioration of “mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment”[1] or particularly the erosion of critical thinking.

This thought process also sacrifices independence, uniqueness, toleration of alternative perspectives and independent thinking in pursuit of group cohesiveness, mostly with the aim to reduce group conflict or maintain balance.

By casting off critical thinking, groupthink leads to hasty, irrational decisions and actions that could be harmful. Think fraternity violence.

If based on social psychologist Irving Janis’ 1970s study on groupthink, the eight symptoms are[2]: (bold emphasis and italics mine)

1. Illusion of invulnerability –Creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks.

2. Collective rationalization – Members discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions.

3. Belief in inherent morality – Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions.

4. Stereotyped views of out-groups – Negative views of “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary.

5. Direct pressure on dissenters – Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views.

6. Self-censorship – Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed.

7. Illusion of unanimity – The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous.

8. Self-appointed ‘mindguards’ – Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group’s cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions.

In other words, Groupthink embodies the psychological properties that characterize most religious, political and economic forms of social zealotry.

Applied to investing, groupthink represents as the wisdom of the crowd at the extreme levels or near the inflection point of any major trend.

The Wisdom Of The Crowds

In analysing social aspects of life, crowd psychology always operate as very critical factors in determining the sentiment and the possible path of people’s action. This means that crowd psychology does not represent random walk, but as collective sentiment brought about by the crowd’s reaction to the fluid circumstances they are faced with.

Whether vetting on the outcome of national elections, observing the behaviour of horse racing enthusiasts or examining the behaviour the financial markets or the real economy, we run a common ground of crowd psychology in different stages.

The crowd psychology comprises as form of social signalling.

Since people are intrinsically social animals, we always have the frequent sublime need to commune as group, and such is the reason why society has ultimately flourished over the centuries, even amidst the destructive impulses likewise inherent in men to dominate and to plunder (that has led to wars).

Ever since the eons of our prehistoric ancestors, as hunters, our progenitors operated on groups (tribes) to seek protection from among each other, to have a greater chance of attaining the goal of a successful hunt, and importantly, to achieve posterity via gene reproduction purposes.

Conforming to these social patterns is how man’s actions have mostly been directed.

As example “Keeping up with the Jones’” is a common catchphrase that signifies attempts by the individual to emulate an elevated social status in terms material possessions.

The crowd psychology also represents a form of tradition.

For instance the perpetuation of various forms of superstitions, such as in politics, are part of the tradition based crowd psychology.

As English philosopher and liberal political theorist Herbert Spencer once wrote[3],

“The great political superstition of the past was the divine right of kings. The great political superstition of the present is the divine right of parliaments. The oil of anointing seems unawares to have dripped from the head of the one on to the heads of the many, and given sacredness to them also and to their decrees.” (emphasis added)

Applied to politics, the crowd psychology hardly distinguishes between functioning reality and the romanticized expectations of government as supermen.

Traditionalism also finds its way deeply rooted into culture, economics, religion and others aspects of social life.

Of course traditionalism via the crowd psychology can also be used as an escape mechanism.

In Henry Kaufman’s Memoirs, he writes[4],

``Most predictions fall within a rather narrow range that does not deviate from consensus views in the financial community. In large measure, this reflects an all-too-human propensity to minimize risk and avoid isolation. There is, after all, comfort in running with the crowd. Doing so makes it impossible to be singled out for being wrong, and allows one to avoid envy or resentment that often inflicts those who are right more often than not.” (emphasis added)

In other words, traditionalism, or applied conventionally, could be used as an advantage to secure social acceptance.

As in the case above, it can be used to as pretext to elude responsibility. And conversely, as ploy to generate ‘networking’ effects.

A good example of this is from Prof Angelo Codevilla[5], who aptly he describes how the American ruling class have used traditionalism (conventionalism) to secure their current position.

``Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters -- speaking the "in" language -- serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct.” (emphasis added)

In short, to be sociologically “IN” means to assimilate conventional ‘uniform’ behavior, de facto ethics and morality as normative.

Importantly, crowd psychology is a form of social expression.

Political elections are the strongest demonstrations of crowd expression.

And so with market bubbles, as James Surowiecki writes[6],

``Bubbles and crashes are textbook examples of collective decision making gone wrong. In a bubble, all of the conditions that make groups intelligent -- independence, diversity, private judgement--disappear.” (emphasis added)

Crowd psychology isn’t always wrong though.

In financial markets crowd psychology can be depicted by trends. Major trends, for instance, are emblematic of the direction of the dominance of crowd behaviour.

As Shawn Andrew of Ricercar Fund observed[7],

“The CROWD is always wrong at market turning points but often times right once a trend sets in. The reason many market fighters go broke is they believe the CROWD is always wrong. There is nothing further from the truth. Unless volatility is extremely low or very high one should think twice before betting against the CROWD.” (all caps original)

The fact of the matter is that it is groupthink or the excessiveness of the crowd to impetuously gravitate towards the collective opinion as the assumed gospel of truth that creates such instability.

Of course, this can only happen when underlying incentives are set to condition people’s mind. Such conditions, in terms of financial markets, include government policies as interest rate manipulation, inflationism, tax policies, the picking winners or losers and etc...

Lessons From The Crowd

So what are the lessons we should learn?

Crowd psychology is a very essential variable in determining social trends (political, economic, and financial trends)

In financial markets, the flow with the crowd is useful for as long as they reflect on the general trend, and for as long as conditions are yet distant from reaching groupthink status.

Groupthink fallacy is the surrender of one’s opinion for the collective. This accounts for as a loss of critical thinking and is reflective of emotional impulses in the decision making of the crowd. When groupthink becomes the dominant mindset of the crowd, an ensuing volatile episode can be expected to occur applied to both markets and politics (bubble implosion or political upheaval).

Though crowd-following is useful, doing what the crowd does isn’t. This prominent quote from a movie character Alan Ashley-Pitt in Quigley Down Under, says it all[8]

"The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been."

That’s because thinking with the crowd exposes one to deep vulnerability, since crowd psychology hardly represents what the reality is. This is especially pertinent to the markets or even to politics.

Gustave Le Bon[9] spared no sympathy on the crowd’s unintelligence, he wrote,

``This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence. The decisions affecting matters of general interest come to by an assembly of men of distinction, but specialists in different walks of life, are not sensibly superior to the decisions that would be adopted by a gathering of imbeciles. The truth is, they can only bring to bear in common on the work in hand those mediocre qualities which are the birthright of every average individual. In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated.” (emphasis added)

And it’s not just Mr. Le Bon, but likewise one of the world’s richest and most successful investor, Mr. Warren Buffett, the sage of Omaha, subtlety admonishes people from using crowd psychology as justification to trade or invest[10],

"A great IQ is not needed to do well as an investor, what is needed is the ability to detach yourself from the crowd."

Why? Because what matters is independent ‘critical’ thinking! This ability, in my opinion, is to get within the ambit of what is consistently effective or what works and what doesn’t.

Author James Surowiecki sees non-correlation and diversity of knowledge as important variables to independent thinking, he writes[11]

``Independence is important to intelligent decision making for two reasons. First, it keeps the mistakes that people make from becoming correlated. Errors in individual judgement won't wreck the group's collective judgement as long as those errors aren't systematically pointing in the same direction. One of the quickest ways to make people's judgements systematically biased is to make them dependent on each other for information. Second, independent individuals are more likely to have a new information rather than the same old data everyone is already familiar with. The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. Independence doesn't imply rationality or impartiality though. You can be biased and irrational, but as long as you're independent, you won't make the group any dumber.”

Since groupthink extinguishes personal opinion for the collective then the variability of information becomes eroded and homogenized and thus expanding the potential errors of the consensus in their assessment and their succeeding courses of action. Thus, independent thinking not only maintains the diversity of opinion and information, but should likewise be representative of more “efficient” markets.

Nevertheless, the groupthink phases of crowd psychology should be taken advantage of by people in the know.

THUS, people who think for themselves, who are not afraid to get socially ostracized and or lose ‘temporal’ acceptance via conformity or signalling, or are prepared to go against conventionalism/traditionalism are the people who are likely to work through with right actions derived from pertinent independent analysis.

If there is one single market today which resonates actions of a bubble matched by groupthink psychology it is the US treasury markets.

The 10 year treasury whose bond yields are near the 3 decade long lows (left window), which I flipped to demonstrate the degree of the bubble action (red upside trend at the right window) is currently matched by the humdrum of daily fervid incantations of mainstream opinion makers and their followers, pumped up by from the insights of policymakers, of the mythical “deflation”.

As a caveat, let me repeat “mythical”, in the world of central banking, deflation would only exist once policymakers abandon to use of the printing press and accept the dominance of market forces.

This isn’t happening.

---

[1] Psysr.org, What is Group Think

[2] Ibid

[3] Spencer, Herbert, The Great Political Superstition (1884)

[4] Random Roving Blogspot, Running With The Crowd

[5] Codevilla Angelo M. Codevilla America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution, Spectator.org

[6] Surowiecki, James The Wisdom of The Crowd (p 244) bloggiaim.com

[7] Andrew, Shawn; Jeffrey Hirsch Stock Trader’s Almanac 2010

[8] Iwise.com, Alan Ashley-Pitt

[9] Le Bon, Gustave Le Bon The Crowd p. 17

[10] MoneyCentral MSN.com 12 steps to being a 'Zen millionaire'

[11] Surowiecki, James loc sit

Why Deflationists Are Most Likely Wrong Again

“After the crisis arrives and the depression begins, various secondary developments often occur. In particular, for reasons that will be discussed further below, the crisis is often marked not only by a halt to credit expansion, but by an actual deflation — a contraction in the supply of money. The deflation causes a further decline in prices. Any increase in the demand for money will speed up adjustment to the lower prices. Furthermore, when deflation takes place first on the loan market, i.e., as credit contraction by the banks — and this is almost always the case — this will have the beneficial effect of speeding up the depression-adjustment process.” Murray N. Rothbard

I find it bizarre for many mainstream experts, if not nearly all, would try to interpret government’s policy actions as means to support the economy (read: property markets) and NOT the politics (read: the banking system).

And these are the same set of people who appear to impassionedly invoke the reprehensible deities of deflation in order for the government to apply more inflationism.

Figure 1: Mark Perry[1]: Relative Bank Failures/St. Louis Fred: M2 annual change

It doesn’t really matter whether the US government put in line an estimated $23.7 billion in bailouts[2], and the countless alphabet soup of stop-gap measures or programs in terms guarantees, swaps, and the various functionality of last resorts, all of which had been applied to ensure the untrammelled flow of liquidity into the financial system.

What seem to only matter to them is that “deleveraging” and the attendant alleged price contraction on every level will be due to loss of “aggregate demand” which ensures a deflationary outcome. As if these “deleveraging” is straightforwardly corollary with “price decline” regardless of the validity and strength of causation linkages.

Yet it’s been nearly two years since deflationists have brandished charts similar to the M2 in figure 1 (right window) to call for the unsustainability of the current economic recovery, and now, since the deflationary spiral hasn’t still happen, they invoke new references such as low interest rates to try to argue their case based on a preconceived bias.

Equally, they now junk this piece of evidence since it has now gone against their argument. So selective perception dominate the mainstream’s reasoning to argue for their rabid fear of deflation.

It doesn’t really matter too, that today’s banking failure hardly matches EVEN the savings and loans meltdown during the 90s and remains a fraction to the domino effect of bank collapses during the GREAT Depression of the 1930s (left window). Yes this includes the 110^th bank in Illinois[3], which failed August 13^th.

Gustave Le Bon appear to be correct[4] anew when dealing with crowd perception, “A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself immediately calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first.”

These people fail to acknowledge that the deflation mess of 1930s wasn’t only due to banking collapses which paved way for the monetary contraction but importantly had also been due to the massive waves of regulations imposed that inhibited trade (Smoot-Hawley Act) and the necessary adjustments in the price levels within the system (New Deal Programs)[5].

Blindness Stems From Political and Economic Religion

The difference why many pundits can’t seem to see is because the monetary contraction they’ve hoped for, out of their predetermined bias, had been offset by an expansion of free trade worldwide.

Thus whatever contraction in US based credit from the banking system had clearly been offset by a surge in globalization[6]and the attendant boom of credit elsewhere. And this is why despite the incremental improvement in the traditional credit system, there has been a boom ongoing in US corporate bonds[7].

Some have argued that corporate bond market are meant to fall, due to the possibility of a double dip, but which is chicken and which is the egg? Given their logic, bonds markets should have never rebounded on the first place.

Besides, there is also the uneven impact from convergent rescue policies applied by respective governments. Given the idiosyncratic nature of each economy, the impact has clearly been asymmetric. And German’s stunning 2^nd quarter outperformance in economic growth seems to be an example[8].

So far, this has been what the Fed has accomplished: By preventing the collapse in the US banking system, which incidentally still remains as the de facto reserve currency of the world, it has managed to keep afloat the payments and settlements function that has allowed the trade mechanism to flourish in spite of signs of credit contraction at home.

This represents as Pyrrhic ‘battle’ (meaning short term) victory at astounding cost to the US taxpayers to sustain the her stature as the world’s currency reserve standard, with the big possibility of a huge unintended payback in the future. That payback, from our perspective will be in the form of higher inflation, bear market in US treasuries or an overall stagflationary environment.

The point is by preventing a collapse in the banking system the Fed has effectively staved off deflation in the 1930 context.

In addition, I don’t see Japan’s lost decade[9] as the path for America in the way the mainstream bears paints her to be. So it’s hardly a paradigm for adequate comparison.

The second and most important point is, the reason why monetary contraction hasn’t impacted the US the way mainstream foresees it is because they ignore that trade by itself, is first and foremost the liquidity provider.

How?

As Murray N. Rothbard explained[10],

“We come to the startling truth that it doesn’t matter what the supply of money is. Any supply will do as well as any other supply. The free market will simply adjust by changing the purchasing power, or effectiveness of the gold-unit. There is no need to tamper with the market in order to alter the money supply that it determines.” (italics original)

Since money’s purchasing power will naturally adjust to the level of existing stock, then there won’t be any required money level in a free market regime. Thus, the persistence of trade is enough to assure the continuity of liquidity and the avoidance of deflation. This applies even if the Fed would remain non-activist.

Even the popular Harvard duo Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff whom has made extensive reviews of the historical relationship of debt, inflation and economic growth during every banking and property crisis worldwide, can’t pinpoint out the definite critical offsetting threshold on how debt and economic growth balance.

Figure 2: VoxEu.org: Reinhart-Rogoff: 90% Debt As Threshold?

This comes with the exception when debt levels have reached or exceeded 90% of GDP (see figure 1), they write, “relationship between government debt and real GDP growth is weak for debt/GDP ratios below 90% of GDP” and “no apparent contemporaneous link between inflation and public debt levels for the advanced countries as a group (some countries, such as the US, have experienced higher inflation when debt/GDP is high)”.

It’s truly difficult to try and compare with past episodes because there is simply NO two similar situations, one can only make estimates and hope that the performances will fall within the ambit of models. However, their implicit point is, this addiction to debt has got to stop. And this is what truly plagues the mainstream mindset.

The third important point is that we have been validated anew.

US authorities on fear of a slowdown that may transform into a double-dip at a time nearing national elections, where the ruling incumbents seem at the risks of being politically dethroned, has called on our poker bluff.

Here is what I wrote at the start of the year[11],

``Many have used the strong showing of 2009 to advert that 2010 would be the year of “exits”. I don't buy it.

``As in the game of poker, I’d call this equivalent to a policymaker’s Poker bluff.”

The FOMC has changed tunes about adapting an exit strategy and will maintain their bloated balance sheets.

Here is the Danske Research team[12], (emphasis added)

``The FOMC revised downward the near-term growth outlook and decided to reinvest the principal payments from the Fed’s portfolio of Agency and MBS holdings in longer-term Treasuries. This implies that the balance sheet will be held constant and effectively puts the exit strategy on hold. While the amount of treasuries to be bought is insignificant, the decision sends a strong signal to markets. It provides a clear indication that rate hikes remain in the indefinite future and that the central bank is prepared for another round of quantitative easing if necessary.”

In short, the Fed’s action is a direct communication to the market that the policy spigot towards Quantitative Easing 2 is being recalibrated as insurance for any material economic growth slowdown.

So there you go—path dependency, economic ideology and the morbid fear emanating from wrong perspectives and analytics will drive the Fed to pump the next wave of liquidity into the system.

For the mainstream, anything that goes down is DEFLATION. There never seems to be within the context of their vocabulary the terms as moderation, slowdown and reprieve. Everything has got to go like Superman, up up up and away!

I’m quite sure, even if statistics would prove to be a false alarm the Fed, would be quick-handed to initiate the trigger.

Let me guess, politics will dictate such action. The Democrats don’t want go without a fight and the Fed will supposedly provide the backdrop for a benign outlook with the slowdown as pretext. It has never really been about economics but the politics of control. Yet the mainstream obstinately refuses to see this.

Of course, there are many other aspects that could debunk the deflation outlook, such actions in commodities markets, the yield curve, exploding emerging bonds and some EM equity markets.

But it really doesn’t matter, because for the mainstream these markets are out of the ambit of “aggregates”. Unfortunately, as F. A. Hayek[13], “aggregates conceal the most fundamental mechanisms of change”.

Phisix: No Decoupling, Only Outperformance

Also this is just a reminder to our Filipino colleagues and audiences where today’s market action is seen or interpreted by some as in some semblance of decoupling.

I’m glad that the ASEAN markets have been showing a steady outperformance, but the case for a decoupling hasn’t clearly been established (see figure 3).

Thus, it would be a darned big mistake to be presumptive of a “decoupling” in the event of another turbulent episode such as US recession which I don’t think will leave the Philippines or ASEAN markets unscathed.

One must be reminded that decoupling and outperformance are two different dynamics.

Figure 3: Tradingeconomics.com[14]: US and Philippine GDP

What ASEAN markets seem to imply is that the US isn’t headed for a double dip as the US mainstream bears suggests.

By the way, the definition of a Double dip recession[15] is a backslide to a recession (negative growth) following one or two quarters of positive growth. Based on semantics, the window for a double dip is fast closing—the end of third quarter of 2010 as per definition (if January of 2010 is the starting point of the recovery based on chart).

For me, if there would any immediate real risk worth monitoring this would possibly emanate from China[16] (yes she is slowing down).

That’s because she has engaged in massive credit expansion to immunize herself from a global growth slowdown in 2008 and many of these loans have channelled via shell companies[17] and lent to government projects that likewise got involved in real estate speculation which is hardly part of their core businesses. And such expansion usually creates alot of malinvestments and would likely result to capital consumption, when the imbalances are forced by the natural laws of economics to reveal themselves.

One thing going for China is that she is replete still with savings. There is as much as 9.3 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) of hidden assets or undeclared assets according to Yahoo News[18].

Nevertheless, I think signs are pointing to a soft landing more than a hard landing.

The problem anew for the bears is that following a slowdown and prospective stabilization, a renewed reacceleration will likely spur another episode of serious lift-off for ASEAN and many emerging markets, whom depend on China for trade and investments. And this should also help boost the US and the Eurozone too.

And another thing, for as long as the US won’t fall into a recession, the expressed policy by the Fed to indefinitely postpone the ‘exit strategy’, and reemergent possibility to engage in QE version 2 is also likely to serve as another tremendous boost for Asia.

For instance, Hong Kong is already having a difficult time fighting her internal bubbles recently having to impose a “60% limit on the loan to value for property purchases worth more than $1.55 million”[19], given her peg to the US dollar which basically makes her import Fed policies. The transmission mechanism will just get magnified by the ensuing policy divergences.

So bears will continue to fumble from one mistake after another, until the broken clock finally strikes twice a day and claim victory. How bizarre.

---

[1] Perry, Mark 106 Bank Failures in Perspective, Enterprise Blog

[2] See $23.7 Trillion Worth Of Bailouts?

[3] Thestreet.com Another Illinois Bank Fail, August 14, 2010

[4] Le Bon Gustave, ibid p. 23

[5] See Financial Reform Bill And Regime Uncertainty

[6] See How Free Trade Saved The World From Depression

[7] See US and Global Economy: Pieces Of The Jigsaw Puzzles All Falling In Place

[8] Marketwatch.com German GDP grows 2.2% in second quarter, August 13, 2010

[9] See Japan’s Lost Decade Wasn’t Due To Deflation But Stagnation From Massive Interventionis

[10] Rothbard Murray N. What Government Has Done To Our Money p.29

[11] See Poker Bluff: The Exit Strategy Theme For 2010

[12] Danske Weekly, Fear of a slump August 13, 2010

[13] Hayek, Friedrich August von Reflections on the Pure Theory of Money of Mr. J.M. Keynes, Mises.org

[14] Tradingeconomics.com

[15] Investopedia.com, Double-dip recession

[16] See China’s State Driven Bubble

[17] FinanceAsia.com, China's endless moral hazard, May 6, 2010

[18] Yahoonews.com Hidden trillions widen China's wealth gap: study, August 11, 2010

[19] Wall Street Journal Blog, Hong Kong Forced to Fight Fed Again, August 13, 2010

Quote of the Day on Self Learning And Death of Credentials

Says Richard Kaalgard at Forbes Magazine (Hat tip: Professor Arnold Kling)

“Self-learning rules. We are at the beginning of the Death of Credentials. The ROI for 95% of college educations will be negative.”

That’s just one of the insightful “10 cheap revolution” or “creative destruction” rules cited by Mr. Kaalgard in today's transition to the information age.

This has been one of my themes wherein I noted that online learning has the potential to pop the inflating bubble at the Philippine Education System.

And also, if self learning and death of credentialism determines the jobs or career of tomorrow, then what good is it to extend the domestic education cycle?

Do Roads Without Traffic Lights Translate To Chaos?

A small town in Britain took out traffic lights and got a pleasant surprise-a smoother flow of traffic!


As Professor Alex Tabarrok writes,

``The experiments are interesting in their own right but they are also very good illustrations of spontaneous order; how order is possible without orders."

Of course, for the mainstream, this is just another form of sacrilege.

Do iPhone Users Have More Sex Appeal?

Many interesting stuff from the web as this

iPhone users draw in more sexual partners than BlackBerry and Android users.

According to Professor Landsburg,

Data from 9,785 users of the dating site OKCupid reveal that iPhone users have 50% to 100% more sex partners than Android users, at every age.

This graph combines men and women, but the same pattern holds for each gender separately.

Correlation isn’t causation, i.e. doesn’t mean that you buy and use an iPhone you automatically get a surge of admirers from the opposite sex, but what gives?

Beware the Leviathan!

Great words of admonition from the Economist

LISTEN carefully, and you may detect a giant sucking sound across the rich world. In the 1990s this was the sound protectionists in the United States thought (wrongly) would accompany jobs disappearing to Mexico as a result of a free-trade deal. This time, too, there are big worries about jobs and growth, but the source of the noise is different, and real enough: it comes from the tentacles of the state, reaching into more and more areas of business in an effort to get the economy moving. It is the sound of Leviathan Inc. (emphasis added)

Here’s the kicker....

In the rich world, meanwhile, the record shows, again and again, that industrial policy doesn’t work. The hall of infamy is filled with costly failures like Minitel (a dead-end French national communications network long since overtaken by the internet) and British Leyland (a nationalised car company). However many new justifications are invented for the government to pick winners, and coddle losers, it will remain a bad old idea. Thanks to globalisation and the rise of the information economy, new ideas move to market faster than ever before. No bureaucrat could have predicted the success of Nestlé’s Nespresso coffee-capsule system—just as none foresaw that utility vehicles, vacuum cleaners and tufted carpets (to cite examples noted by Charles Schultze, an American opponent of state planning) would have been some of America’s fastest-growing industries in the 1970s. Officials ignore the potential for innovation in consumer products or services and get seduced by the hype of voguish high-tech sectors. (bold emphasis mine)