Global capital's songbirds

In the May 26 Financial Times, Jagdish Bhagwati provides a good example of the current argument for open global markets being advanced by the rich and powerful, in the tone of a rational adult reassuring frightened, irresponsible children. The monsters in the closet are growing global inequality and, in wealthier economies, eroding wages for lower-skilled workers. “First, if globalization is not the cause of such ‘wage compression,’” writes Bhagwati, a Columbia University economist, “then the economist must assiduously say so in public.”

That he does not then say so, but take this as a given, may reflect the rarified atmosphere of the Times, from which its columnists view the public. His research shows that trade has “moderated, not accentuated, the decline in wages from technical changes.” In other words, wages for most U.S. workers would have declined even more since the mid-70s, if not for trade liberalization. It’s a corollary to the argument Robert Reich made during the Clinton administration: 1) things in your community are not actually getting worse, even though you think they are; 2) things are not actually getting worse, but if not for so-called “free trade,” they would be; and 3) you are too dumb to understand this, so why don’t you go back to school, get trained for a new job, and then take the job when the new economy finally does come along. Which it has: that’s why things aren’t bad. Even though you still think they are, even though I just explained it to you.

Bhagwati even manages to take a shot at the AFL-CIO, whose “economic advisors” (?!) President Clinton supposedly “coasted along with” instead of confronting, as political leadership should have demanded. I don’t know what country Bhagwati was living in when Clinton pushed through NAFTA; I’ve always suspected the Upper West Side is part of “the other America,” where opening of global markets was designed by well-meaning policy professionals, along with privatization and deregulation, as a sort of public service rather than a strategy for making more money. Clinton didn’t go far enough, the argument goes; he lost his nerve. It’s like Robert Zoellick from the World Bank going around talking about how poor countries should stop trying to control their food supplies, while people are rioting over grain prices.

Why is it that economics professors are always complaining about the unreasonable wage demands of hourly workers, and aren’t bothered by the extraordinary wealth that the policies they espouse create for the richest people? Anything to do with their funding?

I think that Bhagwati is part of a species of academics that the owning class likes to have around. Their job is to provide background music for the policies that have already been decided on, for reasons having to do with return on invested capital. Their music says that the policies are rational, humanitarian, scientific, moral and, anyway, inevitable. Last year’s hit was called “soft power.”

Bhagwati ends his column with an anodyne statement that “the anxiety over wages and jobs is real,” and “requires a holistic revision of our institutional and policy framework.” Too complicated for that day’s column, naturally. That does of prozac for the under- and unemployed will have to wait until the FT brings him out for another song.

Europe swings right

The new mayor of London is most famous for the trip to Africa when he called children “pickaninnies,” but also known for his professed dislike for Islam, city buses, public sector unions, the public sector in general, and other subjects that are more or less major concerns in his new job, you would think. Boris Johnson’s victory came on a day of local council elections that saw a near-collapse of the Labour vote in the UK, with the Conservatives the beneficiaries. It seems like the end of Labour’s mandate.

Johnson isn't as toxic as Gianni Alemanno, the new mayor of Rome, whose supporters celebrated with straight-arm salutes at a victory rally, shocking everyone but Italians. The elections of the conservative and the fascist had some similarities, however, with both winners openly hostile to their cities’ large immigrant populations, to the use of tax for public services, and to the supposedly homogenizing threat of Europe. Their campaigns appealed almost exclusively to the native-born white voters with the notable exception of Rome’s Jewish population. This demographic is shrinking but still in the majority and they are increasingly scared of crime, sick of immigrants, and distrustful of the European Union. Recently they expressed themselves by electing Alemanno, and then attacking Roma (gypsy) camps outside of Rome.

Coming from the U.S., it’s important to keep in mind that our two-party system, for all its faults, tends to keep the lid on most public expression of outright racism and hatred, for what that is worth. In a parliamentary system Ron Paul, David Duke, and their ilk would be representing their own parties instead of the Republicans, who keep guys like that off the stage whenever they can (although they still turn out voters). A scary thought, the GOP moderating someone’s views, but I think it’s true. Wait, both those guys have been elected as Republican candidates. Anyway you get the point.

It is surreal as an American to watch this, partly because my own country’s slide toward fascism has featured the vilification of the sort of multinational, multicultural, funny-talking, French-infused mélange that Europe is supposed to represent. It’s also confusing because Europe seems to kind of work: the euro is killing the dollar, people can take the train anywhere, the food in England and the Netherlands is getting better. But the majority of EU states have not ratified its constitution, which lost referenda in Netherlands and France. The rumored menace of “the Polish plumber” who takes your job by working cheap hasn’t materialized but people are still scared about it. Berlusconi says “we’re all Falange [Franco’s party] now.”

Europe, our best hope, is fragile. The Flems hate the Walloons, the Serbians and the Montenegrans hate the Bosnians, the Albanians hate the Greeks, and then there are the Basques, the RUC, Geert Wilders, Rita Verdonk, and Cyprus. This isn’t like rival football (soccer) fans—they might kill each other. Wait.

“Some will rob you with a six gun, some with a fountain pen.”

Entergy, Inc. is one of the biggest utility companies in the United States, with operations across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. The company was built as a regulated monopoly, with government-guaranteed rates and revenue stream, and ballooned in size during the deregulation of electrical power supply and production that swept across the U.S. in the 1990s. The claims of that initiative sound laughable now—lower rates, more reliable service—but our elected officials said it was just sound public policy. Louisiana’s congressional delegation, J. Bennett Johnston, John Breaux and Billy Tauzin, led the charge.

One of the advantages they claimed for the private sector, its flexibility, has turned out to be true. As we are seeing now with major financial institutions, private businesses always argue for less regulation and smaller government, except when they want a handout. That was the predicament of Entergy after Hurricane Katrina, which forced part of the company—Entergy New Orleans, Inc.—into bankruptcy by barging into the Gulf Coast in 2005.

The rest of Entergy was fine. By operating as a holding company for separately incorporated divisions, the company gets the financial power of a large organization, and its executives get the mega-salaries, but if misfortune strikes they limit the damage by seeking bankruptcy protection, another big government program that wealthy Americans regularly use, and bitch about endlessly when the other 98% of us do.

Anyway, Entergy Inc. decided, probably after a lot of soul searching, that their New Orleans division needed to go on welfare. The company demanded that the state of Louisiana hand over $200 million of its scarce Community Development Block Grant funds, which are allocated by the federal government. The CDBG program was intended to fund things like affordable housing, anti-poverty programs, and infrastructure development, like maybe housing for some of the folks still living in trailers down there, you would presume. But big corporations somehow end up getting their mitts on a lot of the money, even with dedicated public servants like our congressmen minding the store.

Entergy got the money, and Entergy New Orleans was able to emerge from bankruptcy and jack up its rates only moderately in Louisiana, the poorest state in the country, which manages to have lots of oil, several oil refineries, and some of the nation’s highest utility rates. The company’s board of directors and its CEO, Wayne Leonard (photo above), were so happy about the turn of events that they decided they deserved a raise. The company’s recent proxy statement reveals that compensation for the top five executives jumped by 60% in 2007, to $42 million, more than 20% of the CDBG grant. Leonard alone made $26.2 million.

You would think the company might want to keep the relationship between their incredible greed and the public bailout kind of quiet, but there it is, in the 2007 proxy statement’s Compensation Discussion and Analysis: “In assessing individual and management performance overall (with respect to stock option grants and overall compensation), the Committee noted the following significant achievements… Our receipt of authorization for $200 million of community development block grants with $181 million received in 2007.” (Entergy, Inc. DEF-14A 3/19/08)

This makes Barack Obama’s call for a law giving shareholders the right to an advisory vote on executive compensation (which is the law in the UK) seem like a great idea, albeit of the door closing with the horse out the barn variety, closing the door symbolically anyway since it’s only an advisory vote. Shareholders propose resolutions about this every year and the corporations always oppose them. Corporations and their lobbyists are naturally screaming their heads off about Obama’s bill and “big government,” so that is something.

This is deregulation in action. Louisiana citizens can’t look to the public officials who foisted this fucking mess on them for help—Johnston, Breaux and Tauzin are all lobbyists now, when they aren’t busy sitting on corporate boards of directors. Tauzin is on Entergy’s, which paid him $167,777 for his advice and counsel last year.

The last decent president we had

Left to Right: Richard Nicolai, Rosalind Carter, Jimmy Carter, Patricia Nicolai

Almost like they planned it, part 2

I think we should be skeptical about the subprime mortgage crisis, and the subsequent crises it is said to be provoking—credit, banking, confidence, and so on. The paranoid among us, and the non-rich, and the old (almost everybody actually) are always suspicious of these sudden financial panics because somebody like Warren Buffet or Old Man Potter always seems to end up wealthier.

That said, the situation sounds quite bad. The hit to investors, estimated at $70 billion in January, is now thought to be $120 billion or so—about the GDP of a medium sized country (for the Dominican Republic, home country of many of the janitors who clean the bankers’ offices in New York and Boston, it’s only about $85 billion). Last week Germany’s Finance Minister came out of the G7 meeting and said that losses could reach $400 billion. Noriel Roubini says maybe a trillion.

A lot of other shoes are yet to drop—like regulators’ and investors’ who want to know how the banks overlooked such a huge credit risk, and where some of the money went—but the losses already are impressive. Citigroup lost $18 billion, HSBC $17 billion, Merrill Lynch $14 billion, Morgan Stanley $10 billion, and UBS first said $13.5 billion, then $18 billion. Bahrain-based Gulf International Bank lost a billion. Société Général has admitted to €2 billion so far, almost as much as the “rogue trader” cost them. Merrill Lynch lost 42% of its share value. These numbers don’t count the structured investment vehicles that banks sponsored, but say they don’t own, but still maybe have to pay for. That’s how $150 million could turn into a trillion dollars.

The biggest banks in the country are sounding desperate for cash, offering pieces of their institutions to whoever has any. A lot of who has any are the sovereign funds, investment vehicles set up by some nations who aren’t busy giving away all their public wealth, i.e. the U.S. doesn’t have one. Americans who are used to reading (or actually, mostly not reading) about US corporations buying up companies and public facilities in the debt-ridden, desperate global south, are alarmed to see China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates doing the same in New York.

Inevitably the banks have started suing each other, as HSH Nordbank, the German public sector lender, announced it was going after UBS for subprime losses, claiming that the Swiss bank suckered them on a $500 portfolio of collateralized debt obligations.

Not to miss an opportunity to give away our money to the corporate sector, where they will all soon be working, the Bush administration rushed to Congress with an “emergency” package of tax cuts, including $50 billion for business incentives. Because they’re going to invest the money, and create jobs, in American communities, right? After all, it’s a crisis.

Is it? The whole element of surprise was lost on most inner-city communities, where we were concerned for years about subprime lending “loan sharks,” the originators of most of those small loans that got sold, packaged, and re-sold until they were big enough to wreck a few hedge funds. Mortgage defaults and bankruptcies have been rising for years in American cities. Community groups have staged protests at every single one of the banks that were supposedly so stunned by this mess, asking them to be more careful, and fair, with the loans they were making and buying. In 1998 I was part of a group from National People’s Action that demonstrated on the front lawn of Andrew Cuomo, President Clinton’s Secretary of HUD, because he wouldn’t meet with us about subprime loans. Eventually he sent a flunky, who promised she would “look into” the common practice by mortgage bankers of faking assessments on sub-standard houses, so that the FHA would ensure a loan even though it was wildly inflated, and the house needed a new roof or furnace. The scam continued, though, and that federal insurance made a lot of bad loans easier to package and securitize.

Remember Roland Arnall? He was one of George W. Bush’s biggest fundraisers, and also the CEO of a company called Ameriquest Mortgage, which paid a fine of $325 million after all 50 state attorneys general went after the company for deceptive marketing practices. Arnall had to put the thing behind him before heading off to the Netherlands, where he represents Americans as our Ambassador. 30 U.S. states passed laws in the past five years to prohibit the worst abuses of Ameriquest, Countrywide Financial, New Century Financial, and other predatory lenders. How did the banks miss that?

Maybe they didn’t. Take a look at the annual reports, or 10-Ks, of some of the most publicized losers in the subprime crisis. Citigroup, losers of $18 billion, bought nine banks, trading platforms, and financial services companies, and pieces of three others, all over the world, for at least $27 billion. Morgan Stanley, losers of $14 billion, only bought three other banks in the past fiscal year, but paid their CEO, John Mack, $43 million. Sound broke?

But still, the U.S. and Europe are in an economic crisis. Government spending will have to be cut, as we all tighten our belts and help out. More public infrastructure will probably have to be sold, if only we can find buyers, like banks, hedge funds and sovereign funds, maybe. Interest rates are going down, which can be a good thing if you’ve already lent out a lot of money at higher, fixed rates like, say, a lot of banks have. Hey, wait a minute…

In Naomi Klein’s great new book, The Shock Doctrine, she quotes fascist fundamentalist Milton Friedman: “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change.” I don’t mean for this to sound like a some secret conspiracy. They are in charge—it’s policy. Heads up.

Shocked, shocked!

The financial press here has been calling Jérôme Kerviel’s caper at Société Général “the greatest individual fraud in history” (The Guardian) with little apparent irony, at which the British normally excel. Kerviel, a junior trader, secretly entered into a series of derivatives contracts which ended up costing France’s second largest bank €4.9 billion.

The Financial Times even speculated that Kerviel’s actions played a role in the declines of stock prices on Monday in the UK and Europe, which led the US Federal Reserve to cut its interbank rate to ¾ %. On Wednesday, when Société Général finally announced what happened, reporters started looking up his FaceBook page (quickly vacated by his 11 digital “friends,” so much for social networking) and interviewing neighbors and former schoolmates, quoted as saying that Jérôme had been “a serious, helpful teenager,” and a nice neighbor who was kind to their pets, comments which would lead most American readers to suggest digging up his backyard.

All of this took place, of course, in the context of the collapse of investments connected to the sub-prime mortgage industry, in which the world’s biggest banks have already lost $70 billion, and counting. The sub-prime losses are described as a natural disaster—the chief investment strategist for Merrill Lynch (loser of $23 billion) said on January 24, “There appears to be a growing global credit pandemic.” In contrast, Kerviel was a devious mastermind, who France’s top financial regulator called “a genius of fraud”; by Saturday he was in police custody. It’s reminiscent of the scene in Casablanca when Captain Renault exclaims, as he pockets his winnings, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”

What Kerviel did was enter into massive futures derivatives contracts, based on three European stock markets, using his knowledge of the bank’s computer systems to create numerous accounts and raise his trading limit. He then created dummy hedging positions—which the bank uses to protect itself against downside risks of the contracts—so the contracts would appear to be covered, and constantly cancelled and re-opened contracts so his supervisors wouldn’t catch on. By the end of 2007, the bank says he was around €1 billion ahead.

But when the market ran into the sub-prime mess this January, Kerviel had somehow built up positions worth €50 billion, more than SocGen is worth, and was already €1.5 billion in the red by January 19. The bank lost €3.5 billion more on Monday and Tuesday, quickly unwinding the contracts in a falling market. SocGen was not helped by the fact that it, too, has lost another €2 billion betting on sub-prime loans, which they announced on Wednesday. SocGen Chairman Daniel Bouton defended the five days of secrecy about the scandal by saying he needed to protect the bank’s shareholders. Some of those shareholders are now unhappy about being left out of the loop, especially those who bought shares on Monday and Tuesday.

It’s odd, then, that no one seems to connect the larger scandal to the smaller one. The giant bets that SocGen and other banks placed on sub-prime mortgages were not hedged, either. Whether the sub-prime crash contributed to the market losses is not under speculation—the crash caused the losses. UK pension funds are now 10% underfunded. US President Bush is pushing a $150 billion, taxpayer-funded stimulus plan including $50 in business tax breaks, to try and keep the country out of recession.

The usual explanation is that mortgages are safe investments, but it would not have been difficult to find problems with many of the loans packaging by lenders like Countrywide Financial, Armeriquest, and others who caused the crisis by making unwise loans. Community organizations in every U.S. city have been fighting their activities for years; 35 U.S. states have passed legislation, in the absence of federal actions, to regulate companies whose business is little different from loan sharking. Foreclosure rates have been rising since 2004. These were not good investments. How are Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, and SocGen itself not “rogue traders?”

To be fair, there are some major differences between Jérôme Kerviel’s derivatives trading and the investment banks’ gambles on sub-prime loans. First of all, Kerviel was not authorized to make the investments he made. As a junior trader, he made about €100,000 a year and had a trading limit. In contrast, the leaders of the big investment banks are supposed to be experts. Chuck Prince, who led Citigroup to $11 billion losses on sub-prime loans and counting, made $27 million last year.

Second, Kerviel is going to jail. Nobody, as far as I know, is going away for losing billions of pension funds’ money while ratcheting up their salaries. Some CEOs lost their jobs, including Prince, Bear Stearns’ James Cayne, and Merrill’s Stanley O’Neal.

Finally, Kerviel apparently didn’t make any money off his trades, according to SocGen. Even though his crazy scheme was €1 billion ahead in 2007, he didn’t try and cash out. Evidently he did the whole thing for fun. The Wall Street geniuses were more practical. Although the U.S. markets dropped 15% since October, the average trader got a $180,000 bonus this year. Prince, O’Neal, and Cayne walked away with massive severance packages: O’Neal, for example, will pocket another $160 million or so.

Even the sub-prime lenders did OK. Bank of America bought Countrywide Financial, the biggest subprime lender. Former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo lined up a $115 million severance package, including free rides on the company jet and country club fees through 2011. Citigroup was rescued by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, China’s sovereign fund bought a piece of Morgan Stanley, which then helped underwrite a recapitalization for SocGen.

SocGen tracked down Kerviel who had not, as early press reports speculated, fled the country, but was at his brother’s house. The only losers here are the suckers who have their money in a pension fund, or bought a house in the past five years, or actually pay their taxes.

White people are stupid, part 1

In the January 1 New York Times, Adam Cohen's "Editorial Observer" column reviewed the new book by former Republican Party strategist Allen Raymond, "How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative." Raymond was briefly jailed for jamming phone bank lines of five Democratic Party offices and a volunteer fire department in New Hampshire in 2002, when he was working for Senate candidate John Sununu (the Republican won by less than 20,000 votes). Cohen wrote of of Raymond's scheme to defeat a Democratic Congressional incumbent in New Jersey:

"Mr. Raymond's company- in a plan he says he hatched with the challenger's advisers- called liberal Democrats and urged them to vote for the Green Party candidate. Those same advisers, he says, gave Mr. Raymond another assignment: to call white households asking them to vote for the Democrat, using the voice of, as he puts it, a 'ghetto black guy.' He also called union households, using voices with thick Spanish accents."

I assume he doesn't mean Spanish. Why do this kind of stuff? It works.