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21. False Dawn

Author:
John H. Makin
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
The bursting of every bubble is followed by statements suggesting that the worst is over and that the real economy will be unharmed. The weeks since mid-March have been such a period in the United States. The underlying problem—a bust in the residential real-estate market—has, however, grown worse, with peak-to-trough estimates of the drop in home prices having gone from 20 to 30 percent in the span of just two months. Meanwhile, the attendant damage to the housing sector and to the balance sheets tied to it has grown worse and spread beyond the subprime subsector.
Topic:
Economics, Government, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States

22. The Fed's Dilemma

Author:
John H. Makin
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
The Fed is in a bind, pulled toward easier monetary policy by a weak economy and fragile credit markets, while simultaneously needing to resist higher inflation. On Monday, June 9, after a weekend of headlines regarding a half-percentage-point rise in the unemployment rate, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke gave a pathbreaking speech entitled "Outstanding Issues in the Analysis of Inflation" at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's fifty-third Annual Economic Conference. In that speech, after suggesting that the risks of a substantial  economic downturn had diminished over the past month and citing further progress in the repair of financial and credit markets, he proceeded to address the problem of rising inflation. In two sentences, he contributed to a sharp, fifty-basis-point rise in two-year bond yields and boosted the market's assessment of the chance of a fifty-basis-point rise in the federal-funds target rate at the September 16 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) from virtually zero to nearly 70 percent.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

23. Tipping Point

Author:
John H. Makin
Publication Date:
08-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
The annual report of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS)—the central bankers' central bank—which appeared in late June, was somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand, the BIS called for world interest rates to rise in order to deal with a “clear and present threat” from global inflation while, on the other hand, it warned that the global economy may be close to a “tipping point” into a “slowdown severe enough to transform the current period of rising inflation into a period of falling prices.” The simultaneous rise in oil prices and the fall in yields in government securities occurring as the BIS released this ambivalent statement captured well the tensions inherent in the stagflationary crosscurrents facing the global economy. Against this ominous background, the release of the BIS report coincided with the onset of a global bear market in equities.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Oil, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States

24. Risk and Systemic Risk

Author:
John H. Makin
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Speaking on August 22 at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Annual Economic Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke entitled his important address “Reducing Systemic Risk.” Bernanke outlined three key elements of the Fed's response to what he described as “one of the most challenging economic and policy environments in memory.” First, the Fed has eased monetary policy, cutting the federal funds rate from 5.25 percent to 2 percent. Second, the Fed has expanded its liquidity support by developing new special lending facilities to mitigate “very severe strains in short-term funding markets.” The third and, as yet, unfinished element of the Fed's strategy involves “a range of activities and initiatives undertaken in our [the Fed's] role as financial regulator and supervisor.”
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Political Economy

25. Panic

Author:
John H. Makin
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
The credit crisis that followed the collapse of the housing bubble turned into a financial panic on Wednesday, September 17, 2008. There was a run by households out of money-market funds and into safe Treasury bills, pushing their yields to zero for the first time since the Great Depression. There was a liquidity trap in the interbank market, in which banks that are supposed to lend to each other hoarded cash for fear of runs by their depositors and the insolvency of other banks. Financial markets simply froze in the midst of chaos.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Middle East

26. More Panic

Author:
John H. Makin
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Over the past several months as central banks and treasuries have struggled to manage a financial panic and avoid or diminish its soon-to-appear devastating impact on the global economy, I have often thought about the efforts of two great economists to understand the lessons of the Great Depression. John Maynard Keynes's monumental General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936, showed how a failure to understand the nature of the demand for money contributed to the Great Depression. “The importance of money essentially flows from being a link between the present and the future,” Keynes said.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States

27. Print Money and Cut the Payroll Tax

Author:
John H. Makin
Publication Date:
12-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
President-elect Barack Obama faces the most difficult economic challenge confronting an incoming American president since the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt seventy-six years ago in 1932. When he assumes office on January 20, Obama will need to act decisively with heretofore unprecedented fiscal policy steps, in conjunction with measures by the Federal Reserve to increase the money supply and lower long-term interest rates. All of this must be done to help contain and reverse the accelerating global slowdown by halting the rapidly deepening American recession. We can only hope that other national leaders and central banks will follow suit.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States and America

28. Fine in 2009 (Not So Great in 2008)

Author:
John H. Makin
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
The good news about the problems in the financial sector and the larger economy in the United States emanating from the persistent drop in house prices is that they will eventually end, and the underlying resiliency of the U.S. economy will reemerge. The bad news about these problems is that they are going to continue for some time and get worse before they improve. Efforts to address them so far have been ineffective because they have been aimed at containing a subprime credit crisis, not at containing a rapidly spreading primecredit, solvency crisis that is leading the U.S. economy into recession.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
Political Geography:
United States

29. Why Do Financial Firms Take Too Much Risk?

Author:
John H. Makin
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
It is important at the outset to define the terms “financial firms” and “too much risk.” By “financial firms,” I mean commercial banks, investment banks, brokerages, and insurance companies that solicit and manage funds for the public. By “too much risk,” I mean actions undertaken by managers of financial firms that result in substantial losses for the shareholders (owners) of such firms. On an aggregate level, I call “systemic risks” those that emerge when regulators and policymakers are forced to choose between either reinforcing (with bailouts) the venturesome investing that created the problem or allowing substantial damage to depositors and shareholders in financial firms, and possibly to the economy as a whole.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
Political Geography:
United States

30. One Fix Too Many

Author:
John H. Makin
Publication Date:
11-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Just as Wall Street was celebrating the presumed end of the latest financial crisis by pushing stocks to record highs, proclaiming continued strong earnings growth, and continuing to recite the mantra “slowdown, but no recession,” Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson provided a vivid reminder that the housing and mortgage crisis is not over. On Monday, October 15, while Citibank was reporting that compared with last year's results its third-quarter earnings had fallen by 57 percent, the Treasury's “super-SIV” plan was revealed. It seems that the Goldman Sachs alumni at Treasury—Paulson and his under secretary for domestic finance, Robert Steel—had become concerned that the offbalance- sheet special investment vehicles (SIVs) held by commercial banks might not be financeable. That would mean that not enough investors could be found to provide the short-term financing necessary to sustain SIVs, the repositories of hardto- value securitized mortgages that continue to plague bank balance sheets.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
Political Geography:
United States