Undertaxed America

Prompted by the recent trend of anti-tax tea parties, Bruce Bartlett writes in Forbes that the United States is a low tax country ("Tax Tea Party Time?"):

The truth is that the U.S. is a relatively low-tax country no matter how you slice the data. The following tables illustrate this fact by comparing the U.S. to other members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based research organization.

[...]

[T]otal taxation (federal, state and local) amounted to 28% of the GDP in the U.S. in 2006. Only four of the 30 OECD countries had a lower tax ratio. Taxes averaged 35.9% for the OECD as a whole and 38% in Europe. Citizens of Denmark and Sweden paid very close to 50% of their total income in taxes.

I suspect that the complexity of the tax system in the U.S. partly explains why many Americans think they pay higher taxes than they actually do. Also, it's possible that many workers pay more attention to the large amount of taxes that are withheld from their paychecks and pay less attention to the amount that gets refunded to them every year. Bartlett goes on to note that higher taxes in many OECD countries are offset by generous transfer payments. He also notes the effect of government health care spending:

Another way that workers in other countries benefit is in having almost all of their basic health care expenses covered by the government. According to the OECD, 19 of its 30 member countries cover 100% of health care costs, and another eight cover more than 89% of costs. Of the three remaining countries, Turkey covers two-thirds of health expenses, and Mexico pays for half.

In the U.S., however, the government covered only 27.4% of health costs in 2006. And almost all of that went either to the elderly in the form of Medicare or the poor in the form of Medicaid. The American average worker either had to pay for his own insurance in the form of deductions from his pay or go without.

In 2008, employer-provided health insurance reduced the cash wages of American workers by 7.9%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If businesses didn't have to pay for health insurance, they could afford to pay their workers 7.9% more and be no worse off. If workers paid 7.9% more of their income in taxes to pay for national health insurance, they would also be no worse off.

To a large extent, this is exactly what happens in other countries. Workers see the higher taxes they pay the same way Americans view the deduction from their pay for health insurance--not as money down a rat hole, but as the payment for a tangible benefit.

This isn't necessarily an argument for national health insurance. There are lots of reasons why it may be preferable to maintain the largely private health system we have in America. No one thinks it would be a good idea to pay higher taxes in return for having the federal government provide us with food. Variety and quality would undoubtedly suffer a great deal. The same would be true if the federal government took over the provision of health care.

Has Nassim Nicholas Taleb Jumped the Shark?

That's a question¹ that came to mind when reading his op/ed in today's Financial Times, "Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world", parts of which seem strikingly simplistic. Below are a few examples, with commentary.

4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”. Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.

I wouldn't be surprised if nuclear plant managers do have some sort of incentive bonuses -- and why wouldn't they? The lesson here should be that bonuses need to be structured so the interests of shareholders and managers (and, yes, taxpayers) are aligned, not that bonuses need to be eliminated. In the case of a nuclear plant manager, for example, his bonus might be tied to meeting certain goals for safety, efficiency, etc. Obviously, a bonus that encouraged him to ignore safety would be stupid, but there's no reason to structure a bonus that way.

6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning. Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. Citizens must be protected from themselves, from bankers selling them “hedging” products, and from gullible regulators who listen to economic theorists.

Why deprive investors of the means to hedge their risks? You could argue, as Soros has, that certain derivatives (e.g., credit default swaps) should be limited to those who have an insurable interest, but why ban them altogether?

9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement. Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).

Where to begin with this one? If citizens shouldn't depend on financial assets for their retirement, on what should they depend? On defined benefit pensions (which, aside from being scarce in the private sector, are themselves dependent on financial assets)? Taleb seems to be suggesting that business owners put all of their assets into their businesses instead of putting some into passive investments, but what of the majority of citizens who don't own their own businesses?

10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs. Finally, this crisis cannot be fixed with makeshift repairs, no more than a boat with a rotten hull can be fixed with ad-hoc patches. We need to rebuild the hull with new (stronger) materials; we will have to remake the system before it does so itself. Let us move voluntarily into Capitalism 2.0 by helping what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalising the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the “Nobel” in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties.

Then we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer ecology, no leverage. A world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born and die every day without making the news.

"Clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here" makes some sense, but does Taleb really believe our economy ought to have "no leverage"? Does he envision people buying homes for 100% cash, with no mortgages? Wouldn't the more reasonable suggestion be that we have less leverage instead of no leverage?


The image above, of the Happy Days character Fonzie (played by Henry Winkler) jumping the shark comes from Media Bistro.

¹For those unfamiliar with the phrase, see the Urban Dictionary's definition of "jumping the shark".

An Economic Stimulus Idea That Seems to Work

One economic stimulus idea that has been proposed a number of times is for the government to spur auto sales by offering a voucher good towards the purchase of a new car¹ to owners of old cars. The first I remember reading of such a proposal was last summer, but here are a couple of more recent examples, from the Brookings Institution ("Refuel Economy with Cash for Old Cars") and from the chairman of Ford in the USA Today ("Cash in Old Cars for New Ones"). As the Brookings piece notes, Germany included this sort of voucher program as part of its stimulus package it implemented in January. The German version offers vouchers of 2,500 euros to citizens who scrap cars that are at least nine years old. According to an article in today's Financial Times ("Berlin hit by cost of car incentive scheme"), this German stimulus program is having a big effect, both in Germany and in other parts of central Europe. A few excerpts from the article make this point:

“In February and March, we made about three times the sales we had in the first quarter of last year,” says Bernd-Uwe Prochnow, sales director at a Volkswagen dealership in Frankfurt. “And the first quarter of last year wasn’t bad at all.”

Car sales nationwide rose 11.9 per cent in February, making Germany the world’s only bright spot for the car industry.

[...]

Car-scrapping incentive programmes introduced by Germany and other European Union countries² are having a dramatic impact on central European car factories, and could help boost the region’s slumping economies, write Jan Cienski in Warsaw and Thomas Escritt in Budapest.

The turnround at factories making smaller and cheaper cars has been striking. During much of November and December, the Dacia factory in Pitesti, Romania, stood empty, its workforce at home on 80 per cent pay. However, Dacia, owned by France’s Renault, produces the €5,000 ($6,600, £4,500) Logan, Europe's cheapest production car, which has become a winner thanks to Germany’s €2,500 government rebate available for new car purchases.

Recently François Foumont, Dacia's general manager, said surging west European demand meant exports would account for three-quarters of the company’s production this year, against two-thirds in 2008. Dacia said it sold 25,500 vehicles in Germany last year, and German orders this year already exceeded that number.

In the Czech Republic, Skoda, a subsidiary of Volkswagen, has seen its sales to Germany more than double to 11,000 in February, and the factory in Mlada Boleslav has gone back to full-time production after working only four days a week in January.

Petr Vanek, a spokesman for Hyundai, which has a factory in the Czech Republic, said the plant shipped 20 cars a month to Germany in January and February, but last month delivered more than 2,000. Hyundai is now hiring about 500 workers.

Fiat, which makes small cars in southern Poland, exported 47,417 cars in March, almost 10,000 more than in the same period a year ago.

The image above, of a welder working on a Logan sedan in the Dacia factory in Romania, comes from this ViaMichelin.com site

¹Some have proposed making vouchers good for the purchase of newer used cars too, which would indirectly boost new cars too.

²The article mentions that France offers a voucher program as well, but the French vouchers are worth only 1,000 euros.

"David Weidner Brings the Crazy"

Somehow I doubt we'll see a post with that headline on Megan McCardle's Atlantic blog in response to Weidner's MarketWatch column today, which questions the influence Goldman Sachs has exerted on the government's response to the financial crisis ("Government Sachs is in control"¹). Last month Megan used a similar headline when a Member of Congress raised similar questions about Goldman Sachs ("Maxine Waters brings the crazy"). In that post, Megan embedded the video below, of Rep. Waters questioning Treasury Secretary Geithner, and opined that,

She seems to get all of her questions off of the fringier conspiracy sites.

Some commenters dismissed Waters because of her previous comments, or because she flubbed some basic terminology in this video (e.g., referring to Geithner's deputy -- a Goldman Sachs alumnus -- as his "CEO"), but as I wrote in the comment thread of Megan's post at the time,

Maxine Waters is neither crazy nor stupid, as some here seem to think. She and her family members seem to have done quite well in business dealings trading off of her position²: she has to have some savvy to have been able to do that and not get in trouble with the law (at least so far). Since her family's success in business seems to have been from rent-seeking, she probably assumes that's how big business works too, which may explain her apparent contempt for corporate CEOs. In the case of Goldman Sachs, she may not be entirely off base. It's certainly not unreasonable to ask questions about the ubiquity of Goldman Sachs alumni in influential positions, and how that may have influenced government policies that, so far, have been very good for Goldman Sachs.

¹In his column, Weidner wrote,

Since the fall of Bear Stearns Cos. a little more than a year ago, Goldman has taken more than $20 billion in taxpayer cash through loans, payments and backstops.

[...]

In the last year, Goldman has benefited from Paulson's selective bailouts, a fortuitously timed ban on short selling, a liberal interpretation of bank holding company rules and soon, an easily gamed auction of distressed securities run by the government.

A conspiracy theorist might think this run of fortune has something to do with the former Goldman executives having influential roles in the Treasury Department.

²See this previous post for some examples, "Peering Under the TARP: Foul Waters"

"Fighting Recklessness with Recklessness"

That's the title of John Hussman's latest market commentary. Excerpt:

Look. You can play hot potato with the toxic assets all day long, and only outcome will be that the public will suffer the losses that would otherwise have been properly taken by the banks' own bondholders. You can tinker with the accounting rules all you want, and it won't make the banks solvent. It may improve “reported” earnings for a spell, but as investors who care about the stream of future cash flows that will actually be delivered to us over time, it is clear that modifying the accounting rules doesn't create value. It simply increases the likelihood that financial institutions will quietly go insolvent. I recognize that the accounting changes may reduce the immediate need for regulatory action, since banks will be able to pad their Tier 1 capital with false hope. But we have done nothing to abate foreclosures, and we are just about to begin a huge reset cycle for Alt-A's and option-ARMs. As the underlying mortgages go into foreclosure, it will ultimately become impossible to argue that the toxic assets would be worth much even in an “orderly transaction.”

Meanwhile, in a bizarre convolution of reality reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, the Financial Times reported last week: “US banks that have received government aid, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, are considering buying toxic assets to be sold by rivals under the Treasury's $1,000bn plan to revive the financial system.” And why not? They can put up a few percent of their own money, and swap each other's toxic assets financed by a bewildered public suddenly bearing more than 90% of the downside risk. The “investors” in this happy “public-private partnership” keep half the upside while ordinary Americans take the downside off of their hands. Some partnership.

With regard to the economy, there is quite a bit of optimism that the recent market advance represents a forward-looking call that the economy will recover in the second half of the year. Indeed, some analysts have noted that year-over-year consumer spending has only declined very slightly, hailing this as evidence that economic concerns are overblown. The difficulty is that consumer spending has never declined on a year-over-year basis, except in this downturn, so that slight decline is actually the worst showing for consumer spending in the available data. Likewise, capacity utilization has plunged to levels seen only in 1974 and 1982, both which were accompanied by far deeper valuation extremes than at present.

A Different Kind of Banker

From Forbes, "The Banker Who Said No" (Hat Tip: Carpe Diem):

While the nation's lenders ran amok during the boom, Andy Beal hoarded his money. Now he's cleaning up--with scant help from Uncle Sam.

[...]

Andy Beal, a 56-year-old, poker-playing college dropout, is a one-man toxic-asset eater--without a shred of government assistance. Beal plays his cards patiently. For three long years, from 2004 to 2007, he virtually stopped making or buying loans. While the credit markets were roaring and lenders were raking in billions, Beal shrank his bank's assets because he thought the loans were going to blow up. He cut his staff in half and killed time playing backgammon or racing cars. He took long lunches with friends, carping to them about "stupid loans." His odd behavior puzzled regulators, credit agencies and even his own board. They wondered why he was seemingly shutting the bank down, resisting the huge profits the nation's big banks were making. One director asked him: "Are we a dinosaur?"

[...]

Now, while many of those banks struggle to dig out from under a mountain of bad debt, Beal is acquiring assets. He is buying bonds backed by commercial planes, IOUs to power plants in the South, a mortgage on an office building in Ohio, debt backed by a Houston refinery and home loans from Alaska to Florida. In the last 15 months Beal has put $5 billion to work, tripling Beal Bank's assets to $7 billion, while such banks as Citigroup and Morgan Stanley shrink and gobble up billions in taxpayer bailouts.

Beal has barely got a dime from the feds. A self-described "libertarian kind of guy," Beal believes the government helped create the credit crisis. Now he finds it "crazy" that bankers who acted irresponsibly are getting money and he's not. But he wants to exploit their recklessness to amass his own fortune. "This is the opportunity of my lifetime," says Beal. "We are going to be a $30 billion bank without any help from the government." (A slight overstatement: He is quick to say he relies on federal deposit insurance.) Not much next to the trillion-dollar balance sheets of the nation's troubled banks, but the lesson here might be revealed in the fact that this billionaire is not playing with other people's money--he owns 100% of the bank and is acting accordingly.

You should read the whole thing, but here's one more brief quote from it:

In the last 15 years Beal says he has bought only one stock. If he ever thinks of investing in hedge funds or private equity, he says, "Just shoot me."

If you read the rest of article, you'll understand why Beal limits himself to buying distressed debt: he has access to more information than he would investing in a publicly-traded stock, he's built his own methodology, and he's good at it. He seems to be better at it than most of the hedge fund managers who invest in this asset class. The article notes that Beal got his start buying distressed debt during the last credit crisis.

The photo above, of the headquarters of Beal Bank, comes from the company's website.

Green Energy from Bad Debt?

Professor Yu's idea to transfer some Asian holdings of U.S. Treasuries into an infrastructure fund, which we mentioned in a recent post ("The Latest Warning from China about the U.S. Dollar and Debt"), reminded me of another proposal related to infrastructure and sovereign debt. An article a couple of weeks ago in the Financial Times ("‘Green’ plan to consign Argentina’s debt woes to history") described a proposal by Argentine lawyer Pablo Giancaterino to assuage the hold-outs of Argentina's 2005 debt swap and give Argentina access to the international bond market by closing the books on litigation associated with its default in 2001. According to the FT, Mr. Giancaterino

[P]roposes creating a trust into which hold-outs would deposit the verdicts won against Argentina, in essence “freezing” them, but leaving them as a guarantee that they could be executed if Argentina defaulted on the new deal.

The trust would issue investors with certificates of participation tradable in New York.

Argentina would receive the old bonds and all it would pay would be interest, with a 66 per cent so-called “haircut” on the original capital, similar to the 2005 swap that hold-outs rejected as too cheap.

Interest would be paid into the trust, which would be obliged to invest the funds in tax-free energy and infrastructure projects for 11 years. Those investments would generate returns to pay back the hold-outs without them having to accept a haircut.

The image above, of the Agua del Toro hydroelectric dam in Argentina, comes from Industcards.com.