Obama to Back Brown on Battering Bankers

January 13th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

Despite giving Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s idea to introduce a global Tobin Tax, a levy on every currency trade transaction, the shortest and most dismissive of shrift at the last g20 conference, the Obama administration appears ready to join Britain’s efforts to crack down on the banking sector.

According to former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson, the US president has taken the banking sector’s decision to award itself ludicrously huge bonuses this month — instead of using the money to pay back tax payer loans, repair balance sheets, increase small business lending, or pay dividends — as an opportunity to fight back:

The Obama administration tipped its hand today – they are planning a new tax of some form on the banking sector…unfortunately too late to make a difference for the current round of bonuses.

We know there is a G20 process underway looking at ways to measure “excess bank profits” and, with American leadership, this could lead towards a more reasonable tax system for finance. In the meantime, my point is that taxing bonuses – under today’s circumstances – is not as bad as many people argue, particularly as it lets you target the biggest banks.

The prime minister’s and chancellor’s decision to levy a super tax on bonuses looks more and more right every day. One hopes that the rumoured scale of the next round of organised skimming from the banking sector will be the straw the broke the camel’s back and finally lead to serious reform, not just of the wage system, but of the whole sector.

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Political Needs Trump National Interest

January 13th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

Danny Finkelstein uses his column in today’s Times to savage Prime Minister Gordon Brown:

The Chancellor [Alistair Darling] is insisting — as his predecessor Philip Snowden did in 1931, as Roy Jenkins did in 1968, as Denis Healey did in 1976 — that a plan for public expenditure reductions be agreed to retain the confidence of the markets. Gordon Brown — like Arthur Henderson in 1931, Aneurin Bevan in 1951 and Tony Benn and Mr Crosland in 1976 — is resisting. To dress up this resistance as if it was part of some new fangled clever (or even stupid) campaign strategy is to deny the force, the true importance, of what the Prime Minister is doing. It is to end up having a debate about things that really matter (tax, spending, debt, public services) in a sort of code (strategies, dividing lines) that only insiders can understand.

As Chancellor, Mr Brown spent money as if there would never be a bust — an absurd hypothesis. And now, as Prime Minister, he is blocking the measures necessary to put right this error.

For this dispute over public spending is different in one way from any of the past 100 years. The Prime Minister is refusing to support his Chancellor. MacDonald threw away a lifetime’s service to Labour to support Snowden, a man who cordially loathed him. Attlee sided with his Chancellor, Hugh Gaitskell, from his sickbed (“I am afraid they will have to go,” he mumbled to Gaitskell, who at first heard the remark as “very well, you will have to go”). The normally tricksy Harold Wilson gave solid backing to Jenkins. And Callaghan won round the critics by showing that he and his Chancellor were indivisible — if he had not done so, Mr Healey would not have prevailed.

Mr Brown, unlike any of these predecessors, has put himself at the head of the spending rebels. Far from backing his Chancellor in what needs to be done, he forces him to water down his proposals, making clearly inadequate plans to deal with the crisis.

The common attack on Mr Brown, the one we heard again last week from inside his party, is that he is a poor leader, that no one likes him, that he is a loser. But this verdict, damning though it is, is too kind.

It’s a brilliantly withering attack, but the Parallax Brief wonders whether Mr. Finkelstein hasn’t missed the two key points.

First, that part of the reason for the Prime Minister’s dalliances on public spending cuts is unavoidably the approaching election. Of course it is shabby to put party politics before the national interest, and a damning indictment of Labour that it seems to be entering the election with the no-policies policy usually reserved for the opposition. But to ignore the political realities of an approaching election is integral to the story, and should not be ignored.

Second, while it is true that the absence from the pre-budget report of a clear, tough plan of spending cuts to reign in the deficit was an appalling concession to brazen electioneering, it is also true that even if such a plan were in place down the minutest detail, it would not be implemented until after the election. Not because Labour doesn’t want to go to the polls as the party which savaged public services — which it surely doesn’t — but because cuts now would plunge the economy back into recession and have the peverse effect of increasing the debt-to-GDP burden.

And just as Parkinson’s Law tells us that work expands to fit the time available, so it is an unbreakable law of politics that no government will ever raise taxes or lower spending on key services until the last possible minute.

None of this makes Labour’s appalling fiscal policy in the run up to the crisis acceptable. Nor does it excuse the party’s inertia when it comes to dealing with the nation’s problems. Mr. Finkelstein is right to criticise both, and is probably justified in his evisceration of the Prime Minister. He is also correct to note that the country desperately needs a plan to deal with the deficit if it is to retain the confidence of the markets and maintain the ability to borrow cheaply.

But the real “old story” isn’t Labour squabbling over spending, but a party putting politics before country.

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The Department of What If…? The Brown Bounce.

January 12th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

Remember the Brown Bounce? An increasingly unpopular Prime Minister replaced with his trusty, respected right hand man. A blizzard of new policy ideas. Invitations to opposition party members to join a more collegial cabinet of all talents. Flattering media coverage.

Remember that? With Gordon Brown now deeply unpopular both with voters and his parliamentary party, and all but certain to find himself out of office shortly after he dissolves parliament, it’s worth wondering how things might have been had he acted decisively and gone to the polls before the Labour Party conference in Autumn 2007. For Iain Martin, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe, the appearance of Peter Watt’s already infamous new book gives fresh opportunity to consider and blog about the “election that never was in the autumn of 2007.”

“It really was the most bizarre and fascinating period. However, events unfolded at such speed and with so much intensity that it has all become shrouded in myth-making.

Watt recounts his role in organizing the basis of a campaign with Douglas Alexander (Labour’s election co-ordinator). Leaflets were printed, candidates readied and limos ordered to ferry about the cabinet.

But while it is true that many believed right up until the moment that Brown called it off after Tory conference (in a humiliating interview with Andrew Marr in Number 10) that an early election would happen, it was already way too late by that point. In allowing the Tories to begin their Blackpool conference he had blown it.

What would have worked in terms of timing would have been for Brown to turn up on the first day of Labour conference having come straight from seeing the Queen (followed by the media circus) to say that he had asked for a dissolution. He could then have kicked off an election campaign from the podium, telling his troops to leave the hall and go out and fight for a fourth term etc. The Tories would have been blind-sided and all the momentum would have been with Labour.”

The Parallax Brief genuinely believes Mr. Brown would have taken Labour to an election win. The momentum was already with him, and a series of polls from ICM, YouGov, Ipsos-MORI, Populus and BPIX between September 16 and September 29 indicated as much, putting Labour 8, 6, 6, 8, 11, 13, 10, 11, 7 and 7 points ahead.

But alas…

“Instead, Brown waited, let the speculation build, delivered a stinker of a conference speech and then gave the Tories a chance to mount their fightback in Blackpool. The polls reversed and Brown pulled out in a panic on the Friday (only going public on Saturday).”

The folly of this is impossible to overestimate. Of course, Labour would likely have been returned with a reduced majority, and it is quite possible, even probable, that Mr. Brown’s personal weaknesses would have still risen to the surface to make him as unpopular with his party and the public as he is now. However, Labour would have been in power, and would have had another two and a half years from now to ride out the Great Recession, get the economy growing again, shed itself of the unpopular Brown, and give a new leader time to establish a new policy platform before what would have been a summer 2012 election. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Labour could have been returned for a fifth term.

It might not be overstating the case to say that the Prime Minister’s decision not to call an election in the Autumn of 2007 was the most important and influential political moment of this generation.

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Brown: Downfall in the Bunker

January 7th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

The Parallax Brief supposes it had to happen, but he is amazed at the speed at which these things are released nowadays.

Anyway, in all it’s glory, here it is:

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Now Hoon and Hewitt Have Made Their Play, Labour Might Be Left With the Worst of Both Worlds

January 6th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

The chickens are preparing to roost. The vultures are circling. The knives are out for Caesar. The Labour Party is in such a state that every metaphor imaginable wants to get a mention during its slow death march to electoral defeat. Make no mistake, Geoff Hoon’s and Patricia Hewitt’s attempt to trigger an internal, parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) vote of no confidence in Brown — in John Major’s vernacular, a sack me or back me vote — has undoubtedly added to the party’s woes.

But taking the action they have leaves the king makers in the Cabinet with a devil’s alternative.

What is indisputable is that the Labour Party would do far better in the general election if it could enter the campaign with a leader other than Brown. The chart below, which the Parallax Brief shamelessly pinched from Mike Smithson’s brilliant Political Betting website, shows that Brown has the kind of job approval ratings that make the last days of George W. Bush’s presidency look a paragon of popularity.

Even more concerning for Labour, the chart below shows that Brown is even unpopular with Labour voters, which must be a huge concern for the Brown-Balls “core-vote” electoral strategy.

A good way to think about Labour’s best course of action would be to try to imagine what the Conservative Party would least like it to do. And certainly, the Conservative Party wants the Prime Minister to remain in position until the election, which is why, as Guido Fawkes (back on top scoop and Robinson-baiting form again) pointed out today, David Cameron tried to kick off the election early with his speech Monday: CCHQ strategists calculate that nobody will dare challenge Brown amid an election campaign. If there was any doubt that the Conservatives would want Brown to stay, Guido’s “Save Our Gordon” campaign and Iain Dale’s attacks on Hoon and Hewitt should rapidly expel them.

Given that Brown is clearly a hindrance for the Labour Party, the key arguments for the party grandees to retain him have always been, in the Parallax Brief’s view, that (1) it wouldn’t be possible to impose two unelected prime ministers on the electorate, meaning that any new leadership would have to immediately call an election, and (2) that a leadership battle would be divisive in the absence of a clear candidate to take over.

On the former, it is perhaps close enough to May 6th to elect a new leader (which won’t happen instantly) and announce a late April or early May election. On the latter, Hoon and Hewitt’s announcement means that the public image of party has already been shattered.

If the PLP now supports Brown, it will get the worst of both worlds: Brown as leader and the appearance of a party divided.

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Highlighting an Anti-Semitic, Extremist Muslim Group Does Not Make You An Islamophobic Bigot

November 25th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

Today in Prime Minister’s questions, David Cameron asked Gordon Brown whether Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Sunni Muslim vanguard group whose goals include the reunification of all Muslim countries into a single state under the Muslim citizen-elected leadership of a caliph, had received any government money. He later accused the organization of extremism, backed up his claims with several direct quotes, and offered evidence that it had, in fact, through a front organization, received government money.

The line of questioning clearly caught the Prime Minister off guard and wholly unprepared. He shouldn’t be criticised too strongly for this: as the Guardian put it, Mr. “Cameron bowled a googly,” and Mr. Brown cannot be expected to know literally everything about every aspect of government business.

However, what the Prime Minister can be criticised for are some of his words later in the exchange.

From Hansard:

“Let me also say—let us be clear about this—that the vast majority of Muslims in our country are part of the law-abiding majority of this country. I do not want it to be said that those people who are citizens of our country who hold the Muslim faith are to be held responsible for acts of terrorism”

And then later:

“[Mr Cameron] may regret some of the remarks he has made this morning.”

In a way, it’s understandable that the Prime Minister should want to make this point, to reaffirm that the actions of one person or group are not, and should never be, transferred to entire communities. But the message, presented in the way it was, contains a pernicious undercurrent — the hint of a suggestion — of chiding the leader of the opposition for even bringing up the subject, as if to do so was to somehow pass unfair judgement of all Muslims.

Racism is filthy and abhorrent, but criticising a Muslim organization is no more Islamophobic than accusing a black man of a crime is racist. It becomes racist if the black man is accused because he is black (whether consciously or unconsciously). Likewise the Muslim organization.

In this specific circumstance, to infer that those making the point may be doing so because of the religion of the accused organization is not just misguided, but hugely counter-productive. It leads to “language inflation” where a genuine accusation or suggestion of anti-Islamic bigotry ceases to have the devastating impact it should.

But even if such inference was absent and the statement wholly innocent, it’s certainly not helpful to use this type of language when dealing with the situation. Mr. Cameron was not making a point about Muslim extremism in general, rather a point about government bookkeeping, so to say; about how carefully the government monitors the destination of its money.

It wasn’t a Muslim matter, but a matter of the government being lax about where it spends tax payers money that just happened to involve Muslims.

Actual racists, like members of the British National Party, habitually seek shelter under the idea that they’re not really racist but just branded as racists because of the “political correctness-gone-mad” world in which we live. Statements like the Prime Minister’s, therefore, even if made genuinely rather than to cast hidden aspersions, actually live up to that accusation of political correctness, feeding tiny but manifold zephyrs of oxygen to the racist/bigoted/sexist/homophobic fire.

This should not obscure the fact racism, bigotry, sexism and homophobia are far greater problems and threats to our society than political correctness. To listen to some, one would assume than there is no such thing as racism these days, just the soppy, Guardianista, politically correct Taliban making accusations of racism. We should give no credibility to this view. But nor should we have to preface our answers to questions such as those the Prime Minister faced today with a little verbal jig to make plain that we’re not a racist or a bigot. Everyone sensible knows that highlighting the extremism or support of terrorists of one Muslim group does not make Mr. Cameron a bigot, and those who get the wrong idea, and take the accusations about one group as being further evidence against the whole of the Islamic world, are plain ignorant and hateful people whose attitudes will not be changed anytime soon.

Worse, by raising the spectre of racism or bigotry, they’ll be fuelled.

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A Victory for Brown and a Damning Indictment of the European Union

November 20th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

So, the EU heads of state and the cabal of unaccountable bureaucrats chose anonymous and anonymous-er as the President and High Representative of the European Union, respectively, yesterday in Brussels. The decision, which saw one-year Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy chosen for the top spot, and Britain’s EU Trade Commissioner, Baroness Ashton, for the High Representative slot, was a victory for bland, consensus politics, and Gordon Brown. It was also pungent with the smell of Platonic ‘benevolent’ tyranny, and as such a damning indictment of the European Union as it is currently constituted.

Mr. Von Rompuy, a Christian Democrat, was clearly taken specifically because of his blandness. Having only been in office in Belgium for one year, he has had little chance to make enemies in the EU; further, he has no strong foreign policy views that could divide the EU. Tellingly, appointing a man with little foreign policy experience is indicative of an EU which does not want a Presidential traffic stopper to vigorously represent the EU’s interests to the mighty ‘G2′, but rather a secretary general type figure who will be adept at massaging consensus out of the disparate foreign policy aims of the EU’s member states.

More interestingly, Charlemagne, the Economist’s Europe columnist notes, in the most instructive analysis currently available on the net:

I think it also means that today’s European leaders have little ambition to use the EU to talk to the world, at least not at the highest level. Instead, they know their voters want to use the union as a “Europe that protects”, a Europe that makes the world go away. This Europe is an ageing, rich and frightened place, that wants to spend its money on Frontex border guards to keep the poor of the world away. It wants to devote 40% of the EU budget to subsidising farmers against global competition. This Europe rejects the strategic arguments in favour of opening the union to Turkey (one of the few known positions on foreign policy ascribed to Mr Van Rompuy is that he thinks Turkey can never be part of the EU)…

They wanted someone to reach consensus among leaders on big subjects of internal, domestic interest. They wanted someone who did not overshadow national leaders, but acted as a secretary general for their summits.

Continuing the theme, Charlemagne argues that Lady Ashton is also likely to have been chosen because of her utility to a potentially inward looking EU. He notes that many within the EU — especially the French — who seek to drive forward a combined EU military, view Britain’s involvement in any defence force as essential. It follows, therefore, that one of the top slots should go to a Briton.

Beyond that, it is probable that Lady Ashton was chosen because she, too, is inoffensive and bland, because she is a woman and a centre-left politician and therefore balances the ticket on two counts, and that she’s become quietly popular among EU grandees and career bureaucrats. Gordon Brown will be ecstatic that his tactic of continuing to push for Tony Blair, despite knowing that he could not win, in order to be able to claim ‘compensation’ has paid off.

But this shouldn’t disguise to British voters that the whole process, and the decision it has yielded, has been a risible, asinine fudge.

Both positions have been filled with no democratic component, by individuals chosen for their anonymity and political innocuousness, who will have no accountability to the half billion people they represent. Lady Ashton has never held elected office.

Even europhiles can’t be happy with this insipid subjugation.

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Where’s the Deflation? And Will it be Bad if we Find it?

November 18th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

Guido wants to know today “Where’s the Deflation?” because figures recently released show inflation back on the uptick. He also makes an argument that deflation isn’t very bad because “history shows that there have been times of increasing prosperity that coincided with deflation,” that “Deflation happened several times in the nineteenth century,” and, of course, the hoary point that “pensioners know that their standard of living would have improved” had deflation set in.

It is important to debunk the idea that deflation wouldn’t be that bad.

Deflation increases the real burden of debt — something that would be disastrous given current levels of debt in the UK — while providing powerful incentives for consumers to hold off on purchases — why would you buy now when it’ll be cheaper next month? — adding a further drag on economic performance. Japan’s lost decade went missing as a result of deflation. The privations of the Great Depression were brought forth by massive debt-deflation.

Of course, pensioners would see the real value of their pensions increase, but economic policy is not made to satisfy one specific interest group at the great expense of all others — as I’m sure Guido agrees when he discusses matters of pension reform.

Guido’s embrace of deflation might be the most unpopular economic decision since King… no, hang on, hasn’t that line been used before somewhere?

The Parallax Brief knows that conspiracy theories about shadowy groups deciding to introduce QE to prop up gilts and bail out Brown (and no doubt to further the new world order) are far more interesting than mundane reality, but is it too much to ask that Guido might consider the simple explanation that deflation was avoided because of the (independent) Bank of England’s super loose monetary policy?

A better question to ask, given the number of conservative and libertarian commentators droning on about Mugabenomics and Wiemar II, might be “Where’s the hyperinflation?”

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Can Bank Regulators be Trusted with Banking Regulation?

November 18th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

Former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson has written today about a terrifically illuminating paper published by the Bank of International Settlements (the central banks’ central bank) called Banking on the State.

Co-authored by Andrew Haldane, Executive Director for Financial Stability at the Bank of England and, according to the Baseline Scenario, closely in line with BofE supremo Mervin King, the paper offers a gloomy assessment of the current financial system. In broad terms, it argues that the banking system is locked in a boom-bust-bailout cycle whereby the taxpayer lifeboats provided to the management, shareholder and creditors of the banks lay the foundation for the next crisis by encouraging excessive risk.

In order to “drive the conversation forward” the Mr. Johnson discusses seven talking points touched upon by the paper. However, the Parallax Brief would like to concentrate on just two:

1—The authors say that it is clear, in retrospect, that banks were excessively leveraged. But how did regulators/supervisors miss the implications of this at the time? Banks’ balance sheets started expanding from 1970 onwards (page 3) and by 2000 “balance sheets were more than five times annual UK GDP.” This was not an overnight development – see the last sentence on page 8 which says “Higher leverage fully accounts for the rise in UK banks’ return on equity up until 2007″. It may be difficult for a central banker to come clean on who convinced whom that modern banking in this form is safe – but at a minimum the authors should draw lessons from earlier failures of regulators/supervisors when discussing prospective changes in the framework of regulation. Could some of the changes being proposed suffer the same fate as all previous attempts to regulate big banks? It seems the authors answer is that just moving things to Pillar I (from Pillar II) will help. This sounds like wishful thinking.

2—The author are right that US banks faced a leverage ratio constraint, which European banks did not. But US banks circumvented this by setting up SIVs – see the damage at Citi for details. Again, what were the regulators/supervisors thinking when they allowed this?

When placed in these plain terms, it becomes nauseatingly clear that those responsible for the regulation of banks have been outright negligent. How was it possible to the banks to become so huge, so leveraged, and so dangerous? All right under the noses of the regulators.

And more to the point, now that Gordon Brown and Mervyn King seem to be clashing antlers over which of the Treasury-FSA-BofE regulatory menage a trois should hold what responsibilities and for whom after the financial system has been reorganized, can we trust any them? After all, each and every one seemed to be blissfully oblivious to the fact Royal Bank of Scotland had liabilities larger than Britain’s GDP. Was it not, like, you know, pretty obvious that if anything should happen, it might be in trouble?

Talk about missing the elephant in the room.

Mr. Johnson’s conclusion rings depressingly true:

How can we believe that for the regulators, “next time is different“? Most likely, next time will be exactly the same, with different terminology: the financial sector “innovates”, regulators buy their story that risks are now properly managed, and the ensuing bailout (again) breaks all records.

It’s all politics. Unless and until you break the political power of our largest banks, broadly construed, we are going nowhere (or, rather, we are looping around the same doom).

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Et Tu Guardian? Does Stalwart of the Left Have the Knives out for Brown?

November 17th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

Mike Smithson of Political Betting has an interesting take on the Guardian’s surprisingly downbeat coverage of what were actually pretty positive results from yesterday’s ICM polls:

One of the things that we see repeatedly is that it’s often not the numbers in polls that matter but how the findings are covered in the media that has commissioned them.

So on a morning when the Guardian is reporting its ICM poll with a sharp cut-back in the Tory lead the big slant is about “Cameron closing the deal“. This is based on non-voting questions about how respondents rated him and Brown across a range of issues such as toughness, being decisive and being internationally respected.

And if that is not enough there’s further coverage inside about “Labour no longer being seen as the champion of the poor”.

I just wonder whether in this part of the media at least Cameron is reaping the benefit for the decision to abandon a Lisbon Treaty referendum.

The Parallax Brief suspects that Mr. Smithson is right that the Guardian is politicing but wrong about its motivation and aim.

The reason the Guardian framed positive results for the Labour Party as the Prime Minister losing the battle of personalities against David Cameron is more likely to be, in the Parallax Brief’s view, because it wishes to agitate for his pre-election removal.

Just a thought.

Let’s just watch the Guardian’s leaders in the next few weeks.

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