Lies and Statistics

Friday, the stock market rallied on a better than expected unemployment report.  But behind the statistics there was little reason for optimism.  Mike Larson of Money and Markets analyzes Friday’s Labor Department report:

• The economy shed another 54,000 jobs in August after losing a similar number in July and 175,000 in June. If you strip out the impact of the Census, you see that private industry created a paltry 67,000 jobs last month. That’s far, far too low to bring down unemployment.
• Speaking of unemployment, it rose to 9.6 percent in August from 9.5 percent in July, a three-month high. And if you include all unemployed and UNDERemployed workers, you get a whopping 16.7 percent of American workers who are discouraged, only able to find part-time work because full-time work isn’t available, and who have just given up looking entirely!
• Then look at who’s hiring and who’s not! Education and health care continues to see reasonable growth, with 45,000 jobs added. But hiring health care workers to take care of an aging population isn’t going to drive your economy long term. See America’s Unemployment Nightmare

The problem is that higher paying economic sectors are either not growing or continuing to lay off workers:

Economically sensitive sectors are showing virtually no growth, with only 13,000 jobs added in leisure and hospitality and 19,000 in construction. Manufacturing shed 27,000 workers … trade and transport lost 9,000 jobs … and financial firms cut workers for the fourth month in a row. In fact, the “diffusion” index which tracks how many industries are adding jobs versus how many are cutting jobs sank to 53 from 56.7.

And let’s step back and look at the big picture for a minute. We’ve added just 650,000 jobs in the first seven months of 2010. We lost 8.4 million jobs in the recession that started in December 2007. It would take several YEARS to get back to even at this pace. See America’s Unemployment Nightmare

A Look at the Real World

Much reporting of the Great Recession (Depression) comes from New York, Los Angeles or Atlanta based media.  Few of these outlets examine what is really going on in most of the country. Michael Panzer in Financial Armageddon looks at who is really being hurt:

• Two million workers over age 55 are looking for work.  Over a million have been out of work for six months or longer.  The unemployment rate in this age group is 7.1%, the highest rate since the 1940’s.
• A sector of the work force denominated as “middle-skill, middle-wage” has been decimated.  These are entry level white collar jobs such as administrator or secretary, or blue collar jobs such as assembler or machine operator.   Instead of finding good paying jobs, these workers are taking massive pay cuts to work as wait staff or other service personnel, or health aides in homes or health care facilities.
• Among young blue collar workers employment has fallen 18%.
• Middle class and upper middle class managers and professionals are seeking assistance from social service agencies due to unemployment or underemployment.   Former donors to these agencies have become recipients of their services.
• A recent Rutgers study found “that 73% of Americans have either been unemployed themselves (14%) or saw an immediate family member (12%), another member of their family (30%) or a close friend (17%) lose a job.” See Another Installment of ‘Scenes from a V-Shaped Recovery’

Why Intractable Unemployment?

Explanations of “we couldn’t see this coming” or “it was just bad luck” mask several reasons for our current state of unemployment:

1. Technology is a “game changer.”  Technology will replace many lower skilled administrative and manufacturing jobs (postal workers, telephone operators, computer operators, etc).  See e.g. 23 Occupations That Will Never Recover from the Great Recession
2. Outsourcing – Closely allied to technology is the outsourcing of jobs to other countries.  With high speed telecommunications, sophisticated software, larger faster ships and lax foreign labor and environmental standards, American companies will continue to outsource jobs.
3. Financial Excess- The combination of financial engineering of mortgage back securities,  subprime loans and a zero interest rate policy misallocated capital to the housing sector.  With the inevitable housing bust, we destroyed construction jobs and supporting professions such as law, mortgage banking, appraisal, insurance brokers and real estate brokerage.  Moreover, until bad debt is completely recognized and restructured or defaulted upon, the banks will continue limiting new loans.
4. Government Policy – Small business owners are the growth engines for new jobs.  Faced with new health care mandates and the prospect of heavy fines, new business owners are reluctant to expand.  A full description of the problem is outlined in “Angel Heart” and Obamacare.
   

Many of these issues were identified in The New Reality: Permanent Job Loss and Why This May Be Worse than the Great Depression.

Wall Street spokespeople and the Obama Administration have been less than candid with the American public about what the real prospects are for reducing unemployment.  While there is a certain inevitability about technological progress, poor government policy is not necessary.  We need to stop some of the self-inflicted wounds of zero interest rates, poor tax policy, wasted stimulus and new mandates, all of which impede economic growth and stymie new hiring.

Related posts:

1. Labor and Employment Laws: The Hidden Job Killer
2. The New Reality: Permanent Job Loss
3. Thinking About Jobs

Walking

The best way to learn what is going on somewhere is to walk, not drive.  I live in a small city, a bedroom community for a larger city.  The median family income is $62,000 and the per capita income $35,000.  The city is racially diverse and attempts to cater to its upscale resident consumers.  Dropping my car for service at the local auto dealer (there are Porsche, Volvo, Mercedes, Lexus, Subaru and Buick dealers within walking distance),  I politely declined the courtesy shuttle and, to observe business conditions, walked home.   Covering about a mile through one part of our retail  and commercial district, I observed the following:

• Ten retail establishments were vacant.
• Each of several small office buildings had “space available” signs.
• Each of the apartment buildings and garden apartment complexes I passed advertised one and two bedroom apartments for rent.
• An office building which started construction six months ago has not progressed.
• Almost every retail establishment had sales in progress, and restaurants advertised specials.
• A major wind and rain storm hit our city in March.  Several damaged city trees have not been removed and badly buckled sidewalks have yet to be repaired.

Listening

The economy continues to impact friends, neighbors and family.  Here is what the Washington beltway political elites are not hearing:

• One question, I regularly ask: on a percentage basis how much has your income declined from your most recent peak earnings year?  Other than one medical specialist who said his income has not declined, the response is a decline of 25-50%.
• For an over-fifty executive, attorney, senior information technologist or finance specialist the job prospects are almost nil.   These are highly trained, experienced competent individuals who have been out of work from one to two years.  Unarticulated age discrimination is endemic in our system.  This type of candidate probably has a better chance of getting hit by a meteorite than getting a full time position with a firm.
• Sending a high school senior to the state university has come back in vogue.  In the past, State U lacked the cache of the Ivy League or better private schools.  Suddenly this option has gained new luster.
• Instead of the direct path to graduate school, new college graduates, even Ivy League grads, are scrambling for jobs.  Many new alumni of prestigious universities are interning with no pay or $10 per day stipends.  The entire economic value of graduate and even undergraduate degrees is under question.
• Overseas vacations are out and domestic, and automobile vacations are in.  And we’ve all recently heard a new word:  staycation.
• Since the banks have tightened lending requirements, the re-sale house market is virtually dead.  Sellers cannot find qualified buyers.
• Small business owners and professionals have had their credit lines reduced, which de facto has cut back on business expansion.
• Friends who are doctors and dentists are finding that they cannot fill their weekly schedules and are going to 3 and 4 day workweeks. Even in large firms, attorneys are having difficulty generating billable hours.
• Home equity lines have been slashed, further undercutting spending plans.  I question why some of my high earning friends were using these lines for luxury expenditures in the first place.

It May Not Be Science but It Is Real Life

Again I have presented “street level” anecdotal information on the real economy.  I believe this anecdotal information more accurately presents the state of the economy, compared to the endless cheerleading from financial media and the Administration.

Perhaps some of the elite should bring their own cars in for service, avoid the courtesy shuttles, and walk home.    Rather than this cheerleading, what Yogi might say about our current recession is the real truth for many people: “it ain’t over until it’s over.”

Related posts:

1. The Barbell Economy
2. The Organic Economy
3. The People v. Wall Street

• Are the American People Obsolete?
• Do the Rich Need the Rest of America?
• Do the Rich Even Need the Rest of America Anymore?
• Biggest Defaulters on Mortgages are the Rich
• Why is Income Disparity Widening?
• Soak the Rich, Lose the Rich

Voyeuristic focus on the rich has always been an American obsession.  “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” obsessively peered into the lifestyles of wealthy athletes, entertainers and business people.  The show ran for eleven years.   The rich are now objects of scorn: hedge fund managers making money from the housing collapse; bankers, on the brink of bankruptcy, awarding themselves huge bonuses thanks to government loans and guarantees; and corporate executives receiving gigantic severance packages after corporate wrongdoing. See, e.g. Following the Hurd

We have moved beyond voyeurism and scorn.  Our anger at the rich suggests economic and political upheaval.

The Rich Separate from Us

Michael Lind’s article in Salon, Are the American People Obsolete? appears to be the genesis of this meme:

Have the American people outlived their usefulness to the rich minority in the United States? A number of trends suggest that the answer may be yes.

In every industrial democracy since the end of World War II, there has been a social contract between the few and the many. In return for receiving a disproportionate amount of the gains from economic growth in a capitalist economy, the rich paid a disproportionate percentage of the taxes needed for public goods and a safety net for the majority. See Are the American People Obsolete?

We have always needed ordinary people as consumers and soldiers.  But now globalization has undercut the first part of this bargain at the nation-state level.  The middle classes in China and India are more intriguing customers than debt-ridden, unemployed Americans. They are also cheap and productive producers.  For the second part, a volunteer professional military undercuts the bargain even further.

Lind points out the economic and political consequences of this new social contract:

If the American rich increasingly do not depend for their wealth on American workers and American consumers or for their safety on American soldiers or police officers, then it is hardly surprising that so many of them should be so hostile to paying taxes to support the infrastructure and the social programs that help the majority of the American people. The rich don’t need the rest anymore.  See Are the American People Obsolete?

Bring Back the Robber Barons

Previously, we discussed the role of the nineteenth and twentieth century American entrepreneur in Bring Back the Robber Barons.   Lind focuses on the same point:

As bad as they were, the robber barons depended on the continental U.S. market for their incomes. The financier J.P. Morgan was not so much an international banker as a kind of industrial capitalist, organizing American industrial corporations that depended on predominantly domestic markets. He didn’t make most of his money from investing in other countries. See Are the American People Obsolete?

The robber barons were integrated into American society, not living in privileged enclaves like Greenwich, Princeton or Palo Alto or foreign equivalents of London, Hong Kong or Singapore.  Thus, it was natural for the robber barons to focus their philanthropy in America.  Our new citizens of the world have a different mindset:

…philanthropists may be inclined to devote most of their charity to the desperate and destitute of other countries rather than to their fellow Americans.  See Are the American People Obsolete?

Implications

Richistan, A Journey Through the New American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich, describes the rich becoming their own virtual country.  The new rich feel no civic obligation or shared sense of sacrifice.  They can default on mortgages and avoid military service for their children.  We have written about a different time in America where even the scions of the rich and powerful felt obligated to join the war effort to defend the nation. See e.g. A Reputation as Good as Goldman Part II.   Now we hear whining and threats: “if the Bush tax cuts are repealed we will leave the country.”

Unwittingly, the Obama Administration has enabled the petulance of the rich by supporting the banks and Wall Street to the detriment of Main Street.  Faced with threats of emigration, it remains to be seen whether the Administration has the gumption to let the Bush tax cuts expire.  Apparently, the rich are ready to depart the United States if marginal tax rates rise from 35% to 39.6%.  We are not exactly talking about conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War fleeing to Canada.

We have learned much about the new rich, and it is not all to the good. Paraphrasing Sir Winston Churchill, we have already established their virtue; we are only haggling about their price.

Related posts:

1. Bring Back the Robber Barons
2. Labor Day 2010
3. Are We a Socialist Country?

Excessive economic stimulus and a misguided zero interest rate policy has created false bottoms in the housing and stock markets.   See Artificial Sweeteners

Dour economic statistics released this past week only confirm that thesis.  While extrapolating from one month’s statistics is dangerous, nevertheless the numerosity and interrelated nature of recent reports raises questions whether there ever was an economic recovery.

Scanning the Headlines

The past week we have been bombarded by negative economic reports from housing to employment to durable goods.  A quick look at the headlines:

• Sales of US New Homes Sales Dropped to Record Low in July – The Census Bureau reported that new home sales declined from June’s record low annual rate of 315k (revised down from 330k) to July’s new record low annual rate of 276k.
• Existing Homes Sales Plunge 27.2% – July existing homes sales fell to a 3.83m annual rate from the previous month’s 5.26m rate.  Inventories of unsold homes rose to a 12.5 month supply, more than double the normal supply.
• JPM Says “Disastrous Durable” Goods Number Sets Stage for sub-1% Q3 GDP Print – Shipments of core capital goods (without aircraft and defense) fell 1.5%.  Auguring poorly for future growth, capital goods orders dropped a precipitous 8%.
• US Jobless Claims Jump to 500,000; Nine-Month High – New claims for jobless benefits soared to 500,000 exceeding economists’ predictions.  It was the third straight week that claims went up.
• With Economy Teetering, Trade Deficit Widens – In June, the trade deficit widened to almost $50b.  In May the deficit was $42b.  Both imports increased and exports  decreased.  The decrease in exports signaled a declining US manufacturing sector.

The Super Sweetener

The Congressional Budget Office calculates that stimulus added 4.5% to GDP.  Further, these programs created up to 3.3m jobs.   One estimate is that without stimulus, GDP would have been negative 3.5%.   What happens next?

So now that the stimulus is tapering off, America has the following rather unpleasant things to look forward to: a 4.5% reduction in run rate GDP as the direct economic boost disappears, the gradual loss of 1.4 to 3.3 million jobs, and the eventual realization that non-recurring, one time items can not be projected into perpetuity, despite what Keynesian dogma may preach. See CBO Estimates that Stimulus Boosted Q2 GDP by 4.5%, Standalone Number is likely under around -3.5%

Shoveling Money to No Avail

Morton Zuckerman captures the folly of current economic policy:

Tons of money have been shoveled in to rescue reckless banks and fill the huge hole in the economy, but nothing is working the way it normally had in all our previous crises. See End of American Optimism

All we have created is a “new normal” of slow or little growth. Compared to sales growth of 4% in past recessions, sales are increasing at a little over 1%.

…there are at least 14.5 million Americans still searching for work: 1.4 million of them have been jobless for more than 99 weeks, 6.5 million have been jobless for over 27 weeks. This is a stunning reflection of the longer-term unemployment we are coping with.

The unemployment numbers are worse than reported. Last year the Labor Department admitted it over-counted the number of jobs by 1.4 million….

Since April, the Labor Department has counted 550,000 nonexistent jobs under this so-called birth/death series. Without these phantom jobs, the economy this year created virtually no jobs—certainly not the 600,000 the administration has been touting.

The Obama administration projects the unemployment rate will drop to 8.7% by the end of next year and 6.8% by 2013. That is totally unrealistic. See The End of American Optimism.

A policy of artificial sweeteners has misled the American public and merely put off the day of reckoning.  Trillions of stimulus dollars have masked underlying weakness in the American economy.  Instead of these sweeteners, banks should have been forced to write off bad debt, insolvent firms should have gone bankrupt, government interference in the economy should have dwindled,  and programs increasing employment costs should have stopped.

If the economy were permitted to self correct, we would be on our way to recovery rather than be suffering the sour aftertaste of artificial sweeteners.

Related posts:

1. Artificial Sweeteners
2. The New Reality: Permanent Job Loss
3. Zero Interest Rates Equals Zero Jobs

How ironic that we live in an age of magical thinking.  We have never had more information and commentary a mere computer keystroke away.   With all this information, one would think that we could easily accept reality and think critically.   Perhaps reality is so discouraging and the consequences of our current path of behavior so awful to contemplate that we prefer magical thinking, hoping against hope that a solution will appear.

Nowhere is magical thinking more evident than in our current economic plight.

The Land of Endless Deficits

Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics, influential Democrat and New York Times columnist, is the high priest of deficit spending.  His philosophy in short:

Spend now, while the economy remains depressed; save later, once it has recovered.  How hard is that to understand? See Now and Later

First, we never save later, as Congress would rather keep spending to buy votes than be fiscally prudent.   Second, the US is absorbing a large portion of the world’s savings to fund the ongoing $1.3 trillion dollar per year deficit.  Third, even Krugman realized that our debts are growing exponentially.  His view is that with high unemployment this is the not the right time to become fiscally prudent.  Fourth, taxpayers have paid $3.7 trillion over the last year to achieve a modest economic recovery which is currently fading.   In the 1950′s one dollar of debt added a dollar to GDP;  recently it took $5.57 to add a dollar to GDP.  Source Contrary Investor. We have reached the point of debt saturation.

Why Not Cut Taxes?

Republicans have an equally magical mantra:  “just cut taxes.”   Back to the Reagan era, Republicans have been enthralled by the Laffer Curve:

Economist Arthur Laffer made a very interesting supposition: If tax rates are high enough, then cutting taxes might actually generate more revenue for the government, or at least pay for themselves. (In one of life’s great coincidences, he first sketched a graph of this idea on Dick Cheney’s cocktail napkin.) If the government cuts taxes, then Uncle Sam gets a smaller cut of all economic activity — but reducing taxes also generates new economic activity. Laffer reasoned that, under some circumstances, a tax cut would stimulate so much new economic activity that the government would end up with more in its coffers — by taking a smaller slice of a much larger pie.  See Debunking One of the Worst Ideas in Economics

If the US had a 99% marginal tax rate,the rate paid on the last dollar of taxable income, Laffer’s theory might work.  But, we do not:

We don’t have a 99 percent marginal tax rate. Or 70 percent. Or even 50 percent. We start with low marginal tax rates relative to the rest of the developed world. (Yes, I understand that it may not feel that way after the check you wrote last month.)

So cutting the tax rate from 36 percent to 33 percent is not going to give you the same kind of economic jolt as slashing a tax rate from 90 percent to 50 percent. There’s no huge black market to be shut down, no big supply of skilled workers to be lured back into the labor market, and so on.  See Debunking One of the Worst Ideas in Economics

The ultimate problem is that even if the economy grows, government revenues shrink, government spending continues and deficits widen.

Bring in the Grown Ups

Former Reagan budget director David Stockman recognizes that, if honestly measured, the budget deficit would be a Greek-like 120% of GDP by 2015.  Stockman excoriates the Republicans for cutting taxes and failing to balance the budget.

…the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.

This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. See Four Deformations of the Apocalypse

His prescription is both simple and logical: “…balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline — is needed more than ever.”

Without Keynes, Laffer or Friedman

Keynes’ “pump priming” through endless deficit spending and Milton Friedman’s monetarism call for expansion of money supply to ward off deflation.  These flawed strategies have captured our Treasury Secretaries from Republican Henry Paulson to Democrat Timothy Geithner.  Reviving Laffer’s arguments, and ignoring widening deficits, Congressional Republicans argue for extension of the Bush tax cuts.  Unfortunately, these theories have not extricated us from the current economic morass.

Faced with reality, the political elite would rather delude themselves with hope and magical thinking than confront the harder realities of austerity and living within our means.  We appear doomed to repeat these failed policies until it is too late.  Perhaps an economically rational adult will arrive to break the magic spell.

Related posts:

1. Relying on the Kindness of Strangers
2. Thinking About Jobs
3. Consistently Inconsistent

Similarly, the Federal Reserve and the Administration have not trusted that the economy can heal through natural market forces.  Instead we have been served up the economic equivalent of artificial sweeteners.  Concerned by slow growth, not even negative growth, the government again is firing up the machinery for money printing and stimulus.

• The Federal Reserve announced in the beginning of this month that it was going to use the principal and interest payments on its own portfolio to purchase US Treasury debt.  What this really means is that by September it will own an additional $18b of debt.  One suspects that this is the opening of a second round of Quantitative Easing; that is, the government purchase of its own debt.  See New York Fed will Buy 18 billion of Treasury Debt in Nine Operations
• President Obama recently signed a $26b aid bill to the states to prevent public sector layoffs.
• The Administration has floated the idea of forgiving $1 trillion of Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-underwritten mortgages. See Obama Mulling Massive Debt Relief Forgiveness Program
• Alan Greenspan opines that a rising stock market will do wonders for the economic recovery.  Once again, he is implying that  government should stimulate the market.  See Greenspan: New Stock Market Bubble Needed

In each instance, the government is intervening, distorting, and artificially “sweetening”  the bond market, the housing market and, indirectly, the stock market.  What are the consequences?

There is No Free Lunch

Martin Hutchinson in The Peril of False Bottoms targets faulty government policy as the reason for our anemic economic recovery.  Excessive economic stimulus and a misguided zero interest rate policy has created false bottoms in the housing and stock markets.    A false bottom is defined as a stabilized “price far above the likely long-run price equilibrium of the assets concerned.”

Bernanke has precedent for providing excessive liquidity and holding interest rates too low for too long.  Greenspan reacted to the internet stock market crash by flooding the market with liquidity.  Doing this drove the market to over 14,000 on the Dow Jones Index and created a housing boom.   In the 2008-2009 real estate and stock market crash we learned  how flawed this policy was.

More on False Bottoms

Hutchinson points out federally inspired housing market distortions:

House prices are currently 47% above their level in January 2000, according to the S&P Case-Shiller 20-city index, compared to a 49% rise in prices since that time – in other words, they are in real terms at the same level as at the top of an immense speculative boom.During the recent contortions, the U.S. monetary and fiscal authorities have established false bottoms in two markets. The first is housing, where subsidies to first-time buyers, ultra-low mortgage rates, government guarantees on $700,000 home mortgages and foreclosure-avoidance schemes have prevented the housing market from falling even to its average level where the average house price is about 3.4 times average earnings. The Peril of False Bottoms

These misguided policies have consequences:

…with additional buyers having been sucked into the market, it is now likely that house prices will fall further than this. Indeed, if the appalling suggestion put forward last week that the government through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac forgive $1 trillion of defaulted home mortgages is put into effect, they will undoubtedly do so. Nothing could be more designed to destroy confidence in the housing market than a massive subsidy to the most foolish and improvident home buyers, at the expense of the thrifty and careful renters who are the major source of potential new demand for housing.

If the buyer pool is attacked in this way, or forced into unnecessary losses by being made to buy too soon, house prices may not bottom out at the market-clearing level … but may continue falling.  The Peril of False Bottoms

Wither the Stock Market?

The stock market is the second false bottom:

Currently at 10,650 as I write, the market is 35% above its appropriate “middling” target. The “trailing” P/E ratio of 20.4 on the Standard and Poors 500 is also above its historic average, even though corporate and bank earnings are currently inflated by ultra-low financing costs and a steep yield curve. Thus at some point we can expect reality to intrude, and the market to drop to its likely cycle low in the region of 5,000 on the Dow Jones index.

Again market prices are too high for any intelligent buyer.  And worse, buyers will then be unavailable to buy stocks at the bottom. The Perils of a False Bottom

Politics v. Economics

Politicians are worried about the next election.  Thus, we see the desperation of the Administration to throw economic caution to the wind.   Zero interest rates, forgiveness of imprudent debt, subsidies to overpaid public sector workers (with no corollary “give backs”) are all hallmarks of erratic and misguided government policy.  They also sacrifice long-term prudence for the feel good of short term stimulus.

Who will pay this price?  Unfortunately, it will be stock market investors, pension plans, life insurance companies and homeowners.  Directly or indirectly, that is virtually all of us.  We need to beware politicians handing out artificially sweetened candy. Just like aspartame and our physical health, artificial economic sweeteners can be harmful to our financial health.

Related posts:

1. Artificial Sweeteners Turn Sour
2. Can We Continue the Status Quo?
3. The Barbell Economy

A Different Time in America

Once upon a time in America there was an entrepreneurial class that did more than shuffle pieces of paper.  They produced real things.  Historians originally referred to this group as “Robber Barons” because the large fortunes they amassed involved ruthless and sometimes uncompetitive business practices.  While some made their fortunes in finance, the overwhelming majority laid the foundation for America’s 20^th century industrial dominance:

• John Jacob Astor  (real estate, fur)
• Andrew Carnegie (steel)
• Jay Cooke (finance)
• Charles Crocker (railroads)
• Daniel Drew (finance)
• James Buchanan Duke (tobacco)
• James Fisk (finance)
• Henry Morrison Flagler (railroads, oil, the Standard Oil company)
• Henry Clay Frick (steel)
• John Warne Gates (steel)
• Jay Gould (railroads)
• Edward Henry Harriman (railroads)
• Milton S. Hershey (chocolate)
• Mark Hopkins (railroads)
• J.P.Morgan (banking, finance, steel, industrial consolidation)
• Henry B. Plant (railroads)
• John D. Rockefeller (Standard Oil)
• John D. Spreckels (San Diego transportation, water, media)
• Leland Stanford (railroads)
• Cornelius Vanderbilt (railroads)

These individuals were also the backbone of American philanthropy.  For example, think of:  Carnegie (libraries); Rockefeller (University of Chicago, the Rockefeller Foundation) and Leland Stanford (Stanford University).  The Robber Barons not only focused on industrial wealth creation.  They were equally concrete and focused in charitable giving that provided tangible benefit to American institutions and society.

In contrast, the Gates Foundation focuses on world health concerns, a worthy but certainly more amorphous goal.  As an aside, the Gates-funded vaccination and AIDS treatment programs have received criticism for singular focus on certain diseases to the derogation of comprehensive health care and diversion of important medical resources.  Few of the Gates Foundation initiatives benefit Americans.

The Over Financialized Economy

The wealthy donors signing on to the pledge are one more reminder of the over financialized American economy.   See The Mirage of a Financialized Economy; The People v. Wall Street.  Today’s fortunes were earned at the expense of the industrial economy, rather than in pursuit of its success.   Two recent commentaries support the deleterious effect of an economy over-focused on the financial:

Boston-based asset manager Jeremy Grantham in Summer Essays criticizes his own profession:

“In 1965, 3% of GDP that was made up of financial services [and that] was clearly sufficient to the task, the proof being that the decade was a strong candidate for the greatest economic decade of the 20th century. We should be suspicious, therefore, of the benefits derived from the extra 4.5% of the pie that went to pay for financial services by 2007, as the financial services share of GDP expanded to a remarkable 7.5%.

This extra 4.5% would seem to be without material value except to the recipients. Yet it is a form of tax on the remaining real economy and should reduce by 4.5% a year its ability to save and invest, both of which did slow down. This, in turn, should eventually reduce the growth rate of the non-financial sector, which it indeed did: from 3.5% a year before 1965, this growth rate slowed to 2.4% between 1980 and 2007, even before the crisis.”

Professor Steve Keen, an Australian economist and author of Debtwatch believes that the percentage of GDP going to the financial sector should be even lower:

Because of that debt level, bank profits have gone through the roof as a share of GDP. Back before we had a financial crisis—when debt levels were far lower than today—so too were bank profits as a share of GDP. A sustainable level of bank profits appears to be about 1% of GDP.  See Bank Profits a sign of economic weakness, not health

Bring Back the Robber Barons

We need a political and economic re-set button.  The Obama and Bush Administrations have attempted to uncritically favor the financial sector through loan guarantees, TARPs and other artifices.  No one has asked the critical question of why we are favoring this sector that has absorbed a disproportional share of GDP at the expense of a productive reality-based economy that makes real things and employs real people.

No wonder unemployment has remained stubbornly high, and the economy is poised to enter a “double dip” recession.  Perhaps we need a new class of wealthy people focused on creating real wealth and jobs in America.   Maybe it is time for some twenty-first century Robber Barons.

Related posts:

1. Collateral Damage
2. Memes of the Rich and Famous
3. The People v. Wall Street

Another aspect of these cases that still continues to amaze me – as a former leadership development guy – is that all of our efforts (and expense) to instill and develop in leaders the decisions, actions and behaviors associated with good and moral leadership is largely ineffective and neutralized in the presence of the self-affirming/aggrandizing bubble (as you describe) that surrounds characters such as Hurd.

The other element at play I believe has to do with emotional age when assuming the top position and tenure in the job.  Back in the day, executives didn’t get tapped for these jobs until they were pushing 60 or so and maybe they would have a run of five years.  Early in their tenure, the leader almost always navigated the first crisis (usually a business crisis, but sometimes personal).   Given their five year window, back then, they almost never had to deal with a second crisis of major magnitude – they went off into retirement, revered.  The next guy then came in and repeated the same process.

But today, executives are quite a bit younger at appointment, imbued with certainty, looking to prove their virility and more easily seduced by power.  Their anticipated tenure could easily exceed ten years.  Likewise, the top jobs are now of such staggering complexity (cognitive, physical and psychological), that few air-breathing humans can actually perform them well, by themselves – thus the trend toward Office of the Chairman, Executive Leader Council and other rickety power-sharing, “star-chamber” arrangements.  The business environment and the operational tempo today almost guarantees that they will experience a major crisis (business or personal) every 18-24 months.  Like their forebears, they’ll handle the first one just fine, for a variety of reasons they will be unable to navigate the second crisis.  The odds and time itself are against them and they are ill-equipped (on many levels) to prevail.

Add that to the dirty water they are swimming in inside the “bubble” and you have a predictable (maybe unavoidable, though I’d hate to concede that) outcome.

Surviving a Crisis

DS’ additional thoughts on CEO crisis management:

The reasons why they handle the first crisis well are at least twofold -

Early in their tenure their sense-making skills are at their peak – primarily because of the novelty of a new job/environment, they are listening to many sources of input, they are open to new ideas and haven’t wall themselves off in the star-chamber and surrounded themselves with sycophants.  Ironically, the fact that they are short on “experience” in the new situation works to their benefit because they avoid the traps that come with believing they are “familiar” with what is going on.  Big ears trump experience!

Second, they make quicker and more confident decisions early on vs. later when their decision-making slows and they become more risk averse.

With the passage of time on the job, the factors reverse themselves – they stop listening and their reaction and decision-making time slows down.  This is ironic since they have had the opportunity to accumulate helpful experience.

Voila!  Train wreck!

Unfortunately, the Mark Hurd saga is not an isolated instance.  American business has seen a spate of ethical lapses and high level departures. See Ethical Lapses Felled Long List of Company Executives.

Final Thoughts

Hurd’s departure has left a void and recriminations.   The acting CEO is desperately trying to reassure customers, Wall Street and employees that all is well and it is business as usual.   The Board is commencing a search for a new CEO.  Given the fast moving nature of the technology industry, Wall Street is openly worried about a delay in finding a successor.  Finally, the Board is miffed that Hurd did no depart quietly, but sought to vindicate his actions and preserve his reputation. See Digits Live Show: Mark Hurd Isn’t Leaving H-P Quietly

Perhaps the Board should spend less time searching for a cost cutting guru or the next creative Steve Job-like creative genius, and more time and thought on the moral character of Mr. Hurd’s successor.

If my colleague is correct, Mr. Hurd will not be the last CEO to exit in an ignominious fashion.

Related posts:

1. Following the Hurd
2. Safety and Profits: Oil and Water?
3. A Prince of a Fellow

The Financial Dictionary defines legacy costs in the private sector as follows:

Ongoing costs to a company that come from funding activities that, by definition, do not increase revenue. Perhaps the most prominent example of legacy costs is the funding of pension plans. Legacy costs often accrue when a company takes on too many responsibilities in times of strong performance or when it takes on an appropriate level of responsibility and then its priorities change.

Legacy costs also include retiree medical, life insurance and other promised benefits.

The recent turmoil in the financial markets has revealed a potentially larger legacy problem.  Not only is private industry suffering this stranglehold; legacy costs are also drowning state budgets in red ink. Like private business, the public sector is also saddled with pension, retiree medical and life insurance benefits.   Completing the analogy, many of these costs were taken on when state tax revenues (think profits) were high.  Politicians avoided confronting public employees and unions and chose the path of least resistance; that is, they capitulated to exorbitant demands.  Then they compounded the problem:  instead of direct layoffs, states resorted to early retirement pension sweeteners, which depleted pension assets.

The Current Status of Public Pension Plans and Other Benefits

On August 6^th, the New York Times reported the massive underfunding of public pensions.  See Battle Looms over Huge Cost of Public Pensions. The Times discovered a February Pew Center for States study showing a $1 trillion pension underfunding. (We could have a whole different post as to why it took until August for the Times to report a study published in February.)   Worse yet, the Pew study may have been overly optimistic.  In other words, their methodology understated the liability and the deficit.  In contrast, the National Center for Policy Analysis’ Unfunded Liabilities of State and Government Employee Retirement Benefit Plans found that states were using too high a discount rate to determine employee liabilities.  Under the National Center for Policy Analysis deficits are far more alarming:

• Unfunded liabilities for health and other benefits are
  $558 billion, compared to the reported $537 billion.
• Thus, total unfunded liabilities for all benefit plans are an
  estimated $
• Unfunded pension liabilities are approximately $2.5
  trillion, compared to the reported amount of $493 billion.
• 3.1 trillion — nearly three times higher than
  the plans report. See Reality Beckons (Government Pensions)

While pensions are funded, other benefits like retiree medical, vision and dental have no assets side aside to fund them.  Moreover, based on current trends, medical costs are growing exponentially.

The New Battle Ground

Colorado undertook modest changes to its pension plans to lower future pension payments. The state legislature reduced its cost of living adjustment cap from 3.5% to 2%. The result was an immediate lawsuit from public employees:

Earlier this year, in an act of rare political courage, a bipartisan coalition of state legislators passed a pension overhaul bill. Among other things, the bill reduced the raise that people who are already retired get in their pension checks each year.

This sort of thing just isn’t done. States have asked current workers to contribute more, tweaked the formula for future hires or banned them from the pension plan altogether. But this was apparently the first time that state legislators had forced current retirees to share the pain.

Sharing the burden seems to be the obvious solution so we don’t continue to kick the problem into the future. See Battle Looms over Huge Cost of Public Pensions

Employees view their pensions as inviolable contracts, while the state is invoking changes as actuarial necessities.

Who Thinks About the Taxpayers?

Taxpayers are facing unemployment, the risk of losing their jobs and increasing costs of education, medical and energy.   Public employees are well paid, largely insulated against layoffs, and receive top of the line current and retiree benefit packages.  Barron’s points out that: “[m]ost public employees, if they hang around to retirement, can count on pensions equal to 75% to 90% of their pay in their highest-earning years.”  The $2 Trillion Hole.  Frequently, supervisors and employees collude to inflate final pay with shift and overtime pay in the last year of work.  Current and retiree medical benefits require minimum or no contribution.

In contrast, private sector benefit plans pale in generosity to public benefit plans.  I worked for a company for 32 years and my pension is a little more than 40% of my last five years of pay.  Retiree medical requires a 20% contribution.   Our plans had no cost of living adjustments.   My company’s plans were probably in the top 5% of benefit plans in America.   Most companies offer little more than a basic medical plan and no retiree benefits.

The federal government will soon run out of borrowing capacity.  In addition, there are questions of federalism; that is, the states are supposed to be responsible for their own finances.   Federal and state legislators and public unions  have to be far more realistic than they have been.  If they are not,  some of our largest states (think New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois) will suffer as did  GM and  Greece:  drowning in legacy costs.

Related posts:

1. Bailout Nation Lives
2. Bailout Nation Lives: Revisited, a Short Update
3. Can We Afford Our Criminal Justice System?

On Friday, HP expanded that Mr. Hurd, 53 years old, didn’t violate the company’s policy regarding sexual harassment.  He  had however, submitted inaccurate expense reports intended to conceal what the company said was a “close personal relationship” with a female consultant.  See H-P Chief Quits in Scandal

In a memo to all HP employees, acting CEO Cathie Lesjak provided more detail:

“Mark had failed to disclose a close personal relationship he had with the contractor that constituted a conflict of interest, failed to maintain accurate expense reports, and misused company assets.” See H-P’s Hurd Reaches Settlement with Contractor

The Wall Street Journal later learned that Mr. Hurd and the contractor reached a settlement on the sex harassment claim.

Some Thoughts on Corporate Culture

A mystique surrounds CEOs of large, publicly traded corporations.  The CEO of such a corporation is as close to a feudal lord as one can get in 21st century America.  A CEO is surrounded by a myth making machine.   A VP of Public Affairs burnishes the image of the CEO as powerful and successful, minimizes setbacks and trumpets the smallest of victories.  The CEO can access airplanes and limousines, play golf at the best clubs, dine and stay where he or she chooses with little or no oversight.   Backed by corporate political action committee contribution funds, he or she has instant access to Senators, Congressmen and even the White House.   A fawning and largely uncritical cadre of financial media pundits and Wall Street analysts clamor for opportunities to meet and interview a CEO.

Since corporations are a hierarchy and a CEO sits atop the organizational pyramid, subordinates are generally fawning.  Fearing unemployment, few want to tell the CEO (the emperor?) he or she is wearing no clothes, or should be staying clothed at critical moments.

Absolute Power Corrupts

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”  Lord Acton

With few to hold up a critical mirror, CEOs eventually start to believe their own press clippings and may even succumb to believing in their own infallibility.   Forgetting that it is often the office and rank that is being saluted, not necessarily the occupant, the tendency is for the CEO to believe they can do no wrong.

Blind spots eventually develop.  As with CEO’s, we have seen it with our more notorious Congressmen who believe that the tax laws do not apply to them, it is alright to have sex with subordinates, or obtain below rate mortgages.  Eventually comes the belief that the “rules do not apply to me.”  To their dismay, they find out often publicly and harshly that rules do apply.

Some Final Thoughts

I am always amazed when stories like Mr. Hurd’s reach headline status:

-          Why do CEOs risk so much for so little?  Mr. Hurd made $24.2 million dollars in 2009 and was slated to make $100m over the next three years.   How much could the dinners and trips have cost Mr. Hurd if he had paid from his own pocket?

-          Companies have strict policies on sex harassment and expense reporting.  Numerous high level executives have been publicly disgraced and lost their positions for such violations.  Mr. Hurd is a very smart man. Why did he not learn from others’ experience?

-          I have lectured on the EEOC Sex Harassment Guidelines.  The best defense in the workplace is to avoid dating any subordinate or contractor.  Once any personal relationship develops and then breaks off, it is difficult to prove that no harassment occurred in this unequal power relationship.

-          Why did HP’s internal audit function not find the expense report abuses and report them? Why did it take the complaint of the contractor for the Board to order an investigation?

-          Why did Mr. Hurd receive over $12m in severance pay when the Board found expense reporting improprieties?  Isn’t that behavior a “for cause” termination? (Note –if Mr. Hurd had a contractual right to severance regardless of this behavior, that itself is problematic.)

Not all CEOs behave like Mr. Hurd.  Certainly, and in my experience, many are ethical and hardworking.  But unfortunately, Mr. Hurd’s tale occurs far too frequently in corporate America.

Outside corporate governance groups have mindlessly over focused on pay practices, staggered voting and other relatively minor issues.   Focus should be on close corporate Board of Director supervision of CEO and senior executive behavior.   Aside from all the logical and obvious reasons for eliminating this behavior is the other external one as well:  the market generally reacts swiftly to this chicanery.  On Friday, HP stock was down a significant 9.7 %.  Following the Hurd can be quite costly.

Related posts:

1. Hurd Roundup
2. Team Play: How to Lose the Game
3. Silence and Mystery