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ChrisCook:

I think that there's a one-time alternative to default, and that's a swap of secured debt into a new breed of equity via "unitisation".

If this occurs, and the Commons gradually passes into the hands of custodians, then there will be no more bubbles and cycles.

As long as the "units" are liquid there will be bubbles. And if they are not liquid it will be very difficult to find investors to sell them to.

Here's Keynes on liquidity (with my emphasis)

Thus the professional investor is forced to concern himself with the anticipation of impending changes, in the news or in the atmosphere, of the kind  by which experience shows that the mass psychology of the market is most influenced. This is the inevitable result of investment markets organised with a view to so-called 'liquidity'. Of the maxims of orthodox finance none, surely, is more anti-social than the fetish of liquidity, the doctrine that it is a positive virtue on the part of an investment institutions to concentrate their resources upon the holding of 'liquid' securities. It forgets that there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the community as a whole. The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance whichh envelop the future. The actual, private object of the most skilled investment of to-day is 'to beat the gun'. as the Americans so well express it, to outwit the crowd, and to pass the bad, or depreciating, half-crown to the other fellow.
He then proposes a Tobin tax, or high barriers to entry to capital markets
These tendencies are a scarcely avoidable outcome of our having successfully organised 'liquid' investment markets. It is usually agreed that casinos should, in the public interest, be inaccessible and expensive. And perhaps the same is true of stock exchanges. That the sins of the London Stock Exchange are less than those of Wall Street may be due, not so much to differences in national character, as to the fact that to the average Englishman Throgmonton Street is, compared with Wall Street to the average American, inaccessible and very expensive. The jobber's 'turn', the high brokerage charges and the  heavy transfer tax payable to the Exchaquer, which attend dealings on the London Stock Exchange, sufficiently diminish the liquidity of the market (although the practice of fortnightly accounts operates the other way) to rule out a large proportion of the transactions characteristic of Wall Street.[4]   The introduction  of a substantial overnment transfer tax on all transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available, with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation over enterprise in the United States.
However, there is a dilemma: liquidity leads to speculation but you cannot have investment without liquidity.
The spectacle of modern investment markets has sometimes moved me towards the conclusion that to make the purchase of an investment permanent and indissoluble, like marriage, except by reason of death or other grave cause, might be a useful remedy for our contemporary evils. For this would force the investor to direct his mind to the long-term prospects and to those only. But a little consideration of this expedient brings us up against a dilemma, and shows us how the liquidity of investment markets often facilitates, though it sometimes impedes, the course of new investment. For the fact that each individual investor flatters himself that his commitment is 'liquid' (though this cannot be true of all investors collectively) callms his nerves  and makes him much more willing to run a risk. If individual purchases of investments were rendered illiquid, this might seriously impede new investment, so long as alternative ways in which to hold his savings are availale to the individual. This is the dilemma. So long as it is open to the individual to employ his wealth in hoarding or lending money, the alternative of purchasing actual capital assets cannot be rendered sufficiently attractive (especially to the man who does not manage the capital assets and know very little about them), except by organising markets wherein these assets can be easily realised for money.
Unitisation cannot solve the dilemma. It can do away with default risk and default/recovery costs, but it cannot do away with the liquidity/speculation dilemma.

The facts that

there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the community as a whole
and
each individual investor flatters himself that his commitment is 'liquid' (though this cannot be true of all investors collectively
is behind my diary How much is $172 trillion worth? from March 24th, 2008.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 22nd, 2009 at 04:22:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Migeru:
Unitisation cannot solve the dilemma. It can do away with default risk and default/recovery costs, but it cannot do away with the liquidity/speculation dilemma.

The beauty of the pooling concept of undated income is that it gets rid of the fragmentation inherent in dated income eg 5 year, 10 year, 20 year and so on.

Additional income bearing property assets can simply be chucked seamlessly into the pool, provided of course that the owner is happy with the number of Units he gets in return, which is a function of the market price. All existing Unit holders simply have a smaller piece of a bigger pie.

Similarly energy units are part of one single - timeless, because undated - pool instead of a sequence of dated futures contracts with all of the costs of roll-overs etc/

They are an undated, ungeared futures contract, essentially. If you want gearing, by all means borrow to buy the Unit, or use options.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Wed Apr 22nd, 2009 at 05:26:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]
But futures are notoriously bubble-prone, even moreso than corporate equity... A whole generation of Swedish investors lost their shirts in the futures and options market in the late '80s.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Apr 22nd, 2009 at 05:32:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]
It enables a producer to sell forward, and a consumer to buy forward, but the consumer/investor has to hand over value now, unlike a futures contract where he only has to pay a deposit or "margin".

So there's no gearing or leverage, which is what causes the problems.

This is actually quasi-Equity. There can be no bubble unless you borrow to buy Units.

You could also think of it as akin to a redeemable Unit in a Real Estate Investment Trust: because it is essentially that, as well.

It takes a bit of getting your head around, but there is nothing out there quite like it.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Wed Apr 22nd, 2009 at 04:49:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]
ChrisCook:
This is actually quasi-Equity. There can be no bubble unless you borrow to buy Units.
As we know, bubbles in equity instruments take place all the time, because people do borrow to buy equity.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 22nd, 2009 at 04:52:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Moreover, you do not need leverage to make a bubble in equity in the first place. True, they usually doesn't get as spectacularly big, or unwind in quite as imaginatively disastrous fashion, but bubbles and other kinds of pyramid schemes do happen without leverage with some regularity.

And even if your system is proof against Doom By Leveraged Bubble, I'm confident that the exceedingly bright people at Wall Street will find some new and creative way to drive the economy into a ditch. Because gambling is inherently a net loss for the gamblers (due to transaction costs), unless you get the government to pony up a bailout now and again. Which you can only (or at least most reliably) do by driving the economy into a ditch (or at least posing the credible threat of doing it).

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Apr 22nd, 2009 at 09:53:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The Internet will interpret Wall Street as Damage and route around it.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Wed Apr 22nd, 2009 at 10:18:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]
So you see a return to credit creation as before? I don't. Credit intermediaries are obsolete.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Wed Apr 22nd, 2009 at 10:17:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The problem right now is not the lact of willing lenders but the lack of creditworthy borrowers. When you're hungover you don't go to the pub for more.

ChrisCook:

Credit intermediaries are obsolete.
I understand where you're coming from, but I'm still not convinced that's a fact and you're stating it as one.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Apr 23rd, 2009 at 04:47:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]
So why are credit intermediaries necessary?

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Thu Apr 23rd, 2009 at 09:42:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Why do you equate "credit intermediaries" with "credit creation", above?

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Apr 23rd, 2009 at 09:46:38 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Credit intermediaries were mostly the conduit for the recent real estate bubble in the US, the source being Greenspan's FED and its low interest rate policies during the early part of the Iraq Adventure.  If they are not obsolete they certainly have been shown to be prone to facilitating repeated damage to the economy.

Minimizing the potential for that damage would seem to be a good thing, and the last 100 years has shown that we cannot rely on consistent application of common sense by bankers or regulators over long periods of time.  A system less vulnerable to such manipulation would be a good thing.

If the current system is not yet seen as being obsolete it is only for two reasons:

  1.  Critical mass of demonstrably superior alternative systems has not yet been achieved.

  2.  The beneficiaries of the current system remain able to maintain their evil charm over the "minds" of the MSM, the public and the political elite.  It also helps that they have the political elite at their point of maximum sensitivity.

The most vulnerable point of the evil charm may well turn out in the end to be the people.  But increasing adoption of financial structures such as advocated by Chris Cook will probably lead the way, by achieving critical mass while the banks remain mired in denial and the government remains locked in political paralysis.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Thu Apr 23rd, 2009 at 02:14:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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