We’re Talking About Money, Honey

Felix Salmon:

Individuals are doing it, banks are doing it — faced with the horrific news and pictures from Japan, everybody wants to do something, and the obvious thing to do is to donate money to some relief fund or other.

Please don’t.

We went through this after the Haiti earthquake, and all of the arguments which applied there apply to Japan as well. Earmarking funds is a really good way of hobbling relief organizations and ensuring that they have to leave large piles of money unspent in one place while facing urgent needs in other places. And as Matthew Bishop and Michael Green said last year, we are all better at responding to human suffering caused by dramatic, telegenic emergencies than to the much greater loss of life from ongoing hunger, disease and conflict. That often results in a mess of uncoordinated NGOs parachuting in to emergency areas with lots of good intentions, where a strategic official sector response would be much more effective. Meanwhile, the smaller and less visible emergencies where NGOs can do the most good are left unfunded.

In the specific case of Japan, there’s all the more reason not to donate money. Japan is a wealthy country which is responding to the disaster, among other things, by printing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of new money. Money is not the bottleneck here: if money is needed, Japan can raise it. On top of that, it’s still extremely unclear how or where organizations like globalgiving intend on spending the money that they’re currently raising for Japan — so far we’re just told that the money “will help survivors and victims get necessary services,” which is basically code for “we have no idea what we’re going to do with the money, but we’ll probably think of something.”

Tyler Cowen:

For reasons which you can find outlined in my Discover Your Inner Economist, I am generally in sympathy with arguments like Felix’s, but not in this case.  I see a three special factors operating here:

1. The chance that your aid will be usefully deployed, and not lost to corruption, is much higher than average.

2. I believe this crisis will bring fundamental regime change to Japan (currently an underreported issue), rather than just altering the outcome of the next election.  America needs to signal its partnership with one of its most important allies.  You can help us do that.

3. Maybe you should give to a poorer country instead, but you probably won’t.  Odds are this will be an extra donation at the relevant margin.  Sorry to say, this disaster has no “close substitute.”

It may be out of date, but the starting point for any study of Japan is still Karel von Wolferen’s The Enigma of Japanese Power.   Definitely recommended.

Adam Ozimek at Modeled Behavior

John Carney at CNBC:

The fact that Charlie Sheen has decided donate a portion of the money from his live stage shows to help people affected by earthquake in Japan should be all you need to know that donating money to Japan is a bad idea.

Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, volcanoes and even chemical or nuclear disasters can provoke a strong urge on the part of people to want to provide disaster relief in the form of charitable donations directed at those afflicted by the most recent disaster. This is almost always a mistake.

Almost all international disaster relief is ineffective. Part of the reason for this is that relief groups rarely know who is suffering most, or how aid can be most effectively directed.

Reihan Salam

Annie Lowrey at Slate:

Concern and generosity are entirely human—and entirely admirable!—responses to the disaster and tragedy in Japan. But if you really want to be helpful, as Felix Salmon and others have noted, there might be better ways to donate your money than just sending it to Japan. There are two basic rules for being useful: First, give to organizations with long track records of helping overseas. Second, leave it up to the experts to decide how to distribute the aid.

The first suggestion is simple: Avoid getting scammed by choosing an internationally known and vetted group. Big, long-standing organizations like Doctors without Borders and the International Committee of the Red Cross are good choices. If choosing a smaller or local group, try checking with aid groups, Guidestar, or the Better Business Bureau before submitting funds.

The second suggestion is more important. Right now, thousands of well-intentioned donors are sending money to Japan to help it rebuild. But some portion of the donated funds will be earmarked, restricted to a certain project or goal, and therefore might not do the Japanese much good in the end. Moreover, given Japan’s extraordinary wealth and development, there is a good chance that aid organizations will end up with leftover funds they will have no choice but to spend in country—though the citizens of other nations wracked by other disasters, natural or man-made, might need it more. Aid organizations can do more good when they decide how best to use the money they receive.

Taylor Marsh:

As for giving to Japan, don’t and here’s why, unless you want to give specifically to an organization like Doctors Without Borders.

Mahablog:

Felix Salmon wrote a column for Reuters warning people “don’t donate money to Japan.” His argument is that donations earmarked for a particular disaster often “leave large piles of money unspent in one place while facing urgent needs in other places.”

Commenters pointed out that many relief organizations accept donations with a disclaimer that surplus funds may be applied elsewhere. And other relief organizations don’t allow for earmarking of donations at all, but that doesn’t mean they can’t use a burst of cash during an extraordinary crisis.

Salmon also wrote, “we are all better at responding to human suffering caused by dramatic, telegenic emergencies than to the much greater loss of life from ongoing hunger, disease and conflict. That often results in a mess of uncoordinated NGOs parachuting in to emergency areas with lots of good intentions, where a strategic official sector response would be much more effective.”

That last probably is true. I also have no doubt that various evangelical groups already are planning their crusades to Japan to rescue the simple indigenous people for Christ in their time of need. (Update: Yep.)

So if you do want to donate money, I suggest giving to the excellent Tzu Chi, a Buddhist relief organization headquartered in Taiwan. Relief efforts in Japan are being coordinated through long-established Tzu Chi offices and volunteer groups in Japan, not by random do-gooders parachuting in from elsewhere. Tzu Chi does a lot of good work around the globe, so your money will be put to good use somewhere.

It Is 1995 Again And We Are Wearing Doc Martens, Listening To Everclear

John Hudson at The Atlantic:

Congress has until March 4 to figure out how to fund the U.S. government. And as of right now, House Republicans and Senate Democrats are more than $60 billion away from a consensus. It’s a high stakes game, given that last time the federal government shut down, all sorts of important functions were halted (passport/visa processing, toxic waste cleanup, museums, monuments and 368 national park sites all closed, etc). So who stands to benefit from all this brinkmanship?

Jay Newton-Small at Swampland at Time:

House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have been working behind the scenes to draft a two-week stopgap measure to avert a government shutdown that would include $4 billion in immediate cuts, according to House and Senate GOP aides.

The House would move first – the Rules Committee could meet as early as Monday. Boehner is hoping to pass the bill by Wednesday. Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have been in discussions but if a deal is not reached ahead of time Senate Republicans would offer Boehner’s proposal as a substitute to Reid’s bill. The cuts will include reductions that President Obama has suggested and other non-controversial items in the hopes of luring support from moderate Senate Democrats who are facing tough reelections. No details were immediately available on what cuts Boehner and McConnell are looking at. “Senator Reid’s position that they will force a government shutdown rather than cut one penny in spending is indefensible – and it will be very hard for them to oppose a reasonable short-term funding measure that will cut spending,” says a House GOP aide. If nothing is done by March 4 the government will shutdown.

Reid’s office said Wednesday he still plans to move forward with a 30-day spending freeze at current levels. The House on Saturday passed a bill funding the government through the end of the fiscal year. But that bill slashes funding by $100 billion — cuts that are not likely to survive the Democratically-controlled Senate. The Senate has proposed cutting $41 billion from Obama’s 2011 request, but that translates into funding the government at roughly the same level it’s at right now. “While Republicans are making a genuine effort to cut spending and debt, Washington Democrats can’t seem to find a single dime of federal spending to cut, insisting on the status quo, even for a short-term spending bill,” McConnell said Wednesday in a statement to TIME. “But keeping bloated spending levels in place is simply unacceptable. So it is our hope that Democrats will join us in a bill that actually reduces Washington spending.” Both sides agree that more time is needed to negotiate a compromise and Boehner has said he will not allow even a temporary extension without some cuts.

The competing bills amount to a game of chicken between the Republican-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate. Both sides claim they are trying to avoid a shutdown, but if one happens both are laying the ground work to blame the other. While both Parties say they want cuts, Republicans want immediate results while Democrats have been taking more of a “scapel” rather than a “meat axe” approach, as Reid put it yesterday on a call with reporters.

Annie Lowrey at Slate:

So what actually happens if Congress fails to pass a continuing resolution and the coffers dry up? Certain necessary activities would continue—anything related to defense, inpatient or emergency medical care, air traffic control, securing prisoners, or disaster assistance, for instance. But legally, federal agencies would have to wind down nonessential business. That means hundreds of thousands of employees would go on furloughs, from Treasury to Health and Human Services to the Department of Education, to be paid whenever a continuing resolution passed. Thousands more contractors would just lose their gigs. Parks would shut down. Offices would clear out. Phones would go unanswered.

Nobody knows exactly how it would shake out, not just yet. The president has broad discretion to decide what counts as necessary and what does not, says Stan Collender, a longtime budget expert and a partner at Qorvis, a D.C. communications firm. Right now, the White House Office of Management and Budget says it is helping agencies review their protocols in the event that March 4 comes and goes without a continuing resolution on Obama’s desk. (The OMB has required federal agencies to keep an updated contingency plan on file since 1980.) Officials are looking at who will go and who will stay, and how they will tell whom to go where, just in case.

But everyone dreads the prospect. The last time the government shut down was during the Clinton administration. For five days in November 1995 and 21 days between December 1995 and January 1996, the lights went off. In the first shutdown, 800,000 workers stopped heading into the office. In the second, about 284,000 stayed at home, with an additional 475,000 working on “non-pay status.” These were not just pencil-pushers either. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave up on monitoring the outbreak of diseases. Workers at 609 Superfund toxic-waste sites stopped cleaning up.

Ezra Klein:

This isn’t just about the spending bill. The stakes are higher even than that. At this point, no one side really knows how the power dynamic between the House and the Senate will shake out. House Republicans feel their preferences should take priority because they won the last election. Sharp cuts to non-defense discretionary spending are nothing more than their due. Senate Democrats counter that they still control not just the Senate, but also the White House — the House Republicans are a minority partner in this play, and don’t get to decide what the government does or doesn’t do merely because they control one of the three major legislative checkpoints. An uncompromising force is meeting an unimpressed object. But this won’t get settled in an arm wrestling bout, and it’s looking less and less likely that it’ll get settled in negotiations, either. Unfortunately, it seems increasingly possible that this will ultimately get decided when both sides put their theory to the test and take their case to the people during a government shutdown.

The Economist

David Corn at Politics Daily:

What would be the reasonable course of action in a situation like this? The answer is obvious: pass a short extension of the current continuing resolution — say, for a few weeks — to cover the time needed to hammer out a compromise between the House GOPers and Senate Democrats. And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has done just that, proposing a stopgap bill that would fund the government at current levels until the end of March. Boehner, though, has declared he won’t accept a temporary measure unless it includes spending cuts. So if he sticks to that extreme position and he and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid don’t reach a compromise by March 4, much of the federal government will shut down.

In such a scenario, it would seem that Boehner would deserve most of the culpability. Just like Gingrich. But would Boehner pay the same price?

The political dynamics are different this time. And Boehner is playing to two audiences that each is looking for a different show. Much of the tea party crowd — in and out of Congress — would cheer a government shutdown. These folks see the federal government as the enemy. They’d be delighted to strangle it, even if only for a few days. Yet independent voters, whom both parties need to court, would probably not be as happy. These people usually want their representatives in Washington to make the system work. They aren’t looking for showdowns or games of chicken. By forcing a shutdown, Boehner can appease his right — but at the cost of potentially alienating the middle.

Of course, if a shutdown comes, Boehner will try to blame it on Democrats and President Obama, claiming that their unwillingness to accept spending cuts created the problem. He’ll bash them for not listening to the people, and he’ll depict himself as a champion of principle. If it comes to this, it will be the climax of the GOP’s just-say-no strategy of the past two years.

Capitol Hill Democrats say Boehner is riding the Overreach Express and risks coming across more as a tea party bomb-thrower than as a responsible legislator. At least, that’s their hope. It will certainly take some deft maneuvering for Boehner to cause a shutdown, accuse the Democrats, and be hailed as a spending-cut hero of the republic. But it’s hard to know where the American public is these days. It generally detests overall government spending, but opposes many of the individual cuts the Republicans have passed. And though the American electorate sent a band of conservative ideologues to Washington this past November, many Americans fancy the notion of bipartisan cooperation. It’s no sure bet that the public will embrace a politician who throws this switch.

Boehner might be the player who has the most to lose. Obama and the Senate Democrats are already viewed as politicians who consider government a positive force that can be used to resolve the nation’s problems. If they draw a line against severe GOP cuts and ask for more time to forge a compromise, that’s hardly a news story. But Boehner, who is still a new figure on the scene, has benefited by not being regarded as an ideologue. If he refuses to back a measure that keeps the government functioning while the politicians look for a bipartisan deal, he could end up becoming identified as an I-know-best, anti-government extremist. That will, no doubt, be a badge of honor in certain circles. But it may not go over well beyond those quarters.

Boehner has a choice: reasonableness or ideology. In 1996, Gingrich chose the latter and crashed. At that time, Boehner was in his third term as a House member. The next two weeks will show what lessons he learned — if any.

Major Garrett at The Atlantic:

House GOP leaders held a conference call with freshmen GOP members on Wednesday to lay out the strategy. More than half of the 87-member class participated in a call with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio; Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.; Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.; and House Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas. The call gave more detail to an outline of the strategy GOP leaders gave the freshmen class before it left Washington for this week’s recess.

The GOP aides said the thrust of the trimmed-down CR is to avoid a government shutdown and make the GOP spending cuts as hard as possible for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the White House to ignore or criticize. “What we will end up saying is we have passed two bills to prevent a shutdown and then we will ask the Senate: ‘How many bills have you passed to prevent a shutdown?’ ” an aide said.

Senate Democrats dismissed the idea that the House proposal represented any kind of concession.

“The Republicans’ so-called compromise is nothing more than the same extreme package the House already handed the Senate, just with a different bow,” said Jon Summers, Reid’s communications director. “This isn’t a compromise; it’s a hardening of their original position. This bill would simply be a two-week version of the reckless measure the House passed last weekend. It would impose the same spending levels in the short term as their initial proposal does in the long term, and it isn’t going to fool anyone. Both proposals are non-starters in the Senate.”

The GOP freshmen, according to senior House GOP aides, backed the approach, even though it amounts to a retreat from the $61 billion in cuts from enacted fiscal 2010 spending levels (and $100 billion from Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget proposal that the previous Congress ignored). The House approved the $100 billion in cuts after the freshmen rejected the GOP-leadership-backed plan to cut $32 billion from fiscal 2010 spending levels.

According to several GOP sources, the freshmen and many senior conservatives are girding for an eventual retreat from the bigger CR because they know GOP leaders are fearful of the political consequences of a government shutdown and want to wage the spending-cut battle over many cycles–instead of betting all their chips on this first showdown with Reid and Obama.

Boehner and Cantor have pleaded with the freshmen to take the long view of the budget war and not risk a political backlash over the CR dispute. GOP leaders have instead argued to win as many spending cuts as they can during the CR debate and follow up with more when Congress must raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling later this spring and find still more when the fiscal 2012 appropriations bills are written.

This approach reflects Boehner’s deep-seated belief that the 1995 Gingrich-led Congress risked everything in its shutdown confrontation with President Bill Clinton, and in the aftermath Republicans not only lacked the stomach to fight for more spending cuts, they veered in the opposite direction and targeted federal spending to vulnerable districts to protect the GOP majority.

“We have a totally different mindset and approach than 1995,” said a senior House GOP source. “We don’t want to shut the government down. But we do want to cut spending. And we will. And the CR will do that one way or the other.”

We All Need Something To Write About In August

James Pethokoukis:

Main Street may be about to get its own gigantic bailout. Rumors are running wild from Washington to Wall Street that the Obama administration is about to order government-controlled lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive a portion of the mortgage debt of millions of Americans who owe more than what their homes are worth. An estimated 15 million U.S. mortgages – one in five – are underwater with negative equity of some $800 billion. Recall that on Christmas Eve 2009, the Treasury Department waived a $400 billion limit on financial assistance to Fannie and Freddie, pledging unlimited help. The actual vehicle for the bailout could be the Bush-era Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP, a sister program to Obama’s loan modification effort. HARP was just extended through June 30, 2011.

The move, if it happens, would be a stunning political and economic bombshell less than 100 days before a midterm election in which Democrats are currently expected to suffer massive, if not historic losses. The key date to watch is August 17 when the Treasury Department holds a much-hyped meeting on the future of Fannie and Freddie.

Daniel Indiviglio at The Atlantic:

First, this could really happen. The Treasury has unlimited discretion to plow as much money as it pleases into Fannie and Freddie. So adding several hundred billion dollars to the $150 billion already provided through their bailout would be as easy as the stroke of a pen. Moreover, the government’s other foreclosure efforts, particularly the HAMP program, have had lackluster success. This would provide the principal reductions that many progressives have been calling for to make for more effective modifications — but even for those who aren’t in danger of foreclosure.

Consequently, it would act as a stimulus. Let’s say your mortgage was based on original principal of $250,000. At 6% fixed interest, that would make your payment around $1500. But let’s say the housing bubble dropped your property value by 30%, so the home is only worth $175,000. Now, let’s say that you had paid off $25,000. That leaves $50,000 in principal that the GSEs could potentially write down. Suddenly, your payment would drop to as low as $1,050. What would you do with that extra $450 per month? The Obama administration would hope that you spend it!

This would effectively transfer wealth from all taxpayers to middle class homeowners, since it would only benefit those who have mortgages with the GSEs. The upper class generally has either very large (“jumbo) mortgages that don’t qualify for Fannie and Freddie’s backing or they own their home outright. Poorer Americans, however, don’t have mortgages at all — they rent. So they wouldn’t benefit either.

Whether or not this proposal would successfully stimulate the economy depends on the psychology of those lucky homeowners. We have seen recently that saving has been quite high. So it’s certainly conceivable that much or most of that mortgage payment reduction would be saved or used to pay down other debt. If the recipients spent it, however, then it would stimulate the economy.

Ryan Avent at Free Exchange at The Economist:

Such a move would raise some significant questions concerning issues of governance and the use of previously-private firms to support administration ends. Republicans would be furious. At the same time, it could be a nice shot in the arm for the economy (and, it goes without saying, the White House). But there are few good details to go on, and even less in the way of official substantiation. Who knows what the policy would actually look like or whether it’s truly on the table. But it’s August! Gotta write about something.

Annie Lowrey at The Washington Independent:

The question is whether this really is a good move politically if housing has stabilized. It will be expensive, very, very expensive. And my guess is that Republicans would love to campaign on this, easily and rightly characterized as a mass taxpayer bailout of underwater homeowners. For that reason, I would be surprised to see the administration do it. Forcing the banks to enact cramdown or changing bankruptcy laws would be one thing. But doing this through Treasury, politically, would be quite another.

Moe Lane:

You know, I happen to have an underwater mortgage: we bought our house at exactly the wrong moment in time. Do you know what we’re doing about it? WE’RE MAKING OUR MORTGAGE PAYMENTS, that’s what we’re doing about it. Because we sat down and worked out how much we could afford to spend beforehand, then we stuck to that number like glue.  In other words, I don’t need a handout to pay my bills, and I really don’t need to spend another insanely large sum of money (Hot Air thinks that it could reach 100 billion, which is a large sum of money, even today) that my kids are just going to have to repay later, after the President retires to the global cocktail circuit.  And I know that people are going to argue that the majority of Americans can be short-termed bribed in this fashion, but you know something?  I don’t think it’ll work.  Particularly when it comes to people who have kids.

At some point the Democrats are going to have to accept the fact that you cannot finesse your way out of some situations, and that this is one of those times.  Yes, it is going to be incredibly painful for long-term, still-serving federal politicians who can be linked to the crisis.  Yes, thanks to 2006 and 2008 that’s going to disproportionately hurt Democrats.  Yes, Republican and conservative operatives like myself will (deservedly) mock their pain for it.

Andrew Samwick:

If it happens, it will be just another example of why the government should not be involved in running business enterprises that could be done, even if imperfectly, in the private sector.  It will also be another example of how we have moved a bit further away from democracy in allowing such a move solely by the executive branch of government.

Calculated Risk:

The blog post includes the poorly considered proposal from Morgan Stanley (that Tom Lawler responded to last week), and an excerpt from a July 16th Goldman Sachs research note that suggested “while there are ways in which the GSEs could provide support through policy, the effects on the broader economy would ultimately be fairly modest.”

Not exactly foretelling a “gigantic bailout”.

This nonsense is part of the silly season. Sure, some small changes could be made to Fannie and Freddie, but nothing like this post would suggest.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

Alert Drudge and the tinfoil hat sites – they will run with this story. It is a political post … I’m already sorry I mentioned it.

Well, If Andrew Breitbart Had Film Of Bernanke Speaking, We Would Have All Paid Attention

The Fed:

Chairman Ben S. Bernanke

Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress

Before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C.

July 21, 2010

Chairman Dodd, Senator Shelby, and members of the Committee, I am pleased to present the Federal Reserve’s semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress.

Economic and Financial Developments
The economic expansion that began in the middle of last year is proceeding at a moderate pace, supported by stimulative monetary and fiscal policies. Although fiscal policy and inventory restocking will likely be providing less impetus to the recovery than they have in recent quarters, rising demand from households and businesses should help sustain growth. In particular, real consumer spending appears to have expanded at about a 2-1/2 percent annual rate in the first half of this year, with purchases of durable goods increasing especially rapidly. However, the housing market remains weak, with the overhang of vacant or foreclosed houses weighing on home prices and construction.

An important drag on household spending is the slow recovery in the labor market and the attendant uncertainty about job prospects. After two years of job losses, private payrolls expanded at an average of about 100,000 per month during the first half of this year, a pace insufficient to reduce the unemployment rate materially. In all likelihood, a significant amount of time will be required to restore the nearly 8-1/2 million jobs that were lost over 2008 and 2009. Moreover, nearly half of the unemployed have been out of work for longer than six months. Long-term unemployment not only imposes exceptional near-term hardships on workers and their families, it also erodes skills and may have long-lasting effects on workers’ employment and earnings prospects.

In the business sector, investment in equipment and software appears to have increased rapidly in the first half of the year, in part reflecting capital outlays that had been deferred during the downturn and the need of many businesses to replace aging equipment. In contrast, spending on nonresidential structures–weighed down by high vacancy rates and tight credit–has continued to contract, though some indicators suggest that the rate of decline may be slowing. Both U.S. exports and U.S. imports have been expanding, reflecting growth in the global economy and the recovery of world trade. Stronger exports have in turn helped foster growth in the U.S. manufacturing sector.

Inflation has remained low. The price index for personal consumption expenditures appears to have risen at an annual rate of less than 1 percent in the first half of the year. Although overall inflation has fluctuated, partly reflecting changes in energy prices, by a number of measures underlying inflation has trended down over the past two years. The slack in labor and product markets has damped wage and price pressures, and rapid increases in productivity have further reduced producers’ unit labor costs.

My colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and I expect continued moderate growth, a gradual decline in the unemployment rate, and subdued inflation over the next several years. In conjunction with the June FOMC meeting, Board members and Reserve Bank presidents prepared forecasts of economic growth, unemployment, and inflation for the years 2010 through 2012 and over the longer run. The forecasts are qualitatively similar to those we released in February and May, although progress in reducing unemployment is now expected to be somewhat slower than we previously projected, and near-term inflation now looks likely to be a little lower. Most FOMC participants expect real GDP growth of 3 to 3-1/2 percent in 2010, and roughly 3-1/2 to 4-1/2 percent in 2011 and 2012. The unemployment rate is expected to decline to between 7 and 7-1/2 percent by the end of 2012. Most participants viewed uncertainty about the outlook for growth and unemployment as greater than normal, and the majority saw the risks to growth as weighted to the downside. Most participants projected that inflation will average only about 1 percent in 2010 and that it will remain low during 2011 and 2012, with the risks to the inflation outlook roughly balanced.

Colin Barr at Fortune:

Asked if he feared being out of bullets should the downturn intensify, Bernanke answered no, then rattled off the Fed’s three options for adding liquidity. He added that the Fed “needs to continue to evaluate those options.”

Bernanke’s choice of words suggests he isn’t eager to look dovish in front of a Congress that under pressure to take action on the massive U.S. budget deficit – even though the yield on the 10-year Treasury note has tumbled by more than a percentage point since April, easing fears of an investor flight.

Bernanke’s stance seems to preclude the oft-rumored cut in reserve interest rates — unless the bottom absolutely falls out of the recovery.

“To our minds, it would require a considerable further deterioration in the incoming data before the FOMC would realistically consider adding more stimulus to the mix,” Capital Economics analyst Paul Ashworth wrote in a note to clients Wednesday.

Even in that instance, Ashworth believes, the Fed’s first step would be to return to the policy it wound up this spring of purchasing long-dated U.S. government and agency bonds.

Annie Lowrey at The Washington Independent

Mike Shedlock at Favstocks:

Be prepared for Quantitative Easing Round 2 (QE2) and/or other misguided Fed policy decisions because Bernanke Says Fed Ready to Take Action.

Larry Kudlow at NRO:

Ben Bernanke threw a curveball today in his midterm report to Congress. The Fed view of the economy has been downgraded since its last report in February. This is not totally new news, since the June FOMC minutes reported this downgrade. However, “the majority saw the risks to growth as weighted to the downside.”

But here’s the disconnect. With no inflation and weaker growth, including stubbornly high unemployment, Bernanke mostly talked about an exit strategy that would shrink the Fed’s balance sheet by removing liquidity. This was the Fed’s bias last winter when the recovery looked stronger. Now that the recovery looks weaker, the stock market was hoping to hear Bernanke hint of an easier policy that would increase liquidity if necessary. Didn’t happen.

At one point today stocks were down 165 points, though they finished better, falling only 109 points. Gold fell $7 to $1,184, and the greenback rallied a bit. Bond rates continued to slide lower.

But I have a different view of this story. The Fed has injected $1.4 trillion of new money into the economy, of which about $1 trillion of excess reserves are unused and on deposit at the central bank. So, in other words, the economy has more liquidity than it knows what to do with. What’s the problem? All that excess money is not being used. This, I believe, is a fiscal problem, not a Fed problem.

Ryan Avent at Free Exchange at The Economist:

YESTERDAY evening, the Washington Post‘s Neil Irwin discussed the market’s reaction to expectations about Ben Bernanke’s Congressional testimony (taking place today and tomorrow):

For those of us who follow the Federal Reserve closely, it is sometimes shocking how poorly Wall Street seems to understand the central bank. The rumor Tuesday was that Ben Bernanke would, at his monetary policy testimony Wednesday, announce that the Fed is cutting its interest rate on excess bank reserves, now at a quarter percentage point, to zero.

This speculation, apparently, drove the stock market up in late trading. Yet it’s completely blinkered.

As Mr Irwin goes on to point out, Fed officials never announce policy moves in testimony, are extremely reluctant to shift policy between meetings, and have generally laid out conditions that might lead to a policy move—conditions that haven’t yet been met. And sure enough, Mr Bernanke’s prepared testimony for the Senate Banking Committee did little more than recycle the points he had previously made following the June FOMC meeting, including this bland guidance:

Of course, even as the Federal Reserve continues prudent planning for the ultimate withdrawal of extraordinary monetary policy accommodation, we also recognize that the economic outlook remains unusually uncertain. We will continue to carefully assess ongoing financial and economic developments, and we remain prepared to take further policy actions as needed to foster a return to full utilization of our nation’s productive potential in a context of price stability.

Naturally, markets flipped out, falling over 1% in the hour after the testimony was released. Beyond that, there is little to report. The Fed remains ready to act when things are worse, as things are currently not quite bad enough.

Daniel Indiviglio at The Atlantic:

Headlines are proclaiming that the stock market is down today due to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s sobering Congressional testimony on the sluggish recovery. Even though headlines claiming that the stocks are down for ‘x’ reason are usually oversimplified and always annoying, Bernanke’s words likely had something to do with the market’s downward move this afternoon. Yet, anyone who follows the Fed and watched his testimony might find the market’s reaction surprising. Bernanke didn’t actually say anything that the Fed hadn’t expressed before. Had the market been ignoring Bernanke recently?

FinReg Soon To Be More Than Just A Wonky Blogger’s Twitter Tag

The round-up with Max Fisher at The Atlantic

Adam Sorensen at Swampland at Time:

By a 60-39 vote Thursday, the Senate passed legislation that re-calibrates the flow of capital through the American financial sector and provides new powers to the regulatory regime that oversees it. The final bill is the culmination of a near two-year effort launched after 2008’s Wall Street crisis thrust the nation into recession and marks the most comprehensive changes to government’s oversight of banks since the Great Depression. When Obama signs it into law next week, financial reform will join health care and the stimulus in the ranks of major Democratic initiatives enacted by the 111th Congress and boldface bullet-points on the president’s resume.

Peter Suderman at Reason:

In a victory for the hordes of Washington politicians who have been deeply committed to doing something about Wall Street (regardless of whether that something was likely to be effective), the Senate voted 60 to 38 to move forward with a significant overhaul of the nation’s financial regulations. Three of those votes came from moderate Republicans, including Cosmo-pinup Scott Brown, who, after demanding that Democrats remove a tax on banks (and replace the revenue with TARP revenue that was intended to be used to reduce the deficit), gave the bill his blessing. As predicted, once Brown came around, fellow GOP squishes centrists Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins followed. No longer just a guy with a truck, he’s now a guy with a truck who decides whether or not to massively increase the power of federal regulators over the nation’s banking system.

Annie Lowrey at The Washington Independent:

The final bill, more than 2,300 pages in length, directs regulators to create 533 rules, according to the Chamber of Commerce. The bill contains three central provisions. First, it provides the government with new powers to identify risky banking institutions and to shutter them before they harm the broader financial system, via a new systemic regulator. Henry Paulson, the Treasury Secretary under President Bush when the financial crisis first hit, lauded the provision this week. “We would have loved to have something like this for Lehman Brothers. There’s no doubt about it,” he told The New York Times, referring to the investment bank that collapsed, destabilizing the country’s financial system and contributing to the credit crunch. Democrats say this provision ends “too big to fail,” by providing the government with a way of shutting down failing banks, reassuring counterparties and containing any sense of panic.

Second, the Dodd-Frank bill makes banks less dangerous, forcing them to keep more capital on hand, banning them from making risky trades on their own behalf and keeping them from investing heavily in vehicles like hedge funds. “[The bill] places some limits on the size of banks and the kinds of risks that banking institutions can take,” President Obama told an audience of Wall Street workers this spring, speaking at Cooper Union in Manhattan. “This will not only safeguard our system against crises, this will also make our system stronger and more competitive by instilling confidence here at home and across the globe. Markets depend on that confidence. By enacting these reforms, we’ll help ensure that our financial system — and our economy — continues to be the envy of the world.”

Finally, it creates a new consumer financial protection bureau, which will have the power to create and enforce new rules regarding financial products like home-equity loans and credit cards. “Consumers finally will have a cop on the beat … that will monitor the market and write and enforce the rules,” said Susan Weinstock, the financial reform campaign director for the Consumer Federation of America. “The Wild West for financial products and services is coming to an end. Consumers will now have a bureau that will clear out the tricks and traps in financial products and services that have harmed so many Americans.”

Nicole Gelinas at The Corner:

A couple of hours before the Senate narrowly passed the Dodd-Frank fin-reg bill today, Sen. Chris Dodd, one of the bill’s two namesakes, spoke some common sense on the Senate floor:

We can’t legislate wisdom or passion. We can’t legislate competency.

Dodd did not allow this point of truth to inform the bill that he helped write, though.

The financial system’s failures made themselves obvious starting in 2007 in part because legislators and regulators thought that they could conjure up on command not only wisdom and competence but omniscience.

In the years leading up to the financial crisis, regulators allowed financial firms such as AIG to create derivatives that evaded the old-fashioned limits on borrowing and trading. The people in charge figured that the financial guys had figured out every angle and made these things perfectly safe.

Regulators, too, allowed banks to borrow far more than old-fashioned rules would have allowed on mortgage-related securities and other instruments rated AAA — because competent people had determined that such securities could never fail.

Finally, regulators allowed people to buy houses with no money down — even though we learned in the 1920s that it’s not a good idea to let people borrow limitlessly to speculate that the price of something will continue to rise.

The lesson to be learned here is that we need borrowing and trading rules that apply to everyone and everything for those times when bankers, regulators, and tens of millions of ordinary Americans aren’t right.

The bill offers no evidence that anyone in Congress has learned this lesson.

Simon Johnson:

Just over a hundred years ago, the United States led the world in terms of rethinking how big business worked – and when the power of such firms should be constrained. In retrospect, the breakthrough legislation – not just for the US, but also internationally – was the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.

The Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Bill, which is about to pass the US Senate, does something similar – and long overdue – for banking.

Prior to 1890, big business was widely regarded as more efficient and generally more modern than small business. Most people saw the consolidation of smaller firms into fewer, large firms as a stabilizing development that rewarded success and allowed for further productive investment. The creation of America as a major economic power, after all, was made possible by giant steel mills, integrated railway systems, and the mobilization of enormous energy reserves through such ventures as Standard Oil.

But ever-bigger business also had a profound social impact, and here the ledger entries were not all in the positive column. The people who ran big business were often unscrupulous, and in some cases used their dominant market position to drive out their competitors – enabling the surviving firms subsequently to restrict supply and raise prices.

There was dominance, to be sure, in the local and regional markets of mid-nineteenth-century America, but nothing like what developed in the 50 years that followed. Big business brought major productivity improvements, but it also increased the power of private companies to act in ways that were injurious to the broader marketplace – and to society.

The Sherman Act itself did not change this situation overnight, but, once President Theodore Roosevelt decided to take up the cause, it became a powerful tool that could be used to break up industrial and transportation monopolies. By doing so, Roosevelt and those who followed in his footsteps shifted the consensus.

[…]

Why are these antitrust tools not used against today’s megabanks, which have become so powerful that they can sway legislation and regulation massively in their favor, while also receiving generous taxpayer-financed bailouts as needed?

The answer is that the kind of power that big banks wield today is very different from what was imagined by the Sherman Act’s drafters – or by the people who shaped its application in the early years of the twentieth century. The banks do not have monopoly pricing power in the traditional sense, and their market share – at the national level – is lower than what would trigger an antitrust investigation in the non-financial sectors.

Effective size caps on banks were imposed by the banking reforms of the 1930’s, and there was an effort to maintain such restrictions in the Riegle-Neal Act of 1994. But all of these limitations fell by the wayside during the wholesale deregulation of the past 15 years.

Now, however, a new form of antitrust arrives – in the form of the Kanjorski Amendment, whose language was embedded in the Dodd-Frank bill. Once the bill becomes law, federal regulators will have the right and the responsibility to limit the scope of big banks and, as necessary, break them up when they pose a “grave risk” to financial stability.

This is not a theoretical possibility – such risks manifested themselves quite clearly in late 2008 and into early 2009. It remains uncertain, of course, whether the regulators would actually take such steps. But, as Representative Paul Kanjorski, the main force behind the provision, recently put it, “The key lesson of the last decade is that financial regulators must use their powers, rather than coddle industry interests.”

And Kanjorski probably is right that not much would be required. “If just one regulator uses these extraordinary powers [to break up too-big-to-fail banks] just once,” he says, “it will send a powerful message,” one that would “significantly reform how all financial services firms behave forever more.”

Regulators can do a great deal, but they need political direction from the highest level in order to make genuine progress. Teddy Roosevelt, of course, preferred to “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” The Kanjorski Amendment is a very big stick. Who will pick it up?

Brian Beutler at Talking Points Memo:

They’re not campaigning on it in earnest — at least not yet — but Republican leaders say that, given the power, they would like to do away with Wall Street reform much like they have already discussed repealing health care reform.

“I think it ought to be repealed,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner, in response to a question from TPMDC, at his weekly press conference this morning.

One of his top lieutenants, Republican Conference Chair Mike Pence agrees. “We hope [the Senate vote] falters so we can start over,” Pence told TPMDC yesterday. “I think the reason you’re not hearing talk about efforts to repeal the permanent bailout authority is because the bill hasn’t passed yet.”

Your Daily FinReg Centerfold

Brian Beutler at Talking Points Memo:

With the Wall Street reform legislation agreed to by House and Senate negotiators now in serious doubt in the Senate, what happens if the final bill can’t muster the votes? At his weekly press availability this morning, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer hinted that they may have to make some changes.

“We’re trying to work with the Senate to ensure that we both take up a version that does in fact have 60 votes,” Hoyer said.

But the conference report, passed late last week, can not be amended on the House or Senate floors. It’s an up-or-down, yes-or-no proposition. If they need a new ‘version’ that has 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, they’d have to reconvene the conference committee, strip the language that offends Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and try again.

Kevin Drum:

In the wake of a historic economic collapse caused largely by a financial industry allowed to run rampant, Sen. Russ Feingold (D–Wisc.) has decided to vote in favor of doing nothing at all to address this:

As I have indicated for some time now, my test for the financial regulatory reform bill is whether it will prevent another crisis. The conference committee’s proposal fails that test and for that reason I will not vote to advance it. During debate on the bill, I supported several efforts to break up ‘too big to fail’ Wall Street banks and restore the proven safeguards established after the Great Depression separating Main Street banks from big Wall Street firms, among other issues. Unfortunately, these crucial reforms were rejected. While there are some positive provisions in the final measure, the lack of strong reforms is clear confirmation that Wall Street lobbyists and their allies in Washington continue to wield significant influence on the process.

Can I vent for a minute? I know Feingold is proud of his inconoclastic reputation. I know this bill doesn’t do as much as he (or I) would like. I know the financial industry, as he says, continues to have way too much clout on Capitol Hill.

But seriously: WTF? This is the final report of a conference committee. There’s no more negotiation. It’s an up-or-down vote and there isn’t going to be a second chance at this. You either vote for this bill, which has plenty of good provisions even if doesn’t break up all the big banks, or else you vote for the status quo. That’s it. That’s the choice. It’s not a game. It’s not a time for Feingold to worry about his reputation for independence. It’s a time to make a decision between actively supporting something good and actively supporting something bad. And Feingold has decided to actively support something bad.

Scott Brown, the junior Senator from Mass:

Dear Chairman Dodd and Chairman Frank,

I am writing you to express my strong opposition to the $19 billion bank tax that was included in the financial reform bill during the conference committee. This tax was not in the Senate version of the bill, which I supported. If the final version of this bill contains these higher taxes, I will not support it.

It is especially troubling that this provision was inserted in the conference report in the dead of night without hearings or economic analysis.  While some will try to argue this isn’t a tax, this new provision takes real money away from the economy, making it unavailable for lending on Main Street, and gives it to Washington. That sounds like a tax to me.

I have always strongly opposed a bank tax because, as the non-partisan CBO has said, costs would be passed onto the millions of American consumers and small businesses who rely on major U.S. financial institutions for their checking, ATM, loans or other services.  This tax will be paid by consumers who will have to pay higher fees and the small businesses that won’t get the funding they need to invest and create jobs.

Imposing this new tax is the wrong option. Our economy is still struggling. It is wrong to impose higher taxes and ignore the impact it will have on our economy without considering other ways we might offset the costs of the measure.  I am asking that the conference committee find a way to offset the cost of the bill by cutting unnecessary federal spending. There are hundreds of billions in unspent federal funds sitting around, some authorized years ago for long-dead initiatives. Congress needs to start to looking there first, and I stand ready to help.

Sincerely,

Senator Scott P. Brown

John Carney at CNBC:

Democrats on Tuesday planned to strip out a controversial tax from their landmark financial reform bill in order to win the swing votes needed to pass it through Congress.

With crucial Republican moderates threatening to withdraw their support, Democrats were weighing alternative ways to fund the most sweeping rewrite of the Wall Street rulebook since the 1930s.

Though a supposedly final version of the bill had been hammered out last week, Democrats in charge of the process called a fresh negotiating session, which got under way shortly after 5 p.m. EDT Tuesday.

Democratic lawmakers and aides said they planned to remove a $17.9 billion tax on large financial institutions. Instead, they would cover most of the bill’s costs by shutting down a $700 billion bank-bailout program.

“I haven’t talked to everybody, but I gather from a number of people they like this option,” said Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, one of the lawmakers in charge of the bill.

The bill had been expected to pass both chambers of Congress this week in time for President  Obama to sign it into law by July 4. But supporters have been forced to scramble for votes in the Senate, putting that goal in jeopardy.

Analysts said while that timetable may slip, the bill was still likely to become law.

“We believe that this legislation will pass, timing and the bank tax remain the final question marks,” wrote FBR Capital Markets analyst Edward Mills in a research note.

Jay Newton-Small at Time:

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd stood an hour ago in the Senator’s Retiring Room off of the Senate floor in an intense conversation with Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown – one of surely many they will have today. Dodd is trying to get Brown, one of four Republicans who voted for the Senate version of financial regulatory reform, to pledge his support for final passage. House and Senate negotiators last week worked out a deal to combine the two measures only to find that Brown couldn’t support $18+ billion in new bank fees. To complicate matters, Democrats are now down a vote due to the untimely death of Senator Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat.

Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, and House Financial Service Chairman Barney Frank are planning on taking the unusual step of reopening the conference committee this afternoon. Lucky for them it wasn’t formally closed or reopening it would’ve taken votes from both chambers of Congress. They have been negotiating with the four Republicans – Brown, Maine Senators Olympia Snowe Susan Collins and Iowa’s Chuck Grassley — on new offsets for the $18+ billion. Dodd says that 90% of the $18+ billion would now be paid for by the immediate end of TARP, the unpopular bank bailout fund due to expire October 3. The additional offset would come from raising fees the banks pay to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, exempting all small banks under $10 billion capitalization (Dodd says he’s spoke to Sheila Bair on this and she’s fine with it). Some Republicans still have reservations that such a move, though, wouldn’t prompt the banks to pass the cost on to consumers. “Repealing TARP definitely appeals to me,” says Snowe, who met with Dodd in her office last night and again this morning.  “At this point other issues are not related to the TARP part, we’re still looking at how you replace those fees. So things are still in motion here, there are a lot of conservations developing.”

Brown, emerging from his meeting with Dodd, says he’s waiting to see the final product and hasn’t made any decisions yet. Brown sent Dodd and Frank a letter this morning announcing his opposition to the $18+ billion in fees, prompting today’s dramatics. Collins told reporters she was pleased with her meetings with Dodd but that she also had made no final decision. Grassley was nowhere to be found. “I gather there were a number of people who were uneasy with the earlier pay-for who like this alternative and so the present plan is to probably reconvene the conference this afternoon,” Dodd said, heading into a meeting in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s offices. If all four Republicans sign on, Dems should have enough votes to pass the Senate as they race to finish the legislation by the end of the week.

Annie Lowrey at The Washington Independent:

Rather than charging the hedge funds and big banks considered most responsible for the financial crisis a reasonable fee for implementation, the conference committee will settle for ending a government stability program and spreading the pain around to all federally insured banks — including small community-focused banks — to satisfy the demands of one Republican. So it goes in Washington.

Felix Salmon:

It would be a fiasco of tragic proportions if the banks managed to remove these taxes from the final bill, essentially absolving themselves from cleaning up after their own mess. The arguments against the taxes are weak indeed: either you simply oppose all taxes on principle (which seems to be the Scott Brown stance, and which is fiscally disastrous), or else you’re forced into John Carney’s corner.

Carney is worried that we don’t know exactly where the tax will be applied — but that’s a feature, not a bug. Setting up the tax in great deal ex ante is essentially just asking banks to spend millions of dollars on tax consultants who can help them skirt the new levies. And as the risks in the system evolve and change, so to should the way that they’re taxed. It’s right and proper that the newly created Council for Financial Stability will be charged with taxing systemic risk, rather than having a bunch of politicians try to do so at the beginning and then watch as the banks and other financial institutions nimbly sidestep the new taxes.

An increase in the FDIC premium would be a gift on a platter to banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley which don’t have insured deposits — not to mention non-bank players like Citadel which are systemically very important. I’m unclear on what exactly this Republican “procedural hurdle” is — I thought that after reconciliation, you just needed a simple majority to pass a bill. But I’m getting very annoyed about it.

UPDATE: Russell Berman at The Hill

UPDATE #2: Eric Zimmermann at The Hill

Noam Scheiber at TNR

A Blog Post For Your Interest

The Fed:

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in April suggests that the economic recovery is proceeding and that the labor market is improving gradually. Household spending is increasing but remains constrained by high unemployment, modest income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Business spending on equipment and software has risen significantly; however, investment in nonresidential structures continues to be weak and employers remain reluctant to add to payrolls. Housing starts remain at a depressed level. Financial conditions have become less supportive of economic growth on balance, largely reflecting developments abroad. Bank lending has continued to contract in recent months. Nonetheless, the Committee anticipates a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability, although the pace of economic recovery is likely to be moderate for a time.

Prices of energy and other commodities have declined somewhat in recent months, and underlying inflation has trended lower. With substantial resource slack continuing to restrain cost pressures and longer-term inflation expectations stable, inflation is likely to be subdued for some time.

The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions, including low rates of resource utilization, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations, are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period.

The Committee will continue to monitor the economic outlook and financial developments and will employ its policy tools as necessary to promote economic recovery and price stability.

Calculated Risk:

The comments on the economy were slightly more negative than last meeting. The Fed noted the financial issues in Europe, and also commented that “underlying inflation has trended lower”. Each statements was slightly less positive …

Annie Lowrey at The Washington Independent:

Except that this month, the FOMC says that the economy is improving “gradually,” rather than just improving. Last month, financial conditions remained supportive of growth; this month, less so. This month, the FOMC notes that underlying inflation is declining — for the past two months, there has technically been price deflation. All in all, not a particularly comforting message.

Sudeep Reddy at Wall Street Journal:

Four meetings, four dissents. Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig kept his dissent streak going strong at today’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting. Given the rest of the FOMC’s stance — displaying more caution about the strength of the recovery — this probably won’t be Mr. Hoenig’s last dissent of the year.

Mr. Hoenig was the lone opposing vote in the FOMC’s 9-1 decision to keep the federal funds rate near zero with the guidance that economic conditions “are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period.”

The FOMC’s post-meeting statement repeated Mr. Hoenig’s rationale offered in the April statement: “continuing to express the expectation of exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period was no longer warranted because it could lead to a build-up of future imbalances and increase risks to longer-run macroeconomic and financial stability, while limiting the Committee’s flexibility to begin raising rates modestly.” Anyone looking closely for new language from Mr. Hoenig was met with only one slight alteration from the April statement: an added hyphen between “longer run” that was missing on April 28.

For months, Mr. Hoenig has warned about the potential for near-zero interest rates to create imbalances — that is, bubbles — and spur inflation in the longer run. In a  June 3 speech, he again called monetary policy “a blunt instrument that has a wide set of intended but also unintended consequences that can and have worsened economic outcomes including misallocation of precious resources, inflation and long-term unemployment.” He added, “That is why we want to return to a sustainable long-term equilibrium policy rate, starting soon.”

Daniel Indiviglio at The Atlantic:

By now, many people expected that we would have a more concrete blueprint of when the Fed’s exit strategy will begin. When might it begin raising rates? When will it begin selling the assets it accumulated during the financial crisis? We won’t know the answers to these questions as soon as we thought, because the problems in Europe have made the Fed wary about scaring the market with signs of tightening.

As for rates, the Fed continues to assure banks that they will remain “exceptionally low” for “an extended period.” Kansas City Federal Reserve President Thomas M. Hoenig remains the lone dissenter. He believes that this language should be weakened so the central bank can feel more flexibility to raise rates quickly if inflation suddenly manifests itself.

Of course, at this time, inflation is very low. It appears to be well under control, which makes it unsurprising that the Fed wouldn’t feel the need to provide greater certainty on when it might raise rates by changing its language. As the statement noted, energy prices are actually deflationary.

David Leonhardt at the New York Times:

Mr. Bernanke also believes that the economy is growing “not fast enough,” as he recently put it. He has predicted that unemployment will remain high for years and that “a lot of people are going to be under financial stress.”

Yet he has been unwilling to use his power to lift growth and reduce joblessness from near a 27-year high. Instead, Fed officials are expected to announce on Wednesday that they have left their policy unchanged, even if they acknowledge that the economy has recently weakened.

How can this be? How can Mr. Bernanke simultaneously think that growth is too slow and that it shouldn’t be sped up? There is an answer — whether or not you find it persuasive.

Above all, top Fed officials are worried that financial markets are fragile. They are not so much worried about inflation, the traditional source of Fed angst, as they are about upsetting the markets’ confidence in Washington. Yes, investors remain happy to lend the United States money at rock-bottom interest rates, despite our budget deficit and all of the emergency Fed programs that will eventually need to be unwound. But no one knows how long that confidence will last.

In effect, Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues have decided to accept an all-but-certain downside — high unemployment, for years to come — rather than risk an even worse situation — a market panic, a spike in long-term interest rates and yet higher unemployment. As the last few years have shown, market sentiment can change unexpectedly and sharply.

Still, you have to wonder if the Fed is paying enough attention to the risks of its own approach. They do exist. The recent data on jobless claims, consumer spending and home sales have been weak. On Tuesday, Britain announced a budget-cutting plan that will depress short-term growth there and spill over somewhat into the global economy. The necessary budget cuts in Greece and other parts of Europe won’t help global growth, either.

The main historical lesson of financial crises is that governments are usually too passive. They respond in dribs and drabs, as Japan did in the 1990s and Europe did in 2008. Or they remove support too quickly, as Franklin Roosevelt did in 1937, and then the economy struggles to escape its funk.

Matthew Yglesias:

In today’s Federal Reserve Open Market Committee release America’s monetary policymakers said that an already bad economic outlook now looks worse, as “[f]inancial conditions have become less supportive of economic growth on balance” and that “the pace of economic recovery is likely to be moderate for a time” and “[w]ith substantial resource slack continuing to restrain cost pressures and longer-term inflation expectations stable, inflation is likely to be subdued for some time.” That ought to be a recipe for looser monetary policy, but instead the Fed chose to hold pat. Every time I mention the view that more expansionary monetary, some people chime in with the view that monetary policy can’t be made to work under the current conditions. That may be true, though I don’t personally believe it. But it’s important for people to understand that whatever you think about this question Ben Bernanke himself has never adhered to this view.

David Leonhardt has an excellent column today teeing off that point and making the case for looser policy. I might add that this is hardly the first excellent Leonhardt column of the recession years, and it strikes me as a shame for the NYT to be semi-hiding one of their best columnists in the business section. In a time of economic crisis at least, insightful economic policy writing is a huge part of general interest political commentary.

Pee In A Cup And The Government Pays You (Well, Not Really)

Mara Gay at Politics Daily:

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has proposed an amendment to the jobs bill today that would require Americans seeking unemployment benefits and welfare to pass a drug test.

He said the current social safety net only feeds their addiction to both illegal substances and help from the federal government.

“Too many Americans are locked into a life of a dangerous dependency not only on drugs, but the federal assistance that serves to enable their addiction,” the senator said in a statement. “Drugs are a scourge on our society — hurting children, families and communities alike.”

The amendment comes as an attempt to pass the $140 billion jobs bill failed in the Senate. The bill would extend unemployment benefits for millions of Americans, but its price tag has elicited objections from both Republicans and Democrats.

Hatch said his amendment would help save taxpayer money and reduce the national deficit.

“This amendment is a way to help people get off of drugs to become productive and healthy members of society, while ensuring that valuable taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted,” the senator said today.

Joan McCarter at Daily Kos:

Being unemployed just isn’t denigrating enough for Orrin Hatch. You have to be punished it for, put under suspicion. That’s the Republican way. What’s next? Poor houses?

Ezra Klein:

A while back, Matt Yglesias wrote an insightful piece arguing that “ideas about freedom and small government are totally irrelevant to the actual political agenda [of the Republican Party].” I was reminded of it by the news that small-government advocate Orrin Hatch wants the state to perform mandatory drug tests on every one of the 15 million people receiving unemployment insurance or welfare benefits.

Meredith Jessup at Townhall:

I can hear the ACLU’s screams of injustice now.  Truth be told, this seems like such a basic, commonsense notion.  It’s definitely not a new idea, but props to Sen. Hatch for reintroducing it, especially at a time when the country can’t afford to waste a dime.

Annie Lowrey at Washington Independent:

Currently, about 4.4 million families receive assistance through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. On top of that, 9.8 million people are receiving unemployment insurance in some form. Millions more get other kinds of aid. Granted, the federal government does plenty of drug testing already, but does it really want to process 15 million new urine samples? Plus pay for all the court cases the law would create? The Drug Policy Alliance notes that “a 2003 ruling by a federal appeals court that covers the states of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee ruled that states cannot drug test welfare recipients because it’s unconstitutional.”s.

Matt Welch at Reason:

This is, alas, nothing new. In addition to social-welfare recipients, lawmakers have identified several other sub-classes of people ripe for being forced by the state to urinate on command, including (but not limited to) student athletes, kids who dare take part in other extra-curricular activities, and even kids who do nothing all day but draw “I Heart Conor” in their Pee-Chees. (They still have those, right?)

Always missing from these flippant tramplings of our privacy rights are two classes of people: Lawmakers themselves, and recipients of corporate welfare. Wouldn’t you feel just a little safer if Patrick Kennedy got his fluids checked on regular basis? Ya think some of those juicy subsidies for film productions ever land in the hands of people who use drugs?

The moral of the story here is not new, but bears repeating: If you are at all dependent on the state, whether by choice or force, and you don’t have the good manners to be powerful, you will always stand the risk of being treated like a patient at a criminal asylum. It is as good a reason as any other to resist further encroachment of the government on our private lives.

Wonkette:

Famed Utah hazzan Senator Orrin Hatch proposed an amendment to the $140 billion jobs benefits extension bill today that would make make people seeking welfare benefits first pass a drug test. Welfare will now be a level playing field, as poor people will not be able to get away with taking steroids to make themselves super-poor. And also poor drug addicts will maybe starve and thus no longer be a problem, so that’s good.

We’ve Been Hit By A Smooth, And Oily, Criminal

Image from Gawker

Giles Whittell, Robert Lea and Ian King at The Times:

BP’s future as a global concern was at stake tonight after the US Attorney General, announced that he was launching a criminal and a civil investigation into the Louisiana oil spill.

As Eric Holder made his announcement, the British company’s chief executive fought to halt a headlong slide in its stock price.

After losing a third of its value in just six weeks, BP is expected to promise shareholders their full annual dividend in a last-ditch bid to retain their loyalty. More than £12 billion was wiped off the company’s value today alone, as Mr Obama dispatched his top prosecutor to Louisiana and vowed to bring to justice those responsible for what he called “the greatest environmental disaster of its kind in our history”.

Shares in what used to be Britain’s biggest company endured their worst day’s trading in more than two decades, dragging down the FTSE 100 index and with it the value of dozens of leading pension funds.

In Washington, Mr Obama stepped up his efforts to assert control over the disaster response with his second televised address in less than a week. “If our laws have been broken leading to this death and destruction, my solemn pledge is that we will bring those responsible to justice on behalf of the victims of the catastrophe and the people of the Gulf region,” he said.

Mr Holder announced that he was launching a criminal and a civil investigation into the oil spill. Earlier, he met Louisiana law enforcement officials in New Orleans after ordering BP to preserve records that could shed light on what led to the disaster. He has also instructed US Department of Justice staff to look for evidence of “malfeasance” in the days and hours before the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up.

Gus Lubin at Business Insider:

Attorney General Eric Holder has launched a criminal and civil investigation into Deepwater Horizon. Although expected, this confirms the worst fears of BP CEO Tony Hayward and associated executives.

“If I were an exec at BP, I wouldn’t be sleeping for the next several years,” said Tony Buzbee, a trial lawyer who has faced BP in several cases.

Buzbee expects a federal criminal investigation to occur in secrecy over several years. The most likely charge is violation of the Clean Air and Water act, which could lead to one year in jail for persons deemed responsible.

Manslaughter charges are unlikely, as these fall outside the ambit of a federal prosecutor, according to Buzbee.

Matthew McDermott at Treehugger:

I can here the collective cry of ‘Right on!’ and ‘About effing time!’ rising up from the TreeHugger readership… CNN is reporting that US Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that the Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into the Gulf Gusher. We’ll have more as it emerges, but this is what we know so far:

Holder said the investigation would be comprehensive and aggressive. He promised that the federal officials will prosecute anyone who broke the law. Holder, who made the announcement during a visit to the Gulf, called early signs of the spill heartbreaking and tragic. The attorney general was in the Gulf to survey the BP oil spill and meet with state attorneys general and federal prosecutors from Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, according to the Justice Department.

This all comes after a group of Senators sent Holder a letter last week urging an investigation of potential criminal and/or civil wrongdoing by BP; and statements by Holder last month that the Justice Department would “ensure that BP is held liable.”

Again, more as it emerges. It’s likely to take some time. Though hopefully not as long as it’s taking BP to stop this madness…

Andrew Leonard at Salon:

Some context for understanding possible points of interest for DoJ investigators comes from a preliminary report released last week by Robert Bea, the Director of UC Berkeley’s Catastrophic Risk Management Center: “Failures of the Deepwater Horizon Semi-Submersible Drilling Unit.” Bea’s report, which he describes as “preliminary insights … based upon more than 500 hours of analyses of currently available data provided by approximately 60 informants,” places joint responsibility for the disaster on both BP and the regulatory authority, MMS.

Here’s the most relevant excerpt:

• Based on the information available to me thus far, I believe the Deepwater Horizon failure developed due to:
• improper well design (configuration of well tubulars),
• improper cement design and placement (segmented discontinuous cement sheath, minimal volume placed adjacent to lost circulation zone),
• flawed Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QA / QC) — no cement bond logs, ineffective oversight of operations,
• bad decision making — removing the pressure barrier — displacing the drilling mud with sea water 8,000 feet below the drill deck,
• loss of situational awareness — early warning signs not properly detected, analyzed or corrected (repeated major gas kicks, lost drilling tools, including evidence of damaged parts of the Blow Out Preventer [BOP] during drilling and/or cementing, lost circulation, changes in mud volume and drill string weight),
• improper operating procedures — premature off-loading of the drilling mud (weight material not available at critical time),
• flawed design and maintenance of the final line of defense — including the shear rams of the Blow Out Preventer (BOP) and the associated electrical and hydraulic equipment.

I’m not sure at what point any of the multiple instances of BP incompetence cross the line into criminal malfeasance, but we will certainly be learning more about that in the weeks and  months to come. In the meantime, BP CEO Tony Hayward says: “I want my life back.” I don’t think he’s going to get it.

Annie Lowrey at The Washington Independent:

And Congress is starting to take a hard look at regulatory legislation surrounding the oil industry as well. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he heads, will hold a hearing next week “to examine how recent court decisions and federal liability caps influence corporate behavior, affect American taxpayers, and provide justice to victims.”

New laws are coming. One option would be to address the negative externality of cleanup costs: taxing all oil companies and processors in the United States, and forcing them to use the funds to explore new technologies to be used in the event of a disaster. For even if BP had managed to prevent the Deepwater Horizon incident, another catastrophic oil spill would have happened somewhere else, sometime soon. The technologies used to contain and clean up oil remain rudimentary and highly ineffective, particularly those used at sea — top kill, bags of hair, faulty seals. (Of all the well shut-down methods I have seen, it is distressing that the Russians’ controlled nuclear explosion has seemed most promising.) The next conflagration will take light at some point. It would be useful to force the companies at fault to invent the fire hydrant before then.

How to structure the tax? I leave it to the public policy experts to figure that out. But I would imagine either requiring oil companies’ U.S. subsidiaries to spend one or two percent of profits on cleanup and prevention research, then allowing them to license or sell their products to one another; or taxing the oil companies’ U.S. subsidiaries, putting the funds into a pool and having the government disburse the money to vetted research organizations.

Now I’m Free… Free Falling…

Christopher Wood at Wall Street Journal:

World financial markets reacted bearishly to Germany’s surprise announcement last week banning “naked” short-selling of euro-zone government debt, derivatives and some financial stocks. Short selling is considered naked when it involves the sale of an asset that isn’t owned by the seller and isn’t borrowed to cover the position while it’s held. The news disturbed investors because of the unilateral nature of Germany’s action. It’s also seen as a potential prelude to other antimarket actions from Germany, or for that matter the U.S. and other Western nations, where the political backlash against free markets continues.

Also causing anxiety is the ominous rise in recent weeks in the three-month London interbank offered rate (Libor), the rate the most creditworthy banks charge each other for loans. This could result in yet another European credit crisis with banks becoming increasingly unwilling to lend to each other because of the interconnected holdings of “junk” European government debt. Bank for International Settlements (BIS) data shows that European bank exposure to sovereign debt in Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain totalled $2.8 trillion at the end of last year, accounting for 89% of international banks’ total exposure to those countries.

Moving beyond Europe, a further negative for investors to contend with has been China’s current tightening cycle; most particularly a machine-gun burst of antispeculation measures in the past two months aimed at its booming residential property market. China’s leadership, worried by growing social concerns about unaffordable apartment prices, will want to see official confirmation that both residential property transactions and residential property prices are falling, as indeed is now the case. Transaction volumes are down more than 50% from the levels reached in the first half of April. Prices will soon follow.

[…]

Meanwhile, in America bank lending continues to decline as does the velocity of money in circulation. If this persists, markets will face worryingly low GDP growth in the U.S. going into 2011. It’s this prospect that’s begun to be discounted in the recent stock-market correction, which has already seen the S&P 500 give up all its gains for the year. This will sooner or later pave the way for another round of fiscal easing in Washington when both the Obama administration and Congress give up on their current hopes of a normal U.S. recovery.

That political mood swing will again raise the protectionist risk in Washington, with the lightning rod being the Chinese exchange rate. Beijing has been signaling that it will resume incremental appreciation of the renminbi by the middle of this year. But with the renminbi having appreciated by 24% against the euro since late November, China’s leaders may be having second thoughts. A trade row between China and the U.S. on top of the growing concerns about a “double dip” in the West is the last thing markets will want to contend with. But they may have to.

Gwen Robinson at Financial Times:

A big swing up – and back down – for Chinese stocks at the start of the week spoke more eloquently than any analyst could about the market’s extreme sensitivity to any hint of price-curbing measures in China’s overheating property market.

And it’s also shed some light on the role of the country’s restricted A-shares.

After suffering big sell-offs ahead of the recent slide in western markets last week, Chinese stocks surged 3.5 per cent on Monday, their biggest gain since November, largely on reports that the government may defer a planned property tax for several years.

But on Tuesday, the Shanghai market closed down 1.9 per cent on a fresh media report that the government was preparing to step up measures to curb property prices.

As Bloomberg reports, the Economic Observer, a local newspaper, said Shanghai would start a property tax trial next month. In fact, the paper had run a report last month about the trial tax, also in its online English-language edition.

Tuesday’s reconfirmation nevertheless prompted some bearish predictions from analysts of a double-dip for the economy, barely a week after another round of property-induced fears hit stocks.

Calculated Risk:

S&P/Case-Shiller released the monthly Home Price Indices for March (actually a 3 month average), and the Q1 2010 National Index.

The monthly data includes prices for 20 individual cities, and two composite indices (10 cities and 20 cities).

From S&P: The First Quarter of 2010 Indicates Some Weakening in Home Prices

Data through March 2009, released today by Standard & Poor’s for its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices … show that the U.S. National Home Price Index fell 3.2% in the first quarter of 2010, but remains above its year-earlier level. In March, 13 of the 20 MSAs covered by S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices and both monthly composites were down although the two composites and 10 MSAs showed year-over-year gains.

Housing prices rebounded from crisis lows, but recently have seen renewed weakness as tax incentives are ending and foreclosures are climbing.

Naked Capitalism:

Oh, if you don’t love the smell of naplam in the morning, you will not be happy with the market actions.

Per my delayed Bloomberg, Euro flirting with recent lows, at 1.2281. Gold off at $1187 an ounce. (which fits if you believe in deflation, even though gold does well in deflation, the inflationistas may have pushed it too far too fast and be exiting the trade). The Nikkei had a bad day and is off 3.1%. Stoxx 50 is off 3.03%, the FTSE is down 2.54%,

In case you also missed it, the US and China have temporarily buried the hatchet, escalating North Korean tension leading the US to act a tad more submissive and the Euro slide making this not exactly the best time to escalate a fight.

Meanwhile, Geithner is trying to talk up the market: “Geithner Says Europeans ‘Acting Forcefully’ to Mend Finances.” But absent internal rebalancing, fiscal austerity puts Europe on a deflationary path, and its only refuge is to really tank the euro to provide some lift via higher exports. And that will come at the expense of its trading partners, and is eventually likely to produce protectionist measures.

Felix Salmon:

Alphaville has most of the datapoints you need this morning. There’s the European bourses, which started off low and basically haven’t moved all day; the FTSE 100 is now pretty definitively below 5,000 for the first time since September. There’s the flight-to-Germany trade: 10-year Bunds are now below 2.86%. There’s Libor, which is looking ugly and getting worse. There’s the euro, of course, which is now at 1.22. And, in case you want policymaker panic rather than market panic, there’s the proposed German short-selling ban.

All of which makes the downward lurch in US stock prices seem pretty reasonable, in context. Stocks are naturally volatile things, and when you decisively break a barrier like Dow 10,000, there’s no predicting what will happen next. But you might want to have another look at the spreadsheet that Frank Tantillo and I put together comparing the Dow at the bottom of the flash crash to the Dow now: not only is the average at pretty much exactly the same place, but nearly all of the component stocks are within a point or two of their flash-crash lows. (IBM, 3M, and P&G are the outperformers; Caterpillar and Microsoft are the underperformers.)

The S&P 500 is down 2.8% today: another day like this, and it’ll break back down into triple digits. Just remember, though, that it was not all that long ago the S&P was trading below 700. As ever, if you’re invested in stocks, make sure you have a strong stomach. And expect a lot more volatility going forwards.

Ryan Avent at Free Exchange at The Economist:

To what does all of this amount? Clearly, the outlook for the global economy has worsened in the last month, but by how much? Markets provide some evidence. In America, stocks are still up a good 50% from the lows hit early in 2009. Commodity prices, too, are well above the levels they plumbed during the darkest days of the recession. If the outlook isn’t as good as it was in April, it is still considerably better than it was last spring. But this grows less encouraging as markets continue to fall.

One interesting question is the extent to which the current downturn is rooted in structural factors rather than demand shortfalls. It’s easy to identify both. There are persistent trade imbalances which need to be resolved, labour market transitions which need to take place, and balance sheet holes—across sovereigns, firms, and households—that need to be filled. At the same time, developed economies continue to operate well below potential, and the deflationary signs in Europe and America point to too-timid central bank policy.

In the early stages of the recession, the addressing of structural factors was put on hold. Countries ran large cyclical deficits to offset the impact of falling demand, China paused its appreciation of the renminbi against the dollar, and so on. As European debt fears have grown, however, the ability of some countries to delay structural adjustments has vanished. Similarly, some economists have argued that it is now time for China to unleash its domestic demand, in order to provide a much-needed boost to the world economy.

So is the right approach now to embrace structural reforms and hope for the best? Obviously, when the capacity to delay adjustments has been met, there is little choice but to adjust. At the same time, these will be wrenching shifts, in some cases, and it would be preferable to make them over a period of decades rather than years. America would do well to solve its fiscal troubles through tweaks over the course of the next decade, as opposed to rapid, Greek-style crash austerity. But it’s just as important to ensure that these shifts take place in an environment of sufficient demand. Structural reform in a deflationary world will often mean battles over a shrinking pie, and those can quickly become bitter. This must be avoided.

It is going to become steadily more difficult for countries to put off needed structural adjustments to their economies. It is critical that central banks facilitate and accommodate these shifts. They’re going to trigger an increased demand for cash and security. If the Fed and the ECB continue on their disinflationary path, then the global economy may be in real trouble. A world in which demand collapses just as structural shifts can no longer be avoided is one we’d all prefer to avoid.

Dodd:

If you were hoping the economy was due for a turnaround soon, prepare to batten down the hatches instead. The money supply is shrinking at a rate not seen since the Great Depression — and the White House seems intent on repeating history:

The M3 figures – which include broad range of bank accounts and are tracked by British and European monetarists for warning signals about the direction of the US economy a year or so in advance – began shrinking last summer. The pace has since quickened….

It’s frightening,” said Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research. “The plunge in M3 has no precedent since the Great Depression. The dominant reason for this is that regulators across the world are pressing banks to raise capital asset ratios and to shrink their risk assets. This is why the US is not recovering properly,” he said.

The US authorities have an entirely different explanation for the failure of stimulus measures to gain full traction. They are opting instead for yet further doses of Keynesian spending, despite warnings from the IMF that the gross public debt of the US will reach 97pc of GDP next year and 110pc by 2015.

Having spent almost $1 trillion to no effect, Larry Summers has apparently convinced President Obama that another $200 billion will “keep growth on track.”

UPDATE: Ben Herzon

Paul Krugman

Annie Lowrey at Washington Independent