Close Call

Last Wednesday, Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln took to the Senate floor and delivered about as fiery a speech as you’ll hear in the chamber, at least on the subject of financial reform. “Currently, five of the largest commercial banks account for ninety-seven percent of the [derivatives market],” she said. “That is a huge concentration of economic power, which is why I am in no way surprised that several individuals are seeking to remove it from the bill.”

The “it” these unnamed individuals were bent on removing is a provision Lincoln wrote that would force banks to spin off their derivatives business if they want access to federal deposit insurance and other safeguards. Lincoln stunned the financial world when she unveiled the hawkish proposal last month and promptly pushed it through the Senate Agriculture Committee, which she chairs. (Derivatives are essentially a bet on the direction of financial data, like bond prices and interest rates.)

Economy | The New Republic

Greenspan on Capitol Hot Seat

Former Fed chief Alan Greenspan faced some of the toughest questioning yet about his role in the financial crisis at a hearing Wednesday marked by tense exchanges with a longtime foe. Later in the day, members of the congressionally chartered Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission also ripped Citigroup Inc. executives for their role in the subprime meltdown, where Citigroup was a major casualty. The commission is holding three days of hearings on the evolution of the subprime market. Panel members repeatedly questioned why Mr. Greenspan didn't do more to stem the flow of risky subprime loans, pop the resulting real-estate bubble or prevent use of exotic derivatives to expand the market. Commissioner Brooksley Born, a former federal regulator, said the Fed "utterly failed to prevent the financial crisis." She used the word "fail" nine times in a lengthy series of questions.
"Didn't the Federal Reserve System fail to meet its responsibilities, fail to carry [out] its mandates?" she said.
Commission Chairman Phil Angelides added his own criticisms of the Fed's approach to subprime regulation. "My view is…you could have, you should have, and you didn't," he told Mr. Greenspan.

Report Shows Lehman hide Its Financial Problems

The Wall Street Journal - A scathing report by a U.S. bankruptcy-court examiner investigating the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. blames senior executives and auditor Ernst & Young for serious lapses that led to the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history and the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

In the works for more than a year, and costing more than $30 million, the report by court-appointed examiner Anton Valukas paints the most complete picture yet of the free-wheeling culture inside the 158 year-old firm, whose chief executive Richard S. Fuld Jr. prided himself on his ability to manage market risk.

The document runs thousands of pages and contains fresh allegations. In particular, it alleges that Lehman executives manipulated its balance sheet, withheld information from the board, and inflated the value of toxic real estate assets.

Lehman chose to "disregard or overrule the firm's risk controls on a regular basis,'' even as the credit and real-estate markets were showing signs of strain, the report said.

In one instance from May 2008, a Lehman senior vice president alerted management to potential accounting irregularities, a warning the report says was ignored by Lehman auditors Ernst & Young and never raised with the firm's board.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703625304575115963009594440.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTWhatsNews

Americans Pare Debt

The Wall Street Journal  - U.S. consumers are shedding debt at the fastest rate in more than six decades, largely through a wave of defaults, in a trend that underscores the depth of their financial troubles but could also help clear the way for a stronger economic recovery.

Total U.S. household debt, including mortgages and credit-card balances, fell 1.7% in 2009 to $13.5 trillion, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday—the first annual drop since records began in 1945. The debt amounts to $43,874 per U.S. resident.

The drop reflects the extent to which job losses and a moribund housing market are forcing people to default on mortgages and other obligations, a painful process that has slammed millions of families and hit banks and investors with hundreds of billions of dollars in losses.

At the same time, the defaults are leaving many people with more cash to spend and save, jump-starting the financial rehabilitation, or "deleveraging," that economists see as a crucial prerequisite to robust growth.

The Bankruptcy Boys - Why GOP Won't Help Cut the Deficit

By PAUL KRUGMAN

O.K., the beast is starving. Now what? That’s the question confronting Republicans. But they’re refusing to answer, or even to engage in any serious discussion about what to do.
For readers who don’t know what I’m talking about: ever since Reagan, the G.O.P. has been run by people who want a much smaller government. In the famous words of the activist Grover Norquist, conservatives want to get the government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
But there has always been a political problem with this agenda. Voters may say that they oppose big government, but the programs that actually dominate federal spending — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — are very popular. So how can the public be persuaded to accept large spending cuts?
The conservative answer, which evolved in the late 1970s, would be dubbed “starving the beast” during the Reagan years. The idea — propounded by many members of the conservative intelligentsia, from Alan Greenspan to Irving Kristol — was basically that sympathetic politicians should engage in a game of bait and switch. Rather than proposing unpopular spending cuts, Republicans would push through popular tax cuts, with the deliberate intention of worsening the government’s fiscal position. Spending cuts could then be sold as a necessity rather than a choice, the only way to eliminate an unsustainable budget deficit.
And the deficit came. True, more than half of this year’s budget deficit is the result of the Great Recession, which has both depressed revenues and required a temporary surge in spending to contain the damage. But even when the crisis is over, the budget will remain deeply in the red, largely as a result of Bush-era tax cuts (and Bush-era unfunded wars). And the combination of an aging population and rising medical costs will, unless something is done, lead to explosive debt growth after 2020.
So the beast is starving, as planned. It should be time, then, for conservatives to explain which parts of the beast they want to cut. And President Obama has, in effect, invited them to do just that, by calling for a bipartisan deficit commission.
Many progressives were deeply worried by this proposal, fearing that it would turn into a kind of Trojan horse — in particular, that the commission would end up reviving the long-standing Republican goal of gutting Social Security. But they needn’t have worried: Senate Republicans overwhelmingly voted against legislation that would have created a commission with some actual power, and it is unlikely that anything meaningful will come from the much weaker commission Mr. Obama established by executive order.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/opinion/22krugman.html

One Third U.S. is Now Below the Poverty Line

A new study from the Brookings Institution tells us that the largest and fastest-growing population of poor people in the U.S. is in the suburbs. You don’t hear about this from the politicians who are always so anxious to tell you, in between fund-raisers and photo-ops, what a great job they’re doing. From 2000 to 2008, the number of poor people in the U.S. grew by 5.2 million, reaching nearly 40 million. That represented an increase of 15.4 percent in the poor population, which was more than twice the increase in the population as a whole during that period.

Job losses, stagnant or reduced wages over the past decade, and the loss of home equity when the housing bubble burst have combined to take a horrendous toll on families who thought they had done all the right things and were living the dream. A great deal of that bleeding is in the suburbs. The study, compiled by the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, said, “Suburbs gained more than 2.5 million poor individuals, accounting for almost half of the total increase in the nation’s poor population since 2000.”

Democrats in search of clues as to why voters are unhappy may want to take a look at the report. In 2008, a startling 91.6 million people — more than 30 percent of the entire U.S. population — fell below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, which is a meager $21,834 for a family of four.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/opinion/23herbert.html

Why Health Care Bill Is Good For The Economy

Gloom Spreads on Economy, but GOP Doesn't Gain

Americans are growing increasingly pessimistic about the economy after a mild upswing of attitudes in September. But Republicans haven't been able to profit politically from the economic gloom, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

The survey found a country in a decidedly negative mood, nearly a year after the election of President Barack Obama. For the first time during the Obama presidency, a majority of Americans sees the country as being on the wrong track.

Fifty-eight percent of those polled say the economic slide still has a ways to go, up from 52% in September and back to the level of pessimism expressed in July. Only 29% said the economy had "pretty much hit bottom," down from 35% last month.

But a dark national view of how everybody in Washington is conducting the public's business appears to be preventing Republicans from benefiting from concerns about the direction of the country or the Democrat-led government's handling of the economy, as the minority party often does.

In fact, disapproval of the Republican Party actually has ticked upward, along with the public's general pessimism. Asked which political party should control Congress after next year's midterm elections, Democrats now hold a clear edge over the GOP, 46% to 38%, a month after the Republicans were nearly as popular. In September, the Democratic edge was 43% to 40%.

Mining Companies Hit Wall on Mountaintop Blasting

The Wall Street Journal - WHITESVILLE, W.Va.—The coal-mining industry is trying to regroup in the wake of a move by the Obama administration to curtail mountaintop mining to extract coal.

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency said it was holding up 79 permit applications for mining projects in Central Appalachia due to concerns the projects would damage water quality in nearby streams and violate the Clean Water Act. Another 180 applications are pending.

The companies can resubmit the applications, but uncertainty around permit approval makes planning risky.

"They're trying to find a way to kill us a little bit at a time—death by a thousand cuts," said Michael Snelling, head of surface operations for Richmond, Va.,-based Massey Energy Co., which had five permits delayed by the EPA last week. Mr. Snelling said EPA requirements to protect streams might be too burdensome for other projects.

Mountaintop mining involves blasting off the tops and dumping unused rock and dirt into valleys and streams.

The EPA has long had oversight authority over permits that relate to mining's impact on waterways but has challenged few of them--until this year.

'Fastest Dying Cities' Meet for a Lively Talk

Wall Street Journal - DAYTON, Ohio -- Here's an idea for saving Rust Belt cities: Tell bloggers and radio stations to stop calling your town a basket case.

That was one suggestion from representatives of eight of the 10 cities labeled last year as America's fastest dying. They met at the Dayton Convention Center last weekend to swap ideas about how to halt the long skid that's turned cities like Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo, N.Y., into shorthand for dystopia.

The city representatives lunched on $6 sloppy Joes and commiserated through Power Point strategy sessions: Lure back former residents, entice entrepreneurs and artists, convert blighted pockets into parkland.

What emerged was a sense of desperation over the difficulty of rebounding from both real problems -- declining populations, dwindling tax bases -- and perceived woes.

Valarie McCall expressed frustration at marketing a city that still echoed the image of the polluted Cuyahoga River catching fire. "That was 1969," said Ms. McCall, Cleveland's chief of governmental affairs. "Come on, I wasn't even born then."

Last year, Forbes.com used long-term trends of unemployment, population loss and economic output to devise a list of "America's Fastest Dying Cities." A few months later, Peter Benkendorf was eating chicken tacos when he hatched the idea for the symposium.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125011106498326993.html

Credit Relief May Not Last Long

The New York Times - The experience of being choked to death can concentrate a person’s attention. When the chokehold is removed, a feeling of relief, perhaps even of exhilaration, is to be expected.allowing a person to breathe may not be enough to restore him to health.

In that regard, 2009 is starting to feel a little like 1980.

Then, as in recent months, a sudden credit contraction choked off economic activity. When the credit squeeze eased, a sense of relief spread. Within a few months, consumer confidence leaped amid expectations that both employment and business conditions would soon improve.

The improvement came, but it did not last long.

When the current credit crisis was at its worst, even financially solid companies could not get short-term financing. Banks did not trust one another, and trade financing dried up. One result was a collapse in inventories, as imports sagged even more than final demand.

Now, thanks to government financing of debts as diverse as mortgages and commercial paper, credit is more readily available. That should provide a lift to orders and at least a temporary boost for countries, including China and Germany, that rely on export marketshttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/business/economy/29norris.html

Recession Turns Malls Into Ghost Towns

The Wall Street Journal - CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Malls, those ubiquitous shopping meccas that sprang up in the 1950s, are dwindling in number, with many struggling properties reduced to largely vacant shells.

The long recession is helping to empty out the promenades. Some analysts estimate that the number of so-called "dead malls" -- centers debilitated by anemic sales and high vacancy rates -- will swell to more than 100 by the end of this year.

In the 12 months ended March 31, U.S. malls collectively posted a 6.5% decline in tenants' same-store sales, according to Green Street Advisors Inc., a real-estate research firm. The recent slump was led by an average 7.3% sales drop at Simon Property Group Inc., the operator with the largest number of mall locations.

The industry's woes are worsening. Thinning customer traffic, and subsequent hits to tenants' sales and profits, prompted Standard & Poor's Corp. last month to lower the credit ratings of the department-store sector. That knocked Macy's Inc. and J.C. Penney Co. into junk territory and pushed others deeper into junk. Sears Holdings Corp., a cornerstone tenant at many malls, is expected to close 23 stores this month and next.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124294047987244803.html

Is the U.S. Going Socialist?

Slump Creates Lack of Mobility for Americans

Stranded by the nationwide slump in housing and jobs, fewer Americans are moving, the Census Bureau said Wednesday.

The bureau found that the number of people who changed residences declined to 35.2 million from March 2007 to March 2008, the lowest number since 1962, when the nation had 120 million fewer people.

Experts said the lack of mobility was of concern on two fronts. It suggests that Americans were unable or unwilling to follow any job opportunities that may have existed around the country, as they have in the past. And the lack of movement itself, they said, could have an impact on the economy, reducing the economic activity generated by moves.

Joseph S. Tracy, research director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said the lack of mobility meant less income for movers and the people they employ and less spending on renovation and on durable goods like appliances. But, Dr. Tracy said, the most troubling prospect is that people were no longer able to relocate for work.

“The thing that would be of deeper concern is if job-related moves are getting suppressed and workers are not getting re-sorted to the jobs that best use their skills,” he said. “As the labor market started to improve, if mobility stays low, you can worry about the allocation of workers.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/us/23census.html

Weak Housing Data Has a Bright Spot

The Wall Street Journal - New-home construction in the U.S. fell to a new low last month. But an increase in the construction of single-family homes suggests the slump in home building is drawing to a close.

In April, the pace of construction starts fell to an annual rate of 458,000 new homes, a 12.8% drop from March. That was the lowest level since 1959, when the Commerce Department began tracking the figures.

The decline was wholly the result of a sharp drop in ground-breaking for apartment buildings and other multifamily dwellings. Single-family home construction rose 2.8% to 368,000 in April, after rising slightly in March as well.

The increase in the single-family figures adds to evidence that residential construction has begun to recover. The National Association of Home Builders said Monday that its measure of home-builder sentiment increased for a second month in May. New-home sales appear to be turning upward.

Steve Temkin, owner of T&M Building in Torrington, Conn., has started to see business pick up. After weekends when hardly anyone came by, foot traffic in his model homes is back up, and he just made the first two sales in nearly a year in one of his new projects. To adjust to the weak market, he is building smaller homes starting at about $220,000 -- in places where prices once started at more than $350,000.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124273484528334297.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124272971219434135.html

Home Depot Girds for Continued Weakness

The New York Times - ATLANTA — When the collapse of Lehman Brothers froze the credit markets last September, Carol Tome quickly ordered hundreds of Home Depot’s store managers to transfer all their spare cash to headquarters — literally cleaning out their registers and each store’s safe.

Then Ms. Tome, the chief financial officer, took other emergency steps to make sure Home Depot would not have to borrow another nickel from the nation’s dysfunctional lenders. Within days, she and her boss, Frank Blake, the chairman and chief executive, had slashed capital spending and suspended a stock buy-back program, saving millions of dollars.

“We no longer needed short-term loans to operate,” Ms. Tome said at the time. And that has remained the case.

The era of operating easily on borrowed money is over, at least for now, for businesses as well as consumers. That in turn is changing the way companies operate, with profound effects on the economy. Unable to borrow on favorable terms, many companies have retrenched and some have gone into survival mode. But their caution has costs: Not only could it prolong the recession, but it could put them at a disadvantage to more aggressive competitors when the economy revives.

While Home Depot has emerged from the credit crisis strong enough to borrow at attractive rates now, it has chosen not to do so. Mr. Blake has charted a course away from expansion, one that he holds out as a template for running a big company in postrecession America. In his view, the hard times and the less generous credit are restricting consumption and undermining the corporate expansion that drove economic growth in recent years. The best response, he decided, is to focus on Home Depot’s most profitable core business: the existing retail outlets.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/business/19depot.html

Wall Street Journal Article on Home Depot's Plight: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124272774188334067.html

Economists See Long Road to Recovery

Economists in the latest Wall Street Journal survey see an end to the recession by autumn, but say it will take years for the economy to fully recover.

"In general, I think it will be a subdued recovery," said Paul Kasriel of The Northern Trust Corp.

On average, the 52 economists who participated in the survey project that the recession will end in August. They expect gross domestic product to contract 1.4% at a seasonally adjusted annualized pace in the current quarter, compared with the 6.1% drop recorded in the first quarter. Slow growth is expected to return by the third quarter, with the economy expanding more than 2% in the first half of 2010.

Kelly Evans and Phil Izzo discuss the findings of the latest WSJ economist survey, which found that while economists have stopped being pessimists, some still see at least one more quarter of negative growth.

The survey was conducted before the Commerce Department's report this week that retail sales fell 0.4% in April from the previous month, which left some economists questioning whether consumer spending is ready to rebound. Initial unemployment claims released Thursday brought more gloomy news: Seasonally adjusted claims in the week ended May 9 increased 32,000 to 637,000 from a revised 605,000 in the preceding week. Most of the losses can be chalked up to Chrysler LLC's 27,000 layoffs following its April 30 bankruptcy filing.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124223735808916011.html#mod=testMod

Cargo Ships Treading Water Off Singapore, Waiting for Work

Sunrise in the Strait between Indonesia and Singapore, where 735 cargo ships were gathered Tuesday because of a sharp decline in global exports.
The New York Times - SINGAPORE — To go out in a small boat along Singapore’s coast now is to feel like a mouse tiptoeing through an endless herd of slumbering elephants.

One of the largest fleets of ships ever gathered idles here just outside one of the world’s busiest ports, marooned by the receding tide of global trade. There may be tentative signs of economic recovery in spots around the globe, but few here.

Hundreds of cargo ships — some up to 300,000 tons, with many weighing more than the entire 130-ship Spanish Armada — seem to perch on top of the water rather than in it, their red rudders and bulbous noses, submerged when the vessels are loaded, sticking a dozen feet out of the water.

So many ships have congregated here — 735, according to AIS Live ship tracking service of Lloyd’s Register-Fairplay in Redhill, Britain — that shipping lines are becoming concerned about near misses and collisions in one of the world’s most congested waterways, the straits that separate Malaysia and Singapore from Indonesia.

The root of the problem lies in an unusually steep slump in global trade, confirmed by trade statistics announced on Tuesday.

China said that its exports nose-dived 22.6 percent in April from a year earlier, while the Philippines said that its exports in March were down 30.9 percent from a year earlier. The United States announced on Tuesday that its exports had declined 2.4 percent in March. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/business/global/13ship.html

U.S. Median House Price Declines 14%

The median price for a single-family house fell 14% to $169,000 in the first quarter from a year earlier, the National Association of Realtors reported.

The trade group said first-time home buyers accounted for half of all purchases in the quarter, and many of them zeroed in on foreclosed homes. That dragged down the median, the Realtors said.

The median price for the latest quarter is down 26% from a peak of $227,600 in the third quarter of 2005. The latest median price was down from a year earlier in 134 of the 152 metro areas included in the survey.

The biggest increase was in the Cumberland area of Maryland and West Virginia, where the median price climbed 21% to $114,900. Debbie Grimm, manager of the Long & Foster real-estate brokerage in Cumberland, Md., said the area is attracting retirees and second-home buyers, particularly from Washington and Baltimore.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124217092693512789.html

Retail Sales Post April Decline

The Wall Street Journal - WASHINGTON -- U.S. retail sales fell a second month in a row during April, as job losses and uncertainty about the economy put pressure on spending.

Retail sales decreased by 0.4% compared to the prior month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Economists expected an increase of 0.1%.

Sales in March were revised down, decreasing 1.3% instead of 1.2% as previously reported. Sales rose in January and February, after sliding six straight months.

Separately, U.S. import prices jumped last month by their largest amount in almost one year, reflecting a third-straight increase in oil prices. However, excluding oil, prices actually fell for a ninth-straight month, an indication that the global economic recession continues to take pressure off inflation in the U.S.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124221752934414995.html#mod=testMod