On Monday, I was in Newport Beach to speak at the annual client conference of PIMCO, the world's largest bond investment company -- whose CEO Mohamed El-Erian is a frequent and very popular HuffPost blogger. More than 300 of PIMCO's clients gathered for a three-day retreat around the timely theme of "Delivering in a Delevering World."
"Delevering," as it's traditionally used, means decreasing a company or country's leverage, usually by paying down existing debt. It is a term more likely to be heard at finance conferences than around dinner tables, but it's an idea that gets to the heart of our current economic crisis. Because the ways we pay down our debts, in life and in business, have a real influence on our ability to arrive at what El-Erian recently labeled "win, win, win" outcomes: "a win for the individual; a win for the unit, be it the family or a company; and a win for society." We desperately need some win, win, wins.
Unfortunately, on both the political and economic level, we're being told that delevering means that we must cut, cut, cut. And we're about to go into another budget battle in which the word "deficit" is likely to be heard a lot more than the word "growth."
But smart delevering isn't just about cutting. Delevering is a means -- but to many in Washington (and on the campaign trail) these days, it's become an end unto itself. And the relentless emphasis on cutting has obscured the more important question of what is being cut. In far too many cases, our approach to delevering is keeping us from growing, and keeping us from developing our human capital and tapping into all our resources.
And it's no comfort to know that the U.S. isn't alone in its misguided approach to delevering. In Europe, imprudent delevering has a host of countries facing, as PIMCO managing director Saumil H. Parikh puts it, the "twin underlying problems of too little growth and too much debt." Europe's response to recession was austerity, and, as they're finding out, you can't cut your way to growth. As Businessweek's Peter Coy writes, "Europe is choking off its own recovery by insisting on premature austerity," as opposed to the idea of "Gas now, brakes later."
Now they're teetering on the brink of another recession and have taken one of the main recovery weapons out of their arsenal. But according to Herman Van Rompuy, European Union President, the EU must rigidly keep to its self-destructive austerity limits for the sake of "the credibility of the whole operation." So I guess sending a dozen or so countries into another recession, and causing misery for tens of millions of people, doesn't hurt "credibility" as much as simply admitting your mistake and course-correcting. In Europe, excessive delevering is in danger of delivering them from their future.
So it's clear that in America, as around the world, what we need is delevering that delivers a more prosperous economy, a more compassionate society, and a fuller use of our human resources. One of the tragic stories of our time has been the inability of our leaders and institutions to deliver these things, a failure that, as El-Erian wrote on HuffPost in February, has undermined America's ability to "regain economic dynamism, create ample jobs, and deal with growing inequalities."
But we also need delivering from the obsolete dogmas of the past, from the dysfunctional political and economic systems of the present, and from all the distractions that take us further from our own creativity, ingenuity and wisdom.
In his office, PIMCO founder Bill Gross has a quotation from the financier J.P. Morgan: "Lending is not based primarily upon money or property. No sir. The first thing is character." But our capitalist system has strayed dangerously far from the path charted by Alfred Marshall, who in 1890 explained that the "desire of men for approval of their own conscience and for the esteem of others is an economic force of the first order of importance." There's a reason Adam Smith's free-market gospel, The Wealth of Nations, was preceded by his Theory of Moral Sentiments. He understood that economic prosperity has to be built on a firm moral foundation.
But the evidence of capitalism without conscience is all around us. I suspect that if JP Morgan were to claim today that "character" was at the heart of our country's finance system, he would be laughed out of the room.
Earlier this month, Parikh wrote, "Is the global economy in the eye of the hurricane or has the hurricane passed over completely?" For millions of people around the world the forecast is still dark and stormy. Here in America, more than 4 million homes have been foreclosed on since 2006, five million people have been out of work 6 months or longer, and the average student loan debt is $25,250.
But instead of proposing solutions that would deliver us from these multiple crises, our leaders are throwing up their hands and asking us to accept this as the new normal -- or what Bill Gross has termed "the paranormal." Such a response would have been completely unacceptable during an actual hurricane like Irene, which prompted such admirable responses from ordinary citizens, the media, and government. So why are we accepting it when, as El-Erian put it, there is still the "clear and present danger of America losing the war against the curse of joblessness"? And when Joseph Stiglitz's footnote to the drop in unemployment to 8.3 percent is that, at this rate, it will take 13 years to regain full employment?
We clearly need to be delivered from a shrunken presidential campaign that is missing the opportunity to bring the country together around real solutions. As David McCullough once told me, "Every presidential election is a renewal. Like spring, it brings up all the juices. The people are so tired of contrivance and fabrication and hokum. They really want to be stirred in their spirit." Anybody's spirit felt stirred over the last 6 months of this presidential race?
Fortunately, there are plenty of people using incredible innovation, creativity and empathy on a local level to help us overcome our problems -- from Code for America to DonorsChoose to SeeClickFix.
Delevering and delivering. Delevering can be used to help us establish the right priorities. In my own life, my mother was certainly an expert at wise delevering -- and leveraging. She skimped and saved to put my sister and me through college. She wore the same coat for 10 years. She never took vacations. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment. And when that wasn't enough, she borrowed money, too -- to pay for our education. And it was a wise investment -- because it helped deliver her children's dreams. She never let our lack of resources crush our aspirations and our hopes for the future.
Whether it's at the individual, the community, or the national level, delevering can lead to contraction or it can lead to a focus on what really matters. It all depends on what we intend to deliver.
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Merely ending corporate subsidies should save govt money and make us truly compliant with WTO (which ruled against our subsidies to Boeing) and other international trade organizatiÂons (whom we love to hate).
With ending subsidies in agriculture, we raise revenue and decrease expenditurÂe by eliminatinÂÂg 18 Billion dollar/ year ag-subsidiÂes. This would also include eliminating price supports where tax-payers spend twice once in taxes and the other as higher prices at the grocery. Such an approach should only be the begining.
How about the milions paid as sugar subsidies to a handful of GOP supporters in Florida. Price supports not only supports a high price for the particular commodity and distorts the economy preventing production or use of alternativÂes.
This would be a good place to point out that just five crops- corn, cotton, rice, wheat and soybeans, account for 90 percent of all farm subsidies. About 60% of farmers do not receive any direct payments from the federal farm subsidy system, and that group includes most livestock producers and fruit and vegetable growers.
Among the members of the 112th Congress who collect payments from USDA are six Democrats and 17 RepublicanÂs. The disparity between the parties is even greater in terms of dollar amounts: $489,856 went to Democrats, but more than 10 times as much, $5,334,565Â, to RepublicanÂs.
This need for Great Britain and France to import US made military weapons and products caused England and France (before France surrendered to and joined Germany against the Allies) to export their Gold and other financial instruments to the USA in return for Military Weapons and other supplies.
Many of our US located and privately owned Airplane, Tank, artillery, and Army Ammunition Manufacturing Plants were operating and producing large quantities of military goods for export to England using US laborers in exchange for gold from England to pay the worker’s salaries in the privately owned US located plants by the time that the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor.
No other nation would loan the USA any money for any government activities.
American Century wins $373M judgment from JPMorgan unit
American Century Investments quietly won a $373 million judgment last year against a subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase & Co., according to court records reviewed by the Kansas City Business Journal.
An arbitration panel ruled in August that JPMorgan, which held a minority stake in American Century, broke a revenue agreement with the Kansas City-based asset management firm in an attempt to weigh down its value, making it a cheaper acquisition target.
A Jackson County judge upheld the award in December over JPMorgan’s objections. JPMorgan paid a lump sum of $384 million, including interest, later that month, said Randy Hendricks of Rouse Hendricks German May PC, which represented American Century.
“It represents an important event for a Kansas City company to prevail in what resulted in the largest verdict in the state of Missouri, against a Wall Street powerhouse,” Hendricks said.
Judge Jim Kanatzar unsealed key documents in the matter March 21 after the Business Journal had requested and received part of the case file from a court clerk. Time Inc. also had filed a motion to unseal the case.
American Century filed a lawsuit under seal in Jackson County Circuit Court in Kansas City in April 2009, alleging that JPMorgan had violated a 2003 agreement to market certain American Century investment funds.
All cuts I have enjoyed ,it's ok with me, if you all join in the fun.
It's like a death of a thousand cuts..
Most of those government jobs actually kill real jobs, thank you EPA.
SEIU Public Service Unions representing various Government Employee's have an unfair advantage when they are negotiating wage and benefit contracts with the same elected politicians that the same unions helped to elect with campaign contributions from union member’s dues!
The Government Employee's Unions negotiate with the same elected politicians that they financially contributed money (union dues) to in the elections for the union member's requests to take more money from the taxpayers and then give that tax money to the Government Employees!
If the elected politicians do not give the Government Employees as much tax money as their unions ask for, then the Government Employee's Unions will donate union money to other politicians in the next elections who will be more sympathetic to the union compensation demands.
The politician is not forfeiting any of the politician’s money to pay for increased pay and benefits, the politician is giving away the taxpayer's money to help him collect political contributions for his personal political re-election expenses fron the Government Employee's Unions.
Private Sector union and non-union employees negotiate with business owners to get more of the business owner's money into the employee’s pockets, and this is OK by me?
How many of the Government Elite Bureaucrats can the WEALTH CREATING taxpayers afford to support, before the resulting higher taxes drive the businesses and the non-government jobs away to another state or some foreign country?
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The GOP hasn't picked their candidate yet?
What is she talking about?
Last week she ran articles about how Obama was selling liberals out by offering too many budget cuts to the GOP.
A week before that she said that Obama is running against a fantasy version of Obama, the ultra-liberal Obama candidate from 2008.
And now?
She doesn't even mention increasing revenues through tax increases on the top 1% as one of the components the "delevering" she now says she wants.
Something is wrong with this picture.
Jobs, taxes all that kinda stuff.
Its pretty hard to tax yourself into a balanced budget when youre 1.3trillion over budget.
Billions and milllions arent actually the same as trillions.
It is combination of both, obviously.
You seem to be missing that.
You also missed my reference to raising taxes on just the top 1% to what they were under Clinton......
Sounds like HP to me.
The word is getting out about HP.
SEE ALSO:Department of Energy