Two snake oil salesman . . . least, that’s how it looks. One of whom at least knows that about them both, the other of whom has been made braindead by fucked economic theory.
Watch the unedited interview here:
Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer: The Extended Daily Show Interview.
And ask yourself why people so eagerly buy predictions from anyone, with so little apparent thought about it.
Take home message from the whole thing: the future is inherently uncertain, and it’s even more so when your only guide is bad economics and a talking head on the tube. So learn a little something for yourself about where your money’s going and why before you decide to put it there. Get your head around some decent economic theory yourself. And take advice, but in the end make your own decisions based on your own independent judgement, so you can’t blame anyone else for your errors.
And always keep in mind those two words we hear so little about these days, but should be hearing much more: Caveat emptor.
UPDATE 1: Stuart Wood at the Austrian Scholars’ Conference makes more explicit what it means to think independently in this context, which is to say, to think entrepreneurially:
“The future is unknowable but not unimaginable” - Ludwig Lachmann
The future is created by the actions that we take now. The future is changed by our actions. Entrepreneurs create a new world through their actions…
The market for goods is essentially known. We value a good with respect to our own personalities… The asset market is different. The values are constantly changing and very hard to predict… The stock market function quite differently from the good market. Risk perception is subjective… Risk is the opinion a person has regarding his own ability to forecast the future accurately.
UPDATE 2: Also speaking today at the Austrian Scholars’ Conference is Peter Schiff, who (not incidentally) backed by Austrian scholarship reckons “The Meltdown Should have Surprised No One.” Indeed, that’s the title of his talk. Best lines from his presentation:
- “I don't see why anyone should have been surprised by the meltdown. It seemed obvious that is was coming. . . “
- “The government still looks at … prices falling as a bad thing. It's a solution!”
- “So, the free market was getting the blame for a problem created by the govt, and the govt is using this econ crisis to get even bigger!”
- “The govt doesn't want to stimulate the economy, they want to stimulate spending.”
- “America became the world’s richest economy because we borrowed and produced; recently we've just borrowed and spent.”
- “The only way we'll rebuild is with a smaller govt, not a big govt! We need sound money, and high interest rates!”
- “This crisis will end up being a currency crisis! There's no contraction of the money-supply, it's expanding! It's like a giant explosion and everyone's running towards the blast!”
Here’s the notes from his talk, via Twitter] “
I don't see why anyone should have been surprised by the meltdown. It seemed obvious that is was coming. . .
Mark Hanes [the man who started Etoys] told me "you expect me to believe we could have TWO bubbles in ten years!!!???"
But both bubbles were related, they were basically the same. We just replaced one bubble with a bigger bubble.
We had a stock market bubble because the fed reserve pushed interest rates too low. Eventually, Greenspan began to raise interest rates. He burst the bubble. And when it burst, the bad investments were exposed.
But instead of letting the recession run it's course, the fed stimulated the economy, and behold, another bubble appeared. We had record car sales, record home sales, and people got the money for this by going into debt.
This time 'round everyone bought real-estate with someone else's money.
In 2005 the average homeowner believed his house was going to appreciate by 25% for the next ten years. People didn't care what the mortgage payment was, all that mattered was that they thought they were going to be rich. For a few years, this worked. The people who bought houses were getting rich. . .
I knew that problems were coming because the banks had all these IOU's, but those are no good if people can't pay them! Everybody had this idea that housing prices couldn't go down. But I knew that it wasn't so. Everybody wants to go back to prudent lending, but nobody wants to go back to prudent pricing.
The government still looks at home prices falling as a bad thing. It's a solution!
Unfortunately, people keep placing the blame on the market. "Not enough regulation! Too much greed!" they cry. They don't understand that there's a reason that people acted that way. "Whenever there's a problem, don't worry, the government's gonna rescue you!", that was the mentality.
The only things that needed regulation were the ones created by the government/ We didn't make the losses go away, we just postponed them. Once you've got securitization, you've got the moral hazard.For normal lenders we don't need govt regulation. The rating agencies want jobs, and they get jobs by coming out with good ratings. In the old days when banks lent their own capital, they wanted a fair appraisal. [Now they lend ‘money’ created by the Fed.]
Nobody in this countries cares at all what the banks do with our money, because it's insured by the govt! The govt has created a moral hazard by guaranteeing the accounts.… So, the free market was getting the blame for a problem created by the govt, and the govt is using this econ crisis to get even bigger! To save us from capitalism with socialism! … Obama wants to replace the invisible hand with the hand of the state.
It's not government that's going to restore the economy, it will be the free market.
They wanted to bailout companies that should go under. Companies that are not making a profit. We don't want work just so we can have a job, we want work so we can produce something. We work because we want stuff, not because we want to work. I can understand why the executives want to preserve their jobs, but society shouldn't want to preserve them. If we let [companies] go bankrupt, is that an end to [say] the auto industry? Of course not! An entrepreneur would step up and buy the assets and and once again start making cars profitability. . .
We don't need all these investment banks! And there's a lot of small firms out there that are expanding and will expand more if the govt gets out of the way. How can these guys make multi-million salaries when their business's are going out of business?
The govt doesn't want to stimulate the economy, they want to stimulate spending.
The only reason is sort of worked before is because we were able to borrow from the rest of the world, so as we spent money, we counted that as our GDP. But we weren’t growing at all, we were simply spending . . .
We have a lot of Americans working in jobs that they shouldn't be in; we need more Americans making stuff, producing things. Back then, we borrowed money to make investments, to build infrastructure, to build farms, we didn't just spend it. When you invest you have a real asset, and then you can generate revenue.
America became the world’s richest economy because we borrowed and produced; recently we've just borrowed and spent. The only way we'll ever rebuild the econ is by stopping the stimulus and bailouts.
Obama talks about how's he's different from Bush. Everything's the same! (only worse):Obama's fiscal policy is worse than Bush's. The things [Fed chief] Ben Bernanke is doing now will dwarf what Greenspan was doing. The combination of Obama-Bernanke is worse than Bush-Greenspan. Only the rhetoric is different, the policy is the same!
The fact that credit is being denied to Americans is a good thing.
We need to eliminate the deficit and go with surplus. We need a recession! We need one badly. This is the price we pay for years of indulgence and reckless spending.
The only way we'll rebuild is with a smaller govt, not a big govt! We need sound money, and high interest rates!
The results instead will be no different this time 'round. We are right now suffering the consequences of the stimulus and bailouts of 01-02 . . .
This crisis will end up being a currency crisis! There's no contraction of the money-supply, it's expanding! It's like a giant explosion and everyone's running towards the blast!
. . . We're exactly repeating the 1930's. Everything Roosevelt did only made the great depression worse -- that situation is very similar to what's happening now. Bush = Hoover, Obama = Roosevelt.
Look at the problems we had in the 70's, but we at least had a sound economy at that time. People say we can't repeat Japan's mistake, but we're doing just that. Japan kept their interest rates too low, exactly like we've done -- real-estate prices are still falling in Japan; the govt in Japan refused to allow the market to function, so they kept intervening.
When the world stops financing this, it's going to come to an end, and we'll have to make these hard choices, but people still think that when America stops consuming, the world will collapse. America isn't the engine of the world, it's the caboose!
. . . Because the world lends us too much money, there's a capital shortage. They're better off not lending to us.
Since many of you were asking Peter Schiff’s presentation, here it is: Why the Meltdown Should Have Surprised No One .
And yes, you can still follow the conference on Twitter.
15 comments:
Get your head around some decent economic theory yourself.
Economic thoery doesn't really matter if your goal is to make money - and that should be your only goal with respect to investment.
Brett Steenbarger is a Rand admirer and specialises in emotional economics. He says:
We can trade and invest for ego needs, and we can trade and invest to make money: over the long haul, we can't do both. It takes a strong ego to formulate and act upon one's ideas; an even stronger one to step back from those ideas in the face of non-confirmation.
Instead of focusing on making money, you're caught up in proving yourself to be correct.
Which is why no economists, Austrian or otherwise, are on the Rich List.
Obamageddon is not coming - we are starting to see recovery in some sectors already. The stimulus package will 'work', so if you want to make money you should ignore the bad economic theory and start getting back into the market.
"Obamageddon is not coming - we are starting to see recovery in some sectors already. The stimulus package will 'work', so if you want to make money you should ignore the bad economic theory and start getting back into the market."
Looks to me like the perfect example of advice offered without any justification for that advice.
So even if it proved to be right, there is no way of judging it now.
Which means Ruth would be the perfect choice for a money show on CNBC.
PC, I completely agree with what Ruth said here:
Economic theory doesn't really matter if your goal is to make money - and that should be your only goal with respect to investment.
It is irrelevant if it is Austrian economics or otherwise, the strategies of investors wouldn't change much. The market random walk would still be market random walk.
I don't know why you're fixated with market/economic predictions as some sort of holy-grail type of metric that if it is false in most of the time, then it means that the non-austrian economics is the only solution.
There are other metrics that market analysts use besides forecasting or predictions. Some analysts completely ignore predictions in their entirety, ie they don't use it in anyway because they think it is unreliable, but still those same analysts still use or stick to market fundamental analysis techniques in order to guide them in their investment decisions. Without those fundamentals, then there is no reason why private fund managers can't hire those council's rubbish collectors to become analysts. But we know that this is not gonna happen, ie, some rubbish collectors being hired by Carmel Fisher of Fisher Funds to be analysts in her company? At the end of the day, investment analysts need some analytical metrics to benchmark their investments, without these then the market analyst can't in anyway file a regular update report back to the shareholders and describe how his/her funds is performed relative to a specific benchmark.
To describe the investment performance, you need to use metrics and to use metrics you need to know analytical methods and to use analytical methods, you need to know economic fundamentals and economic fundamentals are irrelevant if it is Keynesian, Austrian or otherwise.
Do you think that if I read up all the books on Austrian economic theory that you would recommend for me, then after do you think that can I get a job easily at the fund management industry ? I don't think so, I believe that they're more interested if I have analytical skills, then if I possess knowledge Austrian economic theory.
Correction:
then it means that the non-austrian economics is the only solution.
should read as:
then it means that the austrian economics is the only solution.
Another correction:
economic fundamentals are irrelevant if it is Keynesian, Austrian or otherwise.
economic fundamentals are pretty much the same, if it is a Keynesian system, an Austrian system or otherwise they are irrelevant to it (economic fundamentals)
The difficulty with a rigid adherence to theory is that such rigidity precludes and denies the role of emotion in human conduct.
Heated and irrational emotion in the pursuit of wealth admits gold-rush mentalities. The present economic malaise may have been germinated by factors that are identifiable by accepted theory but its exacerbation is an emblem of emotion.
Obama is an irresponsible spendthrift regardless of his being judged pursuant to any accepted theory or simply by an emotive response. However he is politician enough to anticipate that voters will react to his conduct as a "feelgood" panacea.
Once the volksgeist is again positive through whatever means, a return to the pursuit of wealth will begin with gusto. This is not a rational theory it is an emotive prediction.
Ruth:
"Economic thoery doesn't really matter if your goal is to make money - and that should be your only goal with respect to investment."
and
"Which is why no economists, Austrian or otherwise, are on the Rich List."
Your error is that economics isn't about making consumers rich, its about making them happy. Consumer theory maximises utility, not income.
Let me add, however, that, by and large, happiness and income are positively correlated.
“The Residential Real Estate Bubble”
by Gary North
MARCH 5, 2002
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north96.html
“……..The Federal Reserve System is now pumping in new money at over 20% per annum……
“……..I don’t think Greenspan has increased the money growth rate to 20% in order to give a boost to the U.S. stock market. The stock market was not falling sharply, although it was heading down. He is concerned about the overall economy. He gets blamed for recession. We were in a recession last year, contrary to the financial press at the time. He has inflated us out of it…….
“…….. Corporations borrow short-term money to finance inventories and to keep their doors open. They finish projects that were begun prior to the recession. CD-rates are emergency money rates and day-to-day operations rates. The FED’s expansion of money since last January has stimulated this kind of business activity.
What matters most for businesses, long-term, is the long-term corporate bond rate. The lower this is, the cheaper it is to borrow long-term money for financing land acquisitions, buildings, equipment, and other longer-term productive assets. The FED’s stimulus package has had very little effect here. It has not succeeded in driving down corporate bond rates low enough to persuade managers to begin loading up on long-term corporate debt.
What about the response of business to cheaper short-term and mid-term money? It has sagged remarkably. Commercial paper (CD’s) has fallen from over $325 billion to about $200 billion.
These are short-term loans. What we are seeing is remarkable. The law of economics is this: “At a lower price, more will be demanded (other things being equal).” But the short-term money rate has fallen from 6% to under 2%, yet the amount CD money demanded has plummeted. The decline in demand has been even more dramatic with commercial and industrial loans from banks, which are longer-term loans. They have fallen from about $1.1 trillion to $520 trillion – a drop of over 50%.
Conclusion: other things have not remained equal. Despite falling short-term and commercial loan rates, businesses have left the debt markets in droves. This means that they have stopped expanding. They are operating on the basis of retained earnings.
This is rational in a market that is not expected to produce profits in the near future…..
“……..Hard hit in 2000 were real private fixed investment and real nonresidential fixed investment. The biggest hit was in nondefense capital goods orders: down to a negative 25% at the bottom: the end of third quarter…..
“…….. Only one area of the economy stayed positive: housing starts/home sales. Here is the heaviest debt load for consumers. Housing is basically a long-term consumer good, heavily funded by mortgages. So, consumers have remained optimistic, long-term, but their employers have grown pessimistic at least with respect to the short term.
Consumers believe that the housing market will always rise. They think, “buy now, pay later.” They think, “I can lock in low-interest fixed mortgage money today, and I’ll pay it off with depreciated dollars.” This strategy has worked ever since 1946.
The credit markets are supplying this money to borrowers. The mortgage market is presumed to be secured by the U.S. government, so Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac keeps making available mortgage money to borrowers. These enterprises are called GSE’s or Government Sponsored Enterprises.
If mortgage holders think they can win at the expense of mortgage-issuers, why do people continue to put their money into pools of long-term mortgages? Because they think these pools of capital are government-guaranteed. They are looking for high returns short-term. They figure they can sell off their holdings later if rates climb…..
“……….. In the week following September 11, the Federal Reserve extended credit of $81 billion to ensure adequate liquidity in the markets. On September 14, Freddie Mac moved in an entirely opposite – and counterproductive – direction, issuing $5 billion in two-year notes that took cash out of the market. No other debt issuer did so because the markets were loathe to buy private company debt during considerable market instability. But Freddie Mac exploited its implied government guarantee to raise cheap money from frightened investors at a time of national emergency. . . .
In recent years, the dramatic growth in GSE debt has significantly increased the risk to U.S. taxpayers. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have increased their debt six-fold since 1992, from $196 billion to $1.26 trillion in the third quarter of 2001. In a decade when Treasury borrowing dropped dramatically, uncontrolled GSE debt was moving in the opposite direction. Almost unbelievably, the GSEs now guarantee more debt and mortgage-backed securities (”MBS”) than all comparable U.S. Treasury debt.
This debt has been issued chiefly to fund a lucrative investment portfolio, which was undertaken solely to grow profits for GSE shareholders. Here’s how it works: the GSEs borrow funds cheaply because of their implicit government guarantee, then invest them. The above-market returns are highly profitable – but do nothing to increase American homeownership. In 2000, both GSEs reported that this arbitrage investing accounted for approximately 60 percent of their net income. That’s like a local government issuing a revenue bond to build a schoolhouse, then using part of the money to play the stock market. If the GSEs bet right, their shareholders profit. If they bet wrong, the U.S. taxpayer loses.
Compounding this debt growth, the GSEs are also leveraged far beyond what would be permitted for other financial institutions. At year-end 2000, the GSEs’ debt-to-equity leverage for on-balance sheet liabilities was 30:1 versus 11:1 for commercial banks. If the GSEs were to meet the standards imposed on commercial banks, they would need to hold $82 billion in capital – or double their current amount. In their current condition, the Federal Reserve would deem them “significantly under-capitalized” – and they would face serious risk of closure. These institutions simply are woefully undercapitalized – a situation that becomes more perilous during a recession.
The GSEs attempt to mitigate the risk associated with their debt through extensive reliance on derivatives. From 1995 to 2000, the GSEs’ derivatives exposure increased over 400%. At the end of last year, the GSEs had $749 billion in such exposure. This is a massive amount of derivatives exposure.
As stated above, recent events underscore the riskiness of a derivatives strategy. In the third quarter of 2001, Fannie Mae reported a startling write-down of $10.6 billion in shareholder equity, reducing its equity by 29 percent from where it stood just three months earlier. Fannie Mae took a big position in the derivatives market and bet wrong. As a result, Fannie Mae’s debt/equity ratio shot up to 53:1. This approaches a doubling of the GSEs’ year-end 2000 leverage ratio of 30:1……
“………. I think the FED is providing liquidity mainly to keep this market solvent. The problem is, the constant increase in credit money continues to distort the capital markets. Eventually, monetary inflation will produce price inflation. Long-term interest rates will then rise to compensate lenders for the expected decline in the dollar’s future purchasing power. Equity in mortgages already held by investors will fall. There will be a derivatives-based, Enron-type event, on a scale vastly larger than Enron.
Congress worries about another Enron, yet its own policies are creating the biggest potential Enron-type event in history.
Housing got through the recession of 2001 unscathed. Any time an investment market is perceived as low-risk, capital flows into it. On the one hand, consumers are willing to borrow. On the other hand, lenders are willing to lend long-term. Liquidity looks permanent. The win-win nature of the arrangement is still widely perceived as low-risk. This is the classic mark of a bubble……..”
Take a look at the article archives for that guy, Gary North.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north-arch.html
Take a look, too, at what many other authors on the Lew Rockwell.Com archives and the Ludwig Von Mises archives, were saying for years.
If you spend a little time even just following up the links provided by Gary North alone, you can only conclude that no-one can fairly say they were not WARNED. You also cannot conclude that this was a failure of the “free market”; the role of government policy induced hazards and monetary manipulation were essential factors.
This crash has not just involved a mass failure of wisdom and imagination. This was a mass refusal to LISTEN, a mass willful rejection of advice that was obviously correct, to anyone with half a brain.
It also leads one to conclude that the contrary advice that everyone from the top politicians down preferred to listen to, could only have been based on shameless exploitation of vested interests. I also conclude that this is still the situation today.
In the case of the various talking heads dispensing free advice in the mainstream media, if any of these people were honest at any time, they would lose their job/sponsorship/advertising revenue.
Every private investor and even everyone who is merely looking at buying their own home; would be well advised to do their own research and locate honest sources like Gary North.
Recommended reading for Ruth and Falafulufisi. Peter Cresswell, if you are not onto Gary North already, there is hardly another Austrian economics expert who will furnish you with more ammunition.
http://www.garynorth.com/public/4674.cfm
"A Lesson In Austrian Economics For a Morgan Stanley VP"
Schadenfreude is sweet.
".....the performance of the American stock market since October 2007 offers evidence that the Austrian School economists, myself included, who predicted this recession in 2006, had the story right. No other school of economics did.
I advised my GaryNorth.com subscribers to sell all stocks and short the S&P 500 on November 5, 2007. It closed at 1502. Those who took my advice have done quite well. You and your firm did not offer similar advice to your clients......"
The last few paragraphs:
"...... How did I know? Because I had read and understood Austrian School monetary theory. I had read and did not believe Milton Friedman's monetary theory. I also recognized that Greenspan was a destroyer.
I realize that you are the resident financial expert for World Magazine, the widely read evangelical Protestant journal of opinion. On January 31, 2009, you recommended a reading list of economics books to World readers. It is a good list. It included Mises' Human Action.
If you had only read and believed Chapters 19 and 20 in 2001, you would not have been sucked in by Greenspan, and your clients would own no stocks and a lot of gold.
You got into the stock sales business at the bottom of the first phase of a bear market rally: 2002. It rose until October 2007, but not in terms of purchasing power. Then it crashed. That was the bear market I called in March 2000. It sucked you in. It sucked in your bosses. You in turn sucked in your clients. Dollar cost averaging, if they did it after October 2007, has ruined them.
You have been a very naive young man. You trusted Greenspan. He has betrayed you: "Nationalize the banks that my policies wiped out!" You trusted his stock market bubble. It has popped. You trusted his real estate bubble. It has popped. You trusted the investment banking industry. Its business model blew up last October. It's gone. You trusted Wall Street. It's busted.
You have spent your entire stock selling career in a bear market, but you thought it was a bull market. So did your clients. It is not going to change back into a bull anytime soon. You have wasted a decade. Don't waste another.
Can stocks go up? Yes; there are bear market rallies. We had one: 2002-2007. Can they go up because the value of the dollar falls? Yes. But a bull market, where investors are going to achieve comfortable retirements? That world died in mid-March 2000.
Now you are older. I hope you are less naive now. I'll know you have reached a new level of maturity when you leave Morgan Stanley and find a good Christian rock band to manage. Just don't manage the members' money for them."
Ruth, Falafulufisi, I have been arguing for a while that most of the most successful bear market operators, like George Soros, are either undercover followers of Von Mises' theories of monetary cycles or have devised similar analytical methods of their own.
DO READ THIS WHOLE LETTER:
http://www.garynorth.com/public/4674.cfm
"A Lesson In Austrian Economics For a Morgan Stanley VP"
PhilBest,
You probably didn't understand my post and perhaps I should have elaborate a bit more.
I don't have argument with the Austrian economic theory, I like that theory especially of non-government interference in the market, even I have argued those mis-informed popular US tech blogs such as TechCrunch, O'Reilly Radar, ReadWriteWeb about the caused of the financial crisis which was squarely to be blamed on the government for interference (well I got those infor all from here at Not PC).
My argument was with PC's about his view that market analysts (or mainstream economists as he called them) are not worth listening to them, either by their predictions or their analytical market opinions. I say that there is some values in those analysts opinions and they're not wholesomely worthless as PC made them out to be, those opinions might not be 100% correct but there is still value in them even if they're tiny.
If market predictions/forecastings are not made public or there is law to forbid or ban those, ie, the public don't hear any forecasting coming out of the feds, or other private enterprises, the market fundamentals would still apply, forecasting or no forecastings and that's my whole argument in support of Ruth's point. Investment is to make money, and that's its sole purpose where the analytical methods used by analysts to guide them are still the same, irrelevant of the economic theory.
Facts:
- The financial institutions will still lend to each other using the LIBOR rate and this will go on for years to come whether it is Keynes or Austrian. Analytical methods for fixed interest instruments must use LIBOR rates for their evaluation. If an analyst cannot evaluate the fixed interest asset, then he/she is useless. Financial institutions need to have some rough valuations of the assets that they're trading or otherwise they're recklessly trading in a manner similar to crossing a busy street being blindfolded.
- Derivative markets had existed for over 2,000 years and the fact that they're being blamed for the financial crisis. Again, derivatives are not going to disappear just because they caused the meltdown. They will be around for the next 2000 years. They may be regulated (I am against that), but they will be here where we all long gone. The methods of their analysis would still be more or less the same Keynes economic or Austrian economic.
And my 2 points listed above are why I supported what Ruth stated in her message. Investment is to make money and if an investor is hellbent on the importance of economic theory, then he/she will be in a disadvantage player in the market.
Gee Ruth
I'll pass on taking your advice regarding economics and making money, just as I'd pass on taking your advice regarding the raising of children (and for similar reasons- the results in both cases would be, charitably speaking, sub-optimal).
Understanding Austrian School Economic theory and applying it meant that my team was able to do well out of the "crisis" in monetary terms. On a personal level it meant that my superannuation funds escaped the devastation that most other's were subject to.
The best advice for you to learn is to never invest in anything you do not completely understand. Knowing Austrian Economics provided exactly the understanding required to avoid the worst of this initial (first stage) crisis period.
As for this, "Obamageddon is not coming - we are starting to see recovery in some sectors already. The stimulus package will 'work', so if you want to make money you should ignore the bad economic theory and start getting back into the market."
That's arbitrary nonsense. If you seriously invest on the basis of that advice you'd better be prepared to lose your shirt, unless, of course, you are expecting to be bailed out or nationalised.
LGM
There is world wide a backlash against rich people. This backlash goes deep enough to even force the Swiss banks to open their books to investigators ( http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gnnlwDLNqBf_LBYoI-pR0r0_YBSAD96TBSLG0 )
Glenn Beck uses eggs to point out how flawed this backlash is here ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5BxAInQ7Hw )
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