I came across the following two articles relating to the dynamics of consumer debt and savings well worth reading. I think you will find these saying some of the things I did (though with greater expertise). The first is from the Economist from 2005 and the second is an article on pages 8-9 of the February issue of Fidelity Magazine but written by someone at Standard & Poor’s

http://finance.wharton.upenn.edu/~bodnarg/courses/wemba/readings/worldsavings.pdf

http://myfidelity.members.fidelity.com/investorsWeekly/GetPdf.dyn;mfSessionId=XWF2MFRZU4AI2CQDFEPCFEY?pdf=CurrentFidelityMag

Both relate net-wealth, rather than savings, is the proper measure of how much debt we can afford. The first also says the effect of globalization in the context of traditional ideas still apply, but must be applied to a wider, transnational financial system to understand all that is going on. Thus, your Asians saving provide the cash base American creditors may be exploiting to offset the normal ‘internal’ effect that too much borrowing has on market stability.

If the American economy were isolated (as it used to be) with too many of us not balancing our borrowing against saving, our inflation rate would be too high and our economy less stable. In the first half of the 19th century the U.S. was much more isolated economically than now. Parts of the country were saving while others borrowed heavily. People in the industrial Northeast were thrifty but cash poor. The West was land and resource rich but needed a great deal of investment. A few Westerners were terrifically rich, but turnover among them was high. Only the South had a steady surplus of cash and liquefiable assets. Individual Southerners could be profligate, but the average Southerner was not, and much of his money was banked and served as a credit source to other parts of the country. Another way of saying this is that although Southerners, on average, could be more extravagant than elsewhere, they were not more extravagant generally and not more than their collective net worth allowed them to be; and had net reserves (savings) they lent out at interest. The Civil War radically changed this balance and by the early 20th century most of these regional differences disappeared. Today, it appears, we have something akin to America in the first half of the 19th century with global rather than sectionally interlinked economies.

Interestingly and, if we accept the logic of these two articles, it is precisely because Asians are so thrifty we Americans can afford to borrow so heavily. In effect, they are saying Asian cash is underwriting American cash fluidity and prosperity.

To clarify this, imagine the economy as a complex pipe system with water flowing through it. This system has multiple valves opening and closing as well as numerous pumps fluctuating. In a small system with a single pump and few branches, varying one of the branches upsets the others. With enough valves and pumps the system becomes inherently stable so long as the components act fully random. Provide feedbacks that trigger too many to stop and start together and you re-introduce the kind of instability common to the smaller, simpler system. Regardless of the degree of volatility, we want some kind of mechanism to damp the instabilities (i.e., flatten them out). In socialist countries this is done through damping both supply and demand to the point the whole thing is stagnant. In hydraulics, we use expansion tanks to absorb pulsations and reservoirs from which our pumps draw and receive fluid when out of circulation. Savings serve the same functions in an economic system. Individually we look at them as personal buffers and leverage, but from the system view, they are energy pools. The only question then becomes how much reservoir is needed and how much is too much. Individually, we want as much as we can get, but our economic system can be affected negatively from taking too much cash out of a system that needs it to energize the whole. This happens because, unlike our hydraulic system, cash acts as both fluid and pump; and it acts as pump because of the way people are influenced by the getting of it.

So the upshot is, from the macro-economic viewpoint it is far less important Americans (or any other subset of the global economy) are behaving inappropriately than it is that someone somewhere is behaving appropriately and there is enough savings to damp and feed the system.

Savings are important for weathering shocks, but it is not the main reason we save. We save to be able to afford the big ticket items for which steady earnings are inadequate. We save to show creditors we are responsible and get them to trust us with a mortgage or charge account. We save to put our kids through college so they can be even less hard-working than we are. We save so we are not living from paycheck to paycheck resulting in sometimes being cash short and forced to pay penalties. And, we save for the day we can tell the boss to “go take a hike”, and do as little or as much as we like (retire). Saving for hard times is merely reactive and does not really put our money to good use. It does not maximize our return or get the most mileage from money. Saving in its purest sense is stuffing it in a mattress where it does no one any good because it merely subtracts it from the amount available to do work. In reality, when we put money in a bank, it isn’t being saved at all. It is being lent out at interest to other people who can put it to some better use. It may be lent to a small business as seed money or to a family to buy a home. Either way, this multiplies the power of that money we think of as ‘saved’.

In application, bank savings are just a highly conservative form of personal investment in the market; no different from putting your money more directly into stocks, hedge funds, real estate, or start ups (and only a bit riskier). Other forms of savings include pension funds, insurance policies, and annuities; and, they too, have as a primary object to protect against the unforeseen or unavoidable. As this is the case, it is untrue to say Americans do not save as much as Asians. The real difference is only in the forms of savings each prefers. It may be more correct, therefore, to say Americans indulge in taking higher risks with our savings.

As you pointed out in your last riposte, our highly disciplined Asians have fared no better at dodging economic bullets, so being thrifty, disciplined, excellent, and on-guard has proved no better formula for avoiding the cycles all economies are subject to. Nor do they seem to make a whole lot of difference on the severity or length of the slump. Where they do help is in getting back on your feet faster once the market has bottomed, but not from have a stash of cash … from being better disciplined. As the philosophy behind saving is to guard against the demands of ‘hard-times, lets have a look at just what happens when economic doldrums hit. Usually, a slump is presaged by high inflation and currency debasement (as we are experiencing now). Production is curtailed in an attempt at cutting losses, jobs are cut at the fringes, people spend less, interests rates rise as lenders hedge against risk, and the economy slows further exacerbating inflation. At this point, people are forced to eat heavily into their savings not to improve their situation, but only to get through a bad situation. The more they have saved, the less panicked they feel and the less they act to counter the underlying cause of recession. In effect, having a hoard of money stashed inclines us to just ride it out longer before starting to fight back. Usually, though, inflation is so much greater than what we’ve saved and our savings pitifully inadequate (even among thrifty Asians). This is a lot like what happens to retired people who live too long in retirement. What we think will be adequate to see us through, rarely is. Gradually and as savings are eroded, people realize standing still is not enough. Rather than waiting for someone to give us a job, we begin hawking our talents and get creative about how we do it. This is the real key to turning every slump around; getting folks back to work, not focusing on rainy-day savings.

(cont.)

Second, I believe in America’s resilience. I have no quarrel with your citing the previous waves of Asian prosperity that turned to busts, and America’s bust that turned to prosperity. We will rebound — but right now we are clearly on a long downward trajectory. This frustrates me. What I find admirable about the Asians is their discipline, hard work, and attention to detail. If we could emulate just that, it will be entirely sufficient.

Agreed, and no I am not rationalizing in defense of America, nor am I economist enough to say which is the better model. However, I know enough to tell your exhortation to save money is given too much weight, and did not have to look far to find proof of it. There is a great deal I find to fault in our national economic policies; and paying down our national debt and debasing the dollar are high on my list also. Is there a similar problem in the private sector? Undoubtedly, but it is easier to slow a market than re-energize one made nervous; and we cannot go forward from where we’d prefer to be but from where we are. Right now, that’s from a high debt position and a weak dollar. Personal savings will not magically transform those or prevent them in future unless you play it so safe you’re not really even in the game. Some countries have been doing just that with the result they are suffering economically.

Remember that modern economic development has had its largest and longest expression in the West, and although Asia is now both experimenting in novelties and hedging conservatively, it is really not doing anything fundamentally new. Remember also, it was only twenty years ago Japan and its Asian partners seemed to be on the verge of owning America, defining new models for Western businesses to ape or die, and, frankly, leaving us in the dust. It turned out, however, the Asian models were based on ideas gleaned from ignored Westerner thinkers (Deming, et. al) that resulted in the Asian bubble and subsequent collapse just as the West began to follow suit (mid-1990’s). What was novel and dynamic in their model was mostly Western, what was conservative was mostly Asian. Asia went into the toilet and we quickly back-peddled. Since then, Asians have added to economic models and wisdom, but it is no longer a case of isolated paradigms with Asia going one way and the rest of us another. It may turn out Asia is doing it again, and will run into trouble again trying to move too far, too fast. Time will tell.

Note also that, besides the four Asian tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan), other Asian Countries have been following the same policies with mixed or even poor results (India, Japan, Philippines, Mandalay, China, &c), making it likely those four enjoy some further advantage not adequately defined by the Asian model alone. Similarly, there are non-Asian tigers (Ireland, Chile) to confound the idea these novelties are rooted in unique Asian characteristics. What works is fully exportable and will be imitated because it succeeds.

What we learned and have not forgotten is it does not pay to sit on your hands while the other guy gets the better of us. Yes, modern (as opposed to Western or Asian) economics is, indeed, “an old dog that ought to be taught new tricks”. But this applies both ways, with Asia in need of learning all it can from the West and the West adapting itself to the competition and the approach taken by the East, and, better still, defining the game to be played. Neither can afford to be complacent when it comes to the market. You do, and you fall behind. This applies as much to countries and regions as it does to companies and individuals.

As to tripe, it is a pitfall we all fall into and I did not mean it to impugn but, rather, to strengthen your hand. Call it a weak-argument or laziness or a tendency to ignore the challenge others make to all we assert. Tripe is often no more than putting ideas forward without seeing they can stand up to a strong assault. It creeps in even when we think we’re bulletproof. The object, then, of a great polemic is to be as tripe-free as possible. Test for tripe before you publish. It may sound great and you may agonize; but if you can’t defend it, it’s better to just leave it out.

Consistency is not always a virtue. I write from the perspective of a foreign-
born fox. This means both that consistency is always optional and
subservient to a multidirectional quest for shaping one’s reality, and that my
angle will be based on precepts at least partly acquired offshore.

As you state, the spend-it-all American model has been the more successful
one. But this is an old dog that ought to be taught new tricks, for much has
been happening in the world. The market’s opinion of the US debt addiction
is expressed in a dollar exchange rate of 1/3 of what it used to be relative to
the Swiss franc, 30% relative to the Japanese yen, $2 bucks for the pound
sterling, and the lowest rate ever against the euro: currency of a continent
that’s sliding into a black hole. Since 1971, the dollar has lost 70% of its
purchasing power.

China alone has close to $1 trillion in accumulated trade surpluses with the
US. It uses this and its other plentiful foreign reserves for new industrial
plants and improved infrastructure, though it could decide to use it for
armaments or for destroying the US dollar. Meanwhile the US government
owes $9 trillion to creditors due to excessive government spending. 80% of
that debt is held by foreigners. Against what the US govt. borrows from the
Asian savers, we don’t make nearly enough of what they might want to buy.
When the foreign debtors figure out that the US government is devaluing its
debt by an unrestrained printing of money, watch out…

In comparing the American and Asian models, you have left out important
facts. First, when you speak of the American model’s greater success, you
cannot leave out the salient particulars of America’s emerging from WW2
as the wealthiest and most industrially advanced country on earth, relative
to Japan’s beaten, smoking hulk, China’s 19th century reality, etc. Given
where the US and the Asian tigers started in 1945, it’s by no means certain
that the eagle has covered more distance than the tigers have, or that it will
continue in its primacy.

Second, your statement that “Asian prosperity has never quite made the leap
from an ingrained insecurity” is incorrect. The savings of Japan’s households
have allowed that country to go through a real estate crater and a 17-year
deflation without a devastating impact on the lifestyle and sense of security
of the great majority of the people. The same goes for Singapore and Taiwan,
though their tests have been lesser. China is too large and complex to deal
with here. Given where they have come from, I’d say they are running circles
around us. Still, given the size and number of their endemic problems, the
outcome is highly huncertain.

I agree with you that debt financing can be used as a dynamic and positive
lever. But that is when debt is deployed for funding innovation and
productivity. That’s what we were once good at. But now America’s debt is
deployed to finance gargantuan government spending, private consumption,
and M&A juggling and asset stripping by private equity money shufflers.
True growth does not come from this sort of indebtedness. We are now
turning the largest steel mill in Bethlehem into a casino. If you see this as a
good omen, let’s say that we disagree.

I am intrigued by your statement that “(D)emand for quality is a better
engine for prosperity because it creates more jobs, changes money through
more hands (in effect, creating more money than exists), and providing
things people prefer over things that just make do.” I am not sure I
understand your intent fully, but it looks like you hit one of my pet peeves
spot-on. I could not do all the harping in one piece; this one I’ll leave for
another.

In other matters, your critique is way out in the Land of Solipsis, for you are
slaying the chimeras of your own imagination, or knee-jerking in defense of
your own unexamined tenets and uncorroborated beliefs. You are reacting to
what I did not write, rather than to what I did write.

Your inference that I see other cultures as superior is widely off mark. I am
receptive to your comparisons with the evolution stages of other empires,
and with the model-specific viruses that infect tribal, feudal, communist and
theocratic cultures, but I can’t go into all these things in one readable essay.
What I can do in one essay is to identify a few viruses just in one sphere of
the American reality, and harp on those in a fervent wish that we won’t go the
way of Babylon or Rome.

I have a lot to say about the weaknesses and viruses of other countries and
cultures, including those into which I was born or acculturated, but not now.
I am of the opinion, however, that despite the plenty of equal or greater rot
elsewhere, we would do well to learn and try to adopt some useful precepts
from a few other cultures. After all, if Japan or China is able to give us a run
for the money, it’s because they adopted certain necessary ideas from us,
without sacrificing their identity. We should not be so conceited as to think
that there is nothing useful for us to learn from them.

You are likewise not reading what I actually wrote, if you infer that I have
been an opponent of the war in Iraq from the outset or for lefty reasons, or
that I criticize in hindsight. I supported the war unreservedly from the
beginning. I started turning against it on the day when I could not see any
American armor in the TV pictures, but could see mobs ransacking Iraqi
institutions of culture and learning, with our soldiers standing by under
orders not to intervene and Rummy shrugging it off with a comment that
s**t happens. I turned against it further on the days when our President
crowed triumphantly, “Mission accomplished,” and when we withdrew from
Falujah. I turned further each time we had a chance to take out that thug,
Sadr, and failed to do so.

Right war but wrong implementation; right reason and sufficiently
vindicated too, but abandoned for laughable Wilsonianism; right cause but
an ill-defined strategy; wrong tactics, timidity, naiveté; talking big and
wielding a small stick; supremely incompetent leadership. All that was
evident to me since 4 years ago, not now. Unfortunately, President Bush
does not take my calls.

BTW, the one general who had the guts to say publicly what was on his
mind relative to the proper way of conducting this war, Gen Eric Shinseki –
and he was correct with foresight, not hindsight – was publicly humiliated
by Rummy and unceremoniously pushed out of the military. Not a way
to go…

You are mistaken in inferring that in criticizing Bush I advocate Gore or any
other Dem. I do think that if our field of Presidential candidates is limited to
a pool in which W has been the best choice, we no longer produce great men
who go into politics, and are in trouble.

Finally, I am grateful for the opportunity you have provided relative to
shaping my tripe to the hints of a superior craftsman and sparring
against a real adversary.
Takuan S.

As to Bush and the war in Iraq, now it is you who forgets how we got here, how many and who of us agreed with the need to go, and applying 20-20 hindsight to what was never simple or obvious. If Iraq can be said to be the wrong place to fight terrorism, where is the right place? Iraq was and remains as much a part of the network against us as it was on 9/11/2001. Had we attacked Iran instead of Iraq, I have no doubt those now nitpicking Iraq would instead be nitpicking Iran, or Syria, or North Korea, or you pick a spot. Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan are part of it too, but we cannot fight all at once (actually we could, but we’d inflict an awful lot of collateral death doing it that way) and some have changed behavior (positively) simply because we reacted this time with more than words. We have taken some of the worst actors out of the fight, and the rest have been forced to fight with one hand tied and watching their collective back. We now have bases and troops in a strategic location where we can reach out and cast a long shadow over still rogue actors. If Iraq was not the optimal choice to do this, it was still an unfinished business in need of finishing and with a standing license that did not need approval from a spineless and motionless Congress. If they still have WMD’s, they are severely limited in their ability to use them to any effect. Those are not inconsequential victories. Yes, they are still able to inflict some damage, but not as much and that is always a risk in any fight. Fighting terrorism is a quagmire wherever you fight it, yet not fighting it only exposes us to worse. Bush admits to making some mistakes, but there has never been a war or a commander that did not make some (including Sun Tzu). I have no doubt that had a Gore or Clinton been in office, we would still be dithering over what, if any, action to take; at most tomahawking some unsuspecting shoe factory in the belief we were taking out Al Qaeda and leaving it to lawyers to bring terrorists to justice. Overall, he has done a commendable job of taking it back to the enemy and protecting us from escalating attacks. It’s too bad that more who are gifted with greater insight cannot see this and give at least some credit where it is due. I have my gripes with Bush, but it is hard to see who else would have had the guts to do so much.

I do enjoy your writing and find much to commend in it. You have a nice philosophical touch we don’t get much of and you don’t fawn or mince words. However, you do need to challenge your own assumptions a little more to give them greater solidity. I do this by pretending I am my own worst adversary who is mercilessly punching holes in any tripe I’ve written. This gives me a chance to pull the tripe and plug the holes before I put it out there where real adversaries can rip it.

Deep stuff, but not salient in all particulars.

For example, where you harp on the Western habit of spending as against those cultures that are still thrifty while concurrently extolling our free-market, you are inconsistent. Which model has been the more economically successful: the spend-it-liberally American or the save-one-third-of-all-you-make Asian? Both are at the forefront of economic expansion, yet Asian prosperity has never quite made the leap from an ingrained insecurity. Apparently, a nation or household CAN borrow and spend its way to prosperity; and is a model to study if not necessarily to ape in all particulars. I do think Americans need to save more, but even that can be taken to excess if it causes the economy to slump. The object of saving money is to overcome a later or present scarcity, yet locking up too much of it can cause the very scarcity it is meant to avoid and the money becomes worthless when there is nothing to buy. Therefore, a more complex model (and, by your argument, agility in complexity is laudable) is called for, one that dynamically balances saving and spending in proportion to the direction the market is taking. In this model, neither spending nor saving is dominant or constant; they are simply tools utilized to optimize a return.

My parents were the product of the Great Depression who never quite escaped the logic of that time. They became packrats who held onto tons of still usable stuff nobody really wanted. My dad had his own business and salvaged every bit of restorable equipment he could. He had seen others get rich turning junk into gold, and was convinced it could be done again. For thirty years, he preached thrift and how we’d make it rich when the next depression came along simply because we were sitting on this pile of stuff that would leap in value the moment the factories went bust. It never happened; and the result was my dad’s business never quite made it past the level of eking out a living. Success was always something just around the corner or the next slump in the market. We experienced several recessions, yet no one clamored for our junk. They just held off buying the good stuff awhile.

Instead of selling to people with money what they wanted, we were always selling to people who couldn’t pay much for junk they could barely afford. Yes, we were filling a need, had pleasure helping people, and took pride in doing things most people had forsaken; but it was always no more than a niche without any real potential. Had savings been a greater priority, I have no doubt we’d have done better with this business model as people would have flocked to our bargains over new stuff. Yet, a demand for quality is a better engine for prosperity because it creates more jobs, changes money through more hands (in effect, creating more money than exists), and providing things people prefer over things that just make do. I tried getting my dad to see his thrift-based model was holding us back, but he never could see it. I suspect success wasn’t really what drove him anyway. He did not lack energy or enterprise; he just had this blind spot that was an adherence to an outmoded model.

The other thing I find inconsistent is bewailing our ‘hedgehog-like’ inability to cope with reality and complexity. This is not just a post-modern condition, but has been with us through many times and many cultures. The Romans had it throughout their empire period and the last days of their republic, yet managed to survive as a culture for hundreds of years. The same can be said of Chinese, Japanese, Egyptian, Persian, Incan, and Muslim cultures at their height. It may simply reflect a greater opportunity or luxury for mental laziness than is tenable when conditions are harsh. Yet even tribal, feudal, communist and theocratic cultures are known to be as myopic if not more; implying our defect may only be the more obvious in light of greater visibility or as they come into conflict with change (much as crime and war seem more rampant given we can watch them in real-time on the evening news). You generalize us by cherry-picked subgroups (even to particular persons) despite sharing blog-space with many of the same or similar mind, opinion, and discernment as unlike to those exemplars of what ails us as we are to those cultures you cite as superior. Clearly, not all of our society suffers from this particular mental malaise, nor even most; else there would be few making these points and still fewer agreeing. As there is no lack of people decrying this particular warning, I have no fear we are on the verge of a society-wide mental meltdown – just the usual morons in the mix.

(continued …)