Matt Nolan

More evidence of asymmetric information?

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Over at Market Movers, Felix Salmon discusses “Lehman’s Lies“.

In the wake of the collapse, it was clear that if Lehman couldn’t be trusted, then it would be silly to trust any other troubled financial institution, either — AIG, WaMu, Wachovia, Fortis, Hypo Real Estate, you name it.

This breakdown in “trust” destroyed the delicate equilibrium we were in, and has sent us spinning towards a worse set of outcomes.

Fundamentally, this has happened because “trust” (the fact that we would be playing a “infinitely” repeated game, which then rewards people for collusive behaviour) had allowed us to bypass the asymmetric information problem inherent in the market. With that trust gone, no-one will lend or purchases assets, as they think that only the worst deals are available on the market.

In this light, the behaviour of Lehman appears to be a major factor behind the crisis we now find ourselves in – damned investment banks 😛

Matt Nolan

RBA cuts 100 basis points

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100 basis points slashed by the Reserve Bank of Australia. There cash rate is now 6%. A 50 basis point cut was expected, 75 seemed possible, 100 is epic.

At the start of the recent freeze in credit markets a 75 basis point cut by the RBNZ seemed highly unlikely – but possible. Now a 75 basis point cut is looking increasingly likely – and 100 basis points also seems possible. To put this in perspective – the Bank may have felt that a 50 point cut in October was on the cards following the September cut. Financing costs have now moved up so much that it is (sort of) like the previous cut never happened – implying we need a 100 basis points of cuts just to get where the Bank was aiming, maybe 😛

Does this indicate that the economic situation for Australiasia has deteriorated rapidly – yes and no.

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Matt Nolan

Assets and the market for lemons

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I have spent so much time blabbing about asymmetric information without every explaining what I meant. As a result I feel that everyone deserves a little explanation. Thanks goes out to Akerlof and the lemons hypothesis.

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Matt Nolan

Was it the availability of credit that lead to the housing bubble?

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A popular explanation of the booming in house prices according to, well, everyone is that there was lots of “credit washing around” which convinced people that they should go and bid up house prices. An example of this logic is shown in this statement at the very good Big Picture blog:

The bubble in home prices, fueled by the ready availability of credit, resulted in an underestimate of the risks of residential real estate

Personally, I think this type of thinking has the causality all mixed up – if there was any error it was because people “underestimated the risks” associated with the price of residential real estate, and therefore given the “price” of credit the housing market appeared to be a better bet than it actually was. As a result, the entire blame for the bubble and associated crisis should lie with the fact that risk wasn’t being appropriately identified – not with some mystical belief that credit was springing up all over the place. If the risk problem was unsolvable, then we can blame central banks for leaving the price of credit (not its “availability) to low – however, this is a secondary issue to risk.

The whole concept of the “availability of credit” is somewhat of a misnomer.

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Matt Nolan

Credit crisis: Doomsaying in perspective

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It appears that many people fear a contraction in the economy – and are determined to bring to justice any factors that could lead to such a situation.

As of late, one such factor was the “credit crisis”, which has lead to a sudden freeze in lending and potentially to a contraction in economic growth in many of the worlds largest economies.

Given that it was a seemingly inevitable freezing in the credit market that has caused this reduction in economic activity many people state that it we should have regulated the credit market more – to prevent this sort of contraction from happening.

However, even if we do take the current slump in the credit market as inevitable – I am not convinced that this type of regulation would have improved the situation.

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Matt Nolan

Is the US taxpayer being forced to surrender to Wall Street?

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I don’t like thinks that sound like conspiracy theories – and the title of this post does! However, I am starting to get the impression that this is one situation where it may actually be the case. Overall it stinks like socialism for the rich (good cartoon here, good article here)

Two articles from Bloomberg this morning have pushed me into this view:

Bernanke Signals U.S. Should Pay More for Bad Debt

Bernanke Says Normal Markets Needed or Growth to Halt

As Felix Salmon states here, Bernanke’s interest in paying the hold to maturity price for assets just doesn’t make sense when a good proportion of the assets aren’t going to mature – and even if they wish to take into account risk, the US Treasury does not have time to sufficiently evaluate the risks.

Surely the aim of the bailout should be to do as little as possible to ensure that credit markets start functioning again – in this sense, over paying for assets seems excessive.

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