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Grasping Reality with Both Hands The Semi-Daily Journal of Economist J. Bradford DeLong: Fair, Balanced, RealityBased, and Even-Handed Department of Economics, U.C. Berkeley #3880, Berkeley, CA 94720-3880; 925 708 0467; delong@econ.berkeley.edu.

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Department of "Huh?!" (Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?)

At the 2005 Jackson Hole conference that turned into Raghu Rajan (supported by Alan Blinder and Armenio Fraga) vs. the world, Raghu made two big points: 1. The past decades of financial deregulation had created a world much more vulnerable to financial crises than we recognized.

2. The big thing that needed to be done to guard against disaster was to insure that financiers had their personal fortunes on the line--that every decision maker have not just "skin in the game" but rather a spleen, a limb, a lung, and a heart in the game as well.

Raghu was, it is very clear, very right about (1). I think it was also clear that he was very wrong about (2): Charles Prince and James Cayne and Richard Fuld had plenty of vital organs in the game. And it did not help.

Criticizing Raghu, Larry Summers made some points that he had been making for in some cases decades: 1. That the dangers caused by increased financial sophistication, while real, were more than offset by the advantages in the mobilization of capital for investment.

2. That the first and most important line of defense against financial crises was and remained active economic management by central banks. http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/10/department-of-huh-why-oh-why-cant-we-have-a-better-press-corps.html

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3. That since 1979 the world's central banks had demonstrated that they were significantly more powerful and competent than previous generations had thought, and that there was every reason that they could handle whatever problems markets would throw at them.

4. That Raghu overestimated the extent to which "vital organs in the game" were a solution--that both the principal case study (LTCM) and the principal analytical paper (Shleifer-Vishny "Limits to Arbitrage") that Raghu were relying on were concerned with situations in which the relevant players did have "vital organs in the game."

5. That Raghu underestimated the extent to which additional Brandeisian transparency--conducting financial market transactions in standardized blocks on open exchanges--added to the information flow in a way that would make big crises less likely.

Now I know from direct personal knowledge that Larry had been making point (5) regularly since at least 1988, that he had been making point (4) ever since Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny circulated the first draft of their "Limits to Arbitrage" paper, had been making point (3) ever since the largely-successful resolution of the 1997-1998 East Asian financial crisis and the 2000 dot=com crash, and had been making points (1) and (2) on a regular basis since before I started graduate school.

Until the fall of 2008, I think, Larry believed all 5 of these points--I know I certainly did. And even now the only one that is clearly wrong is (3). (1) is probably wrong (although it is close), and (2), (4), and (5) look stronger and righter than ever.

So I am surprised to see the Economist's Democracy in America writing: The corruption of economics: Larry Summers: neo-Keynesian aristocrat: Mr Rajan is a rather more free-market sort of economist than is Mr Summers.... Mr Summers' intemperate reaction certainly seems benighted.... Once we see Mr Summers for what he is--doyen of the neo-Keynesian technocratic aristocracy--it seems rather more likely that his reaction reflected the wounded pride of a social engineer who personally helped design and vet these institutions; he was insulted

by Mr Rajan's impertinent suggestion that they don't check out. Mr Ferguson is right to shine a light on the corrupting confluence of elite academic economics, the financial industry, and national politics. But the problem just isn't Larry Summers's ideological aversion to government intervention. The problem is that the Keynesian ideology of expert intervention makes a fattened aristocracy of economic experts inevitable.

When people make points that they have been making for decades in the typical manner of intellectual conference engagement they have engaged in for their entire life, you really don't need to go looking for bizarre unsupported psychological explanations.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Brad DeLong on October 08, 2010 at 10:59 AM in Economics, Economics: Finance | Permalink

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Comments Rob said...

"That the first and most important line of defense against financial crises was and remained active economic management by central banks."

Isn't that sort of saying the best way to feed the world is by mana from heaven? Both seem equally likely right now.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 11:07 AM Will Wilkinson said...

Your points 1 & 2 indicate you agree with the main thrust of my comment, which you have elided!, which is that Summers objections were not based in an ideological aversion to government intervention. I don't think the psychological explanation is "bizarre", though I admit it is conjectural. My point was this makes more sense than the explanation offered in the Chronicle article--that Summers is some kind of laissez faire wingnut--and I'm not sure you disagree.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 11:23 AM Moron said...

Shorter BdL: The neoliberal business press is showing their left-wing bias by constantly understating the brilliance and honesty of Larry Summers.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 11:23 AM kaleberg said...

I remember when LTV collapsed, the joke was that Jimmy Ling was back selling television sets. Of course, he wasn't.

So, am I going to see Prince, Fuld or Cayne bagging groceries at the Safeway? I seriously doubt it. I'm not sure what you consider skin, or major organs, the in game, but for most of us it doesn't mean you just get to retire comfortably.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 11:23 AM Robert Waldmann said...

I don't see the difference between the evidence on Rajan's two claims to be as similar as "very clear" and "clear" nor do I see their truth value as symmetric as "very right" and "very wrong." I don't see any basis for those assertions. If Rajan had argued that

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the only possible problems are principle agent problem, the case of LTCM would have refuted him (although last I checked all LTCM principals had all vital organs -- in fact I think most are still very rich).

As very briefly quoted (here and in recent posts) I don't see it. Are you arguing that aligning incentives (what I have heard called "Silicon valley comensation schemes" somewhere) is a big thing but not *the* big thing ? If so, does it matter ? That is does it amount to a disagrement about policy proposals ?

I'd say part of what happened is that Larry Summers saw a hanging curve ball. Hearing the case of LTCM principals hearing to illustrate a principal agent problem is not a temptation that any reasonable person can expect Larry Summers to resist.

The Economist's correspondent does seem to use the word "Keynesian" with a rather broad meaning. I guess it is Keynesian to expect NASA experts to get people to the moon, and that notorious Keynesian Howard Florey was so silly to make such claims about penicillin. Anyway its good that non-experts like Rajan were at least given a chance to contribute.

The above paragraph is silly. Parody is impossible once someone has described both Gramms, Leach, and Bliley as Keynesians. Not to mention contrasting the head economist at the IMF with "the technocratic aristocracy." Good thing we have the IMF to protect us from technocracy no ?

Bagehot it turning over in his grave. I mean if we are to dismiss experts as Keynesian ideologues, then why the hell should we subscribe to The Economist. Clearly the economists correspondent is no expert on economics, but if his or her only argument is "I'm ignorant so I'm not a Keynesian ideologue" why pay him or her a salary. Can one really argue that the transatlantic discussion requires the insights of someone who wrote "the Keynesian ideology of expert intervention."

I wish him or her good health, because with such an attitude towards "expert intervention" he or she had better not ever suffer illness.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 11:28 AM Robert Waldmann said...

Oh I see the Economists correspondent is Will Wilkinson. I'm glad to have him on record writing that believing that there is such a thing as an expert is necessarily Keynesian.

Is Mr Wilkinson aware of any actual link between Maynard Keynes and the employer of one of the participants in that debate ? Does he see the world as a struggle between the IMF's top economist and technocrats whose empowerment was advocated by Keynes ?

Or does he use "Keynesian" as a cheap insult against anyone who isn't a libertarian ?

I think the questions answr themselves.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 11:46 AM Robert Waldmann said...

Back to you Brad. When you wrote "the extent to which additional Brandeisian transparency--conducting financial market transactions in standardized blocks on open exchanges--added to the information flow." Did you really mean to use the past indicative ? "Could add" OK. "Would add" fine. "Added" not so much. I mean what is this Brandeisian transparency of transactions in novel instruments of which you speak ? Might be something in which we can hope. More likely something for which we will

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continue to wish in vain, but as far as I know, there was precious little of it back then.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 11:53 AM Richard said...

About Rajan's point 2, he may or may not be wrong, but you (and Summers) are very wrong. Unless Prince, Cayne, and/or Fuld are going to jail, then no, they did not have vital organs in the game. If you give up a vital organ, you can not live. Prince, Cayne, and Fuld are still living quite well, and would be able to live comfortably for the rest of their lives even if they did not work again (same for the LTCM folks) even though their companies blew up and nearly destroyed our economy. That tells me that they did not have vital organs in the game. Now, would these disasters have happened if the banks were still partnerships where Prince, Cayne, and Fuld are personally liable? Possible.

Some people do reckless, risky, stupid things even if being wrong means losing their life; bubbles have been forming ever since the South Sea Bubble reduced entire familes to penury, so Rajan may not be right. However, at least the incentives would match, so you'd see less reckless, risky, and stupid behavior; it's very likely that the bubble wouldn't have gotten as big.

So that's your point 4.

About your point 2: It's not at all certain. Since our financial behemoths are too big to be broken up in to pieces where they aren't too big to fail, we have to rely on central banks for now, but I'm skeptical that the people heading our central banks have the foresight and political willpower to head off any future financial crisis. To argue against your point 2 another way, if you have so much faith in the wisdom of philosopherkings at central banks forestalling an future financial crisis, why don't you have the same faith that wise philosopher-kings can successfuly run a command-and-control economy?

Finally, I don't see the evidence supporting your point 5. Considering that our most recent crisis was caused by overleveraging (debt) and virtualy all of that debt and the financial instruments based on that debt were traded OTC, I'm not sure how your point 5 is relevant at all.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 11:58 AM Magnus Reputo said... http://chronicle.com/article/Larry-Summersthe/124790/ Reply October 08, 2010 at 12:04 PM Ed said... "(1) is probably wrong (although it is close)" What leads one to believe it's close?

Reply October 08, 2010 at 12:05 PM JW Mason said...

"That the dangers caused by increased financial sophistication, while real, were more than offset by the advantages in the mobilization of capital for investment."

What's the tangible evidence for those capital-mobilization advantages?

"How much has financial innovation increased real investment" is an empirical question. How do we answer it?

Reply October 08, 2010 at 12:07 PM marcello said in reply to kaleberg...

Bingo !

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Comfortably beyond dreams of avarice, I might add. they had not so much as a fleck of dandruff in the game.

Prof. DeLong really needs to look outside and recalibrate his notion of "skin in the game" Reply October 08, 2010 at 12:17 PM jcb said in reply to Will Wilkinson...

Given that the point of your Economist comment was to portray Ferguson as a useful idiot who stumbled upon an important right-wing truth: that Keynes/Summers is bad (aristocratic! elitist!!) why should it be taken seriously?

Neo-Keynesianism is to Keynesian as Neo-Conservatism is to Conservatism. Capiche?

Reply October 08, 2010 at 12:18 PM Don B said...

I admit that I think the professor is wrong here and Rajan is right concerning 2 (this may be the last time I say this). This does not sound like Mr. Prince had much skin in the game (from Wikipedia): On Sunday, 4 November 2007, Prince resigned from his post as CEO of Citigroup due to the failing mortgage industry. He was replaced by Vikram Pandit as the current CEO of Citigroup [10], and by Robert Rubin as its Chairman.

Prince left with vested stock holdings valued at USD$94 million and the roughly $53.1 million salary he received over the four years in the position. He also received a pension of $1.74 million and another one million stock options.[citation needed] He is still a consultant with Citigroup.

In 2008, Fortune named Charles Prince as one of eight economic leaders "who didn't [see] the crisis coming", noting his overly optimistic statements in July 2007.[11] In January 2009 Guardian City editor Julia Finch identified him as one of twenty five people who were at the heart of the financial meltdown. [12] Reply October 08, 2010 at 12:18 PM kharris said in reply to Will Wilkinson...

The psychological explanation is presented as conjectural, but predicated on an absolute assertion: "Once we see Mr Summers for what he is--doyen of the neo-Keynesian technocratic aristocracy..."

Similarly, the seeming benightedness of his reaction is claimed in absolute terms to be intemperate. We all know how this is done. We all know that people paid for their ability with language can stick the knife in and then pretend "who, me?"

I don't think Summers is nearly the gift to the world that Professor DeLong intemperately and benightedly does does, but certainly Wilkerson's text has more than a drop of poison in it. We don't need "speculative" analysis that, when the talent for verbiage is stripped away, boils down to "Summers bad, me hurt Summers".

Reply October 08, 2010 at 12:28 PM kharris said in reply to Ed...

Second this. Easier to claim that to show.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 12:30 PM Barry said...

Brad: "When people make points that they have been making for decades in the typical manner of intellectual conference engagement they have engaged in for their entire http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/10/department-of-huh-why-oh-why-cant-we-have-a-better-press-corps.html

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life, you really don't need to go looking for bizarre unsupported psychological explanations."

When people have watched catastrophic crisis strike in their alleged area of expertise, and still go on believing what they formerly believe, one might wonder about psychological explanations.

Of course, in the case of Larry 'Swathe of Destruction' Summers, he's profited quite a bit from saying what rich and powerful people want to be said, and hasn't suffered worth a d*mn, so the more likely explanation is that he's paid well for being wrong.

I'll save the psychological explanations for those who still support Summers, no matter what he's done.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 12:45 PM chrismealy said...

I thought Wilkinson was smarter than this. Whining about "experts" is libertarian crank 101 stuff. That it's a self-defeating dead end is obvious to most people, but if he needs a reference, here's Buchanan's critique of Hayek: http://goo.gl/XW8o Reply October 08, 2010 at 01:07 PM The Rage said...

FWIW, "skin in the game" doesn't matter to financials. They just manipulate the bk process and return even wealthier. History has proven that. It is why regulation to stop the intial thrusts is so critical and why bailouts come since deregulation.

Remember, the financial bailout was the bankers using desperate politicians and plutocrats not wanting market liberalism's future in doubt. The fraud in Lehman's bk has been amazing and WAYYYYYYY underrported.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 01:15 PM Alan Vanneman said...

Pardon me for saying that this sounds a lot like "why oh why can't we have a press corps that doesn't criticize my friends?"

As for No 5 "That Raghu underestimated the extent to which additional Brandeisian transparency--conducting financial market transactions in standardized blocks on open exchanges--added to the information flow in a way that would make big crises less likely," I don't know why that was "stong and right" in 2005. Perhaps Prof. DeLong is saying "if we had had true Brandeisian transparency, the Great Collapse of 2008 wouldn't have happened." Well,if you define "true Brandeisian transparency" as "transparency that would have prevented the Great Collapse of 2008," yeah, that's true, but Larry was saying we didn't have to worry back in '05 because we had additional Brandeisian transparency, and we did have to worry. A lot.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 01:21 PM Ed said in reply to Will Wilkinson...

"Due to the immense influence of his textbooks, Mr Samuelson was second only to Baron Keynes himself in promoting the now-familiar role of the macroeconomist as the technocratic steward of the national economy."

Nice way to maintain the whole royalty, elite, aristocratic motif - refer to him as Baron Keynes.

Those naughty, terrible, elitist, aristocratic Keynesians, with their attempts to do something about unemployment and not ignore the huge body of work on market http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/10/department-of-huh-why-oh-why-cant-we-have-a-better-press-corps.html

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failure. If only we had sound money and fiscal austerity in the face of crisis, like prosperous, happy Latvia.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 03:46 PM Landru said...

Honestly, I don't see the slightest case for Summers' point (1). Looking at the production gap graph that Brad himself posted recently, the fallout of the financial crisis & ongoing recession means that several, perhaps many, _trillion_ dollars worth of wealth is being lost -- gone forever. Did the supposed gains in economic efficiency from capital mobilization in the preceding decades create anything like a compensating amount of extra wealth? Here "extra" means extra compared to what would have happened if Reagan and Clinton hadn't followed Summers' "brilliant" prescriptions for deregulation. I don't remember productivity gains being all that high during 19802010, compared to the "bad old days" of 1950-1980 when financiers and rich folk were in a straightjacket, relatively speaking.

So, for you educated types: where's the actual, quantitative evidence that (i) extra capital mobilization was worth the risks, or (ii) that extra capital mobilization even helped in wealth creation at all?

Reply October 08, 2010 at 04:33 PM nkv said...

Summers was wrong then, but is right now; RR was right then but is wrong now.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 05:28 PM Reid H said...

Fuld had organs at risk? I doubt it. Fuld walked away worth 100 million? He took over when Lehman's annual profits were 75 million. If he had acted prudently he might have built up to 30 million personal wealth, being boring but safe? Being a mad man he possibly tripled his final take AND the odds the govt would let Lehman tank were small - he could have reasonably expected to clear a lot more than $100 million from wild rashness. So he did not have organs at risk - his rational play was to take likely fatal risks for the firm so as to maximize his individual wealth. To have organs at risk the law would have to take back his prior ill gotten gains - most of the 100 million walk-away money.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 06:39 PM RICHARD said in reply to Reid H...

If Fuld was personally liable (as would be the case in a partnership), he'd be personally bankrupt by now, so no, he most definitely did not have organs are risk.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 06:53 PM PSP said...

The Economist is journalism? I thought it was agitprop Reply October 08, 2010 at 07:00 PM Omega Centauri said...

I'm glad Brad said (1) is probably wrong. Most of us don't think the qualifier is appropriate. Like Landru, I ask, where is the evidence that this fancy financial engineering creates better investment? I've personally seen cases of "best and brightest" being lured away from the productive economy to bolster big financials institutions efforts to win in the zero sum trading games. Its not just the damage caused by the instability, its also the loss of real high powered talent.

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But, then, I've been deriding the viewpoint characterised by "we don't need no stinkin industry, we got world class financial engineering" for a long time.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 07:07 PM heterophilous said... i agree that wilkinson is way off base in his assertion that technocratic and elitist tendencies within academic economics are somehow the purview of new-keynesian / saltwater / 'neo-classical synthesis' economists alone (a la larry summers) . . . how for instance is tom sargent any less elitist or technocratic in his comments from this recent minneapolis fed interview? http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=4526 that being said, i think professor de long's characterization of rajan's thesis is far too simplistic when compared with his elaborate defense of summers - given how little credit he extends to rajan where credit is most certainly due . . . in contrast to permabear / 'broken clocks are right twice a day' proclamations about the coming financial crisis (i.e. roubini and setser's erroneous original arguments - circa 2005 - that 'Bretton Woods II' was unsustainable, and that the initial trigger of a crisis would be the failure of the U.S. treasury market), rajan's thesis was notable for specifying the precise mechanisms of our current unraveling in his discussion of 'fake alpha' and the dangers of issuing contingent liabilities with massive fat tail risks. and acharya's and richardson's work on ratings arbitrage / decapitalization have done much to drive home rajan's basic thesis. i will readily concede a few grains of truth to de long's point number 4 re: prince, cayne, fuld (see for instance Steven Schwarcz on 'secondary agency costs'): http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=2700&context=faculty_scholarship but the suggestion that broker-dealers / commercial banks are somehow equivalent with hedge funds from a moral hazard perspective, or that broker-dealers / commercial banks currently have fully internalized the costs of their risky behavior is playing fast and loose with the facts . . . does this not imply then, that firms like bear stearns and lehman brothers would be taking on 35-45x leverage were they still organized as limited partnerships as opposed to joint-stock ownership firms? http://blogs.ft.com/economistsforum/2008/12/incentives-and-the-financial-crisis/ and what about bob rubin's and stan oneal's +$100 million pay packages? what vital organs did they exactly have in the game? see also recents posts from ashwin paramswesaran and james kwak that offer up quite powerful accounts of crisis mechanisms (owing much to rajan's work) . . . http://www.macroresilience.com/2009/11/06/a-rational-explanation-of-the-financialcrisis/ http://baselinescenario.com/2010/06/14/theyre-just-irrational/ Reply October 08, 2010 at 08:41 PM SRdV said...

"Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?"

Based on what I've seen, I think it is a combination of editors using writers outside the writer's actual areas of expertise, tightened deadlines, and a desire to "sell papers" with http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/10/department-of-huh-why-oh-why-cant-we-have-a-better-press-corps.html

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controversial or otherwise provocative narratives.

Reply October 08, 2010 at 08:56 PM ogmb said...

How about: Raghu was wrong on 2, and Summers was wrong on 4. What the LTCM case teaches us is that the size of the personal stake doesn't matter if the venture is perceived as "can't fail" by the investors. After all, 0*0 = 0*(-1,000,000,000). And if this isn't obvious from the LTCM case, just consider the U.S. justice system's perpetual inability to curb violent crime by imposing the death penalty on perpetrators.

Reply October 09, 2010 at 04:21 AM maynardGkeynes said...

If 3 is clearly wrong, can someone explain to me how 2 can be clearly correct? They are virtually contradictory, because 2 being right seems to require 3 being right, or at least 99% right.

Reply October 09, 2010 at 10:11 AM Grizzled said... "(1) is probably wrong (although it is close)" I normally eschew me too comments, but I can't bear this. Wasn't it Paul Volker who said that the only clearly beneficial financial innovation he could think of was the ATM? Losses are all too obvious; where is the evidence for any gains at all?

And was the measure of these hypothetical gains weighted by the fact that the gains go to the already wealthy while the losses are borne by those least able to stand them?

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