Madis Senner: Why the Bailout will Fail

Those who know him well regard him as a deceitful, violent, unstable liar who collaborated with the enemy and then postured as a hero. Meet the Real John McCain in this special, subscriber-only issue of CounterPunch newsletter, reported by Alexander Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Clair and Douglas Valentine. Why did Cindy McCain become a drug addict who, Phoenix doctors claim, at least three times sought medical attention for injuries consonant with physical violence? Why did Ron and Nancy Reagan shun him and try to derail his political career? Under the terms of the 14th Amendment is McCain actually barred from ever sitting in the Oval Office? Find the answers in CounterPunch newsletter. Subscribe now. ALSO, read David Price on the incredible case of Nicolas Flattes, whom the US government is trying to blackmail into becoming a spook! Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great presents.

Why the Bailout Will Fail

By MADIS SENNER

Treasury Secretary Paulson’s grand scheme to buy $700 billion of toxic derivatives from ailing financial institutions is a pipe dream that logic and history show will not work. The Paulson plan is nothing but manna from heaven for distressed institutions. No doubt there will be a momentary burst of confidence and markets will rally but longer term serious problems remain.

The bailout is an attempt to bring confidence back to the lending market that has seized up in fear and is not making loans. The concern is that the cessation of liquidity and lending will exacerbate the meltdown on Wall Street and ripple broadly into the economy. The Paulson plan fails to address the issue of fear that is behind the crisis.

History shows the Plan is Doomed to Fail

Over the past few weeks we have been consistently told that we face an epic crisis comparable to the 1929 stock market crash with its ensuing Great Depression of the 1930’s. So why are the lessons of the Great Depression being ignored?

During the Great Depression lending similarly dried up and confidence swooned. Lending and borrowing came to a standstill. The Lesson of the Great Depression was that it is next to impossible to get institutions to lend and companies/consumers to borrow once fear sets in. Renowned economist John Maynard Keynes said that trying to get banks to lend and borrowers to borrow during a banking crisis is like trying to “push on a string”—in other words it is impossible. Similarly in the 1990’s the Bank of Japan found trying to resuscitate lending in the wake of the Japan’s stock market collapse was impossible. The Bank of Japan even went to the extreme of making interest rates negative, in other words they paid you to borrow, and it proved ineffectual.

While pushing on a string refers to monetary policy, which the Fed has kept lose, and the Paulson plan is about buying assets they are similar because they are attempts to get banks to lend. Buying the bad assets of institutions is going to at best provide a temporary return to lending. Ultimately you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink.

“All we to Fear is Fear Itself”

In his first inaugural speech FDR voiced the greatest challenge facing America and the world at the time when he said, “All we have to fear is fear itself”. Today fear has again set into the financial markets and is beginning to spread. Turning this tide is next to impossible.

The market runs from the extremes of greed to fear and once a mentality sets in its stays for a very, very long time. Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Mundell described the renitence of consumers to buy things in the 1930’s as a deflation (falling prices) mentality. Because demand fell off a cliff retailers were forced to reduce prices to sell their products. Consumers eventually realized that by postponing their purchases they could save money. As they held off buying retailers were forced to reduce prices further to entice buyers. This created a self fulfilling spiral pushing prices lower that eventually had many buyers forgoing buying totally.

Admit that Reaganomics and Free Markets Don’t Work
The unfortunate thing is that the Bush Administration and Republicans refuse to admit that the problem we are suffering from today is the failure of free market and Reaganomic ideology. The cause of our current problems from the meltdown on Wall Street, to higher gas prices, to higher food prices can be traced squarely to the failure of free market/neoliberalism/Reaganomics ideology.( See “Higher Gas Prices: The Failure of Free Markets and Reaganomics)

Government needs to regulate and get rid of the excesses created by the free market’s binge of the past few decades. Bold and aggressive initiatives such as the government seizing control of financial institutions are needed at this time. Fear has set in and throwing good money at bad as we have done successively with bailouts since the 1987 stock market crash have not worked. Bailouts create a moral hazard and reckless behavior that necessitate further bailouts where eventually you reach a point where the size of the bailout bill is insurmountable. Today we are being forced to fork over a massive $700 billion.

Capitalism is failing again as it did during the 1930’s with the Great Depression. They say “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.” How many more times will we allow our self to be fooled? Free market ideology does not work! Bold initiatives that empower “we the people” are needed.

Madis Senner is a former global money manager turned faith based activist. His Freedom Global Income Fund was the top performing mutual fund in the late 1980’s. He has written for the NY Times, Barrons and others. He is author of Japanese Euroderivatives (Euromoney 1990). He can be reached at madiss(at)verizon.net.

You Can't Push on a Piece of String, Mr. Paulson

Why the Bailout Will Fail