Only about $57 billion more to go until the Public Debt tops $11 trillion. Since I last wrote about this on January 12 http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2009/01/bailout-math-and-implications.html it has soared by some $332 billion, so the $11 trillion mark is just around the corner. Something I failed to notice before: the government gratefully accepts “contributions” to reduce the debt (no kidding) so I include the appropriate information from the government’s web site:
How do you make a contribution to reduce the debt?
Make your check payable to the Bureau of the Public Debt, and in the memo section, notate that it is a Gift to reduce the Debt Held by the Public. Mail your check to:
Attn Dept G
Bureau Of the Public Debt
P. O. Box 2188
Parkersburg, WV 26106-2188
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/resources/faq/faq_publicdebt.htm#DebtOwner
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Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
The Brave New World and the Economy Converge
Once in a while our local paper, The Palm Beach Post, gets a leg up on the rest of the newspaper media, covering a South Florida story that is probably gaining traction in other parts of the country. It is certainly a sign of our times, bioethical issues colliding with the consequences of financial hardship. The headline says it all: More people choosing to turn their bodies into money-makers. http://www.palmbeachpost.com/search/content/local_news/epaper/2009/02/24/0223body4cash.html Besides selling mundane body components such as blood, plasma or one’s hair, eggs and “womb rental” are in demand and pay big bucks.
Donating eggs can fetch $5,000 while rent-a-womb surrogacy can “net from $18,000 to $70,000, whatever the couple and the carrier agree to.”
Interestingly, there is a Catch 22: “not everyone qualifies as a donor, and women whose only reason to volunteer is that they're broke are often rejected.” So, if you really need the money, don’t bother to apply.
Furthermore, egg donors must be non-smokers, which is understandable, but they must also agree to take injections of fertility drugs, hopefully not to the degree to produce a litter as the Californian octuplet mother.
The Boca Fertility IVF Center “once had only one catalog of donors. Now there are two binders with a total of 100 donors. They include blondes, brunettes, whites, blacks, Asians, even Jewish women, who used to be difficult to find.” As the economy deteriorates, genetic engineering or selective breeding could be on the rise.
"O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world!
That has such people in't!"
(Shakespeare's The Tempest from which Aldous Huxley derived the title of his famous novel).
Economists, meet the Bioethicists.
.
Donating eggs can fetch $5,000 while rent-a-womb surrogacy can “net from $18,000 to $70,000, whatever the couple and the carrier agree to.”
Interestingly, there is a Catch 22: “not everyone qualifies as a donor, and women whose only reason to volunteer is that they're broke are often rejected.” So, if you really need the money, don’t bother to apply.
Furthermore, egg donors must be non-smokers, which is understandable, but they must also agree to take injections of fertility drugs, hopefully not to the degree to produce a litter as the Californian octuplet mother.
The Boca Fertility IVF Center “once had only one catalog of donors. Now there are two binders with a total of 100 donors. They include blondes, brunettes, whites, blacks, Asians, even Jewish women, who used to be difficult to find.” As the economy deteriorates, genetic engineering or selective breeding could be on the rise.
"O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world!
That has such people in't!"
(Shakespeare's The Tempest from which Aldous Huxley derived the title of his famous novel).
Economists, meet the Bioethicists.
.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Taking a Break in Key West
I need a break from the constant drumbeat of downbeat news, Russian and American satellites colliding in space, British and French nuclear submarines colliding deep under the Atlantic, and the spiraling economic Armageddon, chasing an unknown vortex. I hark back to the happier times of the recent holidays when we visited Key West with our son.
Jonathan and I shared a camera. We apparently have a similar eye, as I can no longer remember exactly who took what picture. My father was a professional photographer and I would like to think a little of it rubbed off on me, but Jonathan has the advantage of being born into the digital generation and manipulates the features of a digital camera as second nature. Here he is “working” on my first computer, an Apple II, almost thirty years ago.
We walked through Key West’s less frequented side streets. It was a beautiful December day, not humid, temperatures in the 80s. Some of the photos illustrate Key West’s iconoclastic nature, some its beauty, and others the passage of time and disrepair.
Attitude Free Zone
It Don’t Come Off
Roof Shadows
Jonathan and I shared a camera. We apparently have a similar eye, as I can no longer remember exactly who took what picture. My father was a professional photographer and I would like to think a little of it rubbed off on me, but Jonathan has the advantage of being born into the digital generation and manipulates the features of a digital camera as second nature. Here he is “working” on my first computer, an Apple II, almost thirty years ago.
We walked through Key West’s less frequented side streets. It was a beautiful December day, not humid, temperatures in the 80s. Some of the photos illustrate Key West’s iconoclastic nature, some its beauty, and others the passage of time and disrepair.
Attitude Free Zone
Sliver Moon Fence
It Don’t Come Off
Roof Shadows
Tropical Leaf
Key-West-Mobile
Balcony Beer Bottle
A Sailor’s Delight
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Friday, February 20, 2009
Moral Hazard of Loan Modification
One can empathize with Ric Santelli’s widely heard rant and the reaction in the Blogosphere: http://www.fundmymutualfund.com/2009/02/rick-santelli-speaks-for-silent.html. No doubt the people who played by the book have the short stick in the $75 billion Homeowner Stability Initiative (“HSI”), but unless some way can be found to deal with the twin time bomb of mortgage foreclosures and more importantly, jobs and the threat of further job loss, the economy will continue to disintegrate.
There are people in homes who are employed but who borrowed too much or at terms that they can no longer afford, and who now may be motivated to simply walk away from their home and rent down the block and save a bundle. Hopefully, this group will be the plan’s focus. Yes, if they walk their credit rating will become impaired, but outside of that it becomes a simple business decision. How the HSI deals with principal reduction has a weighty bearing on the moral hazard issue.
Proposals that involve reducing the mortgage principal balance have called for banks or the taxpayer (whoever takes the hit for the lowered principal) having a “call” on the appreciated value of the home (over the new principal amount) if the home is sold in the future. So, if the home’s original mortgage was based on, say, a principal of $300k and the new principal is $200k, the bank/taxpayer would be entitled to the appreciated (assuming there is any) difference between $200k and the selling price in the future up to the original principal value. The problem with that approach is why would the seller bother to hold out for a price above $200k – there is no incentive (unless in the unlikely event the home can be sold for more than the original principal amount) – or would the bank then take it over as a foreclosure? Seems to me the bank/taxpayer needs a phased in participation in the selling price to avoid foreclosure down the road, or to provide incentive for the homeowner to get the best possible price, keeping government and/or the bank out of those logistics.
Thus, as far as principal reduction is concerned, the devil is in the detail, and it is here that the core moral hazard issue seems to lie. Other approaches of lowering the mortgage interest rate or converting adjustable rates to an affordable fixed rate or increasing the loan term are more straightforward and quantifiable and would seem to be easier to deal with – from a moral hazard perspective -- than principal reduction. It certainly makes sense to find a way to help people who are employed and can afford a reasonable monthly payment to stay in their homes.
.
There are people in homes who are employed but who borrowed too much or at terms that they can no longer afford, and who now may be motivated to simply walk away from their home and rent down the block and save a bundle. Hopefully, this group will be the plan’s focus. Yes, if they walk their credit rating will become impaired, but outside of that it becomes a simple business decision. How the HSI deals with principal reduction has a weighty bearing on the moral hazard issue.
Proposals that involve reducing the mortgage principal balance have called for banks or the taxpayer (whoever takes the hit for the lowered principal) having a “call” on the appreciated value of the home (over the new principal amount) if the home is sold in the future. So, if the home’s original mortgage was based on, say, a principal of $300k and the new principal is $200k, the bank/taxpayer would be entitled to the appreciated (assuming there is any) difference between $200k and the selling price in the future up to the original principal value. The problem with that approach is why would the seller bother to hold out for a price above $200k – there is no incentive (unless in the unlikely event the home can be sold for more than the original principal amount) – or would the bank then take it over as a foreclosure? Seems to me the bank/taxpayer needs a phased in participation in the selling price to avoid foreclosure down the road, or to provide incentive for the homeowner to get the best possible price, keeping government and/or the bank out of those logistics.
Thus, as far as principal reduction is concerned, the devil is in the detail, and it is here that the core moral hazard issue seems to lie. Other approaches of lowering the mortgage interest rate or converting adjustable rates to an affordable fixed rate or increasing the loan term are more straightforward and quantifiable and would seem to be easier to deal with – from a moral hazard perspective -- than principal reduction. It certainly makes sense to find a way to help people who are employed and can afford a reasonable monthly payment to stay in their homes.
.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Another Shoe to Drop
Turn the bailout hose this way. Here is one waiting for a future one of unknown proportions: “Government pension agency braces for recession” http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/090216/pension_bailout.html
The magnitude of the potential problem is best understood by going to The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s web site www.pbgc.gov for a description of its mission. The PBGC “is a federal corporation created by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. It currently protects the pensions of nearly 44 million American workers….PBGC receives no funds from general tax revenues. Operations are financed by insurance premiums set by Congress and paid by sponsors of defined benefit plans, investment income, assets from pension plans trusteed by PBGC, and recoveries from the companies formerly responsible for the plans. PBGC pays monthly retirement benefits, up to a guaranteed maximum, to more than 631,000 retirees in 3,860 pension plans that ended. Including those who have not yet retired and participants in multiemployer plans receiving financial assistance, PBGC is responsible for the current and future pensions of about 1,274,000 people.”
The PBGC already has an $11 billion deficit but the astounding part of the article cited above is the former Director, Charles Millard’s contention that “a new investment strategy, which allows the PBGC to invest more aggressively in stocks and alternative investments, makes it less likely that it will need a multibillion-dollar congressional bailout.”
That is the “strategy” to “protect” current and future pensions? Here is yet another government “safety net” that is not only vulnerable to the economic downturn but also has hitched it’s star to the future prospects of the stocks and alternative investments.
.
The magnitude of the potential problem is best understood by going to The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s web site www.pbgc.gov for a description of its mission. The PBGC “is a federal corporation created by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. It currently protects the pensions of nearly 44 million American workers….PBGC receives no funds from general tax revenues. Operations are financed by insurance premiums set by Congress and paid by sponsors of defined benefit plans, investment income, assets from pension plans trusteed by PBGC, and recoveries from the companies formerly responsible for the plans. PBGC pays monthly retirement benefits, up to a guaranteed maximum, to more than 631,000 retirees in 3,860 pension plans that ended. Including those who have not yet retired and participants in multiemployer plans receiving financial assistance, PBGC is responsible for the current and future pensions of about 1,274,000 people.”
The PBGC already has an $11 billion deficit but the astounding part of the article cited above is the former Director, Charles Millard’s contention that “a new investment strategy, which allows the PBGC to invest more aggressively in stocks and alternative investments, makes it less likely that it will need a multibillion-dollar congressional bailout.”
That is the “strategy” to “protect” current and future pensions? Here is yet another government “safety net” that is not only vulnerable to the economic downturn but also has hitched it’s star to the future prospects of the stocks and alternative investments.
.
Plastics and Publishing
The commoditization of publishing due to the convergence of trade publishing and other forms of entertainment in a digital age is just but one nail in the coffin of the industry. Even non-trade segments of the industry, such as professional and educational publishing, are struggling with issues of digital delivery, and they have also been caught up in the same financial contagion sweeping Wall Street. These publishers have reacted by cutting their lists, reducing staff, and delaying the signing of new contracts and product development, the same kind of short-term thinking prevalent in American business.
The publishing industry seems to be at an inflection point, with the “trade” part shrinking, fighting all other forms of entertainment proliferating on line, via the Ipod, even the cell phone, cable TV, Netflix, etc. and, now, the emergence of Amazon as a publisher in its own right via its Kindle e-book reader, and educational publishing changing slower than it needs to in order to make the Web more of an opportunity than a threat. Somewhere between the space of the large media publishing organization and the small on demand publisher there would seem to be an opportunity for the strong independent publisher.
Here a just some of the recent developments to consider:
▪ HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Penguin Group, Random House and Simon & Schuster have all announced salary freezes or layoffs, or both.
▪ As of October book sales fell 7 percent compared with the same period the previous year.
▪ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has put a freeze on acquiring most new titles for its trade division while HarperCollins has closed its nonfiction division.
▪ Even the venerable Oxford University Press, the largest university press, laid off 60 people from its US operation, almost a tenth of its staff.
▪ Amazon has ramped up the manufacturing of a new version of its Kindle reader and acquired a new work by Stephen King that will be published exclusively (initially at least) on the Kindle.
The last event is particularly significant. Amazon’s first version is estimated to have sold 500,000 copies. Kindle 2.0 is sleeker, easier to use and even will read the text aloud, still another issue for publishers. While intellectual content is now routinely delivered on the Web, mass-market fiction to date has been the exclusive stronghold of the printed book and therefore the publishing industry. Now best-selling authors can bypass the publisher.
But many publishers are also exposed to the subrogation of internal financing to private equity and the leveraged buyout. By 2006 private equity firms were flocking to the industry:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2006/08/10/private_equity_eyeing_book_publisher_bids_sources/
A former colleague of mine wrote me: “I’ve always been jealous of those of you who were in publishing during the days when it was different from other corporations. I've become quite disillusioned with the business as a whole, basically because it seems every other day you hear that some great long-time member of the publishing community is being pushed out, and someone who was the CEO of a deodorant company or something is coming in to run things. Next thing you know, that company goes under.”
But mergers and acquisitions and the pursuit of the holy grail of synergy are not new. I was involved in several during my career. The most ludicrous one was early in my publishing days. A small publicly owned conglomerate owned the company I worked for at the time. This firm also had a consumer plastics company. The accountants discovered the "process" of making consumer plastic products was similar to books as you make a master (camera ready copy for photo offset or a mold for plastic products) and from the master you make duplicates. Perfect accounting synergy as you capitalize the cost of the master and write it off during the lifespan of the product. So, we became part of the "Plastics and Publishing" division and in their 1971 annual report our books were displayed along side plastic hangers, dishes, and jewelry cases!
And, publishers managed during other dire economic times. There were serious downturns in the mid 1970’s when the prime rate rose for the first time to double digits, in the early 1980s when Paul Volker ratcheted interest rates to unprecedented levels in response to the CPI reaching almost 15 percent, and a recession in 1991 that resembled the present one (although not as severe) as it was a liquidity crisis. At that time the excesses of the 1980s were in the process of self-correcting. Individuals and state and local governments who leveraged their finances found they were without the funds to even carry on day-to-day operations. Many of these loans were underwritten by real estate values that had simply disappeared.
Today’s debt has now been magnified by a huge multiple thanks to exotic financial instruments, resulting in an even more serious liquidity crisis. My mantra was a publisher should be able to operate “out of a tent,” making the investment in talented people and buying services rather than investing capital in plant and equipment, or, even worse, in unrealistic print runs and pricing, everything to keep financing costs to the minimum. Leveraged finance and publishing are a bad mix.
Long-term thinking is needed in the industry. Or, as another colleague of mine noted: “These publishers are like a group in the desert that decides to camp in place and stop expending energy so their limited water will keep them alive longer. By this strategy they will live a little longer but die they surely will.” This is the time for stronger independent publishers to expand their lists while leveraged corporate behemoths are contracting, if necessary practicing attrition rather than layoffs, seeking new authors while competitors caught in the financial mess are not publishing them. By swimming against the tide, rethinking their role in a digital world, independent publishers can help bring the publishing industry back from stagnation. “Camping in place” is not an option.
.
The publishing industry seems to be at an inflection point, with the “trade” part shrinking, fighting all other forms of entertainment proliferating on line, via the Ipod, even the cell phone, cable TV, Netflix, etc. and, now, the emergence of Amazon as a publisher in its own right via its Kindle e-book reader, and educational publishing changing slower than it needs to in order to make the Web more of an opportunity than a threat. Somewhere between the space of the large media publishing organization and the small on demand publisher there would seem to be an opportunity for the strong independent publisher.
Here a just some of the recent developments to consider:
▪ HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Penguin Group, Random House and Simon & Schuster have all announced salary freezes or layoffs, or both.
▪ As of October book sales fell 7 percent compared with the same period the previous year.
▪ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has put a freeze on acquiring most new titles for its trade division while HarperCollins has closed its nonfiction division.
▪ Even the venerable Oxford University Press, the largest university press, laid off 60 people from its US operation, almost a tenth of its staff.
▪ Amazon has ramped up the manufacturing of a new version of its Kindle reader and acquired a new work by Stephen King that will be published exclusively (initially at least) on the Kindle.
The last event is particularly significant. Amazon’s first version is estimated to have sold 500,000 copies. Kindle 2.0 is sleeker, easier to use and even will read the text aloud, still another issue for publishers. While intellectual content is now routinely delivered on the Web, mass-market fiction to date has been the exclusive stronghold of the printed book and therefore the publishing industry. Now best-selling authors can bypass the publisher.
But many publishers are also exposed to the subrogation of internal financing to private equity and the leveraged buyout. By 2006 private equity firms were flocking to the industry:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2006/08/10/private_equity_eyeing_book_publisher_bids_sources/
A former colleague of mine wrote me: “I’ve always been jealous of those of you who were in publishing during the days when it was different from other corporations. I've become quite disillusioned with the business as a whole, basically because it seems every other day you hear that some great long-time member of the publishing community is being pushed out, and someone who was the CEO of a deodorant company or something is coming in to run things. Next thing you know, that company goes under.”
But mergers and acquisitions and the pursuit of the holy grail of synergy are not new. I was involved in several during my career. The most ludicrous one was early in my publishing days. A small publicly owned conglomerate owned the company I worked for at the time. This firm also had a consumer plastics company. The accountants discovered the "process" of making consumer plastic products was similar to books as you make a master (camera ready copy for photo offset or a mold for plastic products) and from the master you make duplicates. Perfect accounting synergy as you capitalize the cost of the master and write it off during the lifespan of the product. So, we became part of the "Plastics and Publishing" division and in their 1971 annual report our books were displayed along side plastic hangers, dishes, and jewelry cases!
And, publishers managed during other dire economic times. There were serious downturns in the mid 1970’s when the prime rate rose for the first time to double digits, in the early 1980s when Paul Volker ratcheted interest rates to unprecedented levels in response to the CPI reaching almost 15 percent, and a recession in 1991 that resembled the present one (although not as severe) as it was a liquidity crisis. At that time the excesses of the 1980s were in the process of self-correcting. Individuals and state and local governments who leveraged their finances found they were without the funds to even carry on day-to-day operations. Many of these loans were underwritten by real estate values that had simply disappeared.
Today’s debt has now been magnified by a huge multiple thanks to exotic financial instruments, resulting in an even more serious liquidity crisis. My mantra was a publisher should be able to operate “out of a tent,” making the investment in talented people and buying services rather than investing capital in plant and equipment, or, even worse, in unrealistic print runs and pricing, everything to keep financing costs to the minimum. Leveraged finance and publishing are a bad mix.
Long-term thinking is needed in the industry. Or, as another colleague of mine noted: “These publishers are like a group in the desert that decides to camp in place and stop expending energy so their limited water will keep them alive longer. By this strategy they will live a little longer but die they surely will.” This is the time for stronger independent publishers to expand their lists while leveraged corporate behemoths are contracting, if necessary practicing attrition rather than layoffs, seeking new authors while competitors caught in the financial mess are not publishing them. By swimming against the tide, rethinking their role in a digital world, independent publishers can help bring the publishing industry back from stagnation. “Camping in place” is not an option.
.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Our Financial Crucible
I was watching some of the House Financial Services Committee’s hearings yesterday with the chief executives of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, State Street Bank, Wells Fargo Bank, and Bank of New York sitting there like a bunch of guilty school boys, being berated by their elders. These firms were the lucky recipients of the $700 billion banking bailout.
A number questions were posed to score points for our lawmakers, questions that were expected to be answered by a show of the hands so we all can see the scarlet letter of guilt. Questions along the lines of “how many of you have received government money but have changed your credit card terms?” The perplexed guilty parties sort of looked at each other (obviously wondering what is meant by the question), and as one would timidly raise his hand, the others would slowly follow. These questions went on and on, an embarrassment to those who posed them, those who were forced to answer, and those of us who are relying on this “system” to fix the problem. (Although they did manage to get John Mack of Morgan Stanley to say, “We are sorry.”)
Most of these lawmakers are the very ones who once pressured financial institutions to make loans available to everyone no matter what their creditworthiness so they could boast their beneficence to their constituency. And the bankers are the same financial wizards who created leveraged products that passed off tremendous risk to investors, and, now, to us. We also had a Federal Reserve that fed the fire with practically free money, leaving Alan Greenspan recently wondering, “I still don't fully understand how it happened or why it happened.”
One can empathize with the feelings of outrage, especially now that we learn that some seven hundred Merrill Lynch employees “earned” bonuses of more than one million dollars in 2008 as the firm lost $27 billion. Yesterday the apologists on CNBC generally defended Wall Street bonuses because even when a financial firm overall loses money there are individual “producers” who make pockets of money. The CNBC cheerleaders went on to say that these “producers” need to be “incentified” – otherwise they will be left only with their base salaries. Most people might be content with the latter and isn’t this the kind of “incentive” which motivated “producers” to take excessive risk in the first place?
The questions posed at the witch-hunt hearings centered on why banks are not lending out all the money they received. What planet do our representatives live on? You can’t force banks to lend money if people do not have jobs or are worried about losing jobs, and that is the central element in the crucible of today’s financial times. Just a cursory look at the chart Job losses in Recent Recessions prepared by Barry Ritholtz dramatically goes to the heart of the matter:
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/job-losses-comparing-recessions/
.
A number questions were posed to score points for our lawmakers, questions that were expected to be answered by a show of the hands so we all can see the scarlet letter of guilt. Questions along the lines of “how many of you have received government money but have changed your credit card terms?” The perplexed guilty parties sort of looked at each other (obviously wondering what is meant by the question), and as one would timidly raise his hand, the others would slowly follow. These questions went on and on, an embarrassment to those who posed them, those who were forced to answer, and those of us who are relying on this “system” to fix the problem. (Although they did manage to get John Mack of Morgan Stanley to say, “We are sorry.”)
Most of these lawmakers are the very ones who once pressured financial institutions to make loans available to everyone no matter what their creditworthiness so they could boast their beneficence to their constituency. And the bankers are the same financial wizards who created leveraged products that passed off tremendous risk to investors, and, now, to us. We also had a Federal Reserve that fed the fire with practically free money, leaving Alan Greenspan recently wondering, “I still don't fully understand how it happened or why it happened.”
One can empathize with the feelings of outrage, especially now that we learn that some seven hundred Merrill Lynch employees “earned” bonuses of more than one million dollars in 2008 as the firm lost $27 billion. Yesterday the apologists on CNBC generally defended Wall Street bonuses because even when a financial firm overall loses money there are individual “producers” who make pockets of money. The CNBC cheerleaders went on to say that these “producers” need to be “incentified” – otherwise they will be left only with their base salaries. Most people might be content with the latter and isn’t this the kind of “incentive” which motivated “producers” to take excessive risk in the first place?
The questions posed at the witch-hunt hearings centered on why banks are not lending out all the money they received. What planet do our representatives live on? You can’t force banks to lend money if people do not have jobs or are worried about losing jobs, and that is the central element in the crucible of today’s financial times. Just a cursory look at the chart Job losses in Recent Recessions prepared by Barry Ritholtz dramatically goes to the heart of the matter:
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/job-losses-comparing-recessions/
.
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