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The NYT seems determined to do the equivalent of birtherism with public pensions, implying that there is some conspiracy in the way they do their accounting. The paper ran a major business section article today headlined, “a sour surprise for public pensions: two sets of books.”
The “surprise” should hardly be a surprise to anyone familiar with public pension systems. Pensions calculate liabilities based on the expected rates of return for the assets they hold. This calculation tells governments how much they should expect to put into the fund each year on order to meet their obligations to their retirees. If they do their projections correctly (this is not an issue raised in the piece) then this should be the number that governments are most interested in.
However, the piece highlights “the second set of books.” This is market value of pension funds assets and liabilities. This is where the pensions would sit today if they wanted to cash out of the system, which is exactly the situation described in the piece. The market value would make a pension look considerably worse, since they would have to use a lower discount rate (typically the interest rate paid on either Treasury bonds or municipal bonds) to assess the liability of the funds.
The fact that the latter would show a worse situation for pensions is hardly a secret, nor is it particularly hard to determine the larger liability, at least to a close approximation. If anyone has a knowledge of the projected stream of payouts for a pension, it is a simple matter to throw this up on Excel spreadsheet and apply a different discount rate to it.
In other words, this is a great non-scandal, just like President Obama’s real birth certificate.
The NYT seems determined to do the equivalent of birtherism with public pensions, implying that there is some conspiracy in the way they do their accounting. The paper ran a major business section article today headlined, “a sour surprise for public pensions: two sets of books.”
The “surprise” should hardly be a surprise to anyone familiar with public pension systems. Pensions calculate liabilities based on the expected rates of return for the assets they hold. This calculation tells governments how much they should expect to put into the fund each year on order to meet their obligations to their retirees. If they do their projections correctly (this is not an issue raised in the piece) then this should be the number that governments are most interested in.
However, the piece highlights “the second set of books.” This is market value of pension funds assets and liabilities. This is where the pensions would sit today if they wanted to cash out of the system, which is exactly the situation described in the piece. The market value would make a pension look considerably worse, since they would have to use a lower discount rate (typically the interest rate paid on either Treasury bonds or municipal bonds) to assess the liability of the funds.
The fact that the latter would show a worse situation for pensions is hardly a secret, nor is it particularly hard to determine the larger liability, at least to a close approximation. If anyone has a knowledge of the projected stream of payouts for a pension, it is a simple matter to throw this up on Excel spreadsheet and apply a different discount rate to it.
In other words, this is a great non-scandal, just like President Obama’s real birth certificate.
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The NYT had a good article on the lobbying effort by Mylan, the manufacturer of EpiPen, to have its product labeled as a preventive drug by the federal government. If EpiPen can get this label, then insurers will not be allowed to require patients to make a copayment. This means that patients will not directly see the price of the drug, although it will be passed on in the form of higher insurance premiums. Mylan is betting that this will make it easier to charge prices that are several thousand percent above its cost of production.
The piece reports on Mylan’s intensive lobbying campaign to gain preventive status. Mylan has paid for research, paid consulting fees to academics, and paid patient advocacy groups to promote use of EpiPen and help gain it the status of a preventive medicine.
This is exactly the sort of corruption that is predicted by economic theory when government intervention creates a large gap between the protected price and the free market price. While EpiPen would likely sell for $10–$20 in a free market, its patent protection allows it to sell for several thousand percent above this price. Economic theory predicts that a tariff of 10–20 percent will provide incentives for the beneficiaries to lobby to increase the benefits of this protection. In the same way a patent monopoly that raises the price of the protected product by 2000 percent will provide similar incentives, except they will be several orders of magnitude larger.
This is relevant to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) since one of its main outcomes will be to make patents and related protections, especially for prescription drugs, longer and stronger. While its proponents, including the news sections of major newspapers like the NYT, call the TPP a “free trade” agreement, most tariff barriers between the countries in the deal are already low. The effects of increased patent and related protections will almost certainly have a greater impact than the modest reduction in tariffs provided for in the deal.
Therefore the TPP can more accurately be thought of as a protectionism pact. It will increase the number and importance of EpiPen-type incidents in the United States and other countries in the TPP.
The NYT had a good article on the lobbying effort by Mylan, the manufacturer of EpiPen, to have its product labeled as a preventive drug by the federal government. If EpiPen can get this label, then insurers will not be allowed to require patients to make a copayment. This means that patients will not directly see the price of the drug, although it will be passed on in the form of higher insurance premiums. Mylan is betting that this will make it easier to charge prices that are several thousand percent above its cost of production.
The piece reports on Mylan’s intensive lobbying campaign to gain preventive status. Mylan has paid for research, paid consulting fees to academics, and paid patient advocacy groups to promote use of EpiPen and help gain it the status of a preventive medicine.
This is exactly the sort of corruption that is predicted by economic theory when government intervention creates a large gap between the protected price and the free market price. While EpiPen would likely sell for $10–$20 in a free market, its patent protection allows it to sell for several thousand percent above this price. Economic theory predicts that a tariff of 10–20 percent will provide incentives for the beneficiaries to lobby to increase the benefits of this protection. In the same way a patent monopoly that raises the price of the protected product by 2000 percent will provide similar incentives, except they will be several orders of magnitude larger.
This is relevant to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) since one of its main outcomes will be to make patents and related protections, especially for prescription drugs, longer and stronger. While its proponents, including the news sections of major newspapers like the NYT, call the TPP a “free trade” agreement, most tariff barriers between the countries in the deal are already low. The effects of increased patent and related protections will almost certainly have a greater impact than the modest reduction in tariffs provided for in the deal.
Therefore the TPP can more accurately be thought of as a protectionism pact. It will increase the number and importance of EpiPen-type incidents in the United States and other countries in the TPP.
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This is another problem with numbers story. Steve Inskeep interviewed Daniel Garza of the Libre Initiative, a Republican group targeting Latino voters in Nevada and Florida, on Morning Edition on Tuesday. In making his case Mr. Garza brought up the issue of the minimum wage:
“On the issue of minimum wage, which is one that is always used as, you know, you don’t care for decent wages, here is a case where you have Latino minorities who are at 20 percent unemployment and you want to double the cost to hire them by doubling the minimum wage. How is that going to help young Latinos?”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for Hispanics in August was 5.6 percent. Even if Mr. Garza was referring to Hispanic teens, he is still a fair bit off. The unemployment rate for Hispanic teens was 15.0 percent in August, up from 14.5 percent in July.
This is another problem with numbers story. Steve Inskeep interviewed Daniel Garza of the Libre Initiative, a Republican group targeting Latino voters in Nevada and Florida, on Morning Edition on Tuesday. In making his case Mr. Garza brought up the issue of the minimum wage:
“On the issue of minimum wage, which is one that is always used as, you know, you don’t care for decent wages, here is a case where you have Latino minorities who are at 20 percent unemployment and you want to double the cost to hire them by doubling the minimum wage. How is that going to help young Latinos?”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for Hispanics in August was 5.6 percent. Even if Mr. Garza was referring to Hispanic teens, he is still a fair bit off. The unemployment rate for Hispanic teens was 15.0 percent in August, up from 14.5 percent in July.
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In a blog post earlier this week, former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke argued for a policy of negative nominal interest rates as being preferable to a higher inflation target for boosting the economy in a severe slump. While his concerns about the downsides of a higher inflation target seem somewhat overblown, there is an important negative aspect to his proposal for negative rates that his post overlooks.
If banks have to pay money on the reserves they hold, then they have less incentive to acquire deposits. This could have a large impact on their willingness to keep smaller checking and saving accounts for low- and moderate-income people. They often lose money on these accounts already, but may consider the losses worth bearing in the hope that these customers may have larger accounts in the future and/or rely on the bank for profitable services.
If interest rates on reserves turn negative, then the losses on these accounts would be even larger. This could result in banks charging for accounts that are now free and raising their fees on services for which they already charge. As a result, many low- and moderate-income people are likely to give up their bank accounts.
According to the FDIC, there were 9.6 million households without bank accounts in 2013. This number could grow substantially if banks had to start paying interest on the reserves they held.
There are potential remedies for this situation. Banks could be required to offer basic banking services at little or no cost, with other customers effectively subsidizing this service. Alternatively, we could adopt a system of postal banking which would allow low- and moderate-income households to get basic banking services through the post office.
Either of these routes would offset the risk that negative interest rates could lead to a larger unbanked population. However, without these fixes in place, the prospect of a much larger unbanked population is major downside to a policy of negative interest rates.
In a blog post earlier this week, former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke argued for a policy of negative nominal interest rates as being preferable to a higher inflation target for boosting the economy in a severe slump. While his concerns about the downsides of a higher inflation target seem somewhat overblown, there is an important negative aspect to his proposal for negative rates that his post overlooks.
If banks have to pay money on the reserves they hold, then they have less incentive to acquire deposits. This could have a large impact on their willingness to keep smaller checking and saving accounts for low- and moderate-income people. They often lose money on these accounts already, but may consider the losses worth bearing in the hope that these customers may have larger accounts in the future and/or rely on the bank for profitable services.
If interest rates on reserves turn negative, then the losses on these accounts would be even larger. This could result in banks charging for accounts that are now free and raising their fees on services for which they already charge. As a result, many low- and moderate-income people are likely to give up their bank accounts.
According to the FDIC, there were 9.6 million households without bank accounts in 2013. This number could grow substantially if banks had to start paying interest on the reserves they held.
There are potential remedies for this situation. Banks could be required to offer basic banking services at little or no cost, with other customers effectively subsidizing this service. Alternatively, we could adopt a system of postal banking which would allow low- and moderate-income households to get basic banking services through the post office.
Either of these routes would offset the risk that negative interest rates could lead to a larger unbanked population. However, without these fixes in place, the prospect of a much larger unbanked population is major downside to a policy of negative interest rates.
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In an article on the prospect of a September interest rate hike by the Fed, the NYT pointed out that Esther George, the President of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Board Bank, expressed concern that low interest rates are fueling financial speculation. She has repeatedly given this as a basis for raising interest rates.
It is worth noting that George has never identified an area where prices are obviously out of line with fundamentals. In the two cases in the last 80 years where the collapse of a speculative bubble led to economic downturns, the stock bubble in the 1990s and the housing bubble in the last decade, it was easy for anyone who looked to recognize the bubbles and that they were moving the economy.
In both cases, the wealth generated by the bubbles led to a consumption boom, which would have been difficult to explain any other way. The stock bubble also led to a surge in tech investment as it was a simple matter for people with the right connections, who had no idea what they were doing, to raise hundreds of millions or even billions by issuing stock in Internet start-ups. In the case of the housing bubbles, residential construction hit a post-war high as a share of GDP even as the country’s demographics would have suggested it should have been falling.
For these reasons, it was predictable that a collapse of the bubble would lead to a recession, and an especially serious one in the case of the housing bubble. Also, it was easy to see that both were bubbles. In the late 1990s, bubble the price to earnings ratio reached levels that were twice the normal ratio. For this to make sense it would have required either a sustained growth rate of corporate profits that was hugely faster than any forecasters were predicting or a change in investor attitudes to stock, where they were prepared to accept returns that were the same or less than the returns on government bonds. In the case of the housing bubble, with vacancy rates hitting record highs and rents seeing no real increase whatsoever, it was pretty hard to see the run-up in house prices as anything except a bubble.
Given this recent history, it would be reasonable to ask Ms. George where she sees evidence of a dangerous bubble. If her argument is that she wants to slow growth and keep people from getting jobs because of her fear of bubbles, she should be able to produce some evidence to support this fear. To date, she has not. (It’s also worth noting that even if we face the risk of a bubble, it is far from clear that higher interest rates are the best tool for addressing the problem.)
In an article on the prospect of a September interest rate hike by the Fed, the NYT pointed out that Esther George, the President of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Board Bank, expressed concern that low interest rates are fueling financial speculation. She has repeatedly given this as a basis for raising interest rates.
It is worth noting that George has never identified an area where prices are obviously out of line with fundamentals. In the two cases in the last 80 years where the collapse of a speculative bubble led to economic downturns, the stock bubble in the 1990s and the housing bubble in the last decade, it was easy for anyone who looked to recognize the bubbles and that they were moving the economy.
In both cases, the wealth generated by the bubbles led to a consumption boom, which would have been difficult to explain any other way. The stock bubble also led to a surge in tech investment as it was a simple matter for people with the right connections, who had no idea what they were doing, to raise hundreds of millions or even billions by issuing stock in Internet start-ups. In the case of the housing bubbles, residential construction hit a post-war high as a share of GDP even as the country’s demographics would have suggested it should have been falling.
For these reasons, it was predictable that a collapse of the bubble would lead to a recession, and an especially serious one in the case of the housing bubble. Also, it was easy to see that both were bubbles. In the late 1990s, bubble the price to earnings ratio reached levels that were twice the normal ratio. For this to make sense it would have required either a sustained growth rate of corporate profits that was hugely faster than any forecasters were predicting or a change in investor attitudes to stock, where they were prepared to accept returns that were the same or less than the returns on government bonds. In the case of the housing bubble, with vacancy rates hitting record highs and rents seeing no real increase whatsoever, it was pretty hard to see the run-up in house prices as anything except a bubble.
Given this recent history, it would be reasonable to ask Ms. George where she sees evidence of a dangerous bubble. If her argument is that she wants to slow growth and keep people from getting jobs because of her fear of bubbles, she should be able to produce some evidence to support this fear. To date, she has not. (It’s also worth noting that even if we face the risk of a bubble, it is far from clear that higher interest rates are the best tool for addressing the problem.)
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That’s what a NYT article told readers, although the $1.0 trillion figure may not have been clear. The European Union determined that Apple owes Ireland $14.5 billion in back taxes. While the article indicated that this is a substantial sum, since most readers are probably not familair with the size of Ireland’s economy, they likely would not realize how substantial it is.
Since Ireland’s GDP is projected to be 229 billion euros this year, the back taxes would be roughly the equivalent of $1 trillion in the U.S. economy. The piece also indicates that with interest included the sum could be $23 billion. This would be the equivalent of $1.5 trillion in the U.S. economy.
Put another way, Ireland’s population is just under 4.6 million. This means the $14.5 billion figure would translate into $3,150 for every person in the country. The larger $23 billion figure would come to $5,110 per person.
That’s what a NYT article told readers, although the $1.0 trillion figure may not have been clear. The European Union determined that Apple owes Ireland $14.5 billion in back taxes. While the article indicated that this is a substantial sum, since most readers are probably not familair with the size of Ireland’s economy, they likely would not realize how substantial it is.
Since Ireland’s GDP is projected to be 229 billion euros this year, the back taxes would be roughly the equivalent of $1 trillion in the U.S. economy. The piece also indicates that with interest included the sum could be $23 billion. This would be the equivalent of $1.5 trillion in the U.S. economy.
Put another way, Ireland’s population is just under 4.6 million. This means the $14.5 billion figure would translate into $3,150 for every person in the country. The larger $23 billion figure would come to $5,110 per person.
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A recurring theme of much of the coverage of support for Donald Trump in Appalachian states is that President Obama’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and thereby reduce the use of coal, have led to a large loss of coal mining jobs. This loss of jobs supposedly devastated the economy of the region. Voters hope that Trump will bring back the mining jobs and thereby restore the economy of the region. A New York Times article on support for Trump in Eastern Kentucky repeats this theme.
The problem with the story is that most of the mining jobs in Kentucky were lost long ago. Even when President Obama took office it was a relatively minor source of employment in the state. The figure below shows coal mining jobs in Kentucky. The number had fallen from close to 30,000 at the start of the 1990s to less than 15,000 by the end of the decade. (It had been close to 50,000 in 1980.)
There was somewhat of an uptick as President Obama came into office due to the surge in world oil prices, but this lasted for less than two years. The current employment level of 6,900 is down about 8,500 from the 2007 levels. By comparison, total employment in Kentucky is over 1,900,000. This means the jobs lost in the mining industry over the last decade are a bit less than 0.5 percent of total employment in the state.
The loss of these jobs has undoubtedly been a huge tragedy for the people directly affected and for the communities in which these jobs are located. However, it does not seem plausible that the actual job loss can explain much about political attitudes across the state.
A recurring theme of much of the coverage of support for Donald Trump in Appalachian states is that President Obama’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and thereby reduce the use of coal, have led to a large loss of coal mining jobs. This loss of jobs supposedly devastated the economy of the region. Voters hope that Trump will bring back the mining jobs and thereby restore the economy of the region. A New York Times article on support for Trump in Eastern Kentucky repeats this theme.
The problem with the story is that most of the mining jobs in Kentucky were lost long ago. Even when President Obama took office it was a relatively minor source of employment in the state. The figure below shows coal mining jobs in Kentucky. The number had fallen from close to 30,000 at the start of the 1990s to less than 15,000 by the end of the decade. (It had been close to 50,000 in 1980.)
There was somewhat of an uptick as President Obama came into office due to the surge in world oil prices, but this lasted for less than two years. The current employment level of 6,900 is down about 8,500 from the 2007 levels. By comparison, total employment in Kentucky is over 1,900,000. This means the jobs lost in the mining industry over the last decade are a bit less than 0.5 percent of total employment in the state.
The loss of these jobs has undoubtedly been a huge tragedy for the people directly affected and for the communities in which these jobs are located. However, it does not seem plausible that the actual job loss can explain much about political attitudes across the state.
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