Those wacky Fed governors are at it
again -- Bullard going on about how housing won't recover for years,
and Williams pounding the table for aggressive stimulation (QE.) Big
surprise, but the dollar is plunging -- even as a House bill is
introduced to strip the Fed of half its mandate (the stimulation half)
and transform it into an inflation fighter/dollar protector only.
In
Williams' back yard, Stockton, CA is mulling bankruptcy. This city of
300,000 souls is California's 13th largest and a hub of the Central
Valley's agricultural activity. From 1998 to 2005, real estate values
tripled. Since then, they've crashed so badly that Forbes considers Stockton
America's "most miserable city." Official unemployment stands at 18.4%,
and the crime rate (2009) earned Stockton the distinction of being
America's 5th most dangerous city. Oddly enough, an $18 million cut to
the police department budget hasn't helped.
If Williams
has his way, the Fed will buy up even more MBS than it already has in
Operation Twist. It will drive down mortgage rates to the point where
buyers will show up in droves, bidding up real estate and saving the
economy. The fly in the ointment, of course, is that lower interest
rates mean a lower dollar. A lower dollar means higher prices for such
luxuries as gas for the Family Truckster (CL topped 109 a few minutes
ago.)
Will the thousands of foreclosed-on families in Stockton (the highest foreclosure rate in the US)
jump back in the market if mortgage rates come down 50 bps? 100 bps?
Will banks suddenly relax their underwriting criteria? Will cities like
Stockton, operating at huge budget deficits thanks, in part, to a
mismatch between property taxes and profligate spending, suddenly wake
from their financial comas?
As Bullard himself said:
"central bankers are having difficulty crafting policy
in this recession and subsequent recovery because this is the first in
which debt levels were too high." Do ya' think? These bozos are caught
between a rock and a hard place that they, themselves, erected. Once
the debt genie is out of the bottle, he's very difficult to stuff back
in. The only solution, as Stockton is learning the hard way, is to reduce the debt to the point where it's consistent with the ability of the underlying asset (the city) to service it.
Whether
you're Stockton, Vallejo, Greece, Portugal or the good ol' US of A,
taking on more debt won't fix the problem of too much debt. At some
point, the lenders who made all those stupid loans are going to have to
face the fact that they made some very bad decisions. They'll have to
accept the inevitable and book the losses that are already hiding in
their phoney baloney balance sheets.
It will be hard.
It will be painful. Most banks, thanks to their servants at the Fed,
will survive. Homeowners, taxpayers and investors will get slammed.
But, hey, with the Dow over 13,000, why should we worry?
