– Peter Morici is a Professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, and former chief economist at the United States International Trade Commission. The views expressed are his own. —

From Berlin to Bangkok, governments are screaming about the falling dollar, because they can no longer rely on reckless American consumers to power their economies.

From the late 1980s to 2007, the global economy enjoyed The Great Moderation-low inflation and sustained growth interrupted by brief recessions. Driving global growth was an eight fold increase in the U.S. trade deficit, facilitated by a doubling of the value of the dollar against other currencies from 1989 to 2002.

Deregulation and new technologies powered U.S. growth, and Americans flush with success bought whatever the world had to sell. However, when imports substantially exceed exports, Americans must consume more than they earn producing good and services, or demand for what they make is inadequate, inventories pile up, and layoffs and recession follow.

From 2003 to 2007, the U.S. trade deficit averaged $665 billion, and Americans massively borrowed from abroad to keep the U.S. economy going. They posted as collateral overvalued homes financed on shaky mortgages. When mortgages failed, banks failed, home prices dropped, and retail sales tanked. The U.S. economy was thrust into the worst recession in 70 years and pulled the rest of the world into crisis.

Imports of oil and consumer goods from China account for the lion share of the U.S. trade deficit. Americans drive big cars powered by thirsty engines. They sit on vast untapped deposits of natural gas but burn too much heating oil in the winter. Simply, conservatives in Congress are unwilling to submit to genuine energy conservation, and liberals teach developing domestic fossil fuels resources is evil.

For nearly two decades, China has maintained an undervalued currency. The Chinese government tightly regulates private trading in the yuan, and each year, purchases more than 400 billion U.S. dollars with newly printed currency to keep the yuan artificially cheap against the dollar. That is 10 percent of China’s GDP and 20 percent of exports to make Chinese goods artificially inexpensive on U.S. store shelves and juice Chinese exports.

China amasses huge trade surpluses that power its impressive growth, and the rest of the world suffers slower growth to compensate. An economic miracle sold to the world as policy genius but really built on currency mercantilism and beggar-thy-neighbor protectionism.

Japan has propped up its economy by purchasing dollars and permitting private investors to borrow yen at near zero interest rates and trade those for dollars-denominated Treasury securities. Now, Tokyo signals it will not let the yen drop much below 90 per dollar when a market equilibrium value would be closer to 80.

Other Asian export powerhouses have practiced variants of the Chinese and Japanese currency model too. It is no wonder the dollar was so strong for so long.

In recent years, private investors have grown wary of massive American borrowing. They have turned to the best substitutes available for the dollar-the euro, yen and gold-and driven up their values and pushed the dollar down against every major currency but the Beijing regulated yuan.

Now, with Americans no longer able to borrow madly to prop up global growth, protests are shouted around the world about a “cheap U.S. dollar.”

The hard facts are the dollar became overvalued earlier in this decade, in no small measure thanks to the currency policies of China and other Asian governments. Now, as private traders flee the dollar, its average value has fallen near the middle of its trading range for the 1990s.

The dollar has fallen too much against the euro and some other currencies, because China, Japan and other Asian exporters have been unwilling, in varying measures, to abandon currency mercantilism and let their currencies rise in value as free markets would require.

If China and others ceased subverting currency markets, the yuan would rise at least 40 percent, other Asian currencies would appreciate too, the U.S. trade deficit would shrink dramatically, and the new demand for American goods would rocket the U.S. economy.

With higher incomes, Americans would need to borrow less, and the global economy could go forward, embracing free trade in goods and currency.

– Peter Morici is a professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland School, and the former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission. The views expressed are his own. –

Healthcare reform is in trouble, because President Obama and congressional leaders are not adequately addressing issues that trouble many Americans.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius caution Americans to ignore terrorist claims about death panels. Reasonable enough—unseemly critics on both the right and the left seek to stir up unwarranted hysteria.

Sebelius defends end of life counseling from physicians as a benefit families need when facing difficult treatment choices for elderly relatives. However, what worries people is such counseling in the context of government rationing.

All health insurers ration care—private insurers in the United States and government-run health services in Canada and Europe face tough choices and limited resources. U.S private insurers generally don’t deny or delay critical care that could cause death—officials implementing such a policy would land in jail.

Foreign public systems are noted for long waits for specialists and critical procedures like hip replacements and bypass surgery. In Sweden, for example, delays result in suffering and deaths that would not occur in the expensive, but more humane, U.S. system. No one is held accountable, the elderly are particularly vulnerable, and that is euthanasia, de facto if not de jure.

President Obama promises Americans they won’t lose private health insurance if they want to keep it. However, legislation moving through the House requires businesses to pay an 8 percent payroll tax if they don’t provide healthcare and creates a government-run alternative to private insurance. Moderate senators would like to create non-profit cooperatives instead but to gain support from liberals in Congress, those non-profits would operate much like government agencies.

It won’t be long before businesses that pay employees an average of $50,000, or even $75,000, annually figure out it would be cheaper and easier to pay the tax than continue providing private insurance. Many people who work in small businesses would be forced by employers to purchase insurance from a government or non-profit agency. Most Americans don’t want to rely on the Post Office or the United Way for their healthcare.

Healthcare costs at least 50 percent more in the United States than in Canada and Western Europe. Important factors include expensive malpractice suits, inefficient insurance company bureaucracies, poor staffing practices and dangerously low standards at many hospitals, and doctor fees and drug prices much higher than abroad.

Early on President Obama gave the tort lawyers a pass, and is busy cutting deals with drug companies and other healthcare businesses that won’t appreciably bring down U.S. costs. That is why his healthcare reform will require $1 trillion in new taxes.

The president promises to soak the rich to raise that cash, but he proposes to tax them for all his other initiatives too. Unless he wants all wealthy Americans to move to Switzerland, that is simply impossible.

Americans are losing patience. They want healthcare fixed but the president is not delivering what they want.

– Peter Morici is a professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland School, and the former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission. The views expressed are his own. –

America’s healthcare system is broken, but President Obama inspires little confidence with his fix.

Healthcare absorbs 18 percent of GDP—about 50 percent more than in other wealthy countries. Prices are too high and are a terrible burden on jobs creation.

Whether Americans continue to pay through private premiums or new taxes, no fix is real without bringing down prices, substantially.

Sadly, Obama’s plan will force Americans to pay even more and chase more jobs abroad.

The U.S. system in unsurpassed in responsiveness—you can see a doctor quickly—but ranks low, internationally, by many other quality measures—infant mortality, life expectancy and preventable deaths. It is burdened by exorbitant drugs prices, doctors that earn twice their Canadian counterparts, higher administrative costs, and a torts system from hell.

Family doctors increasingly act like unionized civil servants—no evening or weekend appointments and closed two hours at lunch. Private insurers and federal agencies encourage doctors to game reimbursement systems, charge well-off patients concierge fees, and send tough decisions to specialists.

Americans subsidize health care globally by paying most of the costs for developing new drugs. Single payers in Canada and elsewhere force drug companies to charge little more than manufacturing and marketing costs, and they must recoup all their development costs by charging Americans oppressive prices.

Unlike U.S. health insurance companies, single payer systems abroad don’t pay executives salaries in the millions, impose multiple systems of private rationing second guessed by buccaneering lawyers, and create massive paperwork burdens to justify high rates.

Americans have created a “competitive market” for private insurance that is less efficient than the French bureaucracy—what a triumph of free enterprise!

The torts system pays lawyers grandly for curing little, and imposes Orwellian decisions on doctors regarding testing, best practices and care for the terminally ill.

Some people can’t afford health care but those are hardly all the 46 million uninsured. Many are poor adults and children who should be enrolled in Medicaid, illegal immigrants, and young workers and rich folks who opt out.

Essentially, President Obama would subsidize health care for those who can’t pay without addressing the perverse incentives for doctors, executive salaries, drug prices and torts abuses that make health care too expensive in the first place.

My very expensive education in economics tells me, when prices are too high for an essential service, subsidizing purchases for those who can’t afford it increases demand and pushes prices up even more.

Americans will be stuck paying both higher health premiums and new taxes.

President Obama promises to lower costs down the road in exchange for new taxes to cover the uninsured today.

Remember Wimpy in Popeye: “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” The children in the theater laughed at the con. Sadly those children are not voting in Congress on Obama’s healthcare plan.

— Peter Morici is a Professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, and former Chief Economist at the United States International Trade Commission. The views expressed are his own. –

On Friday, the Labor Department will report employment data for May. In April, the economy lost 539,000 jobs, and the consensus forecast is for another 550,000 jobs lost in May. My forecast is for a 561,000 loss.

In Friday’s jobs report the key variables to watch are:

Jobs Creation. May 8 the Labor Department reported the economy lost 539,000 payroll jobs in April, down from 699,000 in March. However, a significant part of this improvement was a surge in temporary Census Bureau positions. The private sector still lost more than 600,000 jobs. In recent weeks, new unemployment claims have remained stubbornly above 600 thousand, and my forecast is 561,000 jobs lost in April.

Even if the economic contraction slows in the second and third quarters, job losses above 400,000 appear likely for the next several months. Job losses will top 7 or 8 million before the hemorrhaging ends.

The economy continued to contract at a 5.7 percent annual pace in the first quarter. The numbers would have been much worse but for a January surge in consumer spending.

Weak data for consumer spending and retail sales in February, March and April, notwithstanding, some analysts expect consumer spending to rebound soon.

Through April, the retail sector continued to bleed jobs, but if consumer spending is indeed strengthening, May retail jobs figures should show some leveling and point to recovery.

Unemployment. In April, the unemployment rate, as computed by the Labor Department, was 8.9 percent, and is expected to rise to at least 9.2 percent for May. According to my forecast, unemployment will reach 9.9 percent by the end of 2009.

Since President Bush took office, more adults have chosen not to seek employment owing to worsening labor market conditions. If labor force participation today were at the same level as when President Bush took the helm, the unemployment rate would be about 11 percent. The difference is discouraged workers that have quit looking for work that the Labor Department does not count when computing the unemployment rate. Add in part-time workers who would prefer full-time employment, and the hidden unemployment rate is above 16 percent.

Business vs. Government Payrolls. In April, government employment rose 72,000, as overall payroll jobs contracted 539,000. This indicates the private business economy shed 611,000 jobs.

Construction. In April construction lost 110,000 jobs. Since construction employment peaked in September 2006, the sector has lost 1.4 million jobs.

Those losses indicate the housing recession, credit crisis, high oil prices, and China trade deficit are infecting the long-term growth prospects of the entire U.S. economy. American businesses are simply not hiring or building for the future in the United States, and this bodes poorly for the level of GDP growth in the second half of 2009 and beyond.

Productive assets not put in place during the recession will not be available to produce goods and services after the slump ends. The U.S. economy will be on a permanently lower growth path thanks to mismanagement of the credit crisis, energy policy and trade with China and other Asian developing countries pursuing mercantilism strategies.

Retailing. Retail trade has shed 766,000 jobs since November 2007, and lost 64,000 jobs in March and 47,000 jobs in April. Again look for a jump in retail employment if the recession is ending.

Finance and Insurance. During the economic expansion finance and insurance, along with technology sectors offered some of the best new job opportunities, outside of health care and technology-related activities. Since December 2007, finance and insurance has shed 277,000 jobs, and 25,000 in April alone.

Manufacturing. Over the last 109 months manufacturing has lost 5.2 million jobs. The dollar remains overvalued against the Chinese yuan and other Asian currencies, and the large trade deficit with China and other Asian exporters is a key factor pushing down U.S. manufacturing employment.

To keep the value of the yuan low against the dollar policy, the Chinese government intervenes in currency markets, selling yuan for dollars and other western currencies at a discount from a market determined price. The yuan is at least 40 percent undervalued, and provides a like amount subsidy on Chinese exports into the United States and on Chinese products competing with U.S. exports in China and other markets around the world.

Many U.S. manufacturers find it easier to locate production in China and elsewhere in Asia than to add jobs in the United States to produce goods. U.S. made goods must scale considerable trade barriers and compete against subsidies provided by undervalued currencies in China, India and elsewhere in Asia and regulated fuel prices.

Were the trade deficit cut in half, manufacturing would recoup at least 2 million of the 5.0 million jobs lost since 2000. U.S. GDP growth would be in the range of 3.5 to 4.0 percent a year instead of 2.5 to 3 percent expected as the economy resumes growth in 2010. Real wages would rise briskly.

At his confirmation hearing Treasury Secretary Geithner acknowledged China is manipulating its currency and promised to work toward a realignment of currency values; however, the administration has backed off this position.

President Obama must get behind a policy to reverse the trade imbalance with China, or preside over the wholesale destruction of many more U.S. manufacturing jobs. These losses have little to do with free trade based on comparative advantage. Instead, they derive primarily from currency practices that make Chinese products artificially cheap in U.S. and other markets and Chinese restrictions on imports. These Chinese policies deprive Americans of jobs in industries where they are truly internationally competitive.

In the end, without assertive steps to fix trade with China, as well as fix the banks and curtail oil imports, the Bush years will seem like a walk through the park compared to job and real income losses Americans will suffer during the Obama years.

– Peter Morici is a professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland School, and the former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission. The views expressed are his own. –

American health care is broken.

At 16 percent, the United States spends a much larger share of GDP on health care than Western European economies. Yet the United States has about 45 million uninsured, while its peers do not.

Many Americans between 50 and 65 cling to jobs they don’t want simply to keep health benefits. Their European cohorts are not so constrained.

Simply, European systems ration and control prices more effectively than do U.S. private insurers.

Americans can see a specialist quicker than patients elsewhere; however, U.S. private insurers impose endless paperwork and multiple trips to tawdry, inconvenient locations for blood work, x-rays and other tests that should be conducted simultaneously and under one roof with the specialist.

After your internist finds blood in your urine, it takes many absences from work and visits to moribund waiting rooms to locate the kidney stones, and finally schedule surgery.

In Britain, the National Health Service just makes you wait—it’s cheaper.

Instead of formal rationing, U.S. insurance companies harass patients with processes reminiscent of queuing procedures for a Black Sea vacation in the old Soviet Union. They chisel down physician fees and hospitals stays and lavish the savings on insurance executives who become wealthy in the bargain.

Prescription drugs are another issues altogether—pharmaceutical companies set prices arbitrarily and well beyond the reach of even the tough guys at insurance companies.

President Obama has some good ideas and some bad ones. He proposes a government run program that uninsured Americans may join if they can afford; however, since most of the uninsured can’t pay full price for coverage, he plans to subsidize their membership with tax dollars. In addition, he wants to pay doctors to use computers and software, and establish a national data bank on best medical practices.

Hence, he aims to fix the system by creating a massive new entitlement, subsidizing doctors to buy technologies other businesses already purchase to increase efficiency and profitability, and compile information doctors and insurance companies already collect when they prescribe and approve treatments. Those will drive costs up more than lower them.

Republicans reflexively oppose another government health agency, and this is to the detriment of genuine reform. Medicare has proven more effective at providing doctor and hospital services to the elderly than private-managed-care alternatives.

My plan is simple. Establish an optional plan, similar to Medicare, for Americans between 50 and 65. Let those Americans subscribe, if they choose, by transferring their employers’ payments to that system or keep their existing coverage. That would create needed competition for private insurers and drive down prices, and permit statist Democrats to prove the government can do better or fail.

Require drug companies to charge Americans no more than they charge in the regulated markets of Canada, Britain, France and Germany. Drug prices would rise abroad as those systems would no longer be able to free ride on Americans paying for drug company research, but U.S. prices would fall to a lot less than current levels.

Finally, the government already pays for about 45 percent of U.S. health care. President Obama has promised to weed out waste. Fine—cap spending at its present share of GDP, and find the money there to pay for the uninsured with the savings.

Obama believes in international competition for business—let him show that U.S. government health care can be as efficient as government systems abroad in providing universal coverage.

– Peter Morici is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Business and former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission. The views expressed are his own. —

For every new president, campaign promises and inaugural idealism must give way to the hard choices that measure the mettle of their leadership.

Now Barack Obama must act pragmatically to fix the banks or the economy will sink under their weight.

Banks continue to suffer losses on bonds backed by failing mortgages, credit cards and auto loans, and questionable corporate debt. To assist, the Treasury has used TARP funds to purchase capital in healthy and deeply troubled banks alike; however, no one can calibrate how high bank losses will go, because no one knows how far housing prices will drop and how many loans will ultimately fail.

The Obama Treasury could put a floor under bank losses, through government guarantees on their bonds, or by creating an aggregator bank that purchases those securities from banks altogether.

Guarantees would give the banks profits on bonds whose underlying loans are mostly repaid, and shift to taxpayers losses from those bonds whose loans are mostly not repaid. That would require additional large subsidies from taxpayer to the banks.

An aggregator bank, however, could turn a profit. It could purchase all the commercial banks’ potentially questionable securities, at their current mark to market values, with its own common stock and funds provided by the TARP. Then the aggregator bank could balance profits on those securities whose loans pan out against losses on securities whose loans fail.

An aggregator bank could perform triage on mortgages. It could work out those whose homes can be saved with some adjustments in their loan balances, interest rates and repayment periods; foreclose on mortgages for homeowners who could not meet payments with reasonably concessions; and leave other loans alone.

Commercial banks acting alone cannot accomplish triage as effectively, because individually they can have little effect on how much housing values will fall. In contrast an aggregator bank, holding so many mortgages and working in cooperation with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could have a salutary impact on housing values. It could put some breaks on falling home prices.

Beyond toxic securities, policymakers need to fix what got banks into this mess. The 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall permitted the creation of financial supermarkets, like Citigroup, that combined commercial banks with investment banks, brokerages, and the bizarre universe of hedge and private equity funds.

Those nonbank financial firms are run by salesmen and financial engineers that don’t understand long-term commitments as bankers to borrowers with solid incomes and sound business plans.

Investment bankers, securities dealers and fund managers, essentially, get paid commissions on sales and for betting other peoples’ money on arbitrage opportunities. They put together people that have money with those that need money, and those people that can’t bear risk with those that can.

In contrast, commercial bankers, historically, had skin in the game—bank capital and a fiduciary responsibility to depositors. They were paid salaries, not commissions on the volume of loans they wrote or bought from mortgage brokers to package into bonds. They expected to be fired if their loans prove imprudent.

To investment bankers and securities dealers, it does not matter how risky a loan is, because they can always bundle it into a bond to sell it off or insure it with a swap. That’s nonsense, as we have learned. Adopting that thinking commercial banks got stuck with too many loan-backed bonds and buying swaps that were not backed by adequate assets.

Commercial banks need to be separate and more highly regulated. The ongoing process of breaking up Citigroup and placing its banking activities into a separate entity should be replicated at other Wall Street and large regional banks.

Freed from toxic assets and the complications of affiliations with financial institutions having other agendas, commercial banks could raise new private capital and make new prudent loans as President Obama’s stimulus package lifts consumer spending and business prospects.

Such approaches would disappoint those who champion unbridled free markets but Wall Street’s financiers have abused the opportunities offered them by deregulation to the peril of the nation.

President Obama needs to craft solutions that address the world as he finds it not as intellectuals tell him it should be.

– Peter Morici is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Business and former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission. The views expressed are his own. –

General Motors and Chrysler are on the anvil of history. United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger holds the hammer and will determine whether they emerge more competitive or shattered in pieces and sold to foreign investors.

In December, George W. Bush granted $17.4 billion in temporary loans on the condition those firms convert two-thirds of their debt into equity. Another condition was to persuade the UAW to accept stock for one half of what these companies owe to fund retiree health care and align wages, benefits and work rules with those of the Japanese automakers operating in the United States.

GM and Chrysler must complete these negotiations by March 31 or repay the money and face bankruptcy.

At U.S.-based Toyota factories, workers receive about $25 dollars an hour and good health care benefits. But they don’t retire at 50 after 30 years or get as much time off and huge severance packages. Toyota does not endure the medieval work rules and job classifications imposed by UAW contracts.

Most other Americans would be happy to get Toyota pay, benefits and working conditions. If Gettelfinger continues stubborn resistance to a better package than most Americans enjoy, then Detroit automakers will continue to require government subsidies or not have enough profits to invest and compete in hybrid and other new technologies that will transform personal transportation over the next decade.

Eventually, Washington will tire of their begging, they will march through bankruptcy, and their factories will be sold off to Japanese, Korean, European and Chinese automakers.

If Gettelfinger takes the Toyota package, then Washington should take a hard look at policies that can promote U.S. automaking as effectively as do industrial policies abroad.

This would include addressing undervalued currencies in Asia — currencies kept cheap in foreign exchange markets by government intervention in Japan, China and elsewhere.

Over the last two decades, Japan has kept the yen at least 30 percent undervalued against the dollar, and this provided Toyota with an average subsidy of at least $2,000 on every car it sold in the United States.

Through 2004, the Bank of Japan directly purchased dollars in currency markets to keep the yen undervalued, and since, it accomplished the same by keeping Japanese interest rates very low. This encouraged the so-called “carry trade,” where private investors borrow yen, use those to purchase dollars and then invest in short-term U.S. securities to exploit higher U.S. interest rates.

Now, the Federal Reserve has dramatically reduced U.S. interest rates, and the yen has risen closer to its true market value against the dollar. Japanese officials appear poised to again intervene directly in currency markets to restore Toyota’s unfair advantage, and Washington should take whatever steps are necessary to head off such Japanese protectionism.

In addition, Washington should take assertive steps to encourage production of fuel-efficient vehicles in the U.S. and create a strong export industry.

Washington could offer incentives to car buyers to trade in gas guzzlers for more fuel-efficient vehicles — the newer and the bigger the clunker and the more fuel-efficient the replacement, the more dollars the car buyer would receive if the guzzler is destroyed. This would raise the price carmakers receive from selling more fuel-efficient vehicles and boost car sales.

Washington could provide substantial product development assistance to U.S.-based automakers and suppliers. The latter include Toyota, Nissan and Honda, as well as the Detroit Three, battery makers and other suppliers to accelerate the production of innovative, high-mileage cars.

The condition for assistance would be that beneficiaries do their R&D and first large production runs in the United States, and share their patents at a reasonable cost with other companies manufacturing in the United States. The huge U.S. market would help attract producers from around the world and rejuvenate the U.S. auto supply chain.

Such smart industrial policies would contribute to national efforts to reduce CO2 emissions and reduce oil imports.

Finally, individual Americans should open their minds. Many are considering trading in trucks and SUVs for sedans and are naturally attracted to the Toyota Camry and similar import brands. Visit a Ford or Chevy showroom and test drive a Fusion or Malibu and be pleasantly surprised. Those are high-quality, affordable and reliable vehicles.

Washington is giving Detroit a second chance, and Americans should give its cars a second look.

– Peter Morici is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Business and former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission.  The opinions expressed are his own. —

President Bush has agreed to lend GM and Chrysler $17.4 billion on the condition these firms complete a plan to accomplish financial viability.

The agreements set goals for automakers: converting two-thirds of their debt into equity; paying company stock to fund one half of the Voluntary Employee Benefits Associations, which fund retiree health care benefits and remove these costs from future liabilities; aligning wages, benefits and work rules with U.S. Nissan, Toyota or Honda operations.

These goals are generally consistent with the conditions I outlined as necessary for the Detroit Three to achieve viability when I testified before the Senate Banking Committee on November 18. For example, laid off workers could no longer sit in the Jobs Banks collecting 90 percent of pay and benefits indefinitely and engaging in productive activities like pinochle.

Financial viability requires projecting a positive net present value, taking into account all current and future costs. It does not require a positive cash flow by March 31. In fact, wage and benefit cuts only need be accomplished by December 31, 2009.

Given the depressed auto market, a positive cash flow cannot be accomplished soon, and GM and Chrysler will be asking for more federal loans when they table their plans by March 31. If the auto market stays depressed into 2010, Ford will likely seek assistance. Given the likely duration of the recession, loans of well over $100 billion will be needed. Much of those could prove gifts, with the loans never truly repaid.

Unless the automakers significantly reduce their debt, jettison retiree legacy liabilities, and align wages, benefits, work rules with those of Japanese transplants, they simply cannot hope to be consistently profitable.

Yet, the agreement permits the automakers to vary from those conditions if they can still demonstrate a net positive present value. Enter the accounting magicians.

UAW contracts are exceedingly complex. GM and UAW leaders have mastered obfuscating the consequences of their pay structure and work rules. Calculations of net present value will importantly hinge on forecasts of future car sales and wages paid by Toyota, Nissan and Honda. A few quick pen strokes and a lousy business plan can be made a winner, with costs to taxpayers in unpaid loans only becoming apparent years later.

Barack Obama owes organized labor a huge debt for his November victory. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger can be expected to try to sell Obama labor agreements that appear to create more concessions than are real and leave the Detroit Three in the red going forward.

Fooling Obama would create loans the Detroit Three never can really repay.  The government could force payment at the expense of the next creditors in line—the large U.S. banks—but the federal government is already subsidizing their losses.

One way or the other ordinary citizens who don’t earn nearly the pay and benefits autoworkers receive would be paying taxes to subsidize their rather generous lifestyles, much as taxpayers are financing the bloated bonuses at large New York banks requiring federal dole to stay afloat.

President Bush has punted the auto mess to his successor, and one of three outcomes is possible:

1. President Obama can require the automakers and UAW to come up with a contract ordinary mortals can understand, eliminate all the foolish job classifications and work rules, and establish pay rates that make the Detroit Three competitive.

2. Obama can push the automakers into a prepackaged Chapter 11, perhaps by providing some financing to ensure suppliers are paid and companies can continue to operate, and let a bankruptcy judge impose the essential conditions of the Bush agreement.

3. He can let the Detroit Three continue their profligate behavior, providing subsidies masquerading as loans.

Obama faces the same kind of tough choice Bush did when he lavished generous subsidies on agriculture at the beginning of his presidency. If Obama caves to union pressures and chooses to subsidize the automakers, other unionized industries will line up. Market discipline will not apply to the eight percent of private workforce represented by unions, and damn the majority that really elected him.

For full coverage of the auto industry, click here.

For previous debate entries by Peter Morici, click here.

– Peter Morici is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Business and former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission. The opinions expressed are his own. –

By Peter Morici

The Treasury is injecting another $27 billion into AIG and raising the taxpayers’ investment to $150 billion. Secretary Paulson appears more intent on helping his pals on Wall Street than protecting taxpayer interests.

AIG has solid businesses in industrial, commercial and life insurance, but like a lot of financial firms, was attracted to easy profits writing credit default swaps on mortgage backed bonds—so called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).

AIG received fees to guarantee repayment of those mortgages, or the funds obtained through foreclosures when homeowners defaulted. Like most on Wall Street, AIG executives believed home prices would rise faster than household incomes forever, so these CDOs really bore little risk.

This credit default swap business was outside AIG’s highly-regulated, solid insurance businesses but was backed by the value of those businesses. Essentially, if the CDOs fell too much in value, AIG pledged the value of those businesses.

If an abnormal number of the mortgages failed, the held to maturity value of the CDOs would fall, and obligations would trigger for AIG to post collateral. When that happened in 2007, AIG deposited cash or other liquid assets with the investors holding the CDOs. With the housing market so depressed by the summer of 2007, AIG could not raise enough cash to meet all its obligations.

On September 16, the Federal Reserve provided $85 billion in loans to AIG in exchange for warrants—the right to buy common stock—equal to 79.9 percent of the company.

AIG was to pay 8.5 percent above Libor for the first $85 billion. AIG was to use the loans to honor obligations to holders of the credit default swaps, and AIG was to sell parts of its insurance businesses to repay the loans to the Federal Reserve. That loan proved inadequate, and the Fed advanced another $38 billion on October 9.

The $123 billion was not enough to finance AIG’s short-term credit default swap obligations, and it cannot sell enough pieces of its good insurance businesses to pay back the Federal Reserve in the current environment.

Now, the Federal Reserve and Treasury are agreeing to restructure $60 billion of the original loan, lowering the interest rate to 3 percent above Libor and invest about another $27 billion AIG.

The interest rates on the loans were lowered, in part, because large shareholders complained about heavy handed government action.

The monies will be used to set up two special funds. The first will seek to buy up some of the CDOs that have declined in value for about 50 cents on the dollar, permitting AIG to recoup its collateral paid in cash. This fund will not buy up the most troubled CDOs, whose values are even lower than 50 cents on the dollar.

The second fund will be used to solve liquidity problems at AIG’s securities lending business. It rents securities to short sellers in the stock markets.

This is all folly.

The government assumes greater risks without getting benefits for the taxpayer. Many firms who purchased the original credit default swaps from AIG have used the collateral posted by AIG on the less risky CDOs for other purposes and may not want to sell AIG their CDOs. Also, many of the swaps have been resold to firms that don’t hold the CDOs, as part of complex derivatives transactions.

The short selling business is a whole new headache, and it should make taxpayers ask, what else is lying around at AIG.

If the deal works out, AIG executives get to keep their jobs; but if the plan fails, the U.S. government may get stuck holding the bag on billions of dollars of false promises to pay from AIG. Its warrants may prove not worth very much as AIG’s obligations overwhelm the value of its businesses.

If AIG can’t make it on the money the taxpayers have already apparently squandered, then the Treasury should simply exercise its warrants, take control of AIG, and sell off AIG’s solid insurance businesses for what they are worth. The Treasury can buy back the CDOs for common shares in the company and reorganize the new AIG with more responsible management.

The executives at AIG certainly have not behaved well since the first bailout. They have enjoyed lavish golf retreats in California and luxurious hunting trips in Britain.

While Americans make monthly tax payment to Washington, AIG executives hunt quail on the English countryside.