Brief Outline of Topics Covered in Lecture 13
Chapter 22 Aggregate Demand and Supply Analysis
- Aggregate supply
- Aggregate supply in the short-run
- Aggregate supply in the long-run
- Equilibrium
- Does the economy self-correct?
Chapter 24 Money and Inflation
- Inflation
- Monetarist view
- Keynesian view
- Supply shocks
- Always a monetary phenomena?
- How does inflationary policy arise?
- Cost push - demand for higher wages
- Demand pull - shooting at the wrong target
- Budget deficits and inflation
Materials from class:
Video:
Additional Reading:
- The Citigroup Bailout (Round-Up of Reactions), Mark Thoma
- Sync, and Swim Together - NYTimes.com
- Toles Skewering Economists - Washington Post
- Carbon, trade policy, and carbon free trade areas - voxeu.org
- Bonfire of sovereign wealth funds? - Brad Setser
- The world’s central banks must buy assets - FT
- Quo vadis Islamic finance? - voxeu.org
- The Short-Selling Question - The Balance Sheet
- Why are we mean to car companies (and nice to the banks)? - Justin Fox
- The Real Great Depression - The Monkey Cage
- Anatomy of a Meltdown - The New Yorker
Application:
James Kwak says the bailout is "Weak, Arbitrary, Incomprehensible." I think he has it right:
Citigroup Bailout: Weak, Arbitrary, Incomprehensible: According to the Wall Street Journal, the deal is done. Here are the terms. In short: (a) Citi gets another $27 billion on the same terms as the first $25 billion, except that the interest rate is now 8% instead of 5%, and there is a cap on dividends of $0.01 per share per quarter; and (b) the government (Treasury, FDIC, Fed) agrees to absorb 90% of losses above $29 billion on a $306 billion slice of Citi’s assets, made up of residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities. (If triggered, some of that guarantee will be provided as a loan from the Fed.) There is also a warrant to buy up to $2.7 billion worth of common stock (I presume) at a staggeringly silly price of $10.61 per share (Citi closed at $3.77 on Friday).
The government (should have) had two goals for this bailout.
First, since everyone assumes Citi is too big to fail, the bailout had to be big enough that it would settle the matter once and for all. Second, it had to define a standard set of terms that other banks could rely on and, more importantly, the market could rely on being there for other banks. This plan fails on both counts.
The arithmetic on this deal doesn’t seem to work for me (feel free to help me out). Citi has over $2 trillion in assets and several hundred billions of dollars in off-balance sheet liabilities. $27 billion is a drop in the bucket. Friedman Billings Ramsey last week estimated that Citi needed $160 billion in new capital. (I’m not sure I agree with the exact number, but that’s the ballpark.) Yes, there is a guarantee on $306 billion in assets (which will not get triggered until that $27 billion is wiped out), but that leaves another $2 trillion in other assets, many of which are not looking particularly healthy. If I’m an investor, I’m thinking that Citi is going to have to come back again for more money.
In addition, the plan is arbitrary and cannot possibly set an expectation for future deals. In particular, by saying that the government will back some of Citi’s assets but not others, it doesn’t even establish a principle that can be followed in future bailouts. In effect, the message to the market was and has been: “We will protect some (unnamed) large banks from failing, but we won’t tell you how and we’ll decide at the last minute.)” As long as that’s the message, investors will continue to worry about all U.S. banks.
The third goal should have been getting a good deal for the U.S. taxpayer, but instead Citi got the same generous terms as the original recapitalization. 8% is still less than the 10% Buffett got from Goldman; a cap on dividends is a nice touch but shouldn’t affect the value of equity any. By refusing to ask for convertible shares, the government achieved its goal of not diluting shareholders and limiting its influence over the bank. And an exercise price of $10.61 for the warrants? It is justified as the average closing price for the preceding 20 days, but basically that amounts to substituting what people really would like to believe the stock is worth for what it really is worth ($3.77).
How does this kind of thing happen? A weekend is really just not that much time to work out a deal. Maybe next time Treasury and the Fed should have a plan before going into the weekend?
