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Friday, February 24, 2012

Will Gold be Paulson's Next "Greatest Trade Ever"?

Will Gold be Paulson's Next "Greatest Trade Ever"?

By Peter Krauth, Global Resources Specialist

When famed hedge-fund manager John Paulson speaks, people listen.

And it's no wonder.

Paulson made his way into the financial history books thanks to what many now call the "greatest trade ever".

Paulson & Co. shorted the subprime mortgage market before the collapse banking a $15 billion gain.

So when Paulson went big again by buying gold in 2009 and 2010, investors took notice.

At the time he said, "As an investor, I became very concerned about having my assets denominated in U.S. dollars," Paulson told his audience. "So I looked for another currency in which to denominate my assets in. I feel that gold is the best currency."

In fact, Paulson's holdings in the SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD) make his firm the biggest stakeholder in this ETF, with a position currently valued at $2.9 billion.

So that begs the question....

Is Paulson still a gold bull?
In a recent letter to investors he wrote, "By the time inflation becomes evident, gold will probably have moved, which implies that now is the time to build a position in gold."

And he's not alone.

Recent filings showed that another legendary hedge-fund investor, George Soros, has nearly doubled his stake in GLD to 85,450 shares.

But "Bond King" Bill Gross's latest words and actions may well be the most significant of all.

To continue reading, please click here....
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Fuente:

Saludos
Rodrigo González Fernández
Diplomado en "Responsabilidad Social Empresarial" de la ONU
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Thursday, February 23, 2012

LA IMAGEN DEL PODER EN UN LIBRO

LA IMAGEN DEL PODER EN UN LIBRO

Las pieles de Ana Botella y el Rolex de Cándido Méndez, en 'Política y moda'

Política Y Moda
Foto: PENÍNSULA

MADRID, 23 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS)

La periodista Patrycia Centeno desvela los secretos de imagen de los líderes mundiales, sus fallos y sus asignaturas pendientes en el libro 'Política y moda. La imagen del poder' (Península), que se publica este jueves. La camisa antibalas de Chávez o el asesor de corbatas que sigue a David Cameron son algunas de estas revelaciones.

"En cuestión de imagen, en España suspenderían muchos políticos", ha afirmado la autora en declaraciones a Europa Press. Según señala esta especialista en moda y comunicación política, su aspecto ha de estar "sumamente cuidado" pero, además, ha de usarse como un lenguaje y, por tanto, ha de ser coherente con su discurso.

Uno de los casos de "incongruencia" que Centeno pone como ejemplo es el de Ana Botella, ahora alcaldesa de Madrid y que, como concejal de Medio Ambiente, se "enfundaba" habitualmente en prendas de piel. "No importa si son reales o sintéticas, es un atuendo que no va unido a su cargo", indica.

En esta misma línea, destaca que los líderes sindicales Ignacio Fernández Toxo y Cándido Méndez también fallan en la pertinencia entre su imagen y su posición política. El primero ha aparecido en ocasiones con una bufanda de Burberry y el segundo lleva un Rolex, algo que no es adecuado con su puesto.

Los aciertos y desaciertos también alcanzan a los líderes del país. El presidente del Gobierno afirma no preocuparse en absoluto de su imagen e incluso en ocasiones ha confesado que es su hijo quien escoge sus corbatas. Para la periodista, Mariano Rajoy suspendería por este desinterés y por el aspecto de su barba y su pelo. El líder de la oposición, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, tampoco pasaría con buena nota por el tamaño de sus americanas.

Este es precisamente el primer consejo que reciben los presidentes de Gobierno cuando llegan al poder: llevar trajes a medida. Zapatero siguió esta recomendación al principio de su mandato, así como no llevar nunca mocasines. Sin embargo, se olvidó de ello al poco tiempo, según cuenta Centeno.

"Los presidentes han de mostrar tres características con su imagen: seriedad, seguridad y cercanía", apunta la autora de 'Política y moda'. Zapatero tuvo muy en cuenta la última de las tres, mientras que Aznar tan solo hizo incapié en la austeridad y sensatez, lo demás "no le importaba y no le dio importancia", indica.

BERLUSCONI Y MEDVEDEV, MANÍAS Y SUPERSTICIONES

En el campo internacional, la autora está convencida de que en Estados Unidos y en el continente americano en general, el poder de la imagen como lenguaje no visual es más importante que en Europa. Es el caso de Barack Obama, quien "ha creado estilo y ha inspirado colecciones de moda". "Tiene una imagen impoluta y nunca caerá en la superficialidad", asegura.

En el lado opuesto de Rajoy y de Rubalcaba se encuentran el expresidente italiano Silvio Berlusconi y el presidente ruso Dimitri Medvedev. Il Cavaliere lleva "corbatas de lunares porque le traen suerte" y el mandatario ruso "está obsesionado por combinar la corbata con el reloj".

Otro de los secretos que se desvelan en este libro es un asunto controvertido que siempre termina en debate: la corbata. "Los detractores no quieren llevarla, pero los partidarios la llevan mal", critica Centeno. El primer ministro de Reino Unido, David Cameron ha tomado la decisión de contratar a un asesor personal de esta prenda, "todo un acierto", afirma.

Los secretos de los políticos no se quedan ahí. Según ha investigado esta periodista, la famosa camisa roja que Chávez luce es en realidad una prenda "antibalas"; la reina Isabel II de Reino Unido lleva pequeños plomos en la costura de sus vestidos para evitar "destapes"; y el presidente francés, Nicolas Sarkozy, no permite que las personas que lo rodean habitualmente sobrepasen mucho su altura.

Fuente:

Saludos
Rodrigo González Fernández
Diplomado en "Responsabilidad Social Empresarial" de la ONU
Diplomado en "Gestión del Conocimiento" de la ONU
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Monday, February 20, 2012

Publicación estadounidense Best Lawyers elige a los ocho mejores abogados chilenos 2012

 

por primera vez realiza este reconocimiento en el país

Publicación estadounidense Best Lawyers elige a los ocho mejores abogados chilenos 2012

Las áreas reconocidas fueron libre competencia, financiamiento, banca, arbitrajes, corporativa, litigio, defensa criminal y laboral.

 

Por Paula Vargas 



Se trata de la publicación legal más antigua de Estados Unidos, que por primera vez elige a los mejores abogados de Chile en su versión 2012.

El ranking los ubica por especialidad. Así, en temas corporativos y de fusiones y adquisiciones el que lidera la tabla es Gerardo Varela (Cariola, Diez, Pérez-Cotapos & Cía.), luego el más destacado en arbitraje y mediación es Enrique Barros (Barros, Letelier & Compañía), en finaciamiento y desarrollo de proyectos el número uno es Eugenio Besa (Morales & Besa), en tanto, en materia de libre competencia Nicole Nehme (FerrdaNehme) es la ganadora, siendo, además, la única mujer entre los ocho mejores. Se suma a esta selecta lista, Roberto Guerrero Valenzuela (Guerrero, Olivos, Novoa y Errázuriz), quien se destaca en temas de banca y finanzas, también aparece Pedro Pablo Gutiérrez (Gutiérrez, Waugh, Jimeno & Asenjo) como mejor litigante, además de Gabriel Zaliasnik (Albagli, Zaliasnik / Cía.) en defensa criminal y Oscar Gajardo (Eyzaguirre y Cía.) liderando temas laborales y de empleo.



Otros reconocimientos


El ranking es elaborado en base a la votación de un total de 300 juristas nacionales, quienes además de elegir a los 'top one' por especialidad, escogieron a los más destacados de la plaza en más de una veintena de áreas de práctica. Finalmente fueron reconocidos 124 abogados de un total de 52 estudios de abogados.

Las firmas que obtuvieron mayores menciones fueron Claro y Cía., donde destacaron 6 abogados en 18 menciones, entre ellos, José María Eyzaguirre Baeza, José María Eyzaguirre G., Cristóbal Eyzaguirre; Felipe Larraín, Felipe Ossa, Rodrigo Ochagavía y Sebastián Eyzaguirre.

Otra firma destacada fue Barros & Errázuriz con 16 menciones y 7 abogados destacados, encabezados por Fernando y Cristián Barros, Gonzalo Cubillos, Gonzalo Molina, José Tomás Errázuriz y Pablo Guerrero.Por su parte, Carey & Cía. también fue reconocida en 14 menciones. En su caso, los abogados más destacados fueron Jaime Martínez, Rafael Vergara y Gonzalo Fernández. Además de Jorge y Jaime Carey, Pablo Iacobelli, Salvador Valdés y Juan Guillermo Levine.

Igual número de reconocimientos recibió Cariola, Diez, Pérez-Cotapos, donde destacaron a 10 abogados en 14 menciones. Entre ellos sobresalen Sergio Diez, Francisco Javier Illanes y Sebastián Obach, entre otros.

También destacaron Philippi, Yrarrázaval, Pulido & Brunner, Prieto y Cía., Guerrero, Olivos, Novoa & Errázuriz, Larraín & Asociados, Morales & Besa, Albagli, Zaliasnik & Cía., Alessandri & Cía., Bofill, Mir, Alvarez & Jana Abogados, Grasty, Quintana, Majlis & Cía, Gutiérrez, Waugh, Jimeno & Asenjo, Harasic & López, FerradaNehme, Estudio Otero, Ortúzar, Aguila & Concha, Urenda, Rencoret, Orrego y Dorr, Puga & Ortíz, Vergara, Labarca & Cía.

(vea lista completa en www.df.cl)


Fuente:

Saludos
Rodrigo González Fernández
Diplomado en "Responsabilidad Social Empresarial" de la ONU
Diplomado en "Gestión del Conocimiento" de la ONU
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Monday, February 13, 2012

Mises Daily Street Freak

Street Freak

Mises Daily: Monday, February 13, 2012 by

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[Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers • By Jared Dillian • Simon and Schuster, 2011 • 368 pages]

Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers

Wall Street traders, like high-stakes poker players, are a different breed. The constant pressure, the appetite for risk, the ability to think and react in split seconds, all the while calculating odds in their heads that most can't do with an HP12C.

"These guys are a pretty weird bunch," Dr. Paul Zak says. "They're very rational and very competitive." Zak is a neuroeconomist at Claremont Graduate University who is studying the brains of traders to find out if this personality type has a certain genetic signature.

In his "Head Case" column in the Wall Street Journal, Jonah Lehrer writes that Dr. Zak and fellow Claremont neuroeconomist Steve Sapra have analyzed the genes of 60 professional traders working at five major Wall Street firms. Zak and Sapra focused on the genes known to affect the activity of dopamine.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain that "helps to regulate decisions involving risk and reward," Lehrer writes, "allowing us to experience both the thrill of getting what we want and the pain of losing it all."

Traders who manage to last on Wall Street for a long time, "tended to hit a sweet spot of dopamine activity: their genes kept them from experiencing either very high or very low levels of the molecule," explains Lehrer. "These prosperous professionals were much more likely to have so-called Goldilocks genes, placing them solidly in the middle of the dopamine distribution."

Goldilocks is not what comes to mind as we watch the frantic activity on any trading floor. In fact, it's just the opposite, with people yelling, screaming and gesturing wildly. As Jared Dillian says in this video clip promoting his book Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers, "For someone who has bipolar disorder, being on the trading floor is the absolute worst place to be, because no one's going to notice that anything's wrong, because everybody is crazy." If Dillian had been working at Starbucks, his mercurial behavior might have called attention to his disorder. As is was, at Lehman, being manic, yelling and screaming, was "considered functional behavior on the trading floor."

Dillian tells his story in a fast-paced style that sweeps the reader up into the author's two worlds: the bare-knuckle world of price discovery on the trading floor, along with his descent into depression and the constant coping with his nearly debilitating obsessive-compulsive behavior. All of this makes the book hard to put down.

Street Freak is a great American success story — with a twist. A young man gets out of the Coast Guard and dreams of having a Wall Street career, working in the center of capitalism — the World Trade Center. But he doesn't have the top-tier college pedigree that paves the way to the brass ring. The competition is fierce in the Lehman Brothers training class. He has a slim chance of earning a position.

His training is rudely interrupted by 9/11 and the author must live with the memory of watching the second plane ram into the second tower right above him. Training resumes across the Hudson and would eventually include performing security-guard duties. But while his classmates don't take the menial job seriously, Dillian does, and it serves him well.

He's granted an interview and tells of reading Burton Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street, a book extolling the virtues of efficient-market theory. "I read the book," Dillian tells the interviewer, "decided it was loathsome, nihilistic, academic bullshit, and set out to spend the rest of my career proving it wrong."

Dillian gets his start in index arbitrage, only watching at first, then calculating his mentor's P&L, and finally was allowed to trade. When the firm moves back to New York, and the head man Dick Fuld abolishes business casual, the author goes on a cheap suit shopping spree at Men's Warehouse, spending for five suits what his coworkers pay for one. But his frugality put him on the wrong side of the "Lehman Handshake." (You'll have to read the book.)

The author has a gift for math, while knowing little about finance when he began. As he writes, "I just wanted to create money out of speed and pure intimidation." He says he had no idea what the market was doing, but tick by tick Dillian developed an extraordinary sense for the direction of the beast that is the futures market.

Street Freak is chalk full of market jargon and trading lingo and, occasionally, Dillian stops to explain a trade that tells you all you need to know about modern finance.

I was expressing a view, not just on interest rates but also on forward interest rates, through a cash-settled future. Furthermore, I was doing so in a nonlinear fashion, using options on futures. I'd used a derivative of a derivative to express a view on an imaginary concept. It was downright magical.

While Dr. Zak calls traders very rational, Dillian writes that to get anything done on Wall Street you have to not only act irrationally but also be insane: "Only insane people do exactly the opposite of what common sense tells you to do."

Very little of Dillian's recount of trading resembles deliberate rational thought. But perhaps there is no distinction between rational and otherwise. Ludwig von Mises wrote that there is only purposeful behavior or human action. "Praxeology does not employ the term rational," Mises wrote in Money, Method, and the Market Process, explaining that the "opposite of action is not irrational behavior, but a reactive response to stimuli on the part of the bodily organs and of instincts, which cannot be controlled by volition."

In Mises's view, economics doesn't deal with homo economicus at all, but with homo agens: man "as he really is, often weak, stupid, inconsiderate, and badly instructed."

Dillian's weaknesses overtake him. He attempts suicide unsuccessfully and later on exits the trading floor suddenly, checking himself into a psychiatric hospital. He emerges medicated but healthier, bolstered by the insight that he can write.

However, the Lithium wrecks his concentration (and sex drive) and the patterns and flows that he once saw so naturally are fuzzy and incomprehensible. He must learn to trade all over again.

As impregnable as its employees thought it was, Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail for its overexposure to real estate. While its trading floor was making millions, Lehman brothers amassed a real-estate portfolio that was, in Dillian's words "absolutely pornographic."

According to rumor, Dick Fuld refused an offer of $40 a share for Lehman from Korean Development Bank in its dying days. But unlike his traders, Fuld allowed his pride to get in the way of making the best trade possible.

When capitalism is allowed to work, liquidation creates new beginnings. This was the case for Lehman. The New York trading operation was bought by Barclays, and Nomura Securities purchased the overseas operations. Most everyone kept their jobs.

As for Jared Dillian, he's created the financial newsletter the Daily Dirtnap and is doing what he enjoys most.

Fuente:

Saludos
Rodrigo González Fernández
Diplomado en "Responsabilidad Social Empresarial" de la ONU
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Thursday, February 09, 2012

Women in Mexican politics

Women in Mexican politics

The XX factor

Can a woman candidate count on female voters' support?

Feb 11th 2012 | MEXICO CITY | from the print edition

UNTIL this year, no woman had ever been the presidential candidate for any of Mexico's main political parties. That changed on February 5th, when Josefina Vázquez Mota, a former secretary of education and of social development, won the primary of the conservative National Action Party (PAN). "I will be Mexico's first presidenta" (female president), she said in her victory speech.

Ms Vázquez is a clear underdog in the July 1st election. Polls taken before the primary put the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) nearly 20 points ahead of the ruling PAN (see chart). Voters have tired of the PAN, which has presided over slow growth and rising violence during 11 years in power. Ms Vázquez could even finish third behind Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, a left-winger who narrowly lost the 2006 race.

In this section

No one knows if Mexico's supposedly macho voters are open to a female candidate. Women only gained the right to vote in 1953. But Mexican politics is not especially male-dominated: women hold over a quarter of congressional seats. That is a higher proportion than America's and twice as high as the share in Brazil, which elected a female president in 2010.

Ms Vázquez has said she considers her sex an advantage. It certainly helps to distinguish her from Felipe Calderón, the unpopular current president and a fellow PAN member. According to Mitofsky, a polling firm, women outnumber men by a fifth among her supporters.

Meanwhile, her rivals' attempts to woo female voters have not gone well. The PRI's handsome Enrique Peña Nieto, whose rallies draw throngs of swooning señoritas, was thought to have an edge with them. But when he was recently asked if he knew the price of meat and tortillas, he replied that he was not "the lady of the house". A few weeks later an ex-girlfriend accused him of neglecting children he fathered outside marriage. The fiery Mr López has tried to soften his image by promising a "loving republic". But women seem unmoved. A majority of both candidates' fans are male.

Women have always been less likely to vote than men in Mexico. Might that change this year? The gender gap has disappeared in school-attendance and literacy rates. A third of women work outside the home, helped by a fall in the fertility rate from nearly seven children per woman in the 1960s to around two today. But younger Mexicans of both sexes are less likely to vote than others; and Ms Vázquez's opposition to abortion may not appeal to the new generation of empowered women. She clearly needs their support to close the gap.

from the print edition | The Americas   

Fuente:

Saludos
Rodrigo González Fernández
Diplomado en "Responsabilidad Social Empresarial" de la ONU
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Cato Handbook for Policymakers: Energy Policy


The conventional narrative is that changes in gasoline prices can be almost entirely explained over the long run by changes in world crude oil prices. World crude oil prices have increased for six consecutive years -- the longest sustained oil price increase in history -- because of spectacular global economic growth over that same period. The global economic boom of 2003 -- 08 has increased the demand for all commodities -- including crude oil -- and this demand shock hit the market at a time when both excess oil production capacity and private oil inventories were at very low levels. Given the fact that neither the demand for nor the supply of crude oil changes very much in the short term in response to price changes, even a modest increase in demand can have a major effect on oil, and thus gasoline, prices.

 

Saludos
Rodrigo González Fernández
Diplomado en "Responsabilidad Social Empresarial" de la ONU
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Wednesday, February 08, 2012

The First Lady in a lovely purple dress talking with Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram.

The First Lady in a lovely purple dress talking with Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram.

In honor of the one year anniversary of Startup America, the First Lady spoke with Mike Krieger, the co-founder of Instagram, the fastest growing social mobile startup in the U.S. today. He exemplifies President Obama's belief that "entrepreneurs embody the promise of America: the idea that if you have a good idea and are willing to work hard and see it through, you can succeed in this country. And in fulfilling this promise, entrepreneurs also play a critical role in expanding our economy and creating jobs."

Mr. Krieger moved from Brazil to California to attend Stanford University, where he studied computer science and cognitive science. In 2010, he and a partner founded Instagram, which now employs a talented, growing team of designers and engineers. After graduation, Mr. Krieger worked for a year on his student F-1 visa, later applying for and receiving an H-1B visa as a high-skill worker. Mr. Krieger wants to permanently stay in the U.S. and has applied for a green card.


Fuente:

Saludos
Rodrigo González Fernández
Diplomado en "Responsabilidad Social Empresarial" de la ONU
Diplomado en "Gestión del Conocimiento" de la ONU
Diplomado en Gerencia en Administracion Publica ONU
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Tuesday, February 07, 2012

It's 1980 Again

It's 1980 Again

Mises Daily:Tuesday, February 07, 2012 by

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Floyd Norris writes for the New York Times that it's 1980 all over again.

Discussion of gold has gone from nonexistent a decade ago to the question of whether its price is in bubble territory, and now a policy question in the Republican primary. Ron Paul has been stumping for a return to the gold standard for decades, and the populace has finally caught up.

The issue resonates with young people who worry about a dire future with a dollar crash and nationwide poverty. The gold issue is hot enough that Newt Gingrich has promised to appoint a gold commission, with The Case for Gold coauthor Lewis Lehrman and Jim Grant as cochairman.

When Ronald Reagan went through the gold commission charade in 1981 to satisfy a campaign promise of studying the gold standard question, Lehrman cast one of two dissenting votes on the commission that voted in favor of maintaining the fiat money status quo. The other "no" vote came from Ron Paul himself. As Murray Rothbard explained,

The gold standard was the easiest pledge to dispose of. President Reagan appointed an allegedly impartial gold commission to study the problem — a commission overwhelmingly packed with lifelong opponents of gold. The commission presented its predictable report, and gold was quickly interred.

In similar fashion, Norris and the NYT look to explore the worthiness of a gold standard by citing a University of Chicago survey of 37 economists asking if they agreed that "price-stability and employment outcomes would be better for the average American" if the dollar's value were tied to gold.

Norris makes a point that among the 37 were advisers to both Democratic and Republican presidents. As if this insured some sort of impartiality. Like Captain Renault in Casablanca, you will be shocked — shocked! — to know that all 37 of the esteemed economists polled think a gold standard is a terrible idea.

The first statement the 37 economists responded to was

If the US replaced its discretionary monetary policy regime with a gold standard, defining a "dollar" as a specific number of ounces of gold, the price-stability and employment outcomes would be better for the average American.

Those disagreeing were 43 percent and those strongly disagreeing were the other 57 percent.

With their answers, the responders also provided a one to ten degree of confidence in their opinion. Most were highly confident in their positions. The Ivy League is well represented with nearly half the panel coming from Yale, Harvard, or Princeton. Berkeley and Stanford combined for ten on the panel and the supposedly free-market Chicago had five representatives, as did MIT.

Anil K. Kashyap is a professor of economics and finance at Chicago and used the survey to make this snide remark: "A gold standard regime would be a disaster for any large advanced economy. Love of the G.S. implies macroeconomic illiteracy."

According to his webpage Professor Kashyap is currently teaching these two advanced MBA elective classes: "Analyzing Financial Crises" and "Understanding Central Banks." But Kashyap is plenty busy off campus. He's a consultant for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and a member of the Economic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He does work for the government of Japan and, well, you get the idea.

Former Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee, also a professor at Chicago, seems downright annoyed by the gold questions, saying, "eesh. Has it come to this?"

One wonders how MIT's Bengt Holmstöm makes this judgment: "All insights from the past and current crises go against a gold standard."

To the contrary, history shows that with a gold standard there are fewer crises; and when there are crises they are short-lived, as in the case of the panics of 1819, 1873, and 1920. Since the last remnants of the gold standard were cast aside by Nixon in 1971, world economies have been a series of booms, busts, inflations, economic instability, with no real economic growth.

"This proposal makes no sense in the modern world," says Yale's William Nordhaus. "Just look at the Eurozone to see the consequences." Surely the good professor doesn't think Europe is currently on the gold standard. But assuming he equates the fiat euro with a gold-backed euro, Professor Nordhaus should read Philipp Bagus's The Tragedy of the Euro. Bagus points out that member states of the European Union run deficits expecting them to be financed by the ECB. So Europe has a tragedy of the commons at work with its monetary policy that sets up very dangerous incentives for member states, making the system unworkable.

Governments cannot print prosperity, and capital must be saved — it cannot be conjured from the ether.

A number of professors on the panel made comments to the effect that the price of gold is too volatile or unstable to back the dollar. Evidently it doesn't occur to them that it's not the price of gold that's volatile but the value of the dollar. The value of the dollar is volatile downward for the very reason that the Fed can create dollars from nowhere; evidenced by the M2 money supply increasing from $683.7 billion in August 1971 to the current $9,712.8 billion.

Creating paper and digits is cheap and effortless. Mining gold is anything but. It's expensive and the yellow metal is quite hard to find. Grant's Interest Rate Observer points out that, according to the US Geological Survey, the world supply of gold has increased at rate of only 1.7 percent a year from 1900 through 2009.

Granted, it hasn't been a steady 1.7 percent growth. Production boomed in the 1930s, for instance, but since the 2000s, growth has declined to 1.1 percent. However, as Grant points out,

Still, over the long run, the co-commissioners [Grant and Lehrman] agree, the Newmonts and the Barricks of the world are more dependable sources of monetary matter than the Federal Reserves of the world.

Behavioral economist Richard Thaler asks, "Why tie to gold? Why not 1982 Bordeaux?" Assuming Professor Thaler is being serious, wine doesn't make a terribly good money, although it might do better than our present paper system. After all, a number of things have been used as money throughout history: salt, sugar, cattle, iron hoes, tea, cowrie shells, and even cigarettes in prison camps.

Ultimately the commodity that is selected by the marketplace to be money will have these characteristics: generally marketable, divisible, high value per unit weight, fairly stable value, durable, recognizable, and homogeneous.

Thaler's 1982 Bordeaux flunks most of the test. While it's divisible, wine is anything but durable, certainly not homogeneous, and hauling Bordeaux around by the bottle or barrel would not be handy in this (as the professors like to say) modern world.

It's hard to make a case that 1982 Bordeaux is generally marketable, but having a bottle to trade with might serve you well in certain situations. Value would vary widely due to weather and harvests on the supply side and consumer preference on the demand side. This leads us to the problem that, in some parts of the world and for some people, wine — whether it's 1982 Bordeaux or Two Buck Chuck — is not recognized as having any value at all.

Meanwhile, the yellow metal passes the test with flying colors.

The second statement posed to the panel was, "There are many factors besides US inflation risk that influence the current dollar price of gold."

To this question 73 percent strongly agreed and 27 percent simply agreed.

MIT's Daron Acemoglu strongly agreed with this statement and commented, "Gold is intrinsically close to useless, so its price is determined as a 'bubble.'" Gold has been used for thousands of years as a medium of exchange and store of value. It's jaw-dropping to know a professor at MIT believes gold is useless. In fact it is the dollar and US Treasury debt that are the greatest bubbles the world has ever seen.

Professor Nordhaus also strongly agreed and wrote, "There is no discernible connection between gold price and CPI movements in the period since the demonetization of gold in 1971."

Really? This chart plotting the price of gold and CPI portrays a strong connection.

Figure 1

The connection reflected by the chart would be even stronger if John Williams's shadowstats SGS-CPI were used instead of the BLS's hedonically adjusted numbers.

LBJ's guns-and-butter policy of the 1960s combined with Nixon's big-government conservatism, each facilitated by a compliant Fed, led to Nixon's unshackling the dollar from its last faint gold restraint. The resulting stagflation of the 1970s brought on the cry to return the dollar to gold.

Bush and Obama's drones-and-caviar policy makes LBJ and Nixon look like rock-ribbed fiscal conservatives. The money printing has been relentless, and the yellow metal's price merely reflects this quaint old definition of "inflation."

To ask the question if 2012 is 1980 all over again answers the question as to why returning to gold is imperative. The nightmarish economic outcomes caused by being, as Jim Grant says, on a "PhD standard" demand change, and more people realize it each and every day.

Fiat paper, whose use is mandated by the state, is the PhDs' money; while gold, with a value derived from trade, is the people's money.

The people want their money back from the ivory tower — before it's too late.

 

Saludos
Rodrigo González Fernández
Diplomado en "Responsabilidad Social Empresarial" de la ONU
Diplomado en "Gestión del Conocimiento" de la ONU
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Monday, February 06, 2012

Fixing Mortgage Finance: What to Do with the Federal Housing Administration?

Fixing Mortgage Finance: What to Do with the Federal Housing Administration?

by Mark A. Calabria

Mark Calabria is the director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. He served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and drafted significant portions of the FHA Modernization Act of 2008. He also served as deputy assistant secretary for regulatory affairs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he oversaw FHA's minimum property standards program.


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While Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and private subprime lenders have deservedly garnered the bulk of attention and blame for the mortgage crisis, other federal programs also distort our mortgage market and put taxpayers at risk of having to finance massive financial bailouts.

The most prominent of these risky agencies is the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The FHA currently backs an activity portfolio of over $1 trillion. With an economic value of only $2.6 billion, representing a capital ratio of 0.24 percent, relatively small changes in the performance of the FHA's portfolio could result in significant losses to the taxpayer. As the taxpayer is, by law, obligated for any losses above the FHA's current capital reserves, these are not losses that can be avoided. Reasonably foreseeable changes to the FHA's performance could easily cost the taxpayer tens of billions of dollars, surpassing the ultimate cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bank bailouts.

To protect the taxpayer and the broader economy, the FHA should be scaled back immediately, and an emphasis should be placed on improving its credit quality. At the same time, the agency should be placed on a path to ultimately be eliminated, with its risk-taking being transferred back to the private sector.

 

Saludos
Rodrigo González Fernández
Diplomado en "Responsabilidad Social Empresarial" de la ONU
Diplomado en "Gestión del Conocimiento" de la ONU
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Thursday, February 02, 2012

Previous Mises Daily IndexMisrepresenting Inequality

Misrepresenting Inequality

Mises Daily: Thursday, February 02, 2012 by

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Sir William Thompson, Lord Kelvin, once said,

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.

Kelvin's statement is an important reminder that when magnitudes of certain variables or their relationships are in question, without the ability to accurately measure them, you don't know very much; certainly far too little to claim knowledge of "the answer." Unfortunately, his view, while dominant in the natural sciences, has often been abused in the social realm, in defense of misguided government policies.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the most recent iterations of claims about wealth, poverty, and inequality that seem to arise everywhere from Occupy protesters to President Obama's reelection campaign. Here, the discussion typically relies on measures that are highly inaccurate (compounded by ambiguous and confusing terms, such as statements about "the rich," sometimes meaning people with high current incomes and other times those who have a great deal of financial wealth, even though those groups are very different and the cutoffs are typically arbitrary and often unstated), yet they are used as if they met Kelvin's criterion, providing a reliable basis for social policy.

When advocates for ever-more redistribution focus their antirich rhetoric on those with a great deal of wealth, they rely on seriously incomplete and misleading measures of wealth and ignore variables crucial to an adequate analysis of current financial wealth.

Several huge sources of wealth are omitted from the financial measures used by those fixated on inequality. These include pension-fund assets, which largely represent the retirement funds of the nonrich; Social Security wealth (the present value of benefits qualified for but not yet received); and human capital — the knowledge, energy, and abilities embodied in working people but not yet turned into financial wealth. These represent trillions of dollars of wealth, spread far more evenly through the population than financial-wealth measures imply. The same is true of our tremendous wealth in the form of consumer durable goods, from cars to refrigerators to computers. Such omissions guarantee misunderstanding.

Wealth-inequality complaints, in their rush to justify more government redistribution, also ignore many important determinants of financial-wealth differences. A key one is demographics. Disparities in measured wealth in large part reflect age differences in the population.

When people are young, they have not yet had time to convert their capabilities into financial wealth by earning income, then saving and investing in financial assets (e.g., a major reason for low measured wealth in Hispanic households is the youth of their primary earners). However, when they have gotten older, especially approaching or during retirement, they have had time to convert their unmeasured human capital into measured financial wealth. The result is that much of the apparent wealth inequality really reflects age differences in the population (magnified as baby boomers have aged). This demographic bias is also used to buttress claims by those opposed to reducing tax rates, because the immediate positive effects on financial asset prices go to the owners at that time — those productive enough and old enough to have accumulated the financial wealth to own them — even though they would benefit all productive Americans as people responded to improved incentives.

If anything, measures of income inequality and poverty are even less reliable.

One major reason is that that in-kind welfare programs go uncounted in the official data, so that they do not improve the measured situations of the poor. This is a very large error. Of the over $500 billion given annually in government means-tested assistance (not including another quarter trillion or so dollars Medicare spends on the elderly), roughly three-quarters is now given in kind.

The official data further omits taxes, disguising the disproportionate burdens borne by higher-income families. It also hides the impact of the Earned Income Tax Credit. Even though the EITC is refundable, putting dollars directly into recipients' pockets, it is ignored as a "negative tax," making its $40 billion plus in annual transfers to lower-income families disappear from view.

Income studies also fail to incorporate nonsalary benefits and payments to workers, which have increased most among those not at the top of income measures. Mark Warshawsky of the Social Security Advisory Board found that recent expansions in measured earnings inequality were almost completely attributable to rising benefits costs.

The official Census survey also ignores substantial underreporting of income (e.g., people working "off the books" to maintain greater eligibility for various benefit programs) in the Census survey. For example, the more accurate measures of the Survey of Income and Program Participation have routinely found poverty rates 25 percent below official Census estimates. The underreporting by lower-income households is also reflected in the dramatically smaller inequalities in measures of consumption — far better indicators of well-being — than of current income.

Just as the official data dramatically underestimates the condition of those at the lower end of the current income distribution, it overestimates the incomes of those at the higher end. For example, the recent Congressional Budget Office study of inequality, the most common current "proof text" of increasingly unjustifiable disparities, is based on individual taxable income reported to the IRS. However, many forms of income not formerly reported as individual income now are, due to changing incentives, sharply biasing upward measures of the share of income going to higher-income earners. Many people have shifted from filing as businesses under the corporate tax to filing as individuals as a result of decreasing individual tax rates, dramatically exaggerating increases in their incomes. Top managers have also moved from receiving income as stock options taxed as capital gains to nonqualified stock options, making them countable as taxable personal income. The late 1980s cut in income tax rates also saw greater income reporting, raising measures of income inequality.

Inequality complaints also commonly overlook other important determinants of market outcomes, including far more workers and hours worked by members of higher-income families, family size (positively correlated with income), and the far-higher cost of living in large urban areas, where larger incomes tend to be earned. Official household-income measures also ignore that households have become substantially smaller than in the past, thus substantially underestimating the growth in income (e.g., real per-household income rose only 6 percent between 1969 and 1996, while real per capita income rose 51 percent). Further, our aging population has increased the proportion of those retired, increasing apparent income inequality.

Income data is so flawed that many policies and programs that increase recipients' well-being actually make them look poorer.

While official data ignores massive in-kind aid to those near the bottom of the income distribution, such programs reduce benefits as market incomes rise (e.g., the 30¢ reduction in food-stamp benefits for each dollar of net income) or terminate eligibility if incomes exceed a certain level (e.g., Medicaid). Most EITC recipients are also in the phase-out range of incomes, where they lose 21¢ in benefits (as well as paying other taxes) for every added dollar earned, sharply increasing their effective tax rates. Such disincentives lead many to earn less, reflected in the measured data, making the recipients of huge transfers from others actually appear poorer.

Market responses to redistribution also make inequality look worse. Income redistribution compresses after-tax wage differentials between current high- and low-income earners. But by reducing the after-tax payoff to the necessary investment and sacrifice, it reduces the supply of high-income workers over time, raising their pretax earnings. Conversely, it increases the supply of low-income workers, with the opposite effect. Because income data counts only the changed market earnings, measured incomes grow more unequal.

Beyond such massive mismeasurement, which means that the data used to promote increasing redistribution do not come anywhere near meeting Lord Kelvin's standard of knowing what you are talking about, there is another major problem with the interpretation of changing income shares.

Even if, properly measured, certain groups increased their share of financial wealth or current income, that does not imply that their increase in wealth came at the expense of others, so that the government must intervene to "fix" it. Such a view fundamentally misunderstands the nature of markets. Whatever level of wealth one starts at, the way to get wealthier in a market economy is not to make other people poorer but to make them better off.

This follows from the voluntary exchanges of the marketplace — you and I won't agree to trade unless we both feel we get more in value than we give up. Increasing your wealth in a market economy therefore depends on providing goods or services that others value more highly than what it costs you to provide them: a win-win situation. If the wealthy are getting wealthier in the marketplace, this means that they are employing their wealth to improve, not harm, the well-being of others. But the improved options, products, and services — which are increases in real wealth — that buyers receive in exchange for payments that make some suppliers rich are ignored in standard measures of wealth.

While increased wealth in a voluntary-exchange economy comes from creating wealth for others, there are other ways to increase wealth — ways that make others poorer. They have a common denominator: government and its ability to coerce people. Examples include tariffs, quotas, restrictions on entry and competitors, price controls, licensing rules and requirements, and subsidies. All create wealth for some (typically well-organized and informed special interests) by taking it away from others (typically the poorly informed and unorganized general population). Such policies do leverage government power to increase some people's wealth at others' even-greater expense, and can thereby be properly condemned, but one need not know what happened to the distribution of income to do so.

Disparities in Americans' officially measured financial wealth or current income do not justify abandoning the well-established principle that wealth creation in a market economy benefits others. To the extent that such differences arise from the voluntary exchanges of the market, everybody benefits, whether incomplete data reflects it or not, and there is no problem to fix. Added government interference would then simply reduce people's incentives to make others better off. To the extent that some increase their wealth by using government power to harm others, the problem is the abuse of government power; and decreased government involvement, not increased government intervention, is the only real solution.

Political support for a plethora of redistribution policies has long been maintained by twisting Lord Kelvin's dictum — treating "meager and unsatisfactory" data that dramatically mismeasures wealth, poverty, and inequality in America as if it were accurate. That abuse reflects the huge payoff for those groups who use it to win redistribution in their favor, but it does not even remotely reflect reality. And since reality is the necessary basis for effective judgments, the result is to undermine accurate understanding, and therefore the potential for effective policy — particularly "take your hands off" as the most effective government policy.

Fuente:

Saludos
Rodrigo González Fernández
Diplomado en "Responsabilidad Social Empresarial" de la ONU
Diplomado en "Gestión del Conocimiento" de la ONU
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