Wahrscheinlich können solche Maßnahmen schon deswegen nichts ausrichten, weil die Zeit des Wachstums zu Ende ist. Der ehemalige Bundesbankpräsident Axel Weber erklärt dazu in dem ZEIT-Interview "Kein Grundrecht auf Verschuldung" vom 29.09.2011:
"Die Einschätzung der amerikanischen Regierung ist, dass wir es hier mit einer konjunkturellen Schwächephase zu tun haben – und man auf den alten Wachstumspfad zurückkommt, wenn man die Nachfrage stimuliert. Es gibt aber Indizien dafür, dass wir es in der industrialisierten Welt mit einer strukturellen Krise zu tun haben. [Das bedeutet], dass das Wirtschaftswachstum nach der Krise möglicherweise dauerhaft niedriger sein wird als vorher. Die westlichen Gesellschaften altern, die Wachstumspole verlagern sich in die Schwellenländer. Wenn das so ist, dann ist es nur in engen Grenzen möglich, die Wirtschaft durch kurzfristige Maßnahmen zu stimulieren, und wir müssen uns auf langfristig wirkende Reformen konzentrieren. Für die USA lässt sich das noch nicht abschließend sagen, unter anderem wegen der vergleichsweise guten Demografie. Ich glaube aber, dass sich Europa mit niedrigeren Wachstumsraten zurechtkommen muss. Wir sollten nicht versuchen, einem Wachstum hinterherzulaufen, das sich so wahrscheinlich nicht mehr einstellt."
Und nicht allein, und vielleicht nicht einmal in erster Linie, die demographische Entwicklung wird das Hauptproblem sein, sondern nach meiner Einschätzung eher die Ressourcenverknappung, insbesondere der bevorstehende (oder schon erreichte?) Fördergipfel (Peak Oil) beim Rohöl.
Das aber nur am Rande, den eigentlich wollte ich hier der Frage nachgehen, mit welchen Argumenten, bzw. mit welchem Maß an Unverforenheit, sich die Finanzbranche ihre Verluste von den Steuerzahlern bezahlen lassen will.
Von der Finanzbranche selbst ebenso wie von "linken" Wirtschaftswissenschaftlern (z. B. Nobelpreisträger Paul Krugman) liest man immer wieder dieselben beschönigenden Adjektive, mit denen den Steuerzahlern bzw. den Politikern eine höhere Staatsverschuldung (direkt zu Gunsten der Finanzinteressen oder zur Ankurbelung der Konjunktur) schmackhaft gemacht werden soll:
- "decisive" sollen die Maßnahmen sein, "entschieden oder entschlossen": "... dealing far more decisively with Greece". Darunter kann jeder sich vorstellen was er möchte; aber meist wird es am Ende darum gehen (oder darauf hinauslaufen), dass die Hilfsprogramme vergrößert werden und die Gläubiger weitestgehend ungeschoren davonkommen.
- "credible", glaubhaft, sollen sie sein. Das sieht dann so aus: "..... a far [also irgendwo im Billionenbereich!] bigger fund [ESF/ESM] is needed if a rescue is to be credible". Die medialen Advokaten der Gläubigerinteressen wollen also ein bequemeres Ruhekissen für sich. Aber wozu braucht man das unbedingt in Form von mehr Geld? Für die Beruhigung der Gläubiger würde es nicht nur ausreichen, sondern wäre mittel- und längerfristig sogar besser, wenn Italien und Spanien ihre Wirtschaft, insbesondere den Arbeitsmarkt, deregulieren und die Ökonomie dadurch ankurbeln würden, und wenn sie glaubhafte Sparprogramme - nicht Steuererhöhungen, sondern echte Einsparungen bei den Staatsausgaben - implementieren würden.
- "(political) courage" wird gefordert. Mut z. B. zu: "building a protective barrier around Italy". Was schützen wir da eigentlich? Italien vor den Spekulanten - oder bewahren wir den italienischen Staat davor, sich trotz seinem auf Dauer möglicher Weise unhaltbaren Niveau der Staatsausgaben Gedanken um die Rückzahlung machen zu müssen?
- "bold" sollen die Maßnahmen sein, "a bold enough plan". Damit ist aber (wie man aus dem Gesamtzusammenhang derartiger Texte erschließen kann) keineswegs gemeint, dass die Politiker die Kühnheit besitzen sollen, richtig viel (Steuer-)Gelder in die Hand zu nehmen (bzw. die Notenbanken: richtig viel frisches Geld zu drucken). Schädlich ist dagegen "..... a plan that does just enough to stave off catastrophe temporarily, but lets the underlying problem get worse". Die eigentlichen Probleme (nicht nur strukturelle Verkrustungen, sondern an allererster Stelle das Verteilungsproblem, wie ich es z. B. hier und ergänzend dort beschrieben habe) anzugehen, wäre ja nicht schlecht. Nur sehen die Verfasser solcher Texte größere wirtschaftliche Probleme eigentlich immer nur darin, dass der Staat bzw. die Notenbank nicht genügend Kohlen in den Konjunkturofen schaufelt.
- "Timidity", Zaghaftigkeit, ist den Finanzklempnern eine Todsünde: "Much of the world is now paying for their [gemeint: die Europäer, bzw. genauer die Eurozonäre] timidity". Ebenso sündhaft ist "Half-heartedness": "The Federal Reserve [im letzten Teil des Economist-Artikels stehen die USA im Focus] is trying new ways of support, somewhat half-heartedly".
- Schrecklichster der Schrecken ist die "Austerity", (echte) staatliche Sparprogramme. Klar, wenn die Ratingagenturen die Daumen senken, muss gespart werden. Aber mindestens bis zu diesem Punkt soll der Staatshaushalt durch Kredite aufgebläht werden, egal, was damit finanziert wird: "Germany could loosen fiscal policy, while in Britain the reins should merely be tightened more slowly. But the collective obsession with short-term austerity across the rich world is hurting". Allerdings tut das auch den Kapitalanlegern weh, wenn sie ihr Geld nirgends, oder zumindest nicht sicher, anlegen können. Deswegen führt die Finanzmafia die Staaten immer wieder gern zur Verschuldungskrippe; wenn sie sich dort überfressen haben, müssen die Steuerzahler die Zinsen und Tilgungsraten halt auskotzen.
Jene Finanz(markt)interessen, die in dem oben analysierten Text noch in etwas unklarer und teilweise interpretierbarer Form rüberkommen, hat der New Yorker Finanzprofessor Stephen Figlewski zu Zeiten der Lehman-Krise, also im Oktober 2008, weitaus unverblümter formuliert.
Relativ kurz hatte ich darüber bereits in meinem damaligen Blott "Die Krakenarme der Finanzkrise kriechen auf unseren Kontinent" berichtet. Hier gehe ich noch einmal ausführlicher auf diesen exemplarischen Fall von Finanzinteressenlobbyismus ein um zu demonstrieren, mit was für einer unverfroren Selbstverständlichkeit die Apologeten der Finanzbranche (in diesem Falle ein wissenschaftlicher, aber das gilt ebenso für journalistische oder politische Finanzmarktlobbyisten) eine Begleichung von Kreditverlusten durch die Steuerzahler verlangen. Damals ging es darum, dass die US-Regierung doch bitte für die Hypothekendarlehen geradestehen möge. Heute geht es (mit freilich mehr verdeckten Argumenten) um die Übernahme fremder Staatsschulden durch die Steuerzahler Deutschlands und anderer Solidländer.
Am 06. Oktober des Jahres 2008 startete der New Yorker Finanzprofessor Stephen Figlewski zu einem Flug, der ihn in eine Höhe von 20.000 Fuß über dem Meeresspiegel führen sollte.
Aus jenen lichten Höhen analysierte er die Finanzkrise ganz im Sinne der von ihm vertretenen Interessen der Finanzbranche, und zwar in einem (15-seitigen) Papier "Viewing the Financial Crisis from 20,000 Feet Up". Nachdem er wieder auf der Erde gelandet war, postete er am 13.10.2008 im Blog der New Yorker Stern-University unter dem Titel "A View of the Financial Crisis" einen Link zu seinem dort oben entstandenen Papier.
Und siehe da: es gab eine ganz einfache Lösung für die Krise. Die faulen Hypotheken sollte die US-Regierung (also der amerikanische Steuerzahler) übernehmen und den bisherigen Gläubigern die Zins- und Tilgungsraten garantieren. Dann wären die Finanzmärkte aus dem Schneider und könnten unbesorgt ihrem Geschäft nachgehen, fröhlich weiter Kredite zu vergeben.
In einem "Abstract" fasste er seine Überlegungen und Vorschläge wie folgt zusammen:
"The financial system is currently being battered by huge losses and extreme uncertainty that are arising in the real estate sector of the real economy, and it is breaking down.
Solution: Disconnect the financial system from the risk that is too big for it to handle. The Federal government could take over bearing this risk just by guaranteeing that all mortgage payments will henceforth be made to the lender as scheduled.
The financial markets would stabilize because all mortgage-backed securities, no matter how complicated, would immediately become as safe and as marketable as US Treasury bonds. The government would then work with homeowners to restructure their monthly payments so they can afford to stay in their homes. Defaults and foreclosures would go down sharply. This approach is much more cost effective than alternative proposals that would have the government buy up bad mortgage loans. For example, on a $200,000 mortgage at 7% interest, taking over the loan would cost $200,000, while under this plan, the government would just guarantee the mortgage payments at a cost of about $1300 a month, most or all of which would come from the homeowner."
Ein Leserkommentator mit dem Tarnnamen "Cangrande" witterte freilich Unrat. Und formulierte seine Einwände so:
- "Dear Sir, having read your paper, I rather feel like an investor who has been offered a largely risk free security-package, but at closer look finds it packed with toxic waste. I'm stating that very bluntly, especially considering that I am not an economist myself and not even a native English speaker. However, I do have the distinct feeling of being fed a fairytale story (though I'm not implying that you are doing so consciously), and not one from the Grimm brothers, but with grim consequences, if your proposals were implemented. 1) The argument for the "financial system being a zero-sum game" is totally unconvincing. Your "proof" for that argument is so twisted that this alone gives a crystal-clear clue of something fishy. What necessitates the introduction of a hurricane and a home destroyed by it, in order to “prove” something about a drop in house-prices? And why do you have to resort to the 300,000 / 250,000 / 225,000 example, which is as complicated as a highly sophisticated derivative? In my eyes, the only possible reason is that you yourself feel extremely uneasy about your zero-sum-argument. If it were otherwise, you would have employed a much simpler model: Mr. A takes a loan of 300,000 USD from Mr. B. and buys a house. Who wins, who loses? If you so wish, you might say that at the time when the loan is paid out, A has "won" the money and B has "lost" it. After the loan has been fully repaid, you could say that A has "lost" the money and B has "won" it. When presented this way, it would appear to be a zero-sum-game. But only because you would have excluded two elements: - A has "won" a house in the meantime and - B has "won" interest-rates. Both have “won” and while you might derive the gains from the real economy, the separation seems artificial and meaningless. At any rate, when you reduce your tortuous argument to the basics, you run into problems that your constructs carefully conceal. The reasons for those problems derive partly from a faulty dividing line that you draw between the real economy and the financial system. The hurricane and the insurance company are one thing (and btw even the insurance collects "interest" = profit): the house is either still standing or it is gone (and the real economy would have to rebuild it). Changing market prices are a completely different story in that they are not completely attributable to the real economy, but form an intersection between the real economy and the financial system. Obviously, the asset value is influenced by the availability of credit (as you yourself are stating in your article), and that (in normal times) would in turn be influenced, among other things, by the interest rates and the money supply fixed by the Reserve Bank. So market prices by no means belong to the sphere of the real economy alone and I would not be surprised if some economic theories would even assign them exclusively to the financial economy. The "financial system" consists of more than just the contracts between lenders and borrowers. The ability of the banking system to create money is another important element, and so is, of course, the ability of the central bank to feed “injections of liquidity” into the system. These elements allow the system to "breathe": it can expand as well as contract, which certainly is far different from any zero sum system. You are asking a critical question when you say: "But first an obvious question: If the financial system is zero-sum for the people trading contracts, how are the people who run it all able to pay themselves generous salaries?" Your first answer (“One part of the answer is that financial firms run the system, but many also operate as investors, earning high returns from placing their capital at risk”) I fail to understand, or rather to evaluate its relevance in the context. Your second (or real?) answer is: "the financial system generates $10 in profit that supports the system" (p. 7). If the financial system were self-supporting, neither the bank-employees nor investors could buy anything in the real economy. Of course, in reality it is not the financial system that generates the profits, but the real economy has to feed the financial "system". And that consists, in a way, not just of monetary transactions, but of a lot of people with jobs or money in the system, who want to buy real things with their wages or with (a part of) the interest they collect from borrowers. Obviously, to be acceptable for our society, the stakeholders of the financial system have to claim (or pretend) that they are producing value for the economy (p. 7). While I am not denying the necessity and the value of such a system, I am certainly not convinced that it is only beneficial to the real economy. Its nature might very well be of a partly self-centered and even parasitical character. At any rate when you say that of Mr. Homer is happy to pay insurance fees, you are giving no prove for your contention that “a financial system creates enormous value for the economy”. A counter-example demonstrates that some Mr. Homers would be better off if they would do without the services of an insurance company. Let Homer not be so poor that he has one house only, but give him 100 houses instead (each of equal value). Let's assume he collects an amount of rent -before insurance fees- that allows him, if fully reinvested, to build or buy two more houses every year, and that he does so. Let the insurance rate for all the houses be the amount equivalent to the value of one house. Now Homer has two alternatives: A) Hand over one of his two newly built (bought) houses every year to the insurance, which reduces his net profit to one house, and sleep well even when the weather-report announces a hurricane. In this case, the financial system has taken away one of Homers two new houses. In reality, of course, they wouldn't take a house but the money equivalent, but at any rate Homer would have fewer assets than if he had not paid the insurance-fee. The financial system has made him sleep better, but it has not created any real value for the real economy. B) If Homer is clever, he reduces his risk by not buying houses only in Charleston, but in 100 different places all over the USA. Then maybe every two years a hurricane will destroy one of his houses, but Homer has pocketed the insurance fees for two houses (because obviously those fees must be higher than the losses in order to pay wages for the staff of the insurance company and to gain a dividend for the shareholders). In the end, Homer makes a profit of half a house every year by diminishing his own risk himself (through a geographical distribution of his ownership of houses over the whole country). The point I want to make here is not that we don't need insurance companies or banks etc.; I’m simply trying to demonstrate that you cannot prove any alleged value creation of the financial system for the real economy when you use Homers happiness as a gauge. Obviously it is by no means irrelevant for the real economy but at the same time it appears to be getting more and more centered around itself. How else would you explain the fact that during the last years the increase in derivative instruments has been so much larger than the increase in the real economy? My working hypotheses, if I were a scientist, would be that the financial system has been stuffed with more capital than the real economy can absorb. [Colloquial evidence: Even back in 1998 Hilmar Kopper, former CEO of the "Deutsche Bank" expressly stated in interview that having too much capital was a problem for that bank; I see no reason, why this should not equally apply for all those other banks which bought the "toxic waste": obviously, they didn’t know what else to do with their money]. In that case, large and growing parts of the derivative system would serve as an emergency valve for the money market to reduce inflationary pressures on the real economy. You could claim a real purpose indeed, but - for a large and growing part - different from your idea of how the financial system creates value for the real economy. 2) In the end, however, the whole question of zero-game or not is irrelevant to any solution of the financial crisis. Not in your argument and certainly not in reality can I detect any logical hinge between the zero-sum-theory and your proposed solution of the financial crisis. Actually, your solution might easily be the one that first comes to mind for anybody who thinks about the problem. There is trouble on the financial markets? The trouble was caused by a drop in prices of homes? Okay: let’s tackle the problem at the root and try to stabilize the prices or at any rate let’s things for the financial community continue as if nothing had happened! The way I have argued so far, you may not believe it but actually I do subscribe to your contention that “If we allow significant portions of the financial system to break under the strain, the total loss to the real economy will become much worse” (p. 10). The devil, however, is not in the details (p. 3) but in the (unintended) consequences. And the devils grandmother is in the causes. 3) Which foreseeable consequences would an execution of your scheme entail? To begin with, the Federal government would have to establish a ramified administrative branch to deal with the situation. After all, you want them to renegotiate the loan conditions with many mortgage lenders, and not all of them might be honest. So you would also have to screen their financial situation in detail, just as a bank would do (or as the banks should have done). That would be rather costly, plus you would take away a lot of work from the banks (employees that now deal with such renegotiations, with foreclosures etc.). While the banks themselves very likely will not be unhappy to find themselves relieved of these tasks (for the old mortgages), the state would need qualified and preferably experienced personnel for that kind work. Of course the government might offer the jobs to the bank employees and of course they would gladly take them, when fired from their company. But as you know, any kind of bureaucracy has a tendency to perpetuate itself, even inventing new tasks, once the original purpose has become obsolete. So not only would you burden the contemporary taxpayers with high administrative expenses, but very likely the future ones too. This is not my central objection to your suggestion, but it is by no means irrelevant. Of course, instead of building a new organization, the government might just as well take over the banks to begin with. After all, if you feel the government is competent to deal with existing mortgages, why should it operate state banks? The idea will probably abhor you as being a road to socialism, but it is nothing more than a logic sequel to your proposition. You rightly point out that “any plan of this sort would inevitably produce winners and losers” (p. 3) but you do not follow up on this aspect. The biggest winner would be the financial system, or rather, the owners of those banks, that might otherwise go bankrupt. Not only would the banks profit financially, but also on the moral and political level. Helping the homeowners directly would not only mean a bailout of those people (voters!) by the government. By bailing out the lenders the government would indirectly bail out the banks. Such a proposition obviously has a lot of charm for the financial community, because in public they could and would always use the interests of the homeowners as cover-ups for their own interests. If „the nation is angry“ it would certainly help to divert the national anger away from the financial system (which does not seem to be the only culprit for the present mess, but probably has to bear the brunt of public criticism). This is an aspect to keep in mind; however, even though it is not in itself a valid argument against your plan. Other winners might be landowners, homeowners who want to sell their property, and/or construction companies who might be able to charge higher prices. Who would lose? The taxpayers, to an unknown extent. But also those who build or buy new homes, because if the government intervention would cause “the housing market to stabilize quickly”, (p. 3) which is what you hope for, they would have to pay a higher price than the ‘true’ market price. At any rate, the market would be distorted and have no way of finding the ‘adequate’ price. It might be the case, however, that the market is trying to pass on important information to the participants. This might be the result of peak oil (commuting getting to expensive) and/or information about the financial of the borrowers (everybody who can afford to buy a house has already done so) and/or the debt rate (lenders are wary about the overall debt and the low savings) and/or the influx of money from other countries (they might become unwilling to support the American credit boom, either for fear of bankruptcy of customers or for fear of inflationary tendencies and dollar devaluation). Choose what you want, but there certainly are reasons, other than (or in addition to) the intrinsic problems presently visible within the financial system. When the government intervenes, with what in effect would very likely be a ‘reverse price control’ (keeping them up, whereas normally governments try to keep prices down) does distort the market signals and eventually the financial system has no reliable measurement for the true asset value. 4) You claim that what the Fed and the US-government are doing at present is “treating the symptoms without curing the disease (p. 3)”, thereby implying that the housing bubble is the ultimate cause. However, it is only the proximate causation of the crisis, not the root cause. There are reasons behind the housing bubble, which have to be addressed, in order to prevent the next bubble: low interest rates over a long period, easy availability of credit, abolishment of banking regulation. The derivative system is, or at least was, of course an important part of this: it did a great job in funneling foreign funds to the USA. Actually, being a German taxpayer (and German banks being hit quite hard by the bust), I should rejoice at your suggestions. They would, after all, have the effect to bail out not just the American banks, but all investors worldwide, with US tax money. This, of course, will also be one of the reasons why the USA will not go through with your idea: why should they pay those idiots abroad who didn’t see through the AAA-bogus of the rating agencies and the derivative risks? Could it be that the particular branch of the financial system that you are devoted to (at any rate as editor of the Journal of Derivatives) was part of the problem, and will not be part of the solution? Could it all have been a big hype, which now needs to be deflated down to normal levels? For sure, foreign credit will not pour in so easily any more, at least not to private borrowers and companies. The government, for a while, will still be creditworthy, but very soon will have to raise the taxes in order to pay the interest or at least retain credibility in the market. This in turn will limit the governments’ ability to sustain any economic stimulation program by tax cuts or subsidies. So you would have to do a lot of restructuring, whereas your proposal seems to be designed mainly with the intention of going back to business the way it used to be. There would be a lot more to say, but let this suffice for now, since I most likely cannot convince you and cannot present a solution of my own. Rather, I am extremely skeptical about the ability of the Fed and the US-government (or other governments around the world) for economic stimulation, when the consumers will immediately be ‘punished’, in the next boom, with steeply raising prices for oil and other commodities. The real tragic thing is that the more we succeed in stepping up business, the faster we will deplete the remaining natural resources. Capitalism was a perfect economic system for those days when the stock of nature was full (and that is why, in a way, I have been defending it here against your suggested government intervention). But in the end I rather doubt that it will survive the coming days of Oil-(etc.)Shortage. Yours sincerely Burkhardt Brinkmann
ceterum censeo
Der Wundbrand zerfrisst das alte Europa,
weil es zu feige ist ein krankes Glied zu amputieren!
POPULISTISCHES MANIFEST
(für die Rettung von ? Billionen Steuereuronen!):
Ein Gespenst geht um in Deutschland - das Gespenst einer europäischen Transferunion und Haftungsunion.
Im Herzland des alten Europa haben sich die Finanzinteressen mit sämtlichen Parteien des Bundestages zu einer unheiligen Hatz auf die Geldbörsen des Volkes verbündet:
· Die Schwarzen Wendehälse (die unserem Bundesadler den Hals zum Pleitegeier wenden werden),
· Die Roten Schafsnasen (vertrauensvoll-gutgläubig, wie wir Proletarier halt sind),
· Die Grünen Postmaterialisten (Entmaterialisierer unserer Steuergelder wie unserer Wirtschaftskraft),
· Die machtbesoffenen Blauen (gelb vor Feigheit und griechisch vor Klientelismus), und selbstverständlich auch
· Die Blutroten (welch letztere die Steuergroschen unserer Witwen, Waisen und Arbeiter gerne auflagenlos, also in noch größerer Menge, gen Süden senden möchten).
Wo ist die Opposition im Volke, die nicht von unseren Regierenden wie von deren scheinoppositionellen Komplizen als Stammtischschwätzer verschrien worden wäre, wo die Oppositionspartei, welche sich der Verschleuderung der dem Volke abgepressten Tribute an die europäischen Verschwendungsbrüder wie an die unersättlichen Finanzmärkte widersetzt hätte?
Zweierlei geht aus dieser Tatsache hervor:
Das Volk wird von fast keinem einzigen Politiker als Macht anerkannt.
Es ist hohe Zeit, dass wir, das Volk, unsere Anschauungsweise, den Zweck unserer Besteuerung und unsere Tendenzen gegen die fortgesetzte Ausplünderung durch das Finanzkapital bzw. durch die Bewohner anderer Länder und durch seine/deren politische Helfershelfer vor der ganzen Welt offen darlegen und dem Märchen von dem grenzenlosen Langmut der Deutschen den Zorn des Volkes selbst entgegenstellen.
Textstand vom 02.10.2011. Gesamtübersicht der Blog-Einträge (Blotts) auf meiner Webseite http://www.beltwild.de/drusenreich_eins.htm. Soweit die Blotts Bilder enthalten, können diese durch Anklicken vergrößert werden.
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