Tag Archive | "Bailout Nation"

First Amendment Award for Outstanding Journalism: Best Book Bailout Nation


First Amendment Award 2009 Bailout NationMany authors, journalists, and publicists have asserted causes for the financial crisis and stock market crash of 2008. However, none have done as comprehensive a job as Barry Ritholtz in his Mount Everest view of how it all went down: Bailout Nation.

Bailout Nation avoids all the disingenuous blame-shifting onto specific political parties or individuals. Instead, the surprisingly easy-to-read overview has the balls to publish the entire laundry list of culprits and variables. If you are interested in Truth rather than fancy academic erudition or rhetorical smoke and mirrors, Bailout Nation will fill your brain with the equivalent of a nutritious gourmet meal.

I reviewed Bailout Nation back in May, calling the book “Required reading for every U.S. citizen.” Since then, Barry’s praiseworthy display of authorship has received world-class reviews such as:

“If you want to know how we got into this mess and what might still be coming, this is the book for you.” ~ The Wall Street Journal

“Mr. Ritholtz has written an important book about a complicated subject, and yet you could still read it at the beach.” ~ New York Times

We are proud to select Bailout Nation as the inaugural winner of our Best Book award. We are confident Barry gives financial authors something to aspire to for next year. Let’s just hope the subject has to do with the greatest ever economic recovery …

Damien Hoffman: Barry, when I interviewed you in early July you were awaiting some big book reviews. Since then I saw great reviews in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and New York Times. Can you share how it feels to get world-class recognition for your reporting?

Barry: Damien, it is very gratifying! I sat alone in an office and pounded out 300 pages and wondering if anyone would to appreciate it. From that perspective, the recognition was been wonderful. But, there is also a frustration to the whole process. I wrote the book for two primary reasons: one, this was an area I was studying and researching and knew very well, and two, there is an amazing amount of misinformation out there, and I wanted to set the record straight.

Mark Twain was reputed to have said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”  There is, unfortunately, a lot of truth to that.Bailout Nation Stats

Damien: If you were giving this award to a fellow author, to whom would you give it and why?

Barry: I have to plead nolo contendre. Usually, I blow thru a book or three each month. However, this year I have only read three books so far — Carl Hiassen, Roger Lowenstein, and a book of short Sci-Fi stories — none of which were current.

Blame it on Bailout Nation: I spent the past year researching, writing, and editing. Also, I didn’t want to read anyone else on the same subject for obvious reasons. All thee reading I did was historical research — Bailout! about the Chrysler rescue in 1980, Black Monday about the ‘87 [stock market] crash, and When Genius Failed about the implosion of Long Term Capital Management. Again, none of these are very current.

With that said, I have a huge queue of books to keep me company on planes. Ask me again in December!

Damien: For those authors aspiring to win this award next year, can you offer some advice?

Barry: This was my first book. I kinda got lucky as to the timing, and the good reception might have been a function of the timing. So, I may be the wrong guy to give any advice to aspiring writers. The only thing I can say is write what you know and focus on what interests you. Otherwise, for me, I might as well have been an unhappy 13-year old doing an unpleasant homework assignment.

Damien: That’s good advice for keeping the passion needed to write a great book. Speaking of, can we expect another book from you in the future?

Barry: The distant future! Writing this book was a sonuva-bitch. I need three years to recover …

Damien: That should give you enough time for the next interesting story to hit Wall Street. Until then, we wish you the best Barry and will keep up with your outstanding reporting at your blog The Big Picture.

Required Reading for Every US Citizen

Required Reading for Every US Citizen

Barry: Outstanding! Thank you very much for this award. I’m honored.

For more information about Bailout Nation, please visit: bailoutnation.net

If you would like to nominate a person or media outlet for a First Amendment Award for Outstanding Journalism, please click here.

If you are interested in real-time market analysis, click here to follow Wall St. Cheat Sheet on Twitter.

Check out the other First Amendment Award winners:

First Amendment Award for Outstanding Journalism: Best Blog Zero Hedge

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Buzz This
Vote on DZone
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Kick It on DotNetKicks.com
Shout it
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)




Posted in Awards, First Amendment AwardComments (12)

Book Review: Bailout Nation


Required Reading for Every US Citizen

Required Reading for Every US Citizen

As of the end of spring 2009, I still get carpet bombed with the same question: “How did this financial crisis happen?” No matter how many times I repeat the same two minute recap, apparently people need to see the facts in print (to their credit, the story does have a lot of actors, locations, and other variables). Alas, the savior to your dry mouth and bewildered faces has arrived: Barry Ritholtz’s Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy.

Bailout Nationis the Educated Idiot’s Guide to the Financial Crisis. Barry does an excellent job of chronologically tracing through the history of economic cycles, the greedy a*holes who always destroy asset prices, and the ignorant elected/appointed officials who amplify the destruction. He shows us how we started snowboarding down a slippery slope (without a helmet) when the government bailed out the first private corporation, Lockheed Aircraft, ruined by so-called captains of industry. He gently guides us through the creation and mechanisms of the Federal Reserve. He cites speeches in which Fed Reserve Chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke completely contradict themselves. He points out that the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2002 “removed derivatives and credit default swaps [the financial weapons of mass destruction that torched the global financial system] from any and all state and federal regulatory oversight.” He objectively reveals that “the tragic financial events of 2008 and 2009 are not an unfortunate accident. Rather, they are the results of a conscious SEC decision to allow these firms to legally violate net capital rules that had existed for decades, limiting broker-dealers’ debt-to-net-capital ratio to 12-to-1 [and subsequently allowing them to lever up 30, 35, even 40 to 1].” And then, like Great Grand-Pappy who lived through the first Great Depression, he gives it to us with the simplest of common sense:

“There was a reason why some people in the past had been denied credit: They simply could not afford the homes they tried to purchase. Any mortgage structure that ignores the borrower’s ability to service the loan is destined for failure.”

If you watch too much CNN or FOX news, or you religiously follow one political party, you will need to keep some horse-sized blinders nearby as you are enlightened to the numerous facts that get covered in a dung pile of spin by tabloid imbeciles on the major networks. But if you genuinely want to see the truth in all its naked glory, then prepare for an adventurous trip explained by a master story-teller.

Successful hedge fund manager Bill Fleckenstein’s Foreword summarizes the book perfectly:

“This book is the history of how the United States evolved from a rugged, independent nation to a soft Bailout Nation, one in which too few question why we ask the taxpayers ‘to allow financial firms to self-regulate, but then pony up trillions to bail them out.’”

Although I don’t want to give too much more summary of Barry’s book, I will say he is one of the few who thoroughly show how everyone is to blame. In the media, the politicians blame Wall St., Wall St. blames the public, and the public blames the political party they didn’t vote for. The beauty of Barry’s book is once we truly understand the causes of our economic problems (which lead to social and household problems), we can start addressing how to prevent this repetitive cycle from perpetuating. Armed with the facts from Bailout Nation,we can prevent crises before they happen rather than wasting precious time and money cleaning up after unnecessary shit storms. I am part of a generation that has lived through two bubbles and market crashes since graduating college. If we are to have any faith the system is worth working for, we must end this pattern. We all know what Pavlov proved.

Barry’s keen insights, thorough lawyerly research, and witty explanations make this book a must-read. In fact, I expect college professors to utilize the book as a great tool to educate students in an entertaining way. For example, Barry is full of sweet one-liners such as “If you could fog a mirror, you qualified for a mortgage.” Sad, but true.

Although the release of the book was a tad delayed (because original publisher McGraw-Hill didn’t want Barry to expose subsidiary Standard & Poor’s key role in the crisis), it’s the perfect summer read for those who are looking for thought provoking knowledge wrapped in a “who done it” suspense tale. Unfortunately, this comic tragedy has affected real people in the real world.

matrix-red-blue-pill

In the movie The Matrix, the protagonist Neo is offered an existential choice: take a red pill and enter the world of truth, or take the blue pill and return to the ignorant world of lies. If you are ready to jump in to the truth with eyes wide open, read the red book (it’s really red) and follow Barry down the rabbit hole. You will be glad you did. Like Morpheus said to Neo in the Matrix: Welcome to the Real World …

If you are interested in real-time market analysis and trades, click here to follow me on Twitter.

Craving more Book Reviews? Try these posts:

Book Review: Technical Analysis Using Multiple Timeframes

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Buzz This
Vote on DZone
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Kick It on DotNetKicks.com
Shout it
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)




Posted in Featured, ReviewsComments (8)

Exclusive Interview (Pt. 2): Macro-Strategist Barry Ritholtz


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 R Quote Part 2

Barry Ritholtz

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.

chain gangAt 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?

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

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

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.Mini Ad Premium 2

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.

Our upcoming book will feature interviews with stars such as Jim Rogers, Dylan Ratigan, John Mauldin, Dr. Brett Steenbarger, Todd Harrison, and many more. To make a free reservation for your copy from our first printing, simply join our V.I.P. list below:


 

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Buzz This
Vote on DZone
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Kick It on DotNetKicks.com
Shout it
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)




Posted in InterviewsComments (6)

Exclusive Interview (Pt. 1): Macro-Strategist Barry Ritholtz


Barry Ritholtz

Barry Ritholtz

This is Part One of a two part interview with highly acclaimed Macro-Strategist Barry Ritholtz.

In the movie The Matrix, the character Morpheus serves as a guide to reveal objective Truth. Although we are challenged to discover anything objective in the highly subjective, pseudo-scientific field of economics, independent macro-strategist Barry Ritholtz is leading a clique of newly emerging economic realists. I liken this moment to that in which independent record labels such as Sub Pop Records (Nirvana) flanked the major labels to gain mainstream attention. Barry is our Sub Pop.

Although Barry has become increasingly popular over the years, he exploded onto the scene while blogging critical under-reported data during the housing and credit bubbles. While the mainstream media cheered irresponsible borrowing and spending, Barry’s uber-popular The Big Picture blog chronicled the bare facts and logically induced prescient warnings of the inevitable collapse. As a result, Barry had the rough draft of an indispensable book about the financial crisis and subsequent bailouts.

Despite a political controversy with original publisher McGraw-Hill, Bailout Nation was recently released. I sat down with Barry to discuss his career, his cross-disciplinary framework, his ballsy indictment of the crooks who perpetrated “the greatest heist ever made,” the legal training that helped his efforts, some legendary stories, and his outlook for the economy.

Barry Ritholtz Quote

Damien Hoffman: Barry, we are both lawyers by training. What caused you to also forgo a legal career in favor of finance?Barry Ritholtz Quick Stats

Barry: Mostly other lawyers [both laugh]. I actually enjoyed law school and just found myself not loving being a lawyer. One day about 20 years ago I ended up doing a deal closing at a friend’s trading shop. I got a tour of the trading room and basically I said, “This stuff looks like Nintendo for money.” And that was pretty much it. I was hooked. It didn’t take much.

Damien: Was that before or after the stock market crash in 1987?

Barry: It was after the crash in ‘87. Remember, that event was only a correction [laughing] … or so we were told. And in hindsight, turns out that conclusion was pretty close to accurate. The market finished the year up — which people seem to forget. After a 16-year bear market, you end up with a situation where the first five years of a rally from those lows got a little ahead of themselves. Not surprisingly, we found ourselves with a debacle: creaking internal plumbing in the New York Stock Exchange combined with portfolio insurance (portfolio insurance was, at the time, newfangled derivatives that promised to guarantee against losses). Lo & behold, the crash was one of the exceptions: a true correction that did not spill over into the broader economy.

Damien: Did you enter the trading business then, coming off the ‘87 lows?

Barry: No. I wish. I got into the trading business a couple years later. I graduated law school in ‘89 and practiced for a couple of years. Then I made the switch to finance in the early to mid ’90s. I started out in the business as a trader.

Damien: Did you have a specific methodology at that point with the legal background?

Barry: I knew trading was very challenging, but couldn’t figure why some people did well and others did poorly. Right from the beginning, I started trying to figure out what made better traders and what made worse traders. I ended up looking at a lot of different strategies and styles, but always with a very skeptical, mathematical approach that needed to be proven to me — just show it to me mathematically. My undergraduate work was both physics and applied mathematics. Then, in my fifth year of college I switched to Poly Sci just to graduate and get the hell out.

Now add a lawyer’s skepticism — which as you know you can’t just say something is, you have to demonstrate and prove it. So when you approach things with both of those philosophies, you end up with a very unusual approach. You don’t take things for granted. That leads you to being a little skeptical when someone says, “Hey, buy these stocks cause the P/E is low.” It makes me say, “Well, why do we want to own low P/E stocks? Are these always the better stocks?” We found out the answer was “no” — as with the homebuilders in 2005, the commercial banks in 2006, and the investment banks in 2007. The original claim was a canard. There are lots of those on Wall Street. So, going from a trader to a researcher to a strategist required me to identify these myths of Wall Street and figure out what was right and wrong. It was a major process.

Damien: So do you like to start with your lawyer’s mind and look into things from a fundamental perspective, break them down and come up with your trading ideas first, then move over to the more mathematical, technical side to decide entries and exit points? Or do you like to look at charts first and then be the lawyer and do the investigative due diligence on the company?

Barry: We start from the bottom up. We look at what sectors are doing well and what stocks in those sectors are doing well. We look at what is quantitatively highly ranked in our system and what is poorly ranked in our system. And then I layer the legal approach — the critical reasoning and analytical thinking — on top of the math. That’s how I understand why is this sector doing well or poorly.

A perfect example is the homebuilder stocks in 2005. Every time someone would say homebuilders are cheap based on Price Earnings (P/E), our firm would come back and say rates were low and going higher,  and profits were at all-time highs. Therefore it’s hard to imagine that cyclically the stocks were going to stay elevated forever. Also home sales were at record highs relative to population. Why would we expect this cycle to not turn? So, everything we looked at in the homebuilders from a top-down perspective had us concluding, “Gee, this is really unlikely to continue.”

But the math got us looking at the homebuilders. Same thing elsewhere. We had pretty aggressive sells and short sells on Bear Stearns, Lehman, AIG, and Fannie Mae. It wasn’t that we were rocket scientists on this. These things had popped up in our system as very poorly ranked and having been higher ranked fairly recently. So then we tried to figure out what was the issue. Eventually that led us to AIG carrying a lot of derivatives that were potentially problematic. In August 2008, I was on a Bloomberg television show when AIG earnings came out. That was the day their earnings were delayed for about 15 minutes. Never a good sign.

Damien: Unless you’re short.

Barry: [Laughing] I have the producer of the show in my ear saying, “You gotta stretch it out. The earnings still haven’t come out.” I didn’t even want to do the earnings because it’s a 50/50 thing whether they beat or miss. Our firm was short AIG. We were pretty confident they were going to stink up the joint. But we didn’t expect a complete and total meltdown. So for 15 minutes the anchor is like, “Why are you guys short AIG?” I said, “Well, we think they are not managing their risk well in the financial products division. Their hedge within AIG is a potential disaster. Obviously, the market has been sniffing something because AIG was a $70 stock and it’s now $35. We think it goes lower from here.” The experience was fascinating. When the numbers finally came out, the anchor misread them. She said, “Oh this is a big upside surprise! AIG lost 67 cents and analysts were expecting 55 cents.” I said, “No, no. They lost more money! This isn’t a good thing. This is a bad thing! They were supposed to make 55 cents but they lost 67 cents!” She said, “Oh. Oh, there’s a dollar swing. That’s huge.” Or whatever the numbers were. I can’t recall exactly. Anyway, that is a classic example of the math identifying a problematic sector or a problematic stock, then having to do the homework and figure out what the math means. Sometimes we’re wrong on the explanation. But as long as the math is correct, the trade is very forgiving.

Damien: When you say “the math,” do you mean the technicals and price of the stock action?

Barry: Our firm, FusionIQ, literally runs a quantitative research tool that takes 8,000 stocks and ranks them from 0 to 100 based on 15 metrics we’ve back-tested. The metrics are a combination of things like short-term and medium-term trends, institutional ownership, money flow, short interest relative to the group, etc. We put a numerical ranking on all these stocks. That is how we end up with a 0 to 100. That is what I mean by “the math.” Then on top of that we overlay an algorithm that generates a buy or sell signal depending on a number of factors. We use that system as a basis of our asset management. Last year, 2008, with the market down 42%, our long-only accounts lost about 8%. In a normal year that’s disastrous. But when the market gets practically cut in half, being down single digits is not too shabby.

Damien: It’s incredible.

Barry: And that’s just running with a lot of risk management and awareness that, “Gee, the market was rolling over. This is not the ideal environment in which to be long.” So you raise cash and find the sectors that are not only going to outperform relatively, but also do better. Sometimes we get it more right than others. But in 2008 we did a nice job in terms of preserving our client’s capital.

Truth-seeker Morpheus from The Matrix

Truth-seeker Morpheus from The Matrix

Damien: That is really interesting, Barry. While reading your blog for the past four years I get the feeling there are two Barrys. First there is trader Barry who is very aligned with the FusionIQ system. Then there is econ Barry who is the pragmatic, skeptical economist posting why the government numbers are wrong and the National Association for Real Estate Agents is spinning their data. I always thought the blend of the two made you an economic realist because you kept a focus on the reality of the markets and the raw data while not spinning. Is your investing and trading framework a blend of the two Barrys?

Barry: They’re two sides of the same coin. In fact, this is related to the way we came up with the name Fusion. My partners and I have been on Wall Street for a good chunk of years. One of them worked at Morgan Stanley for quite a while. The other has always been on the research side. We couldn’t help but notice that research from traditional Wall Street firms was sometimes really good, and sometimes really awful. We couldn’t figure out which analysts we should listen to. At the same time, we noticed some of the technicians were really good. However, there was a weird phenomenon almost like declaring a major or finding a religion. Some people were technicians and others were fundamentalists, and never the twain shall meet.

Well, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. We’re agnostic. If something works, we’ll use it. If you can come up with a good fundamental basis for why a certain stock is going to do well, why ignore that? But on the other hand, we know stocks that go up tend to keep going up, and stocks that go down tend to keep going down. So, why ignore trends? Why not make that a significant part of a model? We know sometimes we could use a combination of charts and sentiment data.

My favorite example comes from my partner Kevin Lane who is a very well-regarded technician. When Enron was in the high $80s he very famously said just about every Wall Street analyst had a “Strong Buy” or a “Buy” [rating] on the stock. All the institutions had a 93-94% ownership. In terms of institutional ownership, that’s as high as it gets. So, who’s left to come in and buy? Why shouldn’t someone be able to use those elements in an analysis? So, the idea behind Fusion was we were going to use the technicals and the fundamentals, then include them in a purely objective mathematical ranking.

Damien: What about Barry the economist? The Barry who relentlessly tracks economic data releases?

Barry: When I look at economic data I think I approach it more as a statistician than as an economist. I ask, “What do these numbers really mean? How can I contextualize them? How can I figure out their significance?” My favorite recent example is new home sales. Today is the first month when new home sales have come out with a margin of error less than the actual number. Meaning, until now, every month we see an uptick in new home starts or permits around 3-4% with a margin of error of 14%. Therefore, we have no idea what the hell’s going on! Are we up or down? There is no context if the margin of error is greater than the actual data point. Well, it is not statistically significant. So, the current plus 17% — up from record lows — just means things have gone down so far they were just due for a bounce. Plus 17% was actually better than the 14% margin of error. So, for the first time in who knows how long, we actually had a monthly data point which was higher than the statistical error. Oh, by the way, year-over-year we’re down 47% which means housing is still awful!

Damien: But we’re beating the margin of error …

Barry: [Laughing] But, we have to be willing to look at month-to-month data as well as the margin of error and annual numbers that do a nice job staying away from the seasonality adjustments. The math really affects the ability to say, “Is this number real? What does it mean? How significant is it?” Also, I’m a big fan of behavioral economics. I get skeptical when people start getting crazy excited over one data point. Hey, a single data point does not make a trend. But latching onto a single data point is a function of things like the recency effect. The recency effect occurs when we latch onto the most recent data and put too much stress on it. For example, if we’ve seen a bunch of positive numbers that were followed by 5 negative numbers, there is a tendency to latch onto the recent negative data. There is a whole bunch of psychological foibles like that.

So, to some degree, if you want to be a good investor you not only have to be an accountant, but you also have to be a mathematician, a psychologist, and a historian. You must have the ability to think from a lot of different fields to look at what each data point really means. You must ask, “What do these numbers really mean that come out each month? Are they significant? Are they not?” And you could do the same analysis with individual stocks. It doesn’t have to be only economic releases.

Damien: Do you admire certain economists or other people who use your cross-disciplinary approach?

Barry: Absolutely. Noticing the good guys is something that has gotten lost in the whole debacle and finger-pointing at Wall Street. First, within Wall Street there was only a small handful or percentage of people that screwed the pooch. Look at AIG. It has about 40,000 employees, but only 300 people in the division that brought the company down. When you look at Merrill Lynch, at one point in time they had 16,000 brokers and 50,000 employees. Again only a handful of people, about 500 people in the mortgage and derivatives department, brought Merrill down. You could go company by company and find the same pattern. A teeny-tiny percentage capsize the entire ship.

But, one of the things I’ve loved about Wall Street is people are incredibly generous with their time and expertise. Whether it’s guys like Doug Kass, Jim Bianco, or David Rosenberg, there are a lot of people who are especially realists. I mean I could give you a run of guys who I have been reading for years. I just think these guys get ‘It’. They don’t get sucked into the spin. They’re not cheerleaders. They call it as they see it. A lot of these guys also publish at my blog [The Big Picture].

When it comes to banking analysts, you are not going to do any better than Chris Whalen and Josh Rosner. These guys have been dead right on everything with banking. I also look at guys like Rosenberg or technical guys like John Roque. His big picture views have been really, really good. There is a great book out from years ago called ‘When to Sell’ by Justin Mamis. I also recommend his subscription list if you are lucky enough to get on. It’s not cheap, but he basically has a fabulous feel for real short-term market moves. When you contact these people and ask them questions they are just unbelievably generous with their time and insights. That is one of the really great things about Wall Street. There is this a mentoring relationship you can develop with people — and they’re top notch. My biggest concern about the collapse of the big Wall Street firms is that the mentoring might go away. Although, most of the guys I named were all at big firms earlier in their career and are now at independents or their own firms. So, hopefully that [mentoring] tradition will continue.

Damien: Given that we’re at the beginning of the Information Age and great people who are doing great work can find better ways to distribute more honest information, how much longer do you think the government and other institutions can manipulate economic data? Do you think the economic realists will shift the balance of power over time, or do you think we are destined to live in a propagandous environment?

Barry: I’m not sure the problem is as much propaganda as a noisy data flow. For example, there was clearly an issue with the Establishment Survey at the start of the recovery. There are two surveys for unemployment: one is the Establishment Survey and the other is a Household Survey. So, one of them measures tax receipts to determine the number of people working, and the other is a survey where they ask households, “Are you working? have you been working? etc.” At the start of recessions the Establishment Survey lags the system and the household survey picks up reality first. So, they attempt to correct this issue with an artificial birth-death adjustment. This was a credible attempt to try to make up for the lag error. The problem is they simply do a poor job modeling it.

For example, during the past two years we’ve seen the birth-death adjustment show a lot of new jobs in finance and construction. We know this is absolutely absurd. In fact, in 2007 we changed from a purely measured or 92% measured data point in the non-farm payroll to 75% of new jobs being attributed to the birth-death adjustment. The birth-death adjustment is a derivative of how many new companies are incorporating in various states, then determining how many people are working relative to that. Therefore, these are people who either started new companies or got laid off and went the independent route. There is a huge difference between working for a company and getting a steady paycheck, then being an independent contractor who may or may not get paid. It’s going to impact the way you shop for a car, house, or whatever. That’s why you want to know the non-farm payroll changes and not just to slap a number on it.

But what does this mean for future economic activity? I find the data is less overtly manipulated and more screwed by politics and shitty models. The economists create models and the bosses — entities like the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis — are politicians. They don’t want to show very bad data. So, there is a lot of pressure to make their models a little prettier.

All models are wrong, but not completely worthless. Anytime you are going to attempt to depict reality with a mathematical construct, the model will never be precise. The questions are, “Is the model accurate and precise? How consistently does it miss the mark and how close does it come to the mark? Is it random?” So, there is a lot of math explaining why these models are only mediocre.

Unfortunately, they are the best we have and you want to make them better. But, I look at them very much askance because the way the politicians and others take the output of those models. They take the output and spin it as best they can because they really think, “If I could just build up the confidence of the public, they will go out shopping [laughing].” They pretend you could take a house with rotting timbers and main beams, slap on a coat of white paint, some shutters and flowers, and everything will be lovely. That doesn’t work. You have to fix what is wrong fundamentally before you start working on the confidence. The confidence takes care of itself. Things get better and confidence just works.

Damien: If the government hired you and sent you in with a team to work on some of these models, do you think the political pressure would still be there, thus continuing to cause a lot of these problems?

Barry: Well, the pressure would not be on me, but whoever comes after me [laughing]. If they hire me they know what they are getting. They are getting someone who is going to say, “Let’s go back to the Boskin Commission.” The Boskin Commission determined inflation was overstated by one-point-something percent and they came up with some hair brain ways of lowering it. For example, when steak goes up in price and a consumer purchases chicken instead of steak, the economists call that ‘substitution’. Therefore, the Boskin Commission says this substitution doesn’t reflect a price increase in the basket of goods that that consumer purchased. Thus, they say inflation is moderate.

Now, anybody else would look at that and say, “No, you stupid sons of bitches. I was just priced out of steak and now I’m buying the cheaper meat because I can’t afford the more expensive meat.” Anybody with two eyes and a brain should be able to figure that out. Boskin is obviously sheer absolute and unmitigated nonsense. If steak goes up in price, that’s inflation by definition. The fact that I can no longer afford steak doesn’t mean I’m buying something else or there’s no inflation. It means I’ve been priced out of that product!

I hold Boskin indirectly responsible for the whole credit collapse and the entire stock market crash because his lame hair brained rationales for understating inflation

Required Reading for Every US Citizen

Required Reading for Every US Citizen

gave Greenspan the ability to say, “Well, rates are dangerously low back in ‘01, ‘02, ‘03, but look inflation is contained so it’s really not too bad.” I make that connection in the book [Bailout Nation] in a chapter called ‘Strange Connections, Unintended Consequences.’ The chapter explains how all these weird things took place and they all ended up having extremely bizarre consequences. Boskin is a perfect example.

Hedonic adjustments are another example. I think there is a terrible mistake economists make: they don’t understand technology. They don’t understand the life cycle of a new technology that comes out and there are economies of scale unfolding. For example, when the first plasma screen came out it was $100,000 and eight of them were sold. They cost that much because only eight of them were sold. Then, you build a factory and amortize the cost of the factory, and a few years later you are selling 10,000 of these things a year. Now they are going for $10,000 and $12,000. Then, a few years later you’ve gone from a small factory to a big factory and are selling a million of these a year. At this point plasmas are down to $6,000 a piece.

So, you had the early adopters who were unsure about the technology but bought it. Then you had the later adopters. Fast forward a few years later until finally the item becomes a mainstream product and you have huge factories all over the place. You are cranking out 100 million of these a year and these 50″ plasmas are going for under $1,000. The economists would have you believe this is proof inflation is contained. However, in reality the product cycle is a normal, natural cycle for all technologies and has nothing to do with inflation. This cycle happened with the cell phone, the iPod, PCs, laptops, etc. The cycle doesn’t mean that there is less inflation. The cycle means there is a normal life cycle of a product.

Meanwhile, you’re buying all these goods that didn’t exists 20 years ago. You didn’t have an iPod, an iPhone or a plasma screen. So, you are actually spending more of your discretionary income on all these toys. All the economists listening to this are going to say, “No. He’s wrong. Those are prices coming down. It’s deflationary.” I disagree. This stuff happens with every technology. It doesn’t matter what is going on with the money supply, the deficit, issuing dollars, etc. Every product goes through that life cycle. It’s normal and natural. It sure as hell isn’t deflationary. When something new comes out, you can expect that eventually — as it goes from a limited custom product to a more luxury product, to a more mainstream product, to a ubiquitous product — the economies of scale bring the price down. I don’t believe we can accurately describe that  process as deflationary or disinflationary.

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?Mini Ad Premium 2

Several days from now, in Part 2 of the interview with Barry Ritholtz, Barry’s wit and humor tackle the following:

  • His advice for young econ students;
  • His legendary stories from the housing and credit bubbles;
  • His book Bailout Nation and the reaction to the release;
  • His vision of Wall Street’s future;
  • His personal line of demarcation between tragic truth and fringe conspiracy theory;
  • His thoughts on how the U.S. can reclaim economic greatness;
  • His recommendations for investors; and,
  • His top stock picks from Barry’s outperforming firm FusionIQ.

Read Part 2 of our interview with Barry now:

Barry Ritholtz: Part 2

Our upcoming book will feature interviews with stars such as Jim Rogers, Dylan Ratigan, John Mauldin, Dr. Brett Steenbarger, Todd Harrison, and many more. To make a free reservation for your copy from our first printing, simply join our V.I.P. list below:


 

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Buzz This
Vote on DZone
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Kick It on DotNetKicks.com
Shout it
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)




Posted in InterviewsComments (19)

Chart Junkie: A Picture’s Worth … 6.22.09


Chart Junkie

Welcome to our first installment of Chart Junkie: A Picture’s Worth …

Chart Junkie will be a weekly series sharing some of the best charts and graphics we find on the web. However, this is also an interactive series because without your help we can’t possibly find all the vein-popping visuals. So, if you’d like to nominate a chart or graphic for our weekly post, please pass that dankness over here to charts@wallstcheatsheet.com

Now without further ado, let’s take a step back and admire the canvases of the week:

@vixandmore

Seasonality is something all traders and investors must consider. Above are the seasons of change for fear/pessimism. (Source: Vix and More)

bailoutnationchart-500
1 Year of Bailout Costs vs. 206 years of Historic Event Costs

This is the definition of “cost center.” Puts our costs perspective. (Source: The Big Picture)

Correlation Between S&P 500 and US Dollar
Correlation Between S&P 500 and US Dollar

The US Dollar has guided the S&P 500 (SPY). While betting, keep an eye on this tell. (Source: Quantifiable Edges)

S&P 500 4/02/02 to 12/29/03
S&P 500 4/02/02 to 12/29/03

Where are we now? A nice look at bear market reaction to 200 Day Moving Average. (Source: Minyanville)

dow_12month_rolling_return

This “old” chart shows probablities for longer term returns if you got long at the extreme historical lows. (Source: Howard Lindzon)

Who Is Coming to the US
Who Is Coming to the US

Good investors stay atune to macro themes such as shifting demographics. (Source: GOOD)

Do you have a dank chart worthy of a Chart Junkie? If so, email the link to: charts@wallstcheatsheet.com

(Note: DO NOT send us files. We will not open the email!)

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Buzz This
Vote on DZone
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Kick It on DotNetKicks.com
Shout it
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)




Posted in Chart JunkieComments (5)

Shittibank


shittibank_tCitibank $C is the poster child for shitty banks. Under Sandy Weill’s command, a once normal-sized banking entity became a Frankenstein conglomerate resembling a bureaucratic jigsaw puzzle. The C-level execs and investment bankers siphoned billions from the bank’s revenue stream during the deal-making frenzy. Shareholders haven’t fared as well. The stock is back to the same price as before Black Monday in 1987 (down ~94% from 2000 highs of $58.39).

Today Reuters reported: “Citigroup Inc began a long-delayed $58 billion stock swap on Wednesday that is expected to make the U.S. government the bank’s largest shareholder by far with a 34 percent stake.” Another chapter for Barry Ritholtz’s Bailout Nation is in the works. Now, as US citizens, we can factually claim that we all own the largest share of the shittiest bank in the known universe: Shittibank.

Our friends over at Wall St. Parodies have created some witty paraphernalia as social commentary. We just ordered some sweet Shittibank t-shirts, stickers, and two coffee mugs. We hope you too will join the movement to speak the truth about this shitty situation and our new household ownership of Shittibank. A Tea Party only lasts a few hours. Poignant paraphernalia lasts a lifetime …

ws-parody-ad-300x250-3

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Buzz This
Vote on DZone
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Kick It on DotNetKicks.com
Shout it
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)




Posted in SatireComments (2)

Film Review: I.O.U.S.A


iousaToday Bloomberg reported: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said large U.S. budget deficits threaten financial stability and the government can’t continue indefinitely to borrow at the current rate to finance the shortfall. Since most of our citizens still haven’t figured out that 13 minus 11 equals fiscal destruction, it’s a great time to watch and recommend the outstanding film I.O.U.S.A.

The film breaks down our fiscal crisis into four severe deficits:

  1. The Federal Budget Deficit
  2. The Savings Deficit
  3. The Trade Deficit, and
  4. The Leadership Deficit

The first section explains that when our government spends more money than it earns, financial and social instability is inevitable. Apparently, like any genuine addict, our entire society is living in denial about the effects of our Federal Budget Deficit. The older generations are enjoying government services which will be paid for by their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Their actions say: “Your financial slavery to our national debt (to be paid for with future taxes) is not my concern.” As one person says in the film, it’s analogous to an individual running up a huge credit card debt and then leaving it to their offspring when they die. Selfish? Irresponsible?

The second section explains the Savings Deficit. Basically, Americans don’t save money. This behavior directly amplifies the problem with the Federal Budget Deficit because when people don’t have money saved, the government usually ends up paying for things like healthcare, food, shelter, etc. The government could say “F you,” but that leads to social unrest. And the NUMBER ONE thing a government cares about is keeping order. Everything else is a distant second. So, we are in a vicious cycle.

The third section explains the Trade Deficit. Currently, we import and consume more goods than we export and produce. To make up for this deficit, our suppliers lend us money (i.e., they purchase US Treasury Bonds) which the government pumps into the economy. This is like a retailer which gives you a store branded credit card to buy their goods. So long as you can find money from someone else to pay the debt to the retailer, all is swell in Pleasantville. However, when the game of hot potato ends, someone’s hands get burned. In our situation, the more money we borrow from other countries like China, the more of our tax dollars we will send them. Worse, when that process gets maxed out, our creditors will force us to either sell assets (land, houses, cars, etc.) to pay them or simply start selling our debt. If they sell our debt too fast, our currency will lose value. If our currency loses value, inflation sets in. Once this horrible cycle starts, we will all be working much harder to acquire the same things we have now. Not fun.

The final section of the film highlights the bipartisan contribution to our Leadership Deficit. Rather than talk straight about our illness and the prospective paths to fiscal health, FOX News and CNN focus on petty dramas and blameshifting. We have radio talk show hosts and other entertainers heavily influencing both political parties. We have people who are such diehard fans of a political party, that there is no hope of rational conversation. We are at the point where as a country we must realize that governors, presidents, legislators, etc. are people who make mistakes. In this case, they’ve made some huge ones. But, they have the power to fix those mistakes if we focus their election-centric brains on what we need. Unfortunately, like any good parent knows, it’s hard to be the bad guy when the medicine doesn’t taste good. And our current crop of representatives (if they represent our best interests, please shine some light for me) are more interested in their political careers than our country’s well-being. Clearly, this contradiction must be ripped out like the heart of the guy who got sacrificed in the original Indiana Jones.

With all that said, this movie has wonderful charts and graphics to transform complicated realities into simple understandings. I highly recommend this film if you are:

  • interested in transcending partisan politics so our society understands the truth of our problem;
  • explaining our fiscal problems to friends, family, or co-workers;
  • debriefing someone who is an unbeknownst member of the FOX, CNN, or MSNBC cults; or,
  • trying to teach your children fiscal responsibility or simply explain how out national budget is f*ed.

I guarantee that anyone who watches this film will be more enlightened after 125 minutes.

Craving more Reviews? Try these posts:

Book Review: Bailout Nation

Book Review: The WallStrip Edge

Book Review: Technical Analysis Using Multiple Timeframes

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Buzz This
Vote on DZone
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Kick It on DotNetKicks.com
Shout it
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)




Posted in ReviewsComments (3)


Advert

Share Your Thoughts

Is Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg a thief?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...