The NYT had an article on the growth on India’s pharmaceutical industry in which it raised its enforcement of patent laws as an issue affecting manufacturers’ decision to locate in India. There is no obvious reason why there should be any relationship between the two.
Scientists in India can gain the knowledge to manufacture patent protected drugs regardless of where the manufacturing operations are located. Placing the facilities within India would minimally increase this ability. It is difficult to believe that this additional risk would be an important consideration for drug companies although they may use their location decision as a way to coerce India and other countries to adopt more protectionist patent regimes.
The NYT had an article on the growth on India’s pharmaceutical industry in which it raised its enforcement of patent laws as an issue affecting manufacturers’ decision to locate in India. There is no obvious reason why there should be any relationship between the two.
Scientists in India can gain the knowledge to manufacture patent protected drugs regardless of where the manufacturing operations are located. Placing the facilities within India would minimally increase this ability. It is difficult to believe that this additional risk would be an important consideration for drug companies although they may use their location decision as a way to coerce India and other countries to adopt more protectionist patent regimes.
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In her column bashing AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus complains that Trumka got angry at the suggestion that the retirement age for Social Security be raised in response to the increase in life expectancy in recent decades. Apparently, Ms. Marcus did not know that the retirement age has been raised already. In 1983, Congress voted to raise the normal retirement age from 65 to 67 over the period from 2002 to 2022. Ms. Marcus seems unaware of this 27 year-old law.
Marcus also implies that Trumka believes that the country’s fiscal problems can be solved exclusively by taxing the rich. This is not true. Trumka and the AFL-CIO have consistently been strong proponents of measures that would make the U.S. health care system more efficient, such as a public health insurance option and negotiated prices for prescription drugs.
Such measures would make health care much more affordable for both the public and private sector. If per person health care costs in the United States were the same as in any other wealthy country, the United States would be looking at huge long-term budget surpluses rather than deficits. It is difficult to understand how Marcus could have missed this aspect of Trumka’s political agenda.
It is important also to note that measures that reduce the trend toward growing inequality, such as improved corporate governance that reins in CEO pay or a trade policy that is not designed to increase inequality, would also have beneficial budgetary impact. As more income goes to those at the middle and bottom, there would be less need for various government transfer programs. It would be useful if Post columnists would try to directly address the agenda of the unions, rather than caricature it in order to discredit it.
In her column bashing AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus complains that Trumka got angry at the suggestion that the retirement age for Social Security be raised in response to the increase in life expectancy in recent decades. Apparently, Ms. Marcus did not know that the retirement age has been raised already. In 1983, Congress voted to raise the normal retirement age from 65 to 67 over the period from 2002 to 2022. Ms. Marcus seems unaware of this 27 year-old law.
Marcus also implies that Trumka believes that the country’s fiscal problems can be solved exclusively by taxing the rich. This is not true. Trumka and the AFL-CIO have consistently been strong proponents of measures that would make the U.S. health care system more efficient, such as a public health insurance option and negotiated prices for prescription drugs.
Such measures would make health care much more affordable for both the public and private sector. If per person health care costs in the United States were the same as in any other wealthy country, the United States would be looking at huge long-term budget surpluses rather than deficits. It is difficult to understand how Marcus could have missed this aspect of Trumka’s political agenda.
It is important also to note that measures that reduce the trend toward growing inequality, such as improved corporate governance that reins in CEO pay or a trade policy that is not designed to increase inequality, would also have beneficial budgetary impact. As more income goes to those at the middle and bottom, there would be less need for various government transfer programs. It would be useful if Post columnists would try to directly address the agenda of the unions, rather than caricature it in order to discredit it.
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Morning Edition ran a piece (not on its website) today that presented the view of the Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the national debt is the greatest threat to the security of the United States. According to the piece, Mr. Mullen claimed that in a couple of years the United States would be spending $600 billion a year in interest, an amount that he claimed was larger than the defense budget.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the government is projected to spend $298 billion in interest in 2012 (@ 2 percent of GDP), less than half of projected spending on defense.
Morning Edition ran a piece (not on its website) today that presented the view of the Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the national debt is the greatest threat to the security of the United States. According to the piece, Mr. Mullen claimed that in a couple of years the United States would be spending $600 billion a year in interest, an amount that he claimed was larger than the defense budget.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the government is projected to spend $298 billion in interest in 2012 (@ 2 percent of GDP), less than half of projected spending on defense.
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The NYT warned readers that rising labor costs in China pose a serious threat to many companies that manufacture products there:
“makers of personal computers, cellphones and other electronics — including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and LG — deal with much slimmer profit margins [than Apple] according to several analysts. ‘The challenges are going to be much bigger for them,’ Ms. Lai said. Most other industries, from textiles and toys to furniture, are under considerably more pressure.”
Actually, since China is the low-cost producer, it is not clear that rising wages there will pose a serious threat to even low margin firms. If costs for competitors rise also, due to the higher wages, then all the firms in the industry will be able to raise their prices to cover their costs leaving their margins little affected.
The NYT warned readers that rising labor costs in China pose a serious threat to many companies that manufacture products there:
“makers of personal computers, cellphones and other electronics — including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and LG — deal with much slimmer profit margins [than Apple] according to several analysts. ‘The challenges are going to be much bigger for them,’ Ms. Lai said. Most other industries, from textiles and toys to furniture, are under considerably more pressure.”
Actually, since China is the low-cost producer, it is not clear that rising wages there will pose a serious threat to even low margin firms. If costs for competitors rise also, due to the higher wages, then all the firms in the industry will be able to raise their prices to cover their costs leaving their margins little affected.
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The lead editorial of the Washington Post today mourned the “TARP martyrs” (seriously) who lost their seats in Congress for having supported the bank bailout. The Post’s main points are that we were threatened with “financial Armageddon” had TARP not passed (talk about shrill), and it really didn’t cost us any money.
Starting with “financial Armageddon,” let’s use a little common sense. Suppose TARP had not passed. The Fed actually already had enormous power to lend money to keep the financial system operating. The most immediate threat to the system, which Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and others highlighted, was the risk that the commercial paper (CP) market would shut down. They claimed that even healthy corporations were unable to borrow in the CP market. Since most large corporations depend on the CP market to finance their payroll and other ongoing expenses, the loss of this market would quickly cause the economy to grind to a halt.
While there is some debate as to how bad things were in the CP market at the time (the Minneapolis Fed disputes the claim that the market was shutting down), the more important point is that this issue was irrelevant to TARP. The Fed had the power to single-handedly support the CP market. In fact, the weekend after Congress approved the TARP Ben Bernanke announced the creation of a special lending facility to support the commercial paper market. So, that part of the financial Armageddon story was just a fairy tale for children, reporters and columnists, and members of Congress.
Suppose the TARP money had not started flowing and we saw the chain of bank collapses continue. The two remaining independent investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, would surely have been killed absent TARP and other special assistance from the Fed. It is all but certain that Citigroup and Bank of America would have gone belly up as well, along with many other large financial institutions.
Would this have led to financial Armageddon? Well, it surely would have created considerable disorder in the financial markets and led to a few million lawsuits, but the Fed and FDIC no doubt would have taken over these institutions to keep the system of payments operating. The Fed had a contingency plan to take over the money center banks in the 80s when they were threatened by large amounts of bad debt in Latin America. It is inconceivable that it did not have a similar plan in place following the collapse of Bears Stearns in March.
This means that “financial Armageddon” would have meant the demise of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and most of the other Wall Street titans, but probably would not have led to a qualitatively worse economic situation for the rest of us than what we actually saw. In fact, there would have been a great benefit from this financial Armageddon in that it would let the market wipe out the fast dealing high flying Wall Street gang in a single blow.
This would eliminate the culture of synthetic CDOs and naked credit default swaps that provide ever more sophisticated and expensive ways to gamble. It would also eliminate many of the huge multi-million dollar paychecks that the Wall Street boys take home every year (or week). In other words, this is not obviously a bad story.
The other misleading aspect of the Post piece is its haughty claim that the TARP did not cost taxpayers any money. It is not clear whether this is an assertion based on ungodly stupidity or is just plain dishonest.
The TARP money was a form of insurance. The vast majority of insurance policies are never paid off, but that does not mean they have no value. The point here is that the banks were on the edge of going bankrupt. Private investors would not touch them. The government, through the TARP and the Fed, gave the banks the loans and the guarantees that assured the markets that the banks would survive. This meant that private investors could trust their money with the banks. That allowed the banks to weather the crisis that they had themselves created. They are now back on their feet and again paying their “top performers” tens of millions a year in bonuses.
Does the Post really not understand that TARP money was enormously valuable and imposed huge cost on society? If, back in the fall of 2008, the government had given a thousand community groups hundreds of billions of dollars of loans, accompanied by trillions of dollars of loan guarantees, these organizations could have used this money to make loans at very high interest rates and buy up assets at bargain basement prices. In this story, there would be no risk to the community groups, since if things went badly the government would be out the money. Of course, if the economy recovered, then they would be enormously rich, with large claims on society’s resources as a result of successfully betting with the government’s money. In the Post’s account, the prosperity created for these community groups would have cost taxpayers nothing.
This is the story of the TARP. If the government had not been so generous with the Wall Street banks, Goldman Sachs shareholders would not have claims to $67 billion of the economy’s output. Morgan Stanley’s shareholders would not have claims to $32 billion of the economy’s output. This is all a gift from the taxpayers to some of the richest people in the country. It is hard to believe that the Post’s editorial writers do not understand this fact.
The lead editorial of the Washington Post today mourned the “TARP martyrs” (seriously) who lost their seats in Congress for having supported the bank bailout. The Post’s main points are that we were threatened with “financial Armageddon” had TARP not passed (talk about shrill), and it really didn’t cost us any money.
Starting with “financial Armageddon,” let’s use a little common sense. Suppose TARP had not passed. The Fed actually already had enormous power to lend money to keep the financial system operating. The most immediate threat to the system, which Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and others highlighted, was the risk that the commercial paper (CP) market would shut down. They claimed that even healthy corporations were unable to borrow in the CP market. Since most large corporations depend on the CP market to finance their payroll and other ongoing expenses, the loss of this market would quickly cause the economy to grind to a halt.
While there is some debate as to how bad things were in the CP market at the time (the Minneapolis Fed disputes the claim that the market was shutting down), the more important point is that this issue was irrelevant to TARP. The Fed had the power to single-handedly support the CP market. In fact, the weekend after Congress approved the TARP Ben Bernanke announced the creation of a special lending facility to support the commercial paper market. So, that part of the financial Armageddon story was just a fairy tale for children, reporters and columnists, and members of Congress.
Suppose the TARP money had not started flowing and we saw the chain of bank collapses continue. The two remaining independent investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, would surely have been killed absent TARP and other special assistance from the Fed. It is all but certain that Citigroup and Bank of America would have gone belly up as well, along with many other large financial institutions.
Would this have led to financial Armageddon? Well, it surely would have created considerable disorder in the financial markets and led to a few million lawsuits, but the Fed and FDIC no doubt would have taken over these institutions to keep the system of payments operating. The Fed had a contingency plan to take over the money center banks in the 80s when they were threatened by large amounts of bad debt in Latin America. It is inconceivable that it did not have a similar plan in place following the collapse of Bears Stearns in March.
This means that “financial Armageddon” would have meant the demise of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and most of the other Wall Street titans, but probably would not have led to a qualitatively worse economic situation for the rest of us than what we actually saw. In fact, there would have been a great benefit from this financial Armageddon in that it would let the market wipe out the fast dealing high flying Wall Street gang in a single blow.
This would eliminate the culture of synthetic CDOs and naked credit default swaps that provide ever more sophisticated and expensive ways to gamble. It would also eliminate many of the huge multi-million dollar paychecks that the Wall Street boys take home every year (or week). In other words, this is not obviously a bad story.
The other misleading aspect of the Post piece is its haughty claim that the TARP did not cost taxpayers any money. It is not clear whether this is an assertion based on ungodly stupidity or is just plain dishonest.
The TARP money was a form of insurance. The vast majority of insurance policies are never paid off, but that does not mean they have no value. The point here is that the banks were on the edge of going bankrupt. Private investors would not touch them. The government, through the TARP and the Fed, gave the banks the loans and the guarantees that assured the markets that the banks would survive. This meant that private investors could trust their money with the banks. That allowed the banks to weather the crisis that they had themselves created. They are now back on their feet and again paying their “top performers” tens of millions a year in bonuses.
Does the Post really not understand that TARP money was enormously valuable and imposed huge cost on society? If, back in the fall of 2008, the government had given a thousand community groups hundreds of billions of dollars of loans, accompanied by trillions of dollars of loan guarantees, these organizations could have used this money to make loans at very high interest rates and buy up assets at bargain basement prices. In this story, there would be no risk to the community groups, since if things went badly the government would be out the money. Of course, if the economy recovered, then they would be enormously rich, with large claims on society’s resources as a result of successfully betting with the government’s money. In the Post’s account, the prosperity created for these community groups would have cost taxpayers nothing.
This is the story of the TARP. If the government had not been so generous with the Wall Street banks, Goldman Sachs shareholders would not have claims to $67 billion of the economy’s output. Morgan Stanley’s shareholders would not have claims to $32 billion of the economy’s output. This is all a gift from the taxpayers to some of the richest people in the country. It is hard to believe that the Post’s editorial writers do not understand this fact.
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The NYT’s Ross Douthat gave pessimism a new meaning when he noted the economy’s poor jobs performance in June and commented that:
“It’s now been 30 months since the beginning of the recession, and it looks as if it could take another 30 or so to regain the level of employment we enjoyed in the autumn of 2007.” Actually, we are down about 7.7 million jobs right now from the pre-recession peak. Making this up in 30 months would require creating jobs at a rate of more than 250,000 a month. This is a faster pace than we have seen in any month of the recovery thus far (excluding Census jobs). There are few forecasters who are this optimistic about the economy’s performance over the next two and a half years.
It is also worth noting that his claim that the economy was harmed by pessimism surrounding the stagflation of the late 70s is somewhat dubious. Investment, the component of output most sensitive to attitudes, was at a record share of GDP at that time. The investment share of GDP in the late 70s still has not been exceeded.
The NYT’s Ross Douthat gave pessimism a new meaning when he noted the economy’s poor jobs performance in June and commented that:
“It’s now been 30 months since the beginning of the recession, and it looks as if it could take another 30 or so to regain the level of employment we enjoyed in the autumn of 2007.” Actually, we are down about 7.7 million jobs right now from the pre-recession peak. Making this up in 30 months would require creating jobs at a rate of more than 250,000 a month. This is a faster pace than we have seen in any month of the recovery thus far (excluding Census jobs). There are few forecasters who are this optimistic about the economy’s performance over the next two and a half years.
It is also worth noting that his claim that the economy was harmed by pessimism surrounding the stagflation of the late 70s is somewhat dubious. Investment, the component of output most sensitive to attitudes, was at a record share of GDP at that time. The investment share of GDP in the late 70s still has not been exceeded.
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In an article reporting on the weak jobs report for June, the NYT quoted Alan Krueger, the chief economist at the Treasury Department, as saying “economic recoveries don’t move in straight lines.” Actually robust recoveries from steep downturns, like the one we just experienced do move in pretty much straight lines.
When the economy first start creating jobs rapidly in April of 1983, following the 1981-82 recession, it generated more than 200,000 jobs a month for 20 straight months. The one exception was in August of 1983 when a strike at AT&T led to a reported loss of 308,000 jobs. This was more than offset by a gain of 1,114,000 jobs in September. Given the growth in the labor force, 200,000 jobs in 1983 would be equivalent to more than 300,000 jobs a month in 2010.
In an article reporting on the weak jobs report for June, the NYT quoted Alan Krueger, the chief economist at the Treasury Department, as saying “economic recoveries don’t move in straight lines.” Actually robust recoveries from steep downturns, like the one we just experienced do move in pretty much straight lines.
When the economy first start creating jobs rapidly in April of 1983, following the 1981-82 recession, it generated more than 200,000 jobs a month for 20 straight months. The one exception was in August of 1983 when a strike at AT&T led to a reported loss of 308,000 jobs. This was more than offset by a gain of 1,114,000 jobs in September. Given the growth in the labor force, 200,000 jobs in 1983 would be equivalent to more than 300,000 jobs a month in 2010.
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That is not the way the Wall Street Journal reported it, but this in fact what it effectively quoted White House Energy Advisor Carol Browner as saying. The piece is headlined: “Smaller Oil Firms Might Exit Gulf.”
The item at issue is the $75 million liability cap that the government currently imposes for spills from offshore drilling. This cap effectively means that taxpayers are paying for the insurance for oil companies that drill offshore. The article reports that the smaller oil companies are complaining that they would not be able to compete if they had to pay for their own insurance.
It would have been helpful if the article had made this point more clear to readers. While there are arguments that the government should pay for items like education for children or fire protection, it is not clear what the argument is that government should pay for insurance for oil companies that cannot compete effectively in a free market.
That is not the way the Wall Street Journal reported it, but this in fact what it effectively quoted White House Energy Advisor Carol Browner as saying. The piece is headlined: “Smaller Oil Firms Might Exit Gulf.”
The item at issue is the $75 million liability cap that the government currently imposes for spills from offshore drilling. This cap effectively means that taxpayers are paying for the insurance for oil companies that drill offshore. The article reports that the smaller oil companies are complaining that they would not be able to compete if they had to pay for their own insurance.
It would have been helpful if the article had made this point more clear to readers. While there are arguments that the government should pay for items like education for children or fire protection, it is not clear what the argument is that government should pay for insurance for oil companies that cannot compete effectively in a free market.
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The NYT reported Thursday that manufacturers in Cleveland were having difficulty getting skilled workers. It turned out that the problem seemed to be that the managers interviewed in the article were not willing to pay the market wage for skilled workers, offering jobs that pay just $15-$20 an hour.
While the NYT may have been wrong about the shortage of skilled manufacturing workers in Cleveland, there does appear to be a shortage of skilled economics writers at the Washington Post. In his column today, Frank Ahrens warns readers that when they assess Paul Krugman’s dismal forecast for the economy:
“you need to read him through a filter. He believes that the $787 billion government stimulus approved last year was not enough to really kick-start the economy and that much more is needed.”
While $787 billion is a big number, people who understand the economy would compare it to the gap the stimulus was intended to fill rather than just be awed by the size. The collapse of the housing bubble cost the economy more than $500 billion in annual construction spending (both residential and non-residential). It lost approximately the same amount of of annual consumption spending as homeowners cut back consumption in response to the loss of $6 trillion in home equity.
The $787 stimulus package was supposed to replace more than $1 trillion in annual demand. The stimulus package included a technical fix to the tax code of approximately $80 billion that provided no real stimulus. It also included around $100 billion that would be spent in 2011 and later. This left about $600 billion to be spent in 2009 and 2010, or $300 billion a year. Roughly half of this increased in spending at the federal level was offset by cutbacks at the state and local level, leaving $150 billion a year in net stimulus from the government sector to offset a loss of more than $1 trillion in annual spending from the private sector.
People who know economics would think that a $150 billion in net government stimulus is insufficient to offset a loss of more than $1 trillion. Unfortunately, Mr. Ahren is apparently paralyzed by large numbers and is not capable of making this sort of assessment himself. This leads him to mock Krugman for making completely reasonable statements about the economy.
Mr. Ahrens lack of skills apparently prevented him from understanding that the reponse he received from his equity strategist friend, Peter Bookvar, about the state of the economy made no sense whatsoever. Ahrens reported Bookvar’s response to an e-mail asking about the economy:
“‘Our fragile economy CANNOT handle any tax hikes whatsoever, particularly on capital and the income of those who invest, save and spend the most,’ Boockvar wrote, meaning those American families that make more than $250,000 a year. The all-caps are his, but the feeling is shared by many.”
It is not clear what Bookvar thinks that wealthy people will do with their tax cut. Saving and spending are direct opposite actions. He might think that saving will help the economy (it is very difficult to see how), but then spending would hurt the economy and vice versa. The only plausible meaning that can be attached to Mr. Bookvar’s comment is that he wants wealthy people to have more money and apparently wants the government to run a larger deficit to ensure that they do. The comment concludes that “the feeling is shared by many,” which would seem to contradict the Post’s frequent assertions that everyone is obsessed by the deficit.
Mr. Ahrens also shared another piece of misinformation in his effort to discredit Krugman’s assessment of the economy. In a recent column Krugman had made some comparison’s of the current situation to the depression that began in 1873. Ahrens responded by telling readers:
“The fastest that information and capital could move in this sprawling nation in 1873 was about 80 mph — the top speed of a steam locomotive. When bad times hit back then, they tended to settle in for a good, long time.”
This is not true. The telegraph was in use since the 1830s, with the first transcontinental line put in place in 1861.
Anyhow, it is too bad that the Post cannot find someone with the skills necessary to report on the economy.
The NYT reported Thursday that manufacturers in Cleveland were having difficulty getting skilled workers. It turned out that the problem seemed to be that the managers interviewed in the article were not willing to pay the market wage for skilled workers, offering jobs that pay just $15-$20 an hour.
While the NYT may have been wrong about the shortage of skilled manufacturing workers in Cleveland, there does appear to be a shortage of skilled economics writers at the Washington Post. In his column today, Frank Ahrens warns readers that when they assess Paul Krugman’s dismal forecast for the economy:
“you need to read him through a filter. He believes that the $787 billion government stimulus approved last year was not enough to really kick-start the economy and that much more is needed.”
While $787 billion is a big number, people who understand the economy would compare it to the gap the stimulus was intended to fill rather than just be awed by the size. The collapse of the housing bubble cost the economy more than $500 billion in annual construction spending (both residential and non-residential). It lost approximately the same amount of of annual consumption spending as homeowners cut back consumption in response to the loss of $6 trillion in home equity.
The $787 stimulus package was supposed to replace more than $1 trillion in annual demand. The stimulus package included a technical fix to the tax code of approximately $80 billion that provided no real stimulus. It also included around $100 billion that would be spent in 2011 and later. This left about $600 billion to be spent in 2009 and 2010, or $300 billion a year. Roughly half of this increased in spending at the federal level was offset by cutbacks at the state and local level, leaving $150 billion a year in net stimulus from the government sector to offset a loss of more than $1 trillion in annual spending from the private sector.
People who know economics would think that a $150 billion in net government stimulus is insufficient to offset a loss of more than $1 trillion. Unfortunately, Mr. Ahren is apparently paralyzed by large numbers and is not capable of making this sort of assessment himself. This leads him to mock Krugman for making completely reasonable statements about the economy.
Mr. Ahrens lack of skills apparently prevented him from understanding that the reponse he received from his equity strategist friend, Peter Bookvar, about the state of the economy made no sense whatsoever. Ahrens reported Bookvar’s response to an e-mail asking about the economy:
“‘Our fragile economy CANNOT handle any tax hikes whatsoever, particularly on capital and the income of those who invest, save and spend the most,’ Boockvar wrote, meaning those American families that make more than $250,000 a year. The all-caps are his, but the feeling is shared by many.”
It is not clear what Bookvar thinks that wealthy people will do with their tax cut. Saving and spending are direct opposite actions. He might think that saving will help the economy (it is very difficult to see how), but then spending would hurt the economy and vice versa. The only plausible meaning that can be attached to Mr. Bookvar’s comment is that he wants wealthy people to have more money and apparently wants the government to run a larger deficit to ensure that they do. The comment concludes that “the feeling is shared by many,” which would seem to contradict the Post’s frequent assertions that everyone is obsessed by the deficit.
Mr. Ahrens also shared another piece of misinformation in his effort to discredit Krugman’s assessment of the economy. In a recent column Krugman had made some comparison’s of the current situation to the depression that began in 1873. Ahrens responded by telling readers:
“The fastest that information and capital could move in this sprawling nation in 1873 was about 80 mph — the top speed of a steam locomotive. When bad times hit back then, they tended to settle in for a good, long time.”
This is not true. The telegraph was in use since the 1830s, with the first transcontinental line put in place in 1861.
Anyhow, it is too bad that the Post cannot find someone with the skills necessary to report on the economy.
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