With the recent crises in the financial world, it’s clearer than ever that we need government to step up and address our problems.
There are certain periods in our history during which one can only sit back and wonder what the limits of astonishment really are. A couple of years since Dodd-Frank first passed, we have come through a period of such disrepute for business that one wonders why the working class has not risen as one — except, of course, because it is exhausted with efforts at reform that seem so futile. We have uncovered many disreputable and perhaps fraudulent business activities, but they essentially represent a failure of government.
Facebook’s initial public offering collapsed in price, leaving small investors holding the bag. Brokers took care of their big customers far better than their small ones. Where was the SEC?
New insider trading convictions, most recently of the widely respected Goldman Sachs director Rajan Gupta, show how rampant trading on insider information really is. The $6 billion losses at JPMorgan Chase by a department that was supposed to neutralize risk showed that trading risk is too profitable to be foregone voluntarily.
And now we find out that LIBOR is incontrovertibly rigged. Some may not realize that Barclays, which agreed to pay a $450 million fine, signed a Statement of Facts that admitted its traders rigged this key rate to make profits on positions, and collaborated with bankers/traders at other banks. Now we find out that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, while president of the New York Fed, was worried and even wrote British regulators about this. That’s nice. But why didn’t government — and Tim Geithner himself — actually do something about it? Are government regulators that feckless?
Of course, there was a certain political advantage in a LIBOR that could be fudged. LIBOR is the rate at which banks lend to each other. It should be nearly riskless, and is therefore used as such in many transactions. LIBOR was the basis, in fact, for up to 100 percent of subprime mortgages. It is often a key input into complex pricing models for securities like derivatives and collateralized debt obligations.
It could be that the Bank of England looked the other way when some bankers, including Barclays’s, lied and said they were paying a lower interest rate than they were in order to make it seem their credit was good. Especially in the fall of 2008, after Lehman’s collapse, governments wanted to calm the waters. Did the Fed also tolerate fudging the numbers?
Why wouldn’t they? The Treasury puts a better face on matters all the time, as does the White House, no matter who is president. PR is an integral part of government. Has the practice in this age of greed slid off onto regulatory agencies? Surely Ben Bernanke was overly optimistic about controlling any impending subprime wreckage in 2007 because he knew it was better to err on the side of Pollyanish hopes that risk precipitating a crisis. What better way to underplay a crisis than to let the banks do it for you?
But for all these remarkable events — and government failures — most disturbing is the ongoing demands for austerity that even President Obama himself makes. The president wants to extend tax cuts for all except those who make $250,000 or more. But he cannot make the case without saying we have to get our fiscal house in order. The nation is likely to need stimulus. But Obama bought into the budget balancing process so early on by appointing Bowles and Simpson to come up with a solution that there is no effective opposition to impending obtuse budget policies in late 2012 and 2013. The classic case is made by the CEO of Honeywell on the front page of the Financial Times. Seeking to blame Republicans and Democrats alike, the esteemed chairman and member of the Bowles-Simpson Commission claims that business has no confidence until this is resolved.
The truth is more simple. Uncertainly surrounds the possibility that the Republicans will hold up the government again, claiming they demand budget cutting. And Mitt Romney promises to do far more damage. There is no contest between the two, and let’s keep in mind that Obamacare, and even Dodd-Frank, contain very good measures that Romney would try to overturn.
As we end a bad few weeks and start a period of remedying the damage, let’s keep in mind that America’s fiscal problems in the near run are highly exaggerated. But even down the road, the problem is not what we spend, but the tax cuts we have been giving ourselves for 30 years. I will begin to believe the sincerity of arch deficit hawks when they argue for tax hikes, not only cuts in Medicare and Social Security. And so should the chairman of Honeywell and others of influence like him.
The myths of austerity economics are paralyzing the government and keeping the nation from getting its house in order. How may times can one say it? Not often enough, apparently.
Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Jeff Madrick is the Director of the Roosevelt Institute’s Rediscovering Government initiative and author ofAge of Greed.
Cross-Posted From Rediscovering Government.
The Roosevelt Institute is a non-profit organization devoted to carrying forward the legacy and values of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
