President Obama spent much of Wednesday huddled with a group of business executives, an effort The New York Times said afterward "went a long way to reset the tone of the relationship between Mr. Obama and corporate America" in the eyes of the corporate chieftains who attended.
That's all well and good, if the problems with today's economy were rooted in a lack of warmth and fuzziness between President Obama and corporate CEOs. But they aren't. For decades, the interests of corporate lobbyists—the people acting on behalf of many of the executives at the White House meeting—have been at odds with the interests of working people. The White House "making peace" with corporate CEOs, to use The Washington Post's description of the meeting, is one thing. But Wall Street needs to make peace with those of us who have been forced, as a result of the conservative policies they promoted, to live through a decade of stagnant wages, unemployment and underemployment. Wall Street needs a reset with working America.
Unfortunately, it's not at all clear that this meeting delivered much for working-class people. The Post reported that "after the meeting, several chief executives said their conversation with the president was constructive and open as they discussed education, trade, taxes and jobs. But the executives and Obama remained vague about specific outcomes they expected from the meeting."
And one of the few specifics reported from the meeting is highly disturbing. Bloomberg reported that the CEOs had their hands out for yet another tax cut:
While Obama has called on the CEOs to spend the $2 trillion in cash their companies have accumulated on job creation, the executives said much of that is earnings from overseas sales that are retained abroad to avoid paying U.S. corporate income tax. U.S.-based multinational corporations pay corporate income tax on earnings when they are brought back to the U.S. If the revenue remains abroad, either in cash or investment in overseas facilities, the money isn’t taxed.
Obama said he would consider the issue and asked what the executives would be willing to give up in other corporate tax rates to make sure it remains revenue neutral.
Actually, in many cases the earnings involved are not necessarily from "overseas sales." Many multinational corporations have created elaborate schemes to ensure that domestic sales are credited as foreign ones in order to avoid paying corporate income tax. It's how Google avoids paying billions in corporate income taxes to the United States and the United Kingdom.
President Obama has rightly pledged to go after this tax dodge and sent some proposals to Congress last year that Citizens for Tax Justice said were "steps in the right direction." Businesses have countered with demands for a "tax holiday," The Financial Times reported in October. Again, at least until now, the Obama administration has resisted. One reason, as the FT notes, is that there is no guarantee that the money coaxed back into the U.S. will actually be used for investment and job creation.
We've been here before. In 2004 the Bush administration and the Republican Congress gave corporations a tax amnesty on profits sheltered overseas. The benefits for workers were negligible. Gannett News Service reported earlier this year in a story about Sen. Barbara Boxer's support for an offshore tax break:
A Congressional Research Service analysis published in January 2009 found that 10 of the top dozen companies that took advantage of the 2004 break cut jobs. Hewlett-Packard repatriated $14.5 billion and laid off 14,500. Pfizer repatriated $37 billion and cut 9,000 jobs in 2005.
California-based Oracle and Intel also repatriated foreign earnings. The money helped Oracle acquire two U.S. companies and helped Intel build a new factory
.
The Business Roundtable, a champion of the tax amnesty idea, says of the money that came back to the U.S. as a result of 2004 holiday, 25 percent went to capital investments and 23 percent to hiring and training new workers. Even that positive spin suggests the country doesn't get very much for coaxing businesses to do less than what they should be dong as corporate citizens.
Corporations succeed in the United States not simply because of what they do on their own. Their success depends on the quality of public schools that prepare their workers, transportation networks that move goods and people, agencies that help keep people healthy and safe, and efforts to ensure that each American is able to maintain at least a minimal standard of living. All of these are government functions that corporations undercut when they engage in schemes to avoid paying taxes, leaving the rest of us to struggle with the consequences.
The businesses that profit as a result of the public commons that We the People provide should not have to be given special inducements to pay their fair share toward supporting that commons. (As it stands now, contrary to conservative claims to the contrary, the truth is U.S. corporations pay some of the lowest tax rates of major industrial powers.) That is the starting point from which President Obama should begin in building a new tax framework in which businesses and Main Street can profit together in a new economy.
Even as corporations are seeking a tax holiday, these same corporations spent hundreds of millions of dollars electing congressional candidates opposed to government initiatives that would stimulate the economy and stoke the demand that would coax their hoarded cash off the sidelines. Instead of egging on, tacitly or otherwise, the anti-spending crowd, these CEOs could still choose to back a real economic stimulus—not just cross-your-fingers-and-hope-they-trickle-down tax cuts, but real investment in the economy's future.
Lew Prince, a small business owner in St. Louis, recently penned an op-ed that offered a more Main Street perspective on what businesses need to prosper:
We shouldn’t borrow billions more dollars from China and Saudi Arabia to give to the wealthy. Instead the wealthy should pay their fair share. We need adequate tax revenue to invest in our economy. More tax cuts at the top won’t create jobs. But we will create jobs and strengthen our economy by rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, public transit, levees and water and gas pipelines. We will save and create jobs by investing in education and clean energy research and manufacturing now growing much more rapidly in other countries.
Now that Obama has met with business executives, his next step should be a summit meeting with the unemployed. And then let's have a real debate in which business executives and their conservative benefactors are called to account on whether they are really interested in the fates of American workers or just in their own balance sheets.
All those who believe there is sentiment of complacency within the precious metals camp may be forgiven. After all if one likes gold, one should like silver, and/or vice versa. Today FOFOA presents a counterargument. "I don't write about silver very much. Just like I don't write about copper or pork bellies. But, in fact, I have addressed many of the standard arguments for silver over gold in various comments on this blog and others. I'm sure someone will dig them out again and post links as people pose these arguments once again in the comments. But here's a new one. One of the argument for silver that we hear often is that it is "the poor man's gold." So I guess gold is "the rich man's gold." Well, what is the main difference between rich men and poor men? Is it that the rich have an excess of wealth beyond their daily expenses? In fact, the really rich have "inter-generational wealth," that is, wealth that lies very still through generations. The poor do not have this. So what do you think is going to come of all that "poor man's gold" that the silverbugs have hoarded up? Is it going to lie very still for generations? Or will it circulate, to meet daily needs? Note that circulation velocity is the market's way of controlling the value of any currency. Faster circulation = lower value. Lying still for generations = very slow circulation." Thus, today's question - is silver money too?
Via FOFOA
Focal Point: Gold
In game theory, a focal point (also called Schelling point) is a
solution that people will tend to use in the absence of communication,
because it seems natural, special or relevant to them. The concept was
introduced by the Nobel Prize winning American economist Thomas
Schelling in his book The Strategy of Conflict (1960). In this book (at
p. 57), Schelling describes "focal point for each person’s
expectation of what the other expects him to expect to be expected to
do." This type of focal point later was named after Schelling.
Consider
a simple example: two people unable to communicate with each other are
each shown a panel of four squares and asked to select one; if and only
if they both select the same one, they will each receive a prize. Three
of the squares are blue and one is red. Assuming they each know nothing
about the other player, but that they each do want to win the prize,
then they will, reasonably, both choose the red square. Of course, the
red square is not in a sense a better square; they could win by both
choosing any square. And it is the "right" square to select only if a
player can be sure that the other player has selected it; but by
hypothesis neither can. It is the most salient, the most notable square,
though, and lacking any other one most people will choose it, and this
will in fact (often) work.
Schelling himself illustrated this
concept with the following problem: Tomorrow you have to meet a stranger
in NYC. Where and when do you meet them? This is a Coordination game,
where any place in time in the city could be an equilibrium solution.
Schelling asked a group of students this question, and found the most
common answer was "noon at (the information booth at) Grand Central
Station." There is nothing that makes "Grand Central Station" a location
with a higher payoff (you could just as easily meet someone at a bar,
or the public library reading room), but its tradition as a meeting
place raises its salience, and therefore makes it a natural "focal
point."
Salience: the state or quality of an item that stands out relative to neighboring items.
There are two simple, but seemingly, apparently impossible-to-comprehend concepts. The first concept is why money not only can
be split into separate units for separate roles, one as the store of
value and the other to be used as a medium of exchange and unit of
account, but why it absolutely must and WILL split at this point
in the long evolution of the money concept. This means no fixed gold
standard, or any system that attempts to combine these units/roles into
one, making easy money "less easy" and hard money "less hard." And by
"must" I do not mean that we must do this, I mean that it is happening
today whether we recognize it or not.
And the second concept,
once the first is understood, is how and why gold and only gold will
fill the monetary store of value role. Not gold and silver. Not precious
metals. Just gold. People often ask why I don't mention silver. They
assume that when I say gold I really must mean gold and silver, or
precious metals. So let me be clear. When I say gold, I mean gold and
only gold.
Money's most vital function in our modern world is
lubricating commerce, or more specifically, keeping the essential supply
lines flowing – supply lines that bring goods and services to where
they are needed. Without it we would be reduced to a barter economy,
eternally facing the intractable "double coincidence of wants." This is
the problem whereby you must coincidentally find someone that not only
wants what you have to trade, but also, coincidentally, has what you
want in return. And in the modern world of near-infinite division of
labor, this would be a disaster.
So we need money, and lots
of it. In fact, we need money in unrestricted amounts! (I'll bet you are
surprised to see me write this!) Yes, I said it, we need unrestricted
money in order to fulfill this most vital function in our modern society
– lubrication! But here's the catch: we need the right money in order to perform this seemingly impossible task. Let me try to explain.
Money
is debt, by its very nature, whether it is gold, paper, sea shells,
tally sticks or lines drawn in the sand. (Another shocking statement?)
Yes, even gold used as money represents debt. More on this in a moment.
For
this reason, the money used as a store of value must be something
completely separate and different from the medium of exchange. It must
be so, so that the store of value unit can expand in value while
the medium of exchange unit expands in quantity and/or velocity. You may
be starting to encounter my thrust. Expand… and expand. Unrestricted by
artificial constraints.
Compare this concept to a gold standard
in which you fix the value of gold to the dollar at, say, $5,000 per
ounce. The assumption is that this is where the price of gold will stay
for a long time, if you manage the system properly. So what is the
result? You artificially constrain the expansion of the medium of
exchange fiat currency while also restricting the value expansion of the
store of value. You are locking the two together. Do you think this
works and makes sense?
I said we need unrestricted money in order
to ensure the lubrication of the vital supply lines in our modern
world. This is it. This is what really matters. If we have a major
monetary and financial breakdown, what do you think will be the worst
consequence? Do you grow all of your own food? Do you make – or know
someone who does – all of your own stuff? How long could you survive
without any stores? Do you trust your government to be sufficiently
prepared to take care of you with no supply lines flowing?
Have
you ever stretched a rubber band until it breaks? You can feel the
resistance grow gradually and observe the smooth thinning of the band
until finally it loses its continuity and the two parts snap back
stinging your fingers. A tiny observer of this exercise, perhaps a flea
resting on your thumb (or an economist), one who doesn't really
understand rubber bands, might swear that it could be stretched forever.
The smooth change in the stretching rubber gives little warning of the
abrupt (sometimes painful) deformation that is coming.
This is
where we are today. The dollar standard is like a stretched rubber band.
It has been stretched and stretched, but it cannot provide the
unrestricted money that we need today. They think it can. And that's why
they are spewing it out in quantitative easy money boatloads. But it's
not the right money. As I said above, we need the right money in order to perform this seemingly impossible task.
That
resistance you feel is the artificial restraint built into the dollar
system. It appears to be infinitely expandable, but it is not. It is
just like the rubber band. Oh sure, you can print all the dollars you
can imagine, to infinity and beyond! But it won't work. It won't do the
most vital job, beyond a certain point. And yes, we are beyond that
point.
I want you to imagine a tiny micro economy. Just two guys
stranded on a tiny island. Let's call the guys Ben and Chen. They have
divided the island in half and each owns his half. They each have a tree
which bears fruit and three tools for fishing, a spear, a net and a
fishing pole. For a while they both fished often. Fish were the main
trade item between Ben and Chen. Sometimes Ben would take a vacation
from fishing and Chen would provide him with fish to eat. Other times
Chen would take a break.
But after a while Ben got lazy, and Chen
got tired of giving Ben free fish to eat. At first they used sea shells
as money to keep track of how many fish Ben owed Chen. Then they
switched to leaves from the tree. Finally they just broke a stick off
the tree and drew little lines in the sand. If Chen gave Ben a fish, Ben
drew (issued) a line in the sand on Chen's side of the island. There
were only two of them, so it was easy to avoid cheating.
These
lines sort of became Chen's bank account. Each one represented the debt
of one fish that Ben owed to Chen. But after a while they started adding
up, and Chen worried that he would never get that many fish back from
Lazy Ben. So Chen cut a deal with Ben. Chen said he would keep accepting
lines drawn in the sand for fish, but he wanted to be able to use them
to purchase some of Ben's other stuff (since Ben didn't like to fish).
At
first he used them to purchase fruit from Ben's tree. But after a while
the pile of fruit just rotted on Chen's beach. Next he started
purchasing Ben's tools. First the spear, then the net and lastly the
fishing pole. But at this point Chen realized that Ben would NEVER be
able to repay those fish without his fishing tools. So Chen rented them
back to Lazy Ben.
Of course Ben was still lazy, and now he owed
rent on top of the fish he already owed. The lines in the sand grew even
more rapidly as lines were added to pay for rent even when Chen hadn't
given Ben a fish. Then Ben had a great idea. Why even go through the
charade of selling the fishing pole and then renting it? Ben could just
sell Chen some "special lines" which had a "yield." For ten one-fish
lines, Chen could buy a special "bond" that would mature into 11 lines
in a year's time. They tried this for a while, but all that happened
were more lines in the sand. So many lines! Nowhere to walk. Chen's
"bank account" was taking up all of his real estate!
Finally Chen
had had enough. He called Ben over and said, "Okay, since you refuse to
fish for yourself, let alone to pay me back, I want to use these lines
to buy some of your gold coins." Oh, did I mention that Ben had a
treasure chest of gold coins that had washed ashore? Of course these
gold coins were the last thing that Chen wanted, because what good are
gold coins on a tiny island with only two inhabitants?
But
actually, they turned out to be an excellent record of the debt Lazy Ben
owed to Chen the fisherman. You see, at first, Chen bought half of
Ben's gold with the lines he had already accumulated, transferring his
"bank account" over to Ben's side of the island and consolidating his
"wealth" into gold. It worked out to 100 lines for one gold coin, or 100
fish per ounce.
But after a while, Ben realized that he was
running out of gold. He knew it would only be a short matter of time
until he ran out, so he closed the gold window. And once again, Chen
started accumulating lines and special yielding "bond" lines. Finally,
they agreed that the value of the gold coins had to be raised higher
than 100 fish per ounce. Ben suggested 500/oz., but Chen saw the
short-sighted flaw in his thinking. So Chen said that the value of
ounces should float against the number of lines issued by Ben. This way,
Ben would never run out of gold, and his lines would always and forever
be exchangeable for gold coins. Finally, a sustainable accounting
system!
Now I do realize the glaring flaws in this analogy I
cobbled together. So spare me the critique. It is far, FAR from perfect.
But it does help with a few good observations.
First, the lines
in the sand and the gold coins are both money on this island. One is the
medium of exchange/unit of account and the other is the store of value.
The store of value is quoted at any given time in units of lines, but
its value floats, it is not fixed, so it never runs out. This
method of accounting forces Lazy Ben to part with something more
substantial than simply issuing more lines via line-yielding "special
bond lines."
In this case it was the accounting of transactions
between a consumer and a producer. But it works just as well between any
two actors with unequal levels of production and consumption. Some
people just produce more while others can't stop consuming. I'm sure you
know a few of each type.
Also, notice that gold coins and lines
in the sand both represent the debt owed from Ben to Chen. And with
gold, Chen can wait forever to be paid back (which, on this island, is
quite likely). The gold doesn't spoil, and Chen's possession of it
doesn't interfere with Ben's ability to fish or eat fruit. But notice
also that the more lines in the sand that Ben issues, the more the value
of the gold (representing a debt of fish) rises. So the longer Ben runs
his trade deficit, the more debt he owes for each ounce of gold that
Chen holds.
This is not so dissimilar to the special bond lines,
with a few notable differences. The bond values are not only quoted in
lines, they are also denominated in lines. So the principle amount paid
for the bonds drops in value as more lines are issued to lubricate the
vital trade. To counteract this "inflation," interest is paid by drawing
more lines without the reciprocal delivery of fresh fish. But these
additional "free" lines also dilute the value of lines, which leads
ultimately to infinity (or zero value) in a loop that feeds back on
itself.
The more fish Chen supplies to Ben, the more lines he
receives, the more bonds he buys, and the more lines he receives in
service to interest. Eventually Chen will be receiving two lines for
each fish, one for the fish and one for the interest. And then three,
and then four. And so on. Wouldn't you rather just have one gold coin
that floats in value? I know Chen would.
Another observation is
that the medium of exchange on our island devolved into the most
insignificant and easy to produce item. A simple notation in Chen's
"account." Is that so different from what we have today? And Ben could
issue them with ease as long as Chen let him. Once Chen had so many
lines, he wasn't about to just abandon the system, was he? Wipe the
(beach) slate clean? No, Chen wanted to get something for his lines.
Something compact that didn't interfere with Ben's ability to work off
his debt should he ever decide to do so. Something durable. Something
physical from Ben's side of the island. Something… anything other than those damn-stupid lines!
I
hope that this little analogy helps you visualize the separation of
monetary roles, because those talking about a new gold standard are not
talking about this. I understand that sometimes you have to speak in
terms familiar to your audience in order to not be tuned out, but I also
hope that my readers come to understand how and why a new gold standard
with a fixed price of gold, no matter how high, will simply not work
anymore.
The full explanation of why it will not work is quite
involved, and I'm not going to do it here. But the short answer is that
the very act of defending a fixed price of gold in your currency ensures
the failure of your currency. And it won't take 30 or 40 years this
time. It'll happen fast. It wouldn't matter if Ben decided to defend a
price of $5,000 per ounce, $50,000 per ounce or $5 million per ounce. It
is the act of defending your currency against gold that kills your currency.
You can defend your currency against other currencies… using
gold! Yes! This is the very essence of Freegold. But you cannot defend
it against gold. You will fail. Your currency will fail. Slowly in the
past, quickly today. If you set the price too high you will first
hyperinflate your currency buying gold, but you won't get much real gold
in exchange for collapsing the global confidence in your currency, and
then you will have to empty your gold vaults selling gold (to defend
your price) as your currency heads to zero. And do you think the world
trusts the US to ever empty its vaults? Nope. Fool me once…
If
you set the price too low, like, say, $5,000/ounce, you will first
expose your own currency folly with such an act and have little
opportunity to buy any of the real stuff as the world quickly
understands what has gone wrong and empties your gold vaults with all
those easy dollars floating around. You will sell, sell, sell trying to
defend your price, but in the end, the price will be higher and you'll
be out of gold. Either that, or you'll close the gold window (once
again), sigh, and finally admit that Freegold it is.
Yes, the
gold price must… WILL go much higher. The world needs MONEY! And by
that, I mean recapitalization. Unfortunately the dollar is not the right
money. And printing boatloads of it will no longer recapitalize
anything. Today we are getting a negative real return on every dollar
printed. That means, the more you print, the more you DEcapitalize the
very system you are trying to save. Less printing, decapitalized. More
printing, decapitalized. Freegold… RECAPITALIZED. Yes, it's a Catch-22,
until you understand Freegold.
There Can Only Be One
A
"focal point" is the obvious, salient champion. But for many reasons,
some things are not as obvious as we would think they should be. Mish
ended his recent post, Still More Hype Regarding Silver; Just the Math Maam, with the following disclosure:
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