The Crisis Yet to Come

The Atlanta Fed's blog from October 27, 2010 has a chilling piece on the source of the downturn in revenue at the state level (and by implication the local level, too). Quite simply, they note and then back with data that (duh! - with hindsight) real estate assessments lag the market. Hence the downturn has to have other sources, specifically declines in individual income tax receipts and sales tax receipts. Real estate tax receipts have actually continued to rise, as higher assessments from the era of peak prices continue to track up.

That's chilling, because it implies that state and local governments will continue to see revenues fall as assessments are updated to track the market down. Now the level of dependence on real estate related revenue varies widely. But on average it suggests that even if incomes begin to recover, government revenues will continue to fall.

Indeed, a recent paper by Cogan and Taylor quantifies the magnitude of the downturn: budget cuts by state and local governments fully offset the much-maligned Obama stimulus package. They had earlier taken a stand on the "multiplier" (the extent to which an expenditure increase or tax cut would stimulate activity). [Look for a discussion of multiplier estimates by Brad de Long.] But when they went to check what ex post performance might show, they found a problem that rendered that discussion moot: ex post, there was no multiplicand to be multiplied. Of course that's not reassuring going forward, because in 2011 there won't be a stimulus package to offset what state and local government are doing. When teachers are fired next summer, and as road maintenance crews are axed and parks closed, there won't be anyone stepping in to hire them or pay for them to be rehired. Now Cogan and Taylor think the multiplier is small; I'm not convinced by their arguments. But small multiplier or large, the job losses will be real.

John F. Cogan and John B. Taylor, "What the Government Purchases Multiplier Actually Multiplied in the 2009 Stimulus Package." National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 16505, October 2010. http://www.nber.org/papers/w16505

If we thought banks were too big to fail, what of the government of the 10th largest economy in the world, California? They are starting their 2011 budget cycle with a $25 billion deficit and a long period of underfunding state and local pension funds. I doubt there's enough available for cutting on the expenditure side, and while I've never lived there, my sense is that there is no ability to enhance revenue, given the demonstrated ability of vocal citizens' movements to impede government via referenda. Pundits may be comparing us to Greece to argue that we need to cut the Federal deficit, but they really don't understand the dynamics of bond markets. But they can and should look at California, and ask whether we will feel compelled to bail them out as the EU did with Greece.

Mike Smitka

Addenda

Readers might see a contrarian position at Slate Moneybox, Default Position: Why we needn't worry too much about municipal bankruptcy by Annie Lowry. She argues first that the incentives are strong to avoid bankruptcy, while a crisis increases policy options. Second, though only implicit in her argument, bond holders can be forced to renogotiate without bankruptcy. While she does not mention it, many bonds are very close to private placements, and that facilitates renegotiating debt. (I handled sovereign debt renegotiations during a banking career decades back.) Third, and again less explicit, the biggest obligations are not formal bonds but retirement systems. It may be possible to renege on those -- tell retirees "no more pension." That may not need Chapter 9. In sum, all of those lessen the role of formal bankruptcy.

Elsewhere I calculated the numbers for California. Their accounting is arcane, but at the state level the budget is around $100 billion with a projected $25 billion deficit. That means tax receipts of $75 billion, so that closing the gap via revenue enhancement would in the extreme require a 33% increase in taxes (and more in tax rates, given exemptions). But in the background California's GDP is approximately $1 trillion, so the gap is on the order of 2.5% of personal and corporate incomes. Of course the state has perhaps $500 billion in unfunded pension obligations. Now in most places where I've lived government salaries are below market so these pensions are in effect part of the total package. I don't believe it ethical to adjust those retroactively. But in any case the magnitude of the problem is well within the taxing ability of the state, without leading to exorbitant rates. The problem is one of politics, not economics.

The Election and the Stock Market

It is hard to understand why Republican gains in Congress are leading to a jump on Wall Street: if we listen to their rhetoric, they are promising us fiscal stringency, hard-nosed policies towards those indebted and thereby not recovery (given the role both play in our economy) but further economic pain.

But maybe I listen (well, read) too much. Ronald Reagan ran as a fiscal conservative, deriding the deficits of Jimmy Carter; Bush II couldn’t complain about deficits because he inherited a surplus, but nevertheless paraded as a conservative. Those running for Congress did the same. Yet at least in terms of economic policy they were radical Keynesians, increasing the size of government. To take the more recent case, under Bush II every single department of the Federal government expanded, while he expanded welfare via the huge prescription drug supplement to Medicare). Yet both cut taxes rather than finding a means to pay for their profligacy.

Will things be better this time around? Or will we have a stalemate in Washington? – for better or (right now) for worse, Obama seems to be a real fiscal conservative (woe is us). So the impetus of Congress (or at least Republican congresses) to spend and spend [and not offset that with taxes] may go nowhere.

Of course we know that financial markets are efficient and thus incorporate knowledge of the future: about half the time when markets go up the performance of the economy proves better than the average forecast....now for you students in intro statistics, why is that somehow less than reassuring?

Mike Smitka

Car Czar Steve Rattner's New Book "Overhaul" Names Names!

David Ruggles

By David Ruggles

I've been waiting for this book since meeting Steve Rattner at a Federal Reserve conference in Detroit in May 2010. The subject of the conference was "After the Perfect Storm, Competitive Forces Shaping the Auto Industry. " Rattner gave a presentation that was largely a promotion for the book he was still working on, offering up fascinating anecdotes only an inside would be aware of, along with some juicy gossip. He also answered some questions from the attendees, which included numerous auto industry veterans, members of the press, and ex GM CEO Robert Stempel. The book is finally available and is MUST reading for anyone interested in the previously unknown details on how the auto industry bailout actually took place. I approached the book with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism due to my personal feelings about certain imperfections in the auto industry bailout, in particular the dealer terminations. I came away from the reading with a new found respect not only for the width and depth of the challenges faced by the Obama Administration's automotive task force, known as Team Auto, but a real appreciation for what they did for the country, in most cases at great personal sacrifice. In Rattner’s case, his personal attorney bill for dealing with the rigors of the vetting process cost him $400,000. The book did nothing toward mitigating my anger over the dealer terminations.

It also reinforced the importance to the nation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), an idea proposed by Bush Administration Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and passed by Congress after the Lehman Brothers collapse in the fall of 2008, without which it is unlikely that the auto industry bailout would have been possible.

Some unlikely heroes came to light, including President George W. Bush, Paulson, and even Vice President Dick Cheney. During the last days of the Bush Administration there was a meeting of Republican Senators who were holding up a bill in Congress proposed by the Bush Administration to bail out the U.S. auto industry, a bill which ultimately failed and forced the Bush Administration to use TARP funds to bridge the two ailing automakers over to the Obama administration. Cheney reportedly broke from his usual "laissez faire" “free market” economics stance in an unsuccessful but impassioned plea for a Congressional bailout saying, "Don't let this happen on our watch unless you want to be known as the party of Herbert Hoover forever."

George W. Bush, before taking the bold step of going against Republican Party ideologues in bridging GM and Chrysler to the new administration with TARP funds, said, “Frankly, there’s one other consideration, and that is, I feel an obligation to my successor. I feel it is good policy not to dump him a major catastrophe on his first day in office.”

Hank Paulson testifying before Congress, “Had the banks not returned or repaid their TARP money early out of fear of government involvement in their compensation practices, instead of loaning the money out to support the economy, it is probable the money to bailout GM and Chrysler wouldn’t have been available.” Paulson also made the point to the Bush Administration that, “There is no private debtor in possession financing available for either GM or Chrysler to go into Chapter 11 on their own.

The book is a chronicle of deadlines, heated and impassioned debate, personalities, “brinkmanship,” and harsh negotiations. There was serious debate among the Obama administration about just letting Chrysler go, as in the long run it was thought it was a lost cause and that letting it liquidate would help GM and Ford. At this point, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner weighed in on the “fickle nature of public opinion. Right up until Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, public opinion favored letting the firm go down. In the ensuing chaos, the consensus had shifted overnight, and the government was believed to have made a terrible mistake by letting them collapse.”

It also became evident that letting Chrysler go would send a ripple throughout the supplier community causing a “run on the trade by suppliers refusing to supply parts if not paid in advance.

Called out in the book as Incompetents, Light Weights, or Obstructionists are such well known figures as: Sheila Bair, FDIC Chairman, Ray Young – GM CFO, Rick Wagner, ex GM CEO, Fritz Henderson, ex GM CEO, and a host of GM board members.

There are those called out for praise including Bob Corker, Republican Senator from Tennessee, Mark Zandi, Chief Economist for Moody’s Economy.com, and Ron Gettelfinger, Head of the United Auto Workers union.

Retired General Electric CEO Jack Welch was consulted frequently.

“Characters” include “Jimmie” Lee and Jamie Diman, of JP Morgan, Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat, and, of course, Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s Chief of Staff.

There are many unsung heroes who labored in near obscurity. Without the talent and effort of participants too numerous to list here, the bailout wouldn’t have happened. Of particular significance are Harry Wilson, Team Auto’s corporate restructuring specialist, Matt Feldman, Team Auto’s resident genius of bankruptcy law and driver of the Section 363 strategy that allowed for the speedy trips through bankruptcy court, and Brian Deese, Team Auto’s White House liaison. It was Harry Wilson who first proposed that taxpayers take an equity stake on GM to a large degree, and Chrysler to a lesser degree, to minimize the problem of sending them out into the marketplace with a huge load of debt, and the debt service that goes with it. This was probably the biggest decision, one fraught with “moral hazard,” that had to be made by the President.

The two men “driving the bus” were Larry Summers, head of the White House Counsel of Economic advisers, and Tim Geithner, Treasury Secretary, overseen by President Obama, who once asked about the U.S. automakers, “Why can’t they build a Corolla?” It must have been lost on the President that, in fact GM, and Toyota had built “Corollas” together in their joint venture Fremont CA plant that was shuttered as part of the restructuring.
Rattner doesn’t spend a lot of time on the dealer termination issue other than to emphasize that all industry experts he spoke to recommended thinning out the dealer body. I suspect the primary industry expert was Steve Girsky, a one time advisor to the UAW that was disqualified for Team Auto membership by virtue of that relationship. Girksy has been an outspoken advocate of fewer but larger dealers in the interest of efficiency, as he puts it.

Rattner also fails to mention input by the Pentagon to the Bush Administration over concern over a collapse of the country’s industrial base and how it would impact military procurement in the middle of 2 wars.

Chrysler is doing better than anyone anticipated. Both companies are exceeding the conservative projections assigned to them.

There are still issues at GM as evidenced by yet another CEO change as GM board member Dan Ackerson is taking over as CEO after Ed Whitacre “retired“ after only a few months in the job. Rattner also chronicles the ongoing conflict between the old GM board members and the new ones. The are many “players” who will be unhappy with Rattner’s revelations, which is just one good reason to read it. He must have kept writing new chapters as things have unfolded, all the way up to publication of the book. There are chapters yet to be written, but any student of politics, economics, or the auto business needs to read this book.