The 70% discount on Goldman's $500m gift (Ransom, SmartMoney) Really great work from Diana Ransom. Goldman will get a tax writeoff for much of its "gift." Other parts of it are actually loans the company expects will be repaid with interest. BTW, people know that Warren Buffett isn't actually contributing any money, right? He's just lending his time. Hmmm. What's he going to do? Get on the phone with a Denny's franchisee to talk about the stock market?

Congresswoman passes leverage amendment (Grim, HuffPo) It's hard to keep track of the House Financial Services Committee these days. The amendment would apparently limit leverage to 12x. I'm trying to get my hands on a copy to determine how it defines leverage. And in any case, all of this may be a dead issue. The Congressional Black Caucus canceled a vote on the package Thursday arguing that not enough is being done about unemployment. Ugh. There are lots of problems with the financial reform package, but now it's looking like we may not get anything signed into law before 2011.

Millions may have to repay part of stimulus tax credit (Puzzanghera/Hsu, LA Times)

Tim Geithner, mad as hell and not going to take it anymore (Tech Ticker) This quote from Geithner, in response to criticism from a Republican congressman, is just another reason he has to go: "What I can't take responsibility for is the legacy of the crises you've bequeathed this country." But Geithner bears as much responsibility for the banking crisis as anyone. Recall that he was chief of the NY Fed before he joined the administration. In that role he was supposed to regulate banks. Clearly he wasn't a very tough regulator if, when the CEO spot at Citigroup opened up two years ago, Geithner was Sandy Weill's first choice.

The Louisiana Purchase redux (Milbank, WaPo)

Unburied bodies tell the tale of Detroit (Reid, Times Online)

Baby elephant sneezes...

Britain may finally be emerging from recession, but many analysts warn that it is a false dawn. In fact, they argue, the economy here is so ravaged by growing debts and ruined banks that it could well be following in the steps of Japan’s lost decade of the 1990s.

I still don't understand why we refer to Japan's "lost decade," singular. The country is now moving into its third consecutive lost decade.The Nikkei is still at 1984 levels.

But back to the UK: the NYT piece quotes the latest research from Variant Perception (no link). I got it in my inbox earlier this week and it's a fascinating (though not pleasant) read. Notably, they talk about the outside possibility of a "sudden stop" event. As mentioned in this space before, a "sudden stop" is what happens to emerging economies when they lose access to capital markets. Confidence is lost in the government's ability to pay back debt and everyone races to get out of the system. See Argentina.

The problem is acute for indebted emerging markets because they don't borrow in a currency they can print. So, the argument goes, you can't have a sudden stop in Britain, or the US, because we print the currency in which our debt is payable.

I'll let the VP guys take it from here:

The UK’s fiscal situation is in its most precarious state for 30 years. The Bank of England has responded by cutting rates to historic lows. This has merely bought time. Debt in the household sector remains at its highs, and enormous relief has been provided to many overleveraged mortgage holders who hold tracker deals [i.e. teaser-rate mortgages]. They have been able to ride out the recession so far without defaulting. As their trackers expire and they reset to higher rates they will face acute problems.

Usually a government can quickly return to fiscal vitality after a cyclical upturn. The UK will find this difficult. Structural problems such as a heavy reliance on the business and finance sectors and a consumer that will eventually have to deleverage will provide strong headwinds to any sharp turnaround in revenues.

To pay for the shortfall in income, the UK government has stepped up bond issuance to generational highs. This is not sustainable and taxes will eventually have to rise. However, there is a belief that raising taxes will increase revenue. We believe the opposite is true, and the state will have to borrow more than is projected, for longer than is hoped.

The Bank of England has embarked upon a quantitative easing program to support the gilt market. The sheer size of the initiative raises the question of whether it will be able to reverse it in a stable and orderly manner. Any trip-ups in its unwind would raise yields considerably.

The structural problems in the domestic economy, and difficulties in other economies across the globe, will impede the prospects for sustainable growth in the UK. Debt will continue to grow, and the creditworthiness of the country will continue to weaken. Investors will be more and more reluctant to meet the borrowing needs of the UK.

If the situation continues to deteriorate there is a non-negligible possibility the UK could face a ‘sudden stop’ in capital inflows. A debt crisis would precipitate a currency crisis. This would not be especially unusual for the UK: during the postwar period, there has been one on average every 15 years. These have happened like clockwork.

The possibility of this course of events unfolding is small, but not negligible. If a new government is formed next year, perhaps they will be able to enact the policies that will reduce the deficit and restore confidence in the financers of the UK deficit. We believe, though, that to say the UK will not have a debt crisis is complacent and pays no heed to the past.

If Britain is laid low by a sudden stop event, if the BOE finds itself the only buyer of British government debt, the argument in favor of deficit spending whenever there's an "output gap" will, in my view, suffer a fatal blow.

Also worth calling out, the VP guys note that household debt is still growing quickly in the UK:

In order to return to health the UK, more than most countries, needs to deleverage. However, this process still seems to be in its early stages. UK consumers have so far not materially improved their balance sheets since the onset of the crisis. This is concerning: before the crisis, UK consumers were some of the most indebted in the world, and so have more urgency than most to reduce their indebtedness via deleveraging or default.

But .... household debt to GDP in the UK continues to rise. This is partly a denominator effect, as nominal GDP has fallen in the recession. However, even on a QoQ basis, household debt has barely contracted.

The US consumer, by comparison, is showing much clearer signs of reducing leverage. Over the last 2 years (to Q209), US household debt to GDP has risen by 0.7%-pts, while in the UK the same metric has risen by 4.4%-pts, more than 6 times as much.

#124

• Failed bank: Commerce Bank of SW FL, Fort Myers FL
• Acquiring bank: Central Bank, Stillwater MN
• Vitals: at 8/28, assets of $79.7m, deposits of $76.7m
• DIF damage: $23.6m

Central has been busy. They also acquired the assets of Riverview Community Bank and Jennings State Bank in October, as well as Mainstreet Bank in August.

One wonders where news and approval ratings will be when Bernanke's confirmation comes up for a vote....

I went on record with my Bernanke angst the day said he'd nominate Bernanke for a second term. At that time I qualified my opinion by saying that if Larry Summers was the other option, then I'd settle for BB. But I get the sense that Larry isn't that popular now either, that Washington wants a clean break from Bernanke/Summers/Geithner.

So take a shot on a new Fed chair Mr. President. One who's not afraid to challenge the banks, and run the occasional Fed fire drill.

(Click chart to enlarge in new window)

• -8.6% Mar to Apr
• -7.6% May
• -1.0% June
• -5.1% July
• -3.0% Aug
• -3.9% Sept

Since the peak in October 2007, CRE prices are down 43%.

Residential real estate has been coming back lately, according to the Case-Shiller index. The composite 20 index rose 1.2% in August, after rising 1.7% the month before and 1.4% the month before that.  Again these are month over month changes. The index is still down 11% compared to last year.

There's a lot of skepticism that this indicates we've reached the bottom. Real estate agents will no doubt tell you they have. I doubt many are aware that the GSEs now guarantee a super-majority of all mortgages and that the Fed is printing money to put most of those on its balance sheet. Also ask what they think will happen when the homebuyer tax credit finally goes away next year. Without government support, the housing market wold be a ways down from where we are right now.

As always, keep in mind that the chart above comes with a BIG caveat. The Case-Shiller index is more robust than the Moody's CRE index. The former is based on millions of transactions. In September, there were a total of 363 commercial transactions, valued at $5.1 billion. Of those, 76 totaling $1.1 billion were repeat sales used in calculating the index.

(Click chart to enlarge in new window)

The market for CRE is as cold as ever. Will the Superdome be included in November's data?

John M. Berry, who has covered the economy for four decades for the Washington Post and other publications, is a guest columnist.

Politics is trumping common sense in Congress as Republicans and Democrats keep heaping abuse on the Federal Reserve. As a result, they could end up adopting an unworkable, risky overhaul of financial market regulation. 

Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is leading the parade with his plan to strip the central bank of virtually all its oversight of commercial banks.

  ”I really want the Federal Reserve to get back to its core enterprises,” Dodd said. In recent years, the Fed’s regulation of bank holding companies and consumer lending “was an abysmal failure,” he charged. 
 
No, the Fed didn’t cover itself with glory in some of its regulation and supervision, but neither did any of the other financial regulatory agencies. Moreover, the most serious failures last year involved investment banks overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission, not the Fed.

But there are three more important reasons to keep the Fed in a major role as a regulator of financial institutions.

First, whatever its earlier lapses, once the crisis hit, the central bank kept the U.S. economy from falling into a depression, at times almost single-handed. It did so by using every bit of authority it had to keep the financial system functioning, often over the objections of small-minded politicians who didn’t understand what was at risk. For that alone, the Fed deserves far more praise than condemnation.

Second, it would be much more difficult for the Fed “to get back to its core enterprises” — that is, fostering maximum sustainable employment and stable prices — without the intimate knowledge that policymakers get about conditions in the banking system if the central bank is shut out of continuing oversight of banks. Another such core responsibility is the central bank’s essential function of serving as the financial system’s lender of last resort. Even in normal times, banks turn to the Fed to borrow money on occasion, and the Fed needs to know what shape an institution is in before it lends to it. Second-hand information from another regulator wouldn’t cut it.

Third, Dodd wants to create a single bank regulator, combining the functions of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the state-chartered bank supervisory functions of both the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Fed. The Fed’s bank holding company responsibilities would go there too.

Good luck.

This new agency would have to absorb the bank examiners of all the existing agencies at a time the banking system is still under enormous stress. New lines of authority would have to be developed, and many employees would have to be transferred to new locations. Confusion is far more likely than better regulation and oversight, at least for several years.

If you would like a model, think Department of Homeland Security.

The Obama administration has proposed keeping the Fed in a key role in financial regulation, and the overhaul legislation under consideration in the House Financial Services Committee would preserve a much larger role for the Fed than Dodd’s plan.

But Dodd is up for re-election next year and he is in trouble. So he has chosen the Fed as a whipping boy as seeks to take advantage of public anger over the bailouts of some large financial institutions, and in the process recast himself as a populist after years of defending banks.

Never mind what gets damaged in the process.

Everyone knows that Russia is corrupt, but did you know just how corrupt? The short answer is: more than any other country. That, at least, is the conclusion of a survey just published by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which examines the level of economic crime around the world.

PwC canvassed more than 3,000 companies in 55 countries, 89 of them in Russia. It asked them if they had been the victim of frauds such as embezzlement, bribery and crooked accounting. Russia topped the list, with 71% of respondents reporting at least one instance of fraud during the previous twelve months.

The PwC report makes alarming reading for potential investors. The extent of fraud in Russia is even worse than in Kenya (67%) or South Africa (62%), the next countries down the list. Russia’s score was also far above the global average (30%), as well as the averages for Central and Eastern Europe (34%) and BRIC countries (34%). What’s more, there has been a “shocking” rise in the prevelance of fraud in Russia since the last PwC survey in 2007. 

The report comes just a few days after Transparency International published its annual Corruption Perceptions Index, in which Russia scored lamentably in 146th place, level-pegging with Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone.

As if to ram home the point, the two reports also came the same week that Russian authorities reported an audacious attempt to embezzle $44 million from Russia’s Pensions Fund. (Unlike a similar swindle in March, this one was foiled at the last minute).

The recent surveys illustrate the huge gap that exists between official rhetoric and depressing reality in Russia. During his election campaign last year, President Medvedev made great play of his determination to fight what he called “legal nihilism”. He returned to this theme last week in his annual state-of-the-nation address, garnering rapturous applause with a promise “to sling [corrupt officials] into jail”.

But it’s hardly surprising that these fine-sounding words are met with weary scepticism by both ordinary Russians and foreign investors. Although Medvedev has drafted a package of new laws designed to fight corruption, Russia already has many laws that look wonderful on paper, but are never properly enforced.

Medvedev’s crackdown will in any case remain superficial, unless he also links it with wider democratic reforms, aimed at bolstering independent civil and political institutions capable of keeping the authorities in check. For example, greater public disclosure of information will be useless, unless there is also a strong and independent media, willing to use such information to campaign energetically against bent officials.

That is hardly a description of modern Russia. Even when newspapers do report about corruption – often at great risk to their journalists – the political reaction is usually non-existent. Russia’s most important medium, television, is firmly under state control, ignoring news that might embarrass the authorities. So far, Medvedev has shown no great inclination to break with this tradition.

The second fundamental problem is that Russia’s law enforcement agencies are themselves among the most corrupt institutions in the country, frequently aiding and abetting corporate fraud. A powerful call for action is published today in The Moscow Times by Jamison Firestone, a colleague of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose death in police custody this week has sparked an international outcry.

The need for police reform has become more obvious than ever over recent weeks, after a wave of police whistleblowers took to Youtube. Although Medvedev has acknowledged that there are widespread problems in the law enforcement agencies, he has proposed no serious reforms, calling instead for rigorous “internal investigations”. Such a timid, hands-off approach explains why corruption in Russia is today more rampant than ever.

Fed makes capital foremost concern (Torres/McKee, Bloomberg) With the Fed/Treasury actively engaged in reflating the asset bubble (see next link), it's good to know they're paying attention to capital levels...

With FHA Help, easy loans in expensive areas (Streitfeld, NYT) Anecdotally this is quite scary. Remember a year ago when the size of "conforming" mortgage loans was raised over $700k? That means FHA is backing much larger home purchases (I'd forgotten this when I linked to that article on Toll calling FHA the new subprime). The scary quote (ht CR) comes from some technology guys who went in on a $900k property having been busted just a year ago: “We’re banking on real estate,” said Mr. Kurland, 24. “Everyone expects prices to keep going up.”

Can the postal service be saved? (Montopoli, CBS)

Asia considers capital controls to stem bubble dangers (Adam, Bloomberg) Low rates in the developed world are putting emerging markets in a dangerous position. With no returns available at home, hot money is again flowing East (and South, to Brazil).

SocGen's worst-case debt scenario (Murphy, Alphaville) Good sleuthing from Paul. He has a link to the report that Ambrose Evans Pritchard wrote up. Ambrose embellished a bit. Also the report is over a month old. Still, pessimism porn at its finest.

Texas accidentally bans straight marriage (Spak, Newser) HT Felix.

Satan, the great motivator (Fitzgerald, Boston Globe) "A pair of Harvard researchers recently examined 40 years of data from dozens of countries, trying to sort out the economic impact of religious beliefs or practices. They found that religion has a measurable effect on developing economies - and the most powerful influence relates to how strongly people believe in hell."

College students arrested for not paying tip (Mucha, Philly Inquirer)

Commuter cat star of bus route (BBC)

Nunchuck (imgur)

The Droid, built on Google’s Android mobile operating system, sold 250,000 in its first week on the market. That’s way behind the 1.6 million iPhone 3Gs sold in the first week after its launch, but it’s still enough for Motorola to see possible salvation after years of decline and for Google to feel self-congratulatory about its venture into mobile.

Some of the success of the Droid, and the increasing number of Android-based phones available, can be ascribed to its clean and versatile operating system. Reviewers and users agree that Android still lags the iPhone, but the gap is closing. In contrast, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile has stumbled through numerous iterations — it’s now on version 6.5 — and endless renamings. No one has ever liked it.

 Nokia once ruled the roost with its Symbian-based smartphones, but its market share has been declining steadily. Nokia still sells more mobile phones than anyone else in the world, but Apple — which sold 7 million phones versus 113 million for Nokia in Q3 — astoundingly makes more profit, $1.6 billion on handsets in Q3 this year against $1.1 billion for Nokia.

The operating system alone, however, doesn’t explain the Droid’s initial success, or even the iPhone’s ascendancy. What Apple has done so successfully is build a thriving ecosystem around its product. The various Android-based phones are following the same path. There are now more than 100,000 applications (dubbed apps) for the iPhone, with hundred more appearing every week. As the advertisements tell consumers, there’s an app for that, whether it is timing your cooking for a complicated dinner party, using Facebook, tracking FedEx packages or getting snow reports from ski resorts.

As more apps are developed, there are more and more reasons to buy an iPhone rather than the competitor, the phenomenon economists call network effects. In contrast, there are about 10,000 apps available for Android-based phones. That probably covers the vast bulk of what most users want to do, but the perception is that the iPhone can do much more (hence the Droid’s advertising slogan: Droid Does).

Apps, overwhelmingly built by third-party developers, are nothing new. Apple’s innovative idea was to put an app store on its device, so users could browse, choose and buy apps casually and spontaneously. You didn’t need to search for different vendors, or download apps to your computer for future syncing with your phone. So the ecosystem becomes the phone itself, the app store and the thousands of developers.

But there’s a dilemma with such an ecosystem which is being exposed by the contrast between the iPhone and Android. The differing philosophies pose a choice companies in other fields seeking the benefits of an ecosystem around their products will need to weigh. True ecosystems grow organically, and the process can be messy. One reason why many companies have shied away from encouraging an ecosystem around their products is that coordination and control can be difficult. Apple and Android take radically different approaches.

Apple exercises severe control on what developers can do. Apps go through an opaque, lengthy and at times arbitrary review process before they are accepted into the App Store. Apps can be rejected without explanation. One developer, Rogue Amoeba, says that it took four months to get a bug fix approved for one of its apps. One of the most prominent app developers, Joe Hewitt, who created the Facebook app for the iPhone, recently announced that he was quitting developing for the platform because of Apple’s review process. Another prominent developer, Justin Williams, also stopped his iPhone development, tweeting, “Baseless app rejections, an unsustainable pricing structure, piss-poor developer relations and a blackbox review system. Where do I sign up?”

Android, in contrast, is letting a thousand flowers bloom in its ecosystem. There is no approval system to put your app in the Android Market. That may sound a recipe for chaos and a steady stream of junk apps, but the web is a similarly open and unrestricted. No one can tell a web developer that they can’t launch their new idea, which has led to extraordinary innovation (as well as plenty of junk).There are certainly problems for developers in the Android model, particularly that different handset manufacturers use different versions of the Android system, meaning it’s hard to develop one app that can work across many phones. But the best developers relish the freedom Android provides.

For an ecosystem to succeed it will need the best developers. Apple’s policy of near-tyrannical control ensures certain quality and standards, but it also risks scaring off the best talent.

As always, there are numerous holes in his argument that he chooses to ignore.

1. The chart he uses is the most charitable view of America's public debt burden. It's simply public debt outstanding. This ignores money the government owes itself to fund future benefits. More importantly, it ignores unfunded liabilities. Paul puts debt to GDP at 60%. In reality, public debt is closer to 500%. And that's using 2005 figures.

2. Krugman ignores private debt (household, business, financial) which still stands at a suffocating 300% of GDP according to the latest flow of funds report. If households are drowning in private debt, they can't exactly afford tax increases to pay off more public debt. This is a key argument against those who say that we can borrow more because we have in the past, specifically during the '40s when we were fighting WW2. Yes, public debt was much higher then. But private debt had been virtually wiped out by the Depression. So the total public + private debt burden was far lower than it is today.

(Click chart to enlarge in new window)

Again, the chart above excludes unfunded liabilities. Including them would put the total debt burden closer to 800% of GDP. Truly an astonishing figure.

What bothers me most is how Krugman caricatures the fiscally conservative as Scrooges unconcerned with high unemployment. To the contrary, we see that the root of the employment problem facing the country is debt itself. That's why we find ourselves in this financial crisis.

Digging ourselves a deeper hole means worse unemployment down the road.

But PK needn't take my word for it. He made the argument himself quite cogently back in 2003.