Investing Curiouscatblog

Tag: commentary

  • Rich Americans Sue to Keep Evidence of Their Tax Evasion From the Justice Department

    Group of Rich Americans Sues UBS to Keep Names Secret in Tax Case

    UBS was sued on Tuesday in a Swiss federal court by wealthy American clients seeking to prevent the disclosure of their identities as part of a tax-evasion investigation by the United States Justice Department.
    …
    The lawsuit, which UBS described in an internal memo late Tuesday, stems from UBS’s agreement last week to turn over to federal authorities in Washington the names of 250 wealthy Americans suspected of using secret UBS offshore accounts and entities to evade taxes.

    UBS reached a $780 million deferred-prosecution agreement to settle accusations that it used undisclosed offshore private banking services to help wealthy Americans evade taxes. But the bank is still under scrutiny by the Justice Department, which is seeking to force it to disclose the names of the 52,000 American clients it suspects may have evaded taxes.

    So how many of these people will be serving time in jail do you think. Lets say for example, they ended up stealing $10,000 from the US government by evading taxes. Now UBS has to worry about the Swiss laws on disclosing information. But for the Americans all they are doing is trying to cover up a crime they committed. Do you think they will be punished for the crime in the first place? What about for trying to cover up the crime after the fact? The lack of moral fiber of so many rich in the USA is disheartening. I hope those that tried to steal from all the rest of us, and then tried to cover up their crimes, are thrown in jail at least as long as an average criminal that is young and poor that steals the amount they did and then tries to prevent witnesses from providing evidence to the Justice Department. And not in some country club jail either. But I doubt they will be. More rich people act ethically than those that don’t, but the number that are outrageously unethical is far too high.

    Related: Super Spoiled Brats – Why Pay Taxes or be Honest – Estate Tax Repeal – CEOs Plundering Corporate Coffers

  • What the Bailout and Stimulus Are and Are Not

    The huge banking bailouts and stimulus bill are meant to counter-balance the huge problems the economy is suffering through. The damage caused to the economy, is largely from unwise risks that were allowed by regulators and politicians that have not panned out and are now greatly damaging the economy. It is always easy for politicians to pay out money in an attempt to buy our way out of problems. That is what the stimulus and bailout bills are doing. They are yet again heaping huge debts on our children and grandchildren.

    The bailout and stimulus packages are not about preventing foolish risks to the economy by huge banks that would make the economy safer in the future. Those types of bills are very hard to pass as the politicians get great sums of money to allow people to risk the economy for their own benefit. The concept of the stimulus is not to fix the cause of the problem but do cope with the problem we are left with due to people that paid themselves huge amounts of money. Now the taxpayers get to fund the huge payouts wall street has given themselves.

    This is because they never actually provided the value they claimed. They merely created false returns to claim they provided a benefit to justify obscene pay (many of them truly didn’t understand this is what they were doing so beyond failing they were so incompetent [while accepting well over a million dollars a year] they didn’t even understand that the financial games they were playing were failing. It is hard to know what is worse, being so incompetent while claiming you deserve millions or knowing you are just paying yourself money based on false claims of value.

    Either way, the banks are left bankrupt – having worthless securities created by those paying themselves huge amounts of money. If the huge banks fail the financial system collapse creates huge problems – businesses that have operated for decades by borrowing some funds (responsibly) go bankrupt because no funds are available to lend them, etc..

    The stimulus is not about fixing the problems of the past it is about countering the huge decline from the bubble economy. That bubble economy was funded largely by claiming value where none existed thereby allowing people to spend huge amounts of money based on those faulty claims. How people are shocked that playing financial games doesn’t actually make hundreds of billions of dollars appear out of thin air is beyond me.
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  • Our Capacity Remains Undiminished

    President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address

    We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week, or last month, or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

    That sounds nice I believe however, it is fairly irrelevant. Economic demand is what is down, not production capacity. We are “no less productive than when this crisis began.” Ok, that is probably true. So what. That implies that the crisis has something to do with productivity. If we say the color of our eyes is the same as when the crisis began it is obvious that is a non-sequitur. Well so is the quote by the new President, though that is less obvious.

    Our demand was definitely over stimulated using massive federal government budget deficits, massive trade deficits, massive amounts of consumer debt, massive amounts of unjustified mortgage debt and massive amounts of leverage. None of those things has anything to do with capacity in the implied sense – capacity to produce. They have to do with the capacity to consume. And while our capacity to consume has not declined. The funding that allows that consumption (foreign lending, high leverage, junk mortgages…) has decreased.
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  • Looking at the Chicago School of Economics

    Here is an interesting article at Bloomberg looks at the Chicago school of economics: Friedman Would Be Roiled as Chicago Disciples Rue Repudiation by John Lippert

    At the University of Chicago, once ascendant free-market acolytes are finding themselves in an unusual role: They’re battling a wave of government intervention more sweeping than any since the Great Depression as the U.S. struggles with the worst recession in seven decades.

    By the end of November, the government had committed $8.5 trillion, or more than half the value of everything produced in the country in 2007, to save the financial system.
    …
    Robert Lucas, a Chicago economist who won a Nobel in 1995 for a theory that argued against governments trying to fine-tune consumer demand, says deregulation may have gone too far. Depression-era laws that separated commercial and investment banks helped depositors decide if they wanted secure accounts or riskier investments. Today, without these distinctions, people can’t be sure if their investments, or those of their customers, are safe.

    “I’m changing my views on bank regulation every week,” Lucas, 71, says. “It was an area I saw as under control. Now I don’t believe that.” Lucas says he voted for Obama, the only Democrat besides Bill Clinton he’d supported in 44 years. He concluded the candidate was comfortable talking with professional economists.
    …
    “The big event of the last 20 years is the success of free markets in India and China,” says McCloskey via telephone from South Africa, where she’s a visiting professor at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein. “This is more important than any financial crisis and makes it really hard to argue for a return to central planning.”

    I believe capitalism is the best system for economic development. Unfortunately, as I have written before, too many decision makers don’t have the slightest clue about economics. They accept simplistic views just like scientifically illiterate people accept simplistic claims that have no merit.

    The basics are pretty easy. You want to use the market to guide the economy. You need to regulate in those areas the market alone is know to be weak (negative externalities – including pollution, risks to the public…) anti-market behavior (large players controlling markets for their own benefit, large players paying off politicians for benefits…) and systemic risks (“too big to fail“…). And practical consideration is more important that ideological purity.

    One of the most important consistent failures is the continued favoring of large entities that pay politicians large amounts of money. The continued creation of huge organizations that are anti-competitive by their nature and create systemic economic risk have not economic justification. The role of the government should be to enforce competitive markets not allow huge competitors to buyout other huge competitors so that they can further distort the market.

    Related: Ignorance of Capitalism – Misuse of Statistics, Mania in Financial Markets – Greenspan Says He Was Wrong On Regulation – Lobbyists Keep Tax Off Billion Dollar Private Equities Deals and On For Our Grandchildren – Treasury Now (1987) Favors Creation of Huge Banks

  • Companies Beg Congress to Allow Them to Avoid Paying Into Pension Funds

    Pension Funds Beg Congress to Suspend Billions in Contributions

    Pension funds at Pfizer Inc., International Business Machines Corp., United Parcel Service Inc. and dozens of other companies have joined the parade of businesses seeking relief from Congress amid this year’s economic meltdown.

    Instead of money, they want legislation to suspend a federal law that would make them pump billions of dollars into retirement plans to offset stock-market losses as many struggle to find enough cash just to stay in business.

    So lets see, you minimally fund the pension plan for your workers and make optimistic projections about investing returns. The market goes down, and you are now so far underfunding your pension that the law requires you to add funds to the pension. Your solution, go cry to the politicians. How sad. If Pfizer or IBM are having cash flow problems that is amazing. They really should be able to manage their cash better than that. Their most recent quarterly reports do not indicate cash flow problems. Yes I understand we have a credit crisis so if GM were having problems I wouldn’t be surprised (but you know what – they aren’t, in this area).

    “Without relief, plan sponsors must shoulder the immediate burden of sudden, unexpected, large increases in plan contributions at a time when cash may be difficult to generate internally or to obtain in the credit markets,” Mercer’s Hartshorn says.
    …
    GM was notably absent from the five-page list of companies and organizations asking Congress for relief from the asset thresholds. GM said its pension plans had a $1.8 billion deficit as of Oct. 31, down from a $20 billion surplus 10 months earlier. At that level, GM’s plans would top the pension law’s 2008 asset threshold.

    I think companies need to meet their obligations. If they choose to minimally fund their pensions without understanding that financial market are volatile, then they will have to pay up as required by law. When times are good you see all these CEOs taking advantage of pension fund “excesses” to reward themselves. They need to learn that you don’t raid your pension funds (either by taking cash out or not funding current investments – because you claim the assets are already sufficient). Pension funds are long term investments and you cannot manage as though the target value is the minimum amount allowed by law (unless you are willing to pay up cash every time your investments don’t meet your predicted returns). This is very simple stuff.

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  • Many Experts Say Health-Care System Inefficient, Wasteful

    Many Experts Say Health-Care System Inefficient, Wasteful

    Talk to the chief executives of America’s preeminent health-care institutions, and you might be surprised by what you hear: When it comes to medical care, the United States isn’t getting its money’s worth. Not even close.

    “We’re not getting what we pay for,” says Denis Cortese, president and chief executive of the Mayo Clinic. “It’s just that simple.”

    “Our health-care system is fraught with waste,” says Gary Kaplan, chairman of Seattle’s cutting-edge Virginia Mason Medical Center. As much as half of the $2.3 trillion spent today does nothing to improve health, he says.

    Not only is American health care inefficient and wasteful, says Kaiser Permanente chief executive George Halvorson, much of it is dangerous.
    …
    The United States today devotes 16 percent of its gross domestic product to medical care, more per capita than any other nation in the world. Yet numerous measures indicate the country lags in overall health: It ranks 29th in infant mortality, 48th in life expectancy and 19th out of 19 industrialized nations in preventable deaths.

    One way to reconfigure health spending is to shift large sums into prevention and wellness, said Reed Tuckson, a physician and executive vice president at UnitedHealth Group in Minneapolis. The idea is to tackle the handful of preventable, chronic illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes that account for 75 percent of health-care costs.
    …
    the Dartmouth team concluded that as much as 30 percent of medical spending — or $700 billion — does nothing to improve care.

    I continue to write about this serious problem for the USA. The credit crisis is an immediate crisis (with roots in many bad decisions over the last decade). But the health care crisis is just as deadly. The health care crisis is like a person smoking. It might not kill the economy immediately, but the huge harm down to the economy by the broken healthcare system is like a cancer on the economy.

    Previous posts on problems and suggestions for improvement: PBS Documentary on Improving Hospitals – site and books on improving the health care system – International Health Care System Performance – USA Health Care Improvement – Broken Health Care System: Self-Employed Insurance – Excessive Health Care Costs – USA Spent $2.1 Trillion on Health Care in 2006

  • USA Manufacturing Output Continues to Increase (over the long term)

    When looking at the long term data, USA manufacturing output continues to increase. For decades people have been repeating the claim that the manufacturing base is eroding. It has not been true. I realize the economy is on weak ground today, I am not talking about that, I am looking at the long term trends.

    The USA manufactures more than anyone else – by far. The percentage of total global manufacturing is the same today it was two decades ago (and further back as well). For decades people have been saying the USA has lost the manufacturing base – it just is not true. No matter how many times they say it does not make it true. It is true since 2000 the USA increase in manufacturing output (note not a decrease) has not kept pace with global grown in manufacturing output (global output in that period is up 47% and the USA is up 19% – Japan is down 10% for that period).

    I would guess 20 years from today the USA will have a lower percentage of worldwide manufacturing. But I don’t see any reason believe the USA will see a decline in total manufacturing output. I just think the rest of the world is likely to grow manufacturing output more rapidly.

    Looking at a year or even 2 or 3 years of manufacturing output data leaves a great deal of room to see trends where really just random variation exists. Even for longer periods trends are hard to project into the future.

    Conventional wisdom is correct about China growing manufacturing output tremendously. China has grown from 4% of the output of the largest manufacturing companies in 1990 to manufacturing 16% of the total output in China today. That 12% had to come from other’s shares. And given all you hear from the general press, financial press, politicians, commentators… you would think the USA must have much less than China today, so may 10% and maybe they had 20% in 1990. When actually in 1990 the USA had 28% and in 2007 they had 27%.

    Manufacturing jobs are not moving oversees. Manufacturing jobs are decreasing everywhere.
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  • Feds Rethink Rules on Retirement Savings – They Shouldn’t

    Feds Rethink Rules on Retirement Savings

    Amid growing concern over the stock market’s severe drop, government officials are considering last-minute relief from rules requiring millions of Americans who are 70½ or older to withdraw money from their retirement accounts.

    Among the possible changes: allowing taxpayers to delay taking required withdrawals from their individual retirement accounts, 401(k) plans and other similar accounts this year — or at least reducing the amount that must be withdrawn. Also under consideration are various ways to provide tax relief for people who already have made their required withdrawals for this year.

    This is silly. Everyone in the situation of having to make a withdrawal has know about the requirement for years. My guess is this has been the law for over 20 years. Yes, the stock market is down. Yes, being forced to sell now would be bad. And how does providing “tax relief” to those who already made required withdrawals make any sense? Why not just have the treasury send checks to every American, who had a loss on an investment this year, equal to the amount of their loss? (By the way this is sarcasm – they should not really do that). These people have lost any sense of what investing, planning, responsibly… are.

    First, knowing you have required withdrawals from your IRA, you should not hold those assets in stock (I suppose you could have significant cash assets outside your IRA and chose to just use the next option). Second, you can buy the stock outside your IRA at the same minute you sell them in the IRA. What is the big deal: the cost should be about $20 in stock commission for each stock – you save that much each time you fill up your gas tank lately (compared to prices this summer). All that not having to withdraw funds does is let those wealthy enough not to need a small amount of their IRA or 401(k) savings by the time they are 70 1/2 to keep deferring taxes on their investment gains.

    The amount of the distribution is based on the market value of the taxpayer’s account as of the last day of the previous year.

    Therein lies one of the major problems. This year’s distributions are based on Dec. 31, 2007, levels — a time when market prices generally were far above today’s deeply depressed values. As a result, “millions of Americans are forced to withdraw larger-than-anticipated amounts from already-depleted retirement funds,” says David Certner, legislative policy director at AARP, an advocacy group that represents nearly 40 million older Americans.

    What kind of 1984 newspeak is this? I mean this is absolutely ridicules. You have to withdraw the exact amount you knew on January 1st 2008. Nothing about that has changed in almost a year. How can the Wall Street Journal report this without pointing out the completely false claim.
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  • More on Failed Executives

    Citigroup Saw No Red Flags Even as It Made Bolder Bets

    But many Citigroup insiders say the bank’s risk managers never investigated deeply enough. Because of longstanding ties that clouded their judgment, the very people charged with overseeing deal makers eager to increase short-term earnings – and executives’ multimillion-dollar bonuses – failed to rein them in, these insiders say.
    …
    Citigroup’s stock has plummeted to its lowest price in more than a decade, closing Friday at $3.77. At that price the company is worth just $20.5 billion, down from $244 billion two years ago. Waves of layoffs have accompanied that slide, with about 75,000 jobs already gone or set to disappear from a work force that numbered about 375,000 a year ago.
    …
    “They pushed to get earnings, but in doing so, they took on more risk than they probably should have if they are going to be, in the end, a bank subject to regulatory controls,” said Roy Smith, a professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University. “Safe and soundness has to be no less important than growth and profits but that was subordinated by these guys.”

    It is sad to see the same story repeated over and over. Give people the change for obscene bonuses. They make up claims that they are making lots of money to get bonuses but actually set the company to go bankrupt. They take huge bonuses because of course they are so smart and successful. The company fails and they say the market is to blame (it isn’t that they are really not that smart and of course they deserve the obscene bonuses they took before the collapse – or even after the collapse). They feel no shame for the horrible mess they leave in their wake that they would paid more than a king’s ransom to manage. They will be on to similar schemes in a few years.

    If you are a bank you make money by borrowing for less than you lend. If you are a speculator then you try to out bet the other speculators. Nothing wrong with either choice to me. When you want to say you are a bank but you want to make most of your money from speculating their is a problem. Investment banks used to also make huge amounts from fees they would charge (they still do but not enough to offset the huge speculative losses).
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  • Poll: 60% say Depression Likely

    I would say the chance of a depression in the next 5 years is very unlikely. The last 2 years have been full of bad economic news but a depression is still not likely, in my opinion. However, much of the public, seems to think it is likely – Poll: 60% say depression ‘likely’

    The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll, which surveyed more than 1,000 Americans over the weekend, cited common measures of the economic pain of the 1930s:

    * 25% unemployment rate
    * Widespread bank failures
    * Millions of Americans homeless and unable to feed their families

    In response, 21% of those polled say that a depression is very likely and another 38% say it is somewhat likely. The poll also found that 29% feel a depression is not very likely, while 13% believe it is not likely at all.
    …
    The economists surveyed by CNNMoney.com said they saw a drop of 2% to 4% in a worst case scenario.

    I must say I don’t think those polled don’t really hold their belief very firmly. If you actually see a depression as likely you have to take drastic steps with your finances. I really doubt many of them are and instead think they are casually saying they think it is likely without really thinking about what that would mean.

    I don’t see it as likely and don’t see any need to change significantly what made good personal financial sense 2 years ago. The biggest change I see (over the last couple of months) is the importance of taking smart person finance actions has increased dramatically. The smart moves are pretty much the same but the risks to failing to create an emergency fund, abusing your credit card, losing a job… have increased dramatically.

    Related: Uncertain Economic Times – Personal Finance Basics: Health Insurance – Financial Illiteracy Credit Trap