Magic jobs

Bill Gross, the founder of PIMCO, aka, "The bond king," has a message to his investors and to Congress:

"Solutions from policymakers on the right or left, however, seem focused almost exclusively on rectifying or reducing our budget deficit as a panacea," Gross writes. "While Democrats favor tax increases and mild adjustments to entitlements, Republicans pound the table for trillions of dollars of spending cuts and an axing of Obamacare. Both, however, somewhat mystifyingly, believe that balancing the budget will magically produce 20 million jobs over the next 10 years. President Obama's long-term budget makes just such a claim and Republican alternatives go many steps further. Former Governor Pawlenty of Minnesota might be the Republicans' extreme example, but his claim of 5% real growth based on tax cuts and entitlement reductions comes out of left field or perhaps the field of dreams. The United States has not had a sustained period of 5% real growth for nearly 60 years."

Both parties, in fact, are moving to anti-Keynesian policy orientations, which deny additional stimulus and make rather awkward and unsubstantiated claims that if you balance the budget, "they will come." It is envisioned that corporations or investors will somehow overnight be attracted to the revived competitiveness of the U.S. labor market: Politicians feel that fiscal conservatism equates to job growth. It's difficult to believe, however, that an American-based corporation, with profits as its primary focus, can somehow be wooed back to American soil with a feeble and historically unjustified assurance that Social Security will be now secure or that medical care inflation will disinflate. Admittedly, those are long-term requirements for a stable and healthy economy, but fiscal balance alone will not likely produce 20 million jobs over the next decade. The move towards it, in fact, if implemented too quickly, could stultify economic growth. Fed Chairman Bernanke has said as much, suggesting the urgency of a congressional medium-term plan to reduce the deficit but that immediate cuts are self-defeating if they were to undercut the still-fragile economy.

Emphasis added.

Unfortunately, as Brian Buetler points out, the GOP is too beholden to ideological purity and Dems are just too, predictably, scared.

Red scare

Dean Baker disagrees with Paul Krugman, noting that the Chinese can't suddenly have been "surprised" that they could lose money on the US dollar investments. Baker argues that China saw the value of the dollar plunge a year ago and did nothing to hedge their bets; in fact, the Chinese have long used the dollar to keep their own currency value low and hence keep the prices of Chinese goods for US consumers quite low.

Most importantly, Baker argues that China's "threats" about the US getting its finances in order is being used as the latest cudgel over "entitlements."

Anyhow, the reason why the distinction between the China surprise versus strategy view is important is that the bad guys are already using the China threat as an argument to cut Social Security and Medicare. The argument goes that if we don't get our budget in order (i.e. cut Social Security and Medicare) then the Chinese will pull the plug on us. The Peter Peterson crew have already been vigorously pushing this line.

The McCain campaign

For those who thought that with the campaign for craziest batshit Republican behind him the "old McCain" would return, think again.

Things will not be easy for us or for Obama, and we won't always be happy with what the Obama administration does or how it operates, but shit, we'd be deep in it if McCain were currently occupying the White House.

Bank merger welfare?

So the big bank bailout that was supposed to inject capital into the lending system...not so much.

Given the way, that is, that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had decided to use the first installment of the $700 billion bailout money to recapitalize banks instead of buying up their toxic securities, which he had then sold to Congress and the American people as the best and fastest way to get the banks to start making loans again, and help prevent this recession from getting much, much worse.

In point of fact, the dirty little secret of the banking industry is that it has no intention of using the money to make new loans. But this executive was the first insider who’s been indiscreet enough to say it within earshot of a journalist.

(He didn’t mean to, of course, but I obtained the call-in number and listened to a recording.)

“Twenty-five billion dollars is obviously going to help the folks who are struggling more than Chase,” he began. “What we do think it will help us do is perhaps be a little bit more active on the acquisition side or opportunistic side for some banks who are still struggling. And I would not assume that we are done on the acquisition side just because of the Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns mergers. I think there are going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment, and I think we have an opportunity to use that $25 billion in that way and obviously depending on whether recession turns into depression or what happens in the future, you know, we have that as a backstop.”

Read that answer as many times as you want — you are not going to find a single word in there about making loans to help the American economy. On the contrary: at another point in the conference call, the same executive (who I’m not naming because he didn’t know I would be listening in) explained that “loan dollars are down significantly.” He added, “We would think that loan volume will continue to go down as we continue to tighten credit to fully reflect the high cost of pricing on the loan side.” In other words JPMorgan has no intention of turning on the lending spigot.

Nocera goes on to conclude that one of the reasons the markets are still in free fall is that investors no longer trust Treasury. Wonder why? Keep reading.

It really is voodoo

Here we go again.

When Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1980, he promised to cut taxes in what seemed, at the time, a magical way. Tax revenue would go up, not down, he said, as the economy boomed in response to lower rates.

Since then, supply-side economics, as it was called — first with derision but then as a label embraced by its supporters — has become a central tenet of Republican political and economic thinking. That’s despite the fact that the big supply-side tax cuts of the 1980s and the 2000s did not work out as advertised, as even most supporters acknowledge.

But advocates see broader economic benefits from lowering tax rates, which is one of the reasons the concept has reappeared as a point of contention in this year’s election campaign, in an amended form.

“What really happens is that the economy grows more vigorously when you lower tax rates,” said Kevin Hassett, an adviser to the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, and the director for economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “It is beyond the reach of economic science to explain precisely why that happens, but it does.”

Even with a growing economy, however, the promised boon in tax revenue never materialized. Arthur B. Laffer, the renowned proponent of supply-side economics, still holds that tax revenues “rise dramatically” when tax rates are cut.

It's really incredible how conservative ideology, repeatedly shot to pieces and proven illogical and wrong, simply never dies.