President Barack Obama

Amid the surreal and boastful bonuses the Wall Street tycoons have been paying themselves after being  rescued by the American taxpayer from their own reckless follies, there is an eerie silence from the Obama administration. That this “they can eat cake” mentality flourishes among the financial elites while the economic catastrophe they engineered through their unmitigated and reckless greed sends the U.S. unemployment rate into double digits is an immoral affront to basic human decency. Yet, except for an occasional sermon on corporate excess in a time of profound economic crisis, President Barack Obama has thus far failed to exercise decisive leadership and put a line in the sand on this defining question. To paraphrase a former Republican presidential candidate, where is the outrage?

In 1962 President John F. Kennedy was also confronted with corporate greed and excess. However, in sharp contrast with Obama, he demonstrated both moral outrage and decisive leadership. Does anyone remember when JFK took on the excess greed of the U.S. steel industry? It is instructive to look back nearly half a century ago.

In the second year of his administration, President Kennedy faced two wars, just as Obama reminds us constantly he is currently confronted with. True, only one was hot, in Southeast Asia, while the other conflict was referred to as the Cold War. Yet the Cold War posed a serious threat to the United States of nuclear extinction, a danger that came perilously close to reality later that year during the Cuban missile crisis. Prior to that, the danger of a military confrontation with the Soviet Union over Berlin was very real. All these factors required compulsory military service for hundreds of thousands of Americans, and  vast expenditures on national defence. This was all occurring at a time of economic crisis, requiring the Kennedy administration to confront both recessionary and  inflationary pressures.  To prevent prices from spiralling out of  control, the President sought the cooperation of both labor and management in key areas of the U.S. economy in order to keep the lid on prices. This was important both in terms of preserving the American standard of living at home, while promoting U.S. exports abroad. A major test case for the Kennedy administration was the U.S. steel industry, where large price increases, should they occur, would have a highly negative ripple effect throughout the U.S. economy.

President Kennedy personally intervened in the question over price hikes for steel. His first step was to obtain concessions from the steel unions. He was successful in winning agreement for a new union contract that would have no effect on steel prices, taking into account both wages and productivity. Kennedy expected  management to now do its part. Instead, first U.S. Steel, the nation’s largest steel producer, followed by its competitors, announced a substantial rise in steel prices. This action, if left unchallenged, would clearly have unleashed  a damaging bout of inflationary pressures throughout the economy.

JFK was outraged. He decided to take action, and bring his voice on the importance of the issue directly to the American  people. He conducted a news conference, and in his opening statement he did not mince words. Kennedy said:

“Simultaneous and identical actions of United States Steel and other leading steal corporations increasing steel prices by some $6 a ton constitute a wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest. In this serious hour in our nation’s history when we are confronted with grave crises in Berlin and Southeast Asia, when we are devoting our energies to economic recovery and stability, when we are asking reservists to leave their homes and their families for months on end and servicemen to risk their lives–and four were killed in the last two days in Vietnam– and asking union members to hold down their wage requests at a time when restraint and sacrifice are being asked of every citizen, the American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans. If this rise in the cost of steel is imitated by the rest of the industry, instead of rescinded, it would increase the cost of homes, autos, appliances, and most other items for every American family. It would increase the cost of machinery and tools to every American businessman and farmer. It would seriously handicap our efforts to prevent an inflationary spiral from eating up the pensions of our older citizens, and our new gains in purchasing power…The Steelworkers Union can be proud that it abided by its responsibilities in this agreement, and this Government also has responsibilities which we intend to meet. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are examining the significance of this action in a free, competitive economy. The Department of Defence and other agencies are reviewing its impact on their policies of procurement. And I am informed that steps are underway by those members of the Congress who plan appropriate inquiries into how these price decisions are so quickly made and reached and what legislative safeguards may be needed to protect the public interest. Price and wage decisions in this country, except for a very limited restriction in the case of monopolies and national emergency strikes, are and ought to be freely and privately made. But the American people have a right to expect, in return for that freedom, a higher sense of business responsibility for the welfare of their country than has been shown in the last 2 days. Some time ago I asked each American to consider what he would do for his country and I asked the steel companies. In the last 24 hours we had their answer.”

The leadership Kennedy demonstrated back in 1962 shamed the senior executives of the steel industry, leading them to rescind their unwarranted price increase. Afterwards, JFK is said to have remarked, “my father told me businessmen were SOBs. I didn’t believe him, until now.”

In the past six months, President Obama has revealed his towering intellect, basic decency and sophisticated world view. However, we have yet to observe the toughness and passion required to take on the forces that drove the U.S. and global economy into a ditch. Except for periodic and overly-mild rebukes, we have witnessed excessive conciliation that is underserved. I hope I will be proven wrong, but despite initial hopes by many that President Obama would become the “Black Kennedy,” more and more I am reminded of what the late Senator Lloyd Bentsen once told Senator Quayle during the Vice Presidential debate back in 1988: “You’re no John Kennedy.”

President Barack Obama made the wrong call in labelling the actions of the Cambridge, Ma police “stupid” before knowing all the facts. What makes this error inexplicable is that Obama stated before he made the “stupid” remark that he did not know all the facts. However, to his credit, Barack Obama did call the policeman involved afterwards, and praised his record.

This reminds me when President Nixon called Charles Manson “guilty” of his crimes even before he had gone to trial, an act that could have jeopardized his subsequent conviction. Hopefully, President Obama has learned from this experience. The media also should reconsider asking a president to express an opinion on a controversial matter before all the relevant information is known.

The speculation after the November presidential election was that Barack Obama originally wanted  Bill Clinton’s former Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers, to serve in the same capacity in his administration. When criticism arose within his own party due to Summers’ strong ties to Wall Street, Obama selected  Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary and appointed  Larry Summers to serve as Director of the National Economic Council. In essence, Summers is serving as the principal economic advisor to President Barack Obama. In that role, Summers was undoubtedly one of the principal architects of the Obama administration’s so-called Economic Recovery Act, the $787 billion deficit-driven stimulus package that was supposed to put the brakes on the free fall in employment numbers in the United States.

Increasingly, many critics, not all of them Republican, have raised serious doubts as to the efficacy of the Obama stimulus plan. However, the Obama team is not about  passivity and turning the other cheek in the  face of public doubts. They are pushing back, and taking the lead in connection with the stimulus plan has been Larry Summers.

Appearing before the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Larry Summers wanted to make the case that the Recovery Act was, in fact, working. One would expect a man with as brilliant an intellect as Mr. Summers is alleged to possess to offer convincing analysis based on solid macroeconomic data. However, if that was your expectation, you are out of luck. This is what President Obama’s lead economic advisor had to offer as irrefutable “proof” that the administration’s Recovery Act was functioning according to plan: the number of people conducting Google searches for the term “economic depression,” which had increased last fall in the wake of the demise of Lehman Brothers, was now “back to normal.”

Is Larry Summers serious? This is the strategic data point that the key actor within Obama’s team of economic advisors is fixated on? Google searches are now the leading indicator and most persuasive metric of what’s happening to the real economy? Well, Mr. Summers, last fall, when you noticed  a spike in Google searches related to an economic depression, I established a new website on the crisis, GlobalEconomicCrisis. Com, http://www.globaleconomiccrisis.com. During the first few weeks that the website existed, there was hardly any traffic. Now, months afterwards, the site receives hundreds of thousands of hits per month.  Is that indicative of economic trends? Of course not. But neither is Larry Summers’ “observation.”

A far more relevant indicator of what is occurring with the real economy is the unemployment rate. Contrary to the declarations of the Obama administration that passage of the Recovery Act would stem the tide of job layoffs and stabilize the official unemployment rate at 8%, this sobering statistic has now increased to 9.5%, excluding the long-term unemployed and underemployed unable to find full-time jobs. All indications are that this number will exceed double-digits by the end of the year.

The attempt by Larry Summers to utilize nonsensical data in defence of the core economic policy of the Obama administration in addressing the most severe economic contraction in American history since the Great Depression not only fails to reassure an increasingly uncertain public; it increases scepticism regarding the suitability of Larry Summers to serve as the White House point-person on the economy. Those who had pre-existing doubts regarding Summers due to his role in dismantling the  Glass- Steagall Act ( which eliminated the  longstanding separation between investment and retail banks, leading to the subprime implosion that sparked the current economic crisis) will see them reinforced by the bizarre rationalizations he is now  increasingly resorting to in defence of the Obama administration’s economic policies.

Perhaps we should not be surprised by the convoluted logic Summers invokes in support of  his view of reality. After all, a major factor in his fall from the presidency of Harvard University was his “explanation” for why females were grossly under-represented in tenured academic positions in the sciences and engineering: “the different availability of aptitude at the high end,” according to Summers.

Starting with Alan Greenspan as long-serving Fed chairman, and continuing with the likes of Rubin, Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner and now Summers, the public has been subjected to propaganda from the political establishment that presents those who have been selected to design our economic architecture as being brilliant beyond all measure. If we have learned anything over the past year, it is that these supposed geniuses of macroeconomic policy are in fact highly fallible. If nothing else, Larry Summers’ perplexing descent into meaningless trivialities suggests that this key economic policymaker is as detached from reality as most of his recent predecessors. Rather than being reassured by his reference to Google searches that bright rays of sunshine are about to dissipate the dark economic clouds hovering over the nation, I see Larry Summers’ ascendancy  in the economic policymaking hierarchy of the Obama administration as the harbinger of a long recessionary winter which still lies ahead.

“Commercial real estate is the next shoe to drop.”

James Helsel, Treasurer of the U.S. National Association of Realtors

 
Pennsylvania realtor and U.S. National Association of Realtors official James Helsel joined with other concerned parties in meeting with a congressional committee last week, conveying a collective message that was saturated with gloom and doom. A commercial real estate implosion has been predicted for months by many observers, including this writer. There is now mounting evidence that this sector of the economy is indeed in the grips of a severe contraction, with all indicators pointing to an accelerating price deflation spiral over a period that may extend to several years.

It has all happened before. In the early 1990s speculators drove the valuations on commercial space far beyond the bounds of prudence. When reality caught up, the worst crash in real estate prices ensued. It now seems increasingly clear that this early 90`s disaster is about to be eclipsed by the commercial real estate crash of the current Global Economic Crisis. In fact, commercial real estate prices have already fallen from their 2007 peak valuation by a greater figure than that which has crippled the U.S. residential housing market. As with the housing market, the commercial real estate contraction will adversely affect the balance sheets of the nation’s banks. However, the dynamics of that impact will be qualitatively different.

The subprime debacle in the housing market overwhelmingly impacted the largest U.S. banks and financial institutions. With commercial real estate, however, the pyramid becomes inverted. The bulk of the exposure to commercial real estate mortgages is held by financial institutions of small to medium size. Deutsche Bank real estate analyst Richard Parkus told the same congressional committee addressed by James Helsel that the four largest American banks have an average exposure of 2 percent to commercial real estate on their balance sheets. In contrast, the banking institutions that ranked between 30 to 100 in order of size had on average a 12 percent exposure to commercial real estate mortgages. What these figures suggest is that a massive collapse in the U.S. commercial real estate market will cripple a large number of regional and community banks, in comparison to a few “too large to fail“  institutions stricken by the subprime housing disaster.

Though publicly quiet on this gathering storm, behind the scenes the economic policymakers in the Obama administration are deeply worried by this growing danger of a wider banking crisis brought on by a massive collapse in commercial real estate. The Federal Reserve is also in a state of high anxiety, for the same reasons. By June of this year, there were already 5,315 commercial properties in default, a figure that is more than double the number of commercial real estate defaults in all of 2008.

Many loans initiated when the prices of commercial properties were at their peak will be coming due over the next 3 years, including $400 billion by the end of 2009, and nearly $2 trillion by 2012. With unemployment skyrocketing, real disposable income shrinking and nearly 7% of income now being saved by the chastened American consumer, it is a foregone conclusion that a greater proportion of these loans will become non-performing. In the current economic climate, there are simply no options available in terms of refinancing and securitization. As with housing, a glut of foreclosed commercial properties will further depress prices, creating a vicious concentric circle of financial doom.

Ultimately, the coming collapse in the U.S. commercial real estate market is not only inevitable; it is round two of the banking crisis. Having barely escaped alive from the consequences of the subprime housing collapse due to trillions of dollars in taxpayer aid and quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve, combined with Timothy Geithner’s stage-managed “Stress Test,“ it is difficult to see an escape route for the American banking sector once the ravages of the commercial real estate storm have hit with gale force. That must be what the Obama administration and the Fed are frantically consulting on behind the scenes, hoping against hope that they have a TARP 2 ready in time. In the final analysis, a very large number of small to medium sized banks in trouble can pose just as great a systemic risk to the global financial system as was the case with a small number of banking giants. What happens to the concept of “too big to fail“  in that scenario?

Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke may be fated to go down in history as the three horsemen of the global financial and economic apocalypse. Though Fed Chairman Bernanke was inherited by the Obama administration, Geithner, Summers et al were the chosen economic team of the Obama administration. In effect, their selection was the single most important decision made by President Barack Obama  in response to the Global Economic Crisis. Regrettably, thus far their performance has been found wanting. Most disconcertingly, many of their public statements are Bush 43 redux, a smorgasbord of overly-optimistic platitudes utterly dichotomized from economic realities. Perhaps the one phrase that is most likely to haunt the Obama administration is one uttered originally by Ben Bernanke in the spring; those perennial “green shoots” that the Fed Chairman could see sprouting amid the recessionary quicksand engulfing the global economy.

Like a barbershop quartet, other senior Obama economic policymakers and advisors sang the happy melodies of these enigmatic green shoots. This happy talk was not without its effect; in large measure the bear market rally on Wall Street, what others have referred to as a “dead cat bounce,” was a by-product of investor optimism fuelled by the green shoots serenade flowing from the banks of the Potomac.

As Yogi Berra would say, “it’s déjà vu all over again.” George W. Bush’s economic team was also full of joyful verbiage, until the floor literally collapsed from under them with the disintegration of Lehman Brothers. In the case of the Obama economic crisis management team, however, this theory of hope triumphing over reality has been executed with even more creative dexterity. With all credible mathematical indicators revealing that most of the largest U.S. banks are functionally insolvent, the Treasury Department concocted a totally cosmetic set of so-called “stress tests” to “prove” that these insolvent banks were, actually, “solvent.” In addition, by forcing changes in the FASB rules through political intervention, some of these banks were even able to show a profit in their Q1 results.

The June unemployment numbers, however, are throwing a cold dose of reality in the direction of the pontificators of ephemeral green shoots. With the publicly released U3 Labor Department jobless report showing the level of U.S. unemployment having risen to 9.5%, and the less publicized but far more accurate U6 report showing actual unemployment and underemployment now at a staggering 16.5%, it is quite clear that the American economy, along with most of the planet, is still undergoing a painful contraction. The fact that one in six Americans is either unemployed or trapped in low-paying part-time employment due to the lack of full-time positions, is a far more significant economic indicator than short-term gyrations on Wall Street or periodic upward anomalies confronting an otherwise downward economic trend.

Amid all the green shoots fantasizing, it must be recalled that the United States economy depends on the spending of the U.S. consumer for more than 70% of its aggregate demand. The real significance of rising unemployment, exchanging full-time jobs for part-time employment and the fear factor inhibiting spending by those who think they may lose their jobs, is a radical contraction in consumer spending. It is this reality more than any other that is weighing heavily on the nation’s economic superstructure. Not only is joblessness rising. After years of American consumers spending more than they earned, they have now shifted radically towards a high level of savings. Transitioning from a negative savings rate, the U.S. wage earner now banks nearly 7% of his/her declining take- home pay, despite virtually zero interest being offered to savers due to the Federal Reserve’s zero interest monetary policy.

The American consumer is scared, and is not being seduced by talk of green shoots emanating from Washington. With consumer spending undergoing significant contraction not only in the United States but in virtually all major economies throughout the globe, increasing pressure will bear on securitized investments based on loan portfolios directly or indirectly linked to consumer spending. Retail and shopping mall mortgages will witness higher levels of defaults, in conjunction with the already virulent afflictions  hammering sub prime and prime residential mortgages, commercial office space mortgages, consumer loans and credit card debt.

The Obama administration apparently believed that the original $700 billion TARP Wall Street bailout passed by Congress in the last weeks of the Bush administration, and President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus spending bill, would suffice to stabilize the economy and put the brakes on the free fall in employment numbers. However, jobs are still being shredded each month by the hundreds of thousands, while banks still suffer from balance sheets saturated with toxic assets. The FDIC has already closed more U.S. banks this year than in all of 2008.

As I indicated in a recent piece, there is already serious discussion occurring in the corridors of power in Washington on the necessity of a second stimulus spending package. This is an acknowledgement that the Obama economic crisis team, thus far, has been an abject failure. However, with so much money already having been borrowed by the U.S. government on a variety of schemes supposedly aimed at saving the economy, further large doses of public debt bring along very dangerous negative implications of their own.

In a recent column in the Financial Times of London, Mohamed A. El-Erian, chief executive and co-chief investment officer of PIMCO, the world largest bond trading firm, offered the following observation:
“The bottom line is a simple yet powerful one. The global crisis is morphing again. Having already contaminated (in a sequential and cumulative manner) housing, finance and the consumer, it is now threatening the potency and credibility of the economic policy making apparatus. As far as I can see, there are no first best policy responses that are readily available and easy to implement. Instead, the economy will continue to struggle, navigating both the adverse implications of last year’s financial crisis and the unintended consequences of the experimental policy responses. Given the inevitable socio-political dimensions, this story will play out well beyond the realm of the economy, policymaking and markets.”

Mohamed El-Erian is not offering green shoots, but he does speak the truth. Unfortunately, the truth is so bitter, it is unlikely that President Obama’s principal economic advisors will face up to the harsh and even brutal realities of the Global Economic Crisis until it is far too late for any policy response to be effective.

President Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States of America, sent out the following Independence Day message via the Internet. The Obama letter was sent by e-mail in advance of President Obama’s first official visit to Russia. The Obama July 4th message follows:

This weekend, our family will join millions of others in celebrating America. We will enjoy the glow of fireworks, the taste of barbeque, and the company of good friends. As we all celebrate this weekend, let’s also remember the remarkable story that led to this day.

Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, our nation was born when a courageous group of patriots pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the proposition that all of us were created equal.

Our country began as a unique experiment in liberty — a bold, evolving quest to achieve a more perfect union. And in every generation, another courageous group of patriots has taken us one step closer to fully realizing the dream our founders enshrined on that great day.

Today, all Americans have a hard-fought birthright to a freedom which enables each of us, no matter our views or background, to help set our nation’s course. America’s greatness has always depended on her citizens embracing that freedom — and fulfilling the duty that comes with it.

As free people, we must each take the challenges and opportunities that face this nation as our own. As long as some Americans still must struggle, none of us can be fully content. And as America comes ever closer to achieving the perfect Union our founders dreamed, that triumph — that pride — belongs to all of us.

So today is a day to reflect on our independence, and the sacrifice of our troops standing in harm’s way to preserve and protect it. It is a day to celebrate all that America is. And today is a time to aspire toward all we can still become.

With very best wishes,

President Barack Obama

July 4th, 2009

Only a few weeks ago, the cheerleaders from the financial community and Obama administration were preaching the gospel of “green shoots,” those supposedly subtle indicators that the U.S. recession was bottoming out , and a recovery was just around the corner. However, amid a flood of dire economic and financial news, not the least being the bad unemployment numbers for June, there is increasing talk in Washington that a second dose of deficit-driven stimulus spending  will be required from Washington if the nation’s severe economic contraction is to be reversed.

Not surprisingly, the Republicans are already labelling President Obama’s economic recovery spending package a failure. They point out that Barack Obama’s economic team had envisioned the unemployment rate stabilizing at 8% during 2009, as the impact of nearly $800 billion in borrowed money being unleashed by the Federal government would arrest the free fall in employment numbers. The June statistics released by the Labor department reveal that nearly half a million Americans lost their jobs in June, a significantly higher number than was posted in the previous month, taking the official U3 unemployment rate to 9.5%. However, the disastrous economic performance of the George W. Bush administration, aided and abetted by a  Congress under Republican domination for most of the previous president’s term of office, undercuts the credibility of the GOP’s criticism of the Obama administration on economic policy. Of far greater significance is that much of the criticism is now coming from the left-of-center of the Democratic Party.

Many neo-Keynesian economists  were critical of the original Obama stimulus package for allegedly being too small. Their position was that the  contraction brought on by the Global Economic Crisis required governments across the world, but especially in the United States, to borrow massively in order to compensate for the diminution in private sector economic activity. In a recent op-ed piece in The New York Time, economist Paul Krugman represented this point of view forcefully in labelling the current stimulus package as being  totally inadequate, and emphasizing that a second stimulus spending bill of sizeable dimensions was essential if the U.S. was to avoid slipping into an even worse economic crisis. He drew parallels with the economic downturn that occurred in 1937, when the Roosevelt administration pulled back from New Deal pump-priming in order to bring the Federal budget back under control.

While the Obama administration has been hesitant thus far in committing to a second stimulus spending bill, the combination of growing calls for more deficit spending combined with political realities, namely the 2010 mid-term elections, will likely create accelerating momentum towards another so-called “economic recovery act.” No Democrat wants to run in 2010 with unemployment continuing to rise.

Putting aside political factors, is a second stimulus spending bill a wise course to follow? In my view the answer is no. Just as I disagreed with the wisdom of both the original $800 billion spending bill and the $700 TARP Wall Street bailout package of last fall, I fail to see how the at best short-term enhancement of certain economic indicators outweighs the massive liability of further damaging the already frail fiscal health of the country. The neo-Keynesian economists fail to understand that the United States no longer has the luxury of engaging in counter-cyclical economic policy when its bank balance is mired in red ink. The global bond market is already providing early warning signs that  profligate borrowing needs on the part of the U.S. government are simply unsustainable in the long-run. Not only would another stimulus spending orgy  probably not improve the nation’s long-term economic health; the further deterioration in the fiscal viability of the U.S. government will inevitably create its own negative feedback loop, further exacerbating the underlying weaknesses in the American economy.

The fiscal catastrophe  underway in America’s largest state, California, should serve as a brightly-lit red warning lamp for the entire nation. Endless debt by the sovereign does not guarantee long-term economic equilibrium. It is a roadmap to financial and economic Armageddon.

Barack Obama will soon be embarking on his first official visit to Russia. As Russia still retains a vast nuclear weapons arsenal, it is a priority for the Obama administration to improve relations with the Russian Federation.

During the Bush administration, U.S.-Russia relations were allowed to deteriorate. Barack Obama hopes to reverse direction on Russia, and enhance ties with the Russian Federation. A new agreement on limiting nuclear arms will be sought. Obama will also seek the cooperation of the Russian government on matters involving Iran and North Korea.

The forthcoming trip by Barack Obama to Russia will be historic. President Obama may in fact help thaw the cold state of relations with Moscow.