Tag: bubble

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Next Bubble to Pop?

bubble, Paul Krugman, recession, student loans, debt, folly, David Stockman

There was a great and wondrous moment, a decade and a half ago, when economist Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate and New York Times’s unregistered shill for the Democratic Party, suggested that what the economy really needed was another housing bubble.

What he wrote, specifically, was this: “To fight this recession, the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.”

Krugman later reinterpreted that statement in a clever (if not convincingly honest) way. After the subprime loan industry collapsed in 2008, he attributed that bust to financial market malfeasance, not the Fed-inflated bubble we got . . . and that he had previously called for.

Now we are looking at several ready-to-burst bubbles:

  • The student loan debt problem seems scary.
  • The sovereign debt problem is undoubtedly more dangerous and far larger, but is perhaps still able to take on more fake money — all the world’s 1s and 0s have to go somewhere!
  • So the current bets seem to be on a huge auto loan industry bubble, about to pop.

Loan terms have increased in duration, and the average amount new car buyers are financing has jumped over 17 percent in five years. The idea has been “to continually lower monthly payments,” says David Stockman, “so people can get behind the wheels of vehicles they can’t really afford.”*

Which bubble does Krugman favor? I don’t have the stomach to check.

But, be certain, as we play pop goes the bubble, he’ll play pop goes the weasel.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Stockman seems to be echoing warnings made by Eric Peters, of Eric Peters Autos.

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folly free trade & free markets moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility

Auto Destruct

car, automobile, auto, loan, bubble, illustration

Just when you thought it safe to go back into the loan market. . . .

Yes, you guessed it: a bubble may be about to pop.

There are actually several, but here’s one you might not expect: the automobile loan market.

Though less regulated and tampered with than the housing market, auto loans aren’t immune to “moral hazard” and other government-induced dangers. The Fed’s low interest rates are almost certainly stimulating the new car market. “Subprime” car loans are way up and so are delinquencies. Do the bankers making these decreasingly solvent loans expect a bailout?

As Eric Peters notes at his immensely fascinating automobile website, the average car loan is now $32,000, “a record high.” And then there’s the “ever-increasing duration of new cars loans. They are now on average six years long — and seven year loans are becoming pretty common.”

Why? “In order to spread out payments (now averaging almost $500 a month) that have become simply too much to manage for most people.”

But then of course car prices are rising. And not just because of simple inflation. It’s the result of government regulations, mandates, and . . . general craziness. Many buyers now finance used car purchases, too, as Mr. Peters explains. That used to be fairly uncommon. The used-car market has been unduly affected by government insanity as well. Remember Cash for Clunkers? Politicians boasted about their managed destruction of millions of used autos.

What they really achieved was a tighter-than-ever supply of usable older cars.

Cruising toward the auto-destruct of the auto-loan markets.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

$700 Billion Bad Bet

The administration’s proposed $700 billion bank bailout has finally passed the Congress — in large part because of fear that the economy would crumble if “something” wasn’t done.

But the magic men in Washington don’t have any guaranteed fixes in their bag of tricks. Certainly robbing the taxpayers of $700 billion — that’s a billion, 700 times — won’t cure the economy.

It will, long run, hurt the economy. How? By hampering realistic adjustment to current market conditions. It means taking $700 billion from productive economic activities to buy up debt at prices nobody in the private market is willing to pay. As economist Arnold Kling points out, “If [Bernanke and Paulson] were taking their plan to a venture capital firm to seek funding, they would be laughed out of the office.”

How did we get here? In previous years, the federal government compelled banks to give mortgages to persons who really couldn’t afford them. Meanwhile, the easy credit policies of the Federal Reserve made it easy for banks to obey these irresponsible demands.

Hence the housing bubble. Which popped.

The only long-term solution is to get the government out of the market. Stop trying to paper over the horrendous consequences of past government interventions with even worse government interventions. The free market ought to be free. Otherwise, we’ll one day end up with no market at all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.