A Second Hand Conjecture

Larry Summers and Mark Thoma argue that if done right the bailout will mean we can solve this crisis and still have everything we want, tax cuts, health care spending and all kinds of other goodies. Larry argues:

Just as a family that goes on a $500,000 vacation is $500,000 poorer but a family that buys a $500,000 home is only poorer if it overpays, the impact of the $700bn programme on the fiscal position depends on how it is deployed and how the economy performs. The American experience with financial support programmes is somewhat encouraging. The Chrysler bail-out, President Bill Clinton’s emergency loans to Mexico, and the Depression-era support programmes for housing and financial sectors all ultimately made profits for taxpayers…

Maybe, but Alex Tabarrok finds this optimism a bit ironic:

Does this sound familiar? I can hear it now. A vacation sir is consumption but a home, ah a home, that’s investment. Investments pay off. Just look at the American experience. Rising home prices! Never a downturn. Isn’t that encouraging? Hell, at prices like these you can hardly afford not to buy. Yes sir, a home that’s a wise investment. And that makes you sir, a wise investor. And a wise investor, well a wise investor can certainly afford a nice vacation.

How the economy performs isn’t really the issue as much as the housing market. Chrysler was bailed out at a cyclical low, we are not at a cyclical low in housing, we aren’t even at a cyclical average. We aren’t even close.

Nor was Chrysler such a rousing success anyway. The bailout of Detroit only postponed the pain for the American auto industry and kept them from either going out of business or becoming better, if probably somewhat smaller organizations, and the costs to us all will eventually be pretty damn high. That isn’t even factoring in cementing the idea of “too big to fail” in corporate America. That encourages larger organizations rather than more profitable ones to be created.

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The economy is slowing, and if we are not already in a recession (I think we probably are) the risks of one are certainly high. So should our politicians do something with fiscal policy? Alex Tabarrok says no :

Fourth, in their desperation to “do something” politicians will often do something foolish. If a spending increase or tax cut isn’t worthwhile on its own merits then it’s highly unlikely to be worthwhile once we add in the benefits of “stimulus.” Thus, it’s one thing to argue for extending unemployment benefits as a matter of welfare it’s quite another to think that an increase in unemployment benefits will so increase spending as to reduce unemployment! (The implicit view of Larry Summers.)

I admit to being dubious of legislation and federal government action being useful for short term economic swings. Here are the other quite compelling reasons why:

First, the money for any new spending or tax cuts has got to come from somewhere, right? Thus there is usually substantial crowding out of any stimulus.

Second, by the time the new spending or tax cut gets through the political process the economy has moved on and the stimulus is no longer relevant except by accident.

Third, there just isn’t that much discretionary spending to play with and even a large increase in spending, say tens of billions, is too small to make much of a difference in a 13 trillion dollar economy.

My emphasis above. I am always amused at the power people ascribe to what seems to be a large action, but in the context of the US economy and financial system is actually pretty paltry. That goes for most actions undertaken by the Federal Reserve as well. Finally, even for those amongst us, especially economists, who find those arguments less than compelling, we should all remember this:

Economists may call for “temporary,” “conditional,” and “targeted” stimulus but they won’t be the ones designing the plan. Spending increases and tax cuts are policies with long term consequences that we need to think about carefully.

My own view relates to the first reason I quoted. Spending and tax decisions should make sense in and of themselves, not because of some quixotic attempt to influence the short term course of the economy.

Update: McQ is dubious about the specific package being offered by the Democrats in Congress on far less general grounds as well.

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