by Linda Beale

JCT scoring of Obama budget; Senate vote on extending temporary tax breaks

Harry Reid's office announced that the final vote on the "American Workers, State, and Business Relief Act of 2010 (HR 4213), which will extend $31 billion in temporary tax breaks will take place on Wednesday Mar 10 (at the request of the GOP). The Senators voted today to cut off debate (66-34) and let the vote take place. (Rdan...the bill passed 62-35)

The JCT's "estimated Revenue Effects of the Revenue Provisions Contained in the President's Fiscal Year 2011 Budget (JCX-7-10) is up on the committee's website, with some pretty amazing figures that should convince every single blue dog Democrat and "fiscally conservative" Republican (if there really are any of that nature) that the best thing to do for the country would be to let the Bush-era tax cuts slide into permanent oblivion as they are slated to do under current law. Extending those tax cuts for ten years will cost a whopping $2.5 trillion. Those cuts include:

$238 billion to maintain very low capital gains and divdiends rates (mostly of value to wealthy who receive most of the capital income);

$25.6 billion to maintain the increased "expensing" under section 179 (purported to stimulate growth, but amounting to a huge business tax cut that does not make sense under the income tax and does nothing to cause more investment, since businesses will just get the expensing cut for equipment they'd buy anyway)

more than $1.7 trillion to maintain the lower individual income tax brackets

$359 billion for extension of the child tax credit, refundability and AMT rules
$359 billion for so-called "marriage penalty relief"
$18.4 billion for education incentives

$253 billion for extate tax revisions (extending the 2009 law that permits estates of $10 million to be passed tax free and taxes even multibillionaire estates at only 35% on the amount above the exempted amount)

Everything else in the bill is almost small-change by comparison. Indexing the AMT, though, is more than half a trillion--and again, that goes primarily to the upper crust (though not the very wealthiest, who still pay regular tax instead of AMT)--those with $200-500 thousand in income a year. Hard to justify paying through the nose to give tax breaks to the upper crust, while the same people that pushed these 2001-2003 tax cuts through continue to say that absolutely necessary health care reform is "too costly." because of the creation of deficits. That's hypocrisy, folks.

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by Linda Beale

The Chicago School--why does anybody still listen to it?
I have frequently written here about the problems of "freshwater" economics--the school personified by Milt Friedman and the extremist "free market" ideology that views government as the enemy, the "markets" as always right, and any public role in economic development as "socialism". As I've noted, this ideology misses many points about the role of government in creating a space where markets can function as they should and where individuals can have maximal personal liberty while pursuing better lives and respecting a societal decision that valuing each individual means allocating society's resources in ways that support, rather than brutalize, those at the bottom.

The Nieman Foundation, connected with Harvard's journalism school, has an interesting watchdog website that includes a number of controversial articles raising questions about the way today's media tend to accept without questioning the "received wisdom" of the past (including the ideological views of the "free market" right). As part of a series on the economic collapse, the site includes an article by Henry Banta (a partner at Lobel, Novins & Lamont) noting the consensus developing among a small but diverse group of economists, professors, and those interested in how the economy works about the failure of efficient market theory. That's a post worth reading, since it focuses on this issue. (My posts, perhaps to readers' chagrin, tend to throw these criticisms in as asides in the course of analyzing one position or another being put forrward unthinkingly by proponents of that theory.). Enjoy. Henry Banta, Republicans are locked in a passionate embrace with a corpse and won't let go, Nieman Watchdog, Feb. 11, 2010.

crossposted with ataxingmatter

Today I was thinking about tightening cycles in emerging markets; and more specifically, about that in China. Because let’s face it, China matters. China matters to the rest of Asia via competition for export income. China matters to Europe via competition for jobs. China matters to Brazil via domestic production via imports. China matters.

The inflation pressures are building in key emerging economies, especially in the BIICs (Brazil, India, Indonesia, and China) – see this previous post regarding my new acronym, and this article at the Curious Capitalist (curiously posted just shortly after my post), which leaves my omitted “R” but relays the intuition behind the second “I”.

Although the inflation is not prevalent in any BIIC except India, really, I wanted to comment about why it will build…quickly.

First round, the construction of consumer prices is heavily weighted toward food and energy costs across the BIICs. Indonesia, India, and China are highly susceptible to food price shocks (either driven by shortages or demand growth). Expect this as a first-round driver of inflation as the global economy recovers further. It’s already happening.

Second round, the BIICs are growing quickly and nearing, or are already at, potential. Annual industrial production growth has recovered or surpassed its pre-crisis rate in China, Brazil, and India, 19%, 16%, and 17%, respectively. This is expected, given the drop-off in world trade (an illustration can be found from this May 2009 pos), but unsustainable as the output gap closes.

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This is a guest contribution by Marshall Auerback, Braintruster at the New Deal 2.0

by Marshall Auerback

A new book by Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, "This Time It's Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Follies", has occasioned much comment in the press and blogosphere (see here and here)

The book purports to show that once the gross debt to GDP ratio crosses the threshold of 90%, economic growth slows dramatically.

But that's too simplistic: a ratio is just a number. Debt to GDP is a ratio and the ratio value is a function of both the numerator and denominator. The ratio can rise as a function of either an increase in debt or a decrease in GDP. So to blindly take a number, say, 90% debt to GDP as Rogoff and Reinhart have done in their recent work, is unduly simplistic. It appears that they looked at the ratio, assumed that its rise was due to an increase in debt, and then looked at GDP growth from that period forward assuming that weakness was caused by debt instead of that the rise in the ratio was caused by economic weakness. In other words, they have the causation backwards: Deficits go up as growth slows due to the automatic countercyclical stabilizers.They don't cause the slow down, etc.

After the Second World War, the debt ratio came down rather rapidly—mostly not due to budget surpluses and debt retirement but rather due to rapid growth that raised the denominator of the debt ratio. By contrast, slower economic growth post 1973, accompanied by budget deficits, led to slow growth of the debt ratio until the Clinton boom (that saw growth return nearly to golden age rates) and budget surpluses lowered the ratio.

From 1991 through 2001 the growth of government debt had been falling and since then rising most recently at a faster pace. The raw data comes courtesy of the St. Louis Fed (and attached spreadsheet).

The Ratio of the rates of change of Debt / GDP is rising faster than the change in Debt indicating that both the increase in Debt and the fall in GDP are contributing to a rising Debt / GDP ratio. For policy makers who obsess about a rising Debt / GDP ratio, they fail to understand that austerity measures that cut GDP growth will cause a rise in the Debt to GDP ratio. Basically, it boils down to this simple observation: it is foolish, dangerous, and thoroughly counterproductive to treat fiscal balances in isolation. In particular, setting a fiscal deficit to GDP target equal to expected long run real GDP growth in order to hold public debt/GDP ratios at a completely arbitrary (indeed, literally pulled out of thin air) public debt to GDP ratio without for a moment considering what the means for the feasible range of current account and domestic private sector financial balance is utterly nonsensensical.

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by Linda Beale

Banking Matters--Bing's Views

The Bing Blog is one of those well-written something about everything we've all thought about blogs that everybody should read at least every once in a while. So let me suggest a proper post for your introduction, if you haven't looked there before. It's a list of suggestions for what every bank ought to do. I doubt if there's a soul amongst us who would disagree with any of them--except, perhaps, the bank personnel and especially managers who put the current rules into place. See The Bing Blog, New Banking Rules We'd Like to See, Mar. 2, 2010.

Here's a sample of the new rules suggested:

I’d like there to be a rule that the bonuses a bank pays to its top 10 executives cannot exceed its profits.

(Beale here again) I could add a bunch, but one of the obvious ones Bing leaves out is: "no bank can send out a statement changing its rules to provide even higher fees and service charges in which it touts the rules as though they are for the client's benefit while setting them to work in ways that will inevitably lead to more profits for the banks."
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crossposted with ataxingmetter

(Rdan here...as we develop thought on economic issues facing us today, a nod to excellent writing in the past is important. Newcomers need to know past wisdom exists, and readers of five years ago can use this wisdom again as we visit today's trends in the knowledge of predictions 2003-2005. I also have been reviewing PGL's and Calculated Risk's posts here at Angry Bear.)

Are Earnings Rising or Stagnant? Published June, 2005 by Kash

This question is not as easy to answer as it may first appear. In working on various posts last week I came across an apparent contradiction in the official data on compensation: some series show it rising in real terms, while others show it barely able to keep up with inflation. This discrepancy was also noted by a few readers, who deserve credit for their sharp eyes.

So I thought I’d take a bit of time to sort out these conflicting data series for myself. Here’s what I found. (A warning and apology here: what follows is a relatively econ-geeky post about data details that many may find uninteresting... and I won't be offended if you stop reading here.)

There are three major sources for time series data on earnings: “Hourly Compensation,” from the BLS’s Productivity and Costs (P&C) dataset; the Employment Cost Index (ECI), which provides compensation series broken into the two sub-categories of wage/salary earnings and benefits; and the “Average Hourly Earnings” provided in the monthly employment report as part of the Current Employment Statistics (CES). The following two charts show the behavior of these different series since 1990. All series express hourly compensation rates in real terms.

Note: all series are expressed in real (inflation-adjusted) terms using the PCE deflator.

What explains the sometimes substantial differences between these series? There are several factors that contribute to the discrepancies, but let me point out the most important ones. (For a more complete description of their differences see this paper by Joseph Meisenheimer in the May 2005 issue of the Monthly Labor Review.)

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by cactus

A NonReview of Yves Smith's Econned, Plus Some Questions About Selling Books

I've been swamped - a lot of work at work, deadlines for my book (more on that below), and family issues to contend with so for the past few weeks I've been cooped up with zero downtime. Friday I managed to crawl out of my hole... at least for the time being. I remembered that Yves Smith's book, Econned, was due out. Yves' blog, Naked Capitalism is one of my daily reads and I've been looking forward to her take on the whole Great Recession.

Long story short, I visited two bookstores - both had sold out. I placed an order for the book at Barnes and Noble and was told it would be available this week.

All that is a good sign for Yves Smith, and I wish her well. But I was wondering... what can one do to make one's book more likely to do well? Obviously, with a book coming out later this year - in August - its something I have an interest in knowing. (The book is already for sale at some online locations. Here's the Amazon link to the book. As an FYI, given how little the bio of me is, there's a surprising amount that's incorrect.)

The book is - we think - a bit unique. We looked at a how a large number of issues - from abortion to crime to the economy - evolved over the length over each administration from Ike to GW. (In a few instances, where the data is reliable, we go back to Hoover.) And we let the data speak, as regular readers can imagine from the posts I've written. I'll give you an example - my own political views, as one can imagine from the fact that I occasionally post at Angry Bear, are generally slightly left of center. And when this project started some years ago, I hewed closely to what one might term a slightly left of center view on crime, namely that the way to reduce crime is to focus more on rehabilitation. But the data shows that the Presidents under whom crime fell by the most were the ones who, once you account for demographics, put cops on the street, locked people up, and threw away the key. And that is precisely what we show.

I'm not sure I'm happy that the results on crime are what they are. Philosophically, I'd be a lot more comfortable being able to state that we should spend more time and effort and resources on rehabilitation relative to punishment, but the data shows what it shows. And my comfort level, frankly, is irrelevant, when it comes to determining what reduces crime. And the one thing my co-author and I agreed on from the start was that we would post the data (in a nice graphical format thanks to Nigel Holmes, a brilliant artist the publishing company hired to make our graphs look nice), whatever it showed.

Now, that is going to cause a major problem. See, on some issues, there doesn't seem to be much of a relationship between a governing philosophy and outcomes. For instance, stock market performance seems to be unrelated to the president's party, or even to how well the economy did. But (its not exactly a surprise to readers of this blog) on a lot of issues, particularly the economic ones, Democrats tend to outperform Republicans. And we think we're able to nail the cause of this disparity. We also feel we're able to do a good job of showing that the cause is related specifically to the occupant of the White House, as opposed to, say, Congress, God's will, the public's voting patterns, or whatever else.

And as regular readers know, stating that politicians that followed a certain policy produced better economic outcomes than politicians who followed the opposite policies seems to leads to uncomfortable conclusions for some people. As uncomfortable, for instance, as my epiphany on looking at the data on crime. But some people simply refuse to give up cherished beliefs. Its easier to attack the messenger. So though we call it like it is, and we call it for Republicans when Republicans have the better argument, I have zero doubt whatsoever that our book is going to labeled "liberal." Which is a pity, because the book is not intended to cheerlead. In fact, its intended to poke and prod both sides into keeping what works from their side and giving up what doesn't.

OK. So there it is. That's what the book is about. How do we sell it? Anyone have concrete ideas? Bear in mind, this has to be something we can do. People always tell me to go on the Daily Show or some similar program. I don't exactly have any media exposure (my co-author does), but I'd love to do it. However, there are a lot of people trying to go on TV to peddle their wares or their opinion. Heck, even people who know they're going to get publicly humiliated by Jon Stewart show up with big smiles on their face. And my guess is that a lot of people think, like I do, that they have something unique that can change the world if word gets out. So what do I do from here?

A few minor steps I've taken...
1. I took out websites in my name and the book's name. What should go on them at this time?
2. I took out twitter accounts in my name the book's name. I've never used twitter before in my life. What do I do with these now?
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by cactus

The Fed of San Francisco just published a note on Okun's Law and the Unemployment Surprise of 2009.

In the paper they conclude that strong productivity was the main reason employment growth was weaker than the traditional relationship that Okun's law implied.

Of course, we at Angry Bear have long known this. I have published this chart that shows that roughly before 1974 that a one percentage point growth in real GDP generated a 0.3 percentage point growth in employment. This is what Okun's law is based on. But during the era of low productivity growth, 1974 to 1995 a percentage point growth in real GDP generated almost a 0.5 percentage growth in employment.

But since productivity growth rebounded in 1995, every percent increase in real GPD was accompanied by almost a 0.9% gain in productivity so that employment barely rose 0.1% -- a significantly lower rate than Okun thought.



The data in the chart is the long term trend and ignores the cyclical pattern in productivity where productivity growth peaks in a recession or early recovery period and slows as the expansion continues. That is why productivity growth has long been widely considered a leading indicator. It is also why you get patterns such as the San Francisco Fed found for 2009, and why we now seem to have jobless recoveries.