Streetwise Professor

In my next-to-last post I said Joe Biden gave the worse speech by any president in my lifetime. In his relentless pursuit of perfection, Biden excelled himself and gave an even worse speech yesterday.

Afghanistan last week, COVID yesterday.

As with the Afghanistan speech, the COVID speech was wretched both in terms of atmospherics and substance. The speech dripped with condescension and disdain for large numbers of Americans, notably those who are not vaccinated. (Implicit in most attacks on the unvaccinated is that they are white MAGA Neanderthals: in fact, Biden’s and the Democrats’ most important constituency, low income blacks, are disproportionately represented: why aren’t Biden and his party tarred as racists?)

One line in particular was disgusting: “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin.” Our patience? Our patience? Who are you? Just who the fuck are you that your patience matters fuck all?

And who is this we/our? You royalty now Joe? Or are you speaking on behalf of those actually pulling the strings.

Biden made two main arguments: it’s hard to decide which is more idiotic and insulting.

The first is that the unvaccinated pose a threat to the vaccinated: “We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers.”

Well, it looks like Dumb and Dumber have a new partner–Dumbest:

The externality argument for mandated vaccinations has always been extremely weak. (Not surprisingly, alas, many economists have pushed this lazy argument because too many economists thinking about externalities is lazy in general.) As Coase pointed out long ago, it takes at least two to have an externality, and it is neither obvious nor relevant who “causes” it. The optimal assignment of a property right (and in the case of vaccination policy, what is involved is property rights in one’s person) depends on who is the least cost avoider.

With vaccines, if you are at high risk of COVID, and/or petrified of it, and/or think that the risk of vaccine is low, you can avoid COVID by becoming vaccinated yourself at lower cost than requiring someone who, for example, perceives the vaccine risk to be higher or incurs some other cost to take it (e.g., a religious objection) to be vaccinated. You can protect yourself at low cost: why force someone else to protect you at high cost?

So vaccinate yourself, and don’t force anyone else to do it–or demand the government force anyone else to do it.

But that argument is really moot now. Biden’s mandate is driven by the Delta variant, and Biden’s own CDC–you know, the experts whom we are supposed to defer to–says that vaccination doesn’t reduce the risk of transmission (though it does reduce the risk of serious illness–supposedly, although experience in Israel and elsewhere is casting doubt on that).

(One aside. This speech and the policies expressed were cast specifically as being a response to Delta. If you follow the data, you will see Delta has crested and is declining rapidly: even the NYT admits as such. As well as representing an unwarranted and unjust exercise of power, this policy is cynical: the administration will take credit for the decline in Delta even though it will have nothing to do with it.)

Further, there is the issue which has been raised by very esteemed (or at least once-esteemed) scientists (e.g., Nobel winner Luc Montagnier, but not just him) that the vaccines have spillover effects. Namely, it is hypothesized, and there is some evidence to support, that the vaccines accelerate mutation and in particular mutations that evade the vaccines. Meaning that there could be negative externality not from avoiding vaccination, but from being vaccinated.

As for the other costs that Biden mentions, namely the higher risk of serious illness and death among the unvaccinated, well that’s internalized: people willingly run the risk, and pay the consequences.

Biden’s other argument was “keeping our children safe and our schools open.” “For the children” is the last refuge of the modern (leftist) scoundrel. There is massive evidence–far more definitive than just about anything related to COVID–that children are at extremely low risk of either contracting or communicating COVID.

So hey, teacher, leave those kids alone.

It is particularly disgusting to see children used as Trojan horses for oppressive government policies given the massive harm that has been inflicted on them by governments at every level, most notably by denying them more than a year of education, as well as isolating them socially.

Not only are vaccine mandates a policy monstrosity, the means by which Biden is attempting to implement them are constitutionally monstrous. He has issued an executive order instructing OSHA to issue an emergency rule requiring all those firms employing more than 100 to make employment conditional on vaccination. As an emergency rule, this will be rushed through without the normal procedural safeguards the can sometimes prevent the promulgation of misguided and destructive policies. Moreover, doing this at the federal level by executive–something Biden said during the campaign he would not do and which his execrable flack Psaki said he could not do as recently as 23 July–runs roughshod over the Constitution and federalism.

But that was then. This is now. The even more execrable White House Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, called the OSHA gambit “the ultimate work-around.” Funny I remember the oath of office being about protecting and defending the Constitution, not “working around” it.

Why do we even have a Congress? That’s a serious question. Why do we have states? Another serious question.

Many parts of the country are strongly opposed to his. Many governors in states in those parts of the country have vowed to fight. To which Biden said: “If they will not help, if those governors won’t help us beat the pandemic, I’ll use my power as president to get them out of the way.”

What powers would those be? Just how, pray tell, can the president get governors “out of the way”? A drone strike? (You know, like the one that killed an Afghan who had helped Americans and his children?)

I’ve said before, and I will say it again: we are hurtling towards a constitutional crisis. Vaccine mandates are bad on the merits, and even worse when rammed down our throats while throwing constitutional and federal principles to the winds.

Not only has Biden given the worst presidential speeches of my lifetime, he has cemented his place as the worst, most destructive president of my lifetime, supplanting–by a mile–the loathsome LBJ. Alas, LBJ’s deficiencies became acute when he was entering the last year of his first full term (and his fifth year in office). Biden’s are manifest mere months after his inauguration. And his abject failings, and stubborn, disdainful refusal to brook any objection, are fanning the flames of civil conflict that could make the Vietnam protests look tame by comparison.

I have considered whether we have reached a stage where “the worse, the better” is a reasonable position. If one does indeed believe that, these are the times for you, and Joe Biden is the president for you.

The basic lesson of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s majestic Monetary History of the United States is that most major economic disruptions in the history of the US have monetary origins. Since 1913, and the creation of the Federal Reserve, the Fed has been responsible for these monetary shocks. Which is why Friedman advocated rules over discretion, to reduce the degrees of freedom available to the Fed to fuck things up.

For this, with a few exceptions, Fed board members and chairs have hated Friedman, and attempted to devise alternative histories that blame others for Fed f-ups. Current Fed chair Jerome Powell has joined that crew of ankle biters.

The price level has spurt upwards lately, leading to fears of a resumption of 1970s-style inflation. Not wanting to admit that the current price level increases could be harbingers of true inflation (a sustained rate of increase of the price level), Powell is attempting to argue that these recent increases are due to idiosyncratic factors (e.g., COVID-related supply chain shocks) that will not persist. In an attempt to make this case, Powell has engaged in a revisionist history of 1970s inflation.

In a nutshell: it was your fault. Or your parents’/grandparents’ fault. So if inflation happens again, it’s your fault.

The basic story is this. There were supply shocks in the 1970s (e.g., OPEC) that caused price level increases. These caused people to believe (mistakenly, per Powell) that there was true inflation. These inflationary expectations were self-fulfilling: these expectations decreased the demand to hold nominal balances, which increased the velocity of money, which per the PY=MV equation led to an increasing price level, which confirmed inflationary expectations, which kept velocity high, etc., etc., etc.

There is a core of truth to this: expectations matter in inflation. But monetary growth matters too, and money growth in the 1970s was clearly as much of a driver of inflation as a shift in expectations. Indeed, the money growth was likely a cause of the shift in expectations.

Inflation peaked and subsided when the Fed (under Volcker) put the brakes to monetary growth.

Why does this ancient history matter? Because Powell is using it to justify standing pat on monetary policy despite the recent price spurts. Sort of like someone Powell should NOT want to imitate–Arthur Burns, who made very similar arguments in the 1970s. It was exactly the same don’t worry, be happy complacency that Powell expresses today that led Burns–and the country–down the path of inflationary perdition.

Indeed, Powell’s mistaken-inflationary-expectations argument is all the more reason to take aggressive action today to prevent a shift in inflationary expectations. If he really believes we’re all idiots who will confuse one-time price level shocks with true inflation, he should take aggressive action to show credibly that the Fed will not let inflation take hold. Using it to rationalize inaction which will likely exacerbate a shift in expectations is frankly idiotic.

And also like the 1970s, we are seeing a Democratic administration attempt to rationalize and blame. Case in point, Director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese. This oh-so-typical DC cockroach (who scuttled to Black Rock after the end of the Obama administration only to scuttle back to Washington with the ascension of a Democratic administration) was at pains to educate you idiots that what you are experiencing at the grocery story is a figment of your imagination, except when you pass the meat counter:

https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1435679846307405830?s=20

So I guess vegans should be happy!

This is transparently bullshit on many levels.

First, Deese is literally cherry picking by focusing on fruits and vegetables.

Second, if you look at other ag prices–notably corn, soybeans, and wheat–they have spiked in the last year (although they peaked in the summer and have turned down slightly). The increase in food prices is not limited to meat and poultry.

Here’s corn, for example:

Third, even looking only at meat and poultry Deese’s economics are idiotic and indeed represents another acid flashback to the 1970s.

For one thing, the consolidation in the meat sector occurred years ago, and cannot explain the increase in prices now. Furthermore, firms with market power raise prices above the competitive level, but that is different from causing an upward trend in prices (which is what inflation is). In attempts to deny the true cause of inflation in the 1970s, it was common for liberal politicians and liberal economists to blame “monopolies”: again, this is transparent bushwa, because although monopolies can raise price levels that’s different than causing an increase in the rate of change in the price level.

Indeed, ceteris paribus greater consolidation in the meat sector would tend to reduce input costs (e.g., corn and soy prices): greater monopsony power tends to decrease not increase input prices. That has obviously not happened in the last year. As noted above, corn, soy, and wheat prices have all spurted.

So there’s something else driving food price increases. Deese’s attempt to explain away what your lyin’ eyes see when checking out at the grocery store is pathetically and obviously wrong.

There may be a reason why this is a one time shock rather than a true inflationary trend. But Deese doesn’t provide any such reason, and his risible attempt to provide one seriously undermines his credibility.

And that ultimately is the problem. In the 1970s, the Fed’s and the Carter administration’s attempts to cast blame for price level increases undermined their credibility and contributed to the expectations spiral that Powell laments today. The 70s flashback of just such denial we are experiencing before our very eyes is the strongest indicator that real inflation will return. And with a vengeance, given the far weaker fiscal position of the US government (cf. the fiscal theory of the price level).

Sometime 19th century judge Gideon John Tucker opined: “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.”

Mr. Tucker’s opinion is sadly out of date. Now those things are not safe as long as the executive is in session–which is always.

If you’ve been like Rip Van Winkle, and haven’t noticed this, well the “Biden” administration has given you a wakeup call. The CDC–well known regulator of real estate markets–has extended its moratorium on evictions, for 90 percent of the country anyways. Because Covid.

Isn’t everything?

The Supreme Court has already indicated that this is flatly unconstitutional absent Congressional legislation. Which it clearly is. Though the Supreme Court should go further. Any Congressional legislation remotely similar to the CDC ukase should also be held unconstitutional under the 5th Amendment, which states that no person shall be “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Preventing someone from evicting them from his/her property is clearly depriving that person of his/her property. The defining feature of property is the right to exclude others from the use thereof. If you can’t keep others from using it, it ain’t yours.

Ironic, no, from a government that is ruthlessly pursuing those who trespassed on the Capitol on 6 January?

The CDC is not providing due process–this is a blanket ban. The CDC is not providing compensation. Any “law” that mimics the features of the CDC order would be a blatant infringement on 5th Amendment rights.

The justification for this given by the CDC’s director, Rochelle Walensky (one of the lying Walenskys?) is utterly appalling: “This moratorium is the right thing to do to keep people in their homes and out of congregate settings where COVID-19 spreads.”

Gee, I missed the “right thing to do” clause in the Constitution. I also missed the “congregate settings Covid” exception to the 5th.

It is particularly nauseating to hear this bilge from the “our sacred democracy” crowd. If unilateral expropriation of property with zero process whatsoever, and no compensation whatsoever, is the hallmark of “our sacred democracy” I say hard pass to democracy. Give me autocracy. Autocracy is functionally the same, but doesn’t add the insults of virtue signaling and preening hypocrisy to the injury of theft.

Biden and Walensky essentially caved to the leftist extreme in the Democratic Party, with the utterly loathsome Rep. Cori Bush (D(uh), MO) leading the charge. Go to Twitter to see the “rationale” advanced by the supporters of this. To summarize: Proudhon said it first (“property is theft,” so stealing it back is fine):

We’re talking about a situation where white colonizers stole vast amounts of land they continue to occupy and charge us rental fees for. The origins & underlying structures of the system make it impossible for justice or fair access to exist.

— FREE PALESTINE, NO MASTERS (@BreeNewsome) August 4, 2021

One of my followers asked how could someone so stupid get 480,000 followers. I said

It's like Newton's Law of Stupid, analogous to the Law of Gravity.

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) August 4, 2021

Stupid attracts stupid. The more stupid, the more it attracts stupid.

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) August 4, 2021

Speaking of stupid, Maxine Waters got in the act, ironically channeling Andrew Jackson (or at least a possibly apocryphal statement attributed to him):

I don't buy that the CDC can't extend the eviction moratorium – something it has already done in the past! Who is going to stop them? Who is going to penalize them? There is no official ruling saying that they cannot extend this moratorium. C'mon CDC – have a heart! Just do it!

— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) August 2, 2021

“Who is going to stop them?” That is, “the Supreme Court has made its ruling: now let it enforce it.”

Under the CDC/Biden theory, there are no checks on the government’s authority whatsoever. Say the magic word–“COVID”–and anything is possible.

Which, by the way, is precisely why the ruling class is so hell bent on perpetuating the Covid scare. And which is why, when (if) Covid fades away, another “emergency” will be ginned up to take its place.

To the extent that he is conscious, Biden consciously acknowledged that this action is unconstitutional. But he obviously doesn’t care. Or, he cares more about protecting his political flank than about respecting his oath of office.

The purpose of the compensation clause is to force government to put its money where its mouth is: if a rental unit is more valuable in the hands of its current occupant, who is (allegedly) unable to pay, then go through the political process of appropriating money to pay the property owner to allow said occupant to continue to reside there. The idea is to approximate the outcome of voluntary arms length transactions when some transactions cost (e.g., holdup problems) make such voluntary transactions prohibitively expensive. A compensation requirement, properly implemented, helps ensure that property is allocated to its highest value use.

This process is imperfect, but at least it allows for some element of accountability for those who vote for it. Allow a government to take valuable property, without compensation, without process, and by an agency completely insulated from electoral accountability, and you will see it take and take and take and take. Because it pays no price. When someone pays no price, it consumes to satiation. And governments are never satiated.

Today it’s Covid. Tomorrow it will be something else. Legislature in session or no, your property will be unsafe as long as a bureaucrat can conjure up an “emergency” to justify taking it.

Forget the rule of law. We live under the rule of the lawless.

Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner–better known as Timmy! to loooooongtime readers of this blog–is back, this time as Chair of the Group of 30 Working Group on Treasury Market Liquidity. The Working Group was tasked with addressing periodic seizures in the Treasury securities market, most notoriously during the onset of the Covid crisis in March 2020–something I wrote about here.

This is a tale of two reports: the diagnosis is spot on, the prescription pathetic.

The report recognizes that

the root cause of the increasing frequency of episodes of Treasury market dysfunction under stress is that the
aggregate amount of capital allocated to market-making by bank-affiliated dealers has not kept pace with the very rapid growth of marketable Treasury debt outstanding

In other words, supply of bank market making services has declined, and demand for market making services has gone up. What could go wrong, right?

Moreover, the report recognizes the supply side root cause of the root cause: post-Financial Crisis regulations, and in particular the Supplemental Leverage Ratio, or SLR:

Post-global financial crisis reforms have ensured that banks have adequate capital, even under stress, but certain provisions may be discouraging market-making in U.S. Treasury securities and Treasury repos, both in normal times and especially under stress. The most significant of those provisions is the Basel III leverage ratio, which in theUnited States is called the Supplementary Leverage Ratio (SLR) because all banks in the United States (not just internationally active banks) are subject to an additional “Tier 1”leverage ratio.

Obviously fiscal diarrhea has caused a flood of Treasury issuance that from time to time clogs the Treasury market plumbing, but that’s not something the plumber can fix. The plumber can put in bigger pipes, so of course the report recommends wholesale changes in the constraints on market making, the SLR in particular, right? Right?

Not really. Recommendation 6–SIX, mind you–is “think about doing something about SLR sometime”:

Banking regulators should review how market intermediation is treated in existing regulation, with a view to identifying provisions that could be modified to avoid disincentivizing market intermediation, without weakening overall resilience of the banking system. In particular, U.S. banking regulators should take steps to ensure that risk-insensitive leverage ratios function as backstops to risk-based capital requirements rather than constraints that bind frequently.

Wow. That’s sure a stirring call to action! Review with a view to. Like Scarlett O’Hara.

Rather than addressing either of what itself acknowledges are the two primary problems, the report recommends . . . wait for it . . . more central clearing of the Treasury market. Timothy Geithner, man with a hammer, looking for nails.

Clearing cash Treasuries will almost certainly have a trivial effect on market making capacity. The settlement cycle in Treasuries is already one day–something that is aspirational (don’t ask me why) in the stock market. That already limits significantly the counterparty credit risk in the market (and it’s not clear that counterparty credit risk is a serious impediment on market making, especially since it existed before the recent dislocations in the Treasury market, and therefore is unlikely to have been a major contributor to them).

The report recognizes this: “Counterparty credit risks on trades in U.S. Treasury securities are not as large as those in other U.S. financial markets, because the contractual settlement cycle for U.S. Treasury securities is shorter (usually one day) and Treasury security prices generally are less volatile than other securities prices.” Geithner (and most of the rest of the policymaking establishment) were wrong about clearing being a panacea in the swap markets: it’s far less likely to make a material difference in the market for cash Treasuries.

The failure to learn over the past decade plus is clear (no pun intended!) from the report’s list of supposed benefits of clearing, which include

reduction of counterparty credit and liquidity risks through netting of counterparty exposures and application of margin requirements and other risk mitigants, the creation of additional market-making capacity at all dealers as a result of recognition of the reduction of exposures achieved though multilateral netting

As I wrote extensively in 2008 and the years following, netting does not reduce counterparty credit risk or exposures: it reallocates them. Moreover, as I’ve also been on about for more than a fifth of my adult life (and I’m not young!), “margin requirements” create their own problems. In particular, as the report notes, as is the case in most crises the March 2020 Treasury crisis sparked a liquidity crisis–liquidity not in terms of the depth of Treasury markets (though that was an issue) but liquidity in terms of a large increase in the demand for cash. Margin requirements would likely exacerbate that, although the incremental effect is hard to determine given that existing bilateral exposures may be margined (something the report does not discuss). As seen in the GameStop fiasco, a big increase in margins in part driven by the central counterparty (ironically the DTCC, the parent of the FICC which the report wants to be the clearinghouse for its expanded clearing of Treasuries) was a major cause of disruptions. For the report to ignore altogether this issue is inexcusable.

Relatedly, the report touches only briefly on the role of basis trades in the events of March 2020. As I showed in the article linked above, these were a major contributor to the dislocations. And why? Precisely because of margin calls on futures.

Thus, the report fails to analyze completely its main recommendation, and in fact its recommendation is based on not just an incomplete but a faulty understanding of the implications of clearing (notably its mistaken beliefs about the benefits of netting). That is, just like in the aftermath of 2008, supposed solutions to systemic risk are based on decidedly non-systemic analyses.

Instead, shrinking from the core issue, the report focuses on a peripheral issue, and does not analyze that properly. Clearing! Yeah, that’s the ticket! Good for whatever ails ya!

In sum, meet the new Timmy! Same as the old Timmy!

In his swan song at Glencore, the soon to retire Ivan Glasenberg doubled down on coal:

In what’s likely to be the final deal announced by outgoing Chief Executive Officer Ivan Glasenberg, Glencore agreed to buy stakes owned by BHP Group and Anglo American Plc in the Cerrejon thermal coal mine for about $588 million, subject to purchase price adjustments.

Glencore is filling a void left by two mining giants:

The sale completes Anglo’s retreat from thermal coal and extends similar efforts by BHP, amid investor pressure. However, Glencore has committed to run its coal mines for another 30 years, potentially allowing it to profit as rivals retreat. It’s already the biggest shipper of the fuel, and gaining full control of Cerrejon gives the company even more exposure just as prices trade at the highest level in years, buoyed by strong demand as the global economy rebounds.

In my opinion, this is a very canny contrarian bet. The panicked flight from coal by the Anglos and BHPs and others of the world is directly attributable to political and policy pressure. Hydrocarbons bad. Renewables good. Hydrocarbon companies are evil. You will be punished you carbon spewing bastards! Your CEOs will be snubbed by righteous people. Oh Noes!

But these policies are predicated on a collective delusion about renewables. Bloomberg can preach all it wants about how renewables are as efficient as conventional generation, but the fact is and will remain that dispatchable, reliable, continuous conventional generation, producing power from cheaply stored chemical energy, will remain much cheaper that non-dispatchable, intermittent, unreliable renewables that will have to rely on expensive battery storage. Bloomberg’s “levelized cost” metric is total bullshit because it leaves out all of the costs associated with reliability, transmission, and intermittency–details, details!

Renewables will never be able to handle current electricity demand at reasonable cost, but policymakers in the grip of the delusion are adding to electricity demand by forcing the electrification of other energy consumption, including transportation and home heating and cooking.

And it is almost certain that Glasenberg recognizes these delusions for what they are, and knows that in five to ten years time reality will rear its ugly head–recognition of reality can be postponed, but not forever. And Glasenberg recognizes when that reckoning comes, and electricity costs spike and reliability plunges, countries around the world will come begging for dependable electricity sources. And thus, they will come begging to Glencore for its coal.

The payoff will be all the bigger because Anglo, BHP, and others will not invest, leaving a capacity void. Price will rise to ration the limited supply.

Current government energy policies around the world are not time consistent. Political coercion to achieve a utopian outcome will result in more costly and less reliable energy that will not be politically sustainable. Ivan Glasenberg recognizes that time inconsistency, and as his parting gift to Glencore’s shareholders–and the world, frankly, when it comes to his senses–is an investment that will pay off handsomely when reality intrudes on renewables reveries.

I grew up in the 70s. I never did acid then (or ever!), but man am I experiencing flashbacks. Feckless progressive Democrat presidents. (Though Carter, while an idiot, was at least compos mentis, which is more than can be said of Señor Senile Joe Biden.) Crime. (I’m betting on a comeback of the Charles Bronson revenge and Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry genres.) All in all, the 70s sucked, and I am not nostalgically hoping for a reprise–I’m dreading it actually.

One of the things that sucked worst was inflation. The 1970s were the inflation decade (although it peaked in 1980-1981). In recent months, the price level measured by the CPI, PPI, and GDP deflator has been up substantially. CPI, for example, is up about 4.5 percent on a year-on-year basis. This has raised concerns about a return of 70s-style inflation. Are these concerns justified?

The jury is out, but there is reason for concern.

First, it is important to distinguish between one time changes in the price level and inflation. Inflation is a long term upward trend in the price level, rather than a single stair-step jump in the price level.

The impact of the pandemic (or, more accurately, the draconian policy response to the pandemic) has created the conditions for a one-time step up in the price level. The economic recovery from the pandemic is a positive aggregate demand shock. Moreover, it has occurred against the backdrop of constrained supply conditions that resulted from the pandemic. Upward shifts in supply and demand lead to a higher price level, ceteris paribus.

One would think that these are effectively one-time shocks–hopefully the pandemic is a one-time thing, and therefore the recovery from it is too. Furthermore, supply conditions should ease. (We are already seeing that in some sectors, such as lumber, though not in others, such as semiconductors. Policy, namely paying people not to work in some states, may impede the easing of supply conditions). Thus, one would expect that this is one time, and at least partially transitory, jump in the price level rather than inflation qua inflation.

That said, there are reasons for concern. Most notably, the fiscal diarrhea in the US, and the willingness of the Fed to finance (i.e., monetize) that spending is freighted with inflationary potential.

In the post-Financial Crisis era, the Fed mitigated the inflationary impact of QE and other expansive monetary policies by paying interest on reserves. So the inflationary threat that I worried about in 2009 (and asked Ben Bernanke about) never materialized. But that’s no reason for complacency. We dodged a bullet once, but that doesn’t mean we will always do so. Massive deficit spending accommodated by the monetary authority is highly likely to result in inflation, sooner or later. (I am inclined to favor Thomas Sargent’s fiscal theory of the price level.).

Part of the reason that inflation didn’t occur post-2008 was that money velocity plunged. Part of this was due to the Fed paying interest on reserves, which led banks to hold them (lend them to the Fed in effect) rather than lend them to private individuals and firms. But expectations, and the self-fulfilling nature thereof with respect to inflation, likely played a role too. In the gloomy aftermath of 2008 people expected low inflation (or even deflation), which made them more willing to hold rather than spend money balances–which results in low inflation, thereby validating the expectations and perpetuating the equilibrium.

But expectations are fickle things, and as a result there can be multiple equilibria. Fed board members have strenuously argued that the recent spurt in prices is a one-time stair step phenomenon, not the harbinger of inflation. But if the spurt results in an upward shift in inflationary expectations by the hoi polloi, people will be less willing to hold money balances at the existing price level, so they will try to reduce (i.e., spend) them, which leads to inflation–thereby validating the expectations.

Thus, it’s not so much what the Fed believe that matters. It’s about what you and me and other individuals and firms believe. Combine a negative fiscal picture with a surge in prices and it’s quite possible that inflation expectations soon will no longer be “anchored” at low levels, but will surge to higher levels, which would result in inflation no longer being anchored at low levels.

So although I think that the recent surge in the price level is of the one-time variety, that doesn’t mean everyone will think the same way. And if everyone doesn’t think the same way we may see a 70s rerun. The dire fiscal picture contributes to such worries.

When the subject of inflation comes up, as Dr. Commodities I’m often asked whether commodities are a good hedge. Intuitively it makes sense that they should be, but historically, they have not been. Commodity prices are much more volatile than the price level, and not that highly correlated. That is, relative prices move around a lot even when the price level trends upwards.

I think that availability bias is a big reason why people focus on commodity prices–they are readily observable, on a second-by-second basis, because they are actively traded on liquid markets. Other goods and services, not so much. But just because we can see them easily doesn’t mean that they are reliable beacons for the price level overall, or changes therein.

This brings to mind why we should really fear a return of 70s-style inflation (or worse, heaven forfend).

When sitting in (the great) Sherwin Rosen’s Econ 302 course at Chicago on a cold morning in February, 1982, I was startled when Sherwin’s normal rather droning delivery was interrupted by him shouting and pounding his right fist into his left palm: “And that’s the problem with inflation. IT FUCKS UP RELATIVE PRICES!!!!”

Some prices are stickier than others, meaning that inflation pressures can impact some goods and services more and sooner than others–thereby causing changes in relative prices.

This is a bad thing–and why Sherwin dropped the F-bomb about it–because relative prices guide resource allocation. If you fuck up relative prices, as inflation does, you interfere with resource allocation, leading to lower incomes and growth. Inflation has adverse real consequences.

So we should definitely fear an acid flashback to 70s inflation. And although I do not believe the recent surge in prices is a harbinger thereof, I think that there is a material risk that we may all experience such a flashback–even if you didn’t grow up in the 70s.

There has been something of a kerfuffle recently over the large scale purchases of single family homes by the likes of BlackRock and other institutional investors like pension funds. The criticism is somewhat redolent of the Occupy days, because it unites many on the left with some on the populist right, like J.D. Vance:

Blackrock is pursuing an investment strategy that will make it harder for young Americans to own homes. The Left will ignore this, because Blackrock has committed to "racial audits" and other diversity BS. https://t.co/lgtb3xSlO9

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) June 9, 2021

Understanding should come before judgment. So let’s try to figure out what is going on here. I don’t have a definitive answer, but my strong sense is that this phenomenon is ultimately a consequence of the 2008-2009 Financial Crisis, and the various policy responses to it.

One thing is clear is that the initial foray of institutional investors was a response to the Crisis. And no wonder. Massive amounts of single family homes were in foreclosure, and the biggest fire sale in American real estate history was underway. And in fire sales, those with “dry powder”–cash rich investors relatively undamaged by the crisis that sparks the sales–go bargain hunting. In 2009-2010, the bargains were in residential real estate, especially single family houses. And the “real money” investors like BlackRock and pension funds were best positioned to grab those bargains.

Here it is almost certain that the activities of BlackRock et al did elevate real estate prices. And a good thing, too, for the problem at the time was not that housing prices were too high, but too low. Without bargain hunters (or vultures, if you wish) housing prices would have been even lower, more homeowners would have been underwater, more of them would have been foreclosed, etc. Of course BlackRock et al were not doing this out of charity, but to make a buck. But they were responding to price signals and their actions almost certainly mitigated a horrible situation.

But as the WSJ article linked above notes, institutional investment in the housing sector has persisted after the fire sales ended–especially in places like Houston, Atlanta, and Nashville. This is characterized as a reach for yield strategy on the part of the institutional investors. The yield on rental property is apparently attractive relative to alternative investments. And no surprise: have you looked at bond yields recently? Like in the last 12 years? Is it any wonder that investors like pension funds (especially government funds that are hugely under water) are desperate for assets that generate a stream of cash flows at attractive rates?

But high yield suggests that prices are low in some sense, rather than high. (Price is in the denominator of the return calculation.) “Bubble” real estate markets are characterized by extremely low rental yields, not high ones.

Look at this another way. People are choosing to pay rent, rather than buy and make mortgage payments and forego income on the investment of a down payment amount. Why? Why are they paying rents that generate a high return for the housing owner, rather than buying homes and capturing that return themselves?

My answers will be somewhat speculative, but now the question is the important thing. Many individuals are choosing not to buy, and to pay rent instead. The rents that they are willing to pay are driven by the stream of benefits that they get from living in a single family home. Why don’t they outbid BlackRock or some state pension fund and pay a price that capitalizes that stream of benefits?

Note that there are clear advantages to occupiers owning. The Atlantic article linked earlier discusses the frictions associated with renting. Well, renter-landlord relations have been fraught always and everywhere. Rental contracts are not “complete”–they leave a lot of grey areas that give rise to conflict between owner and renter, and to opportunism by both. Those wasteful activities can be eliminated by having those who live in a home own it. That in and of itself should give individuals a bidding advantage over institutions when buying homes. Cut out the middleman and you cut out the transaction costs inherent in the landlord-tenant relationship.

So then what gives? Now for the speculation, which again revolves around the fallout from the Financial Crisis.

First, the leading diagnosis of the cause of the Financial Crisis was that it was too easy to get a mortgage. In response to this, post-Crisis legislation and regulation tightened up the home financing market. A lot. You can argue that the tightening was justified. You can argue that it went too far. But regardless, restrictions on the ability of individuals to finance a home purchase, or regulations that made it more expensive to do this, shifted the balance away from purchasing towards renting.

Indeed, if the likes of Elizabeth Warren were intellectually consistent (yeah I’m a comedian, I know), they should see the increased presence of Wall Street on Elm Street as a good thing, because it means that their endeavors to prevent another housing “bubble” have worked.

Second, the Financial Crisis took a severe toll on the balance sheets and creditworthiness of many individuals. Although these problems have dissipated, they haven’t disappeared. Combined with the more restrictive access to credit, these creditworthiness/balance sheet effects impede the ability of individuals to capture the high returns of home ownership, and they cannot compete on price with institutional investors who do not face such impediments.

Third–and this is perhaps the most speculative point of all–the Financial Crisis and the follow on Foreclosure Crisis arguably had an impact on the preferences of individuals, especially Millennials and Gen-Zs. Post-Crisis home ownership seemed less like a dream–it had a potential dark side. So many in those cohorts prefer to pay rent and give a high return to institutional investors and deal with the hassles of a landlord rather than buy and face the risk of financial ruin.

Fed policy may also play a role. It clearly has depressed returns on conventional fixed income investments–and has done so by design. That has made institutional investors look at non-traditional investments. But Fed policy alone can’t explain why yields on housing investments apparently haven’t fallen to the level of the low yields on bonds. There must be some other factor impeding the rise of housing prices to reduce the yields that the institutional investors are apparently capturing by buying and renting out single family homes. That brings us back to a search for factors (like those just discussed) that prevent individuals from outbidding institutional investors to capture the stream of returns from housing ownership (and to eliminate the costs that arise when the home occupier is not the owner).

In turn, this means that inquiry into this issue should focus on whether post-Crisis, there are excessive restrictions and costs imposed on individuals looking to finance home purchases. That is, are the post-2008 laws and regulations designed to prevent a recurrence of the housing boom too restrictive?

I don’t have an answer to that question, but again, posing the right question is where you have to start.

My provisional conclusion now is that institutional investors are doing what they do: responding to price signals in order to maximize risk adjusted returns. They are responding to incentives. To evaluate what is going on, it is necessary to evaluate whether those incentives have been distorted by ill-conceived policies.

Of course, these policies were not created in a vacuum. They are the result of a political process that includes lobbying and rent seeking by institutional investors, among others. They have an incentive to harm potential competitors in the housing market. So any inquiry should also focus on whether these institutional investors have helped rig the game against individuals by pressing for the imposition of unwarranted restrictions on home financing. If so, censorious judgment would be warranted.

So is burgeoning institutional ownership of single family housing a 2020s version of Bad Day at Black Rock? A 2020s film noir? I don’t know. But I have the questions and some provisional answers.

One of the few compensations I get from a Biden administration is that I have an opportunity to kick around Gary Gensler–“GiGi” to those in the know–again. Apparently feeling his way in his first few months as Chairman of the SEC, Gensler has been relatively quiet, but today he unburdened himself with deep thoughts about stock market structure. If you didn’t notice, “deep” was sarcasm. His opinions are actually trite and shallow, and betray a failure to ask penetrating questions. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Not that he doesn’t have questions. About payment for order flow (“PFOF”) for instance:

Payment for order flow raises a number of important questions. Do broker-dealers have inherent conflicts of interest? If so, are customers getting best execution in the context of that conflict? Are broker-dealers incentivized to encourage customers to trade more frequently than is in those customers’ best interest?

But he misses the big question: why is payment for order flow such a big deal in the first place?

Relatedly, Gensler expresses concern about what traders do in the dark:

First, as evidenced in January, nearly half of the trading interest in the equity market either is in dark pools or is internalized by wholesalers. Dark pools and wholesalers are not reflected in the NBBO. Moreover, the NBBO is also only as good as the market itself. Thus, under the segmentation of the current market, nearly half of trading along with a significant portion of retail market orders happens away from the lit markets. I believe this may affect the width of the bid-ask spread.

Which begs the question: why is “nearly half of the trading interest in the equity market either is in dark pools or is internalized by wholesalers”?

Until you answer these big questions, studying the ancillary ones like his regarding PFOF an NBBO is a waste of time.

The economics are actually very straightforward. In competitive markets, customers who impose different costs on suppliers will pay different prices. This is “price discrimination” of a sort, but not price discrimination based on an exploitation of market power and differences in customer demand elasticities: it is price differentiation based on differences is cost.

Retail order flow is cheaper to intermediate than institutional order flow. Some institutional order flow is cheaper to intermediate than other such flows. Competitive pressures will find ways to ensure flows that are cheaper to intermediate pay lower prices. PFOF, dark pools, etc., are all means of segmenting order flow based on cost.

Trying to restrict cost-based price differences by banning or restricting certain practices will lead clever intermediaries to find other ways to differentiate based on cost. This has always been so, since time immemorial.

In essence, Gensler and many other critics of US market structure want to impose uniform pricing that doesn’t reflect cost differences. This would be, in essence, a massive scheme of cross subsidies. Ironically, the retail traders for whom Gensler exhibits such touching concern would actually be the losers here.

Cross subsidy schemes are inherently unstable. There are tremendous competitive pressures to circumvent them. As the history of virtually every regulated sector (e.g., transportation, communications) has demonstrated for decades, and even centuries.

From a positive political economy perspective, the appeal of such cross subsidy schemes to regulators is great. As Sam Peltzman pointed out in his amazing 1976 JLE piece “Toward a More General Theory of Regulation,” regulators systematically attempt to suppress cost-based price differences in order to redistribute rents to gain political support. The main impetus for deregulation is innovation that exploits gains from trade from circumventing cross subsidy schemes–deregulation in banking (Regulation Q) and telecoms are great examples of this.

So who would the beneficiaries of this cross-subsidization scheme be? Two major SEC constituencies–exchanges, and large institutional traders.

In other words, all this chin pulling about PFOF and dark markets is politics as usual. Furthermore, it is politics as usual in the cynical sense that the supposed beneficiaries of regulatory concern (retail traders) are the ones who will be shtupped.

Gensler also expressed dismay at the concentration in the PFOF market: yeah, he’s looking at you, Kenneth. Getting the frequency?

Although Gensler’s systemic risk concern might have some justification, he still fails to ask the foundational question: why is it concentrated? He doesn’t ask, so he doesn’t answer, instead saying: “Market concentration can deter healthy competition and limit innovation.”

Well, concentration can also be the result of healthy competition and innovation (h/t the great Harold Demsetz). Until we understand the existing concentration we can’t understand whether it’s a bug or feature, and hence what the appropriate policy response is.

Gensler implicitly analogizes say Citadel to Facebook or Google, which harvest customer data and can exploit network effects which drives concentration. The analogy seems very strained here. Retail order flow is cheap to service because it is uninformed. Citadel (or other purchasers of order flow) isn’t learning something about consumers that it can use to target ads at them or the like. The main thing it is learning is what sources of order flow are uninformed, and which are informed–so it can avoid paying to service the latter.

Again, before plunging ahead, it’s best to understand what are the potential agglomeration economies of servicing order flow.

Gensler returns to one of his favorite subjects–clearing–at the end of his talk. He advocates reducing settlement time from T+2: “I believe shortening the standard settlement cycle could reduce costs and risks in our markets.”

This is a conventional–and superficial–view that suggests that when it comes to clearing, Gensler is like the Bourbons: he’s learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.

As I wrote at the peak of the GameStop frenzy (which may repeat with AMC or some other meme stock), shortening the settlement cycle involves serious trade-offs. Moreover, it is by no means clear that it would reduce costs or reduce risks. The main impact would be to shift costs, and transform risks in ways that are not necessarily beneficial. Again, shortening the settlement cycle involves a substitution of liquidity risk for credit risk–just as central clearing does generally, a point which Gensler was clueless about in 2010 and is evidently equally clueless about a decade later.

So GiGi hasn’t really changed. He is sill offering nostrums based on superficial diagnoses. He fails to ask the most fundamental questions–the Chesterton’s Fence questions. That is, understand why things are they way they are before proposing to change them.

Niall Ferguson rightly worries about the ruling class’s infatuation with the Chinese system, and their clear desire to imitate it. Astoundingly, he fails to grasp the reason for this fanboy attraction.

Ferguson draws an analogy with Cold War I, during which he argues a process of “osmosis” threatened to make the US and the West generally more and more like the Soviet Union. But what is going on now is completely different. It is not an unthinking imitation driven by a need to compete, as in 1945-1991. It is a mixture of admiration (among the political class) and venality (among the corporate class). Yet Ferguson ignores these facts–which are far more disturbing than “osmosis”, which is an unconscious process. The ruling class’s affinity for the CCP model is anything but unconscious.

The West’s political class clearly envies the CCP’s autocratic powers, and strives to imitate them. This is most noticeable with respect to Covid policy, but it is not limited to that. Indeed, the political class fantasizes about using the extraordinary powers it seized based on the Covid pretext to reshape society generally.

The most forthright of the fanboyz is Canada’s effete Justin Trudeau–a perfect useful idiot for the CCP. He openly admires the Chinese dictatorship because, you know, it allows them to dragoon people into going green (amongst other things).

Maybe there are other reasons why Trudeau likes China. pic.twitter.com/mbxfpLQ34Y

— Camus (@newstart_2024) May 1, 2021

I could come up with other Trudeau examples, but I will spare you the torture of watching more of the twerp’s (cleaned that up) power worship/envy.

Although Trudeau is the most open in his admiration, it is clear that in the EU and the US the political class is itching to embrace China-like policies, whether it is massive “infrastructure” spending, draconian restrictions on liberty in the name of public health, or a social credit system (disguised, perhaps, in the form of vaccine passports or government cryptocurrencies which (a) China is racing to introduce in order to expand its social control, and (b) would almost certainly be non-anonymous to the government and linked with vast amounts of other personal information).

The Rosetta Stone to all ruling class policy initiatives is quite simple, people: you can make sense of any policy by asking what most enhances the ruling class’s power most, and deprives you of the most liberty and personal sovereignty. The ruling class envies the party/state power in the Chinese system, and hence is anxious to ape it at every opportunity.

That basic fact is missing in Ferguson’s article. Maybe it’s because he’s so embedded in the ruling class, although he from time to time takes contrarian positions.

Insofar as the corporate class is concerned, they are the 21st century version of Lenin’s 20th century aphorism about the capitalists who will sell communists the rope with which the latter will hang the former. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Slavering over the Chinese market, Western corporatists (I won’t say capitalists) are perfectly willing to countenance the enslavement of billions.

The ruling class and the corporate class crave power–the ability to control you, to coerce you. They see the power the CCP wields, and they want the same. Is not about emulating China to compete with China. It is about emulating China to emulate the domineering power of China’s political class. And to reprise Lenin again: “Who? Whom?” You are the whom.

This should be an obvious point, but Ferguson fails to make it.

The appropriate historical analogy here is not Cold War I, but the 1930s, when many in the Western ruling class openly admired the Italian Fascists, the Nazis, and the Bolsheviks because of the untrammeled power to reshape society that these malign movements possessed. The power to reshape society free from the resistance of the unenlightened proles is what the Western progressive political class desired, and desires, above all else. So they admired Mussolini then, and admire Xi now. Sinophilia (or more precisely, CCP-o-philia) is just the latest symptom of a very old disease.

These people are the enemies of freedom. They are your enemies. Respond accordingly.

Especially if it’s lumber. Not so much if it’s timber or logs.

Lumber prices have been on a tear recently. The CME lumber futures price has risen inexorably for weeks:

The softwood lumber PPI has increased 73 percent from April of last year, when Covid cratered all markets (including all commodity markets in particular) to March of this year. As the graph above shows, the price increase in the last month alone will add almost 100 precent to that. The plywood PPI is up 43 percent. The PPI for logs, timber, and pulpwood has not risen nearly as much over the April 2020-March 2021 period–only 7 percent.

So what’s going on? This podcast has a pretty good explanation, which comports with the analysis that follows. My main objection is that it repeatedly refers to the market as “broken.” No. A market is broken when it sends the wrong price signals. It is not broken if it sends the right signals, even if you don’t like them. That’s what’s going on here. Prices are signaling a major change in demand patterns that is straining a productive capacity oriented to the old patterns.

The podcast claims that log and timber prices are down. That’s not consistent with the PPI data, which does demonstrate some uptick in log/timber prices. I have also seen reports that timber/log prices are firm in western Canada. But it is obvious that the spread between lumber and timber has widened dramatically.

Which provides a perfect opportunity to apply what I teach in my commodities classes: Find the bottleneck. In a reasonably competitive market, the spread between two commodities, one that can be transformed into the other, equals the cost of that transformation. Sawmills transform logs into lumber, so if the spread between the prices of these things blows out, that shows you where the bottleneck is–at the mills.

The podcast largely confirms that. The sawmill sector has contracted and consolidated in recent years for a variety of reasons. The Covid-induced economic shock of last year also led to the idling of capacity. Now demand has come roaring back. There is a building boom, driven by an exodus from cities and a substitution of things for services. The turnaround has been so abrupt that sawmill capacity has not been able to adjust to keep up. It of course takes a long time to build new mills, and the decision to do that depends on expectations about long-term demand. It is quicker and more economical to restart idle mills, and to add shifts, and that is happening. But it can’t happen overnight.

A transportation bottleneck is exacerbating the problems. Shortages of railcars and trucks are limiting the ability of sawmills to satisfy demand. These shortages reflect in part a commodities boom generally. Chinese demand for US ag products (which has sent corn prices soaring) is contributing to that, but the transportation sector has been robust generally since its doldrums of a year ago. In that time the Dow Jones Transportation Average is up 128 percent off its Covid bottom, and is 40 percent above its pre-Covid collapse level.

Transportation bottlenecks tend to widen spreads at all levels of the value chain, from timber farm to mill, and from mill to lumber yard.

Lumber inventories are at barebones levels, as one would expect in such circumstances. When the supply-demand balance is tight today relative to what is expected in the future, the efficient thing to do is to draw down inventories and to consume everything that is being produced. This is leading, exactly as theory would predict, to a pronounced backwardation in lumber prices:

Note there’s an almost 30 percent backwardation going out six months. That’s very steep. Very Although I wouldn’t put too much weight in the distant deferred prices (given the absence of volume and open interest) one, it appears that the curve flattens out after the six month point.

So what’s going on is commodity economics 101. A surge in demand after a sharp fall (which led to reductions in transformation capacity) caused the lumber market to hit constraints–constraints in the amount of available inventory, and constraints in the capacity to transform a raw product (timber) into a consumable one (lumber). This in turn caused spreads (calendar spreads and the spread between finished and raw prices) to blow out. Market participants are responding to these price signals. The backwardation suggests that the constraints will ease by the end of the year. That of course is a forecast based on current information. Things could change.

So things ain’t broke. Indeed, what is happening in the lumber and timber markets is a symptom of a robust economic recovery, at least in the housing and goods sectors. It also reflects an apparent ongoing structural shift post-Covid (and post urban disturbances of the last year), namely, a desire to move out of cities driven by the recognition that more people can work remotely, and the declining amenities of cities (largely the result of lockdowns and their aftermath, and an upsurge in crime). Such an abrupt and seismic shift inevitably bumps up against constraints determined by past investments tailored to accommodate the old consumption patterns. That affects prices, and prices signal the need for new investments to alleviate the bottlenecks. This too shall pass, and within some months the bottlenecks will ease, as. participants all along the value change respond to the extraordinary price signals we see today.