Our next contribution comes from Americans for Tax Reform. They’ve issued a press release announcing that America’s leading crony capitalist will voluntarily subject himself to the higher taxes he advocates for other Americans.
As you can see from this video, don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
Then we have some mockery of Chris Matthews from the Media Research Center. There are a bunch of absurd, yet mostly believable, quotes.
Hey, maybe the President can give every teenager an unlimited credit card and tell them that more spending is good for the economy according to Keynesian economics. Though I’m not sure whether who that joke will hurt the most, the kids, the parents, the economy, or the nation?
Feel free to add any good April Fool’s Day humor in the comments section.
Folks, the pendulum is swinging in the right direction.
In recent weeks, I’ve shared a bunch of examples to support my hypothesis that libertarians, small-government conservatives, and classical liberals are finally making some progress.
Well, here’s another feel-good story. A powerful Committee Chairman in the House of Representatives realizes that being pro-market is not the same as being pro-business. Hallelujah!
During Jeb Hensarling’s first congressional bid, a man at a campaign stop in Athens, Texas, asked the Republican if he was “pro-business.” “No,” the candidate replied, drawing curious stares from local business leaders who had gathered to hear him speak, a former Hensarling aide recalled. “I’m not pro-business. I’m pro-free enterprise.” Now, more than a decade later, that distinction has Wall Street on edge. The new chairman of the House financial services committee wants to limit taxpayers’ exposure to banking, insurance and mortgage lending by unwinding government control of institutions and programs the private sector depends on, from mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to flood insurance. Banks and other large financial institutions are particularly concerned because Mr. Hensarling plans to push legislation that could require them to hold significantly more capital and establish new barriers between their federally insured deposits and other activities, including trading and investment banking. …In interviews, a half-dozen industry representatives expressed some level of anxiety about Mr. Hensarling’s legislative agenda.
So, the cronyists are “on edge” and feeling “anxiety.” Gee, just breaks my heart.
And it’s not just Rep. Hensarling that is singing from the right song sheet.
Earlier this month, all 45 Senate Republicans voted for a symbolic measure aimed at banks with more than $500 billion in assets. The amendment, offered by Sens. David Vitter (R., La.) and Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio), sought to eliminate any subsidies or other advantages enjoyed by the biggest financial institutions because investors expect the government to prevent them from collapsing. …Most congressional Republicans believe the changes enacted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis—principally in the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill—enshrined the notion that the biggest institutions are “too big to fail” because they guaranteed the government would step in to prevent the most sprawling firms from going under.
To be sure, many of these same politicians voted for TARP, so I’m not under any illusions that they’ve become committed supporters of genuine capitalism.
Here are some more details from the article about Hensarling’s commitment to economic liberty.
Mr. Hensarling has been a vocal critic of taxpayer backstops for the private sector. He voted against the Wall Street rescue package in the fall of 2008 and supported measures to ease the importation of prescription drugs. He even picked a fight with one of the largest employers in his backyard—American Airlines—by supporting initiatives to allow more long-distance flights out of Dallas’s Love Field, the home base for rival Southwest Airlines. Now, his other potential targets include: the Export-Import Bank of the U.S., which makes loans to American companies that do business overseas, and the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, a temporary backstop created in the aftermath of 9/11 to insure construction projects. The latter measure expires at the end of 2014, unless Mr. Hensarling’s committee acts to extend it. “In every jurisdictional area that I can get my fingers on, I want to move us away from the Washington insider economy,” he said. Mr. Hensarling sharpened his free-market views when he studied economics under former Sen. Phil Gramm at Texas A&M University.
So what does all this mean? Perhaps not much in the short run, particularly with Obama in the White House and Tim Johnson of South Dakota chairing the Senate Banking Committee.
In the long run, though, this is a positive sign. Our prosperity and liberty depend on small government and free markets, so we need at least a few lawmakers who understand that there shouldn’t be any special favors for big interest groups.
The rest of us suffered and he got richer, but the left seems to be okay with that perverse form of redistribution because he supports class-warfare tax hikes. Sort of like buying an indulgence in the Middle Ages.
Hey, nice work if you can get it.
But Buffett may be an amateur compared to the crony capitalists at Citigroup.
The just-confirmed Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was given a huge bonus for leaving Citigroup several years ago. Did the company give Lew a bonus because they were happy to shed his $1.1 million salary after he presided over gigantic losses at the firm’s alternative investments division?
Don’t be silly. He was showered with money specifically for leaving the company to take a “high level position with the United States government”
Since we’re talking apples and oranges, I have no idea how to compare the value of the payments to Lew and Rubin with the value of all the handouts and subsidies that Citigroup got (and is still getting) from taxpayers.
But I do know that mere mortals like you and me don’t have a prayer of “earning” the incredibly high returns that Citigroup received by “investing” in Robert Rubin and Jack Lew.
And you can even be absolved of your sins by supporting higher taxes! What’s not to love. You get millions of dollars that you could never earn in a genuinely capitalist economy, and all you have to do is agree to give back an extra 5 percent or so if tax rates go up.
But if you’re someone like Tim Geithner, maybe you can avoid the extra burden by cheating on your taxes. Of course, you’ll be taking a risk of having your wrist slapped if you get caught. And that can really sting for 10 seconds.
Remember, rules and laws are for the peasants, not the cronyist 1 percent.
Nice work if you can get it.
And there are lots of opportunities for unjust enrichment, as explained in this video.
The moral of the story is…well, that you should be a libertarian if you want to be a decent person and not reward those who are indecent.
To bail out the housing sector, or to bail out Medicare? Fannie and Freddie, or GM and Chrysler?
All these examples involve huge amounts of money, and both private-sector and public-sector bailouts have perverse long-run effects, but which is worse?
And don’t forget there are lots of other bailouts in our future, as discussed on this interview for Fox Business News.
The interview took place before Christmas, but the topic is even more relevant today since the budget season is about to begin.
Most of the discussion was about government agencies and programs that may get more handouts, though bailouts for the Federal Housing Administration and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation would be indirect bailouts for big business and housing.
So we’d get the worst of all worlds, more government spending and more cronyism.
Or, as they call it in Washington, a win-win situation.
Here are some of the highlights of a remarkable Reuters expose about the fat cats of big government, starting with the huge gap between the insider elite and the poor.
In the town that launched the War on Poverty 48 years ago, the poor are getting poorer despite the government’s help. And the rich are getting richer because of it. The top 5 percent of households in Washington, D.C., made more than $500,000 on average last year, while the bottom 20 percent earned less than $9,500 – a ratio of 54 to 1. That gap is up from 39 to 1 two decades ago. It’s wider than in any of the 50 states and all but two major cities.
One small but important correction in the previous excerpt. As I have noted many times, the “poor are getting poorer” because of “the government’s help.”
The article then explains that a lot of the redistribution in Washington is from taxpayers to a pampered elite.
…in the years since President Lyndon Johnson took aim at poverty in his first State of the Union address, there has been an increasingly strong crosscurrent: The government is redistributing wealth up, too – especially in the nation’s capital. …Two decades of record federal spending and expanding regulation have fostered a growing upper class of federal contractors, lobbyists and lawyers in the District of Columbia area. …Direct spending by the federal government accounts for 40 percent of the area’s $425 billion-a-year economy. …Roughly 15 cents of every dollar from the entire federal procurement budget stays in or around the government’s hometown, said Stephen S. Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University. Last year, that was about $80 billion out of $536 billion in procurement spending, he said. The 15 percent share is far greater than the region’s 2 percent portion of the U.S. population. “We’re seeing an enormous transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the Washington economy,” said Fuller.
And all this spending leads to an elitist class of cronyists, politicians, contractors, bureaucrats, and lobbyists. No wonder the DC area is home to some of the richest counties in America.
But unlike other well-to-do areas, the wealth in DC is rarely accumulated by honest means.
Instead, it’s the result of perverse form of redistribution to big-government insiders. Check out these horrifying details.
Washington-area workers with incomes above $100,000 rose to 22 percent of the workforce, up from 14 percent in 1990, adjusted for inflation, a Reuters analysis of Census data found. …there are 320,000 federal jobs in the Washington area. Within the District of Columbia, 55 percent pay $100,000 or more. …Nearly 13,000 lobbyists registered with the government last year and reported $3.3 billion in fees, or about $260,000 per lobbyist. That’s 22 percent more lobbyists and 37 percent more inflation-adjusted revenue per lobbyist than in 1998… Times are flush for Washington lawyers as well. The number of attorneys in the area has risen 44 percent, twice the national rate, to 41,000 since 1999. Their average income, adjusted for inflation, rose 35 percent to $156,000.
I guess we know who’s having a merry Christmas.
All these rich bureaucrats, lobbyists, politicians, cronyists, and contractors certainly are living the good life, as revealed in a Washington Post story on the “Region’s Rising Wealth.” Here are some sordid excerpts.
…the D.C. region already has a reputation as one of the most affluent in the country. But the area is fast emerging as a home to the truly rich as well. High-end luxury retailers are responding. Brands such as Aston Martin are expanding their operations into the area — betting, for instance, that there will be plenty of customers who can afford the $280,000 sports car James Bond drives in the movies. …Already there are 500 Aston Martin owners in the area with the potential for more.
I’ve already shared an interview with Andrew Ferguson by Reason TV that should make all taxpayers upset. Why should ordinary taxpayers be coerced to subsidize Washington’s high-flying parasite economy?
Redistribution is a bad thing in most circumstances. But when you redistribute from poor to rich, that’s utterly perverse.
The region’s top one percent of households make more than a half million dollars yearly — far more than the national average for the one percent, according to a study of Census data by Sentier Research, an Annapolis-based data analysis firm. And these top earners — many of whom are from dual-income households and benefit from federal contracting — weathered the recession better than their counterparts in some other metropolitan areas and the nation. More are moving beyond comfortable affluence to a much higher standard of living. “What is unique to D.C. is that there has been a change in the complexion of wealth here. There didn’t used to be much of this ultra-high-net-worth business here and now there is,” said Susan Traver, the regional president of BNY Mellon Wealth Management.
But everyone in the rest of America at least can go to sleep tonight with a warm and fuzzy feeling of joy, knowing that our money has created such comfortable lives for the political elite.
Milton Pedraza, the CEO of the Luxury Institute, a research and consulting firm, said that purveyors of luxury goods are drawn to the area because it has…a stable economy bolstered by the federal government. Government contracting, where some local entrepreneurs and business owners amassed their fortunes, has been a key driver of the region’s economy for three decades. A third of the region’s gross regional product still comes from federal spending… “Let’s face it . . . the only place with money during the recession was Washington, D.C.,” Pedraza said.
Perhaps we should make a slight correction in the previous excerpt. After all, shouldn’t it read “America suffered a recession because the only place with money was Washington, DC.”
But I now realize my mini-documentary only scratches the surface. Yes, there are too many paper-pushers on the government payroll, and of course they get far too much compensation.
Given this track record, I don’t think anybody could accuse me of being an anti-big-business activist.
But I do get very irritated when politically connected corporations use cronyism to guard their interests at the expense of other taxpayers and the overall economy.
That’s why, in this interview with Larry Kudlow on CNBC, I spend most of the time advocating for pro-growth policies, but near the end I slam corporate CEOs from the Business Roundtable for endorsing higher tax rates for small businesses.
For those who don’t follow the intricacies of business taxation, most small companies – such as sole proprietorships, partnerships, and S-corps – are taxed through the personal income tax.
So it’s a bit outrageous when corporate CEOs endorse higher personal income tax rates, knowing that their smaller competitors will get reamed.
I don’t think they’re doing it just for that purpose. As I say in the interview, it’s more a case of feeding somebody else to the sharks out of a narrow, short-term sense of self preservation.
But this also explains why I am such a strong believer in the no-tax-hike pledge. Once “revenue enhancement” is part of the discussion, taxpayers lose their sense of unity and begin to throw each other overboard.
And this isn’t just something that happens among Washington insiders. I’ve previously explained that ordinary Americans get very tempted to support class-warfare tax hikes once they realize someone is going to be raped and pillaged by Washington.
This is why, to discourage talk of tax hikes (especially by crony capitalists), I am willing to make a special exception and support an excise tax on CEO salaries. Anybody who endorses higher taxes should be first in line for the guillotine.
P.S. I apologize for the poor quality of the video. The guy at Cato who does these things is out for the holidays, and you see the suboptimal results when I dabble in technical things. And since I’m acknowledging my shortcomings, I should have said “obediently” instead of “appropriately” at the 3:44 mark.
Simply stated, bailouts reward past bad behavior and make future bad behavior more likely (what economists call moral hazard).
But some folks think government was right to put taxpayers on the hook for the sloppy decisions of private companies. Here’s the key passage in USA Today’s editorial on bailouts.
Put simply, the bailouts worked. True, in some cases the government did not do a very good job with the details, and taxpayers are out $142 billion in connection with the non-TARP takeovers of housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But it’s time for the economic purists and the Washington cynics to admit that government can occasionally do something positive, at least when faced with a terrifying crisis.
Well, I guess I’m one of those “economic purists” and “Washington cynics,” so I’m still holding firm to the position that the bailouts were a mistake. In my “opposing view” column, I argue that the auto bailout sets a very bad precedent.
Unfortunately, the bailout craze in the United States is a worrisome sign cronyism is taking root. In the GM/Chrysler bailout, Washington intervened in the bankruptcy process and arbitrarily tilted the playing field to help politically powerful creditors at the expense of others. …This precedent makes it more difficult to feel confident that the rule of law will be respected in the future when companies get in trouble. It also means investors will be less willing to put money into weak firms. That’s not good for workers, and not good for the economy.
If I had more space (the limit was about 350 words), I also would have dismissed the silly assertion that the auto bailout was a success. Yes, GM and Chrysler are still in business, but the worst business in the world can be kept alive with sufficiently large transfusions of taxpayer funds.
And here’s what I wrote about the financial sector bailouts.
The pro-bailout crowd argues that lawmakers had no choice. We had to recapitalize the financial system, they argued, to avoid another Great Depression. This is nonsense. The federal government could have used what’s known as “FDIC resolution” to take over insolvent institutions while protecting retail customers. Yes, taxpayer money still would have been involved, but shareholders, bondholders and top executives would have taken bigger losses. These relatively rich groups of people are precisely the ones who should burn their fingers when they touch hot stoves. Capitalism without bankruptcy, after all, is like religion without hell. And that’s what we got with TARP. Private profits and socialized losses are no way to operate a prosperous economy.
The part about “FDIC resolution” is critical. I’ve explained, both in a post criticizing Dick Cheney and in another post praising Paul Volcker, that policymakers didn’t face a choice of TARP vs nothing. They could have chosen the quick and simple option of giving the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation additional authority to put insolvent banks into something akin to receivership.
Indeed, I explained in an online debate for U.S. News & World Report that the FDIC did handle the bankruptcies of both IndyMac and WaMu. And they could have used the same process for every other poorly run financial institution.
But the politicians didn’t want that approach because their rich contributors would have lost money.
I have nothing against rich people, of course, but I want them to earn money honestly.
Now we have new data on how much “other people’s money” has been diverted. It’s a big number, and it seems to get bigger each time there’s a new estimate. Here’s part of a Reuters report.
The U.S. Treasury Department has said the auto industry bailout will cost taxpayers $3.4 billion more than previously thought. Treasury now estimates the 2009 bailout will eventually cost the government $25.1 billion, according to a report sent to Congress on Friday. That is up from the last quarterly estimate of $21.7 billion.
Sort of reminds me of the old joke about the lousy businessman who says he loses money on every sale, but he makes up for it with high volume.
Well, that incompetent businessman has a kindred spirit in the White House. Here’s some of what Politico reported.
President Obama, while villifying Mitt Romney for opposing the auto industry bailout, bragged about the success of his decision to provide government assistance… he said. “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry…”
Well, we can’t say we haven’t been warned. He wants to do the same thing in “every industry.” Well, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, there are 60 industries in America. At $25 billion each, that means $1.5 trillion.
Stimulus in action
By the way, Mickey Kaus explains that the government’s numbers are incomplete and that the actual damage is significantly higher. And this Reason TV video exposes some of the government’s chicanery.
P.S. If you’re in the mood for some satire, here’s a bailout form showing how you can become a deadbeat and mooch off the government.
Now I’ve come across another example. Over in France, the socialist government says it wants to impose pay caps on corporate executives. That seems like a very bad idea, but there’s a catch. The proposal applies to government-owned companies.
France’s new socialist government has launched a crackdown on excessive corporate pay by promising to slash the wages of chief executives at companies in which it owns a controlling stake, including EDF, the nuclear power group. …According to Jean-Marc Ayrault, prime minister, the measure would be imposed on chief executives at groups such as EDF’s Henri Proglio and Luc Oursel at Areva, the nuclear engineering group. Their pay would fall about 70 per cent and 50 per cent respectively… The government also wants to pressure other companies in which it owns a stake to follow its lead, even though it has no legal power to force such a change. France is unusual in that it still owns large stakes in many of its biggest global companies, ranging from GDF Suez, the gas utility; to Renault, the carmaker; and EADS, parent group of passenger jet maker Airbus. Mr Ayrault said he “believed in the patriotism” of company leaders and their willingness to share the country’s economic pain.
The analogy that pops into my mind is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Those government-created entities (before the crash) were used as piggy banks by members of the political elite, who would take a break from climbing the ladder in Washington and spend a couple of years raking in millions of dollars by overseeing subsidized mortgages.
So even though I’m completely opposed to salary controls on the private sector, I don’t view government-owned and government-subsidized companies as being part of the free market.
But I also worry a lot about slippery slopes, so here’s my thought process.
I fully support pay caps for government-owned entities, such as the Postal Service. Indeed, I assume those already exist.
And I like the idea of pay caps for government-subsidized entities, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I don’t know if there is a limit now, but if one exists, it’s way too generous if this story is any indication.
But I get nervous about subsidies being an excuse for government regulation of executive pay, even when I’m disgusted when big business gets in bed with big government. This is why I was so conflicted in this interview about pay caps for banks getting TARP bailouts.
Moreover, I’m instinctively opposed to pay caps on companies that have contracts with government, though obviously my views are affected by whether a contract deals with a legitimate function of government (buying a tank) or whether it’s a festering waste of money (paying a politically connected PR firm to boost the image of the IRS).
Last but not least, I get very scared that politicians inevitably will take a good idea and turn it into a bad idea. In other words, if we give them the power to do something reasonable, like regulate pay at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they’ll probably get intoxicated by power and decide they should be able to control compensation levels at genuinely private companies.
So what’s the right answer? If we’re allowed to fantasize, the obvious decision is to shrink government to its legitimate size so there aren’t any government-owned or government-subsidized companies.
But if we’re forced to deal with the world as it is today, then the choice is much more difficult. If we oppose pay caps, then political insiders can use cronyism to get undeserved payouts. But if we endorse pay caps, then we’re giving politicians power that almost surely will be abused.
Here’s another example, explicitly showing how big business and big government get in bed together to rape and pillage taxpayers. The sleazy details have been reported by Bloomberg.
Exxon Mobil Corp. and its partners in a $15 billion Papua New Guinea gas project last year paid the travel expenses for employees of the U.S. Export-Import Bank as it considered whether to help fund the venture. The four workers ran up $97,367 in bills traveling to London, Tokyo and the South Pacific, according to data compiled by the bank. They flew business class, viewed the project’s route by chartered aircraft and were entertained by costumed villagers. Eleven months later, the bank approved $3 billion in financing for the liquefied natural gas facility, the biggest transaction in the agency’s 75 years.
Republicans are telling voters that they’ve learned the hard lessons from the 2006 and 2008 elections and that they are back on the side of taxpayers. I’m not convinced, which is why I’ve outlined some key tests that will demonstrate whether the GOP genuinely supports limited government.
I have another item to add to this list, and it’s one that may actually go the right way.
It appears that there’s a chance to end a major source of corporate welfare known as the Export-Import Bank. As the irreplaceable Tim Carney notes, a handful of Republicans are standing up for free markets over corrupt cronyism.
Ex-Im reauthorization typically passes easily. But after the Wall Street bailouts, Fannie Mae’s bailout, Solyndra’s collapse, and the rise of the Tea Party, many conservatives in Washington have grown hostile to corporate welfare. The free-enterprise Club for Growth, which was central in 2010 in helping conservatives and hurting moderate Republicans, blasted Ex-Im as “nothing more than a corporate welfare slush fund for companies with the best lobbyists.”
You won’t be surprised to learn that the President wants to expand this honeypot of corporate welfare. Here’s some of what George Will wrote about Obama’s plan to divert more capital to subsidize the well-connected.
This looks like a promise to compound market distortions by further politicizing credit markets, while enunciating no limiting principle. Obama is directing the bank to offer United Airlines a subsidy to match any subsidy Canada offers to persuade United to choose the Montreal-made Bombardier as United chooses between it, Boeing and Airbus. So American taxpayers will subsidize United to subsidize Boeing, which is already being subsidized in ways injurious to Delta and others.
Other than self-interested companies with their snouts in the trough – and the politicians and lobbyists they finance, it is very difficult to find any legitimate argument for this cesspool of cronyism.
One of the few self-professed conservatives to support the program is Hugh Hewitt, though I’m befuddled how anybody who supports corporate welfare (and Mitt Romney) can call himself a conservative.
But let’s set that aside. Hewitt’s main argument is that exports are good and that the federal government should subsidize good things. If that argument sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve heard Barack Obama say that health insurance is good and that the federal government should subsidize good things.
If you think I’m being unfair, I invite you to read the column. You’ll be especially amused by this passage.
Hamilton argued for a trading empire, a robust union deploying its combined power and resources to advance the nation’s interests abroad to the benefit of its merchants and thus its people at home.
Sounds reasonable, but Hewitt fails to mention that Hamilton’s view of “a robust union” did not include subsidized exports. Heck, Hewitt notes earlier in his column didn’t exist until it was created during the New Deal – about 130 years after Hamilton’s death!
Besides, the Export-Import Bank doesn’t even have an impact on trade balances, as explained by my colleague Sallie James, so mercantilists are barking up the wrong tree.
The Ex-Im Bank at best recreates, and at worst misallocates, private financial behavior. And to what end? The U.S. General Accounting Office (now the Government Accounting Office) has pointed out that“export promotion programs cannot produce a substantial change in the U.S. trade balance.” A country’s trade balance is driven largely by underlying macroeconomic factors, such as the ratio of savings to investment. …rather than authorizing an increase in the Ex-Im Bank’s operating bud-get, or expanding its role in the U.S. economy,Congress should recognize that the alleged justifications for the Ex-Im Bank’s existence are hollow and abolish the agency completely.
Let’s also address the argument of Frank Gaffney, who normally is sensible about public policy. He makes the claim that the Export-Import bank is a profitable activity for the Treasury.
the Export-Import Bank is a money-making activity for the U.S. government. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, since 2005, Ex-Im loans, guarantees and insurance programs have returned $3.4 billion over and above its costs and loss reserves, with a default rate of less than 2%. That includes $400 million in 2011 alone.
Since defenders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made the same claims up until the eve of the financial crisis, this is not exactly a compelling claim. And deposit insurance premiums were a money-maker for the federal government prior to the Savings & Loan crisis about 20 years ago.
It’s possible, of course, that the Ex-Im Bank avoids losses in the future, but that’s not the key point. The real issue is whether the allocation of capital should be distorted by government subsidies. I imagine the government could “profit” by giving sweetheart loans to selected big companies, which would allow those firms to undercut their competitors. Such a scheme might generate some revenue, but it would still undermine prosperity and foment corruption.
Last but not least, don’t forget the moral component. This is a debate about whether ordinary Americans should directly and indirectly pay for a program that enriches some of the biggest companies and richest shareholders in America.
This galls me so much that I’m motivated to create another narcissistic poster (adding to Mitchell’s Law and Mitchell’s Golden Rule), which I’ll call Mitchell’s Guide to an Ethical Bleeding Heart.
President Obama, echoed by the establishment media, routinely trumpets Warren Buffett’s support for higher taxes.
If this rich guy is willing to pay more, the story goes, then surely the rest of us peasants should just roll over and acquiesce to the President’s class-warfare tax policy.
Well, one reason we shouldn’t surrender is that Buffett is either stupid or dishonest. In previous posts, I’ve exposed his fiscal innumeracy and explained that he is understating his own tax rate.
But maybe all this tax talk is a distraction. Perhaps the real story is that Buffett is a clever political manipulator and that his support for higher taxes is a way for him to pay back the politicians who have enacted policies to line his pockets.
Here are some very revealing passages from a new Reason column by Peter Schweizer. We start with the image that Buffett is creating for himself.
He frequently takes to the nation’s op-ed pages with populist-sounding arguments, such as his August 2010 plea in The New York Times for the government to stop “coddling” the “super-rich” and start raising their taxes.
Schweizer than puts forth an alternative hypothesis.
Warren Buffett is very much a political entrepreneur; his best investments are often in political relationships. In recent years, Buffett has used taxpayer money as a vehicle to even greater profit and wealth. Indeed, the success of some of his biggest bets and the profitability of some of his largest investments rely on government largesse and “coddling” with taxpayer money.
Buffett’s self-interested behavior during the Wall Street bailout is especially revealing.
…on September 23 that he became a highly visible player in the drama, investing $5 billion in Goldman Sachs, which was overleveraged and short on cash. Buffett’s play gave the investment bank a much-needed cash infusion, making a heck of a deal for himself in return: Berkshire Hathaway received preferred stock with a 10 percent dividend yield and an attractive option to buy another $5 billion in stock at $115 a share. Wall Street was on fire, and Buffett was running toward the flames.
What’s remarkable is that Buffett basically admitted he was investing money in the expectation that Uncle Sam was going to make his investment profitable.
But he was doing so with the expectation that the fire department (that is, the federal government) was right behind him with buckets of bailout money. As he admitted on CNBC at the time, “If I didn’t think the government was going to act, I wouldn’t be doing anything this week.”
According to Schweizer’s analysis, Buffett very much needed a pipeline to the Treasury because of his investments in Goldman Sachs and other financial institutions.
Buffett needed the bailout. In addition to Goldman Sachs, which was not as badly leveraged as some of its competitors, Buffett was heavily invested in several other banks, such as Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp, that were also at risk and in need of federal cash. So it’s no surprise that Buffett began campaigning for the $700 billion Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP) that was being hammered out in Washington. …Buffett received better terms for his Goldman investment than the government got for its bailout. His dividend was set at 10 percent, while the government’s was 5 percent. Had the bailout not gone through, and had Goldman not been given such generous terms under TARP, things would have been very different for Buffett. As it stood, the arrangement with Goldman Sachs earned Berkshire about $500 million a year in dividends. “We love the investment!” he exclaimed to Berkshire investors.
The same was true for his investment with General Electric.
The General Electric deal also was profitable. As Reuters business columnist Rolfe Winkler noted on his blog in August 2009: “Were it not for government bailouts, for which Buffett lobbied hard, many of his company’s stock holdings would have been wiped out.” …Buffett did very well with Goldman Sachs and GE too after they received their bailout money. His net gain from General Electric as of April 2011 was $1.2 billion. His profits from the Goldman deal by then had exceeded the gains of July 2009, reaching as high as $3.7 billion. He had bet on his ability to help secure the bailout, and the bet paid off.
I don’t know whether the $1.2 billion and $3.7 billion profits were for Berkshire Hathaway of for Buffett, but he still would be accumulating lots of additional wealth even if it was the former.
In late 2009, Buffett made his largest investment ever when he decided to buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF). It was not just an endorsement of the railroad industry’s financials; it was also a huge bet on the budget priorities of his friend Barack Obama. …the railroad industry saw Buffett’s involvement as very helpful, precisely because he was so politically connected. “It’s a positive for the rail industry because of Buffett’s influence in Washington,” Henry Lampe, president of the short-haul railroad Chicago South Shore & South Bend, told the Journal. …After Buffett took over the railroad company, he dramatically increased spending on lobbyists. Berkshire spent $1.2 million on lobbyists in 2008, but by 2009 its budget had jumped to $9.8 million, where it more or less remained. Pouring money into lobbying is perhaps the best investment that Buffett could make. …Buffett also owns MidAmerican Energy Holdings, which received $93.4 million in stimulus money. General Electric, in which he owns a $5 billion stake, was one of the largest recipients of stimulus money in the country.
By the way, Bloomberg reported that the President’s decision to kill the Keystone Pipeline was a boon to Burlington Northern.
Was it part of a quid pro quo? We don’t know, but Schweizer’s conclusion is right on the mark.
Warren Buffett is a financial genius. But even better for his portfolio, though worse for the rest of us, he is a political genius.
The bottom line is simple. When people get rich by providing goods and services in a competitive market, that’s capitalism. When they get rich because of subsidies, bailouts, preferences, and handouts provided by the ruling class, that’s Argentina.
I have no idea whether Buffett is corrupt, but I know he is benefiting from a corrupt system. So it’s understandable that people like me suspect that his endorsement of higher taxes is not because of a mistaken view of fiscal policy, but rather because he wants to do something nice for the politicians who rig the rules to give him more wealth.
Michael Barone of the American Enterprise Institute goes to town on the selective, discriminatory, and politically motivated dispensation of Obamacare waivers. I particularly like how he zings the left by asking why, if Obamacare is so wonderful, so many millions of people trying to escape the President’s new scheme. But the more important message in his article is how arbitrary application undermines the rule of law.
1,372 businesses, state and local governments, labor unions and insurers, covering 3,095,593 individuals or families,…have been granted a waiver from Obamacare by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. All of which raises another question: If Obamacare is so great, why do so many people want to get out from under it? More specifically, why are more than half of those 3,095,593 in plans run by labor unions, which were among Obamacare’s biggest political supporters? Union members are only 12 percent of all employees but have gotten 50.3 percent of Obamacare waivers. Just in April, Sebelius granted 38 waivers to restaurants, nightclubs, spas and hotels in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco congressional district. Pelosi’s office said she had nothing to do with it. On its website HHS pledges that the waiver process will be transparent. But it doesn’t list those whose requests for waivers have been denied. …One basic principle of the rule of law is that laws apply to everybody. If the sign says “No Parking,” you’re not supposed to park there even if you’re a pal of the alderman. Another principle of the rule of law is that government can’t make up new rules to help its cronies and hurt its adversaries except through due process, such as getting a legislature to pass a new law. …Punishing enemies and rewarding friends — politics Chicago style — seems to be the unifying principle that helps explain the Obamacare waivers, the NLRB action against Boeing and the IRS’ gift-tax assault on 501(c)(4) donors. They look like examples of crony capitalism, bailout favoritism and gangster government. One thing they don’t look like is the rule of law.
My contention is that this is the inevitable result of giving more power to Washington. And this gives me an excuse to reuse my video showing the link between big government and corruption.
Here’s a video just released by those wonderful folks at the Democratic National Committee. It claims that the bad Republicans were wrong about the auto bailout because the companies are still in business and have paid back the money they confiscated from taxpayers.
American taxpayers have already spent more than $13 billion bailing out Chrysler. The Obama administration already forgave more than $4 billion of that debt when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2009. Taxpayers are never getting that money back. But how is Chrysler now paying off the rest of the $7.6 billion they owe the Treasury Department? The Obama administration’s bailout agreement with Fiat gave the Italian car company a “Incremental Call Option” that allows it to buy up to 16% of Chrysler stock at a reduced price. But in order to exercise the option, Fiat had to first pay back at least $3.5 billion of its loan to the Treasury Department. But Fiat was having trouble getting private banks to lend it the money. Enter Obama Energy Secretary Steven Chu who has signaled that he will approve a fuel-efficient vehicle loan to Chrysler for … wait for it … $3.5 billion. …to recap, the Obama Energy Department is loaning a foreign car company $3.5 billion so that it can pay the Treasury Department $7.6 billion even though American taxpayers spent $13 billion to save an American car company that is currently only worth $5 billion.
In previous posts, 
