Mudede on the Repo Market Crisis

I'm lucky in that the local alternative weekly features the writings of a topnotch intellectual, Charles Mudede. Mudede rails regularly on all the right things, homelessness, neoliberalism, etc.

Yesterday he took on the repo market in a post titled "Government Cuts $5.5 Billion from Food Stamps Over Five Years, but Gives Banks $300 Billion in Only Three Months":

The Federal Reserve is quietly pumping big money into the banking system by way of the market for repurchase agreements (the repo market). In September, this sector—which connects institutions with cash to institutions in need of quick cash (short term loans)—went suddenly dry, and interest rates on short term debts spiked from around 2 percent to 10 percent. To normalize interest rates, the Fed began pumping cash into market by purchasing stagnant paper (treasury bills and other securities). Since then, a staggering $300 billion (the feds pumped another $70 billion into the repo markets this month), has been spent to keep the repo market going.

Jerome Powell, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, claimed that this massive operation was not quantitative easing (QE)—the $4 trillion Fed program that re-inflated the insolvent stock market after the crash of 2008—because the government is now only purchasing short term debts. QE was about long term debts. But this distinction is meaningless for one simple reason: the repo operation is, like QE, expanding the Fed's balance sheet. Meaning, the cost of saving this financial market is, once again, being transferred to the public.

[snip] 

But why was there turbulence in the repo market in the first place? Why this spectacular credit crunch? According to conventional economic measuring instruments, the GDP is still growing. The unemployment rate is reaching lows that have not been seen in many decades. And the stock market is breaking records. Where did the cash or buyers go to all of a sudden? Jerome Powell has offered nothing in the way of an explanation. Some do not want an explanation—they just want more government cheese. Lots of mainstream economists and columnists have, predictably, blamed capital requirements imposed on banks after the crash of 2008. They claim banks have the cash but they can't use it because regulators want them to have a stash in case of an emergency. Others say it was the taxes that corporations had to pay. It sucked all of the money out of the market. [I've heard -- on the Keiser Report -- that the repo market crisis tracks back to trouble at Chase.]

That is where things stand, USA. You had a massive economic crash in 2008. Millions lost homes and jobs. The feds spent $29 trillion to bail out the global financial sector (read this PDF from Bard's Levy Economics Institute), and all you can get from economists and columnists in mainstream business papers is more blather about how the government is the problem. There is, as you can see, no shame in the game.

But the answer can be found in Hyman Minsky's hypothesis for financial instability (PDF). Markets do not naturally seek a state of stability (or an equilibrium point of sellers and buyers). Indeed, stability itself leads, according to Minsky, to greater instability. When things are volatile, speculators (not to be confused with investors—or entrepreneurs) take fewer risks. When things appear to be stable, then caution is thrown to the hurricane. There is no mystery in the repo crisis if you are familiar with Minsky's writings.

But guess what? The government has changed the rules for food stamps in such way that it can deprive a large section of the poor of basic assistance and save tax payers a grand total of $5.5 billion over five years. I have no words that can adequately express the scale of this kind of obscenity: $300 billion given to banks; $5.5 billion taken from the neediest members of our society.

Max Keiser sees the global neoliberal Washington Consensus headed towards neofeudalism. The bankers will own literally everything and everything will be monetized.

The Emerald City is Going to Shit

From yesterday's Significant Digits:

5,400 people
That’s the number of people in Seattle who live on the street, according to one 2017 survey, about half of whom live in their vehicle. A judge ruled in favor of a Seattle man whose vehicle, where he also lived, was impounded to pay for parking debts, saying that the vehicle was covered under the 123-year old Homestead Act. That law says the government cannot force people to sell their homes to pay for a debt. [KIRO 7 News]

And this from Wednesday's Charles Mudede post, "Seattle Housing Prices Continue to Soar, as Congress Prepares to Deregulate Banks":

Two important pieces of news to consider this afternoon. The first, reported by the Seattle Times, is that the median for single-family-home prices in Seattle has reached an astounding $777,000. That is an increase of $20,000 from the last peak, which was reached in January. As for the Eastside, the median cost is almost $1 million. As expected, the explanation provided for these ever-rising prices is not speculation, but a hot jobs market.

From Seattle Times:
The hyper job market in the Pacific Northwest continues to outpace almost every metro area in the nation, and thus our housing market is booming; for now, there is no end in sight,” Mike Grady, president and COO at Coldwell Banker Bain, said in a statement.

The reporter, Mike Rosenberg, felt that the opinion of this Bain banker settled the matter. Rosenberg did, however, mention that while incomes are rising in the Seattle area, home prices are "still increasing much faster." 

Meanwhile in Washington, D.C., several Dems in alliance with lots of Republicans are preparing to remove significant rules that were imposed on the banking industry after it destroyed the global economy in 2008. These rules are a part of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

I live near downtown Ground Zero of all this. Homelessness is visible everywhere in spite of an atypically harsh winter (part of the polar vortex thing). The nuts and bolts are this: a small business, like a gym or neighborhood saloon, move into a storefront and then closes after not too many months. The main reason? Can't afford the high rent. So the storefront goes vacant and the homeless move in and squat. There has been one a couple blocks from my apartment building for a year now.

Another aspect of living in the hottest job market/real estate market is the massive amount of dog shit on the sidewalk. Maybe it's human shit. I don't know. I assumed it was from a dog based on the large number of people I see walking their precious pooches. More so than at points in the past. More condos and high-end multi-story apartment buildings have shot up in my neighborhood and they cater to the single professional who usually shares her living quarters with a canine pet.

Rampant homelessness, no doubt far worse than that documented by the quote at the top of the post, and sidewalks slathered in shit that's what you get in this iteration of "as good as it gets" neoliberalism.

And now comes the news that Michael Bennett has been traded to Philadelphia and that Richard Sherman will be cut today  The Emerald City is definitely going to shit.

****

POSTSCRIPT: There is a really good piece by Brian Floyd, "A Seahawks fan’s elegy for the Legion of Boom," on what appears to be a done deal -- Richard Sherman will be cut today. It is definitely the end of an era:

The history of the Legion of Boom is full of trials and errors, huge mistakes and amazing successes. In the 2013 playoffs, the Seahawks defense gave up a last-second field goal to the Falcons in the divisional round, ending their season. The next year, with the 49ers driving in the NFC Championship, Richard Sherman tipped a Colin Kaepernick pass to the end zone to Malcolm Smith to seal a Seahawks win. Failure, a lesson learned, and a success. What happened two weeks later was a foregone conclusion and a victory lap for the Seahawks defense. The Legion of Boom had a ring, and the experiment worked.

The question is always how long will it keep working. Getting the experiment off the ground is half the battle. In the NFL, the window is short and so is the shelf life for players. And it’s a contact sport so injury luck is involved.

It wasn’t hard to spot the seams. The blowups on the sidelines became more frequent, and there was more tension. Age catches up and the margin for error on defense goes down. Injuries happen, including freak ones like a leg whip from Chancellor, which ended Thomas’ season in painful and devastating fashion. The wear and tear later caught up to Chancellor, and he may never play football again. Playing at the speed and level the Legion of Boom did takes its toll.

The realization that it was over came as Sherman laid on the turf during a brutal Thursday night game against the Cardinals. His Achilles was ruptured, and had been just barely hanging on all season anyway. The Legion of Boom was aging and injured, and the Seahawks had to make some decisions. The seams had been showing, and this was the last gasp before they, too, burst.

Sherman will be released, and may or may not be back. Michael Bennett is gone and Cliff Avrilmay never play again. The Seahawks are moving players around left and right, signaling a large-scale roster shakeup. Earl Thomas may be the only remaining member of the Legion of Boom. Seattle’s defense will look different, and sound quieter.

The Seahawks will try to rebuild, and try to recapture what the Legion of Boom created. There are holdovers, and new faces will emerge. But it’s impossible to re-create what the LOB became because it was an experiment all along: careful scouting, some patience, an environment they could flourish in, a scheme that fit their skills to a perfectly, and a whole lot of luck. What you’re left with is the end of an era and attitude, and a whole bunch of fun memories.

Those Seahawks teams from the 2012 season through the Super Bowl loss that capped the 2014 season were some of the greatest of all time. It's a shame that Carroll and Bevell didn't let Marshawn Lynch run the ball into the end zone against the Patriots. Back-to-back Super Bowl wins would have memorialized the team's greatness. Now it's being junked as a matter of routine business.