speculation – Page 2 – The Menace of Privilege

Gold vs. “real money”

Gold Mine — image credit: Kake Pugh via flickr (cc)

The basic function of money is as a medium of exchange. Inevitably, a secondary function arises as a measure of value. Money can be paper, precious metals, shells, whatever people in a particular time and place use as a medium of exchange. There’s no reason that it would need to have “intrinsic” value. If people use U S currency to buy and sell, then it is “real money.”

So is gold “real money?” I don’t think so. Just about nobody uses it as a medium of exchange. Historically, gold coins have sometimes been used but for ordinary people silver, copper, or base metal fiat-type money would be much more common.

Certainly fiat money can depreciate, usually does, and for us in the U S that has been and will almost certainly continue to be the trend. And gold might be a good investment, in the sense that it will be exhangeable in the future for more real wealth than it is now, or at least more in comparison to other kinds of investments available to ordinary people. Of course, gold can depreciate too, if large new deposits are discovered or folks decide they really don’t want gold after all. Which isn’t to say that either of these things will happen any time soon.

Anyone who wishes to resurrect the “gold standard” might want to read the late Peter Bernstein’s “Power of Gold,” or some other history books. Somehow we end up electing people who don’t put a high priority on keeping the dollar strong (or at least, not too much weaker). If that’s a problem, then maybe we should be electing other people, or finding ways to reduce the power of those who purchase elections. Making the U S dollar convertible into a fixed amount of gold is not going to bring prosperity, or even prevent further disruption. There are plenty of examples of economic collapse under a gold standard.

It might, however, benefit those who own gold, or gold mining stocks.

Somebody please disagree with me, or I will assume all of the above to be true.

Another entrepreneur brought down by bad public finance

Cocoa Pods, by sarahemcc via Flickr (cc)

This one was “Bernard Callebaut, Alberta’s most famous chocolatier,” who purchased land to build a new chocolate factory. Those who understand land rent and the business cycle won’t be too surprised at what AlbertaVenture.com tells us happened next:

[Callebaut] insists that it was an ill-timed decision to buy a large plot of land near the Petro-Canada station on the TransCanada Highway just west of Highway 22 for $5 million, and his bank’s unwillingness to exercise patience, that really did him in. “The idea was we would sell 30 acres for development, and we would keep the back part, which is actually the less-expensive part,” Callebaut says. He planned to build a manufacturing and warehousing facility there, and he even held out hope that the project would serve as a tourist attraction. “People love to see chocolate factories,” he says.That never happened. Instead, the value of the land plummeted, and his bank decided to pull the plug.

Of course, under the current system of public finance he really had no choice. He needed land for his factory. If he rents instead of buying he is hostage to the landowners. Only if he really understood how the land cycle works, possibly he could have prospered. But no, Bernard Callebaut is not a political economist, he is a chocolatier. But perhaps he might have benefited from a learning some of what we teach at the Henry George School.

Like most good stories, there’s more to it than that. He not only lost his land and his company, he lost his name. To his lawyer. Read it here.

Drug prohibition coordinates politicians and “gangs”

Pilsen — image credit: Rosalyn Davis via Flickr (cc)

David Bernstein and Noah Isackson have a pretty good article in Chicago Magazine, Gangs and Politicians in Chicago: An Unholy Alliance. Focusing mainly on Alderman but also including State and Federal legislators, they assert that “gangs” provide the money, votes, and workers that enable officials to attain and retain their office. In exchange, the governments these legislators control provide funds and favors.

Isackson and Bernstein stop short of suggesting how to repair this problem, but reading thru the article it’s clear that the main way these “gangs” prosper is thru unauthorized distribution of drugs. And one of the main favors aldermen provide is assistance in avoiding “law enforcement” efforts to arrest them. End the drug prohibition, most of the “gangs'” income will end, and candidates will no longer get “gang” money. They’ll have to rely on crooked lawyers, lobbyists, etc.

Some of the drug money, of course, has gone into real estate, with “gang” members able to get favors such as rezoning and inspection waivers. A land value tax, by constraining real estate speculation, would be of assistance here.

Outrageous assessments

Gary Lucido writes of a small parcel at 3710 N. Kenmore, offered at $9.9 million ($4950/sq ft) after failing to sell when offered at lower prices. While the price seems outrageous, the property is very close to Wrigley Field and could be used for a billboard or rooftop viewing platform. We know that the former use has commanded $350,000/year on a nearby building, which seems to justify a multi-million-dollar asking price.

So we have a parcel worth, let us say, five million dollars. What are the taxes? Continue reading Outrageous assessments

Did you hear the one about the two economists….

…who spoke for over an hour about cities, development, migration, and density, and asserted that America would be more productive if our cities were denser, and did not mention economic rent nor land value?

They did it here, on econ-talk, and you can download the podcast or just read a pretty good text summary (I do not recall them using the word “land” either, but it appears several times in the text summary so I must have missed it). The book itself seems to be available only on Amazon Kindle, which as I understand it means I cannot buy it, but only license a copy to read. But from the interview I gather that author Ryan Avent has determined that American cities (and some suburbs too) are not as densely developed as they “should” be, and that this is due to local governments’ reluctance to allow development at optimal densities.

Now certainly there’s no question that local governments, usually reacting to neighborhood concerns, often refuse to allow development at densities which are physically workable. I recall one suburb where a proposal would have had single-family houses on lots of 9000 square feet. Community reaction was that the kind of people who would live on such small lots would not be desirable neighbors, even tho in many other cities such a lot would be considered oversize. These concerns are often stated as “property value” arguments, and perhaps they really are. That’s an expected consequence of an economic system where ordinary people cannot expect to accumulate much money by working and saving, and must hope to profit from rising prices of the real estate they occupy.

And it’s not unknown for the politicians whose approval is needed for major developments to take advantage of the opportunity for personal gain, legal or otherwise but surely wrong.

So how is it to be decided what the optimal density is? In Science of Political Economy, Henry George observes that, for each kind of production, there is an optimal density at which to work. That density depends on what is being produced, the technology applied, the number of workers available, their skills, the quantity to be produced, etc., so it will change over time. Avent may be correct that we would be better off if higher densities were permitted in some already-dense desirable places, but he certainly didn’t offer much evidence in this podcast.

But let us assume that higher density would be a good thing (and I am certain that in some places it would be), how is it to be achieved? Avent seems to assume that a reduction in land use regulation would be the proper method, because the market is efficient and so density would rise to the appropriate level.

But communities are more complicated than that, and you can’t, or at least shouldn’t, ignore externalities. The first builder to put a high-rise in a desirable townhouse neighborhood may profit nicely. However, not only does the character of the community start to change, but different infrastructure is needed. Can the streets handle the traffic, or can acceptable public transport be provided? Will the sewer and water system handle the load? What are the other effects on the larger community, and how can they be dealt with? There are loads of reasons why it makes sense for the community, acting thru its local government, to have a major say in its development.

But to really irritate those who understand political economy, Avent says:

[I]f you had a sort of density charge–I hate to tax density in that way but in terms of being realistic about the distribution of cost–you could channel some of that into investing in local amenities: could be parks, could be transit, something to try to convince local stake-holders that density is going to be in their interest. So normally we think of taxes as discouraging an activity–which it would. It would make it more expensive for developers to make urban areas more dense.

Yes, some way for the community to share in the benefits of increased density. Can you say “land value tax?” It doesn’t tax development, it taxes development potential. It pressures landowners to build at appropriate densities, but doesn’t punish them for doing so. Supported by competent and realistic zoning, it guides density to the places where is works.

Somebody told me once that the Economist, for which Avent is a correspondent, is a pretty good source of economic news except that it refuses to acknowledge the possibility, let alone the benefits, of a land value tax. I still haven’t seen anything that contradicts this assertion.

Prices climb for ag land and infrastructure

I have blogged before about rising prices for agricultural land. The trend continues, with FRB/Chicago reporting(pdf) that, as of Q2 2011, farmland prices in its area (Iowa plus most of Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana) had risen 17% in a year, and 4% just since the prior quarter. This trend, of course, reflects an increasing amount of financial power invested in (and therefore inclined to defend) the goverment’s destructive ethanol incentives.

What’s new, to my knowledge, is investment by speculative interests in grain elevators. While elevators aren’t exactly a monopoly like farmland (farmers lacking reasonable elevator services have in some cases built their own), they’re certainly a tool that can be used to squeeze profit without producing or providing useful service. The source article implies that the investment is simply a function of increasing storage prices (without explaining what caused the prices to increase), with no intention of storing grain to manipulate prices. Americans wouldn’t do that, would they?

Farmland owners profit by returning to suburbs

As the housing market tanked a few years ago, of course the price of farmland “ripe” for housing crashed along with it. Meanwhile, many investors, noting impending food shortages and low interest rates, bought farmland in rural areas. Now, no surprise, they’re selling their rural land and using some of the cash to again purchase suburban farmland, at the much lower prices. The profit, of course, is in buying and selling land, not producing anything. I am grateful to Mary Ellen Podmolik for her article in the June 19 Tribune, which provides some details.

The limits of Econned

Over the years, Naked Capitalism has provided a fine, if discouraging, play-by-play of the worsening corruption of our financial and governmental powers. Dense daily posts, plus links to relevant news stories, supported by thoughtful and knowledgable commenters, makes it one of the few sites I really ought to read daily. (Cute animal pictures are a bonus.)

When chief blogger Yves Smith published Econned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism, I was anxious to read it. Which I finally did over the last couple of weeks. Continue reading The limits of Econned

Excess returns to Congress

Some may say excess never left Congress, but I am referring to something a bit different. “Excess returns” is the phrase used to describe an investment result which is above average for the kind of investment made. And according to a report from Barron’s Randall W. Forsyth, a new study shows that U. S. Senators achieve an excess return of 10.7% per year in their personal investments. For members of the House of Representatives, the excess is 6.8%. Forsyth points out that any professional investment manager who achived this result on a consistent basis would be quite phenomenal. He concludes that

Members of Congress used inside information gleaned from their positions of power to enrich themselves in the stock market.

He is probably right, and I would be the last to accuse Congress of honesty, but there is another possible explanation. Maybe Congressmen are just cleverer than the rest of us, and in particular are more difficult to deceive. Congress itself is evidence that the broad public is easily fooled.

In this regard, I recall stumbling a few months ago on a link to the personal investment statements that Congressmen and some other federal officials file. (Curious that I did not bookmark it and can’t seem to locate it right now.) I picked a Congressman who I thought might be honest, Ron Paul, and looked up his statement. Dr. Paul seemed to have most of his money in precious metals, I don’t recall the extent to which it might have been bullion, mining stocks, or related investments. Of course this strategy would have done very well over the past couple of years. Paul is associated with the idea that U. S. dollars should be backed with gold. I don’t think he considers this realistic in the near term, but of course if it ever happened the effect would be to push the price of gold higher as bullion would be accumulated to “back” the money. But does Paul endorse gold-backed money in order to increase the value of his investments? Or does he invest in gold because he expects its value to increase? I’m pretty sure it is the latter. Of course this kind of logic would apply only to honest Congressmen, so I suppose we could consider Ron Paul to be an outlier.

According to Forsyth, the source study, by Alan J. Ziobrowski of Georgia State University, James W. Boyd of Lindenwood University, Ping Cheng of Florida Atlantic University and Brigitte J. Ziobrowski of August[a] State University appeared May 25 in the Journal “Business and Politics” and covers the years 1985-2001.

What bitcoin illustrates about fiat money

The value of bitcoin seems to have surged to over $7, from less than one dollar a couple of months ago. This is a far faster increase than the price of gold, or silver, or other “hard” assets.

Bitcoin was invented by Satoshi Nakamoto, who must be a skilled and innovative programmer. Anyone can generate bitcoins by setting their computer to solve specific mathematical problems. As more bitcoins are generated, the difficulty of the problems increases. Relatively few vendors currently accept bitcoins, but several dealers are willing to trade dollars for them. And the reason their value has increased must be that people are willing to pay more dollars than previously.

Why pay more dollars? One reason is that the total number of bitcoins is limited, so presumably they cannot suffer the kind of inflation that often occurs with paper currency. (Could that rule change? Yes, just as some new major deposit of gold or silver might be discovered.) Another reason, of course, could be that people are just learning about bitcoins, and seeing the trend, expect it to continue. Also, bitcoins give some indication of being truly anonymous, secure money.

Now, if I was a skilled programmer, I could invent my own bitcoin-ish system, and generate my own coins. But unless someone is willing to accept my coins in exchange for something people want, they’ll have no value. Perhaps Satoshi Nakamoto is not only skilled, but also charismatic.

Bitcoins have intrinsic value in the sense that it takes a lot of work (done by the computer) in order to generate one, much as it takes a lot of work to discover, mine and refine precious metals. But, whereas I could use precious metals to make jewelry or tableware, I can’t think of anything that anyone could do with a bitcoin, other than spend it or save it.

So it seems to me that bitcoin shows that fiat money could work quite well, provided that the proper amount of it is issued. If bitcoin’s deflationary trend continues, it might be a good investment but would lose usefulness as actual currency. I think the most likely outcome will be, either, a decision to produce more bitcoins (however that might be made), or the creation of other alternative currencies operating in parallel.

Interesting times.