BBC NEWS | Business | Sterling rebounds from sharp fall

Americans, are you planning a vacation anytime soon? If so, why not visit LOVELY Great Britain! Why, you ask, would ANYONE want to visit the UK in during this wet, cold season? Well, here’s why I’m buying British this year:

I recently booked a Himalayan ski tour in Indian Kashmir organized by a British company. The price? 1400 GBP, which only three months ago was the equivalent of $2800 US! Today, with the newly weak British Pound, my ski trip to India will only cost me $2100*. In the span of just a few months, the dollar price of this amazing Himalayan ski adventure has fallen by $700! Naturally, Americans like myself now have an incentive to buy British!

What has caused the slide of the Pound in recent months? Here’s the complicated answer:

“The environment of very weak sentiment regarding the domestic economic picture and potential rate cuts alongside equity volatility is keeping sterling very much on the defensive,” said Jeremy Stretch, strategist at Rabobank.

Strategists get paid lots of money to say stuff that 99% of people don’t understand the first time they read it. I get paid very little money to help those people better understand it, specifically, my students. Here’s what Mr. Stretch is trying to say:

A weak economy in Great Britain leads foreign investors to believe that the Bank of England may lower interest rates in the near future. Why would Britain’s central bank lower interest rates? Because lower interest rates create an incentive for consumers and businesses to take out loans from banks and spend money in the economy, which should create new jobs and help prevent a recession in the UK.

If the bank does lower interest rates, this puts “the sterling on the defensive”, in other words, leads to a weakening of the British Pound, as foreign investors looking to put their money where they can earn a decent return on it will be less likely to save in the UK when interest rates fall. “Equity volatility” is a fancy way of saying British stocks have been performing poorly, decreasing their attraction to foreign investors. When saving in British banks becomes less attractive due to expected interest rate cuts, and buying British stocks becomes risky due to their volatility, investors turn to the safest investment in the world, which is… can you guess? United States government bonds!

So how’s this all relate to exchange rates, you ask? Let’s leave this question for readers to answer and discuss in the comments:

Discussion Questions:

1. How does the expected drop in British interest rates affect the demand for British pounds on foreign exchange markets? What does this do to the value of the pound?
2. Why does the stability and safety of US government bonds lead to a strengthening of the dollar in times of global economic slowdowns?
3. How has the recession in the United States further contributed to the weakening of the British pound?

*In fact, I’m too poor to take a ski trip to India this year, I will have to settle for the puny peaks here in the Swiss Alps!

Related posts:

1. More on exchange rates: Winners and losers of a strong British pound
2. What’s got the dollar so weak in the knees?
3. Reflections on the weak dollar

Op-Ed Contributor – Buy American. I Am. – NYTimes.com

So Wall Street has recently experienced its worst shocks since the great depression. Every day the Dow Jones is like a roller coaster, DOWN 800 points, then  UP 500 points, then DOWN 200 followed by another rally of 600! In just three weeks the Dow has gone from 11,500 to below 900 points. Surely, the wise thing to do is get OUT of the stock market, right? WRONG! At least, so says the richest man in the world, Warren Buffet, someone who should know a thing or two about smart investing.

Why?

A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors. To be sure, investors are right to be wary of highly leveraged entities or businesses in weak competitive positions. But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation’s many sound companies make no sense. These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have. But most major companies will be setting new profit records 5, 10 and 20 years from now.

Let me be clear on one point: I can’t predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month — or a year — from now. What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.

A little history here: During the Depression, the Dow hit its low, 41, on July 8, 1932. Economic conditions, though, kept deteriorating until Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933. By that time, the market had already advanced 30 percent. Or think back to the early days of World War II, when things were going badly for the United States in Europe and the Pacific. The market hit bottom in April 1942, well before Allied fortunes turned. Again, in the early 1980s, the time to buy stocks was when inflation raged and the economy was in the tank. In short, bad news is an investor’s best friend. It lets you buy a slice of America’s future at a marked-down price.

Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

You might think it would have been impossible for an investor to lose money during a century marked by such an extraordinary gain. But some investors did. The hapless ones bought stocks only when they felt comfort in doing so and then proceeded to sell when the headlines made them queasy.

Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value. Indeed, the policies that government will follow in its efforts to alleviate the current crisis will probably prove inflationary and therefore accelerate declines in the real value of cash accounts.

Equities will almost certainly outperform cash over the next decade, probably by a substantial degree. Those investors who cling now to cash are betting they can efficiently time their move away from it later. In waiting for the comfort of good news, they are ignoring Wayne Gretzky’s advice: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.”

I don’t like to opine on the stock market, and again I emphasize that I have no idea what the market will do in the short term. Nevertheless, I’ll follow the lead of a restaurant that opened in an empty bank building and then advertised: “Put your mouth where your money was.” Today my money and my mouth both say equities.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why does holding cash seem like the smart thing to do during periods of volatile stock prices like the last month or so? Why does Mr. Buffet think that holding cash is NOT so smart?
2. Mr. Buffet’s advice is counter-intuitive to some. Buying more of something that is falling in value (American stocks) may appear unwise… but what is Buffet’s rationale for why buying now may in fact be the smartest thing for an investor to do?
3. Does the behavior of investors on the stock market reflect the behavior of consumers in a typical product market? In other words, do the laws of supply and demand apply to the stock market? Discuss…

Related posts:

1. So the stock markets are crashing, what’s the big deal?
2. Advice to Republican presidential nominee on taxes – “raise ‘em!”
3. Some good news for Swiss businesses and workers during hard economic times

As I read the daily news, listen to politicians, and chat with my colleagues in the teachers’ lounge, it really seems that almost everyone believes that mortgage defaults and delinquencies are the reason we are in this financial mess characterized by frozen credit markets and downward spiraling stock markets.  

To my way of looking at the economic world, saying that rising mortgage payment defaults and delinquencies are the cause of the global financial crisis is tantamount to saying that poor building design was the true cause of the thousands of deaths on 9/11/2001.

To use an often used cliche, rising mortgage payment defaults are simply “the straw that broke the camels back”. Moody’s Economy.com (Mark Zandi) estimates that all U.S. mortgage losses on existing mortgages will ultimately reach $650B. This $650B of mortgage default is miniscule in relation to the size of our Government’s vast financial resources and to the economy as a whole. It makes no economic sense that a $650B problem would generate an $8 Trillion decrease in financial asset wealth over the last year!

Clearly, there must be a real problem somewhere!

The real cause of the global financial crisis should not be blamed on the mortgage market or the housing crisis, but rather on inadequate regulatory law and the related governmental oversite of our financial institutions. There was no specific law prohibiting financial institutions to amass an alarmingly risky asset to debt ratio. All of the failures of financial institutions are resulting from the firms carrying too much debt (liabilities) relative to their assets (cash & other assets). Marketable securities will always go up and down in price so any firm, especially financial firms, must have a comfortable gap of higher asset values relative to their debt. The financial firms that have failed and are failing did not/do not have a comfortable ratio of asset to debt so when their mortgage related securities fell in value due to the mortgage payment uncertainty, debtors made a run on their collateral and demanded immediate payment from the financial institutions.

So what are the real causes of the financial crisis? Here are my top 6 reasons listed in order of significance. You will notice that the most significant (1-3) are really not specifically related to the housing market or mortgage default increases. Since the mortgage defaults and delinquencies were “the straw that broke the camels” back, I have included them at a lower priority (4-6) of the causes.

TOP 6 CAUSES OF THE U.S. FINANCIAL CRISIS:

1. Imprecise regulatory law allowed the financial institutions to carry too high a ratio of mortgage-backed securities to collateralized debt.
2. Banking regulators should have screamed louder earlier regarding the ratio of assets to debt! Although there are many documented attempts from specific people that did warn of this problem it was more a whisper than a scream.
3. New accounting regulations under Sarbanes Oxley (regulation passed after Enron) are too conservative causing assets like mortgage-related securities to be valued less than their economic value (true worth), which caused the bank debtor run on the bank.  
4. Private lenders (and their CEOs) got greedy either lowering or violating their own lending standards in hopes of making more interest income by loaning to people who were very risk bets.
5. Households borrowed more than they could afford. Citizens that borrowed need to share the blame with lenders, although I place lenders at a higher standard than borrowers.
6. New law had been passed several years ago, urging institutions like Fannie Mae to make more loans to lower income households that carried much more risk.

Related posts:

1. U.S. Financial Crisis!! What Is Really Happening?
2. The Costs of the Bailout, More Government Debt
3. Federal Bailout of The U.S. Economy: Who’s To Blame?

Who’s specifically to blame for the economic situation we find ourselves in leading up to the $700B Federal bailout bill that is just about to be signed into law?

Assuming you have read my previous post (“U.S. Financial Crisis! What Is Really Happening?”) on this topic posted last week on this blog site, a related and logical question might be who is most to blame for the unfortunate economic situation we find ourselves in?

As you can imagine, there is plenty of blame to go around! Republicans are blaming Democrats and Democrats are blaming Republicans. Many are blaming household decision makers, greedy executives, and bank regulators “asleep at the switch”. In short, everyone is blaming everyone except for themselves. I have yet to see one person blame themselves, their agency, or their companies!

I see the answers to the “who is to blame” question as a 6-point answer. Keep in mind that these 6 reasons are strictly my opinions and many would either disagree or add to the list:

1. Imprecise regulatory law allowed the financial institutions to carry too high a ratio of mortgage-backed securities to collateralized debt.
2. Banking regulators (Banking Committee, FED, Regulators, etc.) should have screamed louder earlier! Although there are many documented attempts from specific people that did warn of this problem it was more a whisper than a scream.
3. Private lenders (and their CEOs) got greedy either lowering or violating their own lending standards in hopes of making more interest income by loaning to people who were very risk bets.
4. New law had been passed several years ago, urging that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac make more loans to lower income households that carried much more risk.
5. Households borrowed more than they could afford. Citizens that borrowed need to share the blame with lenders, although I place lenders at a higher standard than borrowers.
6. New accounting regulations under Sarbanes Oxley (regulation passed after Enron) are too conservative causing assets like mortgage-related securities to be valued less than their economic value (true worth), which caused the bank debtor run on the bank.

Yes, there is a lot of blame to go around on this one! If there is any good news it is the hope that new regulation and oversight will occur in our “mixed” economy to help prevent this from ever happening again. Of course, there will be many other “next problems” but, hopefully, we will learn from our mistakes!

Discussion questions:

1. Who do you believe is most to blame for the circumstances leading up to this bailout?
2. Have you remained unbiased in learning that this issue is neither solely a Republican nor a Democratic issue?
3. Which presidential candidate gave you the most comfort as to how he explained his views on the bailout?

Related posts:

1. The Costs of the Bailout, More Government Debt
2. Robert Reich – the financial bailout represents “the worst type of trickle-down economics”
3. Deflation: why lower prices spell doom for any economy!

Economists see financial bailout as necessary – Yahoo! News

Economists in the US are calling this week’s bailout of numerous US companies a necessary step in ensuring that no permanent harm is caused to the financial system and that we do not head into a deep recession.

The Treasury Department under the leadership of Henry Paulson is currently asking congress to move quickly on a bill that would provide $700 billion to the Department to buy up much of the bad debt that many financial institutions have incurred over the past years. Where’s this money going to come from? Since it doesnt look like the Bush Administration will be pushing for increased taxes anythime soon, Congress will have to borrow the money. 

Though most economists are agreeing that this is a necessary step in ensuring the integrity of the economy, I believe that it is important to look at how this additional debt may effect our government and economy in the future. So lets start with some numbers. The following statisitics are taken from the above article.

The deficit for this budget year, which ends on Sept. 30, is expected to rise to $407 billion, a figure that is more than double the $161.5 billion imbalance for 2007, reflecting what the economic slowdown and this year’s $168 billion economic stimulus program are already doing to the government’s books.

The Bush administration is estimating that the deficit for the budget year that begins Oct. 1, which will cover the new president’s first year in office, will hit $482 billion, a record in dollar terms.

And that forecast doesn’t include the $200 billion the administration committed to spending two weeks ago when it took over the nation’s two biggest mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

And it doesn’t have any of the $700 billion the administration is seeking to soak up the bad mortgage-backed securities that have been at the heart of the severe credit crisis the country has been struggling with since August 2007.

The legislation the administration is now seeking to authorize the financial system bailout, according to a draft obtained by The Associated Press, would boost that debt limit to $11.3 trillion, up another $700 billion.

It is the rapidly rising debt that is cause for concern. The government is already spending more than $400 billion a year just to pay interest on the national debt. The higher that debt goes, the higher the government’s borrowing costs and the less it has to spend on other programs.

Discussion Questions:

1. What impact does the knoweldge that the government will bailout struggling financial firms have on investors willingness to take risks?
2. Should the government intervene in these finacial markets or leave the “invisble hand” to its own devices?
3. What are the opportunity costs associated with this decision?
4. What are some short term and long term implications of this bailout?

Related posts:

1. Robert Reich – the financial bailout represents “the worst type of trickle-down economics”
2. Federal Bailout of The U.S. Economy: Who’s To Blame?
3. How big is the government spending multiplier in America? Well, it depends on which economist you ask…

How Does the Stock Market Effect The Economy? | Economics Blog

Well, a few things… Generally, the fluctuations of the stock market do not necessarily bode ill for the whole economy. Likewise, global fluctuations of stock markets does not mean there is a recession on the horizon. In fact, an old adage says that “stock markets have predicted ten out of the last three recessions.” In other words, a slump in global markets does not always precipitate a slump in the world’s economy. Here’s some impacts the market crashes of the last few days may have, however, explained nicely by Richard Pettinger, an economics teacher in the UK:

Economic Effects of Stock Market

1. Wealth Effect: The first impact is that people with shares will see a fall in their wealth. If the fall is significant it will affect their financial outlook. If they are losing money on shares they will be more hesitant to spend money; this can contribute to a fall in consumer spending. However, the effect should not be given too much importance. Often people who buy shares are prepared to lose money; their spending patterns are usually independent of share prices, especially for short term losses.

2. Effect on Pensions: Anybody with a private pension or investment trust will be affected by the stock market, at least indirectly. Pension funds invest a significant part of their funds on the stock market. Therefore, if there is a serious fall in share prices, it reduces the value of pension funds. This means that future pension payouts will be lower. If share prices fall too much, pension funds can struggle to meet their promises. The important thing is the long term movements in the share prices. If share prices fall for a long time then it will definitely affect pension funds and future payouts.

3. Confidence: Often share price movements are reflections of what is happening in the economy. E.g. recent falls are based on fears of a US recession and global slowdown. However, the stock market itself can affect consumer confidence. Bad headlines of falling share prices are another factor which discourage people from spending. On its own it may not have much effect, but combined with falling house prices, share prices can be a discouraging factor.

4. Investment: Falling share prices can hamper firms ability to raise finance on the stock market. Firms who are expanding and wish to borrow often do so by issuing more shares – it provides a low cost way of borrowing more money. However, with falling share prices it becomes much more difficult.

Related posts:

1. Advice from an economic oracle – buy American stocks now!
2. Unemployment and inflation: understanding the Fed’s balancing act
3. Will the stimulus package “crowd-out” private investment and reduce long-run growth potential in America?

FT.com / World – Panic sparks plunge in global markets

While Americans enjoyed a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King yesterday, its stock markets remained closed. Elsewhere, however, stock markets from Asia to India to Europe to the UK experienced the worst one-day fall since 9/11. London’s FTSE fell more on Monday than it had since 1983. In Germany the market fell 7.2%. Here in Asia the picture was equally as dismal:

In Asia, Indian shares on Monday ended 7.4 per cent lower, and trading was halted in Mumbai after the market fell 9.8 per cent in the opening minutes; Hong Kong closed down 5.5 per cent; and Japan’s Nikkei average slid nearly 4 per cent, falling a further 4.4 per cent by midday on Tuesday while South Korea’s Kospi index lost a further 3.9 per cent. In the morning session on Tuesday, Hong Kong skidded another 8 per cent while Shanghai was down over 4 per cent. Indonesian shares sank 8 per cent in morning action.

In one day, literally trillions of dollars was lost in the value of the world’s stock markets; many are already referring to yesterday as Black Monday.

So, what does a global slide in stock markets have to do with macroeconomics? Interestingly, the events in the world’s stock markets tell a story about the interconnectedness of national economies in our era of globalization and international trade.

As some of my students may know, over the last year the housing market in the United States has experienced a massive slow-down. For years banks and lending agencies had been making loans to Americans with very poor or no credit history to buy houses. These “sub-prime” loans often came with variable interest rates, meaning that after a few years, the initial, attractively low interest rate would be notched up, adding significant amounts to the monthly payments owed by the borrowers, many of whom were forced to settle for a sub-prime loan because of their tenuous financial standing in the first place.

The results of this type of lending are predictable, and sure enough over the last year millions of Americans have defaulted on their home loans (mortgages) and the banks and institutions that made the loans have subsequently fallen into hard times. Today, America is experiencing a “credit crunch”, meaning that it’s harder than ever for consumers and firms to get loans from the bank, since banks are now more leery about lending to borrowers who may default on their loans. Less borrowing means less spending and investment, meaning the overall level of economic activity in America has slowed down; a sign that a recession may be on the horizon.

Recession, in macroeconomics, refers to anytime there are two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. In other words, if the economy produces less total output now than it did a few months ago, it might be in a recession. Recessions are usually accompanied by rising unemployment and low consumer spending. Firms considering new investments in capital pay close attention to news of a recession, and similarly investors in stock markets pay close attention to the level of investments made by firms. When investors think firms are likely to expand and acquire new capital due to a positive business climate, investors tend to buy stock, driving up the value of the stock markets. On the other hand, when investors fear an economic slowdown, when consumers stop buying and firms stop investing, the investors themselves sell their stocks and switch their wealth to other assets.

So here’s another question: Why does the fear of a recession in the United States trigger a slump in the stock markets of other countries, from Asia to Europe? The answer here is that America, with its truly gigantic economy, is the largest trading partner of many of the world’s developed economies. If consumers in America stop buying goods and services, not only American firms suffer, but Chinese, Japanese, Southeast Asian, Indian and European firms alike may suffer as their largest trading partner slides towards recession. This phenomenon is called “coupling” and refers to the dependency of many nations on the United States as a destination for its goods and services.

Back to our original question: What does the stock market sell-off have to do with macroeconomics. Here’s the quick answer: Macroeconomic policies aim to achieve three broad goals:

1. Full-employment
2. Price-level stability, and
3. Economic growth

The stock market plunge of “Black Monday” may signal an imminent recession not only in the US, but in the countries that depend on American consumers for their own economic strength (such as China). A global economic slowdown will have a significant human cost, in the form of high unemployment, often accompanied itself by political and social instability.

While we await the opening of the American stock market later today, we can rest assured that politicians and bankers are already considering steps that may help ward off further plunges in the markets and the economic slowdown they seem to foreshadow. Using expansionary fiscal policy, involving the lowering of taxes and increases in government spending, President Bush has already announced his plans to inject $150 into the US economy, hoping to encourage households and firms to spend more on goods and services. Additionally, America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, has pursued expansionary monetary policy in the form of lowering interest rates, also in an attempt to encourage more borrowing and spending by households and firms.

Fiscal and monetary policies are both used to attempt to achieve the three goals identified above. Throughout the coming semester, in AP Economics, we will learn all about these goals and the tools used by policymakers to try and achieve them.

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Related posts:

1. So the stock markets are crashing, what’s the big deal?
2. Down is Often Up & Black is Often White (Why I Love Economics!)
3. Stagflation – a blast from the past could mean trouble for US economy