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President Obama today said “If we once again guide the market’s invisible hand with a higher principle, our markets will recover, our economy will once again thrive and America will once again lead the world in this new century as it did in the last“.

Has he actually read The Wealth of Nations, the classic Adam Smith book that coined the term “invisible hand?”  Does he even know what the term means?

Evidently not, because “invisible hand” is the term economists use to describe the self-regulating nature of markets.  I’d like for President Obama to reconcile that with his call today for increased regulation of financial institutions.

According to Reuters The economy cannot sustain “21st century markets with 20th century regulations,” Obama told reporters after the meeting with lawmakers. And “Strong financial markets require clear rules of the road, not to hinder financial institutions, but to protect consumers and investors and ultimately to keep those financial institutions strong.”

If he’s serious about resolving the financial crisis, Obama will shut up, repeal the current regulations, and allow bad banks to fail.

There’s a lot more in the article, but I don’t have time to get into it all right now.  But I can’t simply disregard statements like Turmoil throughout the banking and financial system caused by the subprime mortgage crisis is at the core of the recession that has spread worldwide. and There is wide agreement among financial market experts — both in the United States and around the world — that the rules governing financial institutions are in dire need of modernization.

These same “financial market experts” are the ones who created the problem – why does anyone think they know how to solve it?

gk

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Wow, I know the NY times is not a fan of deregulation (in any form) but they’re piling on in the past few days.  Check out this editorial calling for more federal regulation on credit cards.

As an example of why more regulation is needed, they provide an anecdote of a stupid man in Chicago.  Here’s a quote:

At a recent news briefing in Washington, a Chicago man told about what happened when he charged a $12,000 home repair bill in 2000 on a card with an introductory interest rate of 4.25 percent. Despite his steady, on-time payments, the rate is now nearly 25 percent. And despite paying at least $15,360, he said that he had only paid off about $800 of his original debt.

Despite paying at least $15,360, he’s only paid about $800 of the principal?   The only way this is possible is if he’s been paying the minimum for the past 8 years.  If that’s what he’s done, he’s a moron! 

I suppose we should look to the government to bail him out too? 

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Reading this story on FoxNewsreminded me to post my thoughts on the growing cries for more government regulation of the mortgage and brokerage industries.  Basically, I think we need to stop the Fed interventions and roll back the regulations we have now.

That comes with a caveat though – no regulation and no intervention also implies no bailouts.  That means that Bear Stearns would have shut their doors last week. That means that Citi and JP Morgan wouldn’t be able to dip their hands into the Fed’s cookie jar to stay afloat.  That means that more home owners would be in foreclosure.  But I happen to think that those are all good things.

The trillions of dollars of CDO’s, CDS’s, and derivatives that are based on bad mortgages (and that are being propped up by the Fed’s intervention) need to reflect the losses they’re actually sustaining at some point.  You can’t carry a bad mortgage on the books as an asset at full face value forever, and the longer they delay writing off the losses, the longer it will take to sort through this mess.

Get it out there, get it over with, and move on. 

gk

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