ICYMI: Companies planning on less hiring in near future
According a report by Reuters, much of it is related to the looming crisis in Europe:
Only 23 percent of the firms polled in June plan to add to staff in the next six months, the National Association for Business Economics said on Monday.
NABE’s prior survey, conducted in late March and early April, had shown 39 percent of companies planning to add workers.
The point, of course, is now is certainly not the time, with unemployment at 8.2%, to give business another reason to delay hiring, right? That would seem, to most, to be a reasonable point. While the European problem unfolds and comes to some sort of resolution, you’d think government would be attempting to encourage and enable domestic businesses to do some hiring anyway, right?
Instead, as demonstrated in the story below, you have a president (and a party) who seem dedicated to killing whatever possibility there is for such hiring in the bud by calling for higher taxes on the “rich”.
Of course they count on the bulk of the public being ignorant of what comprises the “rich” that the administration wants taxed (small business which produces 85% of the jobs in the US) and certainly, to some extent, they’ve been successful in that endeavor.
Many will tell you that there’s really not much government can do economically. That they get blamed or praised when it goes south or does well, but in fact that’s more political tradition than reality.
I disagree. Economic policy can have a profound effect on the economy. A policy that encourages and enables business will have a net positive effect economically. One that discourages or unsettles the business climate (increased regulation, increased taxation, etc.) will have the opposite effect.
Right now we have an example of the latter. The 8.2% unemployment rate we now endure isn’t a result of the “European crisis”, it is the result of an unsettled and hostile domestic business climate, much of it created by the current administration’s policies. Europe’s woes will only add to that. Instead of doing everything they can domestically to encourage expansion and hiring, this administration has decided to again lobby for taxing the job creators at an even higher level.
Of course be prepared for the ready excuse that the crisis in Europe presents. Blaming Bush doesn’t work as well now as it did 4 years ago. ATMs and tsunamis won’t work either. But President “It’s the Other Guy’s Fault” will try very hard to shift the blame of any economic downturn in the next few months across the Atlantic.
But remember – we are at 8.2% now. And that has much more to do with this President’s policies than anything that has happened in Europe.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Around the economic world in a few minutes
A post to update you on what is happening, economically around the world.
In Asia, some not so good signs. In China, housing prices fell in 100 Chinese cities for the 5th straight month. Chinese manufacturing has also cooled significantly:
Manufacturing activity in China and across a wide swath of Asia slowed in May, heightening fears that the turmoil in Western economies is dragging down one of the few remaining engines of global growth.
Two purchasing managers indexes for China fell in May, briefly rattling investors Friday and stoking speculation Beijing may have to respond aggressively to support growth. Indonesia posted its first trade deficit in nearly two years, and South Korea’s exports, considered a bellwether for Asia, unexpectedly fell for a third straight month.
"The green shoots of recovery that we were seeing a month or so back are wilting away," said Rob Subbaraman, chief Asia economist at Nomura Securities. "The crisis in Europe is one reason; the other one is the China slowdown. But I think less appreciated is that the height of uncertainty about the outlook has caused Asian firms and multinationals in Asia to pause in their investments, and I think that’s the bigger factor right now."
China’s official PMI, based on government data, showed manufacturing continuing to grow but by the barest of margins, falling to 50.4 in May from 53.3 in April. A figure above 50 indicates expansion. An index produced by HSBC and Markit showed Chinese manufacturing was worse, falling to 48.4 in May from 49.3 a month earlier.
"We feel that in China a very powerful stimulus"—combining fiscal outlays and cuts to banks’ reserve requirement ratio—"is required to arrest the slowdown in growth," said Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economic research for HSBC. "These numbers today suggest this is coming sooner rather than later. If that stimulus is not delivered, then China is indeed looking at a hard landing."
Both the US’s non-recovery recovery and the Eurozone crisis are being blamed for this slowdown.
The economies of Asia, both the emerging markets and the more developed countries, are being hit by a double whammy of slowing domestic growth and the impact of the European debt crisis on Asian exports and finance.
Signs of distress are proliferating.
In India, the government reported Thursday growth in the first three months of the year at the slowest pace in the past nine years—up 5.3% from the year-earlier quarter, well below the 8% pace of recent years. "A gasping elephant," said Leif Lybecker Eskesen, HSBC’s chief India economist, in a note to investors.
In China Friday, an official gauge of manufacturing activity fell to a lower than expected level, which is likely to add to market concerns about China’s slowdown. China’s official Purchasing Managers Index fell to 50.4 in May, compared with 53.3 in April and lower than the median forecast of 51.5. A reading below 50 indicates contraction. The Ministry of Commerce, meanwhile, is blaming "worse-than-expected" economic performance in Europe for disappointing export data.
Early Friday, South Korea said its exports unexpectedly contracted for a third consecutive month in May compared with a year earlier. South Korea is the first country in Asia to release trade data for the month and is often a harbinger of regional trends.
Meanwhile in Europe, the UK’s manufacturing is reported as slumping with activity dropping to its lowest level in three years. The Eurozone jobless rate stands at 11%. Additionally the Eurozone crisis is now beginning to effect countries with close proximity and ties which are not a part of the Euro:
The euro zone’s deepening fiscal crisis continued to take its toll on some of the neighboring economies of central and eastern Europe in May, as surveys released Friday indicated manufacturing activity contracted again in May.
The countries in Europe’s center and east have close trade and financial ties with the euro zone, and some have seen demand for their exports weaken as the currency area’s economy has stalled, while western Europe banks have cut their lending to the region.
A double whammy. And, finally, within the Eurozone itself, companies are trying to prepare for the Greek withdrawal from the zone (and possibly Spain’s as well):
As European officials race to quell fears that Greece may exit the euro, many companies doing business in the troubled country are preparing for the worst.
Most executives, analysts and others agree on one thing: the impact of a Greek withdrawal from the euro zone is impossible to predict. That’s why multinational companies are rehearsing for any number of contingencies. They range from a paralysis in cross-border payments to a civil breakdown in Greece to a broader breakup of Europe’s common currency.
Retrieving their cash is among the companies’ gravest concerns. If Greece were to revert to its former currency, many companies fear that any euros left there would be converted into less-valuable drachmas. Should that happen, Greece is widely expected to impose capital controls to keep the remaining cash in the country.
Can you say “completely mess?”
Meanwhile, here, the business climate remains unsettled, hiring still isn’t showing any real turnaround and the economy continues to bang along the bottom (one assumes, it could drop again if the Euro crisis explodes) with no real trend upward.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Denial is not just a river in Egypt
Dale’s post, “Fantasy v. Reality” is spot on. And there are plenty of examples of his point to be found. One of the characteristics of those who live in the fantasy side of things is their continued denial of the real cause of Greece’s problems specifically and Europe’s problem generally.
They, like certain politicians on this side of the pond, want to lay it off on others – the implication being that if that situation is changed, the problems that Greece and other countries are encountering will resolve themselves.
And then what? And then the strategy would appear to be to cauterise the amputation; to circle the wagons; to issue the most ringing and convincing proclamation to the markets that no more depredations will be tolerated; and to get the Germans to stump up, big time, to protect Spain and Portugal. We are told that the only solution now is a Fiscal Union (or FU). We must have “more Europe”, say our leaders, not less Europe – even though more Europe means more suffering, and a refusal to recognise what has gone wrong in Greece.
The euro has turned out to be a doomsday machine, a destroyer of jobs, a killer of growth, because it entrenches and exacerbates the fundamental and historic inability of some countries to compete with Germany in making high-quality goods with low-unit labour costs. Unable to devalue their way back into the game, these countries are forced to watch industry wilt under German imports, as the euro serves as a giant trebuchet to fire swish German saloon cars and machine tools across the rest of Europe.
Germany is almost alone in recording economic growth in the first part of 2012; Germany is doing well from the euro; and so the theory is that Germany should pay to keep the whole racket going by bailing out the improvident and the uncompetitive, just as London and the South East subsidise the rest of the UK.
Alas, it is not a strategy that is likely to work. As Angela Merkel has made clear, there is little political support – let alone popular support – in Germany. EU leaders may want a fiscal union, but it is deeply anti-democratic. We accept large fiscal transfers in this country because Britain has a single language and a single political consciousness in a way that Europe never will. Rather than creating an “economic government of Europe”, the project will lead to endless bitterness between the resentful donors and the humiliated recipients, as these diminished satrapies will be instructed to accept cuts and “reforms” – designed in Berlin and announced in Brussels – as the price of their dosh.
Or, “it’s all Germany’s fault”.
Germany implemented Greece’s labor laws, work week, retirement age, public pensions and government subsidies. You didn’t know that? It’s Germany’s fault that it has all caught up with Greece in a down global market. If Germany wasn’t so damn good, Greece would be in such damn bad shape.
Really. That’s what this guy is pushing. I mean, my goodness, imagine – “high-quality goods with low-unit labor costs”. How dare they? How can one pump up a welfare state and keep it going with competition like that? It is Germany’s job to enable Greece’s work 38 hour week. Germany’s job to ensure their generous pension plans, early retirement, subsidies and welfare payments.
How dare they do otherwise. They owe Europe. They owe the rest of Europe the lifestyle they desire but can’t afford.
What is wrong with that country?
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Fiscal austerity? Certainly not in Europe
The narrative the left likes to push is that “austerity” is the wrong thing to do, that increased government spending will see us out of these tough times. And they like to point to Europe’s continuing downward spiral because of “austerity” as proof.
Meh. They should consult the numbers first before pumping out yet another false meme:
Hardly a picture of “drastic” spending cuts. Hardly a picture of “austerity.”
As Joel Pollak at Breitbart points out:
Government spending has continued to rise across much of Europe, and even those countries that have made small cuts have not reduced government spending to pre-recession levels. Some Keynesians might believe that these policies are draconian relative to the massive spending that should have happened during a recession, but that shifting the austerity goalposts.
Veronique de Rugy at National Review Online points to the graph above, and also points out that "whenever cuts took place, they were always overwhelmed by large counterproductive tax increases." Higher taxes on the "rich" have led to uniform misery in Europe–and to political extremism among disenchanted voters.That is the real failure of European policy, and the lesson most relevant to Americans as we head to the polls to choose between an incumbent who wants to raise taxes and one who wants to reform them.
Or to distill this even further, the “blue social/political model” is dying and there isn’t much the left (or anyone) can do to save it. Reality has again defined “unsustainable” for the left in terms they are finding difficult to deal with.
What’s the first stage of coping with grief?
Oh, yeah … denial.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Oh. This can’t be good…
Via Zero Hedge, I’ve acquired this very interesting little chart, that shows the number of margin calls on its credit-extensions to counterparties. Huh. Now, see, I just wrote that, and I have no idea what it means. It’s just lots of economic gobbledy-gook when you write it out in a single sentence like that. But, here, let’s take a gander at the chart, then I’ll explain, in human terms, what it tells us.
So, the European Central Bank (ECB) had this great idea, which was to implement a European version of Quantitative Easing. They called it the Long-Term Refinancing Operation, or LTRO.
It was actually pretty simple. The banks would go to the ECB and get an LTRO loan by providing collateral of some sort—generally A-rated securities. By which, I mean a security that at least one rating agency has rated as "A". Like, you know, Italian bonds. They don’t actually have to give the collateral to the ECB or anything, just let them know that, "Hey, we’ll just keep it safe, and can hand it over if we really have to." On the strength of those assurances, and the sterling quality of the collateral in question, like Spanish bonds, the ECB then gives the banks a huge hunk of cash. The banks then get to keep the money for up to three years, but are only charged the average overnight rate of interest.
Now, as long as the securities you put up for collateral are good, like Irish bonds, it’s a pretty sweet deal. Alas, if the securities turn out not to be so reliable, the ECB will make a "margin call", that is to say, they will demand the banks come up with additional cash or other assets to cover the collateral.
As you can see from the charts, that is exactly what the ECB is is starting to do. That’s troublesome. You see, the ECB has a €3 trillion balance sheet. But it only has a bit under €11 billion in actual assets. So the ECB has a leverage ratio of a little under 300:1. So, it really does have to go after better assets from the banks if the initial collateral turns, you know, sucky.
The problem then is, as Tyler at Zero Hedge puts it:
The rapid deterioration in collateral asset quality is extremely worrisome(GGBs? European financial sub debt? Papandreou’s Kebab Shop unsecured 2nd lien notes?) as it forces the banks who took the collateralized loans to come up with more ‘precious’ cash or assets (unwind existing profitable trades such as sovereign carry, delever further by selling assets, or subordinate more of the capital structure via pledging more assets – to cover these collateral shortfalls) or pay-down the loan in part. This could very quickly become a self-fulfilling vicious circle – especially given the leverage in both the ECB and the already-insolvent banks that took LTRO loans that now back the main Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese sovereign bond markets.
Essentially, the LTRO program is beginning to suck higher quality assets out of the banks to meet the margin calls that are issued when the initial collateral’s value starts to go belly up. Sucking those higher-quality assets into the ECB’s LTRO collateral program, mean that they can no longer be used to finance business and consumer credit, and, thus, spending. The banks essentially become bond storage warehouses, that don’t actually do any business.
That slows the economy, of course. Which means that those original A-Rated securities stand e much better chance of defaulting, in which case, they’re worth nothing. As Seeking Alpha explains:
The real menace comes in the event of a further weakening of the Eurozone economy. If the economy were to contract, the collateral that the banks have pledged to the ECB may cease to be "performing" (seemingly the only hard criterion for collateral for the second round of LTRO). The ECB would be at risk–and ultimately so would the banks that pledged the defaulting securities.
Any defaults, be they of collateral or the banks themselves, would be a serious issue for the ECB. The ECB is supporting its EUR 3 trillion balance sheet with EUR 10.76 billion in capital–leverage of nearly 300 to one. With the fiscal situation of European sovereigns already strained to the breaking point, it’s hard to see where the money to cover the defaults could come from. This issue of a ballooning balance sheet, coupled with shaky collateral and the 3-year tenor of the ECB loans, is precisely why Trichet and Weber would not go the Draghi route. They bristled at the risk.
The odds of a calamity of the sort that would endanger the ECB are not great, but nor are they impossibly long.
Well, that huge jump in margin calls may be an indicator that those not "impossibly long" odds are getting shorter and shorter. And I wonder how much exposure US banks have to an LTRO default through credit/FX swaps. Probably…really a lot.
So, we got that goin’ for us.
~
Dale Franks
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Chevy Volt: “Car of the Year” in Europe
This is so loaded with irony I can’t even count the ways:
Days after General Motors announced it was temporarily suspending production of the Chevy Volt, the electric car was named European Car of the Year.
The Geneva Auto Show announced Monday that the Volt, which is sold in Europe as the Opel Ampera, was named its 2012 Car of the Year ahead of its annual car show that opens this week.
Europe, tottering on the brink of financial collapse because of unsustainable welfare state spending names a heavily subsidized car from a company owned in the majority by government that no one will buy as its pick of the litter (why, because it fits an agenda that no one buys as well).
Of course it’s Europe’s “Car of the Year”.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Half Solutions Will Not Work
Brett Arends is skeptical about Europe’s current direction:
Their proposal is preposterous. Anything can happen in this life, but it would be remarkable indeed if this idea got off the ground. Anyone pinning their hopes that this will solve the crisis needs to think it through.
Why would the Portuguese accept the right of Germany to impose budget cuts on their country? Why would the Greeks?
Would we accept that role for the Chinese and the Japanese, the biggest holders of Treasury debt? How would you feel if you opened the paper to be told that the new Sino-Japanese “Fiscal Stability Commission” in Washington had just slashed your grandma’s Social Security checks by one-third, scaled back federal highway repairs, and that it would impose a 10% national sales tax?
That is, after all, effectively what is being offered to the people of Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.
It’s absurd. There is no reason why these countries should have to surrender sovereignty. They can simply, where necessary, default. A default by, say, Louisiana would not destroy the dollar. Neither did the bankruptcy of Enron or Lehman.
What happens when after signing the new treaty (if it ever actually comes to be) the Greeks or Italians decide to thumb their noses at the EU and default anyway? Kick them out? Isn’t that right where we are now? Isn’t the fear that countries are kicked out or leave leading to financial chaos and defaults? Will these countries truly continue to pay their bills and accept austerity in the face of a severe recession/depression?
If that is the concern, just as I have been pointing out for some time, anything short of true fiscal and political union will fail. The right of existing states to refuse to honor the treaty (remember the last one was treated as inconsequential by violators, including Germany and France) cannot exist which means the right of states to secede or be expelled from the union cannot exist. If that option is not off the table then Eurozone bonds cannot be treated as risk free. If they are not seen as risk free then they will be rated accordingly and the Eurozone will be unstable as Louis-Vincent Gave points out:
Basically, we have to remember that the average sovereign debt buyer is not a hazardous investor. The guy who buys a government bond is looking for a very specific outcome: he gives the government 100 only so he can get back 102.5 a year later. That’s all the typical sovereign debt investor is looking for. Nothing more, nothing less.
But now, the problem for all EMU debt is that the range of possible outcomes is growing daily: possible restructurings, possible changes in currencies, possible assumption of other people’s debt, possible mass monetization by the central bank etc. Given this wider range of possible outcomes, and the consequent surge of uncertainty, the natural buyer of EMU debt disappears. Again, the typical sovereign investor is not in the game of handicapping possible outcomes; he is in the game of getting capital back!
This is very problematic because once uncertainty creeps in, bonds will tend to gradually drift towards what I have come to call the bonds “no-man’s-land”. Basically, once sovereign bonds reach 90c to par, they tend to have a much higher volatility and much greater uncertainty. As a result, they are no longer attractive to the typical bond manager or asset allocator looking to buy bonds to diversify equity risk (think how Italian bond yields are now correlated to European equities. If you want to be bullish Italian bonds, you may now just as well spend a fifth of the money and buy European banks for the same portfolio impact…). And once a bond enters into no-man’s-land, it has to fall a lot before attracting the attention of distressed debt and vulture investors (usually yields of 15%+). So the first obvious problem is that more and more European debt markets are entering this “no man’s land” bereft of “normal” investors.
Do these countries need the Euro over the long term to be prosperous? More Brett:
The British look smarter and smarter for staying out of the euro area in the first place. Prime Minister John Major, and then, later, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, each took the decision to keep the British pound free. At the time fashionable opinion predicted disaster for the Brits. So much for that.
(Predictably, fashionable opinion now says the Brits look “isolated” for staying out. Really, you couldn’t make it up).
My guess is Brett is correct that we are no where close to a real resolution, which is a path to political unification or breakup.
It has long been clear the Franco-German duo wanted to use their shared currency to bludgeon the continent into something closer to a federal system.
Any investor pinning their hopes on this bird flying needs to be aware it looks a lot more like a turkey than an eagle.
This week’s meeting of European leaders already marks the fifth “summit” to solve the region’s debt crisis since early 2009.
My favorite comment this time: “After a series of ‘final’ summits, it would be nice this time to have a real ‘final’ summit.” That was from Standard & Poor’s chief European economist, appropriately-enough named Jean-Michel Six. What’s the betting Mr. Six will be attending Summit No. Six in the new year?
Which is not to say that the ECB or some other entity couldn’t stem the immediate crisis and kick the can further down the road. Maybe, but if so the question is how far? A week, a year, five years? That I cannot answer now.
“Kicking the can” in a cul de sac
Or maybe a better analogy is Nero and Rome. Politicians and hard decisions just don’t seem to mix very well do they? It is much better to be Santa Clause than the Grinch. Especially if you want politics to be your career.
Maybe that’s the problem. If you remember correctly, at least in the US, politics was supposed to be a part-time job. But here as in Europe, it has developed into a full-time job that requires excessive pandering to special interest groups using taxpayer money and borrowing as the means.
And here we are.
In Europe, it has, as predicted for decades, finally reached a tipping point. And the political elite? They really have no idea how to handle the problem (and the same sort of problem is becoming evident here). So they resort to the usual reaction of politicians caught in an uncomfortable situation. Defer a decision:
Under pressure to deliver shock treatment to the ailing euro, European finance ministers failed to come up with a plan for European countries to spend within their means. Such a plan is needed before Europe’s central bank and the International Monetary Fund consider stepping in to stem an escalating threat to the global economy.
The ministers delayed action on major financial issues – such as the concept of a closer fiscal union that would guarantee more budgetary discipline – until their bosses meet next week in Brussels.
If their finance ministers can’t put together a plan of action, what in the world are the ministers going to do next week? Megan McArdle notices the can kicking as well and also recognizes that they’re doing that in a cul de sac:
Keeping the euro together requires much more than fiscal integration–all fiscal integration does is turn the peripheral countries into something like those Algerian ghettos ringing Paris. Actually correcting these imbalances is going to require a lot of people in the periphery to get up and move. That’s a really tall order. Despite the fabled European multi-lingualism, in my experience, the majority of workers speak English about like I spoke high-school French and college Spanish; well enough to go on vacation, but not well enough to enjoy living in another country. I’m told that this is about standard. And that’s just one of the many barriers to movement between countries.
It’s not just the Germans who have to ask themselves whether the PIIGS won’t eventually say "Enough!" and renege. The bond buyers have to ask the same thing. At this point, it’s not entirely clear to me that any solution is credible enough to kick the can more than a very short distance down the road.
McArdle’s question in the title of the piece is “How can Europe possibly save itself?” You could read the question two ways. The first is wondering out loud what Europe could do to fix the problem and solve the dilemma they’re in. The second is rhetorical and reflecting a belief that it can’t.
Given this latest deferral, I’m beginning to see the question as rhetorical and the result as catastrophic. If you want to see a real “Domino Effect”, let Europe collapse.
Oh, and by the way, they just downgraded the third quarter GDP estimate from 3.1% to 2.3%.
And that sound you hear? The can clinking along as politicians the world over do what they do best.
MICHAEL ADDS: You could actually read the question a third way: Who will step in to save Europe from itself? Why, none other than good ole Uncle Sam (aka we the taxpayers):
The Federal Open Market Committee has authorized an extension of the existing temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap arrangements with the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, and the Swiss National Bank through February 1, 2013. The rate on these swap arrangements has been reduced from the U.S. dollar OIS rate plus 100 basis points to the OIS rate plus 50 basis points. In addition, as a contingency measure, the Federal Open Market Committee has agreed to establish similar temporary swap arrangements with these five central banks to provide liquidity in any of their currencies if necessary. Further details on the revised arrangements will be available shortly.
U.S. financial institutions currently do not face difficulty obtaining liquidity in short-term funding markets. However, were conditions to deteriorate, the Federal Reserve has a range of tools available to provide an effective liquidity backstop for such institutions and is prepared to use these tools as needed to support financial stability and to promote the extension of credit to U.S. households and businesses.
This is essentially a back-door bailout of the Euro. The Fed fixes the interest rate for these loans (the currency swaps) at today’s rate, sends a bunch of US dollars to European central banks (and elsewhere), which then loan out those dollars to European banks facing a “liquidity crisis” — i.e. running out of money and holding diminishing assets (one of which may have almost crashed last night). Nominally, the European central banks are on the hook for any losses suffered, but we all know how that works.
You can read more about how these swaps work here.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Krugman has it all figured out: Tax the Rich
Yes, Paul Krugman has a novel idea that no one has previously thought of … we can get out of this mess we’ve spent ourselves into by taxing the rich.
And by the way, income inequality now makes that both feasible and acceptable:
About those high incomes: In my last column I suggested that the very rich, who have had huge income gains over the last 30 years, should pay more in taxes. I got many responses from readers, with a common theme being that this was silly, that even confiscatory taxes on the wealthy couldn’t possibly raise enough money to matter.
Folks, you’re living in the past. Once upon a time America was a middle-class nation, in which the super-elite’s income was no big deal. But that was another country.
The I.R.S. reports that in 2007, that is, before the economic crisis, the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers — roughly speaking, people with annual incomes over $2 million — had a combined income of more than a trillion dollars. That’s a lot of money, and it wouldn’t be hard to devise taxes that would raise a significant amount of revenue from those super-high-income individuals.
Because you know, “super-high-income individuals” don’t deserve to keep the money they earned, because, well, we’ve gotten ourselves in this awful mess and we need someone to bail us out.
And they have a lot of money, by gosh. A lot of money. So “it wouldn’t be hard to devise taxes” that would take most of it on the marginal side. Because again, we should have first claim when we get ourselves in trouble. Besides, they have more than enough money and they should pay their “fair share”.
A couple of reminders. Despite what Krugman says, taxing the top 0.1% isn’t going to make a significant difference. And even if it did, it would only make that sort of difference once. The next year, that money would be much less available. Which would probably mean what?
Well “rich” would have to be redefined, wouldn’t it? Maybe then it would be the top 1%, because we all know they have more money than they need and they should pay their fair share, right?
As a reminder, the Adjusted Gross Income necessary to be considered a one-percenter is a ‘rich’ $343,927. And this particular percentage of tax payers are indeed shirking their fair share. After all, they only pay 36.73% of all income tax collected now. Surely we can kick that up to, oh I don’t know, at least 50%. And, of course “we” can, certainly. For a short time, that will indeed bring in more revenue. But, again, once the marginal rate goes up those being stuck with the tax bill will go to work finding ways to minimize that hit. And, they will.
Which means those top 5% suddenly become vulnerable, etc.
A short version of the Krugman solution can be found working so well in Europe right now. And E21 does a good job of reminding us of Krugman’s unadulterated enthusiasm for the social welfare states to be found there. E21 also does a great job of eviscerating Krugman’s arguments concerning Europe’s problems:
Paul Krugman insists that the European debt crisis has nothing to do with excessive government spending. The problem, to him, is a failed monetary experiment that deprives nations like Greece and Italy of the ability to print money to inflate away excessive debts. The need to create an alternative understanding for the origins of the debt crisis is only natural given the extent to which the current crisis has tarnished the statist ideology that Krugman generally follows. But his basic claims are nonsensical, as is Krugman’s citation of Sweden and Germany as economic role models. While these economies have performed relatively well through the crisis, it was because they abandoned Krugman’s preferred economics and moved in a more market-oriented direction long-ago.
He was wrong about Europe and he’s wrong about taxes. He’s become an economic joke but just doesn’t know it yet. He’s a one-trick pony who, much like the global warming alarmists, ignores the fact that what he continues to claim is viable and necessary is constantly and consistently being trashed by reality.
The only good news is he remains a source of entertainment. It’s sort of like a game. You wonder how long he can go before reality actually grabs him by the scruff of the neck and makes him recognize the error of his ways (my bet? Never happens). And, as a bit of side fun, you wonder how long the NY Times will continue to let Krugman push his reality challenged agenda forward before they finally (and, of course “reluctantly”) can him (see first bet – they haven’t a clue).
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Observations: The QandO Podcast for 13 Oct 11
In this podcast, Bruce Michael, and Dale discuss Obama’s “Americans are lazy” comment, the failing EU. and the presidential race.
The direct link to the podcast can be found here.
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