Central Perk

joi, 27 ianuarie 2011

Watch Live: President Obama's YouTube Interview

Your Daily Snapshot for
Thursday, Jan. 27, 2011

Watch Live: President Obama's YouTube Interview

Today at 2:30 p.m. EST President Obama will be participating in a live interview to answer citizens' questions submitted on YouTube. Watch it live at WhiteHouse.gov/live.

And throughout the day policy experts from the White House and around the Administration will be answering your questions about the State of the Union. Check out the full line-up and tune in at WhiteHouse.gov/live.

Photo Gallery: The State of the Union

See more photos of President Obama’s State of the Union Address.

From left: Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood applaud as President Barack Obama enters the House Chamber to deliver his State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Jan. 25, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

SEOptimise

Simple Goal & Conversion Tracking with Piwik: the Open Source Google Analytics Alternative

Posted: 27 Jan 2011 04:22 AM PST

It’s not only the black hat and the paranoid who are increasingly wary of Google’s privacy issues. Google Analytics has come under attack repeatedly in Europe. Recently, German government officials even threatened to declare Google Analytics illegal.

While I consider Google Analytics a minor threat to privacy compared to other Google products and services (like Doubleclick, Google toolbar or Google Chrome), I think there is still room for improvement.

These and other reasons made me revisit Piwik, the open source, self-hosted Google Analytics alternative.

It’s a German project on top of that, so the solution is already there. I was testing Piwik two years ago in an early beta stage. Now it’s available in version 1.1.1 and already it’s quite a powerful web analytics solution.

Before we go on: Piwik can’t yet replace Google Analytics for most websites, either for entry level or professional users. On the other hand, it is an excellent tool for intermediate users – bloggers, for instance.

Once it’s installed, one of the truly outstanding advantages becomes apparent: the goal tracking and management, or in other words the conversion tracking. It’s very easy to implement, easier than in Google Analytics or other web analytics tools if you ask me. Today I want show you how it works. Let’s use an average blog as an example.

You don’t have any goals to track on your blog? You have no conversions? You don’t sell anything on your blog?

Well, think again. I’m with Avinash Kaushik here: you have to track so called micro-conversions. These are small things that show engagement or have some positive impact on your business. Typically on a blog you could track:

Comments (comment submissions)
Facebook likes
Retweets
Delicious saves
StumbleUpon shares
RSS clicks (as in people trying manually to subscribe to your blog)
Ad clicks
Contact form submissions
“About Us” or “Services” section visits
Downloads

So you see there are plenty of ways in which you want to convert people even on a blog. Watching traffic trends is one thing, but tracking goals is a completely different way to find out what’s popular on your site.

I will show you three of them to start with: comments, Delicious saves and “About” views. I chose these three for two reasons: almost everybody has comments and an About Us page on their blog, and Delicious saves say quite a bit about your content. Furthermore, Piwik allows basically three ways of setting up goals. Each example shows one of them.

To add or edit goals in Piwik:

1. Click the “Goals” tab in the top menu.

Look for “Goals management” in the content part below.

2. Click “Create a new Goal” below.

A “Create a Goal” dialog like the one pictured below should appear:

Tracking “About”

Let’s start with “About” as in “About Us”. Why track “About”? Well, people clicking the About page express genuine interest in who you are and what you do. They are those visitors who might trust you in future based on the information you provide. That’s why tracking “About Us” visits makes sense as a micro-conversion.

3. Enter a “goal name”. I’d suggest “about view” as we track how often the About page has actually been viewed.

4. Check whether the radio button “Visit a given URL (page or group of pages)” is already selected, or select it.

5. Check whether “contains” is already selected in the drop down menu, or select it manually.

6. Add the file name of your About page in the input field right beside it. In case it’s something like example.com/about you can add “/about”. In case you have more than one page or post starting with “/about” you can add a more exact part of the URL.

7. Click the button “Add goal”.

Tracking “Delicious saves”

Facebook likes and Twitter (re)tweets are great, but Delicious bookmarks are still the granddaddy of all social media engagement ways. Users who save your post on Delicious do it for their own sake; they want to read it later, save the resource for future reference or use it in some other way for themselves (I do it for publishing). Also, only an elite few use Delicious these days. Last but not least, Facebook and Twitter sharing does not mean much. People who share do so because they want to show it to others, not because they want to use a post for themselves.

3. Enter a “goal name”. I’d suggest “delicious save”, as we will track how many people have saved your site from a Delicious link on your site. Of course, you need a Delicious save link on your blog first. Most social media plugins provide one. Delicious itself offers tools to integrate it as well.

4. Select the radio button “Click on a Link to an external website” (the third one in the row).

5. Check whether “contains” is already selected in the drop down menu or select it manually.

6. Add the URL “delicious.com/save?” in the input field beside it, or check the actual URL your social media plugin links to and adapt it accordingly.

7. Click the button “Add goal”.

Tracking Comments

Why should you track comments? You can see them in the WordPress back end anyway, can’t you? Well, tracking comments with Piwik allows you to see which users engage with your blog, and thus which traffic is your most valuable based on measuring interaction. Hint: it’s not the search or social media traffic.

Tracking comments is a bit more tricky than the other goals, but if you can customise WordPress themes you can do that as well.

3. Enter a “goal name”. I’d suggest “comment”, as we track comment submissions here.

4. Select “manually” in the “Goal is triggered” drop down menu.

5. Copy the “piwikTracker.trackGoal()” JavaScript call.

6. Click the button “Add goal”.

7. To find out the goal number of your “comment” goal, click the “Goal” tab again.

8. Scroll down and roll over the “Goal ‘comment’ ” link.

9. You see the following JS link “javascript:broadcast.propagateAjax(‘module=Goals&action=goalReport&idGoal=3′)” where the idGoal parameter is your goal number. Remember the number.

10. Add the number in your JS call in your WordPress theme comments.php.

It can be found in Appearance -> Editor -> Comments (comments.php).

Search for the “submit” button. My form submit button looks like this:

<input id="submit" name="submit" type="submit" value="<?php _e('Post Comment') ?>" tabindex="7" />

11. Add onclick="piwikTracker.trackGoal(3);" at the end of it so that it looks likes this:

<input id="submit" name="submit" type="submit" value="<?php _e('Post Comment') ?>" tabindex="7" onclick="piwikTracker.trackGoal(3);" />

Done.

Piwik not only allows you to set up goals easily, but also to get a quick and useful overview of which traffic converts best. Make sure you check out the “Conversions overview by segment” table view in the Goals tab. You have to scroll a bit to see it. It shows you which traffic sources, countries etc. perform best:

Piwik also has advanced privacy options: you can both opt out of Piwik tracking if you want to enable the feature, and anonymise the last digits of the user IP. Google allegedly does this as well, but the data is sent to the US where, due to the patriot act, all kinds of government agencies can access it for a plethora of reasons. That’s why it’s basically already illegal in Germany. You are not allowed to send user data to another country. Furthermore, you’ll never now where your data is . Google has data centers all over the world, and I’m not sure it’s vulnerable to US secret services only.

With Piwik, which is self-hosted, you can decide yourself where your data is stored. It just depends on the location of your hosting. This big advantage is also a drawback. You need to install Piwik on your server or webhosting package. The process is largely automated, but nevertheless even I experienced some issues while installing it: my FTP client had problems copying the ca. 5MB to my server and thus some files ended up being crippled. Instead of the installation page, I only saw garbled code on the page and rather unhelpful error messages.

Piwik is a software package for intermediate users. Ask yourself: can I install a WordPress blog? If so, then you can install Piwik. Don’t know what your PHP and MySQL version is? Maybe you should stick with GA.

While Piwik is not yet a fully fledged Google Analytics alternative, it can compete quite well with popular entry level freemium or paid tools like Clicky, Woopra or Reinvigorate.

© SEOptimise – Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. Simple Goal & Conversion Tracking with Piwik: the Open Source Google Analytics Alternative

Seth's Blog : Why I don't sell Kimchi

[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]

Why I don't sell Kimchi

Years ago, I put together a really cool plan to get into the artisinal kimchi business (with a tofu sideline, of course). What, you didn't know there was an artisinal kimchi business?

Here's the first draft of our packaging (click the picture to see the engaging copy).

Why did I stop before I really started?

Because distribution can define your business. The distribution that book publishers offered me seemed more highly leveraged, approachable and yes, fun, than the idea of driving from bodega to deli, hawking my wares.

Just about every business is limited (and thus valued) by its distribution, by the way it is able to get paid for what it makes. Direct mail is different than a salesforce which is different than retailers... And while the food business attracts tons of enthusiastic people, the distribution challenges are significant.

On the other hand, once you overcome the distribution hurdle in a difficult environment, you have the market all to yourself. The dip that's in between you and the amateurs (the dip you got through, congratulations) gives you insulation and enables your business to thrive.

As is so often the case, there's no right answer, there's just a choice.

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miercuri, 26 ianuarie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Market Participants "Learn the Wrong Lesson" from Bernanke; Conflicts of Interest in "Stay the Course" Advice
Missing the Big Picture Part II
Marc Faber on Investing Opportunities for the Short-to-Intermediate Term
FCIC Investigation Misses the "Big Picture" Cause of the Crisis; Next Financial Crisis Brewing Already

Market Participants "Learn the Wrong Lesson" from Bernanke; Conflicts of Interest in "Stay the Course" Advice

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 04:00 PM PST

The risk trade marches on. It's another day and another high in the DOW. What have investors learned from this?

Alan Hartley writing for Morningstar explores that question in A Potent Brew for a Tall Glass of Regret

While it is clear economic data has improved, we must be conscious of the risks that remain.

For starters, our recent economic growth has required unconventional and unprecedented monetary policy. The purchase of trillions of dollars of securities by the Fed in the hopes that "higher stock prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence" has thus far worked wonders in bolstering equity markets. But such involvement with a seemingly tepid growth response should cause one to ponder the economy's stand-alone strength and growth sustainability.

As Bill McBride of Calculated Risk noted, the December figure was "the largest year-over-year increase in [housing] inventory since January 2008 and … is something to watch closely over the next few months."

Rising inventories would likely lead to additional price declines that would affect consumer sentiment, consumer spending, and ultimately bank balance sheets.

Other concerns are more exogenous, but no less real, and include European sovereign funding troubles, rising commodity prices, and tightening requirements in emerging economies to tame inflation. All these risks could be contentedly borne at the right price, but unfortunately for investors, valuations offer no solace.

The cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio, developed by Yale professor Robert Shiller, stands at 23, a level 40% above its mean. The ratio of the total market capitalization to gross national product, a measure used by Warren Buffett, is almost 50% above its long-term average. Total market capitalization to corporate profits, which can function as an economy-wide P/E ratio, is 10% above its long-term average, despite current near-peak profit margins. In fact, take any valuation method that doesn't rely on next-year earnings estimates that imply ever-expanding profit margins, and you'll find elevated valuations and the lack of a margin of safety in broad equity markets. Yet, analysts' target prices for the S&P 500 still point to significant market upside.

Why do analysts come to such different conclusions when analyzing the same data? Differences in opinion of overall valuation can exist because of most analysts' over-focus on one year of earnings, instead of what is likely to occur on average. To make sense of this discrepancy, it might help to think about investing in the stock market as if you were buying one large company. The first thing to remember is that this "company" is quite cyclical. Its earnings vary over the business cycle, from having profit margins of less than 4% in tough times and greater than 8% at the peak of the cycle. On average, the company delivers 6% profit margins during the course of a full cycle, which includes great, terrible, and average years (think 2001-10).

Analysts expect 2011 S&P 500 sales to breach $1,000 per share with earnings of $87.50, or an 8.5% profit margin--a margin level eclipsed by only the year 2006. Put a long-term average multiple of 15 on those earnings, and you get a price target of $1,313, or 2.3% above Friday's close. But assume the average occurrence of 6% profit margins, and you'll find $60 per share in earnings and a current P/E over 21.

Such disregard for average occurrences is also evident in other corners of asset markets. Fixed-income securities have seen spreads compress to pre-crisis, below-average levels while historically low interest rates remain held in their place. Implied volatility, which is the key driver of option pricing, recently closed at low levels not seen but prior to the onset of the financial crisis. Elevated valuations, limited yield opportunities, tight credit spreads, and complacency are a potent brew for a tall glass of regret.

It seems that market participants have learned the wrong lesson: that the Fed can have an enormous effect on the market, "keeping asset prices higher than they otherwise would be", and not that the Fed's largesse always ends in tears.

Why Wildly Differing Conclusions?

Hartley hits the mark with his analysis and even more with his conclusion "the Fed's largesse always ends in tears." However, he misses one key point:

Most analysts, money managers, and broker-dealers are perpetually bullish because they have a vested interest to be perpetually bullish.

Just as real estate salesman do not sell houses if they tell potential clients houses are too expensive, broker-dealers don't make commissions if people are not buying. Moreover, most money managers earn no fees at all if their clients sit in cash.

Conflicts of Interest in "Stay the Course" Advice

In January of 2009 before the final 20% plunge in the stock market, an investment advisor from Wachovia Securities called me up and stated "Mish, I am sitting on millions because I see nothing I like".

I told the person I did not like much either and that Sitka Pacific was heavily in cash and or hedged. His response was "Well, I do not get paid anything if my clients are sitting in cash".

I called up a rep at Merrill Lynch and he said the same thing, that reps for Merrill Lynch do not get paid if their clients are sitting in cash.

Massive Conflict of Interest

Notice the massive conflict of interest possibilities. Reps for various broker dealers have a vested interest in keeping clients 100% invested 100% of the time, even if they know it is wrong. And so during every recession and every boom alike, bad advice permeates the airwaves and internet "Stay The Course".

By the way, that person at Wachovia mentioned above did the right thing. He did not see investment opportunities he liked, so he kept client funds in cash. Such action is not the norm.

Bullishness Sells

The fact that managers do not get paid if clients sit in cash accounts for a great deal of the long-term-buy-and-hold mentality you see. The rest of it comes from analysts who have a vested interest via relationships to broker-dealers to be optimistic.

Moreover, clients never want to hear that stocks are going down, that valuations are stretched, or that risk is high. The industry capitalizes on that by seldom saying such things.

History shows that no matter how stretched valuations get, analysts invent new metrics to justify stock prices. Remember the concept of tracking "click counts" instead of revenues for dot-com companies? How about the "Gorilla Game" and Pro-Forma earnings?

Now its "stocks are cheap relative to bonds".

For further discussion, please consider The Question "Are Stocks a Screaming Buy Relative to Bonds?" Creates False Premises

We also see the old-standby regarding "forward PE's".

Analysts do not care how ridiculous those PE's are or that earnings are a function of $trillions in stimulus. Nor do analysts care that bank earnings are blatantly fraudulent and based on mark-to-model fantasies not marked-to-market reality; nor do analysts care about the sustainability of those earnings.

Note that rating agencies fraudulently marked pure garbage "AAA" because the more garbage they rated AAA, the more business they got.

This all boils down to a simple statement of fact: Analysts do not care about sustainability of earnings, about valuations, about mark-to-fantasy, about currency risks, about risk in general, or about anything at all because they make more money by not knowing and by not caring if they do happen to know.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Missing the Big Picture Part II

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 12:03 PM PST

In FCIC Investigation Misses the "Big Picture" I made the case that the cause of this crisis is

Loose monetary policies by central banks worldwide
Fractional Reserve Lending
Governments' willingness to spend more money than they takes in

Barry Ritholtz responded with an email "We agree about ultra-low rates, but I have seen no credible evidence that "Fractional lending" was a causal factor; Nor have I found any evidence that the deficit as a cause of the credit crisis"

He also commented on my post in The Crisis Was Caused by [Insert Pet Peeve Here].

Let' focus on Barry's main rebuttal:

Never mind that this form of credit creation has been around for centuries, he is a vociferous critic of it.

Yep, Fractional Reserve Lending is centuries old. However, what kind of logical rebuttal is that?

The fact is FRL has caused problems for centuries. The best example is the John Law Mississippi Bubble. However, FRL has arguably made every bubble in history worse.

The idea that something cannot be a problem because it has been around for a long time is preposterous. So why do we have it?

FRL has suited the interests of bankers and politicians. That is why it has been around for centuries. Indeed, inflation and credit expansion benefit those with first access to money: banks, the wealthy, and governments (via increased taxes, especially property taxes and sales taxes).

Those at the bottom of the economic totem pole get hammered.

In regards to deficit spending, the fact remains that it cheapens the currency and fosters a flight to assets like stocks or housing. This adds to the problems of FRL. Cheap money eventually makes its way into the economy and a flight to asset mentality takes over.

We saw that in spades with housing.

Instead of looking at the root problem, people expect regulation to stop the effects of cheap money. The idea is silly if a few minutes of logical thought processes are spent analyzing the situation.

Public-Union Time Bomb

Secondly, and this does not pertain to Barry but others commenting on his post, I never said public unions are the cause of all problems. In fact it is ridiculous to see such allegations given I just clearly stated the Fed and FRL is.

I have certainly said that public unions have destroyed cities and states, and they have.

Indeed, public unions are the #1 problem cities and states face. Pensions are $3 trillion in the hole at the state level alone. I do not have an accounting of how much bigger the problem is at the city level but it is gigantic.

Might I point out that with a stroke of a pen, President Kennedy authorized collective bargaining of public unions. The result has been an increasing power grab by unions getting in bed with corrupt politicians demanding untenable salaries and benefits over the years.

Most see the crisis now. Very few have traced it back to a regulatory move by Kennedy, a move designed to buy politicians votes, and it did. It has bought corrupt politician votes ever sense.

Now states are in a crisis level, and people ignore the problem and the cause as if bankers created that mess. Well bankers did not create that mess. Unions using tactics of coercion, bribery, and fear-mongering got us to this sorry state.

Such actions are just what one should expect as a function of exponential systems. People do not see the problem until it is too late.

Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

Here is a video Bernanke needs to ponder with his 2% inflation target, and the World Economic Forum with its 4% GDP target and 6% credit growth target. After playing the video, think about China's 10% target with its economy overheating already.

Most importantly, think about public union pension plans with expected annualized rates of return at 8% per year!

Please play that video to the end. It gets better as it progresses.

In FRL credit-based fiat systems, credit expands until the system blows up. History proves it, and no regulation has ever stopped it.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Marc Faber on Investing Opportunities for the Short-to-Intermediate Term

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 10:57 AM PST

Here is an interesting video of Marc Faber on Bloomberg about politicians in general, Obama specifically, and about investment themes for the next few months.

Here's the link on Bloomberg in case that video does not play: http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aGQI_w8IwQnU

Points Faber Emphasized

Obama has done a horrible job and that will continue. He is intellectually dishonest and nothing has changed.
I do not have a high regard for politicians, I have a high regard for people who work, not for those who abuse the system.
Obama came in on a platform of wanting to change government in Washington and actually he has made it worse.
In terms of investments, emerging markets and industrial commodities have done fantastically well. Now we have a change, the US may outperform, it may not go up but it may outperform on a relative basis.
Treasuries may do well for the next few months.
China stock market is giving a signal that something is not right in the Chinese economy.
Right now, shift out of emerging markets as they may correct 20-30%, out of industrial commodities, and into US equities on a relative basis.
Sentiment is overly optimist on the inflation trade like commodities, and overly negative about treasury bonds.
As of tonight I have a buy signal on US treasuries, but not for the long term. The rally may last 2-3 months.
Treasuries may be the best place for the next three months as is the US Dollar.
Look for a correction of 10% in US equities and 20-30% in emerging markets.
It is not a group of thinkers in Davos, but a group of liars.
Gold may correct over the near term.

The Bloomberg interviewers repeatedly tried to put word in Faber's mouth he never said, or remove words that he did say. For example, the Bloomberg interviewer dropped the word relative with statements like "You would advise investors to invest in the US."

That happened 2-3 times, forcing Faber to reiterate the opinion that US stock would likely go down, they just may go down less.

In regards to treasuries, the Bloomberg interviewer quipped "You said US treasuries are a suicidal investment causing quite a stir. ... Marc, things are better than they were a couple years ago, how is that Fraud?"

Faber replied "If you print money, and you have huge fiscal deficits, it would be horrible if the data isn't any better than it is. So we have a crack-up boom. The question is, how sustainable is it and how healthy is it? It's all money printing and fiscal deficits. One day the burden of these deficits will have to be paid by someone. … The economy is like a drug addict and you are not going to solve this by injecting more drugs."

It was a good performance by Faber in spite of the interviewer's efforts to twist his statements by dropping the word "relative" and by failing to distinguish between the near and long term.

Faber handled it well, laughing when those things happened. On one occasion, in reference to Obama, Faber joked that the interviewer was an optimist.

In general, I am in agreement with Faber, including the outperformance of the US stock market on a "relative" basis for a while. However, I am much more bearish on US equities over the long haul than is Faber.

In regards to treasury bonds, there may easily be one more push higher in yields before we see a good buying opportunity. Shorter durations are safer for now.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

FCIC Investigation Misses the "Big Picture" Cause of the Crisis; Next Financial Crisis Brewing Already

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 12:35 AM PST

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) held 19 days of hearings interviewing 700 witnesses and just released a 576-page book of its findings. The FCIC concluded the Financial Crisis Was Avoidable.

The 2008 financial crisis was an "avoidable" disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a federal inquiry.

The commission that investigated the crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations, the Federal Reserve and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors and risky bets on securities backed by the loans.

"The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done," the panel wrote in the report's conclusions, which were read by The New York Times. "If we accept this notion, it will happen again."

What Caused the Financial Crisis

Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture Blog discusses "causes" mentioned in the New York Times article above. Please consider Barry's article What Caused the Financial Crisis

Alan Greenspan's malfeasance — his refusal to perform his regulatory duties because he did not believe in them — allowed the credit bubble to expand, driving housing prices to dangerously unsustainable levels; Greenspan's advocacy for financial deregulation was a "pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages" and "the prime example" of government negligence;
Ben S. Bernanke failed to foresee the crisis;
The Bush administration's "inconsistent response" — saving Bear, but allowing Lehman to crater — "added to the uncertainty and panic in the financial markets."
Bush Treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. wrongly predicted in 2007 that subprime meltdown would be contained.
The Clinton White House, including then Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, made a crucial error in "shielding over-the-counter derivatives from regulation [CFMA]. This was "a key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis."
Then NY Fed President, now Treasury secretary Timothy F. Geithner failed to "clamp down on excesses by Citigroup in the lead-up to the crisis;" Further, a month before Lehman's collapse, Geithner was still in the dark about Lehman's derivative exposure;
Low interest rates brought about by the Fed after the 2001 recession "created increased risks" but were not chiefly to blame, according to the FCIC (I place some more weight on Ultra-low rates than they do);
The financial sector spent $2.7 billion on lobbying from 1999 to 2008, while individuals and committees affiliated with the industry made more than $1 billion in campaign contributions. The impact of which an incestuous relationship between bankers and regulators, Congress and bankers, and classic regulatory capture by the industry.
The credit-rating agencies "cogs in the wheel of financial destruction."
The Securities and Exchange Commission allowed the 5 biggest banks to ramp up their leverage, hold insufficient capital, and engage in risky practices.
Leverage at the nation's five largest investment banks was wildly excessive: They kept only $1 in capital to cover losses for about every $40 in assets;
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency along with the Office of Thrift Supervision, "federally pre-empted" (blocked) state regulators from reining in lending abuses;
The report documents "questionable practices by mortgage lenders and careless betting by banks;"
The report portrays the "bumbling incompetence among corporate chieftains" as to the risk and operations of their own firms:

Missing the Big Picture

I cannot dispute any of those points. They are all correct. Yet every one of them happened as a failure "of" regulation, not a failure "to" regulate.

The actual cause of the financial crisis is easy to explain.

Loose monetary policies at the Fed
Fractional Reserve Lending
Congress willing to spend more money that it takes in

Had there not been Fractional Reserve Lending, and had the Fed not cut interest rates to absurd levels while fostering a "too big to fail" attitude at banks, this would not have happened. Perpetual Congressional budget deficits and the Fed's willingness to finance those deficits too cheaply is icing on the "what happened" cake.

To expect smart regulation from those who did not see it coming, the Fed and nearly all of Congress, is preposterous.

Moreover, had there been (by some miracle) regulation to prevent the housing collapse, liquidity would have flowed somewhere else and there would have been a bubble in some other thing.

Regulatory Failures

Regulation created the Fed
Regulation created Fannie and Freddie
Regulation created FDIC
Regulation changed the way rating agencies did business

Every one of those is a failure "of" regulation, not a failure "to" regulate. The US government has no business sponsoring housing and if there was no Fannie or Freddie, there would be nothing to regulate in the first place.

Look at what solar energy regulation produced in France. The story is not financially earth-shaking. But it is typical of what one should expect from regulation.

Bear in mind I am not against all regulation. I certainly do not want people shouting fire in movie theaters or polluters to poison my water. Laws against robbing banks are quite fine too.

I even agree with Glass-Steagall because the intent to to build a firewall to prevent fraud. However, and as a side note, Glass-Steagall would not have done anything to prevent this crisis.

Glass-Steagall would not have stopped securitizations, rating agency fraud, liar loans, excessive leverage or anything else of merit.

In short, regulation designed to preserve property rights, human rights, and safety are fertile grounds for reasonable types of regulation that have a high probability of success and will do minimal damage if written poorly.

Cogs in the Wheel of Financial Destruction

Please note the allegation that credit-rating agencies were "cogs in the wheel of financial destruction." I agree with that idea completely.

However, the rating agency cog is one of the biggest failures "of" regulation you can find. I discussed the issue at length in Time To Break Up The Credit Rating Cartel.

If Moody's, Fitch, and the S&P got business based on how accurate they were, and competition was opened up, the problem with rating agencies would go away overnight. If you read my article you will see that is the way rating agencies used to work.

However, the SEC came along, demanded that all debt be rated, and instead of getting paid on how well they did their jobs, the rating agencies got paid on the volume of business they did. This of course created an incentive to give high ratings to everything to get more business.

The only thing that needs to happen to fix the rating agency problem is for government sponsorship of rating agencies to end.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Regulation created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well. The first thing any regulator in his right mind would do to Fannie and Freddie now is shut them down, yet they still exist. Does anyone even remember why these agencies were created?

Here is the reason: To foster affordable housing. Did it work?

Amazingly, now that home prices are falling, everyone wants to prop up home prices. No one really wants affordable housing nor did they ever want it. Politicians only want to appear as if they want affordable housing. That promise buys votes.

What About Leverage?

Look at the blame placed on leverage. Do we need a mountain of regulation to rein in leverage or do we need to kill Fractional Reserve Lending?

I suggest the latter.

Regulators in Bed with Those they Regulate

Here is a pair of interesting findings in the report:

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency along with the Office of Thrift Supervision, federally preempted (blocked) state regulators from reining in lending abuses.
The Securities and Exchange Commission allowed the 5 biggest banks to ramp up their leverage, hold insufficient capital, and engage in risky practices.

You can have all the regulation in the world but it will but do a damn bit of good if the regulators get in bed with those they are supposed to regulate.

How are you supposed to fix that? A super-regulator to regulate all the regulators?

Hopefully that sounds idiotic (because it is), but that is exactly what some have proposed.

Can You Get Good Regulation in the First Place?

Before the worry about "who might get in bed with who" even comes up, there is a presumption that you can get good regulation in the first place. Can you?

Please consider these points from the report:

Alan Greenspan's malfeasance — his refusal to perform his regulatory duties because he did not believe in them.
Ben S. Bernanke failed to foresee the crisis.
Bush Treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. wrongly predicted in 2007 that subprime meltdown would be contained.

Here we have an interesting situation where Greenspan, Bernanke, Paulson, and sponsors of financial institutions in Congress (notably Barney Frank), are supposed to write financial regulation that will work, when none of them could see the crisis coming, nor would they listen to anyone who did see it coming!

Yet, everyone is screaming for more regulation. The whole idea sounds preposterous because it is preposterous.

Preventing the Last Crisis

Nearly everyone is running around like headless chickens screaming for more regulation to prevent another housing crisis. They don't have to. We will not have another housing crisis like this for decades if ever, whether another piece of housing regulation is written or not.

The Next Crisis

I do not know what the next financial crisis to bring the global economy to its knees will be, but here are five likely candidates

Sovereign debt crisis in Europe
Sovereign debt crisis in Japan
Trade wars with China
Derivatives meltdown
Currency wars

Please note that not a damn thing is being done about any of those except the first one. Even then, regulators are avoiding the only thing likely to offer a permanent solution: writedowns of sovereign debt. Instead the EU is inflating money supply hoping to avoid the one thing likely to help!

The problem is we have a massive amount of debt that cannot be paid back, which means that it won't be paid back.

With that we have come full circle with still more rock solid evidence that the root cause of this mess is as I stated above (with a few small refinements to take in the global nature of the crisis).

Loose monetary policies by central banks worldwide
Fractional Reserve Lending
Governments' willingness to spend more money than they takes in

Sustainability of Exponentially Growing Systems

Finally, I have not seen any of the bloggers screaming for more regulation discuss a crucial point I made recently regarding the sustainability of exponentially growing systems. Here are the pertinent posts.

World Economic Forum Endorses Fraud; Steve Keen Mocks the WEF Report, So Do I; The Purported "Need to Double Credit in 10 Years"

Exponential Credit Petri Dish; Steve Keen Responds to "World Economic Forum Endorses Fraud" Post

Will financial crises go away until the exponential problem is addressed? I think not, yet no one is even discussing the issue. To show you how screwed up things are, Bernanke openly endorses exponentially growing systems with his inflation-targeting proposals.

So you can write all the regulation you want and it will not do a thing if credit or price inflation (as Bernanke wants) is growing at an exponential rate.

Instead, most regulation will simply increase problems just like the creation of Fannie Mae or the humorous solar energy regulation did in France.

The rest of it will be ignored by regulators in bed with the industries they are supposed to regulate, assuming of course the regulation was written properly in the first place, which is highly unlikely given Congress and high ranking officials did not see this coming.

Regulation is the Cause of the Crisis, Not the Solution

Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture Blog is a bright guy. He is one of the few who saw this coming. He wrote a good book about the crisis.

This post is not an attempt to take any of that away. As I said at the outset, I do not disagree with any of the points he made in his post.

My only dispute is those points miss "The Big Picture". The Big Picture is that regulation is the cause of this crisis not the solution.

The solution involves abolishing the fed and putting the US on a sound financial footing. In turn, that means we need to kill fractional reserve lending.

If we fail to do that, Bernanke specifically, and central bankers in general, will cause the next financial crisis by supporting exponentially growing systems that cannot possibly be sustained.

No regulation other than reversing the regulation that created the Fed, then abolishing fractional reserve lending can possibly prevent the next crisis.

Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

Here is a video Bernanke needs to ponder with his 2% inflation target, and the World Economic Forum with its 4% GDP target and 6% credit growth target. After playing the video, think about China's 10% target with its economy overheating already.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

joi, 27 ianuarie 2011