Satyam and types of scams

There are essentially two kinds of scams

• First where money is siphoned off by paying higher to related parties as suppliers
• Second where profits are added to show higher performance - typically if pay is related to profits / share prices.

The interesting part of Satyam (assuming Mr Raju's statement to be true) is that it went from second type to first type scam. I think thats where it became unmanagable. I would like to believe it is an isolated case but I would not bet my money on this. Ajay Shah has interesting piece on three zones of corporate governance. Type 1 scam affects Zone I and Zone II in big way with large number of cases, less money involved, not easy to recognize for outsiders. Irony is that powerless individual investors are involved hence not much is impacted.

We are surely going to see more uncovering of scams in coming months.

Bullshit Promises

Professor Elizabeth Warren has a pointer on bullshit promises. Dr. Warren, my favourite on the subject, has been at it for quite a while now - battling powerful lobbies. Bullshit promises are about overtly promising something really appealing but actually using disclaimers actually promising exactly opposite - sort of trapping a consumer. Authors Curtis Bridgeman and Karen Sandrik dissect bullshit promises in great detail. Another of my favourite blogger, Yves Smith at nakedcapitalism, comments on key points.

One of the outcomes of this financial crisis I am looking forward is reversing this balance. For long we have corporate enjoying more benefits against consumers. Prof. Elizabeth Warren intends to change that. When she succeeds, we will have much better balance of power between buyer and seller that is core to revival.

Links:

Bridgeman and Sandrik Paper on Bullshit Promises

Elizabeth Warren pointer on Bullshit Promises

Nakedcapitalism on Bullshit Promises

2009: Images from the crystal ball!

It is that time of the year - December is here and so are the holidays. Again time to reflect on what is possibly in store for us in the next year. 2008 snapshots from crystal ball panned out pretty well. So here goes!

The monetary system

The monetary system is under terrible duress. With every central bank printing money - there is a great deal of money sloshing around. As of now it is just plugging the holes in the balance-sheets of the big-money operators. Soon this money will spread and it will create problems. However, we still cannot conclusively say if this will lead to inflation. Let me elaborate.

Inflation happens when buyers have too much money and sellers have too few products. It is often referred to as "too much money chasing too few products". 

Lets look at buyers. US, EU and to a certain extent Japan are biggest buyers. All except Japan, are in deep debt hole. Even if money were made available to these buyers, it is unlikely that they will buy. Most likely the excess money will go into debt repayments and savings. Also, I really have my doubts if the buyers will ever get that much money.

Now lets look at the amount of products available. This is a combination of assets and consumables. As a part of the past few years excesses, we have over supply of assets and substantial supply of consumables. In such a situation, it will be difficult to have inflation. 

The only way we can have inflation is if central bankers across the world collaboratively print whole stacks with gay abandon.

Demotion of US Dollar

Currently most of global wealth is held in USD. The de-leveraging has created an artificial strength for the Dollar. This is a concept a lot of analysts cannot cope with. This will cause as much confusion as "change of origin" causes in introductory trigonometry class. Devaluation of US dollar is a concept where the reference point has changed - and the analyst world will take some time to get its bearing on this. So the default argument is to turn a nelson's eye - ignore it. From the world of measuring the absolute (everything in USD terms) - we will move to world of relativity (everything relative to everything else). 

Emergence of "Wealth measurement anchor" is paramount requirement

What we need is to determine and accept a standard metric of value. Gold used to fit this scale earlier. We need to start using PPP determination as a denominator for value. So like in PPP measurement - we take a basket of goods and measure the currency's potency in terms of price of this basket. Just like Noah's ark carried sample species of all kinds, this basket must be representative across the world. On this basis we can measure wealth and arrive at a saner understanding of gain or loss of wealth. 

If all else fails - plain simple gold will do. But this will create a mega-mad rush for gold and create another scare.

Gold and Oil

If monetary environment isn't already complicated - Oil and Gold are adding to the confusion. These two commodities (and precious metal in a secondary sense) make up a set that is in demand globally. One is value retainer and other is a global necessity for economic growth. The prices of these commodities are denominated in USD. We are likely to see massive price correction in these commodities. Rather it is currency devaluation rather than commodity appreciation. So for investors whose wealth is in other currencies - it will be difficult of estimate the prices. Gold however should regain favour as value retainer and see increase in demand. Here are some links about gold price forecasts.

Corner the consumer - up the trade barriers!

There is going to be a great battle for consumers. At the moment, people are too busy looking for money to make the products. Soon people will be looking for consumers to buy these products. So saver countries (where there are lot of savers) will be expected to consume more to benefit producer countries. But this needs exchange rate management e.g.- China is looking to devalue its currency more than US. So we will see a lot of political hardball on exchange rates and tariff and non-tariff barriers. 

Potential for a global war!

While no-one else believes this and to some extent this often gets me ridicule, I believe a global war probabilities have increased significantly. These are not wars triggered by Mumbai attacks or some terrorist strikes. These are old-school wars based on conflict between creditors and debtors. Lord please give us saner politicians for 2009 and beyond.

Pay scales and organisation structures

Pay scales and organisation structures are going to see drastic changes. Firstly the pay-spread (difference in Cost-to-company salaries between CEO and lowest rung employee) will narrow. This is primarily because current financial crisis has put a focus on top management pay scales.

Further, the current recession will increase the need for special talent in corporations. These people will operate outside the organisations as consultants or temporaries. They will work on project basis and move to next companies. Mostly these people will work on organisation structure, costs and other non-intellectual property issues. Core intellectual property work will require in-house employees in classical organisations.

The main area of disruption will be the organisation structure itself. The structure will go through a radical change in the coming years and some sort of prototype should emerge in 2009. The difference between inventors, technicians, implementors and enablers will become more marked. For more details leave a comment for an e-book I co-authored with Anne McCrossan. 

This means that Private equity and consulting industries will go through a tremendous change. There is going to be a new wave of management jargon and it will be much more difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. I suggest you look at Seth Godin as a new management guru (I know he writes about marketing - but look at Tribes - thats a management book).

In sum

We are looking at an exciting year ahead to say the least. We are looking at a new year where terrorists will have higher leverage (due to financial vulnerabilities), a possible war scenario and new financial and economic system. Lets hope we have the leaders to understand and guide us through this sensibly. So happy new year to all and make sure you savour every second of the celebrations! May peace be with us!

Would asset price fixing have solved the problem?

The response to the crisis has been fast and powerful. The question is - is it the correct response? As Percy Mistry puts it in his Financial Times column, the first montary expansion was directed at averting financial collapse. The second, the one thats currently underway, is about kickstarting the system - getting a consumption driven US economy to consume.

Was there any other way out of this? A possible way could have been US government fixing the price of housing across the country through use of a formula based mechanism. This would have paved a way to price the derivatives and resolve the matter between market participants hopefully without government intervention. Any derivative is first a derivative and gets priced as soon as the asset is priced with fair degree of confidence.

Guaranteeing the home loans at this prices could be a second prop. This would have protected the individual financial system by fixing the floor. 

Beyond this the government should let the financial system resolve itself. First the market participants should start from the floor price set by the government and price discovery will help establish a price level far lower than what we currently see but definitely higher than otherwise. 

This would have created a huge amount of collateral damage. Firms would have been wiped out but the markets would have continued to function because the value of underlying asset was known. But its possible that we would have avoided further cascading effects and impact on individual financials. In the end both will be equally costly - but this one would be much saner.

Now am I missing something here? Probably concurrent devaluation of overseas assets and mark-down of about 600 trillion of derivative positions into something equal to 60 trillion. This looks potential hunting ground for creative accounting standards. But this seems one interesting way. What say?

Links:

Ajay Shah blogs about Percy Mistry column Does anyone have a post recession exit-strategy?

Bailouts and Money flows

Past few months have been riddled with bailouts. And blogosphere was already weighing in on the cost to tax-payer angle. But it is now that the irony of the situation is being exposed. As christmas draws near and bonus figures get announced, we will have Paulson and Co. debate the future of unions and likel pay-cuts they might take.

Its like in the movie "Wall-Street"

The situation is very much like in movie Wall -Street where Gordon Gecko is scheming about unions on airline company while counting on the bonus gain. The movie, Micheal Lewis in Liar's Poker, Raghuram Rajan and others have raised an important issue. That of asymmetry of pay-offs of various stake-holders.

Asymmetry of Payoffs

The pay structure evaluated in cost-to-company terms is disproportionately stacked. The top management gets super high rewards whereas penalties are shared. This is always the case. Across all industries, levels note how proximity to money leads to higher pay-off without any value-addition. There are whole set of arguments if this is fair or not. The least discussed part about this problem is that this asymmetry creates money flow problems.

The GDP growth created by the economy tends to get aggregated at certain pockets thanks to this asymmetry. Further, the consumption basket composition varies significantly as incomes change - therefore it leads to beneficial implication for certain industries.

Problems of the Rich, by the Rich for the Poor!

In such a context, the tax payer, bears unfair burden of this bailouts. Tax-payer has to pay higher for items in consumption basket of the rich - real estate and education. Often they pay more than they can afford - just to break-in into the rich class. However, the unaffordability can catch up based on share of luck and lead to far graver consequences. Therefore Joe the plumber feels like he is on a speeding tread-mill while the energy generated is powering the Rich. So the tax-payer shares the down-side and has no perceptible upside to talk of.

Implications for social peace

Such mechanisms are hotbed for social unrest. It is at this time, government should actively support the cause of the common person. As of date US government is not seen doing anything along this lines. On the contrary, we find the measure undertaken are rubbing salt on deep wounds.

This is also destabilizing force on world peace. I strongly urge the sleepy governments to go into a war ready alert. India wake-up its time to be battle ready. Call me a cynic but its a risk!

Slowdown and credit flow within the manufacturing process

Credit flows within a Customer-shopkeeper-manufacturer-Supplier process. During slowdown the pattern of credit flow changes giving us lead indicators of impending slowdown. The credit flow needs to be analysed and extensively probed for clues for leading indicator for industry cycles and economic cycles. In current cycle the customer went bust hence the inventory destruction will play out longer than earlier when only manufacturer and supplier had inventories.

Usually, the credit within the customer - shopkeeper - manufacturer - supplier process resides across the chain. However, depending on bargaining power and forces best elaborated by Michael Porter, the weightage shifts.

Typically high-demand industries tend to move credit costs to opposite poles. In high-demand scenario, customer end bears a credit costs and so does supplier leaving the manufacturer with close to positive cash-flow business. This could be called the starting point of the end-game. As the inddustry slows, the credit cost moves away from customer-end to the company (in form of inventories) and then to suppliers (delayed payments). The bankrupcies move from suppliers-end towards customer-side. Customer usually does not go bankrupt as banks and FIs refuse to lend to them thereby curtailing demand. Usually, this change of credit cost pattern happens before the industry is about to go bust. Was it the case this time around as well? I hope the research departments have answers.

In current slowdown, banks and FIs didn't follow this responsibility. In fact they inflated the customer giving rise to credit expansion bubble. In our case, customer went bankrupt after buying lot of goods. So now we have inventory pile-up at customer-end, the manufactuers end and we have delayed supplier credit.

Naturally, bankrupcies are looming across the process. Retailers have been the smarter of the lot by not keeping excess inventories. Yet operating on so thin margins, their bankrupcies, when it happens, will be due to all together different cause.

Disclaimer: The post is exteremely generalised and simplified so there will be differences between industries and time-lines. Kindly accomodate.

PS: This marks the 100th post!

I am re-linking to yesterday's Yves Smith post on Stimulus programs. The disucssion in comments is awesome. There one of the questions raised in how dollar depreciation of past few years has not actually mattered for American Jobs. Here is my response -(too late to comment there I guess)

A declining dollar hurts the mfg and export industry in China, India and other countries. There is no doubt. But to move the mfg locations takes time - it takes structural change and confidence (that it wont be a passing competitive advantage). That confidence is coming to companies that US mfg will stay competitive for sometime to come. China's low CNY was more of guarantee that helped manufacturers to shift production. Again, China is also on productivity gain curve - so we still have margin to cut cost. The labour costs were increasing and China also responded by creating labour movement from rural to urban areas. Now you can only shift new labour to cities - till the old displaced labour finds employment. Trust me, you don't want wealthy unemployed labour used to specific lifestyle - bad for social unrest. The other way is to increase capital intensity of mfg. This has happened in tech mfg to a small extent. Here the capital intensity of mfg was increasing. So tech mfg should be closer to moving back into US. (But tech mfg did not fully move out of US did it? we can do with some evidence here). On the flip side this does not create jobs in volumes that US needs. This is the same problem with China - China needs to retain volume jobs. The dollar devaluation of last few years never tipped the scales to realign manufacturing. Theoretically, had it run for some more time, you would have had a tipping point where sustaining low wages would become difficult.

Secondly, either we (US China and world together) engineer a revaluation or turn a Nelson's eye to it - devaluation is going to happen. To control or not to control is the question (a la Shakespeare).

NDK makes a great point about running differential inflation. But I have two worries - first market participants will preempt this by rushing to gold or commodities and the like - creating strong one-time devaluation catastrophe. Second - even if this is managed - it puts US and world through super-slo-mo pain and distress that may be difficult to address in social context.

A note, commentators at the nakedcapitalism.com believe I am suggesting strong dollar - but its other way round. Further, there is a debate about manufacturing - which should be about any "producing" activity rather than manufacturing. In sum, US should produce something that world wants - it may be shoes or it may be website design services - so long as the relation of producer-buyer is unaltered it will work.

Global Rebalancing-wont exchange rate achieve it?

Yves Smith has another excellent post on problems with Keynesian response to the crisis. She quotes Tom Ferguson on how Keynes would have chose global rebalancing as a key solution. There is merit in old Keynesian approach when there is increase debt repayment capability in the future. Currently, US needs jobs and work, but thanks to weird gloabal policies it has neither. So it is dependant on "investor-like" income generation - i.e. through capital appreciation and investment. This, to me, is pushing the ignorant risk-averse citizens along a high-risk cutting edge finance path. This is unfair to US citizens who are not aware how long it will take to repay the stimulus. And dont even think you can print your way out of it! Thus the global rebalancing solution seems only way out. But, as Yves Smith points out, there are hurdles.

I dont see any reason why exchange rate realignment + concerted international financial regulation cannot solve this problem.

Global banking regulation needs reform and Shiller has also highlighted this his new book (I just saw the interview - waiting for the book). There is something fundamentally wrong with accounting policies that let banks lower capital requirements based on "perceived" asset price increases. The same regulation also creates holes in balance sheets as asset prices falls. This regulation needs to be suspended for sometime - (upside suspension), banks be forced to take all the write-downs marking the assets to agreed upon prices (lets call them steady state prices) - and then made to raise capital enough to sustain them.

Secondly exchange rate realignment is absolutely must. I have been harping about this on this blog comments for long now. US must become producer and China and surplus countries must become consumers. Without this there is no resolution of this crisis.

Finally, there is likely to be a diplomatic war to protect and isolate the consumers an keep the consumer to itself. Such a trading barrier game will be detrimental to global prospects and will decrease the total pie. If a big ship(US and EU) is sinking - one way is to protect your resuce boat - or save the ship. Former saves you comfortably but leaves the world with just a boat! and latter is difficult but the Ship stays so we are better off.

What a week! *sigh*

What a week we had.

Mumbai Terror attacks started last Wednesday and it was Friday before it ended with 190+ dead and scores injured. Twitter covered the best news on the Mumbai Terror with real time rumour-destroying coverage from fellow Mumbaikars.

Tanta or Doris Dungey passed away at very young age of 47. James Hamilton has a good post on So long Tanta with a few must-read links.

It is time to sweat the grey -cells to make my country better. The current political system is wreaking havoc with the world's largest democracy. It is time to take action. Welcome to a new revolution!

Great Depression, China, US, War, defaults and other comments

Yves Smith, my favourite financial commentator, has one great post titled China's Smoot Hawley- a reaction to Micheal Pettis (another of my favourites) article. Its an awesome post and worth read - including the comments. I was naturally late to this friday party - so here are my comments on the post!

Hunger of deprived and hunger of developed is different

So pre-Mao chinese hunger and post-Den Chinese hunger are two different animals. If a developed country goes hungry, violence is also a fallout. Sale of guns has risen in US for a good reason. We have to realise that people on ground know best.

China wants to run this game for a wee-bit longer

China has nearly 1.5-2 trillion dollars in USD assets. Now China wants just a little bit of time to save some of it. China believes that this is their sweat money. The way around as they see it is to
let CNY depreciate against the dollar. But this relation is difficult to hold if USD depreciates and commodities rise.

With 2 trillion at stake - War is not yet a possibility

The cost of Iraq war was about a trillion (vague recollection). And it was a trillion dollar
"stimulus". As one part of the world's "skin in the US game" increases the probability of war will
increase. War has many benefits for regimes. It aggregates the population, it creates employment, creates a stimulus, creates an enemy outside of the regime. In this matter India is lethargic and will never have enough "mind in this game". But war is on the horizon - and I am scared.

China and India must become consumers - US must become producer

I have been making this point for like ages now (even in comments to your posts). A recovery without demand from China and India will not happen. US is not going to be a consumer - it has to be a producer. The best way to get these 3 billion people into consumption fold is by letting exchange rates correct. SE Asia and other surplus countries will need to do the same.

Import restriction response is a threat

I hope there is enough sense to not impose import restrictions. Yet, I fear India and China will impose them eventually. There will be a race to corner the "able" consumers for domestic industries. China has a difficult decision to make then. The domestic consumer will be a loser and their money will be looted by domestic corporation. Though it will be done sophisticatedly as a economic process.The best way to get domestic consumption going is to first get the latent demand for best brands going. For that you need to keep imports open.

USD and Gold - Printing currency does not matter

There is a lot of talk that Us can print its way out of the crisis. It is surely doing that. However,
real value is able to discount this printing phenomenon. The only way this might work is - if US has some means where it can aggregate this printed money and destroy it as write-down or something. Printing will set the new money in motion and it has to be collected and destroyed else there will be devaluation.
Currently"US denominate" (in terms of thoughts) people are asking this question hence possibility of US dollar depreciating does not seem feasible - it never does to local as it does not matter so long as other things remain equal. But "other things" like commodities do not remain equal - hence the effect is actually measured as rise in commodity prices. (Or conversely - commodity tries to retain value - whereas USD depreciates).
Further one must understand that equity is open to risks whereas debt has the habit of correcting / adjusting for currency changes. (Particularly cross currency debt).

In sum

Welcome to eye of the storm!!

Links:

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism, China's Smoot Hawleys

Micheal Pettis, China Financial Markets, Rising unemploymentt and trade policies

Soverign Wealth accumulation and wealth dispersion process efficiency

The last decade was characterised by excessive accumulation of wealth by soverign entities. Central Banks accumulated large surplus - that was parked in US treasuries and later in riskier asset classes (through SWFs). This is one of the primary drivers of the current crisis. VoxEu examines the reason for soverign wealth accumulation and suggests that this was primarily done to avoid exchange rate appreciation.

Economy as a Wealth managing engine
Any domestic economy serves as wealth creating and wealth distributing engine. We can imagine an economy as equivalent to two different motors linked in tandem (feeding into each other). Entreprenuership is common name given to the wealth creation motor. Governments add inefficieny into this motor by interfearing with it. What governments are really concerned about is the woking of the other motor - the wealth distribution motor.

In case of economies creating wealth using labour arbitrage, it is the wealth distribution motor that matters more. If this motor is working perfectly then the national income is able to percolate to the lowest rungs of the society. Unfortunately this is not so in developing Asia. The local governments role is of creating, improving and efficiently running this engine. But the measures taken by developing Asian governments had, intentionally or otherwise, no such effect. Indian government is talking of inclusive development - but its only lip-service. Only China built infrastructure but followed policy of enforced migration (to and from) and managed this to certain extent. These indicate a weakness of this critical motor in developing Asia.

The policy of accumulating further wealth while leaving the wealth distribution mechanism broken has lead to rise of very-high income population in developing Asia while low end remains poor. It is interesting that this is a good policy so long as reserve build-up is within a certain limit. Beyond this limit, a policy of allowing exchange rate appreciation may have achieved better wealth dispersion (at least globally) - than what we have achieved. This policy would have raised inflation, and consequently incomes across the income pyramid.

In Sum
There is a need to put this VoxEu research under further scrutiny. There is definitely a lot of merit in the argument. We need to understand the wealth distribution/dispersion process in more detail. Obviously the theory I suggested above has holes and needs thorough examination.

Links:
Asian Exchange Rate asymmetry - Voxeu.org

Financial Crisis - Moving Towards a solution

Finally the quest for solution, both long term and short term, has began. It was going on in hapazard manner across blogs and opinions in newspapers but the most intelligent response comes from Voxeu.org.

They have published and edited version of essays suggesting action plan for G20 leaders to stabilise the economy and fix the financial system. Its 76 pages all worth reading!! Enjoy!

The Core of the organisation - the Honda story

I have read a lot of talk about Core-competency in the past decade. I have seen companies make a mockery of the core-competency issue. I often look at the top management and check how many of the top management team came from "core-competency team". In most - hardly any. Many in fact absued it so much that management gurus like Tom Peters were left screming on their blogs!

Organisations have to evolve an ethic of honouring its core-competency. Forbes highlights how Honda promotes in engineers to top ranks - and not marketers or accountants - engineers! This is the truest way to honour your commitment to "core competency".

Hat tip - Paul Buchheit

Are the store-shelves empty?

We are precariously placed in the recession। Sadly my reading of political and economic news tells me that the top honchos have just messed up pretty big. I am looking for validation.

Just want to know if the store shelves in major super markets are full or empty। At this time, they should start stacking up for Christmas sale - so it should be full।

Can you help me with feedback over next few days? If possible can you post pictures? or email them to rahuldeodhar (-a-t-) yahoo (d-o-t) com! Do include brief store details - name, area, city etc.

The Chinese Dilemma!

There is an interesting post at Marginal Revolution on Chinese model. Tyler Cowen smartly collects lot of pros and cons on the matter. Yet, this is very critical at this stage.

World economy had predominantly two engines of growth - the US consumer and Chinese producer. Both had second and third order effects that accelerated the economy. Now US consumer is dysfunctional - at least for some time to come. So the world looks at China!

China is also aware of the issue. It wants the huge savings rate to translate into consumption and therefore demand. The only way to get the saving population to start spending and kick-start consumption is to let them buy brands that have build up aspirations in their minds. This will be possible with letting CNY appreciate and letting the products be available freely.

The trouble is this will make non-china manufacturing cheaper - leading to job loss from manufacturing sector. However if China really wants to move to a consumption driven economy then there will be job shift to services and out of manufacturing.

This is more critical now। If China misses a step then we are all goner! The question is will china bite the bullet!

Links:

Marginal Revolution - Tyler cowen - This is another premium blog on finance and economics.

We were warned!!

I was really surprised when I realised that entire credit crunch and related problems were highlighted and we were warned back in 16th century itself.

"How to avoid the credit crunch?"

For Rating Agencies
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.

For investors - particularly those who misguide people on CNBC
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

For US / UK and European Consumers
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

For Mortgage dealers (they heeded but CDS borrowers didnt)
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

For all market operators
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man

By now you must have recognised this is Shakespeare's Hamlet! Edited snippets from Lord Polonius' advice to son Lartes.

-Full advice-
Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory

See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

- Shakespeare in Hamlet (Lord Polonius advice to son Lartes)

Hat tip - to Free exchange blog from The Economist (for inspiration!)

Interesting reading about China

All roads lead to China -by Richard Burbaker has a post with interesting link to China Dilemma - a collection of 18 chapters though he mentions 19.


Link:
The Big Picture | All Roads Lead To China

"Commodities as Anti-Dollar"?

Yves Smith has a recent post on whether commodities, particularly oil is finding favour as anti-dollar. In the comments, you will find some arguments about oil demand and fundamentals.

I think Oil price movement were retro-fitted to fundamentals. In other words, the movement in oil was primarily as a value retainer against dollar. But two things happened that twisted the outcomes. First, dollar strengthened (for whatever reasons) and second more money rushed into oil taking it too far away from retro-fitted fundamentals.

Now we are about to witness a second flight into "value". Are we foreseeing another commodity upswing? I think we need to watch Oil, Gold and other key commodities. But one thing is sure - perishable agri-commodities will not be able to retain value for the length of time that we are looking at.

Time to watch out and hold tight!

Links

naked capitalism: Is the "Commodities as Anti-Dollar" Trade Back?

The economics of labour market intermediation | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

David Autor has a fantastic post on Vox on economics of labour market intermediation. Labour markets are imperfect and they are kept that way by interest of recruiters and employees. In the end both loose but still there is enough weight in status quo.

Let us consider an employer and a prospective employee. There is no way for the employer to know the employees performance in previous organisation. Therefore the metric is salary drawn currently.  Now if, by any chance, an employee accepts a job with lower salary then his salary growth is lower! This appears unfair - but its actually a manifestation of inefficient market at work. The only way this situation corrects is when imperfection on other side - i.e. you have a desperate employer. 

As per my experience the intermediaries actually twist this situation to the benefit of the employer. Hence most of the time employees distrust HR managers and intermediaries. That is the reason salaries are secret. Often even though companies treat everyone fairly - employees still feel distrust.

In sum, there needs to be two areas of research in this. First - does this behaviour actually benefit the employer at all. Second - does this distort the labour markets to an extent that it impacts the economy. My intuitive guess is no on first count and yes on second. 

Links:

The economics of labour market intermediation | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists.

Banks need to stop hoarding money - or should they?

Mike Shedlock posts an interesting comment to a White house recommendation (directive?) to banks to stop hoarding money. Prof. David Beckworth however explains why banks are hoarding money.

Now we already knew they would happen, didn't we?

The risks arise in the next step. Here the money system goes
into self preservation mode rather than help push the bailout effects down to
individuals and small businesses. Here second bailout will be required. But this
bailout will need concurrent regulatory changes so that the money system does
not simply fatten up – but actually pushes the recovery stimulus down the chain.
The size of this stimulus will be at least twice the first bailout.

I think, these two bailouts will have to clean the system.
Beyond this will be a period of lull. This is the time individuals and small
businesses start reducing their loan outstanding. This is likely to take long
time in case of US.

To my mind this reaction is rational given the accounting requirements and state of real economy.

There is a serious need to assess accounting norms for banks in the light of Fed guarantees. Banks may be holding too much reserves, capitalising a little too much among other things*. So if indeed Fed is going to prevent the systemic collapse then banks may be able to free some money. But of course its not as simple as that - the issue needs more understanding.

Further, with real economy showing signs of slowing, banks are reluctant to lend. (Rather, banks are now being sensitive to slow-down signs that were present even before the financial crisis!) Now is the time for bailout 2 to materialise. Though this one needs to be aimed at the consumer rather than banks. Banks may be used as a transmission mechanism for this bailout.

Note:

I dont mean to say that bank's have enough capital - but what I mean is so long as Fed gurantees are in place the banks may be better off (for easing out of this crisis) in lending rather than increasing researves. Banking system may need a lot more capital later once we are out of crisis - but the time to get the capital may not be now!

Links:
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: White House: "Banks Need To Stop Hoarding Money"
Second bailout - FIs into self-preservation mode

Macro and other Musings - Is there are credit crunch?