Gaming the Inflation Numbers

Is inflation good or bad? Most consumers and businesses would say inflation is bad. By distorting prices, inflation makes financial planning for the future difficult, it squeezes family budgets, wrecks business plans, and destroys savings. The government, at least in principle, agrees that inflation is bad and one of the duties of the Federal Reserve is to “fight inflation” by tinkering with interest rates.

But there’s a problem with this good versus evil story line. Inflation actually has beneficiaries with a vested financial stake in seeing it continue. For example, debtors benefit from inflation. People who borrow money during periods of inflation get to pay back cheaper dollars than the ones they spent. Homeowners benefit from inflation because no landlord raises the rent. That means as a homeowner’s income increases, the fraction of income needed for housing decreases. Most people who own homes are also in debt because of the home, so they get duals benefits from inflation.

But, the biggest beneficiary from inflation is the federal government itself. The same institution that controls the money supply and purports to fight inflation benefits from it. Actually, the government benefits most from stealth inflation. If the real rate of inflation can be hidden, the government realizes all the benefits from inflation without having to bear the same costs that everyone else does.

The federal government benefits from inflation because it is the largest debtor on the planet. No other institution measures its debt in trillions of dollars. Not only is the debt enormous, it is projected to go on forever. Vague proposals to balance the budget are lame attempts to end the growth of debt, not the debt itself. Inflation makes the national debt manageable. Without inflation it would be mathematically impossible for the federal government to meet its financial obligations.

In fact inflation is an ideal two-headed quarter for the government. Devaluing the currency is a means of taxation without the need to pass a law raising taxes. The government cheapens the dollars it owes and collects more money through the effect of tax bracket creep. At the same time, rising prices create an illusion of wealth while purchasing power falls. But much of the mathematical magic of inflation would go away if the government were honest about reporting inflation rates.

For example, the government issues inflation-indexed bonds that pay a variable interest tied to the inflation rate. Increases in entitlement spending on such a programs as Social Security are based on the inflation rate. The idea that the government can “stimulate” the economy by lowering interest rates only works if you can convince lenders that the inflation rate is low so they don’t need a high rate of return just to break even.

So how does the government pull off this deception? The problem is no one agrees upon a definition of inflation. CEOs of large corporations will say that their ever increasing, stratospheric compensation packages are necessary for a prosperous company. Of course these same executives will fight raising the minimum wage on the grounds that such an action is “inflationary.” It is rather convenient to label your rise in income as deserved and label someone else’s as delusory.

So it is with the federal government. It can tinker with economic data to underreport inflation so that it reaps the benefits but doesn’t have to pay the costs. In Jim Jubaks December 5, 2008 column: “Fake Inflation Numbers Mask Crisis” he explains some of the techniques the government has used in recent decades to disguise inflation.

For example the government started using “hedonics,” a technique that reported a $100 increase in the price of a car as $0 if in the judgment of the government the “usefulness” of the car increased by $100. An increase in the power, safety, or other features would qualify as increasing its “usefulness.” Never mind that the car does essentially the same thing—take its driver from point A to point B.

The government also started to make “substitution” adjustments to its inflation numbers. If the price of steak goes up, the government assumes consumers will substitute chicken and not pay more for food. Therefore food prices are not actually rising. Got the logic on that one? Of course some government official has to decide what substitutions consumers will make and those decisions are subject to a later change.

According to Jubak the result of fudging the inflation numbers is that the Fed should have been raising interest rates to fight inflation instead of lowering them and allowing the housing bubble to develop. Of course the Fed could accurately report the money supply figures that would give a much better insight into real inflation. While there are disagreements on what inflation is, there is common agreement that printing money to circulate without a corresponding increase in economic activity will cause inflation. But in 2006 the Fed stop publishing broad measures of the money supply focusing on more narrow measures instead.

According to the Fed, the cost of collecting the additional data outweighed the benefits the data provided–a rather convenient cost/benefit analysis to make.

Joseph Ganem is a physicist and author of the award-winning The Two Headed Quarter: How to See Through Deceptive Numbers and Save Money on Everything You Buy

Shopping our way to prosperity?

Individuals who wish to accumulate wealth and become financially secure are told to work hard, be productive, save, and invest. The advice is old fashioned and trite. Recent events have shown it doesn’t always work, but, it’s difficult to suggest a better alternative. Work hard, don’t produce, spend every dollar you make and then some will certainly not lead to financial security.

However, as the holiday season approaches and with it the annual nationwide orgy of shopping, we are told that the way out of the economic crisis is to keep up the behavior that made the mess. Black Friday sales figures are headline news. The media, politicians, and corporate executives spread a gospel of salvation through consumption. Robust consumer spending will lead us out of the financial wilderness and avert a reenactment of the 1930s great depression.

On my local NBC affiliate in Baltimore— WBAL— the general manager broadcast an editorial Saturday night pleading with people to shop. While he urged responsible use of credit, he stated: “If you can shop you should. We must each do our part to get the economy jumpstarted. The message from Washington is clear—happy shopping.”

I’m sorry but if consumption without production is not a recipe for individual success, how can it lead to prosperity for all? If Americans saved, invested and then produced what they consume the argument might have some validity. But, as a nation Americans accomplish none of the above.

Americans buy lots of stuff that people in other countries make. For the first time since the great depression our national savings rate is quantified with negative numbers. And for all the trillions of dollars our federal government and large corporations have burned through recently, there appears to be nothing with future value to show for it. Our public infrastructure is crumbling along with our manufacturing base.

Consider Dan Rodricks' column Sunday where he observed: “Look at us: We've become a nation that thrives when people spend money they don't have. This is completely upside down from the society baby boomers recall, when the economy was robust, when people made a decent wage and benefits from manufacturing jobs, and the only things they had to finance were their homes and cars.”

The lesson from the economic crash of 2008 is that unchecked consumption and debt accumulation without production and investment in the future is unsustainable. All bills come due and all debt must be paid back. Shopping is not the magic elixir that will lead us to economic salvation; it’s an ingredient in the poisonous brew that’s killing our prosperity.

Joseph Ganem is a physicist and author of the award-winning The Two Headed Quarter: How to See Through Deceptive Numbers and Save Money on Everything You Buy

Credit Card Crisis Next?

The marketing of credit cards by banks has mystified me for years. How can banks shower the public with credit cards offers like confetti, charge usurious interest rates, tack on exorbitant fees and still have customers who are able to keep up with payments? The answer might be coming soon and it appears the answer will be—not forever. Speculation in financial news reports is that the subprime mortgage crisis will be followed by a credit card crisis.

A Reuters news story: “Looming credit card debt may be the next crisis” quotes John Whitehead, former chairman of Goldman Sachs Group, as saying that a credit card crisis is “waiting in the wings.” And a USA Today story “Why banks are boosting credit card interest rates and fees," quotes Gregory Larkin, a senior analyst at Innovest, as saying "Mortgages were simply the first storm to make landfall. Credit cards are next." According to Innovest, a research firm, by the end of 2009 banks are likely to write off 10% of credit card debt—a staggering $96 billion.

The aggressive marketing of consumer debt appears counter to the careful conservative image we generally have of loan officers and underwriters. After all, most people who loan money to friends and family members expect to be paid back. Are not banks in business to be paid back? Yet even individuals who have rung up tens of thousands of dollars in consumer debt are still inundated with new credit card offers.

So why are banks so intent on lending money to people with questionable means to pay it back? The answer in a word is—securitization. Just as they did with mortgages, banks have packaged and sold credit card debt in the form of securities to unwitting investors. The risk associated with the debt becomes some else’s problem. In the mean time if customers stay in debt, the bank can profit from hefty fees associated with managing the account.

It is actually more profitable for the banks if it customers are overloaded with debt. If a customer has too much debt to pay back in a reasonable period of time, he or she has no choice but to accept whatever additional fees and interest rate hikes the bank decides to levy. A further irony is that the inability of a customer to easily pay off the debt can be used as justification for imposing the additional fees and rate hikes.

Banks looking to make up for losses during the current financial crisis are finding that customers with outstanding credit card debt are easy targets. The USA Today story reported on consumers like Tommy Newsom who never missed a payment but had his credit card interest rate doubled to 27% for no apparent reason other than the law allowed the increase.

Banks justify sudden interest rate increases by claiming that a customer’s risk category has changed. A spokeswoman for Bank of America was quoted in the USA Today story has saying that the bank "regularly assesses the risk profile of accounts. If the bank decides to raise a customer's rate, it will notify the customer first and give him or her the chance to "opt out" and pay off the card balance at the existing rate.”

But notice the two-headed quarter in use in this statement. Customers whose “risk profile” have changed are most likely the ones identified as being unable to “opt out.” Without the means to pay off the balance the customer’s only option is to “accept” the new rate.

Banks can get away with this behavior because of loan agreements that are not agreements in the ordinary sense of the word. Credit card agreements contain language that allows the terms of the agreement to be changed by one party (the bank) at any time for any reason. The legality of such an agreement will never be tested in a court of law because consumers also sign away the right to sue. Only binding arbitration is permitted as means of resolving disputes in credit card agreements.

Of course the bank’s response to rising levels of credit card debt will accelerate the impending crisis rather than avert it. No need to worry though. More than likely customer paid tax-dollars will be sent to bailout the banks.

The “Housing Market” - The Greatest Fraud of All

As the financial crisis has unfolded over the past few weeks, many high profile leaders have had their faith in a market driven economy shaken. Even Alan Greenspan had to admit in testimony before Congress that the assumptions behind his economic policies were wrong. He now says he made a mistake in believing that banks “operating in their own self-interest, would do what was necessary to protect their shareholders and institutions.”

Actually, I think markets work well when the conditions for them are allowed to exist. But we are seeing the unmasking of one of the greatest economic deceptions of all time—the claim that in the United States a market determined home prices. The “invisible hand” that Adam Smith envisioned setting prices in a marketplace is suppose to be just that—invisible. Smith’s economic model rested on the assumption that many buyers and sellers acting in their own self-interest and without government interference would negotiate fair prices for scare commodities.

But lets count the ways the so-called “housing market” has failed to meet these conditions.

Government subsidies for homeowners – For decades the federal government has taxed homeowners at a lower rate than renters. It accomplishes this by allowing payments for home mortgage interest to be deducted from income. Homeowners can borrow up to the entire equity in their house and spend the money on whatever they want—cars, vacations, college tuitions—and the interest paid on the loan is tax deductible. Renters are not allowed to deduct interest paid on loans. The effect of this policy is that homeowners are taxed less as long as they remain in debt. That makes owning a home intrinsically more valuable than just having a place to live.

Government-backed loans eliminate lenders’ risks-The point of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae was to encourage banks to loan private money to purchase homes by promising public money if the loan went bad. This policy effectively privatized gains and socialized losses. The result is a moral hazard that subverts the functioning of the market. Banks can loan money under the most outlandish of circumstances because they have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

A single person sets interest rates – The Federal Reserve Chief dictates interest rates. It’s no accident that Alan Greenspan had the nickname “Maestro” when he ran the Federal Reserve. Rather than allow market processes to determine interest rates he orchestrated market movements by dictating the rates himself. Allowing the judgment of one person to determine something as fundamental as the cost of money on such a grand scale is the antithesis of a free market.

Of course the government had good reasons for these policies. Congress decided that communities benefited from widespread home ownership. In other words a social good resulted if more people owned homes rather than rented. But government manipulation of markets to achieve a social goal is the definition of socialism.

That is where the great fraud arises—the creation of a socialist system for home ownership but labeling it a “free market.” The claim that no regulation is needed for mortgages because the market will operate is absurd. Socialist systems need regulation; otherwise the moral hazards are too great. The government appears to have no plans for ending the mortgage interest deduction, ending bailouts of failed lenders, or ending Federal Reserve control of interest rates. If it continues to use these policies to manipulate home prices its needs to be intellectually honest. The government should admit that fact that the housing market has been socialist for decades and adopt appropriate regulations to protect the public.

Irony in the Financial Crisis

How much should the government pay for the bad mortgage-backed securities that the banks no longer want? I find a profound irony in that question. A problem in the current financial crisis is that no one knows what many of these securities are worth. Settling on a price that will solve the problem is tricky. If the government pays too little the bailout could fail and the banks will go under anyway. If the government pays too much banks will reap enormous profits at the expense of taxpayers and have little incentive to change the lending practices that resulted in this mess.

The reason no one knows a fair price to pay is that the securities in question are too complicated for anyone to understand. The irony is that the complexity was intentional. The securities were designed to make it difficult if not impossible for anyone to know their underlying value.

Much as been written during this current financial crisis on the question of whether free market capitalism is dead. But the mortgage industry during the past few years was anything but a free market. The idea behind a market is that fair and accurate prices will result from negotiations between buyers and sellers acting in their own best interests. But, for consumers to act in their own best interest, they need to understand the agreements they enter.

Corporations have put enormous effort into making contracts so complex the normal rules of the market do not apply. The premise behind my book, The Two Headed Quarter, is that financial companies can mislead consumers without lying by presenting numbers in such complex ways that rational decision-making becomes impossible. Bob Sullivan’s book Gotcha Capitalism exposes how companies use complex contracts to cheat consumers out of money with hidden fees and surcharges. The idea throughout corporate America is to find deceptive yet still legal methods for taking as much money as possible from consumers without them noticing.

Now there is no money left in the consumer’s pocket for the corporations to take. But, it turns out that a constant flow of money from the consumers is needed or the system falls apart. This was never a “market” in the ordinary sense of the word; it was a Ponzi scheme.

In a healthy marketplace, buyers and sellers need each other. Sellers need satisfied customers willing to come back and give referrals. A small community-based business will not survive without repeat customers. Buyers need merchants that they can trust to provide reliable goods and contribute to quality of life in their communities. A business with contempt for its customers, that exists only to acquire as much money as possible, will eventually fail.

Failure is of course what has happened. But, what I find deeply ironic is that these corporations are now victims of their own deceptions. These corporations attribute their failures to customers who did not understand agreements designed not to be understood. Now these same corporations are shocked to discover that no one understands the agreements. The executives who created the complex securities don’t understand them, Treasury Secretary Paulson doesn’t understand them, Fed Chief Bernake doesn’t understand them, would be buyers don’t understand them. A security that cannot be understood cannot be fairly priced.

A mortgage is actually a simple idea. Over the long run it benefits no one to turn package mortgages into complex, incomprehensible, financial instruments. As the government moves forward to craft better regulations to prevent a future financial catastrophe’s it should consider going back to basics. A free market will work but only if the participants understand the agreements.

The Deceptive Math of Financial Leverage

In physics a lever is a tool for obtaining a large torque (rotational motion) with a relatively small force. Anytime you use a screwdriver, a lug wrench, a jack, a crowbar, or a doorknob, you are using a lever. In each of these circumstances the rotations achieved would be nearly impossible without the lever.

By analogy, the leverage principle in finance is intended to magnify rates of return on invested money so that relatively small amounts of money can grow much faster than the actual rate of return on the investment. But in finance the tool used to obtain leverage is debt. Borrowing against an asset to fund an investment is financial leverage.

For example, a homebuyer who takes out a mortgage is leveraging the asset—the home—to increase the rate of return on the money used for the down payment. Suppose a buyer puts $10,000 down on a $100,000 house and finances the remaining $90,000 using the house as collateral. If the value of the house rises 50% to $150,000, the homebuyer now has $60,000 of equity in the house. The $10,000 investment has multiplied 6-fold even though the asset only increased 50% in value. Had the buyer paid $100,000 cash for the house a 50% return on investment is all that would have been achieved.

Investors in the stock market can also use leverage. An investor with a normal brokerage account is allowed to borrow up to 50% of the value of stocks owned to purchase more stocks. That means $10,000 can be used to purchase up to $20,000 worth of stocks. This is called buying on margin. If the stocks double in value to $40,000 the investor now has $30,000 in equity—a tripling of the initial $10,000 investment.

Leverage seems like a kind of financial magic. For many investment banks and hedge funds it was magic because these institutions were not bound by the normal rules that limit ordinary investors and homeowners. Stockowners cannot borrow more than 50% of the value of their stocks; homeowners cannot borrow more than the value of their homes. But, in the unregulated dream world of investment banking and hedge funds, there was no limit on the amount the managers could borrow against their assets. For example, by the time Lehman Brothers went bankrupt it was leveraged more than 30 to 1. It owed $30 for $1 in assets it held. Imagine a homeowner borrowing $3 million against a $100,000 home. That might sound crazy, but that’s effectively what Lehman Brothers did.

The motivation for investment banks and hedge funds to leverage their assets to such absurd levels is that it allows them to report fantastic rates of return for modest investment gains. Suppose a $3 million cash investment returns just 5% in a year so that the value is $3.15 million. That does not sound all that impressive. But, suppose the fund managers had only $100,000 in equity in that $3 million investment. The total equity after the 5% gain is now $250,000. The fund managers can now report a “return on equity” of 150%. That is an eye-catching number to report to investors, prospective customers and stockholders. The managers can reward themselves with bonuses for the their remarkable results. At the same time the appreciation of the actual investment was nothing out of the ordinary. It is a beautiful example of a two-headed quarter—using numbers to have it both ways.

But leverage has a dark side. Not only does it magnify gains it also magnifies losses. In the example above, if the $3 million investment loses just 3.3% of its value, the $100,000 of equity is completely wiped out. In markets with normal volatility, a 3.3% downward move is not unusual for a solid investment. The problem is that many of the investments were in mortgages, which are also a leveraged investment. Many of the subprime mortgages being called assets, were for homeowners who had no equity in their houses. Leverage was piled upon leverage. No wonder the banks have no idea what the mortgage securities they hold are worth. Homeowners with no equity have every incentive to walk away when prices fall. After all, when a homeowner invests nothing, there is nothing to lose.

In the same manner, the executives and fund managers had nothing to lose by taking on such absurd levels of debt. They pocketed huge salaries and bonuses for their financial “genius.” And it was an ingenious scheme—taking home the profits and billing the taxpayers and stockholders for the losses.


Joseph Ganem is a physicist and author of the award-winning The Two Headed Quarter: How to See Through Deceptive Numbers and Save Money on Everything You Buy

The Difference Between Gambling and Investing

The crisis in the financial markets this month is a reminder of easy it is for people to convince themselves that they know far more than they actually do. The executives in charge of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG were highly compensated for their years of experience in investing and finance. Their companies made billions when the investments they made appeared to be profitable.

But, the events of the past month show that the experts running these companies had no more insight into the future than anyone else. Probably even less knowledge of the future than many people because they apparently forgot all the known principles of sound investing. Instead these executives became seduced by the lure of making quick money by gambling with the enormous sums of money entrusted to them.

The problem with gambling is that winning streaks occur frequently. It is possible to place a series of bets and come out ahead. But, suppose I walk into a casino and win five hands of blackjack in row. Does that mean I know something that the other losing players do not? Should I increase my bets? Should I give up my job and become a professional gambler?

Winning five hands in row at blackjack means nothing more than that is how the cards fell for those five hands. It does not mean that I am smart or gifted or have any special insight into the future. I certainly should not be increasing my bets or plan a career change to full-time gambling.

But, the executives running these investment firms and insurance companies had a few profitable years placing high-risk bets on real estate and concluded that they knew something others did not. Instead of being thankful for coming out ahead on bets that should not have been placed, they kept increasing their exposure to risky loans.

In my book The Two Headed Quarter I draw a distinction between gambling and risk-taking. I write:

“Gambling involves betting money on a game or contest for the purpose of winning more money. Attractions of gambling include the thrill, the entertainment value, and the possibility of wealth without work. Risk-taking involves using money to achieve broader goals that have an uncertain outcome. Anyone who pays for an education, buys a house, relocates for a new job, or starts a business, is taking a risk.”

Investing should be a risk-taking activity. The basic idea is to pool and allocate capital to grow businesses and production capacity. The end result should be economic growth resulting in more jobs, more goods and services, and a higher stand of living for all. In contrast gambling simply transfers money from losers to winners. Nothing of value is created. Imagine an economy where everyone is a full-time gambler. It would be unsustainable because nothing would be created.

But somehow the executives running firms on Wall Street convinced themselves that moving money around using complicated impossible to understand formulas was creating wealth where none existed before. They rewarded themselves handsomely for creating what amounted to a shell game. Wealth creation by subtraction does not work. You cannot keep taking out money of the pot and claim that there is more in it. No matter how complicated you make the financial formulas you cannot work around the basic facts of addition and subtraction.


Joseph Ganem is a physicist and author of the award-winning The Two Headed Quarter: How to See Through Deceptive Numbers and Save Money on Everything You Buy