Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae: The New Deal Legacy Comes Home to Roost

With the Fed pondering what to do to stave off the collapse of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae it’s only a matter of time before the pundits start intoning about yet another alleged failure of the market. The Von Mises Foundation has posted several good articles explaining the history of these institutions and their impact on the financial markets.

Freddie, Fannie, and Curses on FDR

Ludwig von Mises had a theory about interventionism:

It doesn't accomplish its stated ends. Instead it distorts the market. That distortion cries out for a fix. The fix can consist in pulling back and freeing the market or taking further steps toward intervention. The State nearly always chooses the latter course, unless forced to do otherwise. The result is more distortion, leading eventually, by small steps, toward ever more nationalization and its attendant stagnation and bankruptcy.

Government intervention is like a vial of mutating poison in the water supply. We can get by for a long time and no one seems really worse off. One day we wake up and everyone is desperately ill, and blaming not the poison but the water itself. So it is with the housing crisis. Lenders are being blamed for the entire fiasco, and capitalism is going to be subjected to a beating as usual, since Freddie and Fannie are traded in public markets. But the fact remains that there is only one reason that this went on as long as it did and became as bad as it is. It was that vial of government poison.

Freddie Mac: A Mercantilist Enterprise

While these institutions have been privatized to a degree, they still remain tied to the federal government in some important respects. In fact, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have access to a guaranteed line of credit of $2.25 billion with the U.S. treasury. This guarantee, coupled by the perception that federal money would be used beyond the extent of the credit limit, allows both companies to maintain lower borrowing costs than would otherwise be the case. In many cases, the companies are able to sell bonds yielding only a few dozen basis points above U.S. treasury benchmarks. If the government's guarantee disappeared, the borrowing spreads for both companies would widen. Beyond the government's line of credit, these companies are also exempt from state and local income taxation and are exempt from SEC filings. Moreover, their securities are listed as government securities and can be held by banks and thrifts as low-risk bonds. These benefits provide a significant advantage since such privileges are not offered to other financial institutions.

Fannie Mae: Another New Deal Monstrosity

Fannie Mae is not a free-market entity, nor is it a private body that must compete on the same playing field as its competitors. Fannie Mae is representative of all that's wrong with central planning institutions: it is a government-created conduit for carefully crafted financial and market socialism that the bureaucrats uphold for the purpose of propping up their fantasies for pandemic social engineering.

There's nothing "American" about this dream. In the eyes of the Republic's visionaries, this particular dream has turned into a nightmare.

God is Green: Part 2

The Wall Street Journal had an editorial by Bret Stephens titled

Global Warming as Mass Neurosis. He touches on how the message of the global warming crowd has strong elements of religiosity to it. Instead of God saving us, we'll find salvation by sacrificing ourselves to a false theory.

Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification. One wonders what the left would make of a scientific "consensus" warning that some looming environmental crisis could only be averted if every college-educated woman bore six children: Thumbs to "patriarchal" science; curtains to the species.

A second explanation is theological. Surely it is no accident that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming alarmists is diluvian in nature. Surely it is not a coincidence that modern-day environmentalists are awfully biblical in their critique of the depredations of modern society: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." That's Genesis, but it sounds like Jim Hansen.

And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the "solutions" chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.

Finally, there is a psychological explanation. Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?

As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.

Stephens doesn't use the word but there is a key concept behind this antipathy towards the West in general and specifically towards capitalism: altruism, the belief that we don't have the right to exist for our own sake and our own happiness. Because capitalism is based on the profit motive it is considered morally inferior to socialism where everyone is supposed to live from everyone else. Therefore I have a quibble with his use of the word neurosis in the title. The problems inherent in the behavior of the global warming advocates are not psychological. They're philosophical.

Review of The World is Flat 3.0

Do you ever debate buying a book? You know what I mean. Something about the cover or title catches your eye. You pick up the book, skim it a bit then put it back onto the shelf. The next time you go back to the store you go through the routine again. And again. Finally you break down and buy the book. After reading it you wonder why you didn’t buy the book the first time. That’s the story of The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman. I must have picked up the book five times before buying it. I wish I had bought it sooner.

Not that this book is perfect. A 100 or more pages could easily be trimmed with tighter editing and removing repetitive passages and Friedman’s name-dropping stories. But his premise is interesting and particularly applicable to individualists. By “flat” Friedman “means equalizing, because the flattening forces are empowering more and more individuals today to reach farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before, and that is equalizing power.”

Friedman contends we are in the third version of globalization. In Globalization 1.0 countries were the key agents in the world. Globalization 2.0 shifts from countries to international companies; Globalization 3.0 shifts again with individuals becoming the focal point.

The World is Flat identifies ten flatteners behind this evolution. While I won’t discuss each one they fall into three categories: political, business practices and individual empowerment. The key political flattener was literal: the flattening of the Berlin Wall in 1989 which enhanced the free movement of best practices. Most of the other nine flatteners deal with corporate practices such as work flow software, outsourcing and off shoring which drew formerly isolated countries such as India, China, Mexico and others into the world market. As the corporate practices lowered barriers between countries other developments occurred to enhance the ability of individuals to obtain information and, more important, to express their ideas that normally would have no outlet. Of course, we’re talking about the Internet, search engines and blogging. Traditional media outlets like TV and radio (except call-in talk shows) are just that: outlets in which the participants passively receive media output with limited ability to have their voices heard.

Blogging, personal web pages, etc. allow individuals to express themselves and to form collaborative virtual communities. In addition, as Friedman notes, small and medium size companies hire the most people, not the mega-corporations. Flattening allows these small businesses to compete better with the big boys. All of these developments provide tools to empower individuals like no other time in history.

These developments also could bode well for preventing wars. While some conservative thinkers fear (appropriately) the growth of Islamic terrorism and the rebirth of totalitarianism, Friedman shares something both interesting and hopeful: the Dell theory of conflict prevention. “No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain.” In other words, economic interdependence can trump political agendas. One can only hope that this theory is true! Of course there are no guarantees. Political leaders can force their agenda onto an unwilling citizenry. However the ease of being able to do this is getting more difficult as the world flattens.

Returning back to the individual, Friedman offers some advice to succeed. “The most important competition is now with oneself – making sure that you are always striving to get the most out of your imagination and then acting on it.”

Ted Kennedy and Universal Healthcare: Do As I Order Not as I Do

Capitalism Magazine has this excellent article on Ted Kennedy's surgery on his brain tumor and how he decided on which doctor would perform the surgery. This quote captures the essence of the situation.

[N]ever mind that Kennedy chose not to go to one of the many "industrialized countries that provide 'Universal Healthcare'." Apparently, Kennedy ignored Michael Moore's claims of the excellent healthcare provided in other “industrialized” communist and socialist nations that provide "Universal Coverage", albeit this is precisely what Kennedy seeks to bring to America at the point of a gun.

While the successful outcome of Senator Kennedy's operation depended on freedom, Kennedy has devoted his political career to legislating freedom out of existence. This is an irony that America's news media will evade, much less report.

This reminds me back when I first moved to Boston in the mid 1970s people were in an uproar over the forced busing of their kids to different schools to ensure racial intermingling. I recall hearing about someone who was fairly well to do who was a vocal advocate of busing but sent her child to private school to avoid the busing issue. When confronted with her double standard her reply, without blinking, was: "I'm not a slave to my principles." Yet she expects others to be enslaved by her beliefs. It appears Ted Kennedy follows the same MO. Nice, huh?

God is Green: Environmentalism as the new secular religion

In 2003 Robert Bidinotto made the argument about environmentalism being the new secular religion at his ecoNot blog. It’s interesting to see that others are starting to have a similar epiphany about the new dogma, complete with its own doctrine and inquisitions.

First, Jonah Goldberg penned an article titled “The church of green: A kind of irrational nature worship separates environmentalism from the more fair-minded approach of conservationism” in the Los Angeles Times.

At its core, environmentalism is a kind of nature worship. It's a holistic ideology, shot through with religious sentiment.

Whether it's adopted the trappings of religion or not, my biggest beef with environmentalism is how comfortably irrational it is. It touts ritual over reality, symbolism over substance, while claiming to be so much more rational and scientific than those silly sky-God worshipers and deranged oil addicts.

Next up, Czech President Vaclav Klaus in Earth Times.

Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the "climate alarmism" perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia. "Like their (communist) predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality," he said. "In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat - this time, in the name of the planet," he added.

Finally we have Freeman Dyson in a New York book review of two books on global warming has this to say.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.

Dyson obviously agrees with the main thrust of environmentalism so it’s interesting to see the dismay in his column about the religiosity of some environmentalists.

In all of the above quotes, however, this one by Klaus touches on a key premise: “they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality.” The key word is “sacrifice.” This is a code word for altruism, the belief that we do not have the right to exist for our own sake. Most people mouth altruism but ultimately live for their own values. However, over time we are constantly beseeched to live for our neighbors (in the form of welfare benefits) and for our international neighbors (in the form of aid to poorer countries).

As I said before, most people fortunately do not accept the hidden premises of environmentalism because “common sense” inoculates them from succumbing entirlely. However, common sense isn’t enough to prevent the infection from taking hold and causing pangs of guilt for not living green enough. The intellectual leaders of the environmental movement don’t compromise their principles. They are relentless in their quest for the ideal world where humans are reduced back to a more primitive existence (except for the anointed, enlightened few who will be allowed to have their private planes and mansions because they’re moral, you see).

Am I saying we have the right to wanton waste? No. I do believe we should be careful how we use the earth’s resources to preserve what we can for future generations and to ensure we have an environment that is healthy for us. But my premise is based on recognizing that we flourish best when we acknowledge how our actions can negatively affect our own survival.

There also is an ultimate irony here. Primitive and developing countries actually do more harm to the environment because it usually costs less to produce things if minimizing pollution is ignored. The worst polluters have been the socialist countries in Eastern Europe and now China. The more advanced capitalist economies can afford to design their production to better control emissions and have done so. This is why I maintain that the bile environmentalists spew at free market economies is not based on their poor environmental performance. Something else is at work here. Something more fundamental. Capitalism works by serving the needs and interests of the customers. The producers and consumers are both motivated by their own self-interest. And this, I maintain, is the real “pollutant” that the extreme environmentalists want to eradicate.

Skyrocketing oil prices: looking for solutions in all the wrong places

As gas prices reach record prices levels our politicians' “cure” is to clamor for windfall taxes to punish those greedy oil companies. Instead of recognizing looking at their own errors of past policies that have allowed us to increase our dependence on Saudi oil they would rather blame oil companies even though, as I have pointed out in a previous post, Exxon Mobil controls less than 1% of the world’s oil supply.

What could we have done? There is a laundry list but at a minimum here are two possible avenues.

• Use breeder reactors to produce nuclear power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

• Develop the tar sands in the Green River Formation which according to Wikipedia “contains the largest oil shale deposits in the world. The 213 billion tons of oil shale contain an estimated 2.38 x 10¹¹m³ (1.5 trillion US barrels) of shale oil.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_River_Formation#Oil_shale See this publications for more detailed information on oil shale. http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2005/5294/pdf/sir5294_508.pdf

The Why's of Rising Oil Prices: Part 2

As usual, Thomas Sowell gets to the core of an issue.