US: The Financial Crisis Is Not That Complicated

For the last month, the press has been raging about how insanely complex the current financial crisis is. So complicated that financial wizards are still reeling to understand what happened. So complex that even mighty titans of finance like Greenspan and Paulson don't know how to fix it.

At the risk of hubris, I disagree. The problem seems pretty simple, really.

Here's what happened. About a decade ago, the financial community dreamed up something called Credit Default Swaps (CDS). These financial tools are basically an insurance policy against something going bankrupt. The "something" could be anything, like a corporate bond or a sub-prime mortgage. So if I sell you a CDS, you pay me a certain amount of money each year, like an insurance premium, and if the mortgage goes bust, I give you a big payout. Just like having car insurance: your insurance company pays you if your car gets creamed.

Here's the catch: "insurance" is regulated. "Swaps" aren't. This means that the Wall St guys don't have to have financial reserves in case they actually have to make the CDS payouts to someone. That's like if I sold all my friends car insurance, took their premiums, and hoped that no one crashes their car. If a bunch of my clients do happen to have car crashes -- especially at the same time -- then everyone is screwed. I can't make the payments, and the car owners suddenly don't have insurance. That's what happened this fall, except that it was mortgages that crashed, not cars.

The heart of the problem is that regulators were convinced by financial lobbyists that they didn't have to regulate CDS because they were called "swaps" instead of "insurance." That's just idiotic. But there you have it: highly-paid Washington lobbyists influenced legislation for special interests, to the detriment of the Joe Taxpayer. Joe Taxpayer just got screwed.

Greenspan admits now that he thought banks would have the self-discipline to hold sufficient financial reserves to back the CDS's even in the absence of regulation. Even without the benefit of hindsight, that's a staggering assumption: it should not be surprising that banks wanted to trade these enormously profitable CDS's while they could, and knowing that if the system collapsed, the government would have to pick up the pieces. The financial system of the US really is too big to fail.

Admittedly, the solution to this problem is not simple. But I think it has to start with the recognition that this is a classic, recurring problem: the financial wizards on Wall St will always be one step ahead of the regulators, and they will always try to hire high-priced lobbyists to create loopholes in regulations. This isn't new: the Savings and Loans crisis in the 1980s was created in much the same way. It almost certainly won't be the last time.

So it seems to me that if we know this is a recurring problem in the financial industry, we ought to structure long-term solutions around that principle. It's true that the exact form and timing of these crises are unpredictable, but the fact that they will happen is entirely predictable. Instead of letting them take everyone by surprise and the cost being passed on to taxpayers, why not find ways to ensure that the fat cats on Wall St foot the bill when financial collapses occur?

The Canada-Obama Free Trade Agreement

Obama's campaign is being accused of soft-pedaling his policy concerns about NAFTA to a foreign government, namely Canada. A leaked memo from the Canadian consulate in Chicago appears to confirm it. It comes just days -- hours -- before the big showdown on March 4.

What a mess.

Despite Obama's strident denials, there probably is something to this story. Either he or his campaign thought it would be good idea to use some weasel words about his true intent on free trade.

The real damage from this episode is that it is driving both Democratic candidates further and further into the wrong policy position: protectionism. Obama is now publicly digging in his heals on free trade, insisting that he would renegotiate NAFTA and pull out if he wasn't satisfied. Still worse, Hillary Clinton is clutching to this controversy like a drowning swimmer, hoping that if she can prove that she is more anti-NAFTA than Obama is, it will win her Ohio.

The tragedy is that both of the candidates appear to know better. Hillary Clinton publicly supported NAFTA when it was passed, and she's smart enough to know that NAFTA has been good for the economy of all three countries involved. But now she says she was against it all along, and was just being loyal to her husband. (Clearly a guy who knows what loyalty is about.)

So the Democrats should feel ashamed of themselves, but the real buffon here is the Canadian government. By allowing that memo to get into the press, the Canadiang government has driven both Democrats into a more anti-NAFTA position, which won't be good for Canada if either of them is elected.

The fact that the Canadian embassy doesn't seem to get it is galling. They issued a statement that says: “The Canadian Embassy and our consulates general regularly contact those involved in all of the presidential campaigns and, periodically, report on these contacts to interested officials. There was no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private, including about NAFTA.”

Hey guys, I got a genius idea for you: stop trying to get private concessions out of Presidential candidates and then leaking them to the press!

International: Blood and oil in Chad

Violence is spreading in Chad as rebels attack the capital. The flow of blood is, unfortunately, all too connected to the flow of oil.

In 2003, Chad became a significant oil exporter thanks to the World Bank-sponsored Chad-Cameroon pipeline. The World Bank stipulated restrictions on how the oil money could be used, but of course once the pipeline was built, the Chadian government as a lot less willing to follow the rules.

Chad's neighbours do not give us much hope for responsible leadership. North of Chad, Qaddhafi has ruled Libya for almost 40 years, where he has used oil money to sponsor violence around the world. To the East, Sudan is a major oil-exporter and, not coincidentally, embroiled in a genocide in Darfur.

Why does this seem to happen in oil-exporting countries? There are two basic reasons.

First, oil erodes the legitimacy of government. The oil industry is famously corrupt, perhaps second only to the global arms trade in terms of bribes paid and officials bought off. Along with corruption, oil money usually brings economic mismanagement and government incompetence. In a desparately poor country like Chad, this all adds up to a highly unpopular government that lacks any real legitimacy. That opens up the door to extreme, revolutionary leaders who are little interested in ruling the country for the good of the public.

Second, oil income is highly concentrated. This makes a successful revolution potentially very profitable: if the rebels can seize control of the government, they seize control of a very lucrative oil business. High stakes attracts big sharks: again, radical leaders.

How should the internatoinal community respond to the situation in Chad, and oil-exporters elsewhere? Well I'm working on that -- I'll let you know when my dissertation is finished. But the logical starting point is that countries should at least avoid doing harm.

This is what France appears to have done over the last 3-5 years: it has continued to back the President of Chad, even as his people have turned against him. Doing so has robbed France of any legitimacy in the eyes of the people, greatly reducing its ability to help re-establish peace. The international community has simply got to learn the lesson that continues to haunt the global arena: backing a unpopular and illegitimate but compliant dictator might work in the short-run, but it frequently comes back to bite us in the rear-end -- with disastrous consequences.

International: Pyrric success in Bali

You have to hand it to the Bush administration: the US is getting world-wide acclaim for the "success" of the Bali global climate change talks, and it cost them nothing.

In one deft move, the US snapped up the label of the magnanimous "compromiser" at Bali. Initially opposed to the proposed agreement, the US delegation did a U-turn and gave its support to the proposed agreement.

But what is this agreement, exactly? It's not a Kyoto-style set of emissions targets, of course. There's no way Bush's core constituency could accept that. It's not even a promise to negotiate binding targets. Its an agreement to talk about undefined targets, and maybe make even make those targets binding. Moreover, the deadline for those talks isn't until the end of 2009 -- well after Bush leaves office.

Instead, it was the greens (mostly the EU) that did all the compromising. There is no agreement to make the emissions targets for industrialized countries binding, and there's no agreement for the developing countries like China and India to do much of anything.

Still, perhaps the Bali conference was not a total failure. It contributes to the long, slow struggle to get the world's attention and build the political will to take real actions to reduce climate change. For now, the best the international community can do is talk about voluntary targets, but that doesn't mean we have to settle for this at home. We can, and should, urge our national and local governments to accept binding targets, even in the absence of a real international agreement.

Canada: Hypocrisy in Bali

Canada's "principled stand" at this week's global climate change talks in Bali is, not to put too find a point on it, a farcical display of hypocrisy.

PM Stephen Harper argues that until all major emitters -- including developing countries like China and India -- have signed up to emissions reductions targets, Canada refuses to accept any limits on its own activity.

But Yvo de Boer, the normally diplomatic UN climate chief, exposed the absurdity of this position this week. “I personally find it interesting to hear Canada just a little while ago indicating it would not meet its commitments under the Kyoto protocol and now calling on developing countries to take binding reduction targets,” he told a press conference Monday.
“So I wonder how that's going to be received,” he added.

One wonders if Harper ever thought about how galling it would sound to developing countries that, after admitting that Canada won't meet the Kyoto targets, we are insisting that they take action. Either he didn't think about, which makes him mildly incompetent, or he did, which suggests his argument is really much more about avoiding binding commitments than it is about any "principled stand." Indeed, Harper's principles look an awful lot like a cynical masquerade.

Not exactly what Canadians expect of their Prime Minister in terms of leadership on the global stage.

International: When Syria comes to dinner

Syria announced this week that, contrary to expectations, it would attend the meeting on Arab-Israeli conflict hosted by the US in Annapolis at the end of November. This could be a chance for a step forward in the peace process, if it were seized correctly.

It is not clear that Syria has ever actually been interested in peace with Israel. Having a foreign enemy serves a useful purpose for the Ba'athist regime: it gives them a scapegoat on which to blame any and all troubles faced by the Syrian people.

But one crucial thing has changed in Syria: its oil is running out. In 2007, for the first time in recent history, Syria became a net oil importer. This has significant consequences: income from oil exports have long been a crucial source of revenue for the Syrian government, and rather suddenly they have lost it -- just as oil prices are skyrocketing.

So why is this an opportunity? The loss of oil revenues means that the Syrian government is desparately looking for a way to balance its books. The first time the US was able to create peace between Israel and one of its neighbors, Egypt, it did so by offering massive side payments to an Arab state in need of revenues. Now Syria falls in the same camp: maybe, just maybe, it could be tempted to offer a lasting peace in exchange for a new source of funding for its cash-strapped government.

This is not to argue that the Syrian regime is either pleasant or trustworthy. Granted, there is a certain stench associated with American payments to a Ba'athist dictatorship. Maybe the best thing to do is to hope that the Ba'athist regime runs into so much trouble that it gets overthrown by its own people, and replaced by a regime more interested in peace. But opportunities to create peace in the Middle East do not come everyday, and the US should think twice before throwing it away.

US: Democrats at the Temple of Cowardice

It's hard to grasp how the US Senate, especially the Democrats, can be so weak, so cowardly, and so stupid.

Recently they approved Michael Mukasey as the new Attorney General, despite his unwillingness to answer a simple question about the legality of torture. Asked whether "waterboarding" is illegal, he refused to answer.As the International Herald Tribune put it so well: "It was not a difficult question. Waterboarding is specifically banned by the Army Field Manual, and it is plainly illegal under the federal Anti-Torture Act, federal assault statutes, the Detainee Treatment Act, the Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions. It is hard to see how any nominee worthy of the position of attorney general could fail to answer 'yes.'" (IHT, Nov 11, 2007)

There really is a right and wrong answer on this one. America prides itself on its claims to freedom and liberty. It is also plainly failing to live up to its values on this issue.

My recent visit to three Arab countries reminded me that charges of hypocrisy are central to the low regard of America in the Arab world. No one admires it when Saudi Arabia locks up political dissidents, but the Saudi regime makes no pretensions to civil rights or democracy. When the US adopts similar practices, it is not just its actions but also its hypocrisy that tears into the American image.

It would be bad enough if this was just a matter of bad policy; it also seems like bad politics. The Financial Times reports that Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic senator whose support for Mr Mukasey was crucial, made clear that she had voted for him in part because "Mr Bush had threatened that if Mr Mukasey were rejected, he would not provide another nominee." (FT, Nov. 6) The fact that the Senate Democrats can be bullied around by Bush so easily -- still, after 7 years -- is appalling.

Democrats hope that if and when they seize the White House in 2008, all will be well in the world. Think again. Unless they learn to wield power responsibly, America's reputation will continue to suffer.