'Mortgage Lending Plunges 95pc as market "Decimated"'Today, in the same paper, the headlines are as follows:
'UK high street banks may benefit from US bailout'
'City has B&B concerns'
'Airbus Launches in China'
'US Markets in Freefall as Bailout Rejected'Why am I giving this list of headlines? The reason quite simply is that, within these headlines are expressions of the roots of the problem. As I viewed the above headlines I came across a quote from Gerard Barker of the Times as follows:
'Banking crash hits Europe as ECB loses traction'
'Banks to absorb B&B losses'
'Benelux states part nationalise Fortis bank'
'If Congress wouldn't listen to Bush and Paulson it might at least listen to the markets'It is a fascinating quote in light of the above headlines, because there is a fundamental disconnect in the thought. Gerard Barker is assuming that the real market is what is happening in Wall Street and the City. He is missing the point entirely. The real market is the market of the day to day decisions and activity of billions of consumers, and endless millions of companies supplying goods and services, and the choice of where real wealth creating capital is allocated. It is they that drive the markets, not Wall Street, and certainly not governments.
The City and Wall Street are just a reflection of the reality of the situation on the ground. The banks are not failing because of the lack of a bailout, but failing because of the damage in the wider economy. Even before the current crisis, the CBI survey of financial institutions in the UK found that the banks were suffering from plunging profits. This is the reality of the crisis, that both consumers and businesses were hurting, and that the result was that the banks were looking at ever more pain as a result. With consumers not borrowing, banks not lending, consumers not spending, and therefore businesses suffering, the banks are in trouble. What that actually means is that, on the ground, away from the world of finance, there are real problems. It is the downward spiral that occurs when the credit ATM shuts down. I have said it before, but the bank balance sheets will be looking ever more ugly as each day goes by, as consumers increase defaults on both mortgage and personal debt, and as commercial debt goes sour.
In other words, there is not some mystical force in Wall Street or the City driving all of this, but fundamental and deep economic problems. If the fundamentals of the economy were good, there would be no banking crisis. Companies would be generating profits, and consumers would not be defaulting on their loans, and the house market would be buoyant.
If we return to the above headlines we can see an illustration of one of the problems in the article that details the opening of an assembly plant in China by Airbus. Such an action would have been encouraged by the Chinese government, as a way of ensuring access to the growing market for aircraft in China. Airbus, in opening such an assembly operation, will ensure that China will emerge as a competitor in aviation in 10 years time. Once embedded in China, the process of sourcing components and parts locally will commence, and local Chinese companies will be taught how to serve the aviation market and, once they have learnt, will expand into broader international markets. As more and more suppliers are able to meet the high standards and technology required to build modern aircraft, the infrastructure will be put in place for a Chinese competitor to emerge. This process has been going on for many years, in many sectors. It is the combination of capital, access to markets, access to technology that I have discussed in my previous posts in the abstract.
This is the reality behind the financial crisis, the emergence of competitors who are taking ever larger shares of world trade. They are producing goods and services in competition with the OECD countries, and they are doing so ever more effectively. For those who still insist that it is just cheap labour, I would suggest that you listen to the following from an Economist report on globalisation (Economist Print Edition, September 20th-26th, 2008, p 12):
'Being Willing to match India's low-cost model was essential, but Mr. Cannon-Brookes insists that IBM's enthusiasm for emerging markets is no longer chiefly about cheap labour [...] Perhaps a bigger attraction now, according to IBM, are the highly skilled people it can find in emerging markets'The reality of the markets is that we in the West have deluded ourselves that we have the better people, the better technology, the better infrastructure. Perhaps we still do, one of the points made in the Economist article, but the speed with which such advantages are diminishing is shocking, and in any case the advantages pertain to an ever smaller part of the market (the part of the market that requires only the highest levels of technology, process and know-how such as aircraft manufacture). In other words, globalisation is setting about a complete restructuring of world markets, and that restructuring is about moving business to any place where there might be any competitive advantage. This again, is the reality of the market.
Every time that a consumer enters a shop to purchase something, they are the drivers of the real market. Every time a business seeks a supplier of a component or service, they are the real market. Every time a company allocates capital, this is the driver of the real market. The financial institutions of Wall Street and the City may imagine they are in the driving seat, but the reality is that they are just responding to each of those tiny market signals. This is not to say that they have no influence, as they allocate the capital that is available, and have allocated it very poorly, leaving insufficient capital for investment in productive activity in the OECD (real wealth generation), but they still are driven by the activities of the real market.
In the current situation, the problem is that they lent to the wrong places, consumer and mortgage debt. They miscalculated, they failed to realise the real source of wealth is in manufacturing products and supplying services to support that wealth generation. They thought that debt = wealth, the fundamental point in 'A Funny View of Wealth'.
The purpose underlying this post is to reiterate that, for all of the excitement about the state of Wall Street and the City, they are really not what matters. If the underlying economy were healthy, then all of the lending to consumers that is driving the banks to bankruptcy would not be going sour. It is the underlying weaknesses, the lack of wealth generation, that means that the debt is going sour.
When we view the world as it is, instead of through the delusional filters with which we have viewed the world, it becomes apparent that the bailouts would never have worked and would just be another burden on economies that were in any case less and less fit to compete. The question that needed to be asked about the bailout is whether it could actually change the underlying reality of the economies that really drive the financial system. In other words, would the bailout do anything to create wealth? At some point wealth must be created to pay back the debt, and the bailout was just transferring debt from one place to another. It was not solving any real problem, but just shifting the problem to another place. The only solution to the real problem is for the OECD countries to respond to the real market, and that market is one in which tough competitors have emerged, and who are fast moving up the value chain.
It is for this reason that in a previous post I call the bailout a 'magic wand'. It is for this reason that I have opposed the bailout. It is just a way of pretending that the real problem is not there, of pretending that the world has not changed. It is just a continuation of the delusion.
No doubt, some readers would have expected me to discuss the events of the last few days. I hope that, having read this, you will see why I have not discussed the blow by blow saga of B&B or Fortis, or the failed bailout. They are events, they are important in their own way, but they are just a reflection of something more important. The market is readjusting, and the banks are just following the 'real' market (or at least the real drivers of the market - individual choices in the selection of goods and services) in the readjustment, albeit accepting that they are one part of that market.
I have had a comment from 'Souza', which questions some of the ideas that I have put forward. I will quote Souza in full, as he puts forward some interesting points:
'Having immigrated from an "emerging economy" to a "rich country" I experienced this phenomenon first-hand, but the explanation always seemed obvious to me: rich countries are rich because of currency imbalances. Much of the wealth of rich countries is founded upon (and funded by) artificial exchange rates. The answer to the "cigarette lighter problem" is that the New Zealand dollar is overvalued against the Chinese yuan by a factor close to the ratio between the prices of the lighter in both countries.He is right to say that the currencies are overvalued. This is a point I have made throughout the posts, and why I predict that the 'rich world' currencies must drop against those of the emerging markets. This represents a real loss of wealth, as the commodities that are purchased will be more expensive, and the goods imported will be more expensive, the holidays that consumers take will be more expensive. A simple and crude way of looking at it is that a consumer will have to work x number of hours more to buy a Japanese branded, manufactured in China, plasma TV than they did before. This is a real loss of wealth. In answer to this point, yes, the currencies will drop, and every individual in the 'rich world' will commensurately poorer. I also agree that currencies are dictated in the long term by supply and demand. A large part of the demand for Western currencies has been driven by demand created by foreign institutions to invest in rich world economies, either to buy companies, or to lend into consumer markets. Now that such demand is falling, there will be ever less demand for the currencies. The currencies will fall. The rich countries (excepting some like Germany) are just not producing enough products that other countries want, and the result is that, without the demand for currencies for (now revealed as foolish) lending into the economies, there is little support for the current value of the currencies.
The fundamental question is not "why the lighter costs more in New Zealand", but rather "why the income of workers in different countries is not commensurate with their productivity". I don't know the exact figures, but I'm quite sure that a convenience store clerk in New Zealand earns at least 10 times more than one in China, despite the fact that the productivity of both workers is roughly the same. As I said, I experienced this first-hand when I moved from one country to another and saw my salary instantly multiplied by 4, despite the fact that I have not become any more productive.
So when you say that "something is very wrong and unbalanced in the world economy", I say "it's the exchange rate, stupid!". (I hope you recognize the "stupid" as an allusion to a commonly used phrase, not an insult). And even though I'm sure there is a lack of balance, I'm not sure it's necessarily wrong, for the simple reason I don't fully understand where it comes from.
The one thing I can be quite sure of is that exchange rates are a matter of supply and demand, so the currencies of rich countries can only become overvalued by creating artificial demand for them. And the most obvious way in which I see this happening is through cultural influence. To take but one example, the fact that Coke is so popular in almost every nation on the planet is highly beneficial to the American economy, but such a high demand for a product with little intrinsic value can only be created by cultural influence. Surely if exposed to it without the accompanying marketing machine, most people would find the taste of Coke between trivial and repugnant (it is, after all, nothing more than water, sugar, and CO2)
This is a complex topic and I have no room to expand on it, so I'll finish with my opinion on the future of the wealth of wealthy countries: there is not much to worry about, things won't change much. The current state of the world's economy is a product of politics and culture, not of worker productivity. A "service economy" is perfectly sustainable for as long as there are far more poor countries in the world than rich ones - a situation not likely to change in any foreseeable future. The most visible result of the "service economy" is that it creates a world market for things people in rich countries are no longer willing to manufacture; things such as cigarette lighters.'
With regards to the salary differentials, that is the underlying point about the 'Cigarette Lighter Problem'. How can this differential be justified? Somewhere in the economy, there needs to be sectors that are generating huge amounts of wealth to pay for the salary differential between the Chinese shop worker and the New Zealand shop worker. Where is this wealth generation coming from. We can look for it, but it is impossible to find such a massive source of wealth (see 'A Funny View of Wealth' for my attempt to find such sources of wealth in the UK). As such, what is paying for the differential? My argument is that it is debt, lending sourced from outside the country, that is paying for a large proportion of the differential.
The Coke example is an interesting one. Coke has many meanings attached to it, not least of which is the association with the US lifestyle, the US dream and US culture. What happens to Coke when the dream goes sour? Coke is a great marketing company, and therefore will probably adapt their image to the changing circumstances, but their value at present is tied up with the culture and values of the US. There still remain in the West many great companies, but these companies are facing ever more, ever better competition. I remember sitting in front of a Unilever executive telling me about the fierceness of competition from local suppliers. Unilever were holding their own, but the battle was tough. Unilever is an example of the very best of Western companies, so what of the weaker companies?
As for the last point made by Souza, I am hoping that the post overall will have answered the suggestion that as long as there are poor countries, the service economy can be sustained.
Anonymous made the following comment (and question):
'I don't know if you are still in China, but I am! I wonder what it would take for all this to start to 'undermine' the Economy here? Is there some event, some process that is unravelling? Elsewhere people have said this is not a 'Global' crisis, just an OECD and particularly US/UK one. To what level might the Euro/GBP actually fall against the Renminbi? You say that is the easiest of the 5 options to be enacted? But would that actually help..and help who?? 'There are many points here, but I will focus on who the devaluation might help. I would not suggest that the devaluation would 'help' anyone. It is a market process that is inevitable, but is not imbued with any intentionality. It is not happening for a purpose, but because market forces seek (again with no intentionality or purposefulness, despite using a verb that suggests otherwise) an equilibrium. The mis-allocation of capital created an imbalance for so long, but eventually the market had to snap back into a balance. In this case the trace balance was pulled out of shape, and the correction is a rectification of this imbalance through currency changes, and the destruction of the value of the Western currencies is the correction.
I hope that the above is clear, as I am somewhat dissatisfied with my own answer here, and am not sure I have expressed it well. Let me know if it does not make sense.
There is much more that could be said in this post, as well as some other comments I would like to respond to. However, time is short, so I hope the other commentators will forgive my lack of response.
I also hope that this post will go some way to directing your attention away from the minutae of events, and help to focus on the bigger picture, which is what really matters.
Are you saying that Wall Street and the USA are not the center of the universe.. How dare you...
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