Rube Goldberg Economics

It’s hard to evaluate Treasury Secretary Geithner’s new bailout plan using traditional economic yardsticks. The government’s economic behavior in recent months has entered realms better understood by studying the works of Franz Kafka and Lewis Carroll, or the illustrations of Rube Goldberg. Here, in less literary and pictorial terms, is what Secretary Geithner hath just wrought.

In an attempt to clear toxic assets from bank balance sheets and free these institutions to start lending again, the government will fund—directly or indirectly with low interest loans that need not be repaid—acquisition of a trillion dollars worth of these assets. The prices paid won’t be based on the current market values of the assets because the government’s main aim is to help refinance battered institutions, not take advantage of them the way any non-governmental toxic asset buyer would do.

Of course, believing that clearing these assets from banks’ books will actually lead to unfreezing the credit markets seems an odd notion, inasmuch as various government agencies have already poured hundreds of billions of dollars into a failed effort to facilitate the same end without any noticeable result. And the reason? Because banks are holding back from new lending not because of stressed balance sheets, but because in a weak economy too many borrowers will not be able to service new loans. And thus even after unloading tons of toxic garbage, what incentive would there be to generate more garbage?

This seems obvious to me and likely to you as well. But the Secretary of the Treasury thinks he knows otherwise. And maybe he does. In a Goldberg/Kafka/Carroll economic world anything is possible.

One much hyped new element of the Geithner plan is the way it seeks to harness the power of the marketplace to achieve its purposes. More specifically, under a public-private arrangement, the public end of the acquisitions (us) will guarantee most of the risk while the private end (including upstanding financial entities like hedge funds) will get most of any profits that accrue.

Think of a casino where the players keep their winnings but the house repays their losses. This pretty much describes the risk-reward allocation in this public private partnership.

Because I’ve been writing about business, finance and economics for 30 years, all this time trying to link my views to market history, theory and sound practices, I don’t feel able to predict where this Geithner-Bernanke-Summers brand of Rube Goldberg economics will eventually lead. Like the crew of the Enterprise, it is taking us where no man has ever gone before. So rather than criticize, let me suggest we all simply repeat as often as possible the following mantra:

“Surely, the authorities know what they are doing. Surely, the authorities know what they are doing. Surely, the authorities know what they are doing.”

What else can we do? They are gaming with our futures. We can only watch with a mix or awe and horror, and pray that all their wild gambles somehow work out.