Questions from Barry Ritholtz

Barry Ritholtz has posed 12 questions related to current global economic situation to the readers. It has incited lot of interesting responses all must read. Here are my 2 dollars (no cents any more!) on the topic.

US Consumer spending, Housing
From first principles, US consumer spending should reduce until the time incomes become greater than interest cost, food and basic expenses. US housing loans are non-recourse loans (as I understand it) –hence jingle mail is best solution to get rid of the liability. Other loans, particularly credit card loans, might become a threat. To make an impact on the economy, this change requires strong-willed cost cutting across the population. This implies that downturn in US will be both prolonged and deep.

Can US avoid this debt trap?
There is a possibility that through structuring, financial engineering US can get out of this situation. It needs a creative solution involving legal, financial and regulatory skills put together. Following ideas can help define a solution:

• The human life is finite but firms’ life is infinite.
• All dues need not be paid back and all debt cannot be waived off
• The process of repayment of dues may be unfair – some people may choose to pay more than their share. (One example is taxes – taxes are unfair payments between individuals) In addition, some organizations will bear larger losses.

Inflation – how much, how soon, how to avoid
The excess money supply created over the past decade has to manifest itself. For long, this excess money remained contained with few resulting in a crop of billionaires, few sovereign wealth funds and overall salary hikes. After a certain passage of time, this wealth has to trickle down. This is what is happening currently. This will continue until such time the excess wealth exists. Wealth contraction can help correct inflation problem quickly. It implies currency revaluations, deep stock market corrections or pricking of asset bubbles. But this will create a lot of pain for the most important class of people politically – the influencers.

Employment – worse still to come – but totally avoidable
Employment is function of jobs available and skill availability. There is a strong mismatch here. If you don’t have skills jobs will move where skills are available. But will the low-skills jobs come back to you? US, in my humble opinion, needs a stronger manufacturing. That will take-off only if US dollar is correctly priced. We have already seen employment spurts with dollar falls.

Credit Crunch – impact on financial sector
Financial sector has itself to blame with the way it handled the excess money supply. Financial sector will go through salary rationalization, product rationalization, management control rationalization – in simple words it needs to go through Business process re-engineering. All financial companies need to talk to James Champy en masse. There is a lot of cost to be cut in these companies.

US Politics and war
The outcome of US election will have no impact on the crises. The current crises and possible solutions require unreasonably high skills of diplomacy. The potential for wars for forcible resolution of economic litigation will soon increase and pose direct threat to world peace. This will be most inconvenient for US. World economies will not take US opinion courtesy of Iraq and Afghanistan experience. It will take a real leader – a statesman – to sort out this mess without the war pains. I believe Hillary Clinton is lucky to have missed the nomination.

In Sum
We are going through one of the worst phases of economic history. No doubt we will come out of it. The only question is will we come out wiser?

A Threat to Globalisation

Let me first categorically state that I am pro-globalisation. Recently there is a careful weighing of pros and cons of globalisation. You can read Tyler Cowen, Mark Thoma and Brad Delong on this. I have a few points to add to this:
Globalisation as envisaged in theory and the practial globalisation that we are experiencing are two different animals. The first is the goal where the world economic system intends to move to. The second is represents a deviation, an intermediate stage, from the prior status (pre-globalised industrialsation) towards our goal of true globalisation. Let me hypothesize what differences we have.

• We have relatively free capital movement but we have a little restricted labour movement. The difference is in quantum and direction both.
• We have locally-wealthy-but-globally-poor pools able to kick start local economic development - but do not "export" this development through "consumption".
• We have economies that articificially create/sustain some competitive advantages longer than its "best-before-date" either through currency pegs, money market intervention or other things.
• We have created higher income polarity - possibly -keeping certain section of population in the low-income pole through a combination of slower skill-upgradation programmes or by keeping industry profitability low throguh subsidies or under the pretense of inflation targeting. Classic case oil and food - future case WATER!
• On the other pole - i.e. high income pole we have multiplying effects of first - increasing savings for similar incomes and second - increasing incomes through market mechanics. The increased savings are result of either flexi-taxes courtsey capital account convertibility or lower costs courtsey inflation control and subsidy. The increasing incomes is what accelerates the income differential - recently this has happened through asset price bubbles and otherwise through productivity gains as a result of globalisation.
• Further there is huge - amazingly huge - increase in cost of the tools of success in globalised world - parimarily higher (grad and post grad) education, health care (i.e for maintaining employability and lower cost when sick).
• Finally - globalisation, in all probability, seems to be irreversible development and will proceed towards the goal (i.e. real globlisation!).
  

Therefore, the current state has the pros and cons mixed up. The matter needs more debate and in-depth analysis. Today was just a welcome start!

Jeffrey Lacker on - The Fed Risks Moral Hazard

Jeffrey Lacker made a speech in London about Fed's bailout of Bear Sterns. The speech has amazing clarity about financial stability and central banking. It is a must read! Since I read it on the big picture - I am linking to it there.
The Big Picture Lacker: The Fed Risks Moral Hazard

Update:

Now here is the explanation and analysis of the Fed President Jeffrey Lacker's speech by Yves Smith. This is one of the reason why I am a fan of Yves Smith!

Thats why not much to add from my side. Here is the link: naked capitalism: Should the Fed Be Independent?

World without Oil.org

Let me first admit - I have a bias towards simulations and moreso towards game-based simulations.

World without Oil is one example why I have this bias. A few months ago an email exchange with a famous game designer Jane McGonigal introduced me to this game. And how soon have we come to this! The game simulated a world without oil and there is a whole lot of content on what people's responses have been to this crises. I guess that resource is now ripe to be tapped. I believe, the resource needs to be advertised and shared more.

Further I believe, the game now needs to be extended. Here are some ideas:

• First of all make the game global.
• It needs a downloadable mobile scoring app that can keep score for oil savings in 3-4 key areas. It could be - for example - everytime we go for a tank full we enter Odo reading and gas filled and cost/ charges we paid. We score higher if we travel more miles per gallon than average. We score higher for using subway etc.
• Make it include other resources as well - water, food, environment, money(considering US credit crises) etc. If we dont print an email - we get some points for saving a tree - etc.
• Hopefully we can simply enter that into a mobile phone / sms based web server and our points get updated twitter style - then we can blog about it- share it - earn identifiable and referable badges - like belts in karate. Everyone starts with Level 1 and lets say goes to Level 12 - they can display this badge on their website/blog etc.

I would love to brainstorm on this. If anyone is interested let me know!

Excess Money and its flow pattern

I am sure you people have already heard this podcast from Russ Roberts' interview of Gene Epstein on Gold Fed and money. There is something really interesting in the points he makes. Epstein talks about 2 ways US fed govt can monetize its deficit.

• First is the monetising of future revenues - pushing incomes up so that taxes go up and therefore government revenues.
• The second is creation of future debt Fed buying government notes and bonds and supplying money.
  

The interesting part is - the first goes through the economy across income classes (leading to distribution of the excess money) and therefore creates expected outcomes (inflation). The second, however, is cornered by "big money" (SWF and likes) and never goes into the system. Or actually it takes longer and and more complicated feedback loop to distribute the effects of the excess money. This leads (or led) everyone to believe - falsely - that system is still stable. The reality remains that system has just postponed its instability. Possibly, what we are seeing is the "mean reversion" after some of the effects became evident.

It would be wonderful to know what Yves Smith and others think on this one. Let me know what you think about this one.

Negative equity on cars - is it damaging?

Felix Salmon in his excellent blog at portfolio.com discusses Why negative equity in car loans is not a problem? To me the post looks at the perspective of financial institution rather than a household that is in debt.

Ideally, asset backed debt is safer for the debtors as they can sell the asset and square-off the debt at any point. In case of negative equity the debtor is in lose-lose situation. If they sell off the asset they loose a tool for income generation, while simultaneously retaining a part of the liability. This puts the household further into the debt trap. I guess Prof. Elizabeth Warren will have to downgrade her forecasts even further. This implies that consumption will suffer for longer than anticipated period.


Such situations elaborate the difference between debt and equity. When the worst strikes - equity vanishes but debt sticks on! And it creates problems. Hence I believe, the appropriate title should be Why negative equity on car loans is not a problem for banks? What say ye?

Financial crises and Recession risks

The current financial crises problem is a problem of capital destruction leading to recessionary risks.

The destruction of capital is happening at financial institution level and individual level. At the financial institutional (FI) level - where brokers who have guranteed capital (i.e. deals etc) are finding it diffficult to fund these commitments. At the individual level wherein individuals are finding it difficult to repay their debt.

The government and quasi- government institutions are targeting relief efforts at the first level. This is primarily to avoid a systemic default and thereby keep a channel open for aid to reach the second level. It is also logistically difficult to address the individuals directly. The recessionary risk, consequently, also attacks two levels - firms (broader than FIs) and individuals. The capital destruction puts a lot of strain on spending plans of firms making them costly. This also puts strain on individuals' spending plans. A slowdown in the consumer spending is catastrophic for an economy like US.

Now given the eminent slowdown in consumer spending, the FIs go into a mode of self preservation. They push the risks down the chain - through higher interest rates, higher equity contribution for same level of spending. This prevents the government aid from reaching to the individual (where it should actually flow). In fact even if now government were to push aid to individuals - institutions will nullify the effect by cornering higher share of the pocket from individuals for repayment.

This is primarily (and simplistically) why no recession-avoiding efffort will be of any use. The only beneficiaries will be share holders of financial institutions. Even those can realise the value in the longer term. In fact this aggravates the probability of recession by pressurising the marginal borrowers (who were good but just so) because of higher interest cost. The situation parallels that shown in movie Titanic where the people on rescue boats refused lower class passengers letting them drown to protect themselves. Fed has given the boat to the FIs and most likely FIs wont allow anyone (individuals) to get on board. The individuals will either drown sooner or later in the sea of debt! Here comes the iceberg - all hands to the bridge!

The best the regulator can do is to efficiently catalyze the process - i.e. lessen the pain on the down swing and push the economy back on to growth track.

Dollar headed for a decline?

Late last year I made some observations about the economic future and some of them are panning out as expected. As mentioned pressure on US dollar is considerable. Mark Thoma in Economists' view linked to Martin Feldstein's falling dollar article.

I was amused by the article and commented on one particular statement. Here it is:

"Despite the recent dollar decline, America’s trading partners still have large trade surpluses. ... So the more competitive dollar is not causing fundamental trade problems for America’s trading partners."

Whoa! While I agree that US dollar needs to correct itself to more competitive levels, the above statement is discomforting. As Alex mentioned if dollar decline was for real US trade deficit should have increased. Thats not happened because "almost" all trading partners have currencies pegged (overtly or covertly) to the dollar. Hence dollar decline takes all this basket of currencies lower.

The "almost" in above statement refers to oil! Oil is delinking from USD denomination. Other commodities are catching onto this idea. And all US trade partners need oil and commodities. As oil and key commodities move relative to dollar you will see more pain for US and trading partners, creating an incentive to stem the currency depreciation.

Now comes the main dilemma - as these countries move away from dollar peg - their reserve start losing value. At the least $ 1.5 trillion is held in reserves by major trading partners - even a percentage point here makes quite a big contribution to their GDP - so its like rock and hard place situation.

This, to my mind, will put a hell lot more downward pressure on the dollar than has ever seen before!

Though this raises US mfg competitiveness but hits Europe hard in their face. The trading partners' might face crises - and lets hope its just monetary and not a social unrest. (thats why you have something called country risk)

To my mind a stronger USD easing out is much better way out of current mess. Funnily US has an incentive/self interest to devalue the dollar - but doing so will mean push everyone into a deep downward spiral.

RD

This summarises my logic neatly. And I even got a comment reply from Organic George. Here it is:

Organic George says...
Rahul is spot on with his "delinking" comment.My company trades commodities from all over the world. We understand that the Euro is the new dollar when it comes to pricing.

I guess most of the Irory tower crowd is waiting for one of their own to write a paper to prove it.

It feels good to get a positive response. And its also in the news as Yves Smith points out! I am definitely elated!

Asset prices rising - Is trouble brewing?

There are reasons to believe that "investor demand" is driving asset prices through the roof. The "investor" crowd dynamics and the wealth they bring to this party may be acting as a self-reinforcing mechanisms at the core of this increase. If this party has gone on too far then we are in for trouble. A really big trouble.

Invested - appreciated - invested more!
This cycle has continued in almost every globalized economy. The increasing returns from the initial run of this cycle did bring in lot of new investors. The cycle, luckily, kept going enriching investor class substantially. This brought into "investment focus" various "asset classes" - like commodities, real estate, currencies etc. The cycle kept turning till about June 2007.

The last buyer - Where art thou?
Typically all investments terminate with end-user or what we can call the last buyer. Road investment look for the car /truck driver - mall investments look for the shopper - and houses look for the person wanting to stay.
The real estate sector, typically, is the first to look for last buyer. But there we had some interesting toxic concoction brewing - with easy credit flowing into the sector. As the sub-prime crises unfolded last year - the real estate sector finally started looking for the last buyer. It didn't find any.
The reality dawned upon the masses that "real estate" was priced too high for the real buyer. Based on current prices the real buyers will have to slog for many years before they can make any significant impact as "last buyers".
This is probably true for all "asset classes". Real estate (residential and commercial), stocks, bonds, non-agri commodities, derivatives across the globe are at the vortex of this hurricane. These asset classes have experienced tremendous upward force. The asset classes at the periphery - agri-commodities, are beginning to feel the force putting upward pressure on inflation - particularly food prices.

A Quick conclusion
If the hypotheses is true we are in for a particularly long painful period.
Even most powerful hurricane drops the things it throws in the air. So will prices drop - in real terms - either through inflation shooting up making this new wealth worthless or prices will deflate to a pain-point.
The most dramatic inflection point will come, if at all, within two quarters where large money will take sides on either possibilities - anticipating a killing. Let us brace for impact.
Meanwhile - we will look at what may have caused this in a little more details - and like always only hypotheses.

 

Technorati Tags: asset prices,recession,US slowdown

US indebtedness - The scope of the debt trap

Technorati Tags: US Slowdown

The long-term implications of high US personal (or family) debt may be worse than we anticipate. Various forecasts, discounting economic outputs from "back-to-normal" scenario 2-4 years in the future, may not have accounted for the problem correctly.

Debt stick on - even increases in bad times
Debt, much unlike losses, has an uncanny ability to stick - tying up future cash-flows for years, thereby constraining future consumption. Debt sticks on through job-losses, bankruptcies. In fact it increases - either in form of accumulated interest or future interest rates or loan availability. At least in India, where we do not have personal bankruptcies, this created systemic household poverty for generations. Drawing parallels from that, I believe, the time it will take to get the balance-sheets of US families to saner level of gearing might be much longer. Further more, for US, this exercise needs to be undertaken in/around recession years. Though it may not be generations, like in developing India, but it cannot be simply 2-4 years we anticipate.

Debt cause social pain
Corporate turnaround experts understand the kind of discipline and dispassionate execution it requires just to make small improvements. And it is still easier with a "company" than with household expenditures. Household cannot cut jobs and costs the way corporates can. Governments in progressive countries, like in US, tend to intervene with additional spending on social support - particularly education and healthcare. That spells problem for US.

In sum
We need to understand for median household debt what would be a good time frame get back in shape. We also need to understand the costs required to get them back in shape. The real future outcomes will lie hidden in these details.
As soon as we correctly value and discount these costs, the bearish-ness will vanish. Bulls don't like bullshit about recovery. Show us a real recovery and it's cost and we will "bear" it all the way into a bull run!

 

International Finance - A systemic weakness?

In my last post, I mentioned that wealth concentration exposed the financial systems to risks. The risk is compounded by inherent weakness of the financial system that  were not designed to accommodate. These systems are weak and plagued by complicated issues.

• Firstly, these were created as a subset of national governance systems. Consequently the flexibility of these systems are limited by the overall governance infrastructure in each nation.
• Also, unlike the capital movements, these standalone national regulatory systems are not inter-connected in any meaningful manner. Meaning any response to international financial crises will be subject to foreign-policy-like ambiguities and negotiations and, therefore, delays.
• The regulations are patchy - unable to control global momentum.

Popular, informed expert opinion is also weighing in on this shortcoming.
You can read Michael J. Panzner

in the modern global financial system, where many participants are either unregulated or are monitored by a patchwork of country or sector-specific regulatory overseers, chances are that a derivatives-related catastrophe will see a similar lack of coordination that will produce a far more devastating outcome than if it was a purely domestic affair.

It is one thing for a central banker to summon the heads of various financial firms into a room to sort out the mess at hedge fund LTCM, as the New York Federal Reserve chief reportedly did in 1998. Despite the fact that the Fed had limited statutory authority in the matter, it is not hard to see why none of those who were asked to attend turned down the "invitation."

However, if a derivatives time-bomb is set off by the failure of a large London-based hedge fund, will a banker in the Cayman Islands, an investor in Japan, an insurer in Germany, and a regulator in France feel similarly inclined to respond, or even to take the lead? That is assuming, of course, that those affected even understand what is going on or why it may be relevant to their own interests. Overall, there appears to be little, if any strategy in place for dealing with cross-border financial upheaval.

And Marshall Jevons linking to Davos

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Knight said the “major challenge” for regulators was the “the Balkanisation of regulation – fragmented across market segments, across national jurisdictions and yet we want to have a global financial system”.

And Dani Rodrick

How do you deal with capital flows when they are so prone to boom-and-bust cycles and generate (roughly once a decade) financial crashes with painful economic consequences?  The mainstream answer is that you do not regulate capital flows directly--through capital controls such as financial transactions taxes or deposit requirements--but you rely instead on prudential regulation of financial intermediaries. The best way to avoid crashes, this argument goes, is not to "throw sand in the wheels of international finance" (as Tobin famously put it), but to make sure that intermediaries do not take excessive risks.

In Sum...
A system so designed will be prone to momentum effects. The momentum is aggravated by wealth concentration. International finance needs to evolve beyond the free capital movement to counter this risk. A system of seamless regulatory response needs to be developed. Hopefully the thinkers at Davos will lay the first stone of a potent globalized interlinked system.

Market behaviour - Is Wealth Concentration a risk?

The world markets have taken a beating for a few trading sessions. We are all confounded by the speed, breadth and uniformity in the correction. As usual, yours truly already expressed it long ago (!) with loads of hypotheses and un-correlated facts. So lets start looking at one out of those - my favourite - Wealth Concentration!

Wealth concentration has increased
The past two decades has created lot of substantially wealthy and globally connected individuals/families. Their numbers were always increasing, but they may have crossed a certain potency threshold in terms of numbers and size of wealth available with each.

And they are connected - creating a super machine!

Thanks to information age, these individuals are now better connected globally. This new found strength enables investors to create companies, investment vehicles, repatriate profits and in general take more risks, faster. This is, in part, the source of complex corporate structure and ever-more complicated investment products.

Financial System, Infrastructure is old

Financial sector infrastructure, designed along national lines in a non-globalized era, is not able to grasp the increasing complexities of the newly globalized investment playground. The regulators still have to develop a "court sense". The current systems cannot control the high velocity international money movements generated by these investors.

The investors themselves don't know the risks

While these investors are (Wall) street smart, they are not the smartest! They are faced with unfathomable complexity - posed by globalization of products, services, capital and concurrent nationalisation of labour, consumption, markets (since driven by national regulators with nation-based systems).

We have just realised US housing markets, Australian banks, Chinese regulators and European central bankers are lot closer than we could have anticipated.

In Sum..

Globalisation has brought forth new set of complexities that are still difficult to gauge. Further wealth concentration have created high mass (volume) - high velocity monetary movements accentuated by innovative structures that can compromise the current financial systems. High velocity, high volume money flow can create "Shock-and-Awe" impact on many asset markets. Consequently, risk has increased many-fold.

The layout of poverty

I mentioned in a previous post why certain people stay poor. In the meanwhile, there have been lots of articles on poverty I have highlighted those below as well. Yet, I don't think enough work has been done to classify and understand different types of poverty. I believe the efforts in classification will help devise better solutions to the problem. I do not claim to be an authority on the subject but I am trying my best to think through the issue.

A different poverty - volatility induced poverty
I have highlighted two broad levels of classification i.e. transient and structural. Under structural poverty, we have a type off poverty that arises out of high net-income volatility combined with adequate average income. This kind of poverty is induced by volatility -in gross incomes and in expenses - both on unpredictable time scale (un-seasonal). Day-laborers, artisans etc suffer this kind of poverty more often. Farmers dependant of rain-water also suffer this kind of poverty. Dean Karlan and Sendhil Mullainathan have explored this here.

The unpredictability of expenses leads to in-debtedness. The flow of credit to this sector comes at high costs hence in-debtedness tends to be self-reinforcing - particularly with higher expense volatility. Hence cash-flows are directed towards life-sustenance rather than investments. In other words - expenses for healing, medicine, food, essential tools etc tend to be favored against education, savings etc. Such people find themselves caught in a structural poverty. I suspect healthcare is the most critical expense of the rest. It reduces income and increases expense at the same time! Also healthcare costs tend to be higher as nutrition is not proper. For them snakes-and-ladder game of scaling the income pyramid seems hopelessly crawling with snakes of healthcare costs denying them the ladders of savings and education.

Framework for solution
A first principles approach suggests that anything that reduces volatility (both income or expense) will be of great benefit. We can also easily conclude that smoothening incomes comes first, before smoothening expense is important. Next, it is absolutely essential to reduce expenses - particularly healthcare, food (proper nutrition) and education (for future). Yet most solutions to their problems tend to addressing volume not volatility. These solutions are likely to fail unless they add an element that suppresses volatility.

Income diversification
The growth in rural incomes in India has come from income stream diversification. Farmers have used tractors, pick-ups for transportation thereby leading to stable earnings and alongwith highly volatile agri-income. This resultant reduction in income volatility has set them on path of prosperity.


Expense smoothening Credit?
Simply throwing credit at this kind of poverty problem is not a solution. Credit repayments impose a smooth addition on their volatile expenses making their situation worse. (Hence farmer suicides in India). Indian rural banking is abound with stories of farmers wanting to pay two months installments together when they have money - and not being able to pay even one months installment in distress times. If their loan repayment schedule were to match the income generation schedule they will have much less to worry about.


In sum
Poverty reducing initiatives need to appreciate the differences in poverty. Volatility induced poverty can be tackled by addressing income volatility first, then expense volatility and then quantum of income and expenses. Expenses on healthcare, food and education are critical and need to be reduced.

Must read links:
Innovation for Poverty Action
MIT poverty action lab -
Is microfinance too rigid?
Marshall Jevons highlights course on poverty and some other links
Poverty in pictures -
Does poverty kill PSD blog links to some important conclusions

2008: Images from the Crystal ball!

I am putting together some statements that are taking my sleep away. I am going away to the calm of sea to mull over these. Or, may be, I am trying to run away from these. Here goes:

Wealth dynamics

1. A handful few own or influence large amounts of wealth.
2. A large part (read almost all) is dollar denominated and has just lost about 10% of its value!
3. Some of these wealthy few are actually countries (China, Abu Dhabi, Netherlands, Singapore etc)
4. Some of these countries (China particularly) have worked hard to accumulate this wealth. They will not like their wealth to loose value.
5. Even if few of them feel they can and should move out of dollar, it will start a landslide. To put it crudely it means if few people (even one of the few people) loose their cool at this stage we will have a run on the dollar and that wont be good day to say the least!
6. Here are some thoughts on dollar valuation by Menzie Chinn , Mark Thoma has some links here and here, by Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution and by Don Boudreaux.

Meanwhile Oil is another link that crosses currencies and assets

1. It impacts consumption basket across income classes
2. Dollar decline (or rising oil prices) meaning there will be impact across income classes
3. Some Readings - Stephen Gordon puts dollar in relation to oil.

Break to US

1. Expenses
   o American non-food consumption basket has considerable import component!
   o As dollar depreciates, the average monthly cost of living will rise.
   o This will mean there will lot more defaults (particularly at border of sub-prime and prime)
2. Source of funds
   o US banks and mortgage lenders have lent to sub-prime borrowers. ( Read Greenspan’s take on that here)
   o That sub-prime borrower is willing (if he has money - let us assume he is not a cheat as most people are not cheats) to pay but his occasional income is enough to pay his mortgage – but just so.
   o If he is found to be sub-prime, he pays higher interest rate to cover for other sub-primes who will not be paying.
3. Net-Net
   o Meaning that will seal his fate – he will default.
   o If cost of living increases then he defaults.
   o This makes sub-prime defaults a self-fulfilling prophesy!
   o US consumption should anyway slowdown (even if there is some demand elasticity)
4. Observations
   o Why do thing above read partly like income statement and partly like balance sheet?
   o Aren’t the wrong parts (of the financial statements) represented there?
5. Reads
   o Tanta (just one link here but there is loads of stuff in here just browse through - )
   o Herb Greenberg interviews Mark Hanson

Cut to income

1. Income for majority of Americans cannot rise if the same job can be done somewhere else in the world at lower cost.
   o Note "majority"
   o Or the job need not be done at all! As Ian Dew-Becker and Robert J. Gordon explore in their new paper
2. These people may move into sub-primes if there are any job losses
3. Great thing is there will be job gains (if dollar depreciates) unless the up-the-value-chain trick has worked for non-US manufacturers.
4. So there will be gain in American competitiveness – but against whom – Chinese or Europeans
5. Does it then mean new problems for just emerging Europe? It does, right?
   o Tyler Cowen again on impact on Europe

Cut back to wealth

1. When people accumulated wealth, they promptly invested in various asset classes.
2. This drove up the asset prices.
3. My guess is – the wealthy bought out more assets that can be purchased by consumers in the coming years.
4. Asset creation drives economy and that drives incomes and wealth
   o The trick is to know that income and income growth are highly correlated i.e. higher the income higher the income growth!
   o So technically if asset financing (by highest income earners) is far outpacing asset buying (by medium and low income earners)
5. Asset prices should correspond to income of medium and low income earners as they are asset purchasers.
6. But not so as this is asset financing bubble.
7. Since this boom is in asset financing – asset creators are using this opportunity to "lighten" the wealth burden of the wealthy
8. Is this good old "money-lender lending at exorbitant rates story" wine in a new bottle?

Government bailout

1. Then should governments bail out anyone?
2. Will real people be bailed out or only organizations who made idiotic mistakes? Read Tanta on Paulson plan here
3. What have you to say on the proposition –
   o If lenders just hold on to sub-prime for long enough they may actually, earn a decent profit. They just have to hold on to this long enough.
   o The question is how long?
   o It is a question of nerves.

Low inflation together with high-income concentration creates rapid wealth

1. Low inflation keeps essential services cost lower
2. Beyond a point its difficult to splurge even if your income increases from that point on
   o Consumption tapers off but not necessarily income ( more on that in next years post)
3. Meaning if you reach a theoretical threshold creating wealth becomes super easy!
   o Bill Gates once said – "It is the first million that is difficult to make"
4. Does this imply that low inflation keeps poor people poor
   o If the poor derive their incomes from sectors that form the inflation basket – is it not logical that those poor will remain poor
   o As food is central component of the inflation basket – and always under watch – results in farmers remaining poor and needing assistance.
   o You might want to read Chris Blattman’s paper here , Amol Agrawal links to IMF chief economist
5. A low-inflation policy is detrimental to GINI score ( I mean it polarizes wealth more effectively – more so away from poor and with the rich)
   You might want to read this link at The big picture

Labor and Capital
The artificial currency pegs seem to have expanded the money supply (in respective currencies) far higher than actual underlying value of products and goods
o This implies value has been limited compulsively
o Implies inflation should be higher
To me it indicates that global monetary system is signaling presence of threshold for how much capital can be present in the system.

An apology for over-simplificationYes thoughts are over-simplified. They may really be dumb. I have not put together data to test these statements and my information is primarily what my mind has retained after reading various articles.

A little disclaimer…
Also, since these are a little dumb I should remind you that they are mine… (pukka original!!) and these do not represent my employer’s views on these topic.

And finally…The divergence and weirdness of the things mentioned above confound me. I may just be out of my mind. These things happen to people who are about to leave for a holiday (15 days of bliss) after a long time (1.5 years!). I am supposed to pack my bags and head to the sea.

So hoping that these points have triggered many thoughts for the year-end, I sign off for 2007. I promise to delve into most of them next year.

Meanwhile, have a great Christmas and a great new years eve. Remember to buy some gift and make your donations – we just might need those things!

Why certain people stay poor?

When world embraced capitalism, it embraced, as Milton Friedman puts it, equality of opportunity and freedom of choice. It also embraced, as Karl Marx anticipated,  income inequality and therefore poverty.  Poverty, the product of capitalism, is a real circumstance.  Since capitalism also offers everyone a fair chance to rise above his circumstance and create wealth, there is not much discord with this arrangement. In fact, coupled with an enabling infrastructure provided by a democratic government, this represents one of the fairest civil structures yet created.

So why do some people remain condemned to poverty? To understand this, we need to understand poverty a little bit better.

Transient Poverty Vs Structural Poverty

Poverty, essentially (i.e. theoretically), is transient. In a stable, fair capitalist economy, there is a certain amount of population that always remains at the bottom - below the poverty threshold - of the income pyramid. By labour and enterprise, this population rises to the next income class. Simultaneously, competitive pressures force certain other people below the poverty threshold. These represent the transient poor. These people are currently poor but by no means restrained by their current poverty against rising through the income pyramid.

Then are there people who by currently being poor are condemned to be poor for their entire life, and even those of generations to follow? Sadly yes, and quite a few of them at that.

Dynamics of Poverty - Scaling up the Income pyramid

The income pyramid represents the basic framework on which the graph of poverty is drawn. The line income of a household will trace over time is determined by, other things remaining same, the age of the household and change in their income.

As mentioned earlier, a typical household has two ways of moving up the income pyramid - labour and enterprise. But a household below the poverty threshold, has only one way out - hard labour! This household does not have savings or income surplus or any access to finance (they are sub-prime!) to kick-start any enterprise. Even now, a household would not have a problem if labour opportunities are assured. Here is where the cusp of the problem lies. Labour does not always help this household scale the income pyramid.

The biggest hurdle - poverty!

Labour demand of an economy shifts every year across sectors. A very distinct shift is noticeable in farm labour's shift into industrial labour. Within this drastic shift there are micro-shifts moving between sectors from metals to plastics, from mechanical to electrical, from plumbing (hydraulics/pneumatics) to instrumentation (switch-gear). This movements create a chasm between available skill and desired skill. This chasm is difficult to cross without investment of time and money. Both of which our poor household does not have. Hence our poor household works twice as hard but does not get added surplus that can springboard it into the next income class.

Springboard for the poor - education and micro-finance!

The only way to help the poor out of this negative spiral is by making their labour ready for the market requirement and giving their enterprise a launch-pad.

Free training and education need to be made available to the poor. Agencies must use proper forecasting techniques and relevant research localised to the area to train the labour making them employable. Example - Locals in an area ear-marked for food processing zone, can trained in repairing, maintaining food grade machinery. Farmers can be trained in operating E-choupal kiosks and accessing mandi prices.

Micro-finance has a distinct role to play in this area. It gives the poor, access to capital to start their enterprise. Please remember micro-finance gives "access to capital". It implies financing "accessories" for the enterprise. And since its capital, return is estimated through study of potential viability  forecast of the enterprise. Thus micro-finance can be a robust springboard.

And the safety net...

We discussed two main levers that give poor households income advantage. But poor households also need a safety net in the form of accessible healthcare and low-cost banking facilities.

Healthcare represents one variable that can reverse income gains very fast. Rising healthcare costs have pushed many a household into the depths of poverty. Hence access to clean and complete healthcare is absolute essential.

Low cost banking is a worthy enabler for the poor helping them keep their assets safe and secure thereby granting small insurance against thefts and burglary etc. It also helps bank create a credit history for the household. This history (knowledge / information) acts as a de-risking element for the household making mainstream banking credit available when required.

Such a minimum safety net would indeed be a great service a nation can do for its poor.

In sum...

Poverty is not always transient. It is a nations responsibility to create adequate anti-poverty infrastructure to help its poor rise the income pyramid. Proper training and Education, accessible micro-finance provide great opportunities for income enhancing ventures to blossom. Adequate safety-nets through clean and accessible healthcare and access to low-cost banking provide critical support to household's growth initiatives.

Use value Vs sale value and Innovation

GDP, the scorecard of economic performance, does not adequately differentiate between Use value and Sale value. This can be illustrated with a simple example.

Use Value Vs Sale Value - Example

The GDP contribution of one coconut is sold is price of that coconut let say Rs 6/-.

A village buyer then drinks the water and eats the fleshy part of coconut, use outer fiberous cover as scrubber, uses the hard shell as a soap holder and later uses all of this as fuel to heat his bathing water.

A city buyer, typically, drinks the coconut water and eats the fleshy part and rest of it is discarded as garbage.

Now the use value of Rs 6/- is totally different in each case. This is what Karl Marx explained, in his paper called "Capital", the difference between use value and sale value. In this difference, or the divide between use value and sale value, lie many possibilities for innovation both for economic learning and entrepreneurial innovation.

Economic Learning opportunities - the hypotheses

First is related to computing GDP numbers. This divide implies that economies with higher ability to extract use value should feature higher than they actually do. Consequently, the algorithms used for estimating this value need to be tweaked to accommodate this difference.

Secondly, we need to interpret the GDP numbers carefully. A country may be actually creating more value than the GDP suggests.

Thirdly, I wonder if that is why economic development is accompanied by stress and loss of happiness (if it happens i.e.). Possibly in our hearts we know that by spending on packaged coconut water, plastic soap boxes and branded scrubbers we are actually in a loss (in terms of costs vs added benefit) than we were using plain old coconut.

Entrepreneurial Opportunities

On the other side, it also leads me to believe possibility of entrepreneurial innovation would be highest at the  innovations bridging this divide. An apt example can be found in the story of "Idea on a leaky platter". Entrepreneurs can gain immensely from bridging this divide.

Bridging this divide helps increase measured GDP. Secondly the adoption of these innovation is much faster (it already exists!), therefore easier to monetise (that the only thing entrepreneur has to do!). It also leads to productivity gain as firm-based efficiencies come into play.

In Sum

Innovation at the divide between use value and sale value holds a lot of promise in terms of success for investors and entrepreneurs. It is this area we should be concentrating upon. What say?

Newspaper or Waste Paper

Every morning my local newspaper reaches a new low in journalistic performance. The matter has come to such a state that I can trash my entire newspaper without even looking at it once and I wont miss anything.

Newspapers as they exists, seem doomed. They cannot fight television in terms of speed. The Internet beats the newspaper in terms of ability to cross-linkages ease of being discovered.

On top of it, it is really difficult of attract and retain a set of readers that advertisers would love to sell to. With money in the hands of people across the intelligence and vocations spectrums, tabloidisation seems the easy solution. Yet, it is now time newspapers realised that tabloidisation is not going to get them anywhere.

When I read in Indian express the interview of two very senior journalists - Tina Brown and Harold Evans - about this very subject, I hoped change would be round the corner. But apart from the comment that highlighted the importance of websites for the newspaper there wasn't much to look forward to. So what do newspapers do?

Step 1: Differentiate or Die - Playing the marketing game right!

Jack Trout provides clear solution, that must be the answer. Newspaper publishers should differentiate among themselves, within themselves and within their readers to survive. While most companies know about the strategy, few know what to differentiate between.

Differentiating the consumers - i.e. the readers!

Typically, for a family newspaper, readers are diverse. At the most macro level, diversity exists between families. Drill down and there also exist a diversity within each family unit in terms of age groups, maturity and gender. The appeal of each class, as created above, to the advertisers actually decides the target group. Analysis of consumption basket of target group coupled with typical annual advertising spends by brands in corresponding categories will logically decide best target segment.

Differentiating the content - guiding the eyeballs

Within a target household, there also exists diversity between roles of the readers. These can be classified into Skimming (glancing across headlines) and Analysis (in-depth coverage on headlines that catch attention). The content layout needs to be optimised for guiding the relevant household member to relevant page.

Standardizing the layouts effectively guides eyeballs. It also helps guide eyeballs if used creatively, case in point being the Google logos!

Differentiating within - between the covers

First and foremost, newspapers must differentiate within the pages. Newspapers have a systematic classification that puts city news on one place, political news on other place. From users point of view, it hardly makes any a difference unless the user can read into the classification. Newspapers seem to have forgotten that the classification must be based on users rather than news. That is the reason, why page 3 is called page 3. It would be great if newspapers can create brands out of their pages as successfully as "page3" brand was created.

For example, any mainstream newspaper may decide to addresses families of working families as their core target audience. Newspapers/periodicals are also known to target college going kids specifically. But as their audience is generically diverse - it is necessary pages are segregated properly so that advertising efficiency may be increased.

Step 2: Playing the production game right

Newspapers need to address "news production" a little differently. Current news production process can be classified into event reporting, reporter investigation, content generation, editing and finally delivery. Let us first enlarge this process by adding "follow-up" to it. As far as I understand, it is the news agencies that do the event reporting. The real winning strategy for a newspaper, therefore, needs to reside in the later part of the "news production" process.

Using reporter investigation better

As Goldratt mentioned in The Goal!, newspapers must optimise the process on their constraint. Clearly world class reporters are the constraint in this case! Using the same reporters and content they have generated, can a newspaper publisher create various stories that can move from plain event reporting to analysis of social issues behind the event. I believe they can. The process is called versioning. Content generated by reporter investigation can be versioned to feed into the headline breaking news story, the reporter's blog or a deeply researched piece. In fact newspapers often have lots of versions of the story write-up ready. (These days they literally have lots of versions of facts - hence had to specifically mention "write-up"). To be able to achieve this, content created by the reporter needs to be redefined. On this redefined content publishers can unleash different sets of editors to make the story readable for different audiences.

In essence one set of reporters can create many newspapers without much cost addition. Alternatively, news can be versioned across editions. E.g. City in the story can have detailed write-up whereas other city editions can have shorter versions!

Follow-up!

Once my boss remarked that if follow-up was an industry it would be the biggest industry! Websites give newspapers a mechanism to follow-up with their customers. Still if you read online content, it is an exact replica of the printed content. This, to my mind, defeats the purpose of the website.

Using IT effectively!

Internet should have allowed all the newspapers to have faster reporting. If all the reporters could upload their stories onto a central database, tag it properly. An intelligent editor with local knowledge can simply check-mark and get the edition out. This will enable the newspapers to create as many papers as they want.

In sum

Newspapers are an area where there is lot of potential for creating value. Steps indicated above are just outsiders view of the industry. Insiders can really create more and better avenues delighting us readers with well created, updated and analysed news in a crisp newspaper!

"In-tell"ing the "idiot box!

I have just been disappointed with my channel surfing experience. This isn’t the first time and surely won’t be the last. Indian television is at its lowest ebb. Not surprisingly, the advertising rates are among the lowest in the world.

Making the idiot box smarter - adding intelligence!
I believe television today is simply too dumb! Most of the soaps tend to take generation leaps making some characters as old as 800years and counting. I guess it is time to use television as tool for information dissemination. Look at the videos of John Bird and John Fortune, about sub-prime crises and credit crunch. They use humour to make people aware about some aspects of happenings in the financial world that are, in all probability, soon going to make life miserable for common man.

Yet all we have managed is to put humour to some crappy idiotic use in prime-time news.

Possibly only Vir Das (below) and Cyrus Brocha have managed to entertain intelligently using humour on news channels.

Intelligence is waning - Channels please wakeup!

I guess this is but just one example. But I guess it should suffice as there is not much opinion against my views. It is time channels and advertisers realised that programming catering to intelligent audience tends to be sticky. The intelligent viewer is intelligent enough to come back to the program and builds a solid "discussion universe" around the program attracting more "intelligent-aspirers" to the fold.

In Sum

Its time to rethink about the customer, about our assumptions of their intelligence and relook at what we are offering to the world. In the long run, well made intelligent programs will create their following and will bring viewers back to the channel. I am sure by making programming relevant to the people the channels can create a sticky customer. Let us hope the channels have some "intel" inside their organisations! Now isn't it what advertisers want to pay quality bucks for?

Real Estate: Where are we "real"ly?

Urbanisation of India has baffled me. Indian cities are a picture of most shoddy infrastructure and yet command more price than any other city in the world. Unlike Singapore, India has large land mass and there is no dearth of land supply. Also unlike other high cost cities, India’s per capita income does substantiate the prices in India. Therefore, what is happening and where will this lead?

Why prices are increasing?

The prominent reasons for increasing prices are said to be:

• Income and demographics
• NRI purchases
• Constrained urban infrastructure and hence higher pricing for currently available infrastructure
• Constrained low cost land supply
• Higher migration into established urban centers

Income and Demographics point to a different reality
This is the most abused story of all. If only people started looking at incomes and demographics, they will realize how outrageously prices have moved. The current incomes and spending patterns cannot support these residential prices or create enough spending to justify retail real estate prices.

NRI investments may not have an exit!
At current levels, housing is only affordable to NRIs with higher per capita income in relation to local population. However, if these purchases are investments then there has to be an exit route at higher prices for encashing the gains. Ultimate sustainable exit must be through selling to the local population. Crude calculations show the un-sustainability of this logic. In essence, the NRI investment theory may not find and exit route!

Constrained supply of low cost land is a cock and bull story!
Developers looking to acquire lands in or near the traditional CBDs are driving up the cost land. This is totally artificially created bottleneck and can be resolved using regulatory measures as seen in China.

Infrastructure constraints are government created
Lack of urban infrastructure is completely artificial, created by successive governments’ lack of vision. It has been years since government opened any new public schools, municipal offices, and water and sewage treatment facilities. The accumulated impact of this has reached a critical threshold where it has started affecting the cost of living and doing business in the city.

Higher migration into established urban centers is a key concern
Of all the reasons this represents the most critical and believable reasons. The job creation outside of the current urban centers is abysmally low. This is leading to in-bound migration across income classes.
At higher income level, it is raising prices in high-end localities. Therefore, we have the posh areas appreciating higher and faster than rationally acceptable rate. This phenomenon also brings in lower transactions leading to lower supply assimilation.
At the lower income side, slum population is increasing. Government is letting the migrant population encroach upon and absorb government and private land leading to artificially reducing the cost of living and doing business for current urban centers. This is a negative spiral as it reduced the incentives for economic activity to move out of the city. Thus, new investments in upcoming urban centers do not yield returns whereas old urban centers continue to become more congested. Consequently, emerging cities are missing the potential growth.

In sum
Governments lack of concern for living conditions, lack of foreseeing infrastructure requirements and lack of respect of property and assets is leading us down a dangerous spiral. Globalization has created ample infrastructure to let global cities compete against each other at a level playing field. Cities in Philippines, Malaysia and other south-east Asian countries are taking a lead and Indian cities will soon be left behind cursing the lost opportunity.

Selling costly products to the bottom of the pyramid!

When phones, televisions and many other costly products came to Indian villages, they were bought by few and used by many at low (or no) cost. In early days, such wonderful devices did not sell as much as they should have. Is there a way to sell such products well before they become affordable for the masses? Possibly! Let us examine the case of one product that is going through the exact same phase - the massage chair!

The massage chair!
Recently a cinema theatre we frequent put-up OSIM massage chairs. The chair is awesome and a full body massage takes about 20-25 minutes with lot of customizations possible. This massage chair from OSIM represents costly, high maintenance equipment that is not a daily use item. Using it requires a comfortable, private setting where one can enjoy the relaxation from the massage.

Converting product into service – a massage chair “Laundromat”
Imagine “OSIM massage parlours” wherein one gets to use the chair for fixed fee. This concept can be developed similar to Laundromats. Lot of such chairs can be made available in these “parlours” with a personal cubicle.
These parlours need to be placed where:

• People with aching backs and bodies are present i.e. airports, gymnasiums etc.
• People have some time on their hands - malls, cinema theatres, spas and hotels etc.

So this single product can be made into many “services” e.g. a simple massage, aroma massage (with choice of fragrances being sprayed in the cubicle), relaxation lights and sound package etc. The concept also opens up a lot of various options for allowing people to experiment with scented relaxation-candles, special relaxation music etc. The possibilities are enormous. The idea will definitely catch on resulting in product sales the company may not even have imagined! What say?