Behavioral Economics

Can you imagine successfully navigating the next decade ahead with a great system. We have arrived at a juncture that will require major efforts on the part of investors to reshape their investments. You see, we believe that major forces at work will be to the benefit of credits. We propose a structure that removes any debt based investments.

Presenting Dave Collum's now ubiquitous and all-encompassing annual review of markets and much, much more. From Baptists, Bankers, and Bootleggers to Capitalism, Corporate Debt, Government Corruption, and the Constitution, Dave provides a one-stop-shop summary of everything relevant this year (and how it will affect next year and beyond).

The assumption that households are doing much better simply because the stock market is up is really a problematic understanding of how wealth is dispersed across the United States. I vividly remember a handful of parties back during the peak of the bubble where people would often quote how much their net worth went up courtesy of the housing bubble. “My home that I bought in the 1990s is now worth over $1 million.” As all of you know, until you sell the home those gains are largely on paper and many did not sell. In fact, many tapped out large portions of that equity and spent it. This is why even with home prices moderately recovering US households still have close to record low equity in their homes. It probably does not help that low down payment FHA insured loans are such a large part of the market encouraging Americans to make the biggest purchase of their lives with very little down. The Fed reported last week on net worth figures and it is worth digging deep into the data.

The market rally has assuredly been more powerful than Morgan Stanley had anticipated, defying the weak fundamentals. Many have said they don’t think fundamentals will matter for the rest of this year. We don’t do heroin. We are sure the period of being high on heroin is “enjoyable.” We had thought that most investors would decide this “heroin” wasn’t worth it. We forgot about what it means to be an addict. Will equities continue to go higher simply because the specter of unlimited liquidity is there or will investors see through to the other side of the “high”? People can’t envision a catalyst to make fundamentals matter, they can’t envision a catalyst for earnings to come down, and they still think the “tradable rally” from positioning and policy will last. It well may last for a while more, but the disconnect from fundamentals can’t last forever. We all know that the current “bad is good, good is good” mentality can’t persist.

Gluskin Sheff's David Rosenberg may be cautious on the outlook for risk assets and cyclical securities over the near- and intermediate-term, but, he notes, change is always at the margin, and it usually starts in the political sphere. Austerity is not some dirty nine-letter word as the socialists in Europe would have you believe. It is all about living within your means and living up to your commitments. There is some good news in the United States with respect to this topic, but the uncertainty over the extent of next year's tax bite is likely to cause households and businesses to pull spending back and raise cash, at the margin, which means the economy won't turn around in time for Mr. Obama. As was the case with Ronald Reagan, just having a clear and coherent fiscal plan will part the clouds of uncertainty and encourage capital to be put at risk rather than sit as idle unproductive cash on corporate balance sheets. In a somewhat stunning sentence from the no-longer-a-permabear, he notes that "The future is brighter than you think", but just in case you are backing up the truck, he adds "this does not mean we will not have another recession, by the way — as we suffer through a deflationary debt deleveraging. I'm noticing a certain degree of despair these days, just as I am getting enthusiastic about the future. Much depends on what happens on November 6th and between now and then we still have the European mess, China hard landing risks and the U.S. debt ceiling issue to confront. Be that as it may, those with some dry powder on hand will be in a solid position to take advantage of whatever forced "panic" selling takes place."

The financial elite - using academe for intellectual cover - want you to believe that markets are efficient, as defined by the Efficient Market Theory (EMT). Neoliberal economic philosophy is based on the belief that neoclassical economic theory is correct. That is, that “markets are efficient”. Wall Street touts markets as trustworthy and infallible, but that faith is misplaced. Gullible US politicians believe that markets are efficient and defer to them. Therefore, US politicians abdicate their responsibility to manage the overall economy, and happily for them, receive Wall Street money. Mistakenly, the primary focus during the 2008 credit crisis is on fixing the financial markets (Wall Street banks) and not the “real economy.” The financial elite are using this “cover-up and pray” policy—hoping that rekindled “animal spirits” will bring the economy back in time to save the status quo. This is impossible because the trust is gone. The same sociopaths control the economy. A Federal Reserve zero interest rate policy (ZIRP), causing malinvestment, and monetizing the national debt with quantitative easing by the Fed, and austerity for the 99% to repay bad bank loans has not worked—and doing more of the same will not work—and defines insanity.

The ascendency of behavioral economics over its “Classical” cousin is one of the more notable effects of the market turmoil of the last five years.  Simple constructs like “Every marginal dollar has utility” have given way to more nuanced explanations that incorporate how human beings really make decisions about the tradeoffs between money and deeply held emotions and beliefs. But even with this realization, academia still seems to have a choke hold on the studies that expand our knowledge of this new discipline.  Nic Colas, of ConvergEx, adds to the discipline’s canon with some examples of common street scams around the world. The comparisons he makes to recent events in the capital markets are fairly obvious, whether they be failed IPOs or the strategies used by weaker sovereign nations to negotiate with stronger ones.  The point here is not to call out anyone as inherent ‘Criminal.’  There are plenty of laws – and diligent regulators - surrounding the capital markets, after all.  Rather, the examples here are simply a lens that allows us to examine the nuances of human behavior with greater understanding. As the old saying goes, 'The proper study of mankind is man.'  Even when it is a con man.  And in the case of behavioral economics, perhaps especially so. 

With Citigroup raising the odds of a Greece exit from the Euro to between 50 and 75% in the next 12-18 months, it is perhaps worth reflecting on just what is holding them back and where Europe goes next. There has been and will continue to be much written on the faulty premise or failed-experiment of the Euro and using George Soros' recent less-than-sanguine discussion (at the INET conference as we noted here) of Europe in general (how did they get here? exactly where are they? and what are the scenarios going forward?) Gordon T Long and John Rubino expand on these thoughts in a must-watch-before-you-hit-the-BTFD-button clip this week. If there was a dummies guide to Europe's problems, this is it - plain and simple - and as this weekend's elections perhaps reflect "when you borrow too much money as a nation - you become ungovernable - as there is no painless way out."

Looking back at the carnage created by the bursting of the credit bubble, it’s natural to scratch your head and ask “How did we ever let that happen?”. Behavioral economics exists to answer questions like this. Last week Chris sat down with Dan Ariely, gallivanting behavioral-economics-researcher-extraordinaire, who is breathing new life into this previously obscure field of study. The resulting interview is full of fresh, non-intuitive insights and shines light on how the human brain is often hard-wired for irrational action when it comes to money.

David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal laments the fact that Mr. and Ms. America wrongfully scorn the bailouts of Wall Street. He believes the bailouts saved the world. I think Mr. and Ms. America have it right.

• Bond-fund fraud suits leaves auditor speechless: PwC joins the E&Y in the incompetent lineup (Bloomberg)
• Goldman director in probe: prosecutors examine trades by Galleon in bank's shares as investigation widens (WSJ)
• The rumors were spot on: Chinese economy grows 11.9%, highlighting threat of overheating (Bloomberg, Reuters)
• New Basel restrictions blasted by banks who thing 100x leverage is perfectly acceptable, anything less and the "client" will suffer (Bloomberg)
• More bad news out of PIIG land: Greece may cancel bond issue - "Athens now hopes to raise "up to $1 billion to $4 billion," compared with $5 billion $10 billion previously." (WSJ)
• We need a Blankfein amendment (DealBook)
• Behavioral economics—the governing theory of Obama’s nanny state (The Weekly Standard)

We think that China is an indestructible economic juggernaut but its economy is very fragile and it is sitting on a property bubble which will burst. What China does in response has major implications for their economy and the rest of the world. This is the first part of a three-part series on this topic.

The real Adam Smith ...

How can it be that risk assets, notably common stocks, have been roaring ahead, presumably discounting a robust V-shaped economic recovery, while Treasury bonds are holding their own with a bull flattening bias, presumably rejecting the V-shaped hypothesis, instead discounting a U-shaped recovery as the base case, with a W-shaped outcome the dominant risk case?

Another educational clip out of FORA TV, this time Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, presents examples of cognitive illusions that help illustrate why humans make predictably irrational decisions - lately that would include purchasing stocks.