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Friday, October 31, 2008

"Greenspan's Folly"

Jeff Sachs says that Greenspan's bubbles and the problems they have caused make clear that it's time to abandon "the economic model adopted since president Ronald Reagan came to office in 1981." I think Fed policy contributed to the housing bubble, but I am not convinced it was the primary cause. However, whatever the primary cause of the problems we are experiencing, I have no disagreement with Sach's call for "a new economic strategy":

Greenspan Folly makes room for a new New Deal, by Jeff Sachs, Project Syndicate: This global economic crisis will go down in history as Greenspan’s Folly. This is a crisis made mainly by the US Federal Reserve Board during the period of easy money and financial deregulation from the mid-1990s until today. ...

At the core of the crisis was the run-up in housing and stock prices... Greenspan stoked two bubbles — the Internet bubble of 1998-2001 and the subsequent housing bubble that is now bursting. In both cases, increases in asset values led US households to think that they had become vastly wealthier, tempting them into a massive increase in their borrowing and spending — for houses, automobiles and other consumer durables.

Financial markets were eager to lend to these households, in part because the credit markets were deregulated... This has all come crashing down. ...

The challenge for policymakers is to restore enough confidence that companies can again obtain short-term credit to meet their payrolls and finance their inventories. The next challenge will be to push for a restoration of bank capital so that commercial banks can once again lend for longer-term investments.

But these steps, urgent as they are, will not prevent a recession... The US will be hardest hit, but other countries with recent housing and consumption booms (and now busts) — particularly the UK, Ireland, Australia, Canada and Spain — will be hit as well. Iceland ... now faces national bankruptcy...

It is no coincidence that, with the exception of Spain, all of these countries explicitly adhered to the US philosophy of “free market” and under-regulated financial systems.

Whatever the pain felt in the deregulated Anglo-Saxon-style economies, none of this must inevitably cause a global calamity. I do not see any reason for a global depression, or even a global recession.

Yes, the US will experience a decline..., lowering the rest of the world’s exports to the US. But many other parts of the world will still grow. Many large economies, including China, Germany, Japan and Saudi Arabia, have very large export surpluses and so have been lending to the rest of the world — especially to the US — rather than borrowing.

These countries are flush with cash and not burdened by the collapse of a housing bubble. Although their households have suffered to some extent from the fall in equity prices, they not only can continue to grow, but can also increase their internal demand to offset the decline in exports to the US.

They should now cut taxes, ease domestic credit conditions and increase government investments in roads, power and public housing. They have enough foreign-exchange reserves to avoid the risk of financial instability from increasing their domestic spending — as long as they do it prudently.

As for the US, the current undeniable pain for millions of people, which will grow..., is an opportunity to rethink the economic model adopted since president Ronald Reagan came to office in 1981. Low taxes and deregulation produced a consumer binge that felt good while it lasted, but also produced vast income inequality, a large underclass, heavy foreign borrowing, neglect of the environment and infrastructure, and now a huge financial mess.

The time has come for a new economic strategy — in essence, a new New Deal.

    Posted by on Friday, October 31, 2008 at 12:24 PM in Economics, Financial System, Monetary Policy, Social Insurance | Permalink  TrackBack (0)  Comments (30)

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