This is Part Two of a two part interview with highly acclaimed Macro-Strategist Barry Ritholtz. You can read Part One by clicking here. This interview includes what I believe will become a legendary story of the time …


Barry Ritholtz
Damien: That opens up a nice segue to talk about your book Bailout Nation which I reviewed last month. However, I have one last question in the area of economics. What advice do you have for young students of economics who are surrounded by classical models with false underlying presuppositions like the one you just described about inflation?
Barry: Change your major! [Laughing] That’s one piece of advice. I was at the Wired conference yesterday — a very fascinating conference, by the way. I listened to Jeff Immelt [CEO of GE] and Jeff Bezos [CEO of Amazon] speak. They were very interesting. During a break I met two young guys who recently graduated the University of Chicago Business School. We talked about economic lock-in with tenured professors. These guys explained how despite the economic collapse and shenanigans, they had professors who were still talking saying, “The free market is the best way to regulate itself and it doesn’t need to be regulated.” These professors are giving the same speech about self-regulation that we have heard for the past 20 years. Astonishingly, the students would look at each other and say, “Dude, does this professor have access to newspapers or TV?” Self-regulation is done. Put a fork in it. That ain’t going anywhere anymore. We have to move on. And yet, we get these tenured guys who are wed to outmoded forms of belief systems. Getting them off that dime is extremely difficult.
Damien: Inertia.
Barry: Exactly. So, I would say to anyone who is taking classical economics: be very wary. When something strikes you as intuitively wrong, do some homework and dig deeper. When you are told that human beings are perfectly rational and efficient decision-makers, then they smoke, don’t wear seat belts or do many things which are not rational from a behavioral perspective, it becomes hard to justify such a belief system — yet a lot of people do.
The cross-disciplinary approach can help put everything into context and hopefully keep you away from really dumb tenured professors who are just slavish devotees of their ideology. Also, and I say this all the time, you must be a pragmatist. You have to stay away from radical and extreme belief systems because history has shown us that these belief systems come and go like the top pop song of the day. You can’t give way to some belief system that crumbles when you are confronted with evidence that raises issues about the belief system. You must take opposing evidence seriously.
One of the my favorite phrases from last year while the market was falling apart and everything was going to hell was ‘cognitive dissonance’. There was a front page New York Times story about Phil Gramm [sponsor of the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act -- which kept a Chinese Wall between investment banks and the commercial banks]. Phil was the guy who attached a rider to one of the budgets the eve Congress left for Christmas vacation. Anyway, this Commodities Futures Modernization Act was essentially passed at the behest of Phil and his wife, Wendy Gramm, who was on the board of Enron. Someone else called them the Bonnie and Clyde of derivatives because they attached this rider, it got passed, and next thing you know we have this shadow banking system of derivatives with no reserves and no transparency. Phil’s still out saying, “No, no, no. Deregulation had nothing to do with this.” Well, he’s so wed to his belief system that his brain won’t allow him to accept his costly error. In psychology this is called ‘cognitive dissonance’. This occurs when a person is confronted with proof his or her belief system is invalid, but instead of re-thinking the belief system, the person disregards the proof. It’s quite fascinating and common.
Damien: Alan Greenspan was a victim on cognitive dissonance for a long time before he come out and admitted he made a mistake because his premise was wrong.
Barry: He discovered a flaw … [both laughing]
Damien: Now that the inertia of the Randian and Chicago School of Economics free market fundamentalist view point is meeting undeniable major proof that the philosophies are flawed, is there a book or a philosophy or a person emerging that is more of a pragmatist that offers us a healthy shift toward another framework for seeing the world economically?
Barry: Are you setting me up to discuss Bailout Nation or are you looking to talk about something else?
Damien: [Laughing hard] I mean in addition to Bailout Nation, of course.
Barry: You know I haven’t seen any specific books that approach the facts and case laid out in Bailout Nation. But I’d say the closest one is The Myth of the Rational Market by Justin Fox. Justin’s book traces the history of the University of Chicago School of Economics and their belief that markets can take care of themselves. The Chicago school of thought said, “We don’t need regulation because what company, if any, is going to put their own existence at risk just for short-term profits? That’s not rational isn’t it?” Well, as it turns out, no it’s not rational. And yet, that’s what was done and done en masse. So, the belief system is invalid.
Damien: Let’s talk more about your book Bailout Nation. The book asserts the naked facts and points fat fingers at culprits. What has been the reaction to the release?
Barry: So far, so good. The book came out about three weeks ago today. I’m always gratified when professional writers really like what you do. The reviews have all been very good. I’m still waiting for a couple more reviews to come out — so I have my fingers crossed.
Quite frankly, I think the book is too long. I would’ve liked to make it shorter. It’s 300 pages, but it covers such a huge topic. I knew there were Bear Stearns and JP Morgan books coming out. Then there is a rating agencies book coming out next year. All these books are like the six blind men describing the elephant: one guy is describing an ear, another one is describing a tusk, a leg, a tail, and a trunk. Yet none of them see the whole thing. They all get different view points from their narrow perspective. I wanted to make sure I took the 10,000 foot view. I wanted to get the whole overview and explain the crisis historically, monetarily, politically, and philosophically. I wanted to explain how we went from a country that couldn’t imagine bailing out a failing corporation to a country that seems to be bailing out every company. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone. My favorite bailout beggar is Larry Flynt. [Both laughing]
I sat in on a meeting about four or five months ago and, by far, I was the biggest piker in the room. I thought, “What am I doing here with guys from Goldman Sachs and the City of New York Finance Department?” I was listening to these very smart, very experienced people describe what they perceived is the problem and how to fix it. I sat there for an hour and finally said, “I’m amazed that none of you people have a clue as to how this happened. All of you are describing a little tiny piece of the cause, yet collectively you guys are still sitting here dumbfounded as to how this whole thing came to pass. If you’re the leadership who is going to fix this, then we’re in deep trouble because everybody’s got their little world and you’re all looking at it through your tiny little slices. Step back. If you want to see the forest, then you have to step back away from the trees.” That was what motivated the book. I wanted to say, “Let’s figure out a way to do the full overview and really let people know where we went off the rails.”
Damien: In relationship to the law, I imagine each of those people standing up in a room blaming one case in a series of cases for causing the destruction of an entire section of jurisprudence. To get see the truth, someone has to step back and ask, “Where do these cases fit? On which branch of which branch does this fact go?” Do you think your legal training aids you with that process?
Barry: Yeah. The case law method teaches you that the law evolves — it just doesn’t spring up out of nowhere. And when we get a game changing [court] decision or reversal, it’s not because a bolt of lightning strikes. We move incrementally towards that new custom. We have a little issue that changes something, then a little more context, and then eventually it gets to the point where we evolve.
Your analogy with tree branches is accurate because at a certain point the branches hit a corner and they just can’t grow anymore. When we arrive at that point, that line of thinking is defunct. The same thing kind of happened with the way the [financial] crisis developed and the way we approached it. Everybody seemed to think there was an ideology that said markets can self-regulate and we don’t have to worry about people doing stupid stuff. There was another ideology which said there is a free lunch: we can lower rates to almost zero and there will be no repercussions.
One of my favorite quotes in the book is from Tom Savage, President of Financial Products at AIG. This is the guy who each year is in charge of $3 trillion of exposure that generates $3 billion dollars in revenue. In the chapter on AIG, his Tom explained his business was free money. You just wrote the policy and never worried about the payout. I’m astonished someone in an insurance company thinks you can do that! He is saying he can have a free lunch. He is saying he has no obligation for reserves. That is the ultimate failed belief system. His quote was, “The model suggested that the risk was so remote, that the fees were almost free money. Just put it on your books and enjoy!” That is just unconscionable!
Damien: I think there was a line in your book where you said this scheme was either a complete act of brilliance or basically fraud per se.
Barry: Right. Either someone’s going to win a Nobel Prize or someone’s going to jail! That was when the CDSs [Credit Default Swaps] and CDOs [Collateralized Debt Obligations] started.
At the time, I sat in on an incredible meeting. I can talk about this now, but for awhile I didn’t really discuss it. About four or five years ago I sat in a meeting at an old firm where I worked. We got the sales pitch from a bunch of Lehman guys that were selling CDOs. The pitch was, “This is just as safe as US Treasuries, but the product pays 275 basis points — almost 3% — higher interest rate than Treasuries.” That’s how the sales pitch began. I raised my hand and said, “So let me make sure I understand this. You guys think you’re going to win a Nobel Prize for this product.” They said, “No. Why would we win a Nobel Prize for this product?” I said, “Because you’ve just changed the law of economics. The laws of economics state that if you want more returns, you must assume more risk. You’re telling me this product is triple-A rated — it’s identical to US treasuries. If so, why hasn’t the market arbitraged away the difference? Why hasn’t Bill Gross [the biggest bond fund manager in the world] come in and bought up all of these to the point where the rates are comparable to Treasuries?” They said, “Oh, he’s not allowed to buy them.” I said, “What do you mean? The guy owns the firm. The guy started the firm! He buys whatever the hell he wants to buy. In my opinion, to be blunt, you guys should either win a Nobel Prize for changing the ‘No Free Lunch’ [law], or we’re going to see you on the side of the road in orange jumpsuits picking up litter. There is nothing in-between. It’s Nobel Prize or jail.”
I got called into the [firm’s] General Counsel’s office and they said “What the hell are you doing? We’re trying to establish a relationship with Lehman.” I said, “This product is a disaster waiting to happen. It is mathematically impossible, or I’m wrong and these guys are going to win a Nobel Prize. I’m betting they are going to jail.” And, of course, I never got invited to those meetings anymore [laughing].
The people who listened to me stayed out of trouble with that crap. Again, it’s not rocket science. All you need is a little bit of common sense. I’m astonished that nobody said, “Wait, let me make sure I understand this: Triple-A rated bonds from Uncle Sam are paying 3.25% and you’re going to give me 6% for Triple-A rated bonds every bit as safe as those. That is not possible.” Yet, a trillion dollars of this crap was sold. It just shows you people are willing to believe anything. At the time, fixed income managers were desperate for yield. They just let their better sense get suspended. That’s another chapter in my book, “The Mad Scramble for Yield.”
Damien: Barry, you have some great insights. I appreciate how you are willing to go the extra mile and dig up the extra facts. But how do you deal with people who are more like astrologists who put stars together that don’t really make shapes? How do you demarcate a line between tragic truth and fringe conspiracy theories?
Barry: Well, I rely on common sense. I’m amazed that after the Nasdaq crash from March 2000 to March 2003 — when the Nasdaq plummeted nearly 80%, the equivalent of how much the Dow [Jones Industrial Average] crashed in 1929 — people still talk about the Plunge Protection Team (PPT) like they can protect something [laughing]. They are saying the same thing now although 2008 was the worst market year in 8 decades. In the book I use a quote by George Carlin to illustrate the absurdity, “It’s not that the American Indians were bad fighters. Just because they started in Boston Harbor and ended in Santa Monica doesn’t mean they are bad.” How incompetent does a government market manipulating agency have to be before someone gets fired?
Damien: [Laughing]
Barry: I mean, we went down 80% on the Nasdaq! If they are supposed to be protecting something, isn’t that the definition of a ‘plunge’? I can understand if they soften a blow where we go down 50% in three years. But down 50% in one year! Someone said to me, “Well, if it wasn’t for the PPT, we would’ve been down 75%.” I wanted to smack this guy upside the head. “Oh, well okay. Down 75% is unacceptable. But down 50% we could live with. Hey everybody, we did a good job!” That’s why I put the line in the book from Rodney [Dangerfield] from Caddy Shack, “Hey everybody, we’re all gonna get laid!”
Damien: [Laughing]

The Fingerprint of the PPT?
Barry: The PPT theory is the same absurdity. “Oh what a great job … we’re only cut in half. Let’s all go out and party!” [Laughing] It just makes no sense.
Putting on the lawyer hat, you have to look closely at people who are speaking as if they are witnesses being cross-examined. That’s the fifth hat you have to wear. When someone comes out and starts saying something, the first things I ask myself are, “What is their bias? Are they talking their book? What are they saying? What is in it for them? Why should I listen to them? What’s up their sleeve?”
In the old days on financial television, guys could just come out pumping a stock. That’s kind of been moderated. Now, if you go on TV and talk about something, you’re not supposed to sell it the next day, week, or whatever. But, every now and then you’ll see someone come on and their call just doesn’t make sense. We were fortunate enough to have called this last rally in a timely manner. We had a March 9th call, “Hey there is a big bear market bounce coming. Don’t be short.” That was actually on Yahoo Tech Ticker. Then the Freakonomics blog picked it up. So our call is in print. Then we had the crazy 40% [March] rally. I noticed the guys who completely missed it because they fought it. They either stayed short or at the very least didn’t get long. These guys were giving me laundry lists of why the market should not go up.
My answer to their theories was always, “The market is cut in half in a year. We’re deeply oversold. We’re due for a bounce. Why are you fighting this?” I don’t disagree that in an ideal world the economics did not support a move up in the market. But if you’ve been following the market for any period of time, you know some of the moves are irrational.
We were long throughout ’07 and I was miserable! I knew the whole thing was going to hell, but the market kept going up. I did an interview in Barron’s in August ‘07 — again it is in print, so nobody is going to call me a liar. I’m at a Maine fishing trip called the Shadow Fed Group. David Kotok puts together this group. It’s just a group of economists and fund managers. It’s great fun! Everyone gets drunk at night and argues economics and markets It’s really very amusing. Anyway, in the interview with Barron’s my firm FusionIQ was mostly long and I was miserable. I wanted to climb into a cave with the other bears and a handful of gold bars so we could wait for the bull mess to end. To some degree, it’s reassuring that my gut was unhappy because if you follow you’re gut you will lose money. But we were going to stay long until our model flipped [bearish]. As of December ‘07, the model flipped negative and we moved aggressively to cash. I was saying, “I hate this economy! I hate this market! This whole rally is based on borrowed money — it’s not real. The way to grow a country is not to borrow and spend, but to earn and spend — to grow and spend, to build something and spend. You cannot just to take out equity from your house.” Thank goodness I have partners that said, “What does the model say? Okay, we stay long.” But I see guys that can’t make that transition. They get steam rolled by the market.
Damien: Do you think the US must “earn” and create value if we intend to reclaim economic greatness?
Barry: No doubt about that. But despite all our problems, not everything is negative. A huge positive is that we are a very entrepreneurial country. Look at all the crazy, new Web 2.0 things that are coming out. They are fantastic. This is not a country that is just going to roll over and be happy with 2nd place. That’s the good news. The bad news is we have a structural deficit. We have a tendency to be spendthrift. Going back to 1950, the consumer percentage of the economy was in the low 60. It recently peaked over the past few years at 71%. This means the consumer was over 2/3 of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). That’s coming back. We’re at about 68.5-69%. I think we are on our way back to 63-64%. By the way, a 3-4% swing is huge when you are talking about a 14 trillion dollar economy.
From the 1950s forward, we had the introduction of the credit card, the widespread adoption of revolving charges, and the increasing ability to pull equity out of our houses. That financing is going to a much more moderate size piece of the economic puzzle. Therefore, if a consumer wants a boat, they’re going to have to save money and buy a boat. The idea that you as a consumer are going to lease an expensive car but get it for $499/month, that’s going to go away. And the idea that you’re just going to be going to the mall just because you feel like some retail therapy or sports shopping, that’s also going to disappear. So, we are left with a somewhat more circumspect, frugal consumer. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe as a nation we’ve been far too obsessed with pointless materialism. Maybe we can get back to creating things. We might say, “Instead of going to the mall, let’s go down to the basement and design a new software app for the iPhone.” There is a ton of that going on already — especially amongst the up-and-coming generation. It’s very encouraging.
Damien: I’m somebody who graduated college at the height of the dotcom bubble in ’99. So the only world I know is one where there’s been two bubbles and two crashes. I lived through two bull markets and two recessions in one decade, and I wonder how do people feel like they can trust putting their money back into the system. It reminds me of an analogy I heard several months ago. Basically, one of the big issues we have to take care of like after 9/11 is to get the terrorists. In this case, the financial terrorists. We can rebuild the World Trade Center and put security in the airports, but we must ensure our citizens that we’re going after the bad guys. As a lawyer, in the book you point a lot of fingers and do a great job laying out your evidence. But how do we as taxpayers, who are finding ourselves continuously getting screwed, procure justice against these people for what you call the greatest heist ever made? How do we hold the financiers, lobbyists, and politicians accountable?
Barry: Well, there’s a couple ways. First, the companies that have gotten all these billions of dollars in bailouts have to start clawing back some of the senior management bonuses. We must to set an example. For example, Stan O’Neil at Merrill, who was there when a lot of this bad stuff was put into place at Merrill Lynch, he left with $160 million dollars in bonuses. I can’t help but feel that some of those bonuses and some of that stock was based on numbers that were purported to be accurate but were not. They didn’t really earn those bonuses and the stock option because it was based on fraud. So, you have to call that back. This guy, out of the $160 million you take back as much as you legally can. And the same thing with guys like Angelo Mazulo, go down the line, and Ken Lewis, all these different people at different firms who oversaw some giant write-downs. Ken Lewis probably less so than most. But, Bear Stearns and Lehman and everyone else that’s there, you take the top guys or people in charge of each department that blew up and you hold them accountable, and that is the first thing you do.
Second, like we did after 9/11, we must put together a blue ribbon task force and charge them with figuring out what the hell happened. As a matter of fact, they could cheat because somebody wrote a book and said exactly what happened [both laughing]. Then, the task force should say, “Here is what happened and these were the problems. Now, here is what we have to do to fix it.” So far, that hasn’t happened.
Third, the Fed must release data. We are starting to see certain people pushing. Congressman Alan Grayson from Florida, a freshman Congressman, has been pressing the Fed to release data and say how much money their losing or making on various investments. There is a need to hold the elected officials accountable. This morning I saw conservative Senator Charles Grassley talking about all but endorsing the Obama team regulations. Here’s a guy who would’ve never in a million years turned around and said, “Yes, we need to further regulate the ratings agencies. Yes, we cannot allow markets to now operate independently. Yes, we have to reduce the leverage in the banking industry.” I was floored — I actually put it on the blog [The Big Picture] — that here’s a conservative Republican, who is savvy enough and heard from enough of his constituents that he’s trying to get out in front on what is more or less inevitable. So, if there was ever a time to press the politicians, they are very receptive to hearing, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.” Not a straight up tea party, but something to stop these rogue fill-in-the-blank bank and insurance companies.
Another thing we have to do is end the Paulson-Bush Plan. The biggest disappointment with President Obama is the carry-forward of pouring money into these inept, mismanaged companies. We have to send these companies down the GM-Chrysler route. The entity is legally insolvent, the government won’t force them into bankruptcy but will put them through the normal FDIC receivership process. This means senior management gets fired. The board of directors gets fired. Shareholders get the, “Sorry you invested in a really crappy company that went broke so you’re wiped out.” We looks at the remaining assets, wipe out the debt. Debtholders get the “Sorry you’re screwed.” We toss all these toxic assets off the books and sell what’s left to somebody else or spin it off as a public entity. Whatever revenue we generate is essentially left over for the bond holders. Then we close down the company.
I suspect this is a real possibility for Citigroup. If there is any faltering of the economy 6 months from now, Citigroup is going to be right back to the well asking for another $45 billion dollars. I hope the government says, “No, if you’re insolvent then there is a process and this [begging for taxpayer dollars] isn’t it.”
Damien: Actually, in the last full chapter of your book, I thought you did a very good job of explaining the fear of nationalization and what it would look like to clean up this mess in a clean, healthy economic way.
Barry: Real capitalists liquidate. faux-capitalists ask for bailout. Real capitalists nationalize. We’re not talking about Argentina. We’re talking about if you’re insolvent. Look at what happened with Washington Mutual — which is my favorite example. One Friday afternoon, the FDIC determined Washington Mutual was insolvent. Over the weekend they did exactly what I just explained: they fire management, get rid of the board, wipe out their shareholders, sell everything that is left minus the bad debts to JP Morgan for a couple billion dollars, and that revenue goes to the bondholders. On the following Monday, if you were a Washington Mutual accountholder, you go to your bank and it’s as if nothing happened. The only difference is if you happened to go to a Chase Bank — which happens to be owned by JP Morgan also — you weren’t charged a $2 ATM fee. The process was that transparent!
We could do the same thing with a Citigroup or Bank of America. We essentially turn them around and say, “We’re sorry you’re insolvent,” and they go through the process. We sell off the pieces. If you can’t find a buyer for the core Citigroup business — which will at that point be clean and well-capitalized and not have all these toxic assets on the books — you spit it out as an IPO. Between the name and the lack of toxic debt on the books, we end up with a company that has real value instead of being a zombie. That’s the solution.
Damien: Sounds like a good solution.
Barry: Unfortunately, no one has the testicular fortitude to step up and do it. That seems to be the real problem. “Oh my god, we cannot put Citigroup out of business.” No, no, no! We’re not putting Citigroup out of business. They put themselves out of business. We’re following the law. The company is insolvent. We’re putting them into receivership. That’s the rule of law. It’s simple. We take these guys and we do what we have to do with them. It’s not that complicated, and yet we seem to be making it very complicated.
Damien: In a world where the solution is not that complicated, how do you recommend your investors at FusionIQ proceed in an environment like this where common sense is being suspended in the name of politics?
Barry: We’re actually about 70% long, 30% cash. Although, that was before the market dropped another 100 points today. We let the market stop us out of positions. That is how we get out. The flip side of this is you turn around and look at what is working. In our case, it’s been primarily technology as well as small industrial companies or large industrial companies such as Joy Global (JOYG). We bought Yahoo (YHOO) a couple months ago when it was considerably cheaper. Yahoo looked attractive mathematically and everyone had been fired who said, “No” to Microsoft’s buyout offer. So, the thought process was that someone would come along and ultimately buy Yahoo. Beyond those picks, in general, you have to use a disciplined approach. You have to stick to your model. If it works great. If the trade doesn’t work, then honor the stop loss and move on.

Barry's firm: FusionIQ
Damien: Are there any other picks or sectors that you would be willing to share?
Barry: We’ve been long Advanced Micro Devices, eBay, Yahoo, Joy Global, Maxim Semiconductor and other names like that where the technicals look good and the fundamentals aren’t awful. These are profitable companies without a lot of debt. AMD is borderline profitable. You limit yourself to your strengths and stay away from things that aren’t within your expertise. That work for us and I think that will work for most people.
Damien: I appreciate you sharing those picks and the advice.
Barry: There are two caveats I’m never allowed to say on TV but really should be allowed to. One is, on Wall Street if you’re .350 hitter you’re an all-star. People seem to think that every pick works out. However, more than the majority of picks don’t work out. Therefore, it is incredibly important for the second point, which is assume you’re going to be wrong. Have a stop-loss or some sell discipline in place. When it’s apparent that something isn’t working out, just move out. That means just sell it and re-deploy capital elsewhere. Don’t just marry a position. Bill Miller was a great trader for many years. But it seems that his model says if something isn’t working and it’s going lower, buy more. He did that with Freddie Mac and got killed.
Damien: Actually, I trade, so I’m a huge proponent of that philosophy. It is the cornerstone of my survival. I always think of the saying, “If there is something wrong with a stock, get out because you can always get back in.”
Barry: Right. You buy it cheaper, who cares!
Damien: If you stay married to it, it can go down forever.

Source: Barron's
Barry: Yet, most of Wall Street to be fully invested, long only. That seems to be a complete and total waste of time [laughing]. That’s how most of the system is set up. It’s astonishing!
Damien: The danger of marriage is evidenced by the graph I think you took from Brian Shannon, where he posted the S&P from 1973 through now.
Barry: Also, one of my favorites is ‘66-’82. I bring that up all the time. In 15 years we were flat on a nominal basis, but on an inflation-adjusted basis — a real basis — you lost 90% of your value. That’s a horrible return! [Laughing]
Damien: I don’t think ‘horrible’ is a bad enough word for that.
Barry: Yeah, down 90%. But hey, you’re fully invested. You’re a long term investor. Well, you better be because after 15 years you’ve been destroyed!
Damien: You’d be fully invested like that if you were holding WorldCom or Lehman. You’d be fully invested until you were taking the tax loss.
Barry: That’s right. Hey, this was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed this and we’ll do it again some other time in the future.
Damien: Sounds like a plan. Barry, thanks so much!
Barry: Anytime. Thank you.
Click here to learn more about Barry and his excellent firm FusionIQ.