Markets and Trading

Hillary Clinton’s Alinskyite Attacks on Pharma Companies

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“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” (Saul Alinsky)

Hillary is clever to go after individual companies. If she attacked the pharma industry as a whole, it could unite politically in response and perhaps gain political support from other industries that would reasonably see themselves as similarly vulnerable. But individual companies have no defenses against this kind of attack. By singling out one victim she discourages other industry players from doing anything in response, because any company or industry group that responds risks being targeted in the future.

She has done this kind of thing before. She will probably keep doing it because it’s politically effective. Her attack on Mylan destroyed a large amount of wealth, and probably not just for Mylan’s shareholders. Today Mylan’s CEO is groveling in the media. As with past political attacks by Hillary and others on vaccine manufacturers, yesterday’s attack on Mylan will discourage pharma companies from introducing valuable new products and will reduce the availability of current products. We will probably see more of this kind of extortionate behavior by the federal govt if she is elected, because that’s how the Clintons operate and because a Hillary administration would appoint more lefty judges and DOJ and regulatory officials who would go along with it.

Lest We Forget: “Reasons Why Dodd-Frank Was a Horrible Law”

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Jeff Carter:

One thing I have noticed over the years is when there is a crisis, it’s a really bad time to pass sweeping legislation. The momentum and justification for legislation comes from fear. “We don’t want that to happen again”, supporters say. For example, 9/11 happens and we get the Department of Homeland Security which is mostly a waste of money and allows the government to pry into all kinds of places it shouldn’t.
 
Dodd-Frank is a result of the financial crisis. There are so many bad actors in this crisis that it’s hard to list them all, but the root cause was the implicit backing government gave Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-along with legislation and regulation that encouraged bad behavior. Sure, the ratings agencies were paid by the big banks and slanted the playing field. The big banks knew exactly what they were doing with the mortgages. But, without the implicit backing of government, the game never gets played.

and

Here are some data points:
 

  • Before Dodd-Frank 75% of banks offered free checking

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  • After Dodd-Frank 25% of banks offered free checking

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  • Small business costs are up 15% to comply with new regulation

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  • 15% less credit card accounts, and a 200 basis points more in cost

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    Remember, many small businesses get started by using credit cards. You might think they are stupid. But why should you import your financial/moral compass on them. Maybe they see the annual percentage rate credit card companies charge as cheap compared to the opportunity that lies ahead of them.
     
    In the state of Missouri, there were 44 banks with less than $50M in assets. Prior to Dodd-Frank they were profitable. Post Dodd-Frank, 26/44 are losing money and will either go out of business or be consolidated. Your local community bank which is often the lifeblood of local capital is dead. How many other states are like Missouri? It’s no wonder small town rural America is having a tough go in the Obama epoch.
     
    Dodd-Frank tried to make central party clearing mandatory for all transactions in the OTC market. Professor Craig Pirrong has blogged brilliantly about this and other aspects of Dodd-Frank. It works for a few, but not for all. This makes it more expensive to hedge risks. Businesses pass along the cost to consumers. In many cases, clearinghouses have to become the actual counterparty to the hedge. This stops commerce and more importantly has created more too big to fail institutions. Those too big to fail clearinghouses are now backed by the full faith and credit of the American taxpayer, you.

    These are great points and Jeff’s post is worth reading in full.

    “Washington’s war against short-term stock traders”

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    From an excellent column by J.W. Verret:

    The government policy of promoting long-term profits is bad economics, and even worse, it is engineered to favor incumbent firms and stifle innovation. When the government gets to decide the proper term of your investments, it constitutes the same form of cronyism as when campaign donors are directly given sacks of cash by the government officials they donated to when they were candidates.
     
    A guiding principle in our economy is Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of “creative destruction.” Just as some forests need to burn in order to clear away brush and make way for more robust growth, economic innovation also requires that old and outdated companies be broken up for new replacements to take root. Recently, Americans have received an education in this principle by watching Uber’s challenge to the taxi cab incumbents.
     
    The American capitalist economic system is at its best when guided by the principle that no firm is too big or special to fail. While corporate executives may feel such a jungle atmosphere is harsh and unforgiving, don’t forget that customers who buy products and investors of capital are at the top of the food chain in this jungle. Wall Street banks and corporate executives are the prey! Protecting failing companies and subsidizing politically powerful incumbent firms, under the false guise of promoting long-term value, is simply un-American.

    A couple of other points:

    -Short-term trading adds market liquidity, which reduces bid/offer spreads. Because of short-term trading, long-term investors pay less to buy and receive more when they sell.

    -Liquidity buffers volatility. Wild market swings happen when liquidity dries up. Any trading restriction that reduces market liquidity will increase market volatility.

    This stuff is basic. It’s a shame that many people never learn it and are credulous about fairy tales involving evil speculators and high-speed traders in dark alleys. When someone in a position of authority tells you that a particular type of free exchange is bad, it’s usually safe to assume that he has a stake in some crony enterprise that benefits by restricting your choices.

    (Via Instapundit.)

    In Defense of Wall Street A**holes

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    Long time Democrat turned Republican Donald Trump, who as a business titan relied more than any of his opponents on “Wall Street” funding, decisively won the Republican primary. In sharp contrast, socialist Bernie Sanders decisively won the New Hampshire Democrat primary by attacking his opponent’s Wall Street ties. Trump supporters apparently believe that the way to deal with Wall Street a**holes is a bigger a**hole who will negotiate much better deals, whereas Sanders supporters believe that “Wall Street (a synonym for the entire US financial system) is a fraud” requiring major extractive surgery.

    Most people within the NY financial community including the numerous mid-town asset management firms agree that many Wall Street players were a**holes during the sub-prime lending debacle leading to the 2008 financial crisis, but surely the Sanders pitchfork brigade wouldn’t travel uptown. This may explain why among the thousands of books and articles written in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement, Wall Street hasn’t defended itself and has found few defenders willing to go public.

    Truth be told, Wall Street has always attracted more than its share of greedy a**holes. But historically they discriminated against the less profitable investments in favor of those that had the highest return potential relative to risk. This represented the brains of a heartless US capitalist system. Defenders of capitalism correctly argue that it is the only economic system at the base of all human economic progress, however unequally distributed. Progressive critics argue for greater equality, the poor made poorer so long as the better off are equally so (although this is not the way it is typically represented).

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    Why the Big Short didn’t work but the next one likely will!

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    In promoting the Hollywood version of The Big Short by Michael Lewis, Paul Krugman (NYT, December 18) misrepresents the central point of this excellent book, previously made by Peter Wallison, who Krugman attacks for his Republican dissent to the 2010 Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) majority Report.

    The Hollywood version reflects the Report’s fundamental conclusion that the root cause of the financial crisis was Wall Street greed: hardly newsworthy, disputable or dispositive. The Big Short is about the equally greedy speculators who were shorting the housing market: had they succeeded early on – as they do in less distorted markets – they would have prevented the bubble from inflating to systemic proportions.

    Contrary to the “indifference” theorem (i.e., between debt and equity finance) of Nobel Laureates Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller, both household borrowers and mortgage lenders chose to finance almost entirely with debt, a strategy best described as “going for broke.” The first distortion – tax deductibility of debt – makes leverage desirable until discouraged by rising debt costs. The second distortion – federally backed mortgage funding as Depression era deposit insurance became virtually universal and the Fannie Mae “secondary market” facility morphed into a national housing bank – prevented these costs from rising. This highly leveraged strategy was guaranteed to fail systemically if bad loans entered the system.

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