• Read this interview in the Times of India with Steve Coll, and this Congressional testimony of his. If you haven’t yet read Ghost Wars, you should.
• Vijay Kelkar’s recent speech on privatisation.
• The comments on this blog post are worth reading.
• Sanjeev Sanyal, in Business Standard, summarises our public policy problem: we need to build a strong (i.e. capable) State with a limited mission.
• Joe Leahy, in the Financial Times, has an article titled India: A nation develops about global quality R&D taking place in India. I’m pleased that researchers are being paid salaries large enough to make it easy to relocate to India. Also see David Brooks in the New York Times on Israel’s achievements in this.
• Tamal Bandyopadhyay in Mint on the woes of foreign banks in India.
• Pratip Kar in Business Standard on competition between stock exchanges in India.
• Parth Shah debates Vinod Raina in the Business Standard on private schools.
• Nitin Pai has a response to Barbara Crossette’s diatribe.
• Vikas Bajaj in the New York Times on the literature festival in Jaipur. How civilised. I have long felt that a genuine life of the mind in India is 25 years or more into the future. Maybe that’s being too pessimistic.
• Olivier Coibion and Yuriy Gorodnichenko remind us that we are in the Great Moderation.
• Shai Bernstein, Josh Lerner, Morten Sorensen and Per Stroemberg have an NBER working paper titled Private Equity and Industry Performance . They find that industries where PE funds have invested in the past five years have grown more quickly in productivity and employment.
• Michael Slackman in the New York Times, taking stock of Dubai.
• One of the best blogs that I know of, from India, is `Wanderer’s Eye’, by Aniruddha Dhamorikar. E.g. see his latest post, on a mother wasp. Also see: a great collection of pictures on India.
• In the Hall of Shame of the 25 dirtiest cities of the world, by Forbes magazine, Bombay is at rank 7 and Delhi is at rank 24.
• Watch me talk about the recent RBI credit policy announcement — part 1, part 2.
• Raghuram Rajan has a careful response to the Obama’s proposals, which illuminates my recent writings on this.
• Scott McNealy has a beautiful goodbye note to Sun.
• Chris Anderson has an amazing story in Wired magazine about the new world of `small batch’ manufacturing.
• Miles Corwin has an inspiring story for everyone who wants to be a writer or a journalist. And, for anyone engaged in deep thinking about the media, do not miss this lecture by Alan Rusbridger.

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This doesn’t represent an endorsement by me of Danny Tarkanian nor an endorsement of me by Danny Tarkanian. I invite all candidates to submit a position statement on this issue because I feel it is important.  So far, Team Tark is the only campaign that has responded to my invitation. Below is a statement from U.S. Senate candidate Danny Tarkanian:

Congressional spending and Federal Reserve policy have teamed up to lock the U.S. economy into a downward cycle that may lead to catastrophic failure if left unchecked. Both Congress and the Federal Reserve have taken reckless abandon in their recent attempts to insert the federal government as a solution to the country´s economic woes. Rapid response and common sense solutions are required to counteract these irresponsible practices.

With the increase in federal spending, and the latest passage of a debt ceiling increase by Congress and subsequent signing into law by the White House, interest in investing in U.S. Government securities, like treasury bills, has begun to decline. The increase in deficit spending has created a growing loss of confidence in the government´s ability to repay its loans and threats from credit rating agencies of a potential downgrading of the US’s credit rating. As interest in the bond market decreases, interest rates on bonds automatically increase creating a higher cost to the U.S. government to sell its debt.

The Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy to finance deficits and suppress interest rates indirectly contributes to what is known as the “carry trade” against the U.S. dollar. By borrowing dollars on the assumption that the dollar will decline and then using them to buy commodities, investors reap higher profits when paying back the initially borrowed dollars. With the continued decline in value of the dollar, the incentive to use the carry trade is increased which leads to a growth in speculation that the dollar will continue to be devalued.

Separately, the Federal Reserve is essentially subsidizing financial institutions by setting the benchmark interest rate at 0%. This initially spurred an increase in financial institution investment in treasury bills to shore up their balance sheets – a practice that served as probably the most under the radar bailout packages in federal government history. The ability of financial institutions to take Federal Reserve dollars at 0% interest and invest them in federal treasury notes with a set interest rate, essentially meant that the federal government was simply handing the financial institutions an allowance (or bailout). The Federal Reserve paying interest on bank reserves is not a solution. Not only is borrowing nearly free money from the Fed to then loan funds back to the Fed at a higher rate immoral, this will force up interest rates on treasuries which, ironically, present policy is trying to prevent.

In the case of a 30 year bond, this was 4.7% as of 1/6/09. Whether by design or by accident, this will serve as a creative federal subsidy until, due to a climbing deficit and reduced faith in the government´s credit, these institutions find it too risky to invest in treasury bills and look elsewhere, or the Fed is forced to raise interest rates due to concerns about creating an artificial bubble for the financial industry, or in housing.  Either that, or the Federal Reserve will displace the market and become the exclusive buyer of treasuries.

The irresponsible lending practices of the Federal Reserve and the reckless spending levels of Congress will inflict greater damage than the country would have felt had the housing and financial institutions been allowed to find equilibrium on their own in the first place. The involvement of the federal government hasn´t saved the U.S. economy; it has simply prolonged and likely worsened the pain of the eventual economic reset. A structurally sound financial system shouldn’t need bailouts or rescues. Swift and steady action is required to help brace the country for a potentially worse decline.

Federal spending must be checked and reversed, including a plan to permanently eliminate the deficit and restore faith in the U.S. government´s credit, thus re-establishing confidence in the bond market. The Federal Reserve must also seek to raise interest rates to prevent inflation and offset any potential asset bubble bursting created as a result of the recent 0% interest rate. Entitlement spending must be decreased and non-essential programs phased out in order to help lessen the strain on the federal budget. All of these actions are necessary now to help soften, and potentially prevent, a predicted economic decline within the next 10-20 years.

Danny Tarkanian
Republican Candidate for the United States Senate
Tark2010.org

Here is a very good recent article that dovetails with this issue: Watchdog: Bailouts created more risk in system

I have an article in Financial Express on this today.

We’ve survived 75 years since this was written back in 1935 when lovers of liberty already thought we were doomed.  Are we too far down the road to serfdom or can we still reclaim our nation?

There are two paths to nice cities: to take a messy old city and fix it, or to start from scratch.

The process of solving the problems of an old city is hard. Some cities started over owing to the destruction caused by war, an earthquake, or a great fire. We wouldn’t wish that on any city. So there is going to be no opportunity to start over.

The other strategy consists of building new cities from scratch. This has traditionally been a troublesome problem. Cities like Chandigarh or Brasilia haven’t worked out too well. The designers who dreamed up these cities did not understand the complexities of the genuine urban life.

I don’t know if Bandra-Kurla Complex was intended to be an attempt at urban planning. But if it was, the designers surely knew nothing about what makes a financial centre. All they have there is a few towers housing large corporations. The entire ecosystem of finance – myriad small firms, service providers, even coffee shops – is missing.

There are people who think differently. There is increased confidence these days that it’s possible to start from scratch and build good new cities. In India, the most important experiment of this nature is GIFT, which is near Ahmedabad/Gandhinagar. It will be interesting to see how this works out. Read Greg Lindsay’s article in fastcompany.com on these radical ideas and opportunities.

Another experiment which is taking place in India, with the establishment of a new high-quality city, is Lavasa.

The real challenge is that of going beyond a first sensible urban plan and some sensible urban infrastructure. Once the machine is set in motion, how will it continue to work? It will inevitably run into problems of urban governance. How can we be sure that the problems of governance and elections, where Bombay has failed so badly, will not bedevil Lavasa?

Here again, there is a slow long path and there is an attempt at a short solution. The slow, long path is to undertake deeper reforms. The 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Indian Constitution began that process but a lot more needs to be done.

In China, the biggest cities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongquing) have the status of provinces. This idea, of a `direct-controlled municipality‘ is equivalent to cities like Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, Madras, Bangalore being states who directly elect a state government and directly get Finance Commission funds from the central tax sharing. This would be a big step forward in improving urban governance in these giant cities.

In some countries, governance is so bad that such reforms are inconceivable. Some countries are just not able to figure out how to do urban governance. Paul Romer’s 2nd big idea is: Would it help if a country like Sweden or Canada was given a 50-year lease on a 100 square kilometre block of land, where it would build a high quality city with first world urban governance? He calls this charter cities. I have a blog post which engages in an alternative history on such a theme.

Danny Tarkanian, GOP primary candidate for U.S. Senate in Nevada, will be issuing a statement on economic policy that will appear right here on CE.  From what I can tell, Team Tark “gets it.”

If we continue down the current policy path - with the Fed propping up the bond market through massive Open Market operations – there will be no floor underneath the dollar and no roof on interest rates.  Investors/lenders will be compelled to tack an inflation agio onto interest rates.  The Fed undermines the very bond market that it is trying to prop up in order to hold interest rates artificially low.  The beginning of the end will come when the short-end of the curve collapses even with Fed support.

The real issue isn’t even so much the direction of nominal prices, but what prices would otherwise be absent central bank manipulation.  Prices are not falling to reflect wages, thus curtailing the market from clearing.  The Fed’s efforts to prop up the bond market through more of the same poison that precipitated the illness in the first place has only served to delay the inevitable consequences that must eventually be reckoned with.  By delaying the inevitable, the inevitable will become much worse.

I look forward to posting Team Tark’s position statement.  I also invite every candidate – Sharron Angle, Sue Lowden, et al. - to submit a position statement on economic policy.

Factory orders continued their solid advance in December, up another 1.0% on top of their 1.0 percent gain in November and 0.8% percent gain in October. The advance is strong in durable goods and non-durable goods, both up 1.0%.   Perhaps most encouraging is a capital goods reading that also shows strength in the month. Thursday’s report underscores strong momentum for the manufacturing sector going into the New Year. Additionally, on Monday accelerating momentum was observed in the ISM manufacturing report on business for January.

Shipments also continue to rise — jumping 1.9%, which adds to a 1.6% rise in November and October’s 0.9% gain.

H.R. 627 The Credit Card Act of 2009 is a sweeping reform of credit card law. Many consumers are concerned over how this act will affect their spending capacity throughout the new year. The act is called into effect in February, meaning consumers will have very little time to determine how to use the act to their advantage.

While there are advantages to the consumer in 2010, the act may also adversely affect the economy, according to some analysts. However, conclusions are anything but cut and dried. For those that need a little more information, here are some details about the way the first serious credit card reform in history may affect you—and the economy at large—in 2010 and beyond.

WHAT IS H.R. 627 – THE CREDIT CARD ACT OF 2009

H.R. 3639 The Expedited Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act of 2009, also known as H.R. 627 The Credit CARD Act of 2009, will dramatically affect regulations on credit cards beginning in 2010. The act aims to improve transparency between credit card companies and the American public, many of whom hold credit cards, under what the government calls an “open-end consumer credit plan.”

The act requires first and foremost for credit card companies to give consumers a month and a half (45 days) of notice if any increases in interest rates are going to be enacted. It also gives card owners the right to cancel their credit cards and pay any outstanding balances once these hikes are enacted.

Credit card companies are prohibited from retroactively increasing their interest rates for cardholders in good standing with the company, and the act does not allow credit card companies to arbitrarily change their agreement with cardholders. Finally, the act prevents companies from imposing unfair or excessive fees on cardholders, which will likely effect those with subprime and secured credit cards.

In summary, the bipartisan measure is meant to protect cardholders from unfair or unclear actions on the part of credit card companies and the big banks like Bank of America (BAC), JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Citigroup (C), Wells Fargo (WFC), and etc. along with their nefarious cohort Visa (V).

POSITIVE EFFECTS OF H.R. 627

It is no secret that some credit card companies and big banks have been acting unfairly for years, like Monex, and that the fees they collect from the general public are not clear and reasonable. Unfair fees and interest adjustments have been banned, meaning that consumers will be given information on how credit card companies are changing their terms at least 45 days in advance.

“Overdraft” coverage will also be opt-in instead of opt-out, which means that over limit charges may not be incurred automatically due to consumer unawareness, and that the card may be denied if you are over the limit and this may have a positive effect with credit cards and identification with potential credit report issues.

The terminology of credit card companies must be made clear in advance, with promotions being disclosed in plain and simple language, and terms that do not change during the first year of a contract. Terms of credit cards marketed to youths and college students must be plainly stated by both the company and the university. Finally, fees may not be placed on store credit cards and gift cards which have not been used for a period of time.

NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF H.R. 627

Unfortunately, as with any piece of legislation the CARD act is not without its drawbacks. The reason that companies are able to keep interest rates so low is that they are not accountable to a governing body for the terms of the contracts and promotions that they use to entice customers. Under the credit card act, it is likely that interest rates will rise substantially. This will make new credit cards unobtainable for many individuals with poor or no credit.

No-fee credit cards will likely disappear as a result, and credit score checks, especially on the best credit cards, will probably become stricter, limiting the number of individuals who can apply for new cards. Although many Americans expect a freeze on interest rates until the act takes effect, most credit card companies will continue to raise rates until they are prohibited by law.

The result may be a slowing economy—many individuals expect to buy and borrow on credit; if they cannot, they will not buy at all. Without consumer purchases stimulating economy, the slump could last longer and consumers could end up frustrated with the lack of options. Less spending means less stimulus, and less spending may be the result of the act.  This is a good example of credit contraction.

IMPACT ON BANK EARNINGS

Andrew Martin of The New York Times recently wrote an extremely high quality article about the ginormous fees Visa (V) charges and nefarious practices in the credit card industry between Visa, Mastercard and the banks.  He wrote:

Competition, of course, usually forces prices lower. But for payment networks like Visa and MasterCard, competition in the card business is more about winning over banks that actually issue the cards than consumers who use them. Visa and MasterCard set the fees that merchants must pay the cardholder’s bank. And higher fees mean higher profits for banks, even if it means that merchants shift the cost to consumers.

Seizing on this odd twist, Visa enticed banks to embrace signature debit — the higher-priced method of handling debit cards — and turned over the fees to banks as an incentive to issue more Visa cards. At least initially, MasterCard and other rivals promoted PIN debit instead.

As debit cards became the preferred plastic in American wallets, Visa has turned its attention to PIN debit too and increased its market share even more. And it has succeeded — not by lowering the fees that merchants pay, but often by pushing them up, making its bank customers happier.

In an effort to catch up, MasterCard and other rivals eventually raised fees on debit cards too, sometimes higher than Visa, to try to woo bank customers back.

“What we witnessed was truly a perverse form of competition,” said Ronald Congemi, the former chief executive of Star Systems, one of the regional PIN-based networks that has struggled to compete with Visa. “They competed on the basis of raising prices. What other industry do you know that gets away with that?”

Visa has managed to dominate the debit landscape despite more than a decade of litigation and antitrust investigations into high fees and anticompetitive behavior, including a settlement in 2003 in which Visa paid $2 billion that some predicted would inject more competition into the debit industry.

The Visa, Mastercard and the big banks like Bank of America, Citigroup, etc. are profiting tremendously while charging outrageous fees to merchants and consumers.  The populist call is to “Starve the vampire squids!” and that is precisely what this legislation is intended to do.  But legislation has an interesting way of working unintended consequences.

This act will likely contribute to a decline in fees and profits for the large banks like Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, etc. while also increasing their exposure to credit risk with debtors that are carrying balances and interest rate risk by not being able to maneuver as efficiently in response to interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve.  According to Bloomberg Wells Fargo already raised rates while sacrificing about $1B on a bet that interest rates will rise.

CONCLUSION

The banking industry and credit card companies are facing a public relations nightmare; after all, they get to privatize the gains with massive bonuses while socializing the losses through multi-billion dollar bailouts.  Matt Taibbi described it best:

The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

H.R. 627 and H.R. 3639 are intended to be the Nanny State coddling the American public and protecting them from the evil big banks.  But this type of legislation will most likely have unintended consequences such as raising the cost of credit, decreasing its availability and preventing the savers, not that there are any real savers and producers in the economy anymore as they have all left for Galt’s Gulch, from being able to efficiently allocate their capital to the entrepreneur.

While I am no fan of the big banks and their vampire squid blood funnel there is an easier way to blunt their beak and starve them while at the same time providing a sound foundation for the American economy: buy gold, silver or platinum, use them as currency and pass H.R. 4248 The Free Competition In Currency Act of 2009 which would repeal the capital gains on the precious metals that is the major deterrent to their circulating as currency in ordinary daily transactions.

DISCLOSURES: Long physical gold and silver with no interest in BAC, JPM, WFC, C, V or the problematic SLV, Streettracks Gold ETF Trust Shares or the platinum ETFs.

Pamela over at Atlas Shrugs has been doing an exceptional job exposing the Jihad bailout of AIG.  To go along with being a terrible hedge fund manager in AIGFP, it just so happens that “AIG was (and still is) the world leader in promoting Sharia-compliant insurance products.”  The problem?  As noted in the press release on attorney David Yerushalmi’s site, “By propping up AIG with tax payer funds, the U.S. government is directly and indirectly promoting Islam and, more troubling, Sharia.“  The crux of the court case is below:

David Yerushalmi, who is co-counsel with Robert Muise, laid out the grounds for the motion:

At the time of the takeover decision, Secretary Geithner was the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and he was the leading advocate of the AIG takeover. Moreover, he designed how the U.S. government would not only bail out AIG with taxpayer dollars, but how the government would illegally take control of 80% of the voting shares through what was patently an illegal and invalid trust arrangement. It is apparent from the discovery we’ve conducted to date that this was done purposefully and with an intent to conceal the illegal takeover with a fraudulent trust.

Attorneys Yerushalmi and Muise want to ask Secretary Geithner:

· Why he forced AIG to take on so much debt that AIG’s credit rating, already in peril, was sure to collapse without yet additional government funds, essentially guaranteeing AIG would remain a ward of the state?
· Why he imposed such Draconian terms on AIG that there was no way it could survive without additional billions from U.S. taxpayers?
· Why he then used AIG to secretly funnel 100% payoffs to AIG’s counterparties, including his colleagues and friends at Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and the European giant, Société Générale.  In other words, why did Geithner decide to destroy AIG’s chances of survival as a private entity while surreptitiously saving and preserving private ownership of other domestic and foreign financial companies? And,
· Why he took control of 80% of AIG’s voting shares without legal authority to do so and used a fraudulent trust arrangement to conceal the illegal takeover?

For more on the matter check out (via Big Government) this transcript from 2008 in which Yerushalmi gives a detailed explanation on the problems regarding taxpayer dollars and Shariah and this interview from yesterday between Frank Gaffney and Yerushalmi on this landmark case of Murray v. Geithner.

On Shariah, Yerushalmi’s moral if not legal argument is well taken:

FrontPage Mag: Why do we care if AIG is offering a Muslim-friendly insurance product as just another way to make money even if the USG is now a shareholder? Doesn’t the USG invest in other companies that might offer religious consumers unique products? For example, what if the USG invests federal employee pension plan funds in a company that publishes books, including a line of religious books?

Yerushalmi: We should care a great deal. First, when the USG invests federal employee pension plans it is acting as an employer, not a government agency per se. In fact, the investment has nothing to do with the government’s tax and spending authority. Second, the investment in such plans is generally through an intermediary investment fund which in turn only invests passively and through minority holdings. In this case, we have the USG acting not as an employer but expressly through its tax and spending authority and taking an absolute controlling position. AIG is in effect nationalized. It is a government company.

But, beyond these strictly legal arguments, there is an overarching concern. Can it really be the case that we want the USG involved in a theologically based legal doctrine that calls for our conversion, subjugation or murder? Have we abdicated even the rudiments of good sense in the name of a PC-driven, non-judgmental multi-culturalism? If we have, we have abdicated our very right to exist as a nation.