Streetwise Professor

Venezuela’s economic and social collapse brings out the most idiotic “reporting” and commentary from the mainstream media. They are desperate to explain away the catastrophic failure of an avowedly socialist polity. They are also eager to recruit the country’s crisis to advance other progressive agendas, most notably climate change.

I thought I had read peak Venezuela stupid earlier this week in an Bloomberg article. (More on that below.) But I now know that I have seen peak stupid, because nothing can be more idiotic than this from a New York Times reporter:

And there’s no way that the Venezuelan government could print that much money to keep up with inflation. So what happens – they don’t. And there’s not enough money. There’s a shortage of money, just like there’s a shortage of electricity and water. It means, you know, paying for things and doing everything in your day-to-day life has become very, very challenging.

Hilarious! Who knew that hyperinflation occurs because the there’s “a shortage of money”?

This is New York Times economics “thinking” in a nutshell: that is, 180 degrees from reality.

News for Mr. Casey, courtesy of Milton Friedman: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”

The corollary is that hyperinflation can be produced only by an extremely more rapid increase in the quantity of money.

Boy, I guess money was really short in Zimbabwe a few years ago (inflation rate 79.6 billion percent in 2008–Venezuela has some catching up to do!)

The rest of the interview with Mr. Casey proves that he is not short of economic comedy gold. John Hinderaker at Powerline has deconstructed it thoroughly, so I don’t have to. The implication is blindingly obvious: anyone who relies on the NYT for economic insight can find it only if they follow one rule: conclude the opposite of everything the Timesman (or -woman) says.

One would hope for better from Bloomberg (its Twitter handle is @business, after all), but one would be disappointed. For while the NYT tells you that hyperinflation in Venezuela is due to the lack of printing press capacity, Bloomberg tells you that the crisis is due to the “wilting away of the state.” (Wait–Marx told me that was a feature, not a bug! WTF?)

Yes, the Venezuelan state is collapsing. But it is collapsing not because of climate change or other factors beyond its control. It is collapsing because its previous hyperactivity wrecked the economy and destroyed civil society. Perhaps the adverse consequences of the drought was the death knell, but that was only possible because Chavism had already undermined society’s capacity to absorb another shock. It’s like blaming pneumonia for the death of an AIDS victim. Yeah, it’s what killed him, but it wouldn’t have killed him if his immune system hadn’t already been ravaged.

This attempt to blame Venezuela’s crisis (and Syria’s–the article is a twofer!) on climate change is beyond annoying because it fails to identify honestly the source of the state’s “lack of adaptive capacity”:

“Powerful groups, especially in corrupt states, use their power to capture resources,” says Homer-Dixon. “You get a polarization of wealth, a weakening of state capacity, and urban stress.” Although these kinds of changes are indirect effects of a drought, they are often the tipping point for social conflict. “We are seeing these things around the world now,” Homer-Dixon says. “As environmental stresses get worse, [their effects] become more common.”

Global water shortages are predicted to decrease global gross domestic product by as much as 14 percent by 2050, according to a recent report by the World Bank, which predicts that this “severe hit” will spur conflict and migration across the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. Even resource-rich countries previously considered to have stable economies, such as Brazil and Russia, have become more susceptible to environmental disequilibrium. Last year production of coffee, one of Brazil’s most important commodities, fell 15 percent as a result of drought. A lack of rain in Russia this fall damaged a quarter of its cereal crops. The last time the country’s harvest failed, rising global prices contributed to the Arab Spring in countries dependent on imported grain. [What? Um, there have been droughts for like forever. And steep declines in agricultural output are a historical norm. Further, Russian grain output is likely up this year. FFS. Agricultural output variability has been the norm since humans first scratched the ground with a stick. Before that, even: variability in the amount of stuff to gather predates the agricultural revolution.] Even Islamic State’s political power may soon be affected by drought. As water levels in Lake Assad in Syria plummet, Raqqa, the group’s stronghold, is facing severe shortages. Last year, Islamic State’s press officer, Abu Mosa, told Vice News that it would consider attacking Turkey to gain access to additional water resources.

Climate science has an explanation for why environmental forces can have this kind of destabilizing effect. Angel Muñoz, a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton, says, “Risk is just a multiplication of hazard by vulnerability.” Muñoz, who grew up in Venezuela and moved to the U.S. to study climate risk management, explains that a drought is a hazard, but what actually created this year’s mess was Venezuela’s lack of what he calls “adaptive capacity.” The drought was predicted months before it began—neighboring Colombia started water rationing in September 2015. Although Venezuela has far more natural resources than its neighbor, Colombia is not in such dire straits. “A society’s vulnerability is at least as important as the hazard,” Muñoz says.

As a result, when weak states [!] face environmental catastrophes like drought, “you might see the collapse of authoritarian regimes, as you did during the Arab Spring,” Homer-Dixon says. “But they’re probably going to be replaced with something just as bad, because a deeply divided society is still dealing with a materially stressed situation.”

The point is that authoritarian regimes–which invariably use their authority to control the economy and undermine private contract and markets–are brittle. That’s why they have less adaptive capacity. Some shock is the proximate cause (in the USSR, it was the decline of oil prices in 1986), but statist systems are brittle because in their mania for control they destroy the resilience of emergent orders.

Brittleness is different than weakness. The “weak state” formulation suggests a polity like Somalia or Afghanistan where the government’s writ does not extend beyond the capital, if it extends even that far. Or medieval Europe. The problem with Venezuela and Syria is that the state’s writ runs everywhere.

Regardless of the science regarding climate change, and in particular the science of attributing to climate change a particular type of event that has occurred on earth since far before recorded history, it is beyond dishonest and manipulative to ignore the real anthropogenic factor at work here: the destruction of a society’s adaptive capacity by a hyperactive state. If Venezuela is on the brink of anarchy, it is because the state was too strong, not because it was too weak.

What is particularly perverse is that climate change is being used to justify intense statist intervention on a global scale. This despite the fact that as the case of Venezuela (and other socialist paradises) demonstrates, humanity (and nature) have much to fear from a hyperactive state. The Bloomberg article is particularly dishonest because it insinuates the exact opposite.

@libertylynx suggested to me that the GOP is primarily responsible for the current unpopularity of capitalism in the US. I agree that this is largely the case. Here’s my first stab at an explanation.

At root it is due to a yawning gap between rhetoric and action. The GOP poses as the party of small government and free markets, but it is not, really. The disconnect was somewhat present during the Reagan administration, but it became progressively (pun alert!) more pronounced starting with Bush I, and particularly during the George W. Bush administration.

Bush II in particular was a big spender. Some of it was war-driven, but he was also profligate domestically. Perhaps most importantly, given the salience of housing to the 2008-2009 financial crisis which inflicted the most grievous blow to belief in the efficacy and efficiency of markets since the Great Depression, was that the Bush administration perpetuated the bias towards investment in housing exemplified by Fannie and Freddie. A truly market-oriented administration would have terminated Fannie and Freddie with extreme prejudice, but it grew apace during the Bush II administration. When combined with an expansive Fed and a flawed banking regulatory framework, the groundwork for a disaster was in place.

In many respects, this is similar to what happened during and after the Great Depression. That event was widely viewed as a failure of capitalism and the market system, when it was actually the result of a combination of bad Fed policy and a dysfunctional banking system that was the result of a political bargain that resulted in the proliferation of small unit banks that could not withstand a broad shock: see Friedman and Schwartz for an analysis of the former, and Calomiris and Haber for an examination of the latter.  The banking system that collapsed in the 1930s was a political artifact, and would have not developed the way that it did in the absence of a regulatory framework that was tailored to benefit very specific political constituencies.

The strong bias towards housing investment in the United States in the 1990s-2000s was also the result of a political bargain: alas, the same is true today, even despite the crisis. This political bargain was based on a coalition of politically connected firms (Fannie, Freddie, major banks, and construction) and populists. This bargain created incentives that led market participants to invest excessively in housing. When this came a cropper, the blame attached to those market participants who responded to incentives, rather than the political agents and political process that created those incentives.

In DC, Republicans talked a pro-market, small-government game, but did not govern that way. Republicans in Congress liked living a comfortable life in DC. They did not have a stomach for fighting the battle that a true pro-market, small government policy would have caused. They liked the sinecures of power too much to risk them, knowing in particular that pursuing such policies would unleash a storm of media criticism and make them unpopular with the bureaucrats and lobbyists who infest the place. So they made a few symbolic gestures, and spouted pro-free market, small government rhetoric, but really did nothing. The continued existence, let alone the growth, of Fannie and Freddie is testament to that.

When the storm hit in 2008, this came back to haunt them. More importantly, it came back to haunt the cause of free markets and smaller government. Since those giving lip service to those ideals were in charge when the storm hit, it was easy to blame the ideals, even though those spouting the rhetoric had done virtually nothing to advance them. Indeed, they had perpetuated, and in fact exacerbated, the market distortion that was the ultimate cause of the crisis. This presented a perfect opportunity for those in politics (the Democratic Party) and the media (an appendage of the Democratic Party) to attack the ideals that they despised.  It would have been better had the Republicans not pretended to be pro-market, as at least that would have limited some of the damage to popular beliefs and opinions about markets.

There are at least a couple of reasons for the Republican reluctance actually to fight the statist DC consensus, despite their rhetorical embrace of that fight.

One is the scars left by the struggles over the government shutdown in 1995-1996, and the impeachment battle that followed. Both fights were a distraction, and what’s worse, the Republicans handled both badly. They took a horrible beating in the media and elections–rightly so, in retrospect–and it got their minds right. The 1994 insurgents were supplanted by time servers and apparatchiks. Hasterts and Boehners and McConnells, and other assorted boneless wonders you’ve never even heard of. They were masters at the Kabuki performance of pretending to be pro-market and pro-smaller government, but really doing nothing to stem the tide.

The second reason is more fundamental, but in a way can explain the first. Politicians respond to incentives too. A good model for them is a pigeon in a Skinner Box. They soon learn to push the lever that results in the magical appearance of a food pellet, and not to push the lever that doesn’t.

Organized constituencies provide the food pellets in DC. There is no organized constituency for freer markets or substantially smaller government. There are constituencies for particular businesses and industries, and for government largesse. The benefits of free markets and smaller government are large, but diffuse. As Olson and Stigler and Becker and others showed long ago, diffuse and unorganized beneficiaries have little incentive or ability to influence policy. In contrast, particular businesses and industries do. Thus, careerist politicians intent on re-election and a comfortable life have little incentive to pursue market-oriented policies, but instead pursue policies that favor particular constituencies, including business constituencies.

Which means that even though many Republicans talk/talked about being pro-market, they are/were at most really pro-business. And there is a difference. A huge difference, as Adam Smith pointed out centuries ago, and Friedman repeated often decades ago. But that difference is not well-understood, which means that failures that occur when Republicans are in power tend to get blamed on the market system, or capitalism.

The S&L crisis of almost 30 years ago provides a good example. The S&L industry was the creation of law and regulation resulting from a political bargain: again see Calomiris and Haber. Inflation devastated the industry, and in response it called for elimination of restrictions on how S&Ls could invest. This was done in the name of deregulation and freeing markets, but the most important government interventions were left in place. In particular, deposit insurance remained, and government regulators refused to shut down insolvent thrifts. The mixture of freeing up the asset side of the balance sheet when (a) liabilities were insured, and (b) S&Ls had no equity, was toxic in the extreme. With insured liabilities and no equity, S&Ls had a tremendous incentive to add risk, and the deregulation of the asset side of the balance sheet gave them the ability to do so. They took on said risk, it ended badly, and taxpayers were on the hook for $200 billion or so as a result. Real money back then!

Was this a failure of deregulation, and a damning verdict on markets? I would say no: the fraught condition of the S&Ls was the product of previous government regulation and policy, and the perverse incentive to take on risk was inherent in another policy—deposit insurance. An organized political constituency (S&L operators) influenced Congress to loosen some regulations that made the perverse effects of the other regulations and policies even more acute.

In other words: they wanted to deregulate in the worst way, and they did. They did so because the deregulation was designed to benefit particular businesses, not to create a free market in banking. Pace the theory of the second best, elimination of something (restrictions on S&L investment) that would be an imperfection in the absence of other imperfections made things far worse when other imperfections (deposit insurance, forbearing regulators) remained in place.

But the narrative that came out of the S&L debacle was one of market failure, not government failure. Deregulation and markets took the blame, when what had really happened is that politicians responding to incentives (the importuning of an organized constituency) changed the laws in ways that created perverse incentives for business, and ultimately all this perversity begot something wretched indeed. The crisis was played out on Main Street, but its origins lay squarely on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The takeaway from all this is rather depressing. It means there is an inherent political bias against pro-market policies because markets, and the beneficiaries of markets, do not form an organized political force. The difficulty of voters to distinguish pro-business policies from pro-market rhetoric often used to advance them means that economic crises (the Great Depression, the S&L collapse, the 2008 Crisis) that are strongly rooted in government failure are blamed on markets instead, which perversely results in even more government intervention.

So this is why Republicans damage the cause of free markets and small government. They spout pro-market and small government rhetoric, but for reasons of political economy, really do little that actually advances free markets or reduce the size of government. But when some government policy creates incentives that lead to a bad market outcome, their rhetoric boomerangs on markets, not government.

The post-crisis years have been a period of slow growth and economic sclerosis. This is largely attributable to the explosion of regulation that has taken place since 2009. The narrative that helped spark this explosion is that markets failed. Alas, Republicans did much to advance that narrative, albeit inadvertently. But advance it they did, and the malign effects will be felt for decades to come.

In brief, Republican politicians may be subjectively pro-market and pro-capitalism, but objectively they have done grievous harm to markets and capitalism.

A couple of weeks ago the CFTC voted to revise its position limits regulation. My verdict: it makes the regulation less bad. Sort of like a strawberry tart, without so much rat in it.

The most important part of the revision is to permit exchanges and SEFs to recognize certain non-enumerated hedges as bona fide hedges that don’t count towards the position limit. In the original proposal, only eight hedges were enumerated, and only enumerated hedges were treated as bona fide hedges.

This drew substantial criticism from industry, particularly from end users, because the list of enumerated hedges was quite limited, and failed to incorporate many commonly utilized risk management strategies. Thus, more participants were at risk of being constrained by position limits, even though their purpose for trading was primarily to manage risk.

The CFTC’s fix was to permit market participants to apply annually to an exchange (“designated contract market”) or SEF for a non-enumerated bona fide hedge. The participant submits information about the hedging strategy to the exchange or SEF, which reviews it and determines whether it meets the criteria for bona fide hedges and grants an exemption for positions entered pursuant to this strategy.

This does help hedgers escape limits intended to constrain speculators. But the review process isn’t free. Moreover, the process of application and approval will take some time, which limits the flexibility of market participants. They have to foresee the kinds of strategies they would like to employ well in advance of actually implementing them.

At most this mitigates a harm, and at a cost. The speculative position limit provides no discernible benefit in terms of market stability or manipulation prevention (for which there are superior substitutes), but imposes a heavy compliance burden on all market users, even those who would almost certainly never be constrained by the limit. Moreover, the rule constrains risk transfer, thereby undermining one of the primary purposes of futures and swap markets. The bona fide hedging rule as originally proposed would have constrained risk transfer further, so basically expanding the universe of bona fide hedges removes a piece of rat or two from the tart. But it’s still appalling.

The revision also clarifies the definition of bona fide hedge, eliminating the “incidental test” and the “orderly trading requirement.” As currently proposed, to be a bona fide hedge, a position must reduce price risk. (I deliberately chose that particular link for reasons that I might be at liberty to share sometime.) That is, it cannot be used to manage other risks such as logistics or default risks. This is what the statute says, and was the way that the old regulation 1.3(z)(1) was written and interpreted.

Perhaps the most important result of this process is that it stands as a rebuke to Elizabeth Warren for the calumnies and slanders she heaped upon the Energy and Environmental Markets Advisor Committee, and me personally. One of the main complaints of participants in the EEMAC meetings was that the bona fide hedging rule as originally proposed was unduly restrictive. I dutifully recorded those complaints in the report that I wrote, which caused Senator Warren to lose it. (I cleaned that up. Reluctantly.) (The report is circulating in samizdat form. I will find a link and post.)

Well, apparently all of the Commissioners, including two strong supporters of the position limit rule, Massad and Bowen, found the criticisms persuasive and, to their credit, responded constructively to them. So, Liz, if supporting a broadening of bona fide position limits makes one an industry whore, that epithet applies to the Democratic appointees on the Commission. I presume you will take it up with them in your tempered, reasoned way.

But I note that Ms. Warren has been notably silent on the Commission’s action. Go figure.

It is now likely that the position limit rule will finally slouch its way into the rulebook. This is unfortunate. All that can be said is that due to this action it isn’t as bad as it could have been, and as bad as it is, it is nothing compared to the monstrosity that is being created in Europe.

One of the most disreputable tactics of those who sound alarms about anthropogenic climate change is to conscript any weather-related disaster to advance their cause. Case in point: the recent wildfires in and around Fort MacMurray, Alberta, Canada:

Experts say climate change is contributing to the wildfires raging across Canada, and the increasing frequency of such fires may overwhelm one of Earth’s most important ecosystems, the boreal forest.

In just over a week, an out of control blaze has charred more than 2,290 square kilometers (884 square miles) of land and forced the evacuation of 100,000 people from Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada.

Dominated by conifers like pine and spruce, the boreal forest sweeps across Canada, Russia, Alaska and Scandinavia making up about 30 percent of the world’s forest cover, and absorbing a big chunk of carbon from the atmosphere.

As crucial as the boreal forest is at reducing the impact of human-driven fossil fuel emissions, it is also increasingly fragile, and expected to become hotter, drier, and more prone to fires in the future.

“Western Canada, including in particular the region in Alberta containing Fort McMurray, has warmed quite a bit more than the global average,” said scientist Michael Mann, author of “Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change.”

With the Arctic region warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, climate model projections place central and western Canada in the “bullseye of enhanced warming,” he told AFP.

Michael Mann. Of course.

The past months have seen a strong El Nino which has caused anomalous weather throughout the world, and in the western hemisphere in particular. It has brought heavier than normal rains to some areas, and drought to others. My immediate suspicion was that El Nino contributed to the warm dry conditions, low snow pack, etc., that set the stage for the Alberta fires. And indeed, that’s the case.

It’s also necessary to put this in perspective. Even in normal years, there are fires in the boreal forests of Canada. Indeed, about 29,000 square kilometers burn in Canada each year. When I looked at the height of the fires, the Fort MacMurray fire had consumed about 2900 square kilometers, or about 10 percent of the annual average in Canada. This also represents about .015 percent of Canadian boreal forest area.

The fire got attention not so much because of its size, but because it occurred in a populated area (something of a rarity in that area), and one that happens to be a major oil producing center.

But the cause is too important to let facts interfere with the narrative. The fires were dramatic, and to the credulous it is plausible that global warming is to blame. So Mann et al could not let this opportunity pass.

Exploiting weather to raise alarms about climate is not the only disreputable tactic these people employ. Another is to attempt to intimidate through the legal process those who dare challenge their orthodoxy. This tactic has reached a new level in California, where a bill with the Orwellian title “California Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act of 2016” has cleared committees in the state Senate:

“This bill explicitly authorizes district attorneys and the Attorney General to pursue UCL [Unfair Competition Law] claims alleging that a business or organization has directly or indirectly engaged in unfair competition with respect to scientific evidence regarding the existence, extent, or current or future impacts of anthropogenic induced climate change,” says the state Senate Rules Committee’s floor analysis.

What does “engage in unfair competition with respect to scientific evidence” even mean? As an industrial organization economist by training, and practice, I know that the concept of “unfair competition” is slippery at best even in a straightforward economic context, and (speaking of Orwellian) that unfair competition laws have been used primarily to stifle competition rather than promote it. How unfair competition concepts would even apply to scientific debate is beyond me.

But that’s not the point, is it? The point of this law is to utilize another law that has proved very convenient at squelching competitors in the name of competition in order to squelch debate about climate change and climate policy. This is antithetical to science yet is done in the name of science: it is also a perfect example of the thuggery that the warmists routinely resort to when they cannot prevail in an open discussion.

When writing about Dickens, Orwell said something that relates to this issue as well:

It is the face of a man who is always fighting against something, but who fights in the open and is not frightened, the face of a man who is generously angry — in other words, of a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.

The smelly little orthodoxy epitomized by Michael Mann and Kemala Harris (the AG of CA, and soon to be Senator, who is a leader of the movement to prosecute climate change dissenters) indeed hates free intelligence, and free debate. And nineteenth century liberals, for that matter.

Have the progressives (particularly in California) who shriek about Peter Theil using the legal system to go after Gawker uttered a peep of protest against the employment of the far heavier hand of the state to silence debate about climate change? Not that I’ve heard. Free speech for me, but not for thee, is their motto.

Those who claim that science is undeniably on their side should have no fear of debate, and should not feel compelled to use coercion to stifle that debate. That they do means that they lack confidence in the truth of their message and their ability to persuade. It also means that they have a hearty disrespect for the ability of the American people to listen to and evaluate that debate with intelligence and fairness. In other words, what we are seeing in California is another example of a self-anointed elite that heartily disdains the hoi polloi, believing that it is their right and obligation to use any means necessary to impose their beliefs.

This is a recipe for social strife, especially since the climate change debate is by no means the only place where this attitude is regnant. This is precisely why battle is now raging between elitism and populism. Sad to say, that battle is likely to become even more intense in the coming months and years.