Financial Transaction Tax Gains Traction

High-frequency trading accounts for roughly half of all stock market volume in the United States. Michael Lewis' recent book on the gaming of markets by high-frequency traders makes a financial transaction tax increasingly attractive.  Nelson Schwartz @ NYTs:

It’s not every day that you find a fan club for new taxes, especially among economists and legal experts.

But a burst of outrage in recent days generated by Michael Lewis’s new book about the adverse consequences of high-frequency trading on Wall Street has revived support in some quarters for a tax on financial transactions, with backers arguing that a tiny surcharge on trades would have many benefits.

“It kills three birds with one stone,” said Lynn A. Stout, a professor at Cornell Law School, who has long followed issues of corporate governance and securities regulation. “From a public policy perspective, it’s a no-brainer.”

Not only would the tax reduce risk and volatility in the market, Professor Stout said, but it would also raise much-needed revenue for public coffers while making it modestly more expensive to engage in a practice that brings little overall economic benefit.

The richest 20% own over 80% of all financial assets

House of Debt blog

This means that when increases in the stock market are reported, the financial gains are skewed largely to the (already) wealthiest 20%.

Is Ben Bernanke abandoning the real economy?

 Economist Jared Bernstein worries about the Fed Chairman:

OK, clearly the markets aren’t listening to me—not exactly a surprise.  But they’re not

listening to Ben either, who’s been saying that the economy’s getting a bit better, so interest rates are going up.  And at some point, sooner than later, he and his buds are going to start adding a bit less juice to the punch bowl.  Surely, markets, (he’s saying) you didn’t think this easy money party was going to last forever?  After all, central banks in healthy economies don’t have $3.4 trillion balance sheets and hold rates at zero.

Here’s a little sample of what’s on the wires re markets and Ben right now—if they were going out, they’d need couples’ therapy (“Markets, I think Ben is trying to tell you something…can you tell Ben why you’re having trouble hearing him?”).

Bernanke and Markets, Crazed and Confused

Bernanke Speaks, and Markets Tumble

Bernanke Sneezes, Global Markets Catch a Cold

So I don’t really know what to make of the markets and I suspect they’re just going to be volatile for a while.  Like I said yesterday, it’s the real economy I’m worried about, and I used to have a friend in Ben when it came to that.  Now, I’m not so sure.

A Stock Market Boom in the midst of a faltering economy

James Surowiecki  @ The New Yorker takes a look at the stock market boom - driven by a growing disconnect between the welfare of Americans and the profits of "U.S." corporations:

With the stock market setting new highs on a nearly daily basis, even as the

real economy just slogs along, there seems to be one question on everyone’s mind: are we in the middle of yet another market bubble? For a growing chorus of money managers and market analysts, the answer is yes: the market is a house of cards, held up by easy money and investor delusion, and we are rushing all too blithely toward an inevitable crash. Given that we’ve recently lived through two huge asset bubbles, it’s easy to see why they’re worried. But in this case the delusion is theirs.

The bubble believers make their case with a blizzard of charts and historical analogies, all illustrating the same point: the future will look much like the past, and that means we’re headed for trouble. Smithers & Company, a London market-research firm, says that, according to a number of market indicators, stocks are, by historical standards, forty to fifty per cent overvalued. The bears admit that corporate profits are high, which makes the market’s price-to-earnings ratio look quite normal, but they insist that this isn’t sustainable.

They think that earnings will return to historical norms, and that, when they do, stock prices will be hit hard. Today, after-tax corporate profits are more than ten per cent of G.D.P., while their historical average is closer to six per cent. That’s a vast gap, and it’s why bears believe that the market is, in the words of the high-profile money manager John Hussman, “overvalued, overbought, overbullish.”

It’s certainly unusual for corporate profits to soar during a slow recovery. But the argument for a stock-market bubble is flawed: when it comes to the role that corporations play in the U.S. economy, the present looks very different from the past, which means that historical comparisons to the nineteen-fifties, let alone the thirties, tell us little. The four most dangerous words in investing may be “This time, it’s different.” But this time it is different.

Take taxes: one big reason that after-tax corporate profits are much higher than their historical norm is that corporations pay much less in taxes than they used to. In 1951, corporations had to pay almost half of reported profits in taxes. In 1965, they had to pay more than thirty per cent. Today, they pay only around twenty per cent.

Who's Booming?

With a nod toward a nominal stock market rebound to what it hit 6 years ago (if you don't adjust for inflation) - from Economic Policy Institute we have a breakdown of who owns personal shares of the stock market and is benefiting from this "boom" :

"A Modest Proposal for (Treasury Secretary nominee) Jacob Lew: Acknowledge Three Simple Facts about U.S. Fiscal Reality"

Robert Pollin @ "Back to Full Employment":

It is clear that debate over the fiscal deficit and austerity will dominate Lew’s confirmation hearings and at least his initial period in office, if he ends up getting confirmed. But without pursuing any deep explorations about who should be taxed more or less, or whether 47 percent of U.S. citizens are indeed freeloaders, I would just propose that Lew be willing to recognize three sets of very simple, irrefutable facts about the current U.S. fiscal condition. Here they are:

Fact #1: The U.S. government is not facing a fiscal crisis.

In any common sense meaning of the term “fiscal crisis,” we would be referring to the government’s inability to make its forthcoming payments to its creditors. By that common sense definition, the U.S. federal government is in just about the best shape it has ever been. Figure 1 below tells the story.


According to the most recent data from the third quarter of 2012 (which we term “2012.3”), the federal government spent 7.7 percent of its total expenditures on interest to its creditors. As the figure shows, that figure is less than half of the average figure under the full 12 years of Republican Presidents Reagan and Bush, when the government paid, on average, 16.8 percent of the total budget to cover interest payments. Right now, as we see, government interest payments are at near historic lows, not highs. As Treasury Secretary-designate, Lew needs to just state this obvious, and highly relevant point. To my knowledge, it has been heretofore completely left out of the insider-D.C. fiscal cliff debates, by Lew, Obama, and Geithner, to say nothing of the Republicans.

Fact #2: Interest rates on government bonds are at historic lows.

"The decline of the public corporation"

Economist Nancy Folbre at NYT's Economix:

Public corporations that ordinary people can invest in and get rich from represent one of the great selling points of American capitalism – at least according to the salesmen.

Yet public corporations, which rose to dominance in the United States economy in the second half of the 20th century, are now waning in significance.

As Gerald Davis of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan points out, the number of public corporations in the United States in 2009 was only half what it was in 1997. The share of employment represented by the largest 25 corporations has also declined over time.

Professor Davis asserts these trends result from increased reliance on overseas contractors for manufacturing...

Public corporations have also become less public. Professor Davis contends that share ownership has become heavily concentrated through mutual funds, such as Fidelity, which he says now holds significant blocks of 10 percent to 15 percent in many large companies. Even Fidelity’s role is overshadowed by BlackRock, proprietor of iShares Exchange Traded Funds, which, Professor Davis estimates, was the single largest shareholder in one out of five corporations in the United States in 2011.

Private companies going public often rely on “dual-class shares” that give original owners more voting rights than other investors. The founders of both Groupon and Zynga gained extra clout in this way.

The incentives to “go public” are smaller than they once were, because the rise of private equity firms and hedge funds has made it easier to raise money outside the stock market. Private companies are less subject to government regulation and oversight...

Paul Ryan's crackpot 2005 Social Security Privatization scheme would have brought the entire economy under state control

Wonkblog turned up this "believe it or not" moment in the history of crackpot "Ryan Plans":

Ryan’s Social Security privatization proposal,  the Social Security Personal Savings Guarantee and Prosperity Act of 2005, which he sponsored along with then-Sen. John Sununu (whose father has been a prominent Romney surrogate), would have allowed workers to funnel an average of 6.4 percent of their 12.4 percent payroll-tax contribution to a private account. Lower-income workers would be able to divert more of their wages, as the plan allows 10 percent of income up to $10,000 and 5 percent of income up to the payroll tax cap to be diverted. By default, the private account would be invested in a portfolio set by the Social Security Administration of 65 percent stocks and 35 percent bonds. Workers could choose an 80/20 stock-bond portfolio, or a 50-50 portfolio, but would not be able to pick individual stocks or bonds. At retirement, all participants in the plan would be required to buy an annuity.

Tell it to Paul Ryan

The Social Security Administration concluded that the Ryan-Sununu plan would require huge increases in general budget revenue to make up the shortfall left in payroll tax revenue. Specifically, revenue would have to increase by 1.5 percent of GDP every year, an analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found, or about $225 billion at current GDP. That’s a big honking tax hike. What’s more, under the plan, investments in the stock and bond markets would skyrocket such that by 2050, every single stock or bond in the United States would be owned by a Social Security account. This would mean that the portfolio managers at the Social Security Administration would more or less control the entire means of production in the United States.

Europe's Deficit Hawks

Paul Krugman explains how Europe's version of "deficit hawks" operate:

Spain has troubled banks that desperately need more capital, but the Spanish government...faces questions about its own solvency.

So what should European leaders — who have an overwhelming interest in containing the Spanish crisis — do? It seems obvious that European creditor nations need, one way or another, to assume some of the financial risks facing Spanish banks. No, Germany won’t like it — but with the very survival of the euro at stake, a bit of financial risk should be a small consideration. 

But no. Europe’s “solution” was to lend money to the Spanish government, and tell that government to bail out its own banks. It took financial markets no time at all to figure out that this solved nothing, that it just put Spain’s government more deeply in debt. And the European crisis is now deeper than ever.

Let's get this straight.  The leaders counseling austerity and cutting government spending sink Spain's crisis-ridden economy into deeper debt...to bail out the banks.  If ever there was evidence of the fraudulence and class warfare foundations of "austerity economics," this is it. 

They're Back!

 Mike Konczal at Rortybomb:

The top 1% had a rough Great Recession.  They absorbed 50% of the income losses, and their share of income dropped from 23.5% to 18.1% percent (in 2009.)  Is this a new state of affairs, or would the 1% bounce back in 2010?

Well we finally have the estimated data for 2010 by income percentile, and it turns out that the top 1%  had a fantastic year.  The data is in the World Top Income Database, as well as Emmanuel Saez's updated Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States ...

The takeaway quote from Saez should be: "The top 1% captured 93% of the income gains in the first year of recovery."

...(L)et's get some absolute numbers here.  Here is income by important percentiles, as well as the change from 2009-2010.  I include the change with and without capital gains, to make sure we understand that this is a phenomenon both in and independent of a strong stock market:

The bottom 90% of Americans lost $127, the bottom 99% of Americans gained $80, and the top 1% gained $105,637.  The bottom 99% is net positive for the year because of around $125 in average capital gains.  They can take comfort in efforts by the Right to set the capital gains tax to 0%, which would have netted them an addition couple dozen bucks...

Which political party is best for business and the economy?

Bloomberg reports:

While Republicans promote themselves as the friendliest party for Wall Street, stock investors do better when Democrats occupy the White House. From a dollars- and-cents standpoint, it’s not even close...

(O)ver the five decades since John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, $1,000 invested in a hypothetical fund that tracks the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) only when Democrats are in the White House would have been worth $10,920 at the close of trading yesterday. That’s more than nine times the dollar return an investor would have realized from following a similar strategy during Republican administrations.

"Why didn’t the stock market go up?"

"Cheap Talk" on the apparent paradox of Treasury bonds becoming more sought after as a secure investment in the wake of their "downgrade" by the "geniuses" at S&P:

You might have thought it obvious that the stock market would go down after S&P downgraded US government debt. The bad news about US debt made investors worry, and worried investors are usually less enthusiastic about holding stocks.

But there is something wrong with this view.