"And they frankly own the place"

Bill moyers revient dans sa dernière émission sur la déclaration de Dick Durbin déjà évoquée dans ce post.
Pour mémoire:
"And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."

Google public data

Via TBP, google a annoncé que des données statistiques seraient désormais facilement accessibles. Comme l'emploi aux Etats-Unis par exemple.

Bientôt, tout le monde aura accès facilement aux données macroéconomiques disponibles sur un bloomberg par exemple mais sans payer $1500 par mois.

Exemple.

For further reference

Bloomberg estime à $38 Trillion les encours de CDS.

Opposition to Obama

Barry Ritholz à TBP recense 14 économistes opposés aux largesses d'Obama envers sa plus grosse constituency: les banques.

Banksters: 14.2%

14.2%. C'est le taux moyen pour les nouvelles Credit Cards américaines. Pour mémoire, le taux de l'usure en France est à 10% pour de prêts supérieurs à 1500 euros (j'imagine l'immense majorité des cas aux Etats-Unis). On peut se demander comment de tels niveaux sont possibles sans entente entre les principaux acteurs. B-A-N-K-S-T-E-R-S.

Voir Bloomberg:
"The average annual percentage rate offered to new card customers in the U.S. was 14.2 percent in April, up from 13.8 percent a year earlier, according to IndexCreditCards.com, which surveys the industry to track rates."

Jeux olympiques 2012

Les plans de relance sont à la mode mais quand même: quelle chance que Paris n'ait pas obtenu les JO! Londres va avoir perdu pas mal de sa superbe en 2012.

Un associé de Buffet pour l'interdiction des CDS

Le "Vice Chairman" de Berkshire Hattaway est pour l'interdiction des CDS. A noter qu'il a 85 ans. 7 ans de plus que Warren Buffett. Il va falloir chercher quelqu'un d'autre pour la succession.

Le paradoxe des bons du trésor

Le rally boursier a été rendu possible par la promesse et l'amorce d'une infusion de cash totalement illimitée dans le système bancaire américain (les financières ont fait l'essentiel du rally). Cette infusion ne peut se faire que grâce à une offre sans précédent (sauf peut-être durant la seconde guerre mondiale) de bons du trésor américain.

Or, le rally a orienté les investisseurs vers les actions plutôt que vers les obligations. C'est un des mécanismes qui a rendu les bons du trésor moins désirables ces derniers temps. Les ventes aux enchères de bons du trésor US se sont passées moins bien que par le passé.

Les investisseurs se bousculent donc pour devenir actionnaire des banques et bénéficier des largesses du trésor US à court terme mais ils sont moins enthousiastes à l'idée de financer à long terme ces dépenses somptuaires...

Stiglitz and the "too big too fail" excuse

Warning: post en anglais.

Stiglitz is saying that people have confused "Too big to fail" with "Too big to be financially restructured". It is indeed the biggest fallacy of this crisis: pretexting systemic risk to let banksters off the hook and channel to them insane amounts of taxpayers' money with absolutely no oversight.

Note + extensive digression: While we're at it, let's not forget the big lesson of this crisis: "Too big to fail is too big to exist". This idea has been around for a long time but I last read it in an article from Simon Johnson. Simon Johnson who has now a blog on the Wapo website which should put a cap on his critical outbursts (my bet would be that the word "oligarch" will make few appearances in his wapo blog). A little bit like Nouriel Roubini's political ambitions seem to me to be limiting his opposition to the Geithner clique. Nothing like carrots to tame criticism. Yet the fact that these individuals are now prominent commentators indicate that the world has changed. Is one more likely to change things by working with the system or by sticking to a hardline? Opposition is a political strategy to gain power. In the short run, it can look like a sellout but what if it brings real change in the medium run?

Proposition pour les CDS

Un système pour réformer le trading de CDS est décrit ici (site de Roubini). Il s'agit de faire passer tous les trade par une contrepartie unique qui a du coup les données nécessaires pour évaluer si le marché est globalement assez capitalisé.

Friday Plane Blogging

On Saturday again...

Aux origines du rally... il y avait Citi

Il semble que Citi ait besoin d'une nouvelle recapitalisation. Cela n'a rien de surprenant en soi et le marché juge les $5 milliards nécessaires tellement faibles (par rapport au $45 milliards précédents plus environ $250 milliards de garantie plus les interventions massives et furtives de la FED etc...) que l'action a progressé de 16% dans la foulée. Still. L'ironie est que le rally actuel a débuté à la faveur des déclarations positives de... Citi. Nous savons "for a fact" que le CEO de Citi est un menteur. Nous savons que le triptyque a la valeur journalistique d'une infomerciale (les détails sont rapportés de manière experte, le mensonge sur la "big picture" est constant et l' "accountability" exigé des banques est nulle). Nous savons aussi qu'après une perte de contrôle de 6 mois sur les évènements, la machine à mensonges des banques a repris le contrôle sur les esprits (malades) des opérateurs de marché avec désormais un allié de poids: le gouvernement.

Plus que jamais, les nouvelles sont bonnes parce que les nouvelles DOIVENT être bonnes (elles ne sont d'ailleurs le plus souvent que "présentées comme bonnes"). Cette dernière reprise en main traduit la volonté pathétique des élites économiques de commander la réalité pour sauver leur peau. Chaque jour qui passe nous rapproche de ce moment pas tellement éloigné où l'on "tipp-exera" des zéros ou des signes "moins" à la va-vite sur les quarterly results la veille de leur publication. Ce jour là (est-il dernière nous?), nous ne serons plus loin du "judgment day" pour l'imposture que représente la finance américaine depuis 10 ans. Le Blogo l'a promis pour 2009 et pour le premier semestre. Cela peut sembler court pour le premier semestre au vu du rally actuel mais une chose est sûre, personne ne le verra venir (pour la bonne est simple raison que les causes prévisibles et logiques d'une nouvelle crise de confiance sont aujourd'hui surveillées comme le lait sur le feu - le coup viendra donc par construction de là où on ne l'attend pas).

Fermeture de Guantanamo?

Les effets d'annonce d'Obama semblent souvent s'embourber dans les marécages du congrès. Que ce soit pour le retrait d'Irak, les contraintes imposées aux banques sur les rémunérations du management, les mesures pour rendre les faillites personnelles moins dures etc... on retrouve souvent le même shéma: il y a d'abord une annonce qui frappe les esprits et tout de suite commence un travail de sappe des lobbys qui remet en cause la mesure avec la complicité passive ou active des médias . L'annonce initiale est très médiatique mais le travail de sappe se fait discrètement.

Dernier exemple en date: les démocrates ont refusé de voter les fonds nécessaires à la fermeture de Guantanamo promise sous un an par Obama. Ce fut une des premières mesures annoncées à sa prise de fonction et elle lui avait valu une ovation quand il l'avait évoquée à Strasbourg devant 4000 jeunes européens. Il n'est pas encore dit qu'elle ne se fera pas mais cette tendance systématique doit conduire à se méfier des résultats concrets que vont engendrer les bonnes intentions d'Obama.

Les lecteurs attentifs du blogo auront compris qu'en ce qui concerne le fait économique majeur depuis sa prise de fonction, (la préservation en l'état d'un système bancaire failli), il est extrèmement difficile de déceler des différences entre Obama et son prédécesseur. L'engagement en terme budgétaire va bien au-delà de toutes les promesses électorales d'Obama réunies (sans doute plusieurs multiples). Les Etats-Unis se retrouvent donc dans la situation ubuesque où l'on coupe les cheveux en quatre pour quelques mesure sociales et où le commentariat s'indigne des déficits des comptes sociaux alors même que la mise à sac des comptes de la nation pour préserver le système bancaire est censée aller de soi. Quelle meilleure illustration de l'influence politique des banques que ce "deux poids, deux mesures" qu'il engendre? Il est possible qu'on se retrouve dans un an avec un président qui n'aura pas obtenu grand chose face aux divers lobbys qui bornent son pouvoir et dont la politique aura beaucoup plus à voir avec celle de Bush que ce qui était anticipé.

Cor-rup-tion

Un éditorial du NYT fait mine de s'indigner quand 12 démocrates s'allient à 39 républicains pour bloquer une mesure autorisant les juges gérant les faillites personnelles à modifier les emprunts dans un sens favorable aux particuliers mais en défaveur des banques.

La majorité au sénat n'est ni républicaine ni démocrate, elle est bancaire.

Sunday Rome Blogging

A l'ouest, rien de nouveau

Mais à chaque fois que c'est répété par des insiders, le Blogo ne manque pas de se sentir un peu plus "vindicated"...

Extrait de ce post de Glenn Greenwald:

Sen. Dick Durbin, on a local Chicago radio station this week, blurted out an obvious truth about Congress that, despite being blindingly obvious, is rarely spoken: "And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place." The blunt acknowledgment that the same banks that caused the financial crisis "own" the U.S. Congress -- according to one of that institution's most powerful members -- demonstrates just how extreme this institutional corruption is.

Friday Plane Blogging

Note: comme la plupart des images postées sur le blogo, vous pouvez agrandir les FPB en cliquant dessus.

Bonne nouvelle

Glenn Greenwald signale une victoire importante contre Obama. Ce dernier avait en effet repris le flambeau de Bush en revendiquant le droit de mettre fin à toute poursuite judiciaire sur la simple affirmation qu'elle mettait en cause un secret d'Etat. Cet abus de pouvoir avait permis à Bush de mettre fin aux procédures judiciaires susceptibles d'incriminer son régime. Obama n'avait pas d'autres choix que de le reprendre à son compte s'il voulait, comme il en a manifesté l'intention, protéger l'administration précédente et tout l'establishment washingtonien qui a soutenu le bushisme. Une cour d'appel vient de contester cette position de l'administration.

Le pouvoir judiciaire semble reprendre sa place dans le paysage politique américain (la maison blanche a aussi dû mettre de l'eau dans son vin sur sa volonté affichée de ne pas poursuivre Bush - ce n'est pas elle qui décide en la matière). L'élection d'Obama a normalisé la démocratie américaine dans la mesure où le pouvoir du président est à nouveau confronté à des limites. En votant Obama et démocrate massivement, les américains ont également manifesté leur souhait de revenir à un fonctionnement démocratique normal. Tous les corps de l'Etat (et la société en général) ont entendu le message et il est donc logique qu'ils retrouvent leur place en s'opposant si besoin au nouveau président. C'est l'effet induit de la victoire d'Obama: les américains n'ont plus peur de leur exécutif, les langues se délient. Cette forme de Glasnost* non-dite après une période de crispation autoritaire va avoir des effets pendant plusieurs années et pourraient être une lame de fond qui recentre le paysage politique américain aujourd'hui encore très fortement droitisé. Jusqu'au prochain attentat?

* Obama en Gorbatchev américain? Voir ici. Encore une analogie fumeuse dont le Blogo peut sans doute revendiquer la paternité. En réalité, en préservant à tous prix (littéralement) les structures du système bancaire en dépit de sa faillite, Obama semble au contraire de Gorbatchev se crisper sur la préservation d'un système cassé plutôt que d'essayer d'accoucher un nouvel équilibre. Quand on voit l'Etat de l'empire soviétique, on se demande si on peut réellement le lui reprocher. Comme signalé ici, les américains n'ont rien à perdre à tenter de préserver le système actuel: il n'existe pas d'alternative qui leur soit favorable. "They are all in" pour les amateurs de poker. J'ose donc une analogie encore plus fumeuse: Obama, le Iouri Andropov américain? El Blogo: "To boldly go where no man has gone before".

Longue interview d'Obama dans le NYT

J'ai sélectionné les passages susceptibles d'intéresser un lecteur du Blogo. L'interview a été faite le 14 avril et n'a été publiée qu'hier:

IV. Where the Economists are Coming From

I want to talk broadly about policy. When you and I spoke during the campaign, you made it clear that you had thought a lot about the economic debates within the Clinton administration. And you said that you wanted to have a Robert Rubin type and a Robert Reich type having a vigorous debate in front of you. And clearly you have a spectrum of Democrats within your economic-policy team.

THE PRESIDENT: But I don’t have Paul Krugman or Joseph Stiglitz. (7) (Laughter.)

No, this wasn’t about them. But they have made it clear that they are not working in your administration, haven’t they?

But in your inner circle, it really is dominated by Rubin protégés. And I’d be interested if —

THE PRESIDENT: You know, the — I mean, look, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner obviously worked at Treasury under Rubin.

And Peter Orszag, I think.

THE PRESIDENT: And Orszag — fair enough. You know, Christy Romer didn’t.

Jared Bernstein doesn’t — and Jared sits here every morning as part of my economic team. And Austan Goolsbee doesn’t. (8)

I mean, the truth is that what I’ve been constantly searching for is a ruthless pragmatism when it comes to economic policy. It is probably true that, given the financial crisis that had arisen, that the fact that both Tim and Larry had familiarity with financial crises was a plus, because I thought that we needed some people who could hit the ground running and would be comfortable dealing with some very large and difficult economic issues. And frankly, that list is pretty small, because the last Democratic president we had was Bill Clinton; he was on the scene for eight years, and for a big chunk of that time, Bob Rubin was his primary economic-policy maker. So it’s not surprising that anybody who had experience in those fronts was going to be coming out of a shop that would have been influenced by that.

Keep in mind, though, I mean, I have enormous respect for somebody like Joe Stiglitz. I read his stuff all the time. I actually am looking forward to having these folks in for ongoing discussion. Somebody who has enormous influence over my thinking is Paul Volcker, who is robust enough that, having presided over the Carter and Reagan years, he’s still sharp as a tack and able to give me huge advice and to provide some counterbalance.

The last point I’d make, though, is I think that — and I may have mentioned this to you — but now that I think about it, maybe it was post-election. When I first started having a round table of economic advisers, and Bob Reich was part of that, and he was sitting across the table from Bob Rubin and others, what you discovered was that some of the rifts that had existed back in the Clinton years had really narrowed drastically.

They agree a lot more than they used to, but not entirely.

THE PRESIDENT: Not entirely. But, I mean, the fact is that Larry Summers right now is very comfortable making arguments, often quite passionately, that Bob Reich used to be making when he was in the Clinton White House. Now Larry might not like me saying that —

Larry Summers is the new Bob Reich —

THE PRESIDENT: — that he’s become a soft touch. But, no, I think that one of the things that we all agree to is that the touchstone for economic policy is, does it allow the average American to find good employment and see their incomes rise; that we can’t just look at things in the aggregate, we do want to grow the pie, but we want to make sure that prosperity is spread across the spectrum of regions and occupations and genders and races; and that economic policy should focus on growing the pie, but it also has to make sure that everybody has got opportunity in that system.

I also think that there’s very little disagreement that there are lessons to be learned from this crisis in terms of the importance of regulation in the financial markets. And I think that this notion that there is somehow resistance to that — to those lessons within my economic team — just isn’t borne out by the discussions that I have every day.

If anything, the only thing I notice, I think, that I do think is something of a carry-over from Bob Rubin — I see it in Larry, I see it in Tim — is a great appreciation of complexity.

And a willingness to admit what you don’t know, in many cases.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, exactly. And so what that means is that, as we’re making economic policy, I think there is a certain humility about the consequences of the actions we take, intended and unintended, that may make some outside observers impatient. I mean, you’ll recall Geithner was just getting hammered for months. But he, I think, is very secure in saying we need to get these things right, and if we act too abruptly, we can end up doing more harm than good. Those are qualities that I think have been useful.

VI. Out of the Rough?

Do you think this recession is a big-enough event to make us as a country willing to make some of the sorts of hard choices that we need to make on health care, on taxes in the long term — which will not cover the cost of government — on energy? Traditionally those choices get made in times of depression or war, and I’m not sure whether this rises to that level.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, part of it will depend on leadership. So I’ve got to make some good arguments out there. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do since I came in, is to say now is the time for us to make some tough, big decisions.

The critics have said, you’re doing too much, you can’t do all this at once, Congress can’t digest everything. I just reject that. There’s nothing inherent in our political process that should prevent us from making these difficult decisions now, as opposed to 10 years from now or 20 years from now.

It is true that as tough an economic time as it is right now, we haven’t had 42 months of 20, 30 percent unemployment. And so the degree of desperation and the shock to the system may not be as great. And that means that there’s going to be more resistance to any of these steps: reforming the financial system or reforming our health care system or doing something about energy. On each of these things — you know, things aren’t so bad in the eyes of a lot of Americans that they say, We’re willing to completely try something new.

But part of my job I think is to bridge that gap between the status quo and what we know we have to do for our future.

Are you worried that the economic cycle will make that much harder? I mean, Roosevelt took office four years after the stock market crashed. You took office four months after Lehman Brothers collapsed. At some point people may start saying, Hey, why aren’t things getting better?

THE PRESIDENT: It’s something that we think about. I knew even before the election that this was going to be a very difficult journey and that the economy had gone through a sufficient shock and that it wasn’t going to recover right away.

In some ways it’s liberating, though, in the sense that whether I’m a one-termer or a two-termer, the problems are big enough and fundamental enough that I can’t sort of game it out. It’s not one of these things where I can say, Oh, you know what, if I time it just right, then the market is going to be going up and unemployment will be going down right before re-election. These are much bigger, much more systemic problems. And so in some ways you just kind of set aside the politics.

What I’m very confident about is that given the difficult options before us, we are making good, thoughtful decisions. I have enormous confidence that we are weighing all our options and we are making the best choices. That doesn’t mean that every choice is going to be right, is going to work exactly the way we want it to. But I wake up in the morning and go to bed at night feeling that the direction we are trying to move the economy toward is the right one and that the decisions we make are sound.

Et aussi (le début moins important):

I. The Future of Finance

Q: The idea here is to look beyond the current moment and try to think about what American life is going to be like on the other side of the so-called Great Recession. And so I thought it might make sense to start where the trouble started — finance. People who want to get a sense for how you think about education and jobs and all sorts of other issues can get a really good sense for your thinking by reading “The Audacity of Hope,” or by reading your old speeches, where you basically lay out your learning curve. But there’s no chapter on finance in “The Audacity of Hope.” And so I wonder if you would be willing to describe a little bit of your learning curve about finance, and what you envision finance being in tomorrow’s economy: Does it need to be smaller? Will it inevitably be smaller?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, I think that we should distinguish between finance as the lifeblood of our economy and finance as a significant industry where we have a comparative advantage — right? So in terms of just growing our economy, we’ve got to have enough credit out there to fund businesses, large and small, to allow consumers the flexibility to make long-term purchases like cars or homes. So that’s not going to change. And I would be concerned if our credit market shrunk in ways that did not allow for the financing of long-term growth.

What that means is not only do we have to have a healthy banking sector, but we’re going to have to figure out what we do with the nonbanking sector that was providing almost half of our credit out there. And we’re going to have to determine whether or not as a consequence of some of the steps that the Fed has been taking, the Treasury has been taking, that we see the market for securitized products restored.

I’m optimistic that ultimately we’re going to be able to get that part of the financial sector going again, but it could take some time to regain confidence and trust.

What I think will change, what I think was an aberration, was a situation where corporate profits in the financial sector were such a heavy part of our overall profitability over the last decade. That I think will change. And so part of that has to do with the effects of regulation that will inhibit some of the massive leveraging and the massive risk-taking that had become so common.

Now, in some ways, I think it’s important to understand that some of that wealth was illusory in the first place.

So we won’t miss it?

THE PRESIDENT: We will miss it in the sense that as a consequence of 25-year-olds getting million-dollar bonuses, they were willing to pay $100 for a steak dinner and that waiter was getting the kinds of tips that would make a college professor envious. And so some of the dynamic of the financial sector will have some trickle-down effects, particularly in a place like Manhattan.

But I actually think that there was always an unsustainable feel about what had happened on Wall Street over the last 10, 15 years, and it’s not that different from the unsustainable nature of what was happening during the dot-com boom, where people in Silicon Valley could make enormous sums of money, even though what they were peddling never really had any signs it would ever make a profit.

That doesn’t mean, though, that Silicon Valley is still not a huge, critical, important part of our economy, and Wall Street will remain a big, important part of our economy, just as it was in the ’70s and the ’80s. It just won’t be half of our economy. And that means that more talent, more resources will be going to other sectors of the economy. And I actually think that’s healthy. We don’t want every single college grad with mathematical aptitude to become a derivatives trader. We want some of them to go into engineering, and we want some of them to be going into computer design.

And so I think what you’ll see is some shift, but I don’t think that we will lose the enormous advantages that come from transparency, openness, the reliability of our markets. If anything, a more vigorous regulatory regime, I think, will help restore confidence, and you’re still going to see a lot of global capital wanting to park itself in the United States.

Are there tangible ways that Wall Street has made the average person’s life better in the way that Silicon Valley has?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that some of the democratization of finance is actually beneficial if properly regulated. So the fact that large numbers of people could participate in the equity markets in ways that they could not previously — and for much lower costs than they used to be able to participate — I think is important.

Now, the fact that we had such poor regulation means — in some of these markets, particularly around the securitized mortgages — means that the pain has been democratized as well. And that’s a problem. But I think that overall there are ways in which people have been able to participate in our stock markets and our financial markets that are potentially healthy. Again, what you have to have, though, is an updating of the regulatory regimes comparable to what we did in the 1930s, when there were rules that were put in place that gave investors a little more assurance that they knew what they were buying.

There was this great debate among F.D.R.’s advisers about whether you had to split up companies — not just banks — you had to split up companies in order to regulate them effectively, or whether it was possible to have big, huge, sprawling, powerful companies — even not just possible, but better — and then have strong regulators. And it seems to me there’s an analogy of that debate now. Which is, do you think it is O.K. to have these “supermarkets” regulated by strong regulators actually trying to regulate, or do we need some very different modern version of Glass-Steagall, (1)

THE PRESIDENT: You know, I’ve looked at the evidence so far that indicates that other countries that have not seen some of the problems in their financial markets that we have nevertheless don’t separate between investment banks and commercial banks, for example. They have a “supermarket” model that they’ve got strong regulation of.

Obama pics

Photos des sympas des 100 premiers jours d'Obama ici. Extrait de l'album de TPM (pour ceux qui ne sont pas des afficionados de "West Wing", il est assis dans le bureau oval sur la photo):