Trend: Large banks continue to use their political clout to channel funds from government, with questionable effects.
The The Baseline Scenario blog digs into the causes of the financial crisis and describes how to correct some the underlying problems. My interpretation is that political contributions by the benefactors of the bailouts continue to influence public policy in Washington. Excerpts below.
Link: Baseline Scenario, 2/9/09 « The Baseline Scenario.
In order to create the conditions for long-term economic health, we need to identify the real structural problem that created the current situation. The underlying problem was that, after the 1980s, the “Great Moderation” of volatility in industrialized countries created the conditions under which finance became larger relative to GDP and credit could grow rapidly in any boom. In addition, globalization allowed banks to become big relative to the countries in which they are based (with Iceland as an extreme example). Financial development, while often beneficial, brings risks as well.
The global economic growth of the last several years was in reality a global, debt-financed boom, with self-fulfilling characteristics - i.e., it could have gone on for many years or it could have collapsed earlier. The US housing bubble was inflated by global capital flows, but bubbles can occur in a closed economy. The European financial bubble, including massive lending to Eastern Europe and Latin America, occurred with zero net capital flows (the Eurozone had a current account roughly in balance). China’s export-driven manufacturing sector had a bubble of its own, in its case with net capital outflow (a current account surplus).
But these regional bubbles were amplified and connected by a global financial system that allowed capital to flow easily around the world. Ordinarily, by delivering capital to the places where it is most useful, global capital flows promote economic growth, in particular in the developing world. But the global system also allows bubbles to feed on money raised from anywhere in the world, exacerbating systemic risks. When billions of dollars are flowing from the richest countries in the world to Iceland, a country of 320,000 people, chasing high rates of interest, the risks of a downturn are magnified, for the people of Iceland in particular.
Ideally, global economic growth requires a rebalancing away from the financial sector and toward non-financial industries such as manufacturing, retail, and health care (for an expansion of this argument, see this op-ed). Especially in advanced economies such as the US and the UK, the financial sector has accounted for an unsustainable share of corporate profits and profit growth. The only solution is to invest in the basic ingredients of productivity growth - education, infrastructure, research and development, sound regulatory policy, and so on - so that our economy can develop new engines of growth.
But this change in the allocation of resources is greatly complicated by the increased political power of the financial lobby. During the boom years, large banks and their fellow travelers accumulated ever greater political power. This power is now being used to channel government subsidies into the now outmoded (and actually dangerous) financial structure, and in essence to prevent resources from moving out of finance into technology and manufacturing across the industrialized world.
We have done considerable damage to our economies through a debt-fueled bubble. But it could get worse. If the financial sector can use its political power to generate a higher level of subsidies from the government, we will convert even more of our banking industry into pure rent-seeking activities (i.e., all the bankers will do is lobby, successfully, for more support in various forms). If public policy is captured by banks in the US, Europe and elsewhere, then we face much slower productivity and overall growth rates for the next 20 years.
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