Typography

Last week I asked whether the Federal Reserve could get rid of the $100 bill. This week let's discuss whether it should get rid of the $100. I don't think so. The U.S. provides the world with a universal backup monetary system. Removing the $100 would reduce the effectiveness of this backup. Earlier this week the New York Times took up the knell for eliminating high value bank notes, echoing Larry Summers' earlier call to kill the $100 in order to reduce crime which in turn was a follow up on this piece from Peter Sands. More specifically, Summers says that "removing existing notes is a step too far. But a moratorium on printing new high denomination notes would make the world a better place." As an aside, I just want to point out that Summers' moratorium is an odd remedy since it doesn't move society any closer to his better place,  a world with less crime. A moratorium simply means that the stock of $100 bills is fixed while their price is free to f...

It would be wrong to blame the economics blogosphere's failure to foresee the 2008 credit crisis on complacency. Better to say that bloggers were distracted. Instead of sifting through sub-prime and CDO data, they were grappling with an entirely different threat, the impending Wile E. Coyote moment in the U.S. dollar. The perpetual racking-up of ever larger debts by the U.S. to the rest of the world for the sake of funding current consumption, and the eventual dollar collapse that this implied, was believed to be tripping point numero uno at the time. Look no further than Paul Krugman, who in September 2007 (in just his fourth blog post) had this to say: The argument I and others have made is that the U.S. trade deficit is, fundamentally, not sustainable in the long run, which means that sooner or later the dollar has to decline a lot. But international investors have been buying U.S. bonds at real interest rates barely higher than those offered in euros or yen — in effect, the...

In his first blog skirmish , Ben Bernanke took on Larry Summers' secular stagnation thesis, generating a slew of commentary by other bloggers. If the economy is in stagnation, the econ-blogosphere surely isn't. I thought that Stephen Williamson had a good meta-criticism of the entire debate. Both Bernanke and Summers present the incredibly low yields on Treasury inflation protected securities (TIPS) as evidence of paltry real returns on capital. But as Williamson points out, their chosen signal is beset by static. Government debt instruments like TIPS are useful as media of exchange, specifically as collateral, goes Williamson's argument. Those who own these instruments therefore enjoy a stream of liquidity services that gets embodied in their price as a liquidity premium. Rising TIPS prices (and falling yields) could therefore be entirely unrelated to returns on capital and wholly a function of widening liquidity premia. Bernanke and Summers can't make broad assumptio...

The Cider Mill, by Robin Moline In general, the real price of land has been increasing all over the world, especially since the early 1990s. (Japan and Germany are the exception). The recent credit crisis hurt this trend in a few countries like Ireland, Spain, Netherlands, and the US, but in other countries like Belgium, Canada, Sweden, and Australia the secular rise in housing prices remains intact. A popular explanation for the rise in land prices are the various versions of the secular stagnation thesis advocated by folks like Paul Krugman and Larry Summers. According to Krugman , if the natural rate of interest has become persistently negative—i.e. new capital projects are expected to yield a negative return—then investors will look to existing durable assets like gold or land that yield no less than a 0% return. The prices of these goods will be bid upwards, bubble-like. Or, as Summers puts it, if the return on capital is below the economy's growth rate, then intrinsically va...

Once in a while I veer out of the realm of abstraction into the land of usefulness. This post is meant to be helpful for anyone currently invested in stocks. Contrary to what you might think, your stock portfolio is not a hedge against inflation. This won't be a big deal if you're not concerned about inflation. If you are, read on. In an ideal world, stocks would be great inflation hedges. Take a business with revenues of $100, costs of $50, and earnings of $50. After inflation doubles all prices, the business's revenues now amount to $200, its costs $100, and earnings $100. Adjusting for inflation, the firm's earnings power has stayed constant. In this ideal world, a stock is a 100% inflation hedge. In our not-so-perfect world, companies must pay taxes. This alone isn't sufficient to turn stocks into poor inflation hedges, but when we mix taxes with historical cost accounting , the distortions can be dramatic. The actual accounting details behind this may seem ach...