What motivated Medvedev to surprise the world with his Iskander card? Most probably, he was determined to complicate and aggravate Russia's already tense relationship with the United States as much as possible in the days following Obama's election. After all, the siloviki were hoping that John McCain and a neocon Cabinet would come to power because they would guarantee four more years of heated anti-Russia rhetoric, expansionism and unilateralism. This, of course, would be grist for the siloviki mill, which needs the image of an aggressive U.S. enemy to carry out its ambitions political, defense and foreign policy programs.

Barack Obama Hedge Fund Link Fest

Related to Barack Obama and the Hedge Fund Industry:

• Joe The Hedge Fund Manager | Not Joe The Plumber
• Barack Obama & Hedge Funds | The Long-Term Impact
• Geographical Guides
• Washington D.C. Hedge Fund Guide
  

Prospects that Barack Obama will become the next U.S. president continued on Tuesday to provide a surge for exchange-traded funds focused on solar energy.

"There are a lot of factors going on in markets right now, but we think there's good evidence that at least with solar ETFs, a lot of this is coming from an Obama bounce," said Christian Magoon, president of Claymore Securities.

He was speaking as the day's session along Wall Street was finishing and right before many polling centers were opening on the East Coast. Later in the night, of course, results were expected in the race between Obama and Sen. John McCain.

The Bush administration has focused more on oil- and transportation-related issues, noted Magoon. "But this presidential campaign has really brought more attention to solar energy. And Jim Cramer led off his television show on Monday making a solar ETF one of his first post-election trades," said Magoon.

The popular CNBC stock trader picked The Claymore/MAC Global Solar Energy ETF (NYSEArca: TAN) as one of his top choices for the new year. It was up more than 10% in the final hour of trading. That came after TAN jumped better than 15% the day before. In the past five trading days, the ETF has gained 48%-plus, according to Morningstar data.

That signals a complete turnaround for TAN, which launched in April. In the past three months, the fund had returned -48.32% through Monday.

The Market Vectors Solar Energy ETF (AMEX: KWT) has gotten an even bigger bounce. The fund, which also launched in April, has soared—though by somewhat less. In the past five trading days, it's up 45%; on Monday alone it gained 11.66%.

Obama is considered more solar-friendly than Republican candidate John McCain in some circles. But analysts along Wall Street have been putting out notes lately warning that such views, whether accurate or not, aren't enough fuel to support such a big run-up in stock prices.

Many market observers are warning that after a so-called "Obama Bounce," the sector could be due for a considerable slowdown.

But it certainly has served to raise the profile again of alternative energy ETFs. Niche funds such as TAN and KWT are getting an extra kick as their underlying benchmarks, both of which use different methodologies for screening out pure-plays from large conglomerates.

But the solar energy market is a small market, and these are very focused ETFs, holding less than 30 companies each in a typical reporting period. (See related article here.)

Magoon also pointed out that no matter who wins the White House race, "both candidates have been talking about solar and alternative energies a lot."

"A new administration is likely to raise the profile for solar ETFs as a whole, whether it's Obama or McCain," he said. "So we're seeing this election as a positive no matter who wins."

This from Investor’s Daily Edge:

John McCain is a practical guy. He subscribes to the “let’s try anything that works” theory. He’s willing to go with anything that weans the U.S. from Mideast oil. Nuclear, biofuels, ethanol, sun and wind, the traditional oil and gas hydrocarbons, tried and true coal and super-clean thermal and hydro energy – they’re all on table.

Throwing…

Dear Friend,

A new month brings a new batch of depressing headlines from the real economy.

U.S. factory activity fell to its lowest level for 26 years in October. Circuit City says it plans to close 155 stores and slash its workforce by 17%, all before the end of the year. And Fitch says credit card losses will likely surpass historical peaks in 2009.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Lacker, president of Richmond’s Federal Bank, says the government’s response to problems in financial firms may have added to market turmoil.

Still, that won’t stop it from trying to ‘fix’ things.

There are rumors of a $500 billion guarantee for distressed mortgages. There could even be another economic stimulus package in the…

The Washington Post figures the country has about one million homes too many.  And close to 30,000 of them are in Las Vegas alone.  “The solution, local executives say, will come not from Washington policymakers but from the market itself,” reports the Post. “When there are too many houses, builders stop building them. That has already happened, and many Vegas home builders have gone out of business.”

But of course, that’s not going to stop politicians from intervening anyway and trying to prop up home prices — that is,…

The Washington Post figures the country has about one million homes too many.  And close to 30,000 of them are in Las Vegas alone.  “The solution, local executives say, will come not from Washington policymakers but from the market itself,” reports the Post. “When there are too many houses, builders stop building them. That has already happened, and many Vegas home builders have gone out of business.”

But of course, that’s not going to stop politicians from intervening anyway and trying to prop up home prices — that is,…

Figure 1 also reports the alternative ratio if the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts (EGTRRA and JGTRRA) are extended (but not including AMT fixes). What is noteworthy is that if Obama's plan (as evaluated on September 15 by the Tax Policy Center) is implemented, then -- excepting the first couple years, the budget balance mimics the baseline plus extending EGTRRA/JGTRRA. On the other hand, the McCain's plan implies a substantial deterioration relative to even the baseline plus tax cut extension. The McCain plan induces budget deficit to GDP ratio nearly 1 percentage point larger than the Obama plan by FY2018. (Note: I have used the revenue implications as indicated under "Tax Proposals as Described by Campaign Staff" in the following table):

Let me stress what I think is the key take-away from this table: the total revenue loss FY2009-18 under the McCain plan is $4170.5 billion, as compared to the $2947.6 billion loss relative to CBO current law baseline. So the McCain plan implies a $1.2 trillion extra revenue loss. Alternatively, the McCain plan implies a 41.5% greater tax revenue loss than the Obama plan.

Figure 1 also depicts the DeutscheBank estimate for FY2009 budget deficit. From the report (not online):

For the on-budget contribution to issuance, we are expecting a $775 bn deficit in FY 2009. This is based on the CBO baseline, adjusted for increasing baseline expenses, falling revenue (particularly from corporate income taxes), potentially large fiscal initiatives, and a fiscal stimulus package from the new Administration that would all add up to a near doubling of the traditional measure of the budget deficit. For our estimate, we are assuming $100 bn outlays for FDIC rescues and as a fiscal stimulus, as well as $35 bn above the baseline for purchases of GSE preferred stock. The actual outcome relative to our budget deficit estimate is biased upward, since there could easily be a larger fiscal package, the FDIC outlays could move sharply higher if more banks fail, and tax revenues could fall if the economy enters into a deep recession.

This excerpt highlights the fact that the world, and the macroeconomic and budget outlook, have changed drastically since September 15th, when these revenue implications were tabulated.

Since then, the candidates have released new spending initiatives. The fiscal implications are examined in this Tax Policy Center report, entitled The Presidential Candidates' New Tax Proposals (October 28):

In response to the deterioration of the economy and the decline in asset values, Senators McCain and Obama have offered new proposals related to unemployment compensation, retirement savings, taxation of capital gains, and job creation. Although the proposals would provide some benefit, they have significant shortcomings.

In response to the deterioration of the economy and the decline in asset values, both presidential candidates offered new proposals related to unemployment compensation, retirement savings, taxation of capital gains, and job creation. Although the proposals would provide some benefit, they have significant shortcomings.

Senator McCain proposes to exempt unemployment compensation from federal income tax in 2008 and 2009 for most taxpayers, suspend required distribution rules for IRAs, lower the tax on some withdrawals from retirement savings accounts, increase the limits on the deductibility of capital losses, and lower the tax rate on long-term capital gains. Senator Obama would eliminate all taxation of unemployment compensation, allow limited penalty-free withdrawals from retirement savings account, and provide firms a refundable credit of $3,000 for each additional employee they hire. All of those proposals would be temporary and expire by 2010 or 2011.

Most of the proposals are very poorly targeted and would do very little to address the fundamental problems caused by the economic downturn. The proposal to eliminate tax on some or all unemployment benefits, for example, which is supported in different forms by both candidates, would most help unemployed workers who have substantial other income. A better option would be to extend unemployment benefits for workers who suffer long spells of unemployment. Most of the other proposals would do little good and could have unintended and counterproductive side effects.

It strikes me that these tax-based initiatives are ill-suited to countering the impact of recession, and the tabulation buttresses my view that stimulus should be oriented toward transfers and spending on goods and services, as discussed in this post on multipliers.

The Tax Policy Center does not report costs; however, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's has tabulated the costs of the various plans, in this report.

Note that, while the price tag of McCain's plan is $52.5 vs. $186.5 to $190 billion for Obama's, this calculation requires that the $300 billion McCain plan to buy distressed mortgages is funded out of the $700 billion TARP funds.

While these are big numbers, I think they are still dwarfed by the tax policy impacts, illustrated in Figure 1.

A last point. Figure 1 depicted the deficit impacts taking the campaign staff numbers as given. However, the Tax Policy Center (a joint Urban Institute/Brookings Institution) has conducted its own analysis based upon the candidates' stump speeches (second panel in the table). This yields the implied deficits illustrated in Figure 2.

This graph highlights the fact that the McCain plan implies a substantially more serious deterioration in the fiscal balance than the Obama plan: -$6,953.5 billion versus -$2,557.4 billion, over FY2009-18, a $4396.1 billion difference. In other words, the McCain plan implies a 171.9% larger reduction in revenue relative to current law baseline than the Obama plan, as scored by the Tax Policy Center. (Of course, the McCain plan does include substantial unspecified spending reductions, but these are akin to the "magic asterisks" of yore.)

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, John McCain, tax cuts, tax revenues, and budget deficit.

Figure 1 also reports the alternative ratio if the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts (EGTRRA and JGTRRA) are extended (but not including AMT fixes). What is noteworthy is that if Obama's plan (as evaluated on September 15 by the Tax Policy Center) is implemented, then -- excepting the first couple years, the budget balance mimics the baseline plus extending EGTRRA/JGTRRA. On the other hand, the McCain's plan implies a substantial deterioration relative to even the baseline plus tax cut extension. The McCain plan induces budget deficit to GDP ratio nearly 1 percentage point larger than the Obama plan by FY2018. (Note: I have used the revenue implications as indicated under "Tax Proposals as Described by Campaign Staff" in the following table):

Let me stress what I think is the key take-away from this table: the total revenue loss FY2009-18 under the McCain plan is $4170.5 billion, as compared to the $2947.6 billion loss relative to CBO current law baseline. So the McCain plan implies a $1.2 trillion extra revenue loss. Alternatively, the McCain plan implies a 41.5% greater tax revenue loss than the Obama plan.

Figure 1 also depicts the DeutscheBank estimate for FY2009 budget deficit. From the report (not online):

For the on-budget contribution to issuance, we are expecting a $775 bn deficit in FY 2009. This is based on the CBO baseline, adjusted for increasing baseline expenses, falling revenue (particularly from corporate income taxes), potentially large fiscal initiatives, and a fiscal stimulus package from the new Administration that would all add up to a near doubling of the traditional measure of the budget deficit. For our estimate, we are assuming $100 bn outlays for FDIC rescues and as a fiscal stimulus, as well as $35 bn above the baseline for purchases of GSE preferred stock. The actual outcome relative to our budget deficit estimate is biased upward, since there could easily be a larger fiscal package, the FDIC outlays could move sharply higher if more banks fail, and tax revenues could fall if the economy enters into a deep recession.

This excerpt highlights the fact that the world, and the macroeconomic and budget outlook, have changed drastically since September 15th, when these revenue implications were tabulated.

Since then, the candidates have released new spending initiatives. The fiscal implications are examined in this Tax Policy Center report, entitled The Presidential Candidates' New Tax Proposals (October 28):

In response to the deterioration of the economy and the decline in asset values, Senators McCain and Obama have offered new proposals related to unemployment compensation, retirement savings, taxation of capital gains, and job creation. Although the proposals would provide some benefit, they have significant shortcomings.

In response to the deterioration of the economy and the decline in asset values, both presidential candidates offered new proposals related to unemployment compensation, retirement savings, taxation of capital gains, and job creation. Although the proposals would provide some benefit, they have significant shortcomings.

Senator McCain proposes to exempt unemployment compensation from federal income tax in 2008 and 2009 for most taxpayers, suspend required distribution rules for IRAs, lower the tax on some withdrawals from retirement savings accounts, increase the limits on the deductibility of capital losses, and lower the tax rate on long-term capital gains. Senator Obama would eliminate all taxation of unemployment compensation, allow limited penalty-free withdrawals from retirement savings account, and provide firms a refundable credit of $3,000 for each additional employee they hire. All of those proposals would be temporary and expire by 2010 or 2011.

Most of the proposals are very poorly targeted and would do very little to address the fundamental problems caused by the economic downturn. The proposal to eliminate tax on some or all unemployment benefits, for example, which is supported in different forms by both candidates, would most help unemployed workers who have substantial other income. A better option would be to extend unemployment benefits for workers who suffer long spells of unemployment. Most of the other proposals would do little good and could have unintended and counterproductive side effects.

It strikes me that these tax-based initiatives are ill-suited to countering the impact of recession, and the tabulation buttresses my view that stimulus should be oriented toward transfers and spending on goods and services, as discussed in this post on multipliers.

The Tax Policy Center does not report costs; however, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's has tabulated the costs of the various plans, in this report.

Note that, while the price tag of McCain's plan is $52.5 vs. $186.5 to $190 billion for Obama's, this calculation requires that the $300 billion McCain plan to buy distressed mortgages is funded out of the $700 billion TARP funds.

While these are big numbers, I think they are still dwarfed by the tax policy impacts, illustrated in Figure 1.

A last point. Figure 1 depicted the deficit impacts taking the campaign staff numbers as given. However, the Tax Policy Center (a joint Urban Institute/Brookings Institution) has conducted its own analysis based upon the candidates' stump speeches (second panel in the table). This yields the implied deficits illustrated in Figure 2.

This graph highlights the fact that the McCain plan implies a substantially more serious deterioration in the fiscal balance than the Obama plan: -$6,953.5 billion versus -$2,557.4 billion, over FY2009-18, a $4396.1 billion difference. In other words, the McCain plan implies a 171.9% larger reduction in revenue relative to current law baseline than the Obama plan, as scored by the Tax Policy Center. (Of course, the McCain plan does include substantial unspecified spending reductions, but these are akin to the "magic asterisks" of yore.)

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, John McCain, tax cuts, tax revenues, and budget deficit.

More from Bloomberg:

The dimming outlook signals consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy, will deteriorate further, deepening the U.S. slump.

“The economy feels like it is contracting at a rapid pace,” Lewis Alexander, chief economist at Citigroup Global Markets Inc. in New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “It’s clear that consumers have really been affected by the volatility we’ve seen in the last six weeks.”

The report underscores voter discontent with the country’s direction heading into the Nov. 4 presidential election. A majority of voters think Illinois Senator Barack…

Dear Friend,

We are happy to say that we’ve just launched a new and hopefully improved version of our website,
http://www.contrarianprofits.com

. When you click on the links below, you’ll be directed to the article on the new version of our website.

Please let us know what you think. Send your comments to
info@contrarianprofits.com

.

Now on to the markets and today’s four Hidden Value picks…

The bear is raging again today.

European and Asian stocks ended mostly lower.  Back in the US, traders beat the Dow down by 350 points.

Crude oil fell to nearly $75. That’s half the price it was a mere four months ago…

And gold is up $10. This leads us to our first pick.

Urgent News… that Could Save…

That reflects the general preference for Obama held in Europe; it’s worth noting that the bank’s not offering an equivalent deposit product biased the other way, which by all the rules of hedging it should be (opening branches in Arizona and Wasilla, Alaska, where demand might be expected to be greatest, for example).

You don’t need to go to Portugal to bet on the election. At Iowa Electronic Markets, or IEM, Obama is currently trading at 85 cents asked, so if you bet $85, you stand to be repaid $100 if Obama wins. You can get much better odds on McCain; you only need to bet $16 to win $100 if he wins.

Aside from the amusement value, there’s actually a very real hedging question here. Most of the differences between Obama and McCain come down to questions of policy preference that are difficult to express in a monetary form. Thus, the two candidates’ policies on the Middle East have quite different implications, and though you may have strong views on which candidate you prefer, it is impossible to put a monetary number on those preferences. Even on policies such as healthcare, the details are so complex – and the application to your own circumstances involves such indeterminable unknowns as your future health – that a net monetary number is impossible to calculate.

There is one exception, and that is in the tax field. For those of moderate incomes, there is probably not much to choose from between the two: Obama may bring slightly higher taxes, but the additional government services he promises to institute may provide benefits to offset them.

For high-income people, however, there is a clear difference: Obama promises to repeal the Bush tax cuts (which lowered the top tax rate 4.6%) on incomes over $250,000, and to institute Social Security contributions (at 6.2%, or possibly less) on those top incomes. Therefore, for someone with a steady taxable income of $500,000, an Obama presidency can be expected to cost about 10% of his or her income above $250,000, or $25,000 per annum. Over a four-year presidential term – the time that elapses before we get to choose again – that total cost will reach $100,000.

There are several ways to hedge this:

• You can bet in the Iowa Electronic Markets. If you bet $85,000 at 85, you will have $100,000 to pay your taxes if Obama wins, and nothing if he loses. On a net basis, you will be $85,000 poorer after the election, so you may regret not having done this earlier, when Obama contracts were trading at around 50.

• You can place a deposit with Banco Best. As I penned this, there were 21 days remaining before the election; at that point, the difference between the two returns works out to 6% x21/360 or 0.35% on your money. Your deposit would thus have to be $28,571,428.57 to make $100,000 of difference between the two outcomes. Given the wobbliness of most banks currently, you may feel that’s a lot to risk (and Banco Best says its limit is 10 million euros, about $14 million).

• You can buy Obama-friendly shares like green energy and short McCain-friendly shares like defense. If you assume that an Obama win will increase the return on Obama-friendly shares by 5% annually compared to McCain-friendly shares, then over the four-year term their returns will differ by 20%. That means that an investment of $500,000 should cover you.

Alternatively you can shrug your shoulders and realize that political events, like the weather, are mostly too difficult to hedge against.

Source: Election 2008: Taking a Financial Flyer on the Race for the U.S. Presidency

Editors Note: “Election 2008" is an ongoing Money Morning series that examines the investor implications of the presidential election campaign.

From Greg Mankiw's blog, an argument against the New Deal policies.

Lessons from the Past

UCLA econ prof Lee Ohanian:

There are many historical precedents of bad policies following crises. The worst case was after the stock-market crash in October 1929, which produced a truly perfect storm of bad policies. Tax rates rose, tariffs rose (reflecting special interest groups attempting to insulate domestic producers from foreign competition), and both Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt strongly promoted industry-labor cartels that were designed to stifle domestic competition.

In the absence of these policies, the Great Depression would almost certainly have been like every other U.S. recession -- short-lived and relatively mild. Normal recovery didn't begin until the most onerous of these policies were reversed, a process that didn't begin until the end of the 1930s when antitrust activity was resumed, and during World War II when the National War Labor Board reduced union bargaining power by limiting negotiated wage increases to cost-of-living adjustments only....

I am particularly concerned about bad policies because significantly higher taxes have been proposed by Barack Obama. His plan would raise the marginal tax rate on the most productive workers more than 10 percentage points -- an increase that would bring us near Western European levels. His plan would also raise capital income taxes, taxing capital gains and dividends at 20%, compared to a 15% rate under Sen. John McCain's plan. A five percentage-point difference might strike you as small, but it is not. I have calculated that a five percentage-point difference in overall capital income taxation over the long haul is equal to a difference in the nation's capital stock of about 18%. This means a 6% difference in GDP and a 6% difference in the average wage rate. This means that real GDP and the average wage would fall, gradually but persistently declining about 6% after 25 years. That's not quite a Great Depression, but a significant step towards one.

...

Here's a link to the Cole-Ohanian paper (ungated working paper version) which is the basis for the view that the New Deal policies exacerbated the decline in output during the Great Depression.

While the types of macro models that Ohanian uses to analyze the New Deal policies are not the ones I work with, I have always wondered how robust the results are. Here's one paper which suggests the results are not robust. From the abstract to Gauti Eggertson, "Was the New Deal Contractionary?"

Can government policies that increase the monopoly power of firms and the militancy of unions increase output? This paper studies this question in a dynamic general equilibrium model with nominal frictions and shows that these policies are expansionary when certain "emergency" conditions apply. These emergency conditions -- zero interest rates and deflation -- were satisfied during the Great Depression in the United States. Therefore, the New Deal, which facilitated monopolies and union militancy, was expansionary, according to the model. This conclusion is contrary to the one reached by a large previous literature, e.g. Cole and Ohanian (2004), that argues that the New Deal was contractionary. The main reason for this divergence is that the current model incorporates nominal frictions so that inflation expectations play a central role in the analysis. The New Deal has a strong effect on inflation expectations in the model, changing excessive deflation to modest inflation, thereby lowering real interest rates and stimulating spending.

So, a lot hinges upon one's feelings regarding the stickiness of prices. As a person who taught graduate students the Mankiw menu cost model from Mankiw and Romer's, New Keynesian Economics (MIT Press, 1991), I'm on the side of nominal rigidities, and hence the model that re-establishes the conventional wisdom regarding the New Deal policies. But, if you feel that prices are fully flexible (i.e., somehow you've missed the fact that the prices at your local restaurant are moving around day by day), then you should side with Cole and Ohanian's perspective.

Regarding Ohanian's calculation of the tax impact, it's not clear from the text exactly what assumptions are made to obtain these effects. We do know that assumptions regarding whether deficits are run are not when taxes are cut yield drastically different results for output -- see this point illustrated in sharp relief in the context of the 2006 Treasury study [1].

By the way, the deterministic trend line (red) in Figure 1 has no meaning aside from highlighting the movement down in GDP during the Great Depression. For a statistical analysis of the time series properties of real GNP over a long span, see Cheung and Chinn, "Further investigation of the uncertain unit root in GNP," Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 1997 (NBER Technical WP version) (We find that over a long time span, GDP does appear to be trend stationary.) .

In less than one month, Americans will vote into office either Barack Obama or John McCain. Each has very different ideas about how to tackle the financial crisis.

Martin Hutchinson says Obama is most likely to win on a populist anti-Wall Street platform. But if he follows up this rhetoric with more regulation and protectionism, this could hurt US investors even more in the long run.

This from Money Morning:

The market’s verdict on the billion bailout was pretty clear: Stock prices started dropping the moment the bill was passed on Friday afternoon and continued to do so Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing down 370 points for the day – after being down 800 points earlier that same day.

The economic effect is also pretty clear: Given that the bailout plan is being launched at a point when money is already tight – and that it pours $700 billion of our money into the most useless, toxic waste left over from the housing bubble – you can be certain that it will end up starving more-worthwhile potential investments of badly needed capital.

But the political impact is less clear, in both the short- and long-term periods.

For a start, it’s not clear to the electorate who is to blame for the financial debacle. The Democrat presidential nominee, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., naturally blames the Bush administration and mysterious “deregulation” for the problem. Indeed, he has a particular deregulatory act in mind, the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which ended the separation of commercial and investment banking – conveniently ex-Sen. Phil Gramm was an advisor to Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Add in conventional Democratic rhetoric about the “evils” of Wall Street (albeit toned down somewhat since so many Wall Street titans are Democratic supporters and have provided funding for Obama’s campaign) and you would think he had a pretty clear path to sail to achieve electoral victory. After all, if economic or political disaster occurs on the “other guy’s watch, it generally doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out a way to blame that “other guy” for what happened.

However, it’s not quite as simple as that, though you would think it was from the initial reactions of the McCain campaign. Blaming Wall Street greed gets Republicans nowhere, since Wall Streeters are popularly thought to be mostly Republican. And if there was regulating to be done, why didn’t the Republican administration do it? Thus, the populist comments by the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, at the end of the vice-presidential debate last Thursday night amounted to a series of “own goals”— a soccer term for when a team forgets which end is which and boots the ball past its own goalkeeper.

There are two perfectly respectable things a Republican candidate can say in defense of the last eight years of economic management:

• First, much of the housing disaster was caused by the activities of Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE), the two government-backed behemoths who should never have existed in a rational free-market economic system – and who were pushed into conservatorship by foreign governments
• Second, much of the misbehavior on Wall Street – as well as the subsequent collapse – resulted from an excessively loose monetary policy by the U.S. Federal Reserve over a period of more than a decade – and the Fed, in case nobody noticed, is not a private-sector operation.

There were signs Monday that McCain was moving onto the attack on the subject of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama, after all, was the Senate’s second-largest recipient of campaign funds provided by the executives of those organizations – topped only by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., who chairs the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, which oversees Fannie and Freddie. Further, McCain was a leader of the (rather feeble) Republican attempts in 2005 to rein them in, which Obama and other Democrats opposed. Indeed, back in 2004-2005, there are lots of good sound-bite quotes from the Democrats about what splendid organizations Fannie and Freddie were.

Regrettably, for the Republicans, the responsibility of Fannie and Freddie for the disasters on Wall Street, while substantial (the securitization market would probably not have got off the ground without them) is somewhat indirect. Even more directly linked is the responsibility of the Fed in inflating money supply and inflating bubble after bubble. No politician, except the eccentric Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex., has gone after the Fed, and since neither McCain nor Palin can be classed as economic experts, it seems very unlikely that either of them will use the Fed’s misdeeds as a key election-talking point in the last month of the campaign.

Thus, Obama’s mantra of Wall Street greed and excessive deregulation will probably continue to register with voters in the next few weeks, and should maintain – or even increase – the lead Obama is showing in opinion polls. The $700 billion bailout, which appears (rightly) to be massively unpopular, will remain in the news as supervising staffers are appointed and the first purchases of loans are made, and will be blamed primarily on the administration that thought of it. Both candidates supported it, so any advantage between them will be minor. At this point, therefore, it is difficult to see how McCain can win on Nov. 4, unless some foreign policy crisis refocuses the electorate’s attention away from the economy.

Obama elected on a platform similar to President Bill Clinton’s 1992 platform of free trade and middle class tax cuts would be relatively investor-friendly, as was Clinton himself. Moreover, Obama’s undoubted ability might help him take the right steps to clear up the current mess and move the economy back into growth mode. But Obama elected on a platform of bashing Wall Street, opposing global trade, raising taxes on the rich and re-regulating everything is a very different matter; if he really believed his own propaganda he would be a menace both to investors and the U.S. economy.

Fortunately, as with most politicians, it seems likely that what Obama says to get elected and what he will do in office bear little relation to each other. We will just have to wait and hope.

Source: Election 2008: Who Will Get to Spend the $700 Billion?

The Dow gained back more than half its record Monday loss, climbing 485.21 points, or 4.68%, to close at 10,850.66. The broad Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gained 58.35 points (5.27%), to hit 1,164.74. And the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index zoomed 98.60 points (4.97%), to close at 2,082.33.

"There are at least some hints of optimism that something will still happen soon with regards to the [bailout] bill," Jim Dunigan, managing executive of investments at PNC Wealth Management (PNC) in Philadelphia, told Reuters. "It’s not surprising with the washout [Monday] that you’d get some bounce-back [yesterday], both due to bargain hunters and some prospects of a resolution. All eyes are still on Washington."

In related developments yesterday:

• U.S. Senate leaders announced late Tuesday that their chamber plans to vote on a Wall Street bailout package tonight (Wednesday).  Any plan will include souped-up deposit coverage, which is already being sought by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC).
• Earlier in the day, President George W. Bush and Senate leaders of both parties publicly vowed to push for a quick approval of a new financial bailout plan, despite the surprise Monday move by the House of Representatives to reject the pact that the Bush administration had negotiated with both parties in Congress. In a speech broadcast from the White House, President Bush urged lawmakers to avoid a potential economic crash, stating that "we are at a critical moment for our economy. Congress must act," the International Herald Tribune reported.
• Indeed, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) said it will ask Congress for permission to at least temporarily insure greater amounts of deposits for each depositor at member banks. The FDIC right now insurances individuals’ deposits of up to $100,000 and retirement accounts up to $250,000.
• The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission probably will resist calls to suspend the fair-value accounting rules that some members of Congress blame for exacerbating the global financial crisis, sources familiar with the issue reported. Although the SEC and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) yesterday issued “clarifications” on how banks should interpret existing rules requiring them to review assets each quarter and report losses if values decline, an actual moratorium isn’t being considered.
• Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama called upon Congress to keep working on a financial-markets rescue plan and also pushed for an increase in FDIC deposit insurance as a short-term step to restore consumer confidence in the U.S. financial markets.

Foreign Market Reaction

Although the House rejection of the bailout legislation led to the crash-like 777-point drop in the blue-chip Dow index on Monday, reactions in the global markets were mixed yesterday.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index plunged more than 4% to a new three-year closing low after shedding 483.75 points to close at 11,259.90. But Hong Kong’s blue-chip Hang Seng Index inched up 0.8% as it gained 135.53 points, to close at 18,016.20. Even with the slight gain, yesterday marked the end of the worst quarter for Hong Kong shares since 2001.

"It looks like Congress is going to be up in arms about this for a while but there are hopes that there may be other moves from authorities such as a rate cut from the Fed," Yutaka Miura, deputy manager at Shinko Securities, told Reuters.

In Europe, bourses gained on the revived U.S. markets and government interventions into failing banks. The FTSEurofirst 300 index gained 1.6%, fueled by the strong early-morning gains in the United States. The Paris-based CAC40, London’s FTSE 100, Madrid’s IBEX 35 and the Frankfurt-based DAX all posted gains on hopes of a new bailout plan.

The London Interbank Offered Rate, or LIBOR, surged to a record high of 6.88% yesterday, the British Bankers’ Association said. LIBOR is the rate banks charge each other for overnight lending. Such a high rate - well above the Federal Funds rate of 2.0% - demonstrates the high level of risk-aversion currently in the market.

Central banks flooded the markets with short-term liquidity yesterday, but could do little to restore financial firms’ faith in lending.

"Come Thursday, when the package is presented again to the U.S. House, many of the same people who voted against it earlier today will change their minds because of the pressure coming from the markets," Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia Ltd. (MS) said at a seminar in Hong Kong Monday, Bloomberg News reported.

Continued Bailout Hopes

Both the U.S. House and Senate were adjourned yesterday for the Jewish New Year holiday. The Senate will reconvene today - with members intending to actually vote on a new package tonight - while the House will gather again tomorrow (Thursday).

Despite the legislative holiday break, the executive branch continued its full-court press to get the bailout legislation passed.

"I realize this is a difficult vote for members of Congress," President Bush said the White House address yesterday. "But the reality is that we’re in an urgent situation and the consequences will grow worse each day if we do not act."

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. "Hank" Paulson Jr. also tried to underscore the benefit to the average American, and not just Wall Street bankers, as he lobbied politicians to move forward with the proposed bailout, Bloomberg reported.

"Markets around the world are under stress, and that reduces the availability of credit that businesses across America use to meet payroll and to purchase inventories," Paulson said to reporters gathered outside the White House. "Families, too, feel the credit crunch as it becomes more difficult to get car loans or student loans."

More Bank Bailouts

European governments stepped in again to aid more ailing financial institutions yesterday. In a united effort, Belgium, France and Luxemburg earmarked $9.2 billion (6.4 billion euros) in emergency cash for Dexia SA (PINK: DXBGF).

"Due to the significant deterioration in the business and market environment and the financial distress of a number of financial services companies, Dexia made a careful assessment of its situation and decided to take decisive action," the bank said in a statement, MarketWatch reported.

In Ireland yesterday, in a bid to stabilize sinking bank shares, the Irish Finance Ministry pledged to back deposits for two years with taxpayer funds if necessary. The move pushed Irish financial stocks higher.

Iceland nationalized its third-largest bank, Glitnir, on Monday, which sent the Icelandic crown diving to a new low against the euro. Also on Monday, banks in Belgium, Germany and Britain received government aid.

In the United States, Citigroup Inc. (C) purchased the retail banking assets of Wachovia Corp. (WB). The shares of both domestic banks enjoyed major gains yesterday, with Citi’s stock climbing 15.6% to close at $20.51, and Wachovia’s shares advancing 90.22% to close at $3.50.

Source: Credit Crisis Update: U.S. Stocks Notch Record Gains on Investor Hopes for a New Bailout Plan

LEHRER: New lead question. Russia, goes to you, two minutes, Senator Obama. How do you see the relationship with Russia? Do you see them as a competitor? Do you see them as an enemy? Do you see them as a potential partner? OBAMA: Well, I think that, given what's happened over the last several weeks and months, our entire Russian approach has to be evaluated, because a resurgent and very aggressive Russia is a threat to the peace and stability of the region. Their actions in Georgia were unacceptable. They were unwarranted. And at this point, it is absolutely critical for the next president to make clear that we have to follow through on our six-party -- or the six-point cease-fire. They have to remove themselves from South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The wild instability in current markets has me thinking...

"Washington Mutual Becomes the Biggest Bank to Fail in U.S. History," blares a headline.

"Bailout Talks Implode During Day of Chaos," screams another.

That can't possibly be good for the markets, right?  You'd have to think that the Dow and the Select Sector SPDRS Financials ETF (XLF) will be taking another nosedive today unless the government gets it together. In a major league show of brinksmanship, Paulson et al announced the big bailout assuming (correctly) that if you don't follow through and actually fund the plan, that it could exacerbate the situation.  I mean if you make the announcement, at that point, you can hardly NOT fund the bailout, right?

Crazy times.

And our job is to tell you what it means for you as an index and ETF investor.  Does it mean get ready to buy the crap out of the panicked bottom of this market (risking trying to catch a sky full of falling knives)?  Or should we sell ALL our ETFs NOW while there's still liquidity in the market and go buy a plot, a bunker and maybe some physical gold and plant a bit potato field somewhere in Idaho or North Dakota?"

I'm leaning slightly toward the "buy the crap out of the market" camp but not by much.  Frankly, it feels like a bit of an Alice in Wonderland fantasy scenario where you've got John McCain "suspending" his campaign, the VP frankly looking, uh, ditsy - when they allow her to talk - and really just a sense that maybe no one really knows what they're doing.  I mean, really, how much confidence does Paulson inspire?

But SOMEHOW I think the world will survive all of this drama...even if it takes us 10 years and a lot of potato eating to wade our way out of it.

And honestly, I'm not doing much with the portfolio.  I definitely feel like there are a very likely a few more shoes to drop, Khrushchev-style, on to the financial table.  Don't get me wrong. These ARE important times...and you do get the feeling that we are at an inflection point in history.  But panicking and making wild moves nearly always turn out to be the wrong things to do, whether they're driven by greed or fear.

I wanted to follow up a bit on the Lehman story and the Opta ETNs. It turns out (and we're still digging around this a bit) that those funds were almost entirely drawn down to nothing before they shut down...with only a million bucks or something left in them. We're working on the post mortem of that story (and looking at their much more significant structured products as well).

The ETF/ETN industry (and U.S. finance frankly) will never be the same after this latest round.  That much you can count on. By and large I think it's healthy...or at least it is as long as I'm not forced to actually move to that bunker and grow potatoes.

By midnight, it was hard to tell who had suffered a worse evening, Bush or McCain. McCain, eager to shore up his image as a leader who rises above partisanship, was undercut by a fierce political squabble within his own party's ranks.

The consequences could be worse for Bush, and for millions of Americans if the impasse sends financial markets tumbling, as some officials fear. Closed-door negotiations were to resume Friday, but it was unclear whether House Republicans would attend.

Now that all five big investment banks -- Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- have disappeared or morphed into regular banks, a question arises.

Is this bailout still necessary?

The point of the bailout is to buy assets that are illiquid but not worthless. But regular banks hold assets like that all the time. They're called "loans."

With banks, runs occur only when depositors panic, because they fear the loan book is bad. Deposit insurance takes care of that. So why not eliminate the pointless $100,000 cap on federal deposit insurance and go take inventory? If a bank is solvent, money market funds would flow in, eliminating the need to insure those separately. If it isn't, the FDIC has the bridge bank facility to take care of that.

Next, put half a trillion dollars into the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. fund -- a cosmetic gesture -- and as much money into that agency and the FBI as is needed for examiners, auditors and investigators. Keep $200 billion or more in reserve, so the Treasury can recapitalize banks by buying preferred shares if necessary -- as Warren Buffett did this week with Goldman Sachs. Review the situation in three months, when Congress comes back. Hedge funds should be left on their own. You can't save everyone, and those investors aren't poor.

Without the bailout, “credit will be restricted further for homeownership, for small business, for individual consumers and so on, but that is not just an inconvenience,” Bernanke said. “What that is going to do is affect spending and economic activity and it will cause the economy as a whole to decline and be much weaker than it otherwise would be.”

All three major U.S. stock indices declined - shrugging off earlier gains after investing icon Warren Buffett’s vote of confidence in Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) prompted a rally - when investors realized there will likely be no quick passage of Paulson’s bailout plan. [A related report in today’s issue of Money Morning analyzes Warren Buffett’s investment in Goldman Sachs Group].

The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average Index posted a loss of 161.52 points (-1.47%), closing at 10,854.17. The tech-laden Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 25.64 points (-1.18%), to 2,153.34. And the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 18.87 points (-1.56%), to settle at 1,188.22.

"I think investors are sitting back and waiting to see what Congress does," Fred Dickson, director of private client research and chief market strategist for DA Davidson, told TheStreet.com. "Hopefully, we’ll see something by the end of the week."

While uncertainty over the outcome of the bailout plan remains, the market will trade with a great deal of volatility, Dickson added.

In other credit-crisis-related developments yesterday:

• Bernanke pleaded before the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee for Congress to act quickly, while U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. "Hank" Paulson relented on some of the taxpayer safeguards Congress sought to add to his original plan.

• President George Bush’s planned to address the nation last night as Republican Presidential hopeful John McCain proposed a halt to campaign activities to focus on the ongoing bailout debate in the Senate.

• And the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) continued its ongoing investigation into some of the biggest corporate casualties of the current credit crisis.

Bernanke and Paulson’s Congressional Push

In his second day of Congressional testimony, the Fed chair appeared before the Joint Economic Committee to urge lawmakers to quickly pass the proposed legislation that would allow Paulson’s $700 billion bailout to take effect.

"Despite the efforts of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and other agencies, global financial markets remain under extraordinary stress," Bernanke said, predicting that the U.S. economy would likely contract even with the plan’s approval, the International Herald Tribune reported. But without it, he warned, the situation would be far worse.

"Action by the Congress is urgently required to stabilize the situation and avert what otherwise could be very serious consequences for our financial markets and our economy," Bernanke said.

"With the exception of a few outliers on either side, there is clear recognition among members of both parties that we must act and act soon," said U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, and the chairman of the Joint Economic Committee.

But without adequate safeguards, "then we risk the plan failing," Schumer said.

According to The New York Times, Schumer said Congress must keep in mind the opinions of the constituents who have reacted with "amazement, astonishment and intense anger" at the bailout in its original form. Debate over the details continues as lawmakers argue for more provisions to safeguard the public interest.

Paulson has relented on executive compensation caps for companies that participate in the bailout, one of the most contentious amendments proposed by Congress, according to several media reports.

Meanwhile, Buffett endorsed Paulson’s plan in an interview yesterday morning on CNBC, saying it was "absolutely necessary" to stem an "economic Pearl Harbor."

"The market could not have taken another week" like last week, Buffett told the news channel, Bloomberg News reported. "It was the last thing Hank Paulson wanted to do, but there’s no Plan B for this."

First, what is the source of the crisis? Is it as is asserted here in this statement from John McCain today?

....

There are certainly plenty of places to point fingers, and it may be hard to pinpoint the original event that set it all in motion. But let me give you an educated guess. The financial crisis we're living through today started with the corruption and manipulation of our home mortgage system. At the center of the problem were the lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats who succeeded in persuading Congress and the administration to ignore the festering problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

These quasi-public corporations lead our housing system down a path where quick profit was placed before sound finance. They institutionalized a system that rewarded forcing mortgages on people who couldn't afford them, while turning around and selling those bad mortgages to the banks that are now going bankrupt. Using money and influence, they prevented reforms that would have curbed their power and limited their ability to damage our economy. And now, as ever, the American taxpayers are left to pay the price for Washington's failure.

...

I certainly concur with the first sentence. But I do wonder about the assertion that the problem started with and is fundamentally driven by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. After all, neither of these two institutions were at the heart of the massive surge in subprime mortgages that are the most toxic component of these asset backed securities. Smarter people than me (Justin Fox, Tanta at CR h/t Mark Thoma) have been similarly dubious.

Moreover, the originating entities for these subprime mortgages were not Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, by large, but rather the banks that the Federal government refused to let state agencies regulate. Or the ones the Treasury's OTS itself failed to regulate. To refresh memories, consider this article from December 18, 2007 NYT:

WASHINGTON-- Until the boom in subprime mortgages turned into a national nightmare this summer, the few people who tried to warn federal banking officials might as well have been talking to themselves.

Edward M. Gramlich, a Federal Reserve governor who died in September, warned nearly seven years ago that a fast-growing new breed of lenders was luring many people into risky mortgages they could not afford.

But when Mr. Gramlich privately urged Fed examiners to investigate mortgage lenders affiliated with national banks, he was rebuffed by Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman.

In 2001, a senior Treasury official, Sheila C. Bair, tried to persuade subprime lenders to adopt a code of "best practices" and to let outside monitors verify their compliance. None of the lenders would agree to the monitors, and many rejected the code itself. Even those who did adopt those practices, Ms. Bair recalled recently, soon let them slip.

And leaders of a housing advocacy group in California, meeting with Mr. Greenspan in 2004, warned that deception was increasing and unscrupulous practices were spreading.

John C. Gamboa and Robert L. Gnaizda of the Greenlining Institute implored Mr. Greenspan to use his bully pulpit and press for a voluntary code of conduct.

"He never gave us a good reason, but he didn't want to do it," Mr. Gnaizda said last week. "He just wasn't interested."

Today, as the mortgage crisis of 2007 worsens and threatens to tip the economy into a recession, many are asking: where was Washington?

An examination of regulatory decisions shows that the Federal Reserve and other agencies waited until it was too late before trying to tame the industry's excesses. Both the Fed and the Bush administration placed a higher priority on promoting "financial innovation" and what President Bush has called the "ownership society."

...

On Tuesday, under a new chairman, the Federal Reserve will try to make up for lost ground by proposing new restrictions on subprime mortgages, invoking its authority under the 13-year-old Home Ownership Equity and Protection Act. Fed officials are expected to demand that lenders document a person’s income and ability to repay the loan, and they may well restrict practices that make it hard for borrowers to see hidden fees or refinance with cheaper mortgages.

It is an action that people like Mr. Gramlich and Ms. Bair advocated for years with little success. But it will have little impact on many existing subprime lenders, because most have either gone out of business or stopped making subprime loans months ago.

...

The Fed was hardly alone in not pressing to clean up the mortgage industry. When states like Georgia and North Carolina started to pass tougher laws against abusive lending practices, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency successfully prohibited them from investigating local subsidiaries of nationally chartered banks.

Virtually every federal bank regulator was loathe to impose speed limits on a booming industry. But the regulators were also fragmented among an alphabet soup of agencies with splintered and confusing jurisdictions. Perhaps the biggest complication was that many mortgage lenders did not fall under any agency's authority at all.

...

And for some more concrete examples of how deregulatory zeal had an effect, consider this account from the WSJ (March 22, 2007):

Regulators appointed by President Bush often have been more sympathetic to industry concerns about red tape than their Clinton administration predecessors. When James Gilleran, a former California banker and bank supervisor, took over the OTS in December 2001, he became known for his deregulatory zeal. At one press event in 2003, several bank regulators held gardening shears to represent their commitment to cut red tape for the industry. Mr. Gilleran brought a chain saw.

He also early on announced plans to slash expenses to resolve the agency's deficit; 20% of its work force eventually left. When he left in 2005, Mr. Gilleran declared that the OTS had "exercised increased diligence in its review of abusive consumer practices" while reducing thrifts' regulatory burden. But his successor, Mr. Reich, a former community banker, has reversed many of Mr. Gilleran's cuts. Citing "understaffing," he hired 80 examiners last year and plans to add 40 more this year. A spokeswoman for Mr. Gilleran, now chief executive of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle, said he wasn't available to comment.

So, from my perspective, locating the source of the current crisis in corruption/influence peddling surrounding Fannie and Freddie exhibits a misreading of recent history. (More important might have been lax monetary policy and the saving glut, and exemptions from capital requirements for certain investment banks... [see Ritholtz])

Second, how hard will the rescue be given the reckless decisions of the past? It seems that whatever entity is established to purchase these bad assets will require some fiscal outlay. Estimates are all over the place, given that there is so much uncertainty over how much the assets will be bought for and eventually sold; here is one account:

U.S. Debt May Grow $1 Trillion on Rescue, Barclays' Pond Says

By Sandra Hernandez

Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. may have to borrow an extra $700 billion to $1 trillion to fund the biggest rescue of the financial system since the Great Depression, according to Barclays Capital Inc.'s Michael Pond.

Federal takeovers of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and American International Group Inc.; the central bank's expansion of lending to financial firms; and a slowing economy will add $455 billion to the Treasury's borrowing needs, the New York-based interest-rate strategist estimated. Pond said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan to rid banks of "hundreds of billions" of troubled assets would bring the amount to $700 billion assuming the plan costs $200 billion.

"We could easily add up to an additional trillion to the outstanding Treasury debt just from the initiatives announced over the past couple of weeks," said Pond, ranked the best Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities analyst in 2008 by Institutional Investor magazine.

The government's liabilities swelled in past weeks as policy makers sought to arrest a growing financial crisis by taking over financial institutions threatened by a shortage of capital.

The Treasury on Sept. 7 took over mortgage-finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and said it would buy mortgage-backed debt in the open market. The Fed this week boosted its Treasury auctions to bond dealers by $25 billion, loaned $85 billion to the insurer AIG, and quadrupled the amount of dollars foreign central banks can auction to $247 billion. Paulson today said the government will buy illiquid assets from banks' balance sheets and insure money-market mutual fund holdings.

Deficit Widens

"The odds of the deficit becoming enormous are certainly there," said Nils Overdahl, a bond fund manager in Bethesda, Maryland, at New Century Advisors, which oversees $500 million. "I suspect you will see issuance at a variety of maturities."

The deficit will likely widen to $650 billion in fiscal 2009 because of the U.S. rescue of Fannie and Freddie, analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. wrote in a Sept. 12 report.

Over the next decade, the gap between spending and receipts will swell to $5.3 trillion, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts wrote Sept. 10, revising a previous forecast of $3.6 trillion. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office forecast a record $438 billion deficit for 2009 on Sept. 9.

"The deficit will soar to enormous proportions,'' said Lou Crandall, the chief economist at Wrightson ICAP LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey. ``Even before this week's events, estimates based on visible factors were pointing to a deficit above $500 billion next year, with the prospect of billions of mortgage- backed securities on top of that."

See also this Bloomberg article.

Here, I want to return the issue I've brought up countless times before. We cut taxes, and we embarked upon a war of choice, and in addition to the opportunity and fiscal costs, this constrained our range of actions for the future. Even if you thought the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 "benefitted" the US economy on net, we know that the war in Iraq has cost on the order of $653 billion nominal dollars from FY03-FY0-09 [2] -- in current dollars that's even more given inflation. Those dollars could have been spent fixing the financial system. Now, we'll have to either borrow or tax to to finance the operation.

So, if you wanted the McCain extension of the Bush tax cuts, and the additional $1.3 trillion tax cuts, then you might wonder about the impact on US borrowing rates. If you were hoping for more domestic initiatives, perhaps to give tax relief to the lower and middle income households, or to invest in infrastructure, the borrowing constraints will be more binding than they otherwise would have been.

Perhaps that's obvious, but sometimes in the midst of crisis, the obvious bears repeating. Here's a picture to illustrate the budget balance outlook pre-intervention....

The purple square is just for illustrative purposes. If you think the Treasury will only have to borrow $350 billion in FY2009, then the orange square is relevant. Further, if we're lucky (and Brad Delong is right), in future years we will recoup all and more of these outlays, so the deficit will be smaller than otherwise. But, in the short run, we'll have to take a hit (of unknown magnitude) now and hope for the best.

Technorati Tags: , subprime, Fannie Mae, Freddie+Mac, and deregulation, Office of Thrift Supervision, and tax cuts.

First, what is the source of the crisis? Is it as is asserted here in this statement from John McCain today?

....

There are certainly plenty of places to point fingers, and it may be hard to pinpoint the original event that set it all in motion. But let me give you an educated guess. The financial crisis we're living through today started with the corruption and manipulation of our home mortgage system. At the center of the problem were the lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats who succeeded in persuading Congress and the administration to ignore the festering problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

These quasi-public corporations lead our housing system down a path where quick profit was placed before sound finance. They institutionalized a system that rewarded forcing mortgages on people who couldn't afford them, while turning around and selling those bad mortgages to the banks that are now going bankrupt. Using money and influence, they prevented reforms that would have curbed their power and limited their ability to damage our economy. And now, as ever, the American taxpayers are left to pay the price for Washington's failure.

...

I certainly concur with the first sentence. But I do wonder about the assertion that the problem started with and is fundamentally driven by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. After all, neither of these two institutions were at the heart of the massive surge in subprime mortgages that are the most toxic component of these asset backed securities. Smarter people than me (Justin Fox, Tanta at CR h/t Mark Thoma) have been similarly dubious.

Moreover, the originating entities for these subprime mortgages were not Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, by large, but rather the banks that the Federal government refused to let state agencies regulate. Or the ones the Treasury's OTS itself failed to regulate. To refresh memories, consider this article from December 18, 2007 NYT:

WASHINGTON-- Until the boom in subprime mortgages turned into a national nightmare this summer, the few people who tried to warn federal banking officials might as well have been talking to themselves.

Edward M. Gramlich, a Federal Reserve governor who died in September, warned nearly seven years ago that a fast-growing new breed of lenders was luring many people into risky mortgages they could not afford.

But when Mr. Gramlich privately urged Fed examiners to investigate mortgage lenders affiliated with national banks, he was rebuffed by Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman.

In 2001, a senior Treasury official, Sheila C. Bair, tried to persuade subprime lenders to adopt a code of "best practices" and to let outside monitors verify their compliance. None of the lenders would agree to the monitors, and many rejected the code itself. Even those who did adopt those practices, Ms. Bair recalled recently, soon let them slip.

And leaders of a housing advocacy group in California, meeting with Mr. Greenspan in 2004, warned that deception was increasing and unscrupulous practices were spreading.

John C. Gamboa and Robert L. Gnaizda of the Greenlining Institute implored Mr. Greenspan to use his bully pulpit and press for a voluntary code of conduct.

"He never gave us a good reason, but he didn't want to do it," Mr. Gnaizda said last week. "He just wasn't interested."

Today, as the mortgage crisis of 2007 worsens and threatens to tip the economy into a recession, many are asking: where was Washington?

An examination of regulatory decisions shows that the Federal Reserve and other agencies waited until it was too late before trying to tame the industry's excesses. Both the Fed and the Bush administration placed a higher priority on promoting "financial innovation" and what President Bush has called the "ownership society."

...

On Tuesday, under a new chairman, the Federal Reserve will try to make up for lost ground by proposing new restrictions on subprime mortgages, invoking its authority under the 13-year-old Home Ownership Equity and Protection Act. Fed officials are expected to demand that lenders document a person’s income and ability to repay the loan, and they may well restrict practices that make it hard for borrowers to see hidden fees or refinance with cheaper mortgages.

It is an action that people like Mr. Gramlich and Ms. Bair advocated for years with little success. But it will have little impact on many existing subprime lenders, because most have either gone out of business or stopped making subprime loans months ago.

...

The Fed was hardly alone in not pressing to clean up the mortgage industry. When states like Georgia and North Carolina started to pass tougher laws against abusive lending practices, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency successfully prohibited them from investigating local subsidiaries of nationally chartered banks.

Virtually every federal bank regulator was loathe to impose speed limits on a booming industry. But the regulators were also fragmented among an alphabet soup of agencies with splintered and confusing jurisdictions. Perhaps the biggest complication was that many mortgage lenders did not fall under any agency's authority at all.

...

And for some more concrete examples of how deregulatory zeal had an effect, consider this account from the WSJ (March 22, 2007):

Regulators appointed by President Bush often have been more sympathetic to industry concerns about red tape than their Clinton administration predecessors. When James Gilleran, a former California banker and bank supervisor, took over the OTS in December 2001, he became known for his deregulatory zeal. At one press event in 2003, several bank regulators held gardening shears to represent their commitment to cut red tape for the industry. Mr. Gilleran brought a chain saw.

He also early on announced plans to slash expenses to resolve the agency's deficit; 20% of its work force eventually left. When he left in 2005, Mr. Gilleran declared that the OTS had "exercised increased diligence in its review of abusive consumer practices" while reducing thrifts' regulatory burden. But his successor, Mr. Reich, a former community banker, has reversed many of Mr. Gilleran's cuts. Citing "understaffing," he hired 80 examiners last year and plans to add 40 more this year. A spokeswoman for Mr. Gilleran, now chief executive of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle, said he wasn't available to comment.

So, from my perspective, locating the source of the current crisis in corruption/influence peddling surrounding Fannie and Freddie exhibits a misreading of recent history. (More important might have been lax monetary policy and the saving glut, and exemptions from capital requirements for certain investment banks... [see Ritholtz])

Second, how hard will the rescue be given the reckless decisions of the past? It seems that whatever entity is established to purchase these bad assets will require some fiscal outlay. Estimates are all over the place, given that there is so much uncertainty over how much the assets will be bought for and eventually sold; here is one account:

U.S. Debt May Grow $1 Trillion on Rescue, Barclays' Pond Says

By Sandra Hernandez

Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. may have to borrow an extra $700 billion to $1 trillion to fund the biggest rescue of the financial system since the Great Depression, according to Barclays Capital Inc.'s Michael Pond.

Federal takeovers of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and American International Group Inc.; the central bank's expansion of lending to financial firms; and a slowing economy will add $455 billion to the Treasury's borrowing needs, the New York-based interest-rate strategist estimated. Pond said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan to rid banks of "hundreds of billions" of troubled assets would bring the amount to $700 billion assuming the plan costs $200 billion.

"We could easily add up to an additional trillion to the outstanding Treasury debt just from the initiatives announced over the past couple of weeks," said Pond, ranked the best Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities analyst in 2008 by Institutional Investor magazine.

The government's liabilities swelled in past weeks as policy makers sought to arrest a growing financial crisis by taking over financial institutions threatened by a shortage of capital.

The Treasury on Sept. 7 took over mortgage-finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and said it would buy mortgage-backed debt in the open market. The Fed this week boosted its Treasury auctions to bond dealers by $25 billion, loaned $85 billion to the insurer AIG, and quadrupled the amount of dollars foreign central banks can auction to $247 billion. Paulson today said the government will buy illiquid assets from banks' balance sheets and insure money-market mutual fund holdings.

Deficit Widens

"The odds of the deficit becoming enormous are certainly there," said Nils Overdahl, a bond fund manager in Bethesda, Maryland, at New Century Advisors, which oversees $500 million. "I suspect you will see issuance at a variety of maturities."

The deficit will likely widen to $650 billion in fiscal 2009 because of the U.S. rescue of Fannie and Freddie, analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. wrote in a Sept. 12 report.

Over the next decade, the gap between spending and receipts will swell to $5.3 trillion, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts wrote Sept. 10, revising a previous forecast of $3.6 trillion. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office forecast a record $438 billion deficit for 2009 on Sept. 9.

"The deficit will soar to enormous proportions,'' said Lou Crandall, the chief economist at Wrightson ICAP LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey. ``Even before this week's events, estimates based on visible factors were pointing to a deficit above $500 billion next year, with the prospect of billions of mortgage- backed securities on top of that."

See also this Bloomberg article.

Here, I want to return the issue I've brought up countless times before. We cut taxes, and we embarked upon a war of choice, and in addition to the opportunity and fiscal costs, this constrained our range of actions for the future. Even if you thought the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 "benefitted" the US economy on net, we know that the war in Iraq has cost on the order of $653 billion nominal dollars from FY03-FY0-09 [2] -- in current dollars that's even more given inflation. Those dollars could have been spent fixing the financial system. Now, we'll have to either borrow or tax to to finance the operation.

So, if you wanted the McCain extension of the Bush tax cuts, and the additional $1.3 trillion tax cuts, then you might wonder about the impact on US borrowing rates. If you were hoping for more domestic initiatives, perhaps to give tax relief to the lower and middle income households, or to invest in infrastructure, the borrowing constraints will be more binding than they otherwise would have been.

Perhaps that's obvious, but sometimes in the midst of crisis, the obvious bears repeating. Here's a picture to illustrate the budget balance outlook pre-intervention....

The purple square is just for illustrative purposes. If you think the Treasury will only have to borrow $350 billion in FY2009, then the orange square is relevant. Further, if we're lucky (and Brad Delong is right), in future years we will recoup all and more of these outlays, so the deficit will be smaller than otherwise. But, in the short run, we'll have to take a hit (of unknown magnitude) now and hope for the best.

Technorati Tags: , subprime, Fannie Mae, Freddie+Mac, and deregulation, Office of Thrift Supervision, and tax cuts.

The Georgia strategy is premised on working jointly with European allies and on avoiding the sort of unilateral U.S. military threats that would scare them off. It is also tempered by the administration's earlier mistakes in dealing with mercurial Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, which set the stage for his unwise Aug. 7 attack on South Ossetia that provoked the punishing Russian reaction. It's a policy, in short, that distills some of the foreign policy lessons learned at the shank end of the Bush presidency. And its contours, interestingly enough, arguably are closer to the thrust of Barack Obama's initial, cautious reaction to the Georgia crisis than to the more confrontational approach of John McCain.

The administration wants to keep Putin from driving Russia off a cliff. They view his successor, President Dmitry Medvedev, as a man who understands that Russia's future is as a 21st-century power. They want to avoid a strategy that unintentionally undermines Medvedev and bolsters the Putin camp.

On Tuesday, he used some of his harshest rhetoric to date, calling Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili a "political corpse" and suggesting the U.S. somehow instigated the war in Georgia to bolster Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. (...) Squaring his shoulders, looking grim and punctuating his speeches with uncharacteristically blunt language, the 42-year-old Medvedev has in recent months sounded like Putin, his predecessor and mentor. On Aug. 11, he used the words "lunatic" and "bastard" in talking about Saakashvili.

U.S. Reviews Its Ties With Russia

The Bush administration, escalating its response to Russia's actions in Georgia, has placed under review talks with Moscow focused on missile defense and nuclear-weapons disarmament, according to U.S. officials. A delay would cast uncertainty over the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or Start, a successor to Cold War era arms-reduction agreements that expires at the end of 2009. The treaty restricts the number of long-range nuclear weapons each side is allowed to have

XX Is this new cold war worrying you? Because it’s scaring the crap out of me.

Obama Pledges to Restore `America's Promise,' Says McCain `Doesn't Get It' Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president, mixing a soaring pledge to preserve the ``American promise'' with a sharp attack on John McCain's judgment on the war, the economy and support of George W. Bush.

XX It was a great speech. Even Pat Buchanan loved it. The Associated Press, however, not so much. And they got called on it. OUCH!

Paladin Energy Forecasts Doubling of Uranium Output This Year

Production should rise to 3.6 million pounds of uranium oxide in the year ending June 30, 2009, from 1.71 million in the preceding 12 months, Managing Director John Borshoff said on a conference call. Output should increase to 6.8 million pounds the following year, to 7.4 million in 2010-11 and 9.3 million in 2011-12, he said.

XX Sean’s note – we’ll see. Paladin has disappointed us before.

India Economic Growth Slowed to 7.9% Last Quarter; Weakest Pace Since 2004 India's economy grew at the slowest pace since 2004 last quarter as the fastest inflation in a decade and increased borrowing costs damped consumer spending.

Bank of China flees Fannie-Freddie

ank of China has cut its portfolio of securities issued or guaranteed by troubled US mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by a quarter since the end of June. The sale by China’s fourth largest commercial bank, which reduced its holdings of so-called agency debt by $4.6bn is a sign of nervousness among foreign buyers of Fannie and Freddie’s bonds and guaranteed securities.

The Energy Challenge: Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid’s Limits

Pakistan Sets Floor on Stock Prices to Stop Plunge

Pakistan set a floor for stock prices on the benchmark exchange, moving to halt a plunge that has wiped out $36.9 billion of market value since April.
Securities can trade within their daily limit of 5 percent ``but not below the floor-price level'' of yesterday's close.

Yes! That’s what I’ve always wanted – a stock market that can only go up. Don’t tell Bush about this solution or we may see it enacted on Wall Street.

In other news, Bloomberg really knows how to bury the lead in this next story. Check out what I’ve highlighted …

Financial Crisis Is Absent From Agendas of Parties, Candidates

The U.S. is facing the worst financial crisis since the Depression. You would never know that from the Democrats' platform in Denver or its Republican counterpart, or from listening to Barack Obama or John McCain.

XX Sean’ note – Splutter! Excuse me while I a do a spit-take, Bloomberg, but did you say the U.S. is facing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression? For Pete’s sake, don’t tell Larry Kudlow, at least when he’s walking by an open window.

The rest of that Bloomberg story is heavy on politics and light on economics. Seriously, I want a Bloomberg story detailing why they agree (with the folks at Weiss Research, who have been saying it for months) that the US is facing the worst crisis since the Depression.

South and South-East Asia in the Midst of a Global Recession

Trade and financial linkages with the G-7 countries mean that Asia is unlikely to remain unscathed. Asian economies dependent on exports to the US and Europe and having large current account surpluses (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and others) will suffer from the G-7 recession.

XX Sean's note -- unless, of course, the G-7 doesn't slide into recession. I only mention that because America's Q2 growth was revised much higher to 3.3%.

Riders on the Storm …

"Corn and soybeans have rebounded as reduced crop yields push U.S. stockpiles to near five-year lows. Oil has reversed on U.S.-Russian tensions. Nickel has turned after Xstrata Plc closed a Dominican Republic plant.

The worst rout in the history of commodities may be ending, signaling a replay of the 2006 tumble that preceded a doubling of prices in the next 17 months as measured by the Standard & Poor's GSCI index. Only this time, the driver is supply cuts rather than increasing demand. Supply constraints are "coming more and more to the fore'' and that "will separate the performance of individual commodities," said Alan Heap, global commodity analyst at Citigroup Inc. in Sydney. "We're still looking for higher prices next year and in some cases the year after."

XX Sean’s note – the same piece quotes a contrary view …

"The whole cycle that began around the turn of this century ended," said Michael Aronstein, chief investment strategist at Oscar Gruss & Son Inc. in New York, who returned 15 percent a year in the 1990s managing commodity investments. "Human ingenuity creates productivity, and the real price of almost everything that's extracted or manufactured goes down over time. That's the nature of human progress."

Lead Climbs to Three-Week High on Speculation of Rebound in China Demand Lead rose to the highest in three weeks in London on speculation demand improved in China, the world's largest consumer and producer of the metal.

Crude Oil Rises a Fourth Day as Tropical Storm May Threaten Gulf Platforms Crude oil and natural gas rose as Royal Dutch Shell Plc, BP Plc and ConocoPhillips evacuated drilling rigs before the arrival of Gustav, forecast to become the worst Gulf of Mexico hurricane since Katrina.

The OCS is estimated to contain substantial resources of crude oil and natural gas; however, some areas of the OCS are subject to drilling restrictions. With energy prices rising over the past several years, there has been increased interest in the development of more domestic oil and natural gas supply, including OCS resources. In the past, Federal efforts to encourage exploration and development activities in the deep waters of the OCS have been limited primarily to regulations that would reduce royalty payments by lease holders. More recently, the States of Alaska and Virginia have asked the Federal Government to consider leasing in areas off their coastlines that are off limits as a result of actions by the President or Congress. In response, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the U.S. Department of the Interior has included in its proposed 5-year leasing plan for 2007-2012 sales of one lease in the Mid-Atlantic area off the coastline of Virginia and two leases in the North Aleutian Basin area of Alaska. Development in both areas still would require lifting of the current ban on drilling.

For AEO2007, an OCS access case was prepared to examine the potential impacts of the lifting of Federal restrictions on access to the OCS in the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Currently, except for a relatively small tract in the eastern Gulf, resources in those areas are legally off limits to exploration and development. Mean estimates from the MMS indicate that technically recoverable resources currently off limits in the lower 48 OCS total 18 billion barrels of crude oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (Table 10).

Although existing moratoria on leasing in the OCS will expire in 2012, the AEO2007 reference case assumes that they will be reinstated, as they have in the past. Current restrictions are therefore assumed to prevail for the remainder of the projection period, with no exploration or development allowed in areas currently unavailable to leasing. The OCS access case assumes that the current moratoria will not be reinstated, and that exploration and development of resources in those areas will begin in 2012.

Assumptions about exploration, development, and production of economical fields (drilling schedules, costs, platform selection, reserves-to-production ratios, etc.) in the OCS access case are based on data for fields in the western Gulf of Mexico that are of similar water depth and size. Exploration and development on the OCS in the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the eastern Gulf are assumed to proceed at rates similar to those seen in the early development of the Gulf region. In addition, it is assumed that local infrastructure issues and other potential non-Federal impediments will be resolved after Federal access restrictions have been lifted. With these assumptions, technically recoverable undiscovered resources in the lower 48 OCS increase to 59 billion barrels of oil and 288 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, as compared with the reference case levels of 41 billion barrels and 210 trillion cubic feet.

The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017. Total domestic production of crude oil from 2012 through 2030 in the OCS access case is projected to be 1.6 percent higher than in the reference case, and 3 percent higher in 2030 alone, at 5.6 million barrels per day. For the lower 48 OCS, annual crude oil production in 2030 is projected to be 7 percent higher -- 2.4 million barrels per day in the OCS access case compared with 2.2 million barrels per day in the reference case (Figure 20). Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.

Similarly, lower 48 natural gas production is not projected to increase substantially by 2030 as a result of increased access to the OCS. Cumulatively, lower 48 natural gas production from 2012 through 2030 is projected to be 1.8 percent higher in the OCS access case than in the reference case. Production levels in the OCS access case are projected at 19.0 trillion cubic feet in 2030, a 3-percent increase over the reference case projection of 18.4 trillion cubic feet. However, natural gas production from the lower 48 offshore in 2030 is projected to be 18 percent (590 billion cubic feet) higher in the OCS access case (Figure 21). In 2030, the OCS access case projects a decrease of $0.13 in the average wellhead price of natural gas (2005 dollars per thousand cubic feet), a decrease of 250 billion cubic feet in imports of liquefied natural gas, and an increase of 360 billion cubic feet in natural gas consumption relative to the reference case projections. In addition, despite the increase in production from previously restricted areas after 2012, total natural gas production from the lower 48 OCS is projected generally to decline after 2020.

Although a significant volume of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and natural gas resources is added in the OCS access case, conversion of those resources to production would require both time and money. In addition, the average field size in the Pacific and Atlantic regions tends to be smaller than the average in the Gulf of Mexico, implying that a significant portion of the additional resource would not be economically attractive to develop at the reference case prices. [Emphasis added -- mdc]

Here is Figure 20 from the report, showing the impact on lower-48 production in the baseline and the alternative.

What exactly is "insignificant"? One can get an idea by doing a back of an envelope calculation. The 3% increase by 2030 cited by the 2007 Annual Energy Outlook analysis works out to 0.163 millon barrels per day (mbpd) incremental production. Projected world output of conventional oil in 2030 is 99.30 mbpd. This means access to the OCS would result in a 0.164% increase in output.

Let's appeal to a supply-demand framework, assuming log-linearity:

Where q is log quantity, p is log price, X and Z are other shift variables, assumed to be exogenously determined. a_i and b_i are parameters, a₂ > 0 and b₂ < 0. Z could be income, for instance.

Solving the simultaneous system of equations for the equilibrium price leads to:

Taking the total differential and holding constant the shift variables X and Z leads to the following expression:

Substituting in some parameter values, taking Δa₁ as the percentage increase in supply, namely 0.164% (0.00164), and setting the price elasticity of demand equal to -0.4, and and price elasticity of supply to 0.3 (Perloff and Whaples has cited these figures; plausible alternative parameter values would not alter the results in a qualitative fashion) yields the following: The resulting change from baseline in 2030 is -0.00234 (-0.23%). Taking the AEO 2008 baseline estimate of 70.45 2006$/barrel in 2030, the implied reduction in price is 0.165 2006$.

Now let's conduct some sensitivity analyses/robustness checks.

Intertemporal Considerations

There have been some assertions that driving down prices in the future will have an impact today. Since petroleum is durable, there is no doubt that this must be true; the question, as always, revolves around the quantitative magnitudes. Take the 2030 impact on today; one can calculate the present value of the innovation: (1+r)²². Take r = .027 (which is the average ten year constant maturity yield minus the lagged one year inflation rate over the 1976-2008 period), one finds that the 0.165 2006$ decline in 2030 results in a 0.106 2006$ decrease today.

Alternative Estimates of Reserves

As pointed out in several venues [1], there is some debate over the amount of technically recoverable oil in the OCS that currently not accessible; the CS Monitor editorial argues that there's been a big revision in estimation technologies. That may be, but here is a quote from the February 2006 report to Congress from the MMS of the Department of Interior (page xii):

Many proponents of domestic energy security consider gaining increased access to Federal resources to be one of the biggest challenges. Part or all of nine OCS planning areas, which include waters off 20 coastal states, have been subject to longstanding leasing moratoria enacted annually as part of the Interior and related agencies appropriations legislation, or are withdrawn from leasing until after June 30, 2012, as the result of presidential withdrawal (under section 12 of the OCSLA). Some of these areas contain large amounts of technically recoverable oil and natural gas resources. The MMS estimates that conventional oil and gas resources (i.e., UTRR) in OCS areas currently off limits to leasing and development total 19.1 Bbo and 83.9 Tcfg (mean estimates). There remains today, considerable uncertainty concerning the resource potential of many of these OCS areas. The availability of additional modern G&G data could reduce this uncertainty. It is instructive to note that perceptions concerning the resource potential of the Central, Western and portions of the Eastern GOM, areas experiencing robust levels of exploration and production effort, have continued to evolve for the better over the years. Critical to the changing perception is the fact that the MMS has acquired approximately 1.75 million line-miles of two-dimensional (2-D) common depth point (CDP) seismic data and nearly 300,000 square miles of 3-D seismic data. However, the additional G&G data and information that become available to assessors between assessments is frequently mixed in terms of having a positive or negative effect on the perception of the overall hydrocarbon potential of the OCS.

This implies that the EIA's base assumptions do not appear unreasonable, on the face of it.

Alternative Elasticities

The calculations rely upon long run elasticities, and a constant elasticity along the curves (Note: linear demand and supply curves do not exhibit constant elasticities.) If the supply curve in log-price/log-quantity space was still backward L-shaped, and the supply enhancement occurred with demand intersecting along the near-vertical portion, then the price change would be larger.

What about short run effects (in 2030 say)? When new suppy comes on line, the resulting deviation in price from baseline will be commensurately larger in the short run. But by definition, over the longer horizon, prices will gravitate toward those indicated by the long run analysis.

Alternative timing

The calculations I presented focus on 2030. One could examine the effcts earlier. But as shown in Figure 20 (reproduced above), production does not even begin until 2017 assuming leasing begins in 2012 (less than four years from now!). Even assuming the 2030 effect is achieved in 2020, that would mean the resulting change in today's prices would only be 0.12 2006$ per barrel.

Strategic Interactions

Reader Anon (in commments to this post) argues against my critique of offshore drilling arguments using a game-theoretic framework:

You are wrong. Opening up more acreage to exploration will affect psychology and markets. let me explain.

A credible threat of increased supply - even ten years away - certainly does have immediate impact to the ruminations of energy policy makers from Russia to Saudi to Mexico.

If you have a large control over marginal supply (Mideast/Russia/Mexico could all do a lot more if they choose to) and you see the glimmer of another North Sea or another ANS then you rightly might adjust your policies. Strategically speaking, if you dominate global oil supply then at some price point you rightly begin to fear Competitive Entrants.

...

In the case of Oil (by no means a free market), governments control access to resources (sell it like real estate and demand whatever they like or in many cases simply make everything off limits to private capital). However, if you push oil importing nation governments too far with overly high prices then you just might trigger competition.

I hope this makes it clear that the main reason we pay such high oil prices today is the government RESTRICTED ACCESS to reserves (a global phenomenon) that has tended to dominate the oil industry landscape for so long. The secure knowledge that the US Government is EXTREMELY UNLIKELY to open up new reserves for exploitation is enough to keep exporting nations confident that they can safely continue to extract higher rent for their commodity.

So just the credible threat of a surge in new competition (a la Bush statement) may be enough to open the taps a bit more or cause a flurry of counter-competitive increased supply activity to quickly try to KILL the new threat or frighten off competitive capital investment in new supply..

...

Think Strategically. BTW - I condemn Bush for many things and I sympathize with your attitude towards this administration, however, for once, Bush is actually right this time!

...

Anon admonishes me to read Barry Nalebuff's book Thinking Strategically (actually it's Dixit and Nalebuff); I confess I have not yet done so. But having endured some amount of game theory over the years, I'm going to wade ahead nonetheless.

First, consider this exchange from April 2004, where Nalebuff suggests investing $5 billion to enable Iraq's oil industry to export a million extra barrels of oil a day, thereby negating OPEC's monopoly power. One interesting aspect of Nalebuff's argument is that he doesn't propose something like exploiting US offshore reserves. I think the reason is quite simple, and is rooted in game theory -- Iraq in principle can be a low cost producer (after security is established). Supply from offshore sources in the US would be (and is known to be) a relatively high cost (per unit production) venture relative to, say, Saudi oil production. Hence, it's not clear increasing US production can have the strategic effect often suggested. (Example, see: [2])

I do agree with Anon that a lot of world production is undertaken by state owned enterprises, which lack proper incentives for responding to price signals. But I'm unconvinced that foreign state owned enterprises would be privatized simply because the US removed its moratorium on OCS exploitation.

So, opening up production in the currently inaccessible areas of the OCS might have substantial effects (perhaps on trade balance, or oil company profitability, Federal leasing revenue), but in my view is unlikely to have a substantial impact on oil prices (just as in the case of opening up ANWR).

As an aside, John McCain is still supporting a gasoline tax holiday [3], so on this count, I remain puzzled.

Technorati Tags: oil prices, outer continental shelf, offshore drilling, oil reserves, elasticities.