Stock market bubble fueled by printed money

So the Dow Jones has hit 15,000, it was 14,000 just over two months ago, with the S & P reaching a record level, the FTSE is at its highest since 2007, and the German DAX index reaching levels not seen since before the global financial crisis.

It is like the crisis didn't happen, but oddly enough there isn't a huge amount of evidence to demonstrate that this is due to performance, rather than cheap credit.

Yes there has been a bit of a recovery, and yes some stock prices were low compared to expected revenues.

However, as Allister Heath of City AM says:

"Ultra-loose and interventionist monetary policy globally is one of the main causes of this resurgence. Pretending that it isn’t, and that economies – even those like America’s which have liquidated many past malinvestments – could immediately and easily readjust to neutral interest rates and zero intervention is a dangerous delusion.

Much of the central-bank induced madness that led to the last two bubbles is reaching ever more dangerous proportions, not least the Fed’s hubristic determination to prop up markets..."

It was the perpetual issuing of fiat money by central banks that fueled the crisis, with CPI inflation hidden by a combination of plummeting prices from Chinese imports (a scenario that has come to an end, as China no longer offers lower costs) and the inflation being largely seen in stock and property prices.

The new bubbles will be stores of future problems. 

Increases in stock prices due to good performance and optimistic earnings based on improved productivity and market growth are one thing,  increases due to banks, flooded with cheap money from central banks, seeking somewhere to put it, are another.

No one has learned anything.

Not all austerity is equal...

Allister Heath of City AM:

Spending cuts are austerity of the public sector  (as it has to reduce its activity)

Tax increases are austerity of the private sector

Think about which one is more likely to decrease employment, and which one is more likely to reduce economic growth.

Davos - when will someone talk about the elephant in the venue?

Regular readers of my blog know my views of the annual World Economic Forum at Davos.

In 2009 I wrote:

There is not inconsiderable hype in the business world and among some in governments about the annual exercise in mutual onanism called the Davos Economic Forum in Switzerland. Like many conferences of high profile people, one of the key objectives is to get people to agree and put out nice sounding statements that will offend no one and look like some enormous intellectual capital has been applied to the economic issues of the world.

Liam Halligan at the Daily Telegraph calls for this year's WEF to actually do something useful, like dealing with the elephants in the economic room that never get discussed, because to do so would embarrass the inept, timid and unprincipled politicians that scurry about the venue at Davos, seeking to appear important and competent.   He focuses on the US fiscal cliff and the unsustainability of the "Western model" of growing state dependency, deficit spending and public debt.

However, Davos wont do that.   It didn't identify the financial crisis, it didn't debate solutions, it hasn't really done much at all over the years.   It does involve a lot of networking and back slapping.  Andrew Ross Sorkin in the New York Times has written about how many of the prophesies at Davos prove to be far from true, like Bill Gates predicting Google didn't really have a business, how Ken Lay CEO of Enron was a keynote speaker in 2001 (yes the one convicted of conspiracy and fraud)  and how C. Fred Bergsten, senior fellow and director emeritus of the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said at Davos 2008 that it was inconceivable that there could be a world recession.

It's hilarious, for an event where the cost to send a delegate is a registration fee of US$20,000 a head, plus accommodation, airfares and other expenses of course, add a zero or two if you actually want to speak.

No doubt the business people attending see value in networking and discussing opportunities, but it is the fact it provides a forum to ignore some serious home truths about public policy in governments, whilst politicians are there talking about everything, but the hard issues, that makes the Forum more hype than substance.

No serious scholar of economics or finance would look at the Davos World Economic Forum as a locale of intense debate and discussion about any need for serious systematic change to domestic or foreign policy in any countries.

So what SHOULD be talked about?

How about this:

- The budget deficit and public debt of the United States, exacerbated by the unsustainability of social security and Medicare, and how it requires the US to choose between serious cuts in the role of the Federal Government, or serious increases in taxes, and what both options mean for economic growth and the long term future of the United States as the world's leading economy;

- The future of the European Union, particularly the nationalisation of southern European public debt by northern European economies, and how unsustainable the widespread European model of ever growing public spending and regulation of the private sector has proven to be in sustaining growth, employment and confidence.  In other words, how will Europe grow when so much of its economy and society is dependent on internal transfers;

- The risks and disappointment that quantitative easing/money printing/debasement and devaluation of currencies has proven to be in re-invigorating those economies that have engaged in it, and the emergence of new asset price inflation bubbles fueled by the fiat money manufacturing process.  In other words, real debate about the use of monetary policy to create money and the chimera of the short term "success" it creates.  Is there starting to be a shift back towards commodity money as a source of store of value?;

- The opportunities trade liberalisation in good and services can have in promoting economic growth, reducing poverty, increasing employment and improving the environment, if only the US, EU, Japan, China, India and Brazil could get their act together and launch a new WTO trade round, and how the creeping protectionism globally threatens to cause much harm.  How could world leaders catalyse a new open trade round for the 21st century?;

- The corrosion of economies and societies by corruption, through the effective confiscation of wealth by corrupt politicians and business owners using state regulation, protectionism, subsidies, exemptions from legal enforcement of contract, tort, criminal and property laws.  How critical it is for developing countries to seriously tackle corruption, with open independent courts, open free media and political systems that allow voters to remove those in power readily, and to protect the rights of all citizens from infringement by government, by gangsters and other thugs.  What does failing to do this encourage in terms of net emigration, the lack of interest from foreign investors beyond extractive businesses?

- The qualitative difference between governments cutting spending on consumption, and increasing taxes on wealth and income creation, and how one helps to create economic growth, whereas the other stymies it.

It wont happen.  Economic vandals like Gordon Brown will be speaking, a man who was one of the world's worst dealers in precious metals, but also an egregious creator of rampant state dependency and an unsustainable economy fueled by an endless addiction to promoting private and public sector credit.  His personal behaviour was notable for paranoia and an egotistical over-estimation of his own intellect and perspicacity, he shouldn't be speaking in polite company.

It includes Eurocrats, who demand austerity from Member States but more money for their own, unaudited, intergovernmental organisation.  The leader of a company that facilitated a country lying about its public spending and then seeking to profit from it.  A communist and finally a serial bigamist who jokes about rape.  Pardon me if I am not impressed by a group that invites individuals with such questionable intellectual and moral credentials.

Of course the World Economic Forum includes meetings in secret, but who really will take on the corruption,  the wilful deception by politicians of the monetary and fiscal positions of their countries, including those who promised unearned money, goods and services at the price of bankrupting future generations?

It wont be happening in Davos.

Yep, it's not worthy of the esteemed individuals who actually do attend.

Move along, there isn't a lot to see here.

UPDATE:  Helen Clark is at Davos.  Who is surprised? 5 star hotels, schmoozing and pontificating, whilst escaping the excoriating criticism of the substandard subsidiary of the UN she leads.   She is keen on how austerity is impacting on development, code for "how dare developed countries cut spending on aid funnelled through intergovernmental organisations because they have the temerity to try to balance their budgets by means others than taxes".  Rich, of course, for an international civil servant who pays no tax.

Yes you can privatise the roads - says UK thinktank

The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is rapidly becoming one of the highest profile think tanks in the UK, certainly it has been getting increased media exposure, including the regular appearance, on the BBC no less, of the excellent Communications Director Ruth Porter (who has links to New Zealand, having once worked for the Maxim Institute - not a reason to hold against her though).

It describes itself as "the UK's original free-market think-tank, founded in 1955. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems".

It has become one of the foremost advocates for questioning new government interventions, preferring less government spending and regulation, and seeking solutions involving free markets and personal choice over statism.

The latest report commissioned and published by the IEA, has been written by German transport economist and President of the Institute for Free Enterprise, Dr Oliver Knipping, and IEA deputy editorial director and director of its transport unit, Dr Richard Wellings.

It advocates privatising all roads in the UK.  Yes, ALL roads.  

The report is available here, and makes a compelling case that damns the existing system for producing inefficient outcomes (congestion, poor maintenance standards, inadequate supply of capacity in some areas and overbuilding in others) and suggests that the government simply get out of the way, by selling some roads and giving others away perhaps to co-operatives of road users and property owners to decide for themselves how to make money from them.

The authors propose that all roads, motorways, major highways, rural roads and urban streets could be privatised. Just selling the major highways is estimated to generate £150 billion for the government, which could be used to repay public debt, saving several billion a year in interest.  That would still leave local roads to be privatised by transfers to co-operatives of businesses and residential properties.

The new owners could choose to toll, issue access permits or leave the roads free when and where they saw fit, using whatever technologies they decided.

In exchange, the authors suggested abolishing vehicle excise duty (the equivalent of motor vehicle registration), and cutting fuel tax by at least 75% (noting that the UK, unlike NZ and the USA, does not legally dedicate any fuel tax to government spending on roads - but the existing fuel tax takes four times as much tax revenue as is spent on the roads), with the remainder being a sop to environmentalists by reflecting a carbon tax and tax on emissions.  This would reduce the price of fuel in the UK by a whopping 53p/l (though they neglect to note that EU law sets a minimum tax rate for energy that is about 29p/l).

Wouldn't the new road owners rip everyone off?  Well the authors say no. They have several ideas to avoid this.

They argue that the way privatisation is carried out should be done to promote competition between road owners.  For example, major highways could be sold to different companies, so that the M6/M1 and the M40 would have different owners offering different prices for driving between London and Birmingham.  Yes, there will be many cases where competition isn't feasible, but having some competition is more than exists now.  They see breaking up the road network so it doesn't resemble the patchwork of central and local government controlled routes now, would promote competition and innovative approaches to pricing.

By allowing road owners to price flexibly, it would mean prices at off peak times would likely be lower than at peaks, because underutilised assets are better off with customers willing to pay to use them, especially cars as they inflict relatively little damage to road surfaces compared to trucks.   As such, it may be much cheaper to drive outside commuter and holiday peaks than today.

Local roads owned by businesses seeking customers are more likely to discount access or offer it for free, especially if it attracts retail customers.  They may see this as important as offering free parking, so that the incentives are wider than just paying for the roads.

There remains competition  from other modes for certain trips, such as railways, airlines and canals.  In addition, telecommunications technology makes it increasingly attractive to use phones, Skype and other forms of teleconferencing instead of travelling.  Road owners will not be insensitive to these options.

Indeed, the question about being "ripped off" becomes more moot, if road owners are seeking to attract users by having well maintained, well signposted roads, which are priced to avoid congestion by spreading demand, and a planning system that does not prevent new capacity being built except by road owners needing to consider private property rights.  The likelihood is that the motoring experience will improve.

Finally, it's worth noting (though they did not appear to do so in the report), that with government in the UK already recovering four times as much in motoring taxes from road users (fuel tax and vehicle excise duty) than it spends on roads, that motorists are already being ripped off, by the government.

The UK government is today considering how to get more private sector involvement in financing and building roads, this report shows how far it could really go, and is one of the few studies I've seen which actually breaks apart the "consensus" of state owned and operated roads, and shows how it might be different, and better with privatisation.

Lithuania isn't in a recession - No Right Turn is not right again

I do read the No Right Turn blog from time to time, and it demonstrate how willfully blind and deceptive some can be when the facts reported in the same story they quote from, don't fit their blinkered vision.

He said:

Lithuanians went to the polls today in the first round of parliamentary elections - and have voted resoundingly against their neoLiberal, pro-austerity government which had plunged them into a Greek-style austerity-induced recession.

He links to a BBC article about the election and says that the government "plunged them" into a recession.  The leftwing meme being simply that reforms that shrink the state sector create a recession and Greece's problems are that it is cutting spending, not that it can't borrow to sustain overspending anymore and is having to beg from other states to cover its overspending until it can balance its books.

Yet that very same article from the BBC says this about the Lithuanian economy:

Mr Kubilius came to power in 2008, just as the global financial crisis was bringing a dramatic end to an extended Lithuanian boom fuelled by cheap Scandinavian credit.

So Lithuania's recession started the same way as most of the others, cheap credit from banks with state issued fiat currencies, overborrowing and an adjustment when reality set in.

Mr Kubilius enforced a drastic austerity programme, to stave off national bankruptcy.

Presumably the leftwing view of this is that the government should simply print more money.  After all if the state can't borrow anymore, it either has to cut spending, raise taxes or print.

Meanwhile, economic output dropped by 15%, unemployment climbed and thousands of young people emigrated from the Baltic nation of 3.3 million in search of work.

Yes, a fiat currency credit fueled boom adjusting itself, and the government balancing its books.

The budget deficit has since been tamed and GDP reached growth of 5.8%.

Hold on.  Growth of 5.8%? What is this austerity induced recession?  Indeed according to Eurostat, Lithuania's unemployment rate has been dropping from a peak of 18.3% in June 2010 to 12.9% in August 2012.  

Idiot Savant need only have read the rest of the article for it to be obvious the recession in Lithuania is well and truly over, and a 5 minute search to find the Lithuanian unemployment rate.

However, that wouldn't suit the "evil neo-liberals want to destroy the state and ruin the economy and want mass unemployment, but socialists love people, want prosperity and know how to do it, if only they were allowed to spend money that doesn't exist, and could get their hands on all the money of the evil capitalists" monologue that he, and the left (becoming more and more out of touch with economic) have been preaching.

Greece is a totemic example of the failure of socialism to deliver sustainable prosperity, followed by Portugal and Italy.  Spain and Ireland are totemic examples of the failure of cheap credit created from nothing through fiat currencies and fractional reserve banking.

Maybe Idiot Savant might want to revise his tired empty thesis that the only people to blame when governments overspend, are those who loaned money to them in the first place,  because when they stop, what does he really expect should happen?

What went wrong with Greece

Aristides Hatzis is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Law & Theory of Institutions at the University of Athens, Department of Philosophy & History of Science.

He has some firm views of what went wrong in Greece, and it is not a view that fits the conspiracy theories of the Syriza party or the empty claims that Greece is a victim of financiers.

Hatzis says Greece joined the then EC (now EU) in relatively good economic health:

Seven years after embracing constitutional democracy the nine (then) members of the European Community (EC) accepted Greece as its tenth member (even before Spain and Portugal). Why? It was mostly a political decision but it was also based on decades of economic growth, despite all the setbacks and obstacles. When Greece entered the EC, the country’s public debt stood at 28 percent of GDP; the budget deficit was less than 3 percent of GDP; and the unemployment rate was 2–3 percent. But that was not the end of the story.

Greek voters voted to the left, and that changed everything:

Greece became a member of the European Community on January 1, 1981. Ten months later (October 18, 1981) the socialist party of Andreas Papandreou (PASOK) came to power with a radical statist and populist agenda, which included exiting the European Community. Of course nobody was so stupid as to fulfill such a promise. Greece, with PASOK in power, stayed in the EC but managed to change Greece’s political and economic climate in only a few years.

He continues to explain that PASOK changed the relationship between the state and the people, but even the so-called "rightwing" opposition did nothing to change that.  Recognise that pattern in other countries?

Today’s crisis in Greece is mainly the result of PASOK’s short- sighted policies, in two important respects:

(a) PASOK’s economic policies were catastrophic; they created a deadly mix of a bloated and inefficient welfare state with stifling intervention and overregulation of the private sector. (b) The political legacy of PASOK was even more devastating in the long-term, since its political success transformed Greece’s conservative party (“New Democracy”) into a poor photocopy of PASOK. From 1981 to 2009 both parties mainly offered welfare populism, cronyism, statism, nepotism, protectionism, and paternalism. And so they remain. Today’s result is the outcome of a disastrous competition between the parties to offer patronage, welfare populism, and predatory statism to their constituencies.

It wasn't as if the political classes didn't know there needed to be reforms either, but the bare minimum was done to reach a magic goal - joining the EURO.  So how did Greece expand spending on such a grand scale?  It wasn't from taxation, because tax evasion was rampant and tax collection very inefficient, but borrowing.  

He calls it  "party time":

The borrowing became much easier and cheaper after Greece 2adopted the Euro in 2002. After 2002, Greece enjoyed a long boom based on cheap and plentiful credit, because the bond markets no longer worried about high inflation or a devalued currency, which allowed it to finance large current-account deficits. That led to a crippling €350 billion public debt (half of it to foreign banks) but, more importantly, also to a negative effect that is rarely discussed:The transfers from the EU and the borrowed money went directly to finance consumption, not to saving, investment, infrastructure, modernization, or institutional development. The Greek “party time” with the money of others lasted 30 years and—I must admit it—we really enjoyed it! Average per capita income reached $31,700 in 2008, the twenty-fifth high- est in the world, higher than Italy and Spain, and 95 percent of the EU average. Private spending was 12 percent more than the European average, giving Greece the twenty-second highest hu- man development and quality of life indices in the world. 

Yes, most of the borrowing the Greek government undertook was not to build infrastructure (except for some very high profile totemic projects like the Olympics, a metro, tram lines and a new airport), nor to finance productivity improvements, but to consume.

People lied and evaded tax, but this culture was endemic.  Remember this isn't an outsider, but a Greek academic noting this:

Lying became a way of life in Greece. Still, one might argue that lying to protect what one has created is justified. But in Greece that wealth was not created, but simply borrowed. In 1980 public debt was 28 percent of GDP, but by 1990 it had reached 89 percent and in early 2010 it was more than 140 percent. The budget deficit went from less than 3 percent in 1980 to 15 percent in 2010. Government spending in 1980 was only 29 percent of GDP; thirty years later (2009) it had reached 53.1 percent. Those figures were hidden by the Greek government as late as 2010 when it admitted that it had not actually met the qualifying standard to join the Eurozone at all. The Greek government had even hired Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs, to help them fudge the numbers and deceive lenders.

Yet for entrepreneurial activity, Greece became a disaster. In 2012 it was ranked 100th out of 183 countries for ease of doing business, being the worst in the EU and the OECD and below Columbia, Rwanda, Vietnam, Zambia and Kazakhstan.  It ranked 154th for laws protecting investors and 147th for ease of employment.  The best ranking was 43rd, for closing a business.  One study indicated that 25% of Greece's GDP was "informal" or outside the law, and petty corruption cost €800 million in 2009.  42% of the state budget is on welfare benefits of some kind.  Pensions were ridiculously generous.  35 years working in the state sector allowed a man to retire at 58 on a pension.  

The "free" public health system actually saw 45% of total health spending coming informally directly from users bribing staff to do their jobs.

Greece is now facing some reality.  It is still borrowing, but this time from taxpayers in Germany in effect.  It is still overspending, but is set to break even in three years.

However, the Greek disease has been socialism, with parties outdoing each other to spend borrowed money to buy votes and evade economic reality.  Greece's economy has had to shrink, because it has been built on credit - not production.  The hard awful reality is that those who benefited from it, never have to pay it back, whereas the up and coming generation face paying for it.

Greece has had its economy destroyed not because of bankers, but because it was rotten at the core, sustained by socialist politicians and those whose support they gleaned by their bribery using borrowed money.   Since the early 1980s, more and more of the economy was built on nothing at all - sadly today, it isn't the public sector facing retrenchment and pain, but the private sector.   Increasing taxes and increasing tax collection is gutting the part of Greece's economy that is productive, and precious little is being done to gut the part that isn't/

France's road to disaster courtesy of Hollande

Detlev Schlichter on France:

In 2012, President Hollande has not reduced state spending at all but raised taxes. For 2013 he proposed an ‘austerity’ budget that would cut the deficit by €30 billion, of which €10 billion would come from spending cuts and €20 billion would be generated in extra income through higher taxes on corporations and on high income earners. The top tax rate will rise from 41% to 45%, and those that earn more than €1 million a year will be subject to a new 75% marginal tax rate. With all these market-crippling measures France will still run a budget deficit and will have to borrow more from the bond market to fund its outsized state spending programs, which still account for 56% of registered GDP.

If you ask me, the market is not bearish enough on France. This version of socialism will not work, just as no other version of socialism has ever worked. But when it fails, it will be blamed on ‘austerity’ and the euro, not on socialism.

As usual, the international commentariat does not ‘get it’. Political analysts are profoundly uninterested in the difference between reducing spending and increasing taxes, it is all just ‘austerity’ to them, and, to make it worse, allegedly enforced by the Germans. The Daily Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard labels ‘austerity’ ‘1930s policies imposed by Germany’, which is of dubious historical and economic accuracy but suitable, I guess, to make a political point.

Most commentators are all too happy to cite the alleged negative effect of ‘austerity’ on GDP, ignoring that in a heavily state-run economy like France’s, official GDP says as little about the public’s material wellbeing as does a rallying equity market in an economy fuelled by unlimited QE. If the government spent money on hiring people to sweep the streets with toothbrushes this, too, would boost GDP and could thus be labelled economic progress.

Russel Norman says "fuck the poor" with his economic illiteracy UPDATED

It's a shame really, you can rely on Russel Norman to engage in reality evasion, but his latest attempt to introduce monetary policy into the Green Party's repertoire is laughable. 

It's a big "fuck you" to people on low to middle incomes with savings, because he wants to devalue the New Zealand dollar.  Not because there is a major flight in capital from NZ$ holdings, but because he thinks the NZ$ in overvalued.

Russel Norman knows that the money you hold should be worth less.

Not you, not the millions of people who buy and sell NZ$ and in NZ$ every day, but Russel Norman and the Green Party.

He wants the Reserve Bank to print money to devalue the dollars you have in your wallet or bank account.  

It means that the vast bulk of New Zealanders, especially those on low to middle incomes, with small savings, will have part of their own money TAKEN by stealth by the state.  

They know what it means.  It means an overseas holiday is a lot less affordable.  It means a new laptop, car, books, clothes, TV, mobile phone all become more expensive.  

It means petrol goes up, but the Greens kind of like that, as you should be driving less says transport spokesperson Julie-Anne Genter.  Of course it puts up the price of moving freight as well, and flying domestically.

However, whilst devaluation increases the price of imports, the way Russel wants to do it will increase prices across the board.

It is a recipe for more inflation.  

Yet he wants to increase the availability of credit by reducing interest rates, meaning businesses and consumers can borrow more, and so promoting more demand (after all this is what QE does) so hiking up inflation more and more.

You see, the standard response to inflation of the Reserve Bank is to increase interest rates, but Russel Norman would reduce interest rates.

He wants "new tools for managing asset bubbles", yet would be pouring petrol on property bubbles by allowing loose credit and allowing people to borrow more.

His claim is that this will help the productive sector, because exporters will suddenly get a boost because they will be able to undercut foreign competitors.  This is true, on the face of it.  Devaluations do that, but they also increase the price of inputs into production.  Fuel being the obvious one.  Tourism would become cheaper, for foreigners visiting New Zealand.  However, Air NZ wouldn't be able to take advantage of as much of that as its competitors as two of its biggest long run costs - fuel and the capital cost of aircraft, would rise.  

Yet, Norman ignores the consequences of his approach to devaluation, which would be to generate inflation.  With domestic costs soaring, exporters would find their competitiveness would be entirely wasted as they couldn't spend their renewed returns quickly enough to offset inflation, they couldn't save them (with interest rates on savings below inflation - as they are in the UK, US and Japan today) and would be less and less able to afford imports.

His ignorance is breathtaking.  He says that printing money so that the government can engage in..

"Buying Christchurch earthquake recovery bonds will reduce the need for the Government to borrow offshore. Currently, about 60 percent of all Government borrowing is from offshore.

"Buying overseas assets to restore the EQC's Natural Disaster Fund will prepare us better for any future natural disasters."

So he will print money, for the government to borrow from the Reserve Bank, creating inflation, saving the government from borrowing from those with actual money, by debasing the savings of NZers.  Then, having devalued the NZ$ he proposes using it to buy assets from overseas which will suddenly cost more.

He claims that the UK, US, Japan and the European Union (presumably he means the European Central Bank, as there are 11 currencies in the European Union) engaged in quantitative easing (money printing) to boost their export sectors, which is utter nonsense.  It has been an exercise in trying to stimulate demand in stagnant economies.  After 15 years, Japan remains stagnant, whereas the US has small hiccups of demand that quickly subside.  However, in all these cases the effect has not been to substantially devalue currencies relative to major trading partners (nor was it designed to).

He thinks that the NZ$ has a high value because of speculators, yet he himself wants to speculate with the money held by every New Zealander, by debasing it.

The average New Zealander isn't as ignorant as Russel, because they know that when the NZ$ drops, they lose, unless they have earnings in foreign currencies (which few do).

So the losers are the poor and middle income New Zealanders.  They can't readily open foreign currency bank accounts, buy foreign shares or equities and rescue their savings from the thieving politicians and central bankers out to take it from them.

The rich will bail out of Russel Norman's vision for the NZ$.  They can afford to. 

The poor would have to swallow it.   Give up on the overseas trip.  Give up on buying a laptop or a kindle.  Watch while their savings earn nothing in the bank, and lose value in real terms - just like they did when Post Office accounts offered 2% when inflation was 12% under Rob Muldoon.   

Of course foreigners buying New Zealand made goods and services would do well, because the products would be cheaper.  In fact, a holiday to New Zealand would be so much cheaper.   However, they aren't exactly poor now are they?

The Green vision for monetary policy is simple:

- Take money from NZers' savings through devaluation (who pay more for imports from everywhere) - transfer it to foreigners buying NZ goods and services (who pay less for imports from NZ) and NZers who make money from foreigners buying NZ goods and services using foreign currencies.

- Take money from NZers who are savers and transfer to those who are borrowers (through low interest rates).

- Fuel a new property bubble as NZers use cheap credit to enter the property market as a hedge against inflation, and fuel a new sharemarket bubble as the same happens (fleeing savings accounts as a hedge against inflation, and foreigners buy NZ shares because they are cheap).

- Fuel hyperinflation, as the debased currency puts up import prices and the flood of cheap credit overheats demand.

The people who are hurt the most from devaluation and inflation are the poor.  More money printing will make it worse.   This inflationary spiral can only end by:

- Hiking interest rates as happened in the late 1980s, effectively reversing the "gains" for exporters and businesses by pushing their borrowing costs through the roof, sending thousands bankrupt and bursting the property bubble;

- Banning inflation, Muldoon style, creating shortages - (former) east Germany style

- Abandoning the NZ$.

In all of those scenarios, the people who lose the most are those who are least able to leave the country or shift their savings elsewhere.

Hyperinflation, debasement of savings, makes the Green Party's claim to give a damn about poverty almost laughable.

UPDATED:  Of course The Standard embraces it, tribal like, because they see money printing as some sort of anti "neo-liberalism" project.  (yes, anyone opposing the left just want to eat the poor).  The intellectualism in this post is astonishing "I look forward to John Key, when he gets back from fellating Mickey Mouse" showing how asinine the debate is.

The status quo in the Western world, including all US Administrations since Reagan and UK since Thatcher, has been Milton Friedman's monetarism.  That is to progressively increase the money supply regulated by interest rates set by a state central bank to manage inflation.

Hayek opposed this, Rand opposed this, Murray Rothbard opposed this. Alan Greenspan once did, and then embraced Friedman's view. Detlev Schlichter opposes it now.

A fundamental cause of the global financial crisis is the continual state issuing of new credit and new money, so that it isn't savings being reinvested, but money created from..... nothing.

Monetarism, as it is called, attempts to manage the inevitable inflation arising from this (lowering the value of the medium of exchange by producing more of it inevitably means prices rise), but ignores asset price inflation.  The property and sharemarket bubbles caused by malinvestment are ignored.

It has failed.

QE has been the Keynesian response in Japan, the US, the UK and the Eurozone.  The mass destruction of value due to these bubbles popping has been filled by massive money printing, yet it has not resulted in a sustained kickstart to demand for simple reasons.  One is that the banks, which were the conduit of the cheap credit, have been told to increase reserves, so are filling up their reserves with freshly created cash and banks have also tightened up credit enormously, because they were told to not undertake anymore bad lending.  The other is that there is a lack of confidence in the economic fundamentals.   It is why gold prices have soared, as a safe haven.

It wasn't undertaken to improve export competitiveness.  It has demonstrably failed to boost Japan's economy.  It has created minor blips in the US economy, and nothing more.

For the Standard to say that having a consistently high dollar is about speculators making money from New Zealand is demonstrable ignorance.  To think that, say cutting the value of the NZ$ by 25%, is good for the working poor (when it will raise prices of petrol, electrical goods, overseas holidays and any imported books, clothes), is bizarre.

However, socialists have long thought thieving from the mass of the population through debasing the currency was an easy path to spending more money on what they think is good for them.  Easier to implement than a straight out tax, and easier for all of the elite to evade, by shifting their own savings away from the debased currency, leaving the average people robbed.

Taking from the poor to give to the rich

Yes that's what Labour's David Cunliffe and the Green Party's resident vulgarian, Russel Norman are advocating.

Peter Cresswell gave some clear reasons why it is delusional as economic policy, I'd like to make it a lot simpler.

Devaluing the New Zealand dollar would be the government stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

How?  Because those who win are exporters and those who lose are people who save cash in the bank.

Those with modest savings, without stocks or shares, without the means or wherewithal to shift their money into foreign currencies, equities, gold or property, are the losers in any devaluation.

It debases the cash they hold, whether it be in banknotes or bank accounts.  It takes away from their ability to consume, to buy what they want if it comes from overseas or is dependent on imports as a major factor of production.

It means the poor will less be able to afford an overseas holiday.

It means the poor will less be able to buy a laptop or a games console or a new TV, or books that aren't printed in NZ.

It means the poor will have to drive less (not that the Greens give a damn about that)

The winners are farmers, vintners, hoteliers and moteliers, in essence those who own export oriented businesses (or in the tourism sector) who suddenly find they can undercut competitors in other countries (or in the case of tourism attract visitors).

That of course makes for another group of winners.  Foreign consumers of NZ goods and services.

Devaluation discounts the prices they pay, which of course is the opposite of what happens to the goods and services NZers buy from them.

So there you have it.  The Labour and Green Parties want to reward those who sell goods and services overseas and their foreign customers, by taking wealth directly from New Zealanders who import goods and services from overseas, and who undertake foreign travel.

If you have enough money, you can open foreign currency accounts, you can shift your depreciating NZ dollar into other assets or commodities, and protect yourself from this government endorsed theft by stealth.

However, if you're relatively poor, with savings largely sitting in a bank, you've had it.

That's from the parties who, like attention seeking poseurs, are pretending to live like poor people to highlight how tough poverty is. 

They want to take from the poor to give to the relatively well off. Why?  

Because their entire philosophy is to intervene, to do something, because they know better than the millions of people making individual decisions about what to buy and sell and at what prices, because they are uniquely blessed with greater knowledge, so they can debase the wealth of some to better others, so they look like they've done something good.

They're not.  They are ready to steal by stealth.  Don't let them.

Economic Freedom Report shows how far the US has fallen

The Fraser Institute - a Canadian libertarian think tank - has produced a fairly comprehensive assessment of the ranking of about two-thirds of countries on the basis of economic freedom over a wide range of indicators.  It produces it every year.  This year the story it tells is of a world where economic freedom is still correlated to wealth, but also relief from poverty and, despite the scaremongering of the left, proportions of wealth owned by the poor relative to the rich.

Peter Cresswell pipped me to the post in writing about it,  describing why economic freedom means more than just wealth, but also wealth for the poor (who are many times better off in free economies) but I thought it deserved a longer review.

The report measures a wide range of indicators such as:

- Size of government:  This includes the extent of government consumption, levels of transfers/subsidies, the share of government presence in the market as an owner and investor in business and top tax rates.  No doubt socialists would regard this as being an invalid measure of success or failure, as they would see a large state participant in the economy as positive.

- Legal System and property rights:  Independence of the judiciary, impartiality of courts, protection of property rights, military interference in rule of law, integrity of the legal system, enforceability of contracts, restrictions on sale of land, reliability of the police and the business costs of crime are included here.  I'd have thought most of these would be seen by even those on the centre-left as being critical components of any good state.

- Sound money:  Measures here include growth in money supply, inflation and freedom to hold foreign currency accounts.  Of course those of us who believe that fiat currencies are fundamentally flawed wont be satisfied, but it is a good measure of the management of a key policy that can be so destructive to the wealth and savings of the vast bulk of the population of a state.

- Freedom to trade internationally: Tariffs, regulatory barriers to trade, the usage of black market exchange rates and controls on the movement of capital and people (including travel restrictions) are all considered here.  Again those on the left would be supportive of restrictions on many of those points. 

- Regulation:  Regulations on bank ownership, credit and interest rates.  Labour market regulations ranging from hours of work to conscription, and regulations on starting, licensing and tax for business are all included.  It also measures the need to pay bribes.  Once again, those on the left would be keen to have more of most of these.

The full report is here, and I'll leave it to others to do a more depth distillation of specific results, but for me there are some notable trends and statistics.

Key overall rankings

Hong Kong and Singapore are the top two, followed by New Zealand.  Yes NZ is number three, the freest "proper" liberal democracy.  It shows both how far NZ came in the 1980s and 1990s, but also how far others have not come.

Australia is fourth, but the UK is 12th and the USA 18th.  The last of those should be a clarion call warning to Americans who believe in capitalism that warnings about Obama making America like Europe are optimistic - for six European countries are more free, economically, than the USA.  It is noted the US was ranked 2nd in 2000, and fell to 8th in 2005.  No sign of Bush "neo-liberalism".

In Europe, Switzerland tops clearly, at 5th,  Finland at 9th, Ireland at 12th equal with the UK,  Estonia 14th and Denmark at 16th.   Of the other big European economies it is telling that Germany is 31st (below the likes of Sweden and Austria), Spain 34th,  France is 47th (barely above Poland but behind Albania - yes Albania), Greece is 81st,  Italy is 83rd, all beating Russia at 95th.  Ukraine is the worst in Europe at 122nd.

In the Americas, Canada is 5th equal with Switzerland.  Yes, more economic freedom north of the border.  Chile soars ahead of the rest of the Americas at 10th.  Mexico 91st, Brazil 105th, Ecuador 126th and Argentina 127th.  Venezuela naturally is 144th (bottom rated of those measured). 

In Asia, Taiwan gets 15th, Japan 20th and South Korea 37th. China 107th.  India and Pakistan both 111th.  Myanmar is bottom in Asia at 143rd (yes I know another would be worse). 

In Africa, the best performer is Mauritius at 8th, but then it is a long drop to Rwanda at 45th.  South Africa is 85th.  Most of the bottom rated countries are in Africa, still, with Zimbabwe at bottom on 142nd.

The Middle East has Bahrain topping at 7th, proving that economic freedom does not necessarily mean political freedom.  UAE is 11th and Qatar 17th.  Algeria is bottom of the Arab world at 137th, with Syria at 119th.  Israel is 52nd.

What of New Zealand's ranking?

NZ might be third overall, but it is 95th on size of government (95th smallest out of 144), which shows how highly ranked NZ is on most other measures. 

Yet NZ was ranked far more highly on size of government recently.  In 2009, the year after the current National led government stopped the Helen Clark juggernaut, it was ranked 73rd on size of government.   So National has led the growth in the state, relative to others.  Of course Labour achieved a lot on that front, as NZ was ranked 47th freest in 2000 just after it was elected, but that's a far cry from 1995 when it was 18th.   You can thank Jim Bolger, Jenny Shipley and Winston Peters for that.   You can go further back and see Ruth Richardson saw NZ rise from 66th to 18th in five years and now drop to a ranking last seen in 1985 when Roger Douglas was only starting to unwind Muldoonism.

Beyond that measure, NZ's score on legal system and property rights has slipped a little from a high point in 1995, although it would be interesting to probe into the detail behind the scores here (and elsewhere).

On sound money it remains about as highly rated as it always has been.  However on freedom to trade internationally it is now scored the lowest since the 1980s, with compliance costs on trade, foreign investment limits and limits on capital flows reducing the score.

The overall regulatory score is the best it has been since it has been measured, but on labour market regulations NZ is ranked 9th, its lowest ranking besides size of government.

So what does this mean?  Simple.  Any claim this National-led government is implementing radical free market reforms falls flat on the evidence - it has grown the state.  In relative terms, NZ has been retreating from such reforms for around 17 years now.  The state grows faster under Labour, slower under National.

Yet despite slipping on some measures, especially size of government, NZ ranks well largely because others have slipped as well.   It becomes more apparent if one looks at key comparators like Australia, the US and the UK.

Australia

62nd in size of government, 66th on freedom to trade (a lot of protectionism), 29th on monetary policy, 11th on regulation overall, 13th on legal system and property rights.  Australia is 4th overall still, which is still the best position it has ever had.  However, under that Australia has slipped on size of government (had been 47th in 2009), slipped on legal system and property rights (was 3rd in 2000), slipped on monetary policy (10th in 2009), plummeted on freedom to trade (was 19th in 1990 and has slipped since, mainly because others have moved faster) and slipped a little on regulation (was 8th in 2009).  Disturbingly one area Australia has slipped back on is bribery.   Capital controls are also severely restricted.

In essence, Australia slipped back on protectionism some time ago, but the end of the Howard administration has been characterised by ongoing slippage in economic freedom.  Not entirely surprising, as this has been shrouded by the bubble of mineral prices that politicians have been riding on.

UK

117th in size of government, 41st on regulation, 19th on monetary policy, 15th on legal system and property rights and 5th on freedom to trade.   The UK has slipped badly in recent years as it was 5th overall as recently as 2005, being 12th today.  How has it dropped?  It was 58th on size of government in 1990, just after Thatcher had resigned.  It has fallen steadily since 2000. The legacy of the spending and regulatory measures taken after Blair won a second election is what is now apparent, with the Gordon Brown years particularly reducing economic freedom.  The hysteria over the barely apparent austerity (which is simply slowing the growth in spending) is just that, and the big emphasis now ought to be cutting the size of the state and regulation - but it's unlikely to happen under a Conservative coalition with a schizophrenic leftwing party.

USA

73rd on size of government.  Yes 73rd!  57th on freedom to trade.  31st on regulation.  28th on legal system and property rights and finally 7th on sound money (really??).  Where has the US come from?  It is 18th overall now, but was 2nd as recently as 2000.  By 2009 it was 15th (yes you can thank Bush for that) and the slide has continued under Obama.   On size of government it has dropped from 24th in 1990 to 73rd now, consistently.  That's through two Bushes, Clinton and Obama, and Congresses dominated by Democrats and Republicans.  On legal system and property rights it was 1st way back in 1980, yes before Reagan.  It slipped through to 1995, improved a little for 2000, and then kept slipping back, although is slightly better now than it has been since 2005.  In 2005 it was top for sound money, but it is no surprise that that has slipped with the printing presses.  Freedom to trade was once 7th in 1980, but has slipped back almost consistently since then - globalisation?  No, the US hasn't kept up with that.  The slide has been particularly intense since 2005, but Obama has never been a friend of free trade.  Finally, the US was once 2nd for regulation in 2000.  It has plummeted since then to 31st, notably it was 24th in 2009, showing once more that Bush was hardly a small government President.

Republicans in the US often talk about how they don't want to be like Europe because it is so socialist, but they need to look at themselves.  The US ranking on so many measures is worse than several European countries.  On size of government, Albania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania, Switzerland and Ukraine are all smaller than the US.  Yes, Albania, once the last bastion of true believers in Stalin.   This should blow any claims that the US is the bulwark of economic freedom of the world - it quite simply isn't.

Curious ratings

On size of government Madagascar gets the best rating, but given every other rating is 92nd or worse than 100th, it isn't really a fair indicator, much like Bangladesh at 3rd (which more shows an inept state rather than a good small one).  Hong Kong is 2nd though.  At the other end of that ranking, Algeria at 142nd sits near the Netherlands at 144th and Sweden at 143rd.  Big states that are offset by good legal systems, protection of property rights and lower levels of regulation.

Legal system and property rights ratings are more consistent.  Finland is 1st,  NZ 2nd and Denmark 3rd.  Every other top 10 country is either western European, Singapore or Hong Kong.  At the bottom are the likes of Venezuela, Haiti, DRC and CAR.  All other below 100 rated countries are developing countries in Africa and Asia, including the likes of Argentina.  

On monetary policy the leaders are the likes of Japan (yes really!), Portugal, Albania and the USA.  Bottom rated are Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Angola and DRC.  Still I've little confidence that monetary policy deserves a high rating anywhere nowadays.

On freedom to trade internationally, the best rated are the likes of Singapore and Hong Kong, UK, Uruguay, Guatemala, Ireland, Peru, Netherlands and NZ.  Not a consistent lot, but showing different levels of openness.  At worst it is Venezuela, Iran, Myanmar and DRC.  India is also ranked poorly at 114th, not great for a country seeking to emulate China (which itself is 104th).  Russia is 127th, but oddly Iceland is 118th!  A lot depends on what is protected and size of the domestic economy, obviously Singapore and Hong Kong would not thrive being closed economies.

Finally on regulation, the best rated are Hong Kong, but then Fiji, NZ and Singapore.  At bottom is Algeria, Brazil, Myanmar, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.  One wonders if Brazil can sustain growth with such a tightly regulated economy. 

Conclusion

The big picture is that for much of the world economies have been subject to more government regulation in recent years, as the automatic response to a financial crisis caused by central bank fueled credit bubbles and exacerbated by fiscal incontinence has been to regulate more, engage in more central bank incontinence and to do little to substantially shrink state spending.

So let's stop talking about austerity.  In Greece, the only dimension that has ranked well as of late has been monetary policy - the rest have been the measures of a state dominated and regulated economy.  The broad indicators of a sound economy come down to a robust legal system that protects property rights and reasonably sound monetary policy.  Beyond that, the more regulation and more trade restricted the economy, the less likely it is to grow or to deliver better results for the poor. 

There is a lot of further analysis that could be done of these figures, particularly trends in GDP growth, GDP per capita and changes in rankings over time.  Of course this is all based on scoring which is not particularly transparent.  Herein lies the difficulty in making more than broad based interpretations of the report.

Quantitative easing should upset the left - it's highly regressive

Anthony Randazzo of the Reason Foundation explains why money printing quantitative easing ought to get the socialist Occupy movement out in the streets. 

Which of course wont happen, since their pinup economist - Paul Krugman - is a fond believer in printing more money and spending more money the state doesn't have, to boost the economy.

No doubt some Democrats will think this is a cunning move to give the US economy a boost before the election, as some Republicans think this also, and are criticising it on that cynical basis.  That isn't a reason to criticise it, because it is unlikely to make enough difference to enough people to have an electoral impact.

So why is it bad?

You see you have to ask the question as to who benefits from the creation of new money and who loses.  Bearing in mind Bernanke has said he will create US$40 billion out thin air, every month, until the economy recovers, this matters.  It's also why the price of gold took a big hike overnight.

The beneficiaries are those whose securities the Federal Reserve is now going to buy with its new money.  Those will include the securities holding debt to the Federal Government or mortgages.  So the immediate winners are investors in those securities who now have a willing buyer.  With such purchases, the recipients are the financial institutions who now have money to reinvest.  So it is the shareholders of those institutions who immediately gain from money printing.  The next beneficiaries are those owners of securities, stocks and bonds that gain such investments, as they suddenly find there is more money available to invest.  Prices for stocks and bonds will rise, so existing holders of them benefit.

Those who own such stocks and bonds are going to be primarily other institutions or wealthy individuals. People who are also aware of the counter-risk of money printing - inflation - and so are able to take steps to protect themselves from what inevitably becomes a new round of malinvestment.  Why malinvestment?  Because the flow of "free money" will see choices made that are dependent on what securities the Federal Reserve buys.  The Federal Reserve will want to sweep up government debt and mortgage securities because they are seen as low value investments, so that there is a preference for stocks and shares.  However, with investors having low confidence in the economy, many also sweep into commodities, because they see any scope for rising demand being seen in rising prices for commodities.

So a speculative bubble emerges, with those who joined at the start - those who gained from state purchases of their securities, gaining the most.  Whether it be energy, food or minerals, another round of malinvestment will create a bubble.

That's where we find the losers.  For the consumers of such commodities, be it in purchasing food, heating their homes or even building materials to fix or extend their homes, they face inflation, and as that grows it means their purchasing power declines.

With virtually zero interest rates, it means savers lose out as with growing inflation, they find they are fighting a losing battle.  They can choose to hop onto various speculative bandwagons, but know it is high risk.  So they mix between commodities, stocks and shares, property and various other equities.  Those who already had property theoretically benefit, but few are likely to realise this gain unless they sell at the right time and convert their depreciating currency into another investment.   Of course for those who largely live on receiving an income, they face inflationary pressure with little hope of relief unless their field of employment can afford to raise their wages.   Those who are saving to buy property or indeed anything, are on a losing streak.

In short, what is called quantitative easing, which is a euphemism for printing money, benefits those who the Federal Reserve buys securities from the most, and actively harms those who are poor, who don't own property or whose savings are primarily in bank deposits.  

Will it work?  Well Randazzo believes that private debt levels remain so high that most people are simply concentrating on reducing their levels of debt, rather than seeking to invest.  So whatever trickles down is likely to be used on that.  

Don't come to London - it will be too busy

They didn't, so it isn't.

The economic story of the Olympics is increasingly damning as it has become abundantly clear to many businesses in London that the net effect has been to scare off tourists from the city and to scare away the locals. The first thing that is noticed is that the public transport system and the roads are quieter than usual. The expected huge delays and overcrowding haven’t happened, in fact it is the other way round. On Monday I retimed my own commute to deal with the expected chaos, but on Tuesday found it quiet. It’s busy around Olympic venues yes, and there was awful weekend traffic in no small order because of the cycling road race both closing a whole series of roads and encouraging hundreds of thousands to head that way to watch.  Otherwise it’s grim for businesses (but a delight to walk around).

 Look at these figures: 

- 50% reduction in foreign visitors to London in July 2012 compared to July 2011 (European Tour Operators’ Association) 

- 4.5% reduction in retail footfall in the West End in July 2012 compared to July 2011

 - 2.6% reduction in retail footfall in the East End (where the games are) in the first few days of the Olympics compared to last year 

- 25% reduction in visitors to the British Museum in July 2012 compared to July 2011 

- Traffic counts in central London are down 17% on previous weeks 

- Major retailer NeXT estimates sales are down 10% in its central London shops.

-  The Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association estimates business is down 20-40%.

In short, it has been pretty much what I and others predicted. The Olympics deters as many as it attracts, as many presume prices will be inflated (and they were) and everything will be too busy. However, given that government agencies such as Transport for London have been constantly telling Londoners to make different plans and businesses were told to encourage people to work from home, take leave or avoid unnecessary travel, it shouldn’t be a surprise. People have done what they were told. 

However, politicians are in denial. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that such figures were nonsense saying that “restaurants, theatres and even cabbies who are out of pocket today will reap benefits for years to come.” according to the Evening Standard.  Yet how come the media can't find businesses outside the mall adjacent to the site that are doing well?  He's touting the obvious manufactured claim of his bureaucrats that "businesses who marketed well are doing well", yet how does he realistically think this can make up for the reduced visitor numbers?  Having taken taxes from all of these businesses to pay for these games and told many businesses to effectively cut travel to London or staff commuting in London, how dare he tell off the people who are paying for the games without the credit for it.

In a parallel story, traders at Greenwich market reported a 60% decline in trading, even though the market is located between the nearest Docklands Light Railway station and the Olympics venue, because of a huge barrier placed on the road to shepherd people from public transport to the venue. It has since been removed.

Of course a small business that takes risks based on a government funded project is always going to be taking a gamble, it doesn't help that Transport for London is still telling motorists to avoid Greenwich altogether and warning people of overcrowding stations in the area.

This follows rude prick and Sports Minister Hugh Robertson saying that businesses had “years” to plan, as if a restaurant in the West End can somehow woo hundreds of thousands of people that have been put off by constant taxpayer funded warnings to stay away. The Prime Minister continues to spout the empty delusion that the Games will generate £13 billion of benefits for the economy. 

Of course not one politician will come out and say the obvious. Hosting the Olympics never made economic sense. The Blair Government had advice at the time that said this. However Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Ken Livingstone and their minions, and since then David Cameron, Nick Clegg, George Osborne and Boris Johnson, have all gone along with this delusion. The money for the games came from taxpayers. The majority of whom don’t live in London so will have seen no net benefit at all. If the businesses that were meant to benefit, by and large don’t, then you’ve been wrong. You’ve all gambled away £9 billion of other people’s money on a fun party. 

Yes the Olympic Games are a great time, and offer fantastic spectacles of people truly achieving their best through effort and training. Yes it’s nice for Team GB athletes to compete on home soil, but if you asked them if it was worth £9 billion of other people’s money for just that, I doubt they would agree. 

However, don’t bother pretending they are an “investment”. Don’t pretend that there are real economic benefits for anyone, beyond the construction companies for the facilities you paid for with other people’s money. London is already one of the world’s most popular tourist destination, it has no shortage of visitors. It was inevitable that a city as crowded and congested as London would need to chase some people away to allow others to come in.   The same thing happened in Sydney.   A study by James Giesecke and John Madden of Monash University indicated that the Sydney games generated a net loss of A$2.1 billion in economic activity.

Well done. 

Now first prize for the UK politician who stands up, after the OIympics I expect, and says “it wasn’t worth it”. 

and no, unlike the grumpy failed politician Gore Vidal, I don't get that much pleasure from "I told you so" when so much money has been wasted.

Second prize if someone simply pointed out that if London wants more visitors, allowing its busiest airport and only hub airport to build a third runway, a project the airport's Spanish owner is able to fully finance itself, would have been a far more effective and enduring way of attracting visitors that building a stadium that still doesn’t have a long term user. 

However, Olympics are a bigger spectacle and far more exciting than a permanent piece of infrastructure, especially when the latter is opposed by hoards of angry environmentalists (the ones who can't and wont protest the extra runway a month being built in China for new airports) and NIMBYs (who wish that 60 year old airport would go away so their property values would go up).

Which is why the government shouldn't be involved with either!

Meanwhile, DO come to London.  There are massive discounts at hotels, flights are cheap and it's easy to get around, and there are sales on if you avoid the crowded Stratford Westfield Mall (and why would you come to London to go to a mall full of eastenders on school holidays?).

Kiwirail's asset revaluation - because Labour concealed the truth with accounting: UPDATED

Regular readers will remember that I’ve been long critical of the bizarre Treasury valuations of the social policy/heritage/commodity sector subsidy project called Kiwirail. So the latest report that this “asset” is to be revalued hardly surprises me. However, I am enormously dismayed at the unprofessional politically driven basis for valuation of this business which was instigated by the previous Labour government. It is one thing to throw taxpayers’ money at buying it back, another to hide what a real dud it is on the government accounts. Let’s bear in mind that neither Labour, nor the church of the Holy gRailway the Greens, have any interest in really showing what it’s worth.

So let’s start with the latest announcement. What does it mean?

The short version is “I told you so… again”. What was reported before has finally happened.

The land assets will remain under the NZRC, which has in fact been the case since 1 April 1982 when it was created. There was always a peppercorn rental of NZ$1 paid for use of the land under the rail corridor, which given that the Crown isn’t paid for the land under the road network, has always seemed an easy compromise in dealing with the thorny issue of valuing strips of land with little alternative use (especially roads, given land without access to roads has greatly diminished value). This should not be controversial, but let’s be honest about what the valuation of that asset should be – the market value of the land if sold. A study commissioned by the MoT valued it, in 2001, at NZ$462 million. This could be indexed to today’s values and priced, but I doubt it would top NZ$1 billion. Bear in mind this was never privatised in the first place, because every time TranzRail closed a rail line (which was rare), the corridor would, ultimately, be able to be sold by the Crown.  So the valuation was done professionally based on assumptions of the value of neighbouring land being applied, in most instances, to a narrow inaccessible corridor.

Yet the Annual Report 2011-2010 indicates land is valued at just over NZ$6 billion. This is quite absurd, so is the asset write down going to address this? Let’s continue.

The transfer of the other assets to a separate SOE is exactly what happened before the last privatisation, when NZ Rail Ltd was set up. The logic of this is clear, as the issues around rail land and its use are complex. Partly because of Treaty of Waitangi claims over Crown land, partly because the confiscation of past land under the Public Works Act means that if the land isn’t to be used for rail purposes, the previous owners or their successors must be offered the land back.

So the new SOE will be responsible for everything, other than the land, just like before. This is already raising the spectre of a new privatisation among those who treasure Kiwirail because they think it will be the saviour in the event oil prices and climate change suddenly decimate the viability of road transport.

Bill English states the total assets are being written down from NZ$13.4 billion to NZ$6.7 billion, this being both the land and the operations business. A simple halving of value, indicating a lot of in depth work was not done into this at all. The Kiwirail press release explains this further by saying that the non-land business will carry a valuation of up to NZ$1.3 billion “reflecting the revenue generated by it” rather than the current NZ$7.8 billion.  That's helpful in analysing this further.

The land component of the valuation seems to retain most of its book value, as it will be worth around NZ$5.4 billion, yet wont be expected to make a return on most of that asset (given the land under the roads isn’t expected to either). A small writedown of around NZ$600 million, but not nearly enough. Has the land under the rail network really shot up in value by a factor of 11 since 2001?  Kiwirail's Annual Report indicates that a professional valuation was done, no doubt in good faith. However, does that really reflect the market value of this land? If a railway line across a field, or behind some warehouses or houses is sold, are there really any other likely buyers beyond the neighbouring property owners? The discrepancy between valuations seems extraordinary, and I doubt whether valuations of railway corridors are done frequently enough in New Zealand to enable it to be equated to other such valuations.  

Setting that to one side, the valuation of NZ$1.3 billion for the operating business still seems wildly excessive. It was bought for NZ$665 million. How has it suddenly become worth double that since 2008? Is it revenue? Well no.

In 2011 it had gross revenue of NZ$667 million. It also got nearly NZ$345 million from taxpayers (yes you’ve spent more than a billion on this one and counting). However, its operating costs were NZ$567 million. Cool NZ$100 million profit before government right? No. Once you remove roughly NZ$60 million in subsidies for operating Auckland and Wellington passenger rail services, you’re down to about NZ$40 million. Not so good then.

Bearing in mind that the NZ$345 million from taxpayers is a capital grant to replace and renew some assets, you’ll also see it’s clear this isn’t a sustainable business able to renew its capital.  Otherwise it would take out debt that would be repaid over the depreciated life of those assets, which of course is not going to happen (but Treasury of course has taken out debt to pay for the nationalisation and all of the capital grants).  Bear in mind also that the market valuation when Toll Rail was nationalised was only NZ$435 million. Has the government really trebled the value of this business even though it has never paid a dividend yet? 

One guess as to why Opposition Finance spokespeople haven't asked that - because they fully supported this destruction of taxpayer wealth.

So the valuation continues to be generous in market terms. Kiwirail, if sold, would not go for the sort of money on its accounts, even if it continued to get hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies and grants every year.

The use of replacement cost as an asset valuation gives a false impression of the value of an asset if it to be sold, simply because it does not generate sufficient revenue to justify ever replacing the asset on the scale (and in the same way) as it was originally acquired.

My previous post on this was right.

Kiwirail is not an “investment” in its current form, but rather an emotionally laden piece of heritage that mixes some commercial elements, some local public policy elements with a lot of hyperbole and wishful thinking.

Debates about pouring taxpayers money into it need to be based on some market based accounts, accounts that might actually show it can generate a reasonable rate of return based on what it could be sold for – but which wouldn’t ever justify the money poured into it so far.

For that reason, given both National and Labour have thrown over a billion into this taxpayer owned bonfire, and the Greens are just gagging to throw billions more at it, means that having debates based on reasoned balanced analysis are absent when most of those involved prefer conspiracy theories around corruption, hyperbolic evangelism about rail “saving the economy” and economic illiteracy.

Most of my past posts on this subject are summarised in this one, on what it would take to make the railway a viable business.

It includes the following ones:

-  The Greens posted a link to a great presentation on Kiwirail, which actually destroys most of their own self-generated myths about the business.  I link to it here.

-  Where is the rail network viable?

-  Bill English admits the rail network is virtually worthless

Another good read is this from Ross Clark which explains that the "failure" of rail privatisation is because there are some serious questions about the viability of rail at all.

UPDATE:  I know this article has been linked to by a couple of forums.  Please read the articles at the bottom and indeed the presentation I linked to here. You can romanticise as much as you like, and I have a stack of Rails magazines from the 1980s and 1990s, and the NZ Railway Observer as well, so I am a rail enthusiast at a personal, emotional level, but the hard economic facts are that rail is an expensive way to move goods given the high capital costs of the bespoke equipment and infrastructure.  Only when volumes are high, frequent and over long distances do the fuel and personnel advantages start to offset this.  It's about economics.  In the US, rail freight succeeds in spite of serious undercharging of trucks on untolled interstate highways, in NZ Road User Charges contribute to a very different picture.