In an article that discussed an IMF report on new taxes on the financial industry the Washington Post referred to a “financial activities Tax” (FAT) proposed by the IMF and said that: “The IMF’s proposed fees would raise more money than the other options under debate, with an emphasis on discouraging the type of risk-taking that caused the recent crisis.”
This is not true, a financial transactions tax (FTT), like the ones put forward in recent bills by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin and Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio, could raise more than $100 billion a year. This is considerably more money than the amount that would be raised by the FAT at the levels suggested by the IMF.
Remarkably, this article contains no mention of the FTT even though one of the main purposes of the IMF report was to assess its merits. The IMF unambiguously concluded that an FTT was an administratively feasible tax, directly contradicting one of the main objections put forward by many officials in the Obama administration and other opponents of the tax. Although the IMF report indicated its preference for the FAT, its assessment of the FTT’s feasibility undermines one of the main arguments against the tax. This fact should have been noted in the article.
In an article that discussed an IMF report on new taxes on the financial industry the Washington Post referred to a “financial activities Tax” (FAT) proposed by the IMF and said that: “The IMF’s proposed fees would raise more money than the other options under debate, with an emphasis on discouraging the type of risk-taking that caused the recent crisis.”
This is not true, a financial transactions tax (FTT), like the ones put forward in recent bills by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin and Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio, could raise more than $100 billion a year. This is considerably more money than the amount that would be raised by the FAT at the levels suggested by the IMF.
Remarkably, this article contains no mention of the FTT even though one of the main purposes of the IMF report was to assess its merits. The IMF unambiguously concluded that an FTT was an administratively feasible tax, directly contradicting one of the main objections put forward by many officials in the Obama administration and other opponents of the tax. Although the IMF report indicated its preference for the FAT, its assessment of the FTT’s feasibility undermines one of the main arguments against the tax. This fact should have been noted in the article.
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Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson makes a habit of using sleight of hand to promote fears about the budget deficit. He was in fine form yesterday in a column that argued that a value added tax offered little hope of addressing the deficit problem.
Samuelson told readers:
“By 2020, it could reach 25.2 percent of GDP and would still be expanding, reckons the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of President Obama’s budgets. In 2020, the deficit (assuming a healthy economy with 5 percent unemployment) would be 5.6 percent of GDP. To cover that, taxes would have to rise almost 30 percent”
A 30 percent increase in taxes sounds pretty scary (that’s percent, not 30 percentage points), but it is also beside the point. There is no reason to balance the budget in 2020 or ever. The key point is that the debt to GDP ratio cannot be growing indefinitely. To get the deficit down to a level that is consistent with a flat or declining debt to GDP ratio we would need to bring the deficit down to about 3.0 of GDP. The revenue needed to meet that target would involve a tax increase of a bit more than 10 percent or about 2.6 percentage points of GDP. That is not trivial, but not especially terrifying. We have been there before.
The problem is that once you move beyond the cheap tricks, Samuelson really doesn’t have much of a story. Hence the need for cheap tricks.
–Dean Baker
Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson makes a habit of using sleight of hand to promote fears about the budget deficit. He was in fine form yesterday in a column that argued that a value added tax offered little hope of addressing the deficit problem.
Samuelson told readers:
“By 2020, it could reach 25.2 percent of GDP and would still be expanding, reckons the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of President Obama’s budgets. In 2020, the deficit (assuming a healthy economy with 5 percent unemployment) would be 5.6 percent of GDP. To cover that, taxes would have to rise almost 30 percent”
A 30 percent increase in taxes sounds pretty scary (that’s percent, not 30 percentage points), but it is also beside the point. There is no reason to balance the budget in 2020 or ever. The key point is that the debt to GDP ratio cannot be growing indefinitely. To get the deficit down to a level that is consistent with a flat or declining debt to GDP ratio we would need to bring the deficit down to about 3.0 of GDP. The revenue needed to meet that target would involve a tax increase of a bit more than 10 percent or about 2.6 percentage points of GDP. That is not trivial, but not especially terrifying. We have been there before.
The problem is that once you move beyond the cheap tricks, Samuelson really doesn’t have much of a story. Hence the need for cheap tricks.
–Dean Baker
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Budget cutbacks at the state and local level make the downturn worse by reducing demand. This is econ 101. The NYT should have found someone to make this point so that readers would recognize that the members of Congress who refuse to allow more spending to prevent these cutbacks are raising the unemployment rate.
–Dean Baker
Budget cutbacks at the state and local level make the downturn worse by reducing demand. This is econ 101. The NYT should have found someone to make this point so that readers would recognize that the members of Congress who refuse to allow more spending to prevent these cutbacks are raising the unemployment rate.
–Dean Baker
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The folks who got it wrong when the housing bubble was growing seem determined to prove to the world that they are incapable of learning anything. The latest tales of Goldman designing CDOs are fascinating in that they reveal the incredible level of corruption at Goldman and on Wall Street more generally, but it was not the CDOs that gave us 10 percent unemployment.
Unemployment soared because demand collapsed. And the reason that demand collapsed is because housing bubble wealth disappeared. And housing bubble wealth disappeared — well, because it was a bubble that was not supported by the fundamentals.
For the 87,865th time, the collapse of the bubble led to a falloff in annual construction (residential and non-residential) spending of more than $600 billion. The loss of $6 trillion in housing wealth led, through the housing wealth effect (this isn’t radical — it is as old an economics doctrine as you’ll find) to a loss of close to $400 billion in consumption demand. That gives a combined loss in demand of more than $1 trillion and hence a really bad recession.
This story has nothing directly to do with CDOs. Insofar as CDOs and other games helped to drive the bubble beyond the levels it would have otherwise attained then they made the crash worse than it otherwise would have been, but the CDOs were not directly the problem. It was the bubble.
The folks who played games on Wall Street should be put safely behind bars for long periods of time, but it is important to know that the real story of this crisis was not the complex shenanigans of the Goldman gang. The real story was a huge bubble that was easy to see and guaranteed to burst. The fact that those involved in making and reporting on economic policy somehow did not see the bubble was a failure of immense proportions that should cost many many people their jobs.
–Dean Baker
The folks who got it wrong when the housing bubble was growing seem determined to prove to the world that they are incapable of learning anything. The latest tales of Goldman designing CDOs are fascinating in that they reveal the incredible level of corruption at Goldman and on Wall Street more generally, but it was not the CDOs that gave us 10 percent unemployment.
Unemployment soared because demand collapsed. And the reason that demand collapsed is because housing bubble wealth disappeared. And housing bubble wealth disappeared — well, because it was a bubble that was not supported by the fundamentals.
For the 87,865th time, the collapse of the bubble led to a falloff in annual construction (residential and non-residential) spending of more than $600 billion. The loss of $6 trillion in housing wealth led, through the housing wealth effect (this isn’t radical — it is as old an economics doctrine as you’ll find) to a loss of close to $400 billion in consumption demand. That gives a combined loss in demand of more than $1 trillion and hence a really bad recession.
This story has nothing directly to do with CDOs. Insofar as CDOs and other games helped to drive the bubble beyond the levels it would have otherwise attained then they made the crash worse than it otherwise would have been, but the CDOs were not directly the problem. It was the bubble.
The folks who played games on Wall Street should be put safely behind bars for long periods of time, but it is important to know that the real story of this crisis was not the complex shenanigans of the Goldman gang. The real story was a huge bubble that was easy to see and guaranteed to burst. The fact that those involved in making and reporting on economic policy somehow did not see the bubble was a failure of immense proportions that should cost many many people their jobs.
–Dean Baker
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It seems that the media are not interested in letting bad economic data get in the way of the economic recovery stories. The Labor Department reported that new unemployment claims rose to 484,000 last week, an increase of 24,000 from the previous week. This report got very little attention and seems to have gone unmentioned in both the NYT and WAPO.
While the weekly figure was undoubtedly inflated by people who put off filing the week before Easter, the prior week was exceptionally high given its timing. The 4-week moving average was 457,750, a number that is far above levels consistent with job growth. For 90 percent of the country, the labor market is the economy. This number deserved some serious attention.
–Dean Baker
It seems that the media are not interested in letting bad economic data get in the way of the economic recovery stories. The Labor Department reported that new unemployment claims rose to 484,000 last week, an increase of 24,000 from the previous week. This report got very little attention and seems to have gone unmentioned in both the NYT and WAPO.
While the weekly figure was undoubtedly inflated by people who put off filing the week before Easter, the prior week was exceptionally high given its timing. The 4-week moving average was 457,750, a number that is far above levels consistent with job growth. For 90 percent of the country, the labor market is the economy. This number deserved some serious attention.
–Dean Baker
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The Wall Street Journal told readers that the country will face a serious shortage of doctors in the next decade. It notes that in principle the country could bring in more foreign doctors, however, U.S. rules require foreign doctors to do a residency in the United States. Since U.S. residency slots are limited, the availability of foriegn-trained physicians will not help.
This article is remarkable because it does not include any quotes from economists about the enormous cost that the economy is being forced to bear as a result of the extreme protectionism used to maintain doctors’ salaries. It would not be difficult to design residency programs in other countries that met U.S. standards. (Even a doctor should be smart enough to do that.) We can also include a subsidy to the countries of origin of foreign-trained physicians to ensure that they can train more than enough doctors to make up for those that come to practice in the United States.
This could hugely increase the supply of doctors in the United States. This would lower the wages of physicans and reduce the cost of health care. This article should have been reported as an example of protectionism by a powerful special interest group being carried to absurd levels (e.g. Buy American policies times 1000), but instead the issue was never even raised.
–Dean Baker
The Wall Street Journal told readers that the country will face a serious shortage of doctors in the next decade. It notes that in principle the country could bring in more foreign doctors, however, U.S. rules require foreign doctors to do a residency in the United States. Since U.S. residency slots are limited, the availability of foriegn-trained physicians will not help.
This article is remarkable because it does not include any quotes from economists about the enormous cost that the economy is being forced to bear as a result of the extreme protectionism used to maintain doctors’ salaries. It would not be difficult to design residency programs in other countries that met U.S. standards. (Even a doctor should be smart enough to do that.) We can also include a subsidy to the countries of origin of foreign-trained physicians to ensure that they can train more than enough doctors to make up for those that come to practice in the United States.
This could hugely increase the supply of doctors in the United States. This would lower the wages of physicans and reduce the cost of health care. This article should have been reported as an example of protectionism by a powerful special interest group being carried to absurd levels (e.g. Buy American policies times 1000), but instead the issue was never even raised.
–Dean Baker
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The NYT reported on the release of new data from the Treasury Department showing a doubling in the number of redefaults on loans that had been permanently modified through the administration’s HAMP program. The new data show that more than 1 percent of permanent modifications have already redefaulted. Since most of the modifications have only been completed in the last few months, this indicates that a very percentage of the permanent modifications are likely to end in default. Since the vast majority of homeowners facing foreclosure will not receive a permanent modification, these means that the program is likely to help only a small minority of homeonwers keep their home.
It would have been useful to point out that the money that the government spends on a failed modification goes to banks, not homeowners. Typically, the government will have subsitituted an FHA insured mortgage for the original mortgage issued by a bank. This means that when a redefault takes place, the bank will have received most of the principle back on the loan, with the government incurring the loss on the redefault. The net result of this policy is that far more money is likely to be given to banks through the HAMP than to homeowners. This should have been pointed out in this article.
–Dean Baker
The NYT reported on the release of new data from the Treasury Department showing a doubling in the number of redefaults on loans that had been permanently modified through the administration’s HAMP program. The new data show that more than 1 percent of permanent modifications have already redefaulted. Since most of the modifications have only been completed in the last few months, this indicates that a very percentage of the permanent modifications are likely to end in default. Since the vast majority of homeowners facing foreclosure will not receive a permanent modification, these means that the program is likely to help only a small minority of homeonwers keep their home.
It would have been useful to point out that the money that the government spends on a failed modification goes to banks, not homeowners. Typically, the government will have subsitituted an FHA insured mortgage for the original mortgage issued by a bank. This means that when a redefault takes place, the bank will have received most of the principle back on the loan, with the government incurring the loss on the redefault. The net result of this policy is that far more money is likely to be given to banks through the HAMP than to homeowners. This should have been pointed out in this article.
–Dean Baker
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That might have been a good question for reporters to address when they reported on the February trade data released yesterday. The data showed that royalties and licensing fees had increased by $883 million from January, a rise of more than 40 percent.
This has occasionally happened in prior months and presumably reflects one-time payments to a producer or set of producers. However, this was a big part of the $2.8 billion rise in the overall trade deficit from January and it deserved some mention in the coverage of the February data.
That might have been a good question for reporters to address when they reported on the February trade data released yesterday. The data showed that royalties and licensing fees had increased by $883 million from January, a rise of more than 40 percent.
This has occasionally happened in prior months and presumably reflects one-time payments to a producer or set of producers. However, this was a big part of the $2.8 billion rise in the overall trade deficit from January and it deserved some mention in the coverage of the February data.
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That’s effectively what the Washington Post told readers in another front page editorial highlighting the need for deficit reduction. The article said:
“But by suggesting the deficit may have peaked, administration officials are taking a political gamble. If the favorable number does not hold up in coming months and the budget shortfall surpasses the $1.4 trillion recorded last year, voters in the November midterm elections could punish the Democrats for offering false hope.”
That’s a great story. Is it plausible that even 1 percent of voters are going to have any clue as to whether this year’s deficit is marginally higher or marginally lower than last year’s deficit? Is there any reason that anyone should care? Is there any evidence that this will influence their vote in an environment where they are concerned about their jobs and their homes?
In the Post’s dreams maybe, but not on this planet.
That’s effectively what the Washington Post told readers in another front page editorial highlighting the need for deficit reduction. The article said:
“But by suggesting the deficit may have peaked, administration officials are taking a political gamble. If the favorable number does not hold up in coming months and the budget shortfall surpasses the $1.4 trillion recorded last year, voters in the November midterm elections could punish the Democrats for offering false hope.”
That’s a great story. Is it plausible that even 1 percent of voters are going to have any clue as to whether this year’s deficit is marginally higher or marginally lower than last year’s deficit? Is there any reason that anyone should care? Is there any evidence that this will influence their vote in an environment where they are concerned about their jobs and their homes?
In the Post’s dreams maybe, but not on this planet.
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Paul Krugman asks in his column this morning why Texas managed to largely escape the worst of the housing bubble while Georgia leads the country in the number of failed banks. Both are states in which the major cities have relatively few zoning restrictions or natural barriers, which allows for easy sprawl to meet new housing demand. Krugman explains the difference by the better consumer protection legislation in Texas.
While this may have played a role, it is important to note that Texas had just been through a boom/bust cycle in the 80s. The state was at the epicenter of the S&L crisis. Land prices had soared with the oil boom at the start of the decade, but then collapsed along with the price of oil in the middle of the decade. Texas bankers who had lived through this experience might have had more realization that house prices could fall than bankers in other parts of the country. Of course, the experience of a recent boom and bust cycle did not affect in slowing the bubbles in either southern California or Colorado.
Paul Krugman asks in his column this morning why Texas managed to largely escape the worst of the housing bubble while Georgia leads the country in the number of failed banks. Both are states in which the major cities have relatively few zoning restrictions or natural barriers, which allows for easy sprawl to meet new housing demand. Krugman explains the difference by the better consumer protection legislation in Texas.
While this may have played a role, it is important to note that Texas had just been through a boom/bust cycle in the 80s. The state was at the epicenter of the S&L crisis. Land prices had soared with the oil boom at the start of the decade, but then collapsed along with the price of oil in the middle of the decade. Texas bankers who had lived through this experience might have had more realization that house prices could fall than bankers in other parts of the country. Of course, the experience of a recent boom and bust cycle did not affect in slowing the bubbles in either southern California or Colorado.
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