Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
| Last | Change | Percent | |
| S&P Futures | 1457.5 | -6.8 | -0.46% |
| Eurostoxx Index | 2701.4 | -13.7 | -0.51% |
| Oil (WTI) | 93.67 | -0.5 | -0.50% |
| LIBOR | 0.303 | -0.001 | -0.33% |
| US Dollar Index (DXY) | 79.65 | 0.158 | 0.20% |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 1.82% | -0.02% | |
| RPX Composite Real Estate Index | 191.9 | 0.0 |
Futures are deteriorating on fears that Congress won’t find a way to raise the debt ceiling. Fitch ratings said that it would put the US credit rating under review for a downgrade if there is a delay in raising the debt ceiling. The Bernank weighed in on the debt ceiling at the University of Michigan yesterday. The producer price index showed inflation remains under control at the wholesale level and Dec retail sales were better than expected. Bonds and MBS are up.
The Empire State Manufacturing Survey indicated that conditions for New York State manufacturers continued to decline at a modest pace. Roughly 20% of businesses surveyed expected to increase payroll, while the same number expect to decrease payroll. Capital Expenditures dropped again to its lowest level since 2009. That said, the outlook for 2013 remained mildly positive.
Lennar reported a profit of 56 cents a share for the 4th quarter and FY12 EPS of $3.11 a share. Revenues were up 42% in Q4, and backlog was up 32%. Margins also increased. The CEO noted that the housing recovery seemed to accelerate in Q4 as low mortgage rates, affordable home prices, lower foreclosures and a compelling rent vs own comparison drove the recovery.
The CoreLogic Market Pulse showed that 2012 was better than expected for the housing market. They raise a good point though, that 2012 had no major economic shocks – no Japanese tsunami, no debt ceiling debate / downgrades, no major blow-ups of big financial entities. They characterize 2012 as “a year in recovery, but not one in which the country has actually recovered.” They foresee further recovery next year, but note that supply has been constrained as many move-up buyers have been underwater. As prices rise, those properties will be put back on the market. As the economy recovers, the first-time homebuyer will become in a better position to purchase these properties, which will provide the increased demand to meet the increased supply.
The debt ceiling debate has been getting more confrontational, with the President using hostage-taking metaphors during his speech yesterday. Sen Pat Toomey (R-PA) has introduced a bill to avert default by requiring Treasury to prioritize payments (with interest, SS, and active duty military pay taking precedence) and allowing them to borrow just enough to cover those expenses if revenues aren’t enough. My personal belief is that Republicans know the politics aren’t there for a debt ceiling standoff, but they will accept the full sequestration cuts. The sequestration cuts were designed to never happen – the cuts were supposed to be unpalatable to both sides. Much to the surprise of Democrats, Republicans are more comfortable with cutting defense than they thought, which means that the roughly $109 billion of spending in 2013 will get left on the cutting room floor.
To put the sequestration into perspective: the 2012 budget was $3.729 trillion. The 2013 budget is $3.803 trillion. The increase is roughly $74 billion. In other words, the actual cut to government spending is $109 billion – $74 billion or about $35 billion. $35 billion is 22 basis points of GDP. We are currently spending 24% of GDP, while the highest taxes as a percent of GDP have ever gotten in a touch over 20%, primarily during the equity bubble when capital gains tax receipts were huge. To get spending down to where we are able to balance the budget under the best of conditions, we would need to lop off $567B from 2012, or about 4% of GDP. Republicans would be wise to give Obama what he wants on the debt ceiling and then force the Administration to explain why cutting spending by 22 basis points of GDP is somehow intolerable. Of course, the Administration has already telegraphed how it will fight this battle (terrorists will run wild, pollution will increase, airplane accidents will happen, we won’t be able to deal with natural disasters) so Republicans will be well advised to separate out the necessary functions of the government (basic safety net, FAA, FBI, FDA, etc) from the “nice-to-haves” like foreign aid to places like Egypt, agricultural subsidies, green energy subsidies, etc.
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
Don’t hire a portfolio manager to make your investments. Get a cat.
It took us a decade to get to the current deficit level, I don’t see the urgency in balancing it in a year or two even if it could be done without cratering the economy. Part of the problem with trying to strike a deal that includes the most strident members of the Republican party is that they welcome the effects of a failed negotiation, particularly anything that paralyzes and makes ineffectual the federal government. It may be a particularly extreme case of cutting off their nose to spite their face but they have no qualms about being throw into that brierpatch.
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“Futures are deteriorating on fears that Congress won’t find a way to raise the debt ceiling”
This should really read:
“Futures are deteriorating on fears that Congress will be unwilling to raise the debt ceiling”
Everyone knows how to raise the debt ceiling. They certainly have enough practice at it.
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Politico is reporting that a majority of House Republicans are willing to shut down the government. If not over the debt ceiling than over the next budget battle. They are really looking for an excuse to do it, so Obama needs to find an incentive other than the continued operation of the government to carry out its previously delegated and legislated functions.
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“The debt ceiling debate has been getting more confrontational, with the President using hostage-taking metaphors during his speech yesterday. Sen Pat Toomey (R-PA) has introduced a bill to avert default by requiring Treasury to prioritize payments (with interest, SS, and active duty military pay taking precedence) and allowing them to borrow just enough to cover those expenses if revenues aren’t enough.”
This is silly, as there’s no need to borrow to cover interest expenses. If that was the case, we would already be doomed.
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“yellojkt, on January 15, 2013 at 7:56 am said:
…
It took us a decade to get to the current deficit level, I don’t see the urgency in balancing it in a year or two even if it could be done without cratering the economy. “
Deficit reduction plans where all the savings are back loaded into the out years are pure bullshit.
I’d say that a reasonable step one is that the current year deficit should be brought below $1 trillion.
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I’d say that a reasonable step one is that the current year deficit should be brought below $1 trillion.
That certainly sounds reasonable.
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I think I saw the final paragraph on Plum Line today.
I’d make a couple of slight adjustments. Spending for FY12 was projected at 22.6% of GDP, not 24%. That’s a roughly $200B shift, significant in terms of the numbers used.
Second, are those budget numbers indexed for inflation? If not, using the CPI of 1.7% (I’m using the number for the SS COLA) would suggest a constant dollar increase of $15B, not $74B. Increases in social security and related COLAs are baked into the cake. The reductions in discretionary spending will be significantly more than the 22 basis points cited above.
If you think agricultural support is a “nice to have”, you haven’t spoken to a senator from a state with farms recently. Sigh…
BB
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Yes, the discretionary non-defense spending will have to take a hit. The private sector has had to do with less; there is no reason why DOE or HUD should be exempt.
Hell, we burned almost the entire sequestration in green energy boondoggles in the last few years. Every single dime of non-defense spending is not sacrosanct.
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This is a great quote:
“House Speaker John Boehner “may need a shutdown just to get it out of their system,” said a top GOP leadership adviser.
It’s all about living up to Gingrich’s standard. Can’t have any half-asses in this Congress.
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“House Speaker John Boehner “may need a shutdown just to get it out of their system,” said a top GOP leadership adviser.
Exactly the kind of barn-torching machismo which makes my stomach churn. They are determined to extract a pound of flesh no matter what the damage to the economy.
It’s not just the fed workers and contractors who end up furloughed who are hurt by this kind of grandstanding. It’s everybody in the supply chain including all those ‘Don’t tell me I didn’t build this’ business owners who have a government contract somewhere in their accounts receivable.
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“business owners who have a government contract”
perhaps they’ll do business with more reputable partners in the future.
[edit — after further review — meaning given that it’s clear that we’ll never have regular order again, why would you sign up this?]
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“yellojkt, on January 15, 2013 at 9:16 am said:
“Exactly the kind of barn-torching machismo which makes my stomach churn. They are determined to extract a pound of flesh no matter what the damage to the economy.”
There’s also a general feeling that they’ve been lied to on the actual spending cuts in every previous deal since 2010 that’s poisoned the water.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/budget/cbo-says-budget-deal-will-cut-spending-by-only-352-million-this-year-20110413
See also this write up on Jack Lew
Those sorts of tricks work once. After that, there’s not enough trust to do a deal.
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There’s also a general feeling that they’ve been lied to on the actual spending cuts in every previous deal since 2010 that’s poisoned the water.
There are so many baselines out there you can turn any cut into an increase and vice versa. The recent tax increases/cuts are just one example of this. The naiveté of people supposedly running this country who don’t understand the accounting behind the budgeting process is a little un-nerving. Are they really that ignorant or just perpetually indignant.
Those sorts of tricks work once. After that, there’s not enough trust to do a deal.
Boehner has negotiated in supposed good-faith twice only to pull the football away each time. And the second time he couldn’t even get his party to support his own bargaining position, let alone an actual deal. There is a lot of scorched earth on both sides of this Hindenburg Line.
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Joe Nocera is worth a read:
“The Foreclosure Fiasco
By JOE NOCERA
Published: January 14, 2013”
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Exactly. Republicans shouldnt draw a line in the sand on the debt ceiling – they’ll get skewered by the liberal media. But they have $109 billion in sequestration cuts in hand that will happen unless something stops them. They can sit back and let the phone ring.
Let obama make the argument that every dime of government expenditure is sacred.
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Let obama make the argument that every dime of government expenditure is sacred.
If Republicans think the country can be run with fewer programs they should name names and attach dollar signs (and that really shouldn’t be hard to do). Otherwise it’s all the Closing Fire Stations Gambit. Behind the debt ceiling is the secondary game of chicken where conservatives want Democrats to take responsibility for entitlement cuts so they can hypocritically demagogue against the cuts in the next election.
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yello:
If Republicans think the country can be run with fewer programs they should name names and attach dollar signs
Does this mean that you think the country can’t be run with fewer programs? I just can’t imagine how we would manage without the National Endowment for the Arts.
In any event, it is precisely because of this kind of attitude that new government spending programs, and even increases in old ones, should be fought tooth and nail and should never be automatic. Once passed, it immediately becomes “crucial” spending to someone, and it becomes a near impossible political achievement to ever get rid of it. Demagogues galore. It is also why we should have hard debt limits and a flat tax. Force the voters who demand this spending to feel the economic pain of paying for them.
As for naming names and $ amounts, how about this: Every single government spending program gets 10% less this year than it got last year. And to be clear, not 10% less than what it was supposed to get after automatic spending increases. 10% less than it actually got last year.
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Well, the sequestration is going to cut some departments by 7.6%, not eliminate them. Nobody is suggesting that we eliminate the Department of Energy, or HUD, but why can’t they handle a smaller budget? Everyone else on the planet has had to make do with less, the government can do their “fair share” too.
Like I said earlier, We are talking about $54.5 billion of non-defense discretionary spending. obama has pissed away over $90 billion in green energy alone since he took office.
We can cut government spending by 11 basis points of GDP without starving children, starving granny (which is ridiculous anyway – the sequester leaves entitlements alone), letting terrorists run loose, or having planes fly into each other.
Look, obama has gotten everything he wants and then some. It is time he ponied up a little. Since he won’t do it voluntarily, involuntary will have to do.
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Like I said earlier, We are talking about $54.5 billion of non-defense discretionary spending. obama has pissed away over $90 billion in green energy alone since he took office.
If it’s such small potatoes, why does it take so long to get to ‘yes’? An inability to genuinely compromise seems to be hurting the Republicans strategically since you claim they aren’t getting any of the loaf. They might as well settle for half but they seem to be temperamentally incapable of it. They have walked away from better deals than what they are being offered now.
Look, obama has gotten everything he wants and then some. It is time he ponied up a little. Since he won’t do it voluntarily, involuntary will have to do.
Spoken like a true Molotov-cocktail thrower. Care to throw in some rants about watering the tree of liberty or not coming armed, this time? All cutting the budget takes is a majority of each house and a presidential signature. Holding the livelihoods of millions of people (not all sucking on the government teat since a credit debacle will affect everyone) hostage is a pretty extreme tactic.
For a party with a majority in one chamber and a filibuster in the other, Republicans sure are a bunch of whiners about not getting their way.
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YJ, Brent is not proposing to hold hostages. The Molotov-cocktail remark was way out of proportion.
Simply proposing to hold all programs level for one budget cycle just to see what would actually happen would be novel – and a significant cut from what usually happens.
But as I wrote earlier, the number of interests and persons who are yelling NIMBY or “whose ox is gored?” dictates that everything be available for small cuts, and if actual waste, fraud, and abuse is ID’d that it be cut entirely.
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I just can’t imagine how we would manage without the National Endowment for the Arts.
I’m sure we could. The NEA is either a subsidy for wealthy art patrons or a make-work program for unemployable liberal arts majors depending on how you look at it but we would have to cut it a thousand times over before we get to right side of the decimal place in spending as a percentage of GDP.
Every single government spending program gets 10% less this year than it got last year.
The sequester basically does this but it’s the conservatives who are trying to figure out a way of letting the Defense Department finagle out of any belt tightening. As has been mentioned here, the sequester is not all that draconian if evenly applied. Whether it’s a good idea in a teetering economy is a different discussion.
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yello:
The sequester basically does this but it’s the conservatives who are trying to figure out a way of letting the Defense Department finagle out of any belt tightening.
Yes, that can be a problem. Conservative don’t want to cut defense, and liberals don’t want to cut spending.
As has been mentioned here, the sequester is not all that draconian if evenly applied.
Unfortunately the sequester is not evenly applied. Mandatory entitlements are untouched, which is a problem.
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For any Hunter S. Thompson fans here, this is classic:
Full book:
http://www.hunterbio.com/
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BizzaroWorld:
Nope it’s exactly about incurring more debt, not giving the government the “fiscal wherewithal to pay for spending”. The latter would be more properly characterized as taxes.
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it’s exactly about incurring more debt
Really, it’s about authorizing more debt instruments. Defining payables and mandates as not being debt is convenient, except when the lawsuits begin.
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Sing it with me now:
Every cent is sacred
Every cent is great
If a cent’s not spent
The prez gets quite irate..
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Republicans are actually getting the better deal in the sequester because discretionary defense spending is more than discretionary non-defense spending but is only getting half of the cut.
I still think that the perpetually-increasing mandatory spending is the bigger problem.
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I still think that the perpetually-increasing mandatory spending is the bigger problem.
And you are still correct. You and I should go to DC with Brent as our advisor and straighten them out. We won’t satisfy Scott, but JNC will give us points for helping at the margins.
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mike:
I still think that the perpetually-increasing mandatory spending is the bigger problem.
I agree.
mark:
We won’t satisfy Scott,
I’d give you huge kudos if you somehow put a dent in perpetually-increasing mandatory spending.
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“Mike, on January 15, 2013 at 1:44 pm said:
Republicans are actually getting the better deal in the sequester because discretionary defense spending is more than discretionary non-defense spending but is only getting half of the cut.
I still think that the perpetually-increasing mandatory spending is the bigger problem.”
Yep, but neither the Obama administration nor the Republicans were interesting in proposing specific entitlement cuts so here we are.
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“markinaustin, on January 15, 2013 at 1:49 pm said:
I still think that the perpetually-increasing mandatory spending is the bigger problem.
And you are still correct. You and I should go to DC with Brent as our advisor and straighten them out. We won’t satisfy Scott, but JNC will give us points for helping at the margins.”
As I mentioned earlier, my personal marker for whether or not something is being done is whether this year’s deficit is in excess of $1 trillion again. I think it’s a very modest target to hit.
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jnc:
I think it’s a very modest target to hit.
I think an easy and flat 10% cut across the board from last year’s spending would achieve exactly that.
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Your tax dollars at work.
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The Heritage Foundation seems very pollyanna-sh in assuming that a Congress which can’t agree on a debt ceiling can easily pass legislation prioritizing who gets paid (and implicitly, who doesn’t) in the event of a default:
Underselling the economic damage that a default or shut-down would incur is tantamount to an endorsement of the tactic.
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“I still think that the perpetually-increasing non-sustainable mandatory spending is the bigger problem.”
Fixed that for you. How are we defining ‘perpetually increasing’? Per capita? Percentage of GDP? Fixed constant dollars? Social security is fine once we turn all the baby boomers into soylent green. Medical costs are the real long tent in the pole and that is a societal problem, not a governmental program. Vouchers and rationing and just plain putting granny on an ice floe won’t do a thing if we are cutting the governmental portion and shifting the burden onto individuals with no means of their own. The cost curve has to decay to some predictable portion of the economy. {Standard disclaimers that we pay twice as much for worse health care than other developed countries apply.}
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yello:
Vouchers and rationing and just plain putting granny on an ice floe won’t do a thing if we are cutting the governmental portion and shifting the burden onto individuals with no means of their own.
This is a conceptual error. It is impossible to “shift” the burden of health care for a person onto the person himself. That is where the burden quite naturally falls. One can only attempt to shift the burden away from that person and onto someone else.
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That is where the burden quite naturally falls.
Patient, heal thyself.
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mark:
Patient, heal thyself.
Not quite. When I got lasik eye surgery to fix my eyesight, I certainly didn’t “heal” myself. But the burden of finding a doctor willing to do it for what I was willing to pay for it quite naturally fell on me, not on “society” or government.
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But the burden of finding a doctor willing to do it for what I was willing to pay for it quite naturally fell on me, not on “society” or government.
I’ll remember that process the next time my son needs an emergency appendectomy.
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I thought you understood the concept. To be clear:
1] The burden of health care falls upon those caring for health. Typically, the burden is shared by family, nurses, pharmacists, doctors; the least of the burden of care is upon the individual.
2] The economic cost of the burden of care is usually shifted from the caregiver to a purchaser of the care, because the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, and the burden of providing care can be beyond the capacity of a volunteer or volunteers.
3] The purchaser might be the patient, or the patient’s adult relatives, or a charity, or a public health service, or an insurance company which has sold risk spreading, or a governmental unit that has enforced risk spreading.
Paying for health care is not a single economic issue. For example, infectious disease is analogous to fire prevention in all modern society – the community will pay through its tax structure for sanitation, clean water, and immunizations, or it will succumb to plague. Your lasik decision, for example, has no plague implication.
You probably have no problem with anyone other than the government as a purchaser of health care through enforced risk spreading. Because the burden of health care is never primarily upon the patient the real issue is who is going to pay for it. Your platitude unintentionally obfuscates the real issue. YJ posed individuals who could not afford to pay for health care. For them (and wrt cancer or`chronic disease, or battlefield trauma, those individuals who cannot afford to pay include most of us) the questions are complex. Let them die without care and in pain? Let them die with palliative care paid for by someone else? Count on charity for more than palliative care? Shoot the mentally ill?
Once you permit a VA system into your world view, as George and I do, it becomes more difficult to draw lines based strictly on a principle of no enforced risk spreading. Mike and I obviously agree with NoVA that there are reasonable lines to be drawn here about end of life care and about making patients have buy-in; I am only trying to get you to see that your reply to YJ is just too simple and too glib.
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Mark:
The burden of health care falls upon those caring for health.
If you are saying what you seem to be saying, this is just a tautology. Those who provide health care do, as a matter of definition, provide health care. If you want to call a chosen profession for which one gets paid a “burden”, then I guess we are all “burdened” with the “obligation” to do whatever it is we do for a living. But that “burden” is not dictated by the nature of reality, which is what I was talking about.
It is not dictated by the nature of reality that person X become a health care provider, or having become one, continue to be “burdened” with providing a specific kind of health care to patient Y. Clearly doctors can and do choose to do other things.
It is the nature of reality that each of us, as individuals, are “burdened” with caring for our own health. That burden may be taken up by others, either voluntarily (out of compassion or by contract) or by force (via law), but to suggest that if the government is not providing health care to person Y, or not forcing others to provide it, it is “shifting” the burden of health care to person Y is to completely invert the nature of reality.
Paying for health care is not a single economic issue. For example, infectious disease is analogous to fire prevention in all modern society – the community will pay through its tax structure for sanitation, clean water, and immunizations, or it will succumb to plague.
Agreed.
Your lasik decision, for example, has no plague implication.
Correct, a characteristic it shares with, I would guess, perhaps 99% of the health care decisions we are talking about.
You probably have no problem with anyone other than the government as a purchaser of health care through enforced risk spreading.
The government is the only entity with the legal ability to enforce risk spreading. BTW, the real goal of government involvement in the health care system is actually cost sharing, not risk spreading.
Your platitude unintentionally obfuscates the real issue.
I actually think that pretending that the burden of caring for one’s health naturally falls on anyone other than the individual obfuscates the philosophical foundation on which the admittedly complex issues under discussion must be built.
YJ posed individuals who could not afford to pay for health care. For them (and wrt cancer or`chronic disease, or battlefield trauma, those individuals who cannot afford to pay include most of us) the questions are complex.
Yes, they can be. Where we disagree is on the premise that there exists an answer that “we” need to come up with.
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“Medical costs are the real long tent in the pole and that is a societal problem, not a governmental program. “
Not if you view Medicare payment structures and current tax incentives as the key drivers of cost growth as opposed to separate from them.
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“Underselling the economic damage that a default or shut-down would incur is tantamount to an endorsement of the tactic.”
Reminds me of the “we should spend more now because with current interest rates, the money is effectively free” argument that ignores the fact that the debt rolls over at some point. There’s no plan to get to a balanced budget, let alone pay anything down.
The people who claim to be Keynesians are actually MMT’ers at this point.
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Greg did a post on Emily Meier’s passing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/01/15/r-i-p-emily-meier/
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jnc and NoVA, this one’s for you:
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Fixed that for you. How are we defining ‘perpetually increasing’?
Yeah, thanks. I guess I’m defining it by percentage of GDP, but I’m sure it is “perpetually-increasing” by other measures as well.
As jnc points out, medical costs are both a societal and an governmental problem.
What are we willing to pay for, as a society? Lots of clinical studies show a statistically significant improvement in outcome without worrying about whether it is a clinically relevant improvement in quality of life. There has to be a cost-benefit analysis at some point/level. One of the only things I don’t like about “death panels” is the name.
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Mike:
What are we willing to pay for, as a society?
Whatever we, as individuals, decide to pay.
One of the only things I don’t like about “death panels” is the name.
I don’t mind the name so much, and I like them too. But we don’t need them to control societal spending. We need then to control government spending. As I have said several times, if the government is going to force me to pay for other people’s health care, I not only welcome death panels, I demand them.
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mark,
Thank you for making points I would want to make much better than I could. Catastrophic health incidents are not entirely within one’s control and they can be financially devastating. Without employer-provided insurance my son could have died and I would be bankrupt regardless.
One proposed solution is high deductible coverage to cover financial ruin because many medical issues are predictable or avoidable. But regular doctor visits and having preventive treatment reduces the risk. Perhaps not on a dollar for dollar basis, but the cheapest health care is always to just let people die. At some point we need to decide what we are willing to pay for.
There are slippery slopes and there are moral hazards in giving people ‘free’ health care. But letting people die or go broke because they either can’t afford comprehensive health care or have made poor life choices or are just plain unlucky is a very callous philosophy.
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“But regular doctor visits and having preventive treatment reduces the risk.”
This is true, but like everything in health care, only to a point. And simply making them “free” doesn’t increase the take-up rate. The way the system is designed, it’s much easier for me to leave the office with iphone in hand and continue to work than someone who works on an hourly basis or doesn’t have a car. it’s one of the reasons I like the clinic model. we’re a 24-7 nation, and preventive care is on 1950s time. making it free or low cost doesn’t necessarily make it accessible.
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yello:
But letting people die or go broke because they either can’t afford comprehensive health care or have made poor life choices or are just plain unlucky is a very callous philosophy.
Callous or not, it is a philosophy that pretty much every one adheres to. The only difference is which and how many people they are willing to let die or go broke.
Out of necessity we all (as individuals) prioritize other people when it comes to using our own resources to help them. Some people we are more willing to help than others, if only because our resources are, again of necessity, limited. It is not a question of whether to “let people die or go broke”, but which people we will let die or go broke. My parents? My neighbors? Someone in the town next to me? Someone in California? Someone in India?
We all must prioritize. To the greatest extent possible, I prefer not to impose my own priorities on others. I realize others of you do not share that preference.
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Mark:
Once you permit a VA system into your world view, as George and I do, it becomes more difficult to draw lines based strictly on a principle of no enforced risk spreading.
I would add that we as a society have also chosen to enact EMTALA, requiring hospitals to provide emergency care to everyone regardless of ability to pay, etc.
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