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By Martin Hutchinson
Contributing Editor
Money Morning
It's been in the news the last couple of days. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) bankers are headed for record bonuses. The Financial Times reports that bankers' pay in the London market is already right back to 2007 levels and going higher. Banks are poaching each others' best staff, and are offering huge pay packages to staffers willing to make the leap.
It's enough to make you succumb to the Two Minutes' Hate.
But let's face the truth. As egregious as salary escalation seems - coming as it does on the tail of the worst U.S. banking crisis since the Great Depression - the reality is that this is the U.S. government's fault. After all, it was the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Obama administration that created all the bailouts and the special-loan-subsidy schemes for banks that would otherwise have been on their last legs.
In a truly free market, ex-Citibankers (NYSE: C) would be on every street corner of Manhattan - selling apples - and that would properly hold down the pay of those bankers still lucky enough to have a job.
The sudden rebound in demand for bankers is a symptom of overall market conditions right now. The U.S. stock market is way up from its lows, there are three Chinese initial public offerings (IPOs) due to come to market this week (one of them for a company with no earnings), the volume of home mortgage refinancing has been running at record levels, the FHA index of home prices has dropped only 0.3% this year and the volume of new corporate debt issuance is also high. Commodity prices are well off their lows, and oil prices are again close to $70 a barrel, which would have been considered an excessively high level only three years ago. That's not a picture of a financial market - or a global economy - in deep recession.
Far from it.
To some extent, this is good news. A revival of the financial system and its ability to finance businesses and home purchases is exactly what the huge monetary and fiscal stimulus was meant to produce. A modest revival in world trade, as inventories cease being wound down and Chinese production ramps up again, is also a necessary precondition for economic recovery.
As the banking bonus news suggests, however, much of the activity is coming in some pretty funny places, where the excesses of the past decade were concentrated and where you wouldn't expect to see such a quick revival.
That gives us a clear indication of just what the problem is. Because bankruptcies weren't allowed to happen back in September and October - as they would have in a free market - there are more institutions in the market than there should be, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch most notable among them.
Moreover, in a true free market, the entire credit-default-swap (CDS) business - a product that caused $180 billion of losses to the financial system through American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG) - would be nothing but a smoking ruin. But in the market we are living in, those $180 billion worth of losses have been transferred to the tab of the taxpayers of America.
With Citigroup and Merrill Lynch bankers mooching around on street corners, financial sector salaries would be forced down to a more reasonable level. As it is, the few unemployed unfortunates who worked at Lehman Brothers are not enough to depress the market. Likewise, credit default swaps have caused huge pain to the unfortunate employees of Abitibi-Bowater Inc. (NYSE: ABH), General Growth Properties (OTC: GGWPQ), and Six Flags Inc. (OTC: SIXFQ), each of which went bust partly because their creditors were playing in the CDS market and had no incentive to find an alternative to bankruptcy. Had CDS caused the pain they should have to financiers, the product would no longer exist, to the considerable benefit of the rest of us.
Inevitably, we are going to have to pay the price for all the bailouts. The financial sector will eventually shrink to its proper size, as will its members' earnings. CDS will eventually be sharply restricted, to prevent their holders from forcing random companies into Chapter 11. Interest rates will have to rise, to accommodate the huge debt-funding needs the government has incurred. Money will have to be kept tight, to pay for the indulgences that Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke granted during the bubble, as well as for the even greater-indulgences of the bust.
Which is probably why you don't want to hold U.S. stocks right now. [Click here to check out a related Money Morning story on the salary increases some banks are offering in order to retain key employees.]
[Editor's Note: Longtime global investing expert Martin Hutchinson has made a specialty of evaluating banking profit plays, and in recent reports has warned investors away from "Zombie Banks" and devised his own "stress test" to highlight the best profit plays in the troubled U.S. financial-services sector. Hutchinson brings that same creative analysis to his The Permanent Wealth Investor trading service, which uses a combination of high-yielding dividend stocks, profit plays on gold and specially designated "Alpha Dog" stocks to create high-income portfolios for his subscribers. Hutchinson's strategy is tailor-made for uncertain periods such as this one, in which too many investors just sit on the sidelines and watch opportunity pass them by. Just click here to find out about this strategy - or Hutchinson's new service, The Permanent Wealth Investor.]
News and Related Story Links:
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- Wikipedia:
Initial Public Offerings.
- Money Morning News:
Citi Raising Salaries to Offset Lower Bonuses.
- Wikipedia:
Two Minutes Hate.
- Money Morning News Analysis:
Rising Treasury Yields Could Trip Up the U.S. Recovery
- Money Morning Market Analysis:
When and How the U.S. Economy Will Recover
Government intervention is creating a whole set of problems and injustices but blaming Obama is just idiotic. I enjoy reading your columns but this is just the latest of a long line of taxpayer funded bailout/thefts going back decades. As a previous poster mentioned, Paulson got this rolling under Bush but before him there was Long Term Capital Management, the Savings and Loan scams, Enron, Chrysler, etc…
It's a cultural flaw in the US, look at Donald Trump, he's one of the most celebrated capitalists in the country and he's gone financially bankrupt 3 times and morally bankrupt countless more
I have to agree with Barry and the Amish Rake Fighter. When you stick both feet in your mouth by trying to lay this off on Obama I have to question your credability on everything else that comes out of your mouth. Reagan is in heaven wringing his hands, Bush is back at the Ballpark where he belongs and Phil Graham (who sold us all out) is rich beyond his wildest dreams.
This banking crisis was long in coming. You at Agora claim to have some level of prescience in seeing what those [fools in office] don't see, and I believe you were probably sounding the alarm long before the walls crumbled. Easy credit and lack of regulation of both the financial industry and the mortgage industry lead to enormous abuses, and potential financial collapse…long before November. Furthermore, the debt accumulated by the US during cushy economic times left very little margin for dealing with a major financial crisis. The decade before Obama ever set foot on the stage was an era of rampant greed, corruption in government contracting practices, an unnecessary war, a heyday for the "creators" of financial instruments understood by virtually no one, and protectionism for the rich and powerful. It's easy to blame; less easy to fix the enormous problems we and the world face.
Martin- while I agree with you that none of us like the bailouts, to suggest that Obama's administration initiated them is absolute nonsense and an attempt to rewrite history. TARP was forced down the legislature's throat last Fall by Paulson and Bernanke, both Republicans I might add. Congress was told that the World's financial system would fail completely until and unless they gave $700 Bn to bail out the banking system. Bush signed this bill.
The genesis for the financial calamity was deregulation, derivatives, leverage and lax lending standards. Even Greenspan admitted that his view of the free market system was wrong. Left to their own devices, human greed will distort market efficiencies and fill their own pockets without any regard to risks.
You are absolutely correct that current policies are inflationary, but what was the alternative last year? Uncontrolled deflation like was seen in the 30's? That's what Hoover thought was appropriate. Unemployment climbed from single-digit in 1929 to more than 25% in 1933 under his strict policy. Do you really think we'd be better off with a replay? I don't.
If more people would speak with their pockets in protest of issues they do not like, abuses like this would end. I personally do not have any account with Citi since I closed an account with Washington Mutual in a protest to TARP the minute Citi took them over. If I did have an account with them now, I would be closing that account too. I already boycott the major gas suppliers who were posting record profits while gas was $4+ a gallon last summer (and were typically $.10 higher than the lower competitors), Walmart (once it quit being "made in the USA" as they claimed when they first opened), and have paid off all my cards each month so as not to pay any of these fat cats a dime. I hope if they do get those HUGE raises that they are taxed so outrageously that this type of GREED is discouraged. Unbelievable!
Inside all of this is a key component: Inflation. Or, to be more precise, the never-ending expansion of the money supply. This is what fueled the bubble, this is what fuels the 'bailouts', this is what robs decent people of the value of their money.
If the Fed was to stop inflation (which it won't, it derives too much power from it), the whole bubble economy would unwind. Overpaid CEO's would be history, as they would not be able to lead their financial companies to windfall-style profits in a sane financial market.
Martin (may I call you by your first name?), it's always refreshing to read your commentaries. Few see things as clearly as you. If everyone had the foresight and "pattern recognition" abilities you have, we wouldn't be in this dreadful mess.
Anyone who believes anything has changed in this economy over the past eight months other than the injection of printed money into the system (no new factories, no new innovation, and no new bubble on the horizon) simply doesn't understand that the crisis has only just begun.
The curtain has just closed on Act I. Act II and Act III will be doozies.
So it's the fault of the Fed and the Obama administration huh?
Well, what about the Bush administration? This bailout process began with Paulson and Bush. And what about the Boards and compensation committees? There's plenty of blame to go around.
Hey, is it any real mystery that the financial sector is crooked? It always has been and it always will be. Just about any mortgage broker that I have ever had any dealing with has opted to try to get me to go along with the cooked story they give to lenders. The lies permeate right through the entire industry so why should the boys at the top not be the same? No reason at all. People are only too happy to pull one over on the lender when times are good, except it is ok then. It doesn't matter what regulation you put into place the crooked will always find a way around it.
Where the bailouts screw things up is that it prevents banks "who did it right" and people who did it right to capitalize on the morons mistakes or lies. That is where I have the problem. It removes fair competition and in essence hurts the guys who did it right and the guys who did it wrong. Let the banks and institutions who did it right, poach the good staff from the corrupt companies who did it wrong. The problem is they are all tied into each other in some way at the higher levels and what is secret or confidential is really not confidential. So try and stop these guys from making their money. Good luck. By putting laws on these institutions the only thing that is effected is main street. Not wall street. They will sadly never change. It has always been a dammed if you do and dammed if you don't area of society.
And AIG has $130million to give its team Manchester United to contract a Brazilian soccer player. For those of you who don't understand ManU and AIG have a contract whereby AIG is advertised on the ManU jersey.
Does that mean that we share in the ManU and AIG winnings?
Government is the cause of almost all of our problems and it goes back long before Bush and Obama. What family, deep in debt and financially out of control, take the position that the only solution is to increase spending and go even deeper and deeper in debt? Only fools would take such action. And that is a perfect description of our government. Fools. Mainly those who make up our Congress. They have been doing this for decades, creating a national debt beyond repayment and causing inflation and devaluation of earnings and savings. If our government balance sheet and profit and loss statement had been in order the current mess would have been a small 'blip' in our daily lives.
There has been, for maybe 90 years now, a growing infestation on earth of 'Canniblals', who arose in the grammar schools and on the streets of the time. They multiplied their kind through bullying. They, today as then, hunt every conceivable human default in our systems, processes, things, circumstances, places, and personalities. They have by now multiplied to the hundreds of millions . They are like demonic cockroaches, feeding off of the scraps of human nature lying around in the human pantry. It is in the end ourselves, and the human natures that we are ignorant of, that these monsters have been able to exploit. All the problems of this planet are traceable to these people, who know us as we do not know ourselves. They get into EVERYTHING, infecting our systems with all the diseases they carry on their roach-feet, screwing up everything. They always pretend to make things better, while instead, they make everything worse in order to maximize WASTAGE! Truly, I think this is the top line of all that you are discussing here about ANYTHING!
We will ultimately have to STARVE the problem out, by exposing our human nature to OUR studious attentions, thus depriving the cannibals of their peculiar advantage. And we then have to expose all the illusions that keep these predatory processes alive, as well. Start here! Start NOW!
AT LAST, somebody HONEST enough and who doesn;t have their nose up barry the Socialist's rear, to tell the TRUTH!!! barry and his LIB DEM cronies are TOTALLY responsible for the MESS we are in!!
Keep telling it like IT IS!!!
Thank God there are some readers that see the utter nonsense in Hutchinson's piece today. The recreation of history about where the blame rests in all of this, is the latest attempt by the Right, to inundate us with crap. Take this statement for example "After all, it was the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Obama administration that created all the bailouts and the special-loan-subsidy schemes for banks that would otherwise have been on their last legs." What credibility can Hutchinson now have for such a blatant misrepresentation of the truth. I recommend a reading of the latest articles on a Wall Street firm as a better answer as to where many of our problems originated.
The Federal Reserve is a private banking cartel that controls the US government, and they are responsible for destroying the American economy. They have betrayed the Constitution of the United States, and the shareholders of this criminal Fed need to be arrested, and their whole operation shut down! They are traitors to America and Western civilization!