Coyote Blog

MaxedOutMama echoes many of my thoughts on recent economic activity and the shameless way our President has been manipulating these issues:

In January, I was writing that fundamentals had taken an upswing, and that the US economy was going to try to resurge in the third quarter.

The numbers that came in for January and February did show what P-Nat projected, which was a gradual bottoming pattern overall and the beginning of some upticks. Bloomberg today:

Orders for U.S. durable goods unexpectedly rose in February on a rebound in demand for machinery, computers and defense equipment.
...
Combined with reports showing improvements in retail sales, residential construction and home resales, the figures indicate the economy is stabilizing after shrinking last quarter at the fastest pace in a quarter century. Stepped-up efforts by the Obama administration and Federal Reserve to ease the credit crunch may help revive growth later this year.

Last night Obama took credit for these events, but the stimulus package had nothing to do with it - the effects of that haven't even hit the economy yet. Very little of that package will be felt in the first half of 2009, in fact, and less than 25% of the effect will be felt in 2009. I would also like to point out that at the time the stimulus bill was being debated, the administration was claiming that the economic emergency was so dire that the representatives and senators shouldn't even be allowed to read the thing before they voted on it. Instead, this was what was really going on in the economy.

She also shares my concerns that the recovery may in fact be undone by recent government actions, not the least of which is the Weimar Republic-like printing of money to buy back government bonds and help fund a mushrooming deficit.  In fact, she and I must be fairly attuned, as she wrote:

Last week I was so sick at heart that I didn't think I could continue writing this blog.

I too felt almost exactly the same last week.  Never have I been so depressed about the direction of domestic policy (I might have felt about the same around 1978, but I was only 16 and had other things on my mind).  Every day last week there seemed to be a new policy directive crazier than the last.  I had a real feeling like I was living through the last half of Atlas Shrugged, where an increasingly desperate government initiates a series of policies with disastrous long-term effects crafted just to survive a little longer in office.  The only difference was several years in the book seemed to have been compressed into about a week of real time.

Fortunately, I am basically a happy soul and I seldom stay depressed long.  I just did what I always do when I despair for the world - spent some time with my family and concentrated on what I could fix, namely the health of my own business.

The Liberty Papers thinks we have become a lawless Banana Republic.  George Will is thinking along the same lines, snarkily observing that Sweden, China, and Mexico have all observed in one way or another that the Feds seem to be acting outside the rule of law.

I have opined in the past that what really extended the Great Depression was not any real underlying economic issue, or even vast increases in government spending per se.  It was that arbitrariness with which the Roosevelt administration dealt with economic matters.  With nutty programs like the Mussolini-inspired National Industrial Recovery Act coming and going, investors and businesses never knew from day to day what the rules of the game would be next year, or even next week.

I fear that this is exactly the climate Obama and Congress are creating today.

• When Congress reacts to CNN headlines by retroactively confiscating legal compensation that it had protected just weeks before, what will happen to my compensation?
• When government deficits soar by trillions of dollars, what will taxes look like next year?
• When the Administration says that Co2 will have to be reduced by 80%, what numbers do I plug into my forecasts for fuel and electricity?
• When the government decides on a whim to print a trillion dollars more money to pay off government debt, what will inflation look like in the coming months and years?

As of two months ago, my company was still investing.  We were still getting bank credit, particularly for equipment financing, though it took more work than in the past to secure it.  We still saw opportunity in our business, and in fact saw increased opportunity in the recession for low-cost recreation options and outsourcing of public recreation facilities.

But today, I am reluctant to make any new investments.  Investing $5000 now for $8,000 a year from now normally sounds good, but what happens now that the Feds have more than doubled the money supply?  How much will $8,000 really be worth a year from now?  What will my taxes be on the increase?**  What new costs or liabilities  might be retroactively placed on me for making the investment?  What happens if beltway pundits start thinking I am making too much money?

All this commotion of government intervention started when Paulson and other Bush appointees started screaming that the banking system was going to shut down and therefore crash the whole economy.  As my readers know, I believe to this day that this was all sky-is-falling over-reaction and panic-mongering, and most of the credit crunch resulted from uncertainty about the Treasury and its statements, not due to realities on the ground.   However, whatever tightening of credit we might or might not have avoided by government action, it pales in its effect on investment in comparison to the arbitrariness and trillion-dollar-plan-of-the-day that has been the first 60 days of the Obama administration.

** footnote: For those of you who have not lived through high inflation times, taxes and inflation are a deadly combination.  That is because the Federal Government, after creating inflation, then taxes each of us on its effects.  Here is an example:  Invest $5000 now at a fixed 10% a year.  Suddenly, inflation goes up to 8% a year.  In five years, I now have a bit over $8000.  In economic terms I have made a small profit of, since $8000 in five years at 8% inflation is worth $5,445 today.

But the IRS thinks I have made $3000, not just $445, and will tax me on the full $3000.  If they take a third, I only have $7000 at the end, or $4,764 in current dollars, meaning that after taxes, I actually lost money.

A bit over a week ago, I forecast that we had passed the economic bottom and would soon be back on the way up.  The IBD lists a number of reasons why I may be correct:  (ht:  Carpe Diem)

"¢ A broad rally in stocks, confirmed last Thursday, continuing into this week and led by the beaten-down financials.

"¢ A surprising 22% surge in February housing starts to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 583,000 units.

"¢ A back-to-back jump in retail sales ex autos, in both January and February.

"¢ A return to profitability at several major banks, including Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan.

"¢ A doubling in the obscure but important Baltic Dry Index, a key indicator of global trade flows.

"¢ An upwardly sloping yield curve, which Fed research suggests all but ensures a rebound by year-end.

"¢ A Housing Affordability Index that has hit an all-time high.

"¢ A two-month improvement in wholesale used-car prices, measured by the Manheim Index.

"¢ A rise in Monster's Employment Index in February, suggesting a turn in the job market may be around the corner.

"¢ A 4 1/2-year high in the dollar against other major currencies, on a trade-weighted basis.

"¢ A sharp increase in the money supply, as measured by M2 and M1. Weekly M2 growth has averaged 10.1% year-over-year since the start of 2009, while M1 has grown at a 14.6% rate.

"¢ A two-month rally in the Index of Leading Indicators.

"¢ A growing body of evidence that the "liquidity crunch" is dead. Data show nearly $14 trillion in liquidity on the sidelines of the markets, ready to boost consumer spending, credit growth or further stock market gains.

Of course, this makes the entire argument for the trillion dollar plus stimulus bill moot.  If my company had started spending itself into debt to fight some sort of emergency, and then found the emergency did not exist, you can bet we would be spending every hour of the day to stop as much of that emergency spending as possible.  Not so in Washington.  Despite now forecasting an improving economy, and basing his budget on this being a milder-than-normal recession, Obama has not even suggested any roll-back in the massive spending and debt-creation program.  Which just goes to prove that the "stimulus" bill had nothing to do with stimulus in the first place, but was a leftish spending plan sold based on panic, in exactly the same way the Bush administration sold the Patriot Act.

In fact, much of Obama's remaining legislative agenda (including nationalization of parts of the health care system and a Co2 cap-and-trade system) include what are effectively large tax increases that cannot realistically be passed in the depths of a recession.  So expect a lot of talking up of the economy to prepare the way for these tax increases, not to mention the tax increases that will be necesary, but have not yet been proposed, to pay for the servicing of the huge debt and new spending we just took on.

One final prediction:  As the economy improves enough for the average person to see the improvement, expect the Obama administration to be spinning like mad.  Their first objective will be to take credit for the recovery.  This is absurd, as it appears that the recovery will start long before the first dollar of spending occurs.  The media may, however, let him get away with this.  If it does not, his second story will be that the confidence exuded by the passing of the stimulus bill created the recovery.  This is also absurd on its face, given the crash in equity prices after the stimulus bill was passed and the extreme general skepticism about the stimulus in poll numbers.

Postscript: By the way, I would argue the whole story of this stimulus bill is a microcosm of the climate debate.  Extreme panic was generated based on a fear that their might be some possibility of a catastrophe (ie a second Great Depression) and that on the precautionary principle, we spent a trillion dollars just in case.  Remember that in January, Obama said there will be - not might be - another 5 million job losses, a number we will come nowhere near.

As it turned out, there was never a realistic chance of a catastrophe, but the costs will remain, and all the while the panic over the issue was used as cover to pass a whole range of freedom-reducing initiatives.   Naomi Klein was half right in the shock doctrine -- there are folks who use emergencies to successfully push for radical change, but it is almost always the forces of more government control who win out, not the supporters of laissez faire.

Update: A similar list here from Forbes.

This graph of the US monetary supply is un-freaking-believeable.  Someone please tell me that this is a data error or something.  I guess this is one way to bail out borrowers -- if you create enough inflation, then the real value of principle owed drops.  Sure looks like it is time to borrow long at fixed rates.  Are real interest rates about to go negative?

Via Phil Miller

By the way, this really gives the lie to the whole government stimulus effort.  They may be moving large amounts of money around, but they can't create value, and in the absence of real value creation all they are doing is inflating the currency.

Via Reason:

Obama has promised that no family earning less than $250,000 per year will pay one dime in higher taxes. But the companies that have to pay for permits will pass that cost on to consumers in the form of higher prices for electricity and other products. So these families will pay $645 billion, only some of which will be returned in the form of lower income taxes, for a system that is terribly inefficient.

The solution, of course, would be a straight-forward tax on carbon, the proceeds to be refunded through the payroll tax system. But unlike the hidden tax of cap-and-trade, a carbon tax is out there for the voters to see. And given the choice between a stealthy tax and a visible tax, politicians will pick the former every time.

Once upon a time, most entrepreneurs organized their business as what is called a C-Corporation.  Most of the publicly traded corporations you can think of, from Avon to Zenith, are essentially C-Corporations.   Such corporations had any number of advantages, but they had (and still have) one big, big disadvantage.  C-Corporations paid federal income taxes at the corporate tax rates.  And then, if after-tax profits were dividended to owners, those dividends would be taxed again.  This double taxation of earnings is something Congress talks about all the time, but never does much about.  And the implicit government tax subsidy for debt over equity does a lot to explain various waves of merger and LBO activity we have seen since the 1980's.

Now, entrepreneurs were not stupid.  No one wants their hard-earned income taxed twice.   So, entrepreneurs who owned C-corps would do one of two things.  One approach was to have the owner pay himself a large salary, thus reducing corporate income and converting the dividends to more tax-advantaged wages.  The other approach was to have the company issue the owner loans rather than dividends.  I have seen many closely-held C-corps with huge accumulated corporate loans to their owners, which may only be unwound years or decades later when the company is sold or liquidated and profits can be taken out a lower capital gains rates.

Over the last 20 years or so, a new corporate vehicle called the sub-chapter S or S-corp has become popular.  With a few limitations, the S-corp offers all the same liability protections as a C-corp, with a big tax advantage:  S-corps are not subject to corporate taxes -- corporate profits of the owners flow straight through the corporation to the owners' 1040 personal returns, eliminating any double taxation  (Limited Liability Corps or LLC's operate roughly the same, but with slightly different rules).  For this reason they are also sometimes called pass-through entities.

It is interesting to note something I never hear mentioned when discussing aggregate personal income data, which is that the switch over time from entrepreneurs using the C-corp to the S-corp creates something of a discontinuity in the income data.  Thirty years ago, much of the annual corporate earnings, and all of the retained earnings, of business owners would not show up in the IRS personal income data  -- it shows up as corporate income, but not personal income.  Today, nearly all of that corporate income of small business owners shows up as regular income on personal tax returns.  Absent any other changes in income trends, business owners as a group will appear to have large increases in taxable income, when in fact economically nothing may have changed save the corporate structures of their businesses.

But the real point I want to make is that all of the retained income and potential investment capital of a small business using S-corps or LLCs (which is nearly everyone nowadays)  shows up on the owner's personal income tax returns.  Let's hypothesize an entrepreneur whose S-corp earns $250,000 in profits after-tax.  Let's say he typically puts $150,000 of that to savings and living expenses, and the other $100,000 is reinvested in the growth and/or productivity of the business.  Now let's look at proposed increases in upper income tax brackets.  With these higher proposed rates, the business owner will have less than $250,000 in after tax income.  Let's say it goes down to $220,000.  Odds are that the owner will retain his lifestyle (he will as a minimum still have the same size mortgage and school and other payments).  The slack, then, comes out of the retained earnings.  Essentially, higher taxes result in less investment capital.  In fact, we can see an increased tax rate on wealthier entrepreneurs and business owners could easily result in a dollar for dollar reduction in business investment among small businesses, acknowledged to be the place where most all new jobs are created.

I think readers know that I don't fully accept the Obama administration's analysis of this recession.  However, let's take them at face value for a moment.  They are concerned that savings of average people won't currently translate into more business investment, as they fear the credit crisis causes banks to hold the savings rather than re-lend it.  If this were the case, then it would mean that as a policy, we would want to preferentially route tax savings to entrepreneurs and business owners who invest their own money directly, because their is no intermediary of a bank to interfere with the process.  But in fact, this is exactly opposite of what the Obama administration is doing through tax policy, instead taking away the investment capital and retained earnings of entrepreneurs through higher taxes.

This is the European-style corporate state in a nutshell.  In Europe, entrepreneurship is made extraordinarily difficult.  This is part of the deal that the political elite have with the largest companies in their countries -- we will protect you from potential new competitors, we will bail you out when times get tough, and you in turn will support us politicians.  One only has to look at the turnover of the top 30 companies in the US since 1970 vs. the top 30 in Germany or France to see this at work.  Political turnover is even slower, as an elite group of ministers run the country, almost no matter the party voted in office.  The economy as a whole suffers, but for the top 1000 or so men in power, the system works to protect their position, be it in government or in the largest industries.

And now we bring this system to the US.  Small business owners and entrepreneurs are punished with higher taxes in order to bail out politically powerful but failing companies like GM or Citicorp.  Welcome to America, the new corporate state.

Postscript: A lot of folks erroneously associate corporate states with right-wing governments, and certainly that was the case in Mussolini's Italy.  But the closest brush the US has ever had with such a system (prior to today) was implemented by leftish FDR via the National Industrial Recovery Act, and governments of both left and right have supported the corporate state approach of France and Germany.  In Britain, it was the left that built the corporate state and the right, under Thatcher, who tore it down.

I just skimmed through Obama's speech.  I am not particularly good at parsing this political stuff, so I won't.  The speech had a lot of the typical politician's assertions about features of his programs that have no basis in their actual design.  For example, he asserts that home bailout money won't go to the irresponsible, but there is no such design element in his actual plan (homeowners are eligible for bailouts based on various hard-wired value formulas and ratios -- there is no step where their motivation for becoming overextended is or even could be assessed, nor any step where the government may exercise discretion).

Anyway, the one overriding sense I got from reading the speech was that I was totally correct when I wrote this:

So you ask, will we get any stimulative effect?  I would answer:  Just one.  Obama and Congress will now shut the hell up trying to panic everyone into battening down the hatches for the worst economy in history, and folks can get a bit of breathing space to look around them and see that business opportunity is still there.  This is $800 billion in hush money, a bribe we are paying Obama and Pelosi in the form of passing a lot of their pent up leftish wish list, in return for them taking some ownership interest in real economic health.

I remember Democrats scoffing at GWB's on-time tax refund checks last year.  I agreed with them at the time, thought potentially for different reasons, saying that one-time rebates are far less attractive than permanent rate changes, and a rebate that just increased the national debt was robbing Peter to pay his dad.

So I am not sure how the Democrat's explain this any differently (from an email I got from the SSA)

Dear Colleague:

On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This new legislation provides a one-time payment of $250 to Social Security and Supplemental Security Income beneficiaries.

Over 60 million beneficiaries will receive a one-time payment. We expect all payments to be delivered by late May 2009. To assist us in issuing these payments as quickly as possible, beneficiaries should not contact Social Security unless they do not receive their payment by June 4^th. As we move to implement the new legislation, we will continue to provide updates to keep you informed of our efforts in this area.

You can learn more about these one-time payments at www.socialsecurity.gov.

We ask that you share information about these efforts with members, colleagues and any parties who would find them of interest.

I look forward to the opportunity to discuss this important legislation with you.

Sincerely,

Cheri Arnott

Associate Commissioner

for External Affairs

The only difference I see is 1) the rebate is going to a lot of people who do not even pay taxes and 2) by giving it to social security beneficiaries, the generational wealth transfer is all the more stark.  Now we are robbing Peter to pay his grand-dad.

It has been interesting to watch the reaction to Obama's mortgage-holder bailout.  Certainly the plan is expensive, likely largely ineffective, and has terrible long-term impacts on incentives.   To my libertarian eyes the plan is awful, but no more awful, and actually less expensive (incredibly!) than other bailouts and legislation pouring out of Washington of late.  Like everything else we are seeing, it is a hair-of-the-dog plan:  fix government over-promotion of home ownership with more government promotion of home ownership;  Fix the fact that individuals are over-leveraged by trying to keep them in their mortgages.

But this issue changes the political map to some extent.  The usual rhetoric about milking one group to help another who are "on the outs by no fault of their own" is just stretched past credulity on this one.  Sure, there are enough folks who were really tricked or scammed in their mortgages to fill up any length of a news segment with tearful anecdotes.  But the 50% of the country that rents or the large percentage of homeowners that didn't chase around after zero-down house-flipping deals don't seem to be buying that their tax money is now flowing to innocent victims.

Postscript:  I know there is a tendency to leap onto this "fraud" excuse to help assuage one's ego.  Yeah, I wasn't stupid, I was tricked!  Well, I am in some financial tough times, and I will declare it here publicly:  It is all my fault.   I got overly exuberant in expanding the business, and doubled down on my mistake by agreeing to a large financial commitment based on a bank's loan commitment letter, rather than an actual loan (a commitment letter that was pretty much worthless as the bank went into FDIC receivership).   I have found, by the way, that my banks have been very reasonable about restructuring commitments as long as I come to the table with a plan showing how I intend to pay them back every cent that is theirs  (yes, I said it, it is theirs -- it is their money) though just with altered terms and timing.  The good news is that a ebbing tide reveals a lot of rocks, and the business has been vastly improved by the thorough review and restructuring we have put it through of late.

One problem with the stimulus bill is that it is so diffuse, so poorly understood, and so impossible to measure, that it will allow its supporters to claim anything about its effects.  If no one knows what is in it, how do you measure effectiveness?  Long recession?  Those dang Republicans slowed the bill and kept the size too low.  End of 2009 recovery?  It's because of the stimulus bill (never mind that the money will not have even really been spent).  So, in the interests of setting a reasonable baseline, here is the pre-stimulus economic projections:

Via Carpe Diem.

In case you are not infuriated enough over this bill, remember that Obama is looking at exactly this data when he makes his proclamations of continued economic doom to scare folks into passing his pork-spending liberal wish list stimulus bill.    Remember when Obama said "My economic advisers have told me this recession will last 4-5 more months, and then we will start to see a recovery?"  Yeah, neither do I.  I remember him projecting another 5 million lost jobs.   Do you think if he said "the economy will start growing again in 5 months" he could have passed a 10-year "stimulus" bill?  Fat chance.  Maybe he is the new FDR, but with a new phrase "The only thing we have to promote is fear itself."

Carpe Diem also has a useful comparison to 1981:

Back then, we responded with tax cuts and a focus by the President on reducing the size of government.  Twenty-five years of prosperity followed.  Today we are responding with a trillion dollars of money for government bureaucrats, increases in welfare, and pork for favored corporations.  I am not hugely confident.

The mechanism for this recession seems pretty clear:  A bursting asset bubble has left both lenders and consumers over-leveraged, so everyone is trying to reduce their debt.  This means less consumer spending for a while, as well as tighter lending.

Running a small business over the last few months, I have found that the credit we need to expand is not unavailable, but is harder to get.  Banks and individual investors are asking for tougher terms, more collateral, and are being pickier about what they will fund.  All totally normal and unsurprising (though stressful if you are in the middle of it).

The one thing small borrowers like myself have in our favor:  Eventually, lenders have to lend and investors have to invest.  They simply cannot just put all their money in the vault or the mattress.  The money they hold, in deposits and CD's and whatever else, has a cost, as do their operations staff.  These costs have to be covered.  The only way they have of doing so (short of switching businesses) is to put their free cash to work.  They have to lend it and invest it.  It's  a useful thing to remember in this world dominated by the cult of victimization and helplessness  -- that even as a borrower, you have power.  Banks need you as much as you need them.

So, what does the government do now?  Well, very soon, the Obama administration is going to be marketing to banks and investors an additional trillion dollars of government bonds backed by the full faith and credit of the US taxpayer as an alternative investment to funding my business.  Uh, yeah, that's sure going to help.  On Thursday, I had some power with investors.  Given time, they were going to have to consider my business as a place to put their money to work.  Now, however, everyone can run out and park their money in a trillion dollars of new government securities that have features attached I can never match (e.g. the ability to print money or grab it at gunpoint to repay the loans).

But don't worry about me, I will figure it all out.  I just will not grow the business or hire as many people as I thought I could given new investment capital.  But everything will be fine for the country as a whole as long as you believe that Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, with their vast business experience, will invest this trillion dollars more productively than I, and other like me, would have.

October 2008 was a failure of nerve.  As so often happens, folks who normally support letting failing institutions fail when times are good tend to lose their nerve when the crisis is at hand, and find some way to convince themselves that somehow, this time is unique and different.  But it is not.   Only later is there remorse.  I won't want to pick on Megan McArdle too much, if for no other reason than she is generally the first person on the planet to admit she is wrong, but you can start to see some of the remorse here:

We're now making many of the mistakes that Japan did.  I know, I know--I supported TARP I.  But I did so because at the time, there seemed to be a reasonable possibility that the funds could stop a liquidity crisis from turning into a solvency crisis.  But if liquidity crises go on long enough, they become solvency crises, so whatever we had then, we now have a badly crippled banking system.  More of the same isn't going to help.

We need a plan that is going to force the banks to recognize and write down their bad loans, restructure dysfunctional borrowers, shut down the banks that are too far gone, and inject substantial capital into the banks that are strong enough to pull through.  But that kind of radical action is scary.  And whether they decide to do it by nationalizing bad banks, or by injecting capital into good ones, the political cost is going to be very high.  So we get baby steps and vague promises of major leaps forward down the road.

Another political problem is that recapitalizing the banking system involves, in the initial stage, conserving capital (read: cutting credit limits), and writing down bad loans means unpopular actions like restructuring failing companies (read:  layoffs) and foreclosing on hopeless borrowers.  One of the major arguments against bank nationalization is that a government-owned bank will find it harder, not easier, to do those things.  The temptation to keep large employers on life support will be large, and every congressman will have a list of firms in their district that can't be allowed to go bust.

I have tried to have this and other bailout arguments with a number of folks.  This is often a hard conversation, because people have trouble separating in their minds the productive assets of these companies (factories, investments, systems, deposits, trained people) from the institution itself.  So when we talk of bankruptcy of, say, GM, they think if GM goes poof, then all those factories and cars go poof.

But that is absurd.  Remember the huge gas shortages that resulted from the loss of the Enron gas trading desk and transportation infrastructure when Enron went bust?  Yeah, neither do I.  That's because all of Enron's productive assets flowed through the well understood chapter 11 (or was Enron Chapter 7) process to new owners.

By the way, by management, I mean something broader than just the CEO or the top tier of managers:

A corporation has physical plant (like factories) and workers of various skill levels who have productive potential.  These physical and human assets are overlaid with what we generally shortcut as "management" but which includes not just the actual humans currently managing the company but the organization approach, the culture, the management processes, its systems, the traditions, its contracts, its unions, the intellectual property, etc. etc.  In fact, by calling all this summed together "management", we falsely create the impression that it can easily be changed out, by firing the overpaid bums and getting new smarter guys.  This is not the case - Just ask Ross Perot.  You could fire the top 20 guys at GM and replace them all with the consensus all-brilliant team and I still am not sure they could fix it.

Bankruptcy is a scary term, but here is what makes it beautiful -- it takes assets out of the hands of failed management, failed business plans, failed management cultures, etc. and puts those assets in the hands of new owners and managers.  These new owners and managers are not guaranteed to be better at managing the assets, but the odds are they will be since the performance bar set by the last management team is by definition so low (ie, they went bankrupt!)

When we interrupt the bankruptcy process and bail out a failing company, we do two things:

• We leave the productive assets of the company in the hands of the same failing management (again, with this term defined broadly as above) that got the company into the current straights, rather than putting the assets in the hands of new owners
• We focus the country's limited investment capital (via taxes or government borrowing that crowds out private borrowers) towards what are by definition among the worst managed institutions in the country.   If someone asked you to invest a billion dollars either in the top 10 most successful companies or the bottom 10 least successful, where would you put the money to create the most jobs and growth?  In the top 10, right?  But the government is doing EXACTLY the opposite.

Here is the true economic miracle of the 80's and 90's:  Not Reagan's tax cuts or Clinton's economic plan or Alan Greenspan in the Fed.  It was the fact that the government, with the American economy sweating under some very difficult conditions (worse than they are today, but you would never know it in the press) and under strong threats from Japan and Europe, basically did ... nothing.  There was all kinds of pressure to create an American MITI  (seriously, it seems like a joke today, but the push was strong).  We did not.  The American economy was allowed to restructure itself.

This is why our recessions tend to be shorter than those in Japan and Europe.  These other economies are generally more of a corporate state, with a major goal of the government to maintain the incumbents in the corporate world.   I would argue that the key determinants to recovering from a recession quickly are asset, capital, and labor mobility.  Japan has many structural limitations on these, and it dragged their recession out for years.  In the name of trying to avoid the problems Japan has faced, we are repeating the exact same mistakes.  Every step we have taken so far to deal with the "crisis" have reduced the asset, capital, and labor mobility the economy needs to right itself.

We will be posting on the stimulus bill for months and years, because it will take that long to figure out what was in it.  Congressman who voted for it may never know what they actually voted for.  Veronique de Rugy takes a first swing at it:

Total spending amounts to $792 billion, with $570 billion in direct spending and $212 billion in tax provisions. These numbers don't include the massive amount of interest that will accrue on the increased debt. If we include that, the total amount comes to $1.14 trillion.

Supporters of the package describe the legislation as transportation and infrastructure investment, the idea being to use new spending to put America back to work while at the same time fixing decrepit infrastructure. However, only 17 percent of the discretionary spending in this package is for infrastructure items. More worrisome still, the final version lacks any mechanism to ensure that spending will be targeted toward infrastructure projects with high economic returns

De Rugy actually overestimates the infrastructure spending, because she looks at the spending over 10 years.  Since the stimulative effect of infrastructure spending in this recession is, at most, limited to 2009-2010 spending, and since the infrastructure spending is more back-end loaded, the percentage is much lower in the first 2 years -- something like 6-7% as I calculated here (I will go back through the CBO reports with an update when I get a chance, but Kevin Drum links them here, hilariously saying they "scored well."

Unfortunately, even this seems to wildly underestimate the true cost of the bill.  In creating the bill, Congress increased the general operating funds for zillions of departments and programs  (remember, 80+% of the spending is departmental budget increases, not infrastructure construction).  However, they show these increasing disappearing after a couple of years.  We all know that Democrats consider removing an increase to be "a massive cut" so we can assume that at some point, these budget increases will be extended for eternity.  If one makes this more realistic assumption, then the cost of the stimulus bill is over $3 trillion!  [update:  Carpe Diem demonstrates this with a nice set of graphs]

My other project I am working on is to look at some of the "shovel ready" projects on the mayor's list here  (warning!  600 page pdf!!) in the Phoenix area.  My incoming hypothesis is that any project on here either:

1. Is not shovel ready, as it takes years to get a project through planning, procurement, and environmental permitting, but once anyone in DC finds that out, they won't take back the money, -OR-
2. Is something that the local residents, who will enjoy the benefit, refused to fund, raising the question as to why the rest of us should fund it.

I won't spill the beans yet, but here are a few tastes from the Phoenix area:

• A major upgrade to the water system of the town of Paradise Valley, a small community embedded in Phoenix which is, by a fairly good margin, the single wealthiest zip code in the state.
• A lot of solar.  Solar is a particularly good choice for this list because 1)  Obama has a hard-on for it, so he is unlikely to question it  2)  Solar's problem is high capital cost vs. the amount of electricity produced, but if someone else is paying the capital cost....

I don't have to explain to readers that I oppose the idea of government stimulus.   So I am loathe to argue about stimulus methodology, because I think one is just arguing over gradations of suck.

But if I were to discuss stimulus for employment, my first thought would be reducing the employer portion of FICA -- reduce the cost of employment, the quantity employed would likely go up  (of course, rather than doing this, the administration has done just the opposite, by requiring union shops on government contracts, effectively increasing the cost of employment).

My second thought was the SBA.  Most stats show that job creation is mainly in small businesses, and it appears to be small business credit that is impacted most for the 2008 banking crisis.  So, instead of sending more money to state governments; or welfare recipients; or large companies who have, by failing, proven themselves to have bad management or a bad business model or both  (none of whom are likely to be huge engines of private job creation).  Why not find a way to increase funding to small businesses?  Temporarily reduce the federal guarantee fee on SBA loans, provide tax credits for banks making such loans, something.

I called the SBA today.  They said they have no idea, just like the rest of us, what is in the bill.  Apparently there were a few incremental changes proposed, but nothing concrete.  The only specific proposal the SBA rep made was an early provision in the stimulus plan to raise the government gaurantee fee, which hardly seems like a way to promote small business credit.  It probably makes fiscal responsibility, but since when did the stimulus have anything to do with fiscal responsibility?

Ayn Rand had an image in Atlas Shrugged that has always stuck with me.  The government looter-weenies were likened to a guy standing on the roof of a boxcar on a speeding train, claiming to be in charge of the train's motion.  To extend the analogy further, a guy on top of a freight car (in Rand's day) only had the power to slow the train down (via the brake wheel on the car) but obviously had no ability to accelerate the train and had no relationship to the real motive force that drove the train.

The analogy has always been a powerful one for me in viewing Congresses and Presidents when they talk about the economy.  Claiming to be in charge of the economy, they have little power except to impede its progress.  And they have so little connection to the true motive force behind the economy, that it is clear they don't even comprehend its operation.

Which all leads me to wonder, is the rush to pass the stimulus bill based on a true perception of emergency, or is it driven more by the need to do something before the economy heals itself (which is the only way the economy every recovers).  Via Carpe Diem, the NY Fed model based upon year-ahead yield curves is predicting that we will be out of recession by the latter half of this year:

The home page for the NY fed model, including data, explanations, and its history is here.

Update: Here is a longer history of the metric.

From the WSJ, via Carpe Diem

Well, it looks as if the "stumulus" bill has passed, and its all over except for the conference committees (which will likely comprimise the House and Senate bills by adding a $100 billion or so).

There is just no way there can be a Keynesian muliplier above 1 for such spending.  Even if someone could show me a theoretical example crafted for a particular economic situation with the best of all governments, there is simply no way this real-world government is going to spend the money that well.   500 geniuses with perfect incentives couldn't do it, and certainly the folks in Congress are not geniuses and have far less-than-perfect incentives.

So you ask, will we get any stimulative effect?  I would answer:  Just one.  Obama and Congress will now shut the hell up trying to panic everyone into battening down the hatches for the worst economy in history, and folks can get a bit of breathing space to look around them and see that business opportunity is still there.  This is $800 billion in hush money, a bribe we are paying Obama and Pelosi in the form of passing a lot of their pent up leftish wish list, in return for them taking some ownership interest in real economic health.

Apparently, Obama is trumpeting victory because a company that will recieve a lot of the stimulus money will likely hire more people.

President Barack Obama says Caterpillar's chief executive has told him the company will rehire some laid-off workers if the stimulus bill passes.

The heavy equipment maker announced more than 22,000 job cuts last month as it scales back production amid the economic slowdown.

Seriously, do proponents of the stimulus really think that we opponents don't understand that individual projects funded by this new bill will employ people on the project?  I guess they do, because I had this very argument last night.  So, to clarify my position, I fully understand and comprehend that projects that get additional funding in the new bill will likely employ more people on that project than if they had not been funded by the bill.

The issue is that the $800 billion of "stimulus" comes from somewhere, in this case borrowing paid for by future taxes. At any point in time, there is only so much investment capital out there in the world.  So, the real question is not whether Caterpillar will hire more people if the government throws money its way. The real issue is who won't be hired somewhere else because $800 billion of investment capital that was going to be employed for some private purpose is now going to be spent by the government.

For those who are not confused about this, and want to discuss the multiplier, which is another way of asking how the net gains and losses described above balance, there is a good back and forth here.

One thing this country just seems incapable of considering -- it may be that there is simply nothing the government can do to make this recession better.  Everyone, from consumers to lenders, find themselves overleveraged and new spending is simply going to go down for a while until everyone feels comfortable with their reserves.  The only thing Obama has done so far is, by spreading panic, to increase the size of reserve everyone thinks they need (example here, and my analysis here)

Postscript: Obama's actions  of late are kind of funny.  He has been criticized for lacking experience and having only really demonstrated the ability to campaign well.  So, when things get tough and he starts to come in for some here-to-fore unprecedented criticism, he runs back to what he does best - campaign.

At what point do politicians bear some public accountability for their public statements and the effect those statements have on the economy?  I almost want to ask Obama and Pelosi -- what is the minimum size of pork-spending bill you will accept so we can just go ahead and pay the money and get you and your cohorts to shut the hell up on trying to convince everyone we are in the Great Depression.  Because, to some extent, such statements can be a self-fulfilling prophesy.  Seriously, the biggest stimulative effect of passing this stimulus bill will be, almost without doubt, that it will end the felt need for Washington weenies to create an atmosphere of panic.

Now, I suspect that I would have a different observation if I lived in Detroit, but I ask every business owner or manager I meet for the personal evidence they have of economic cataclysm.  Is their business down?  And in a surprising number of cases, I get the answer that their business is doing OK, but they are cutting back because surely the worst is soon to come, based on everything they see in the media.  And do you know what?  I have done exactly the same thing.  I had one bad month, but since then things have been pretty steady, but I am cutting like crazy anyway, because I can't ignore the only other information source I have on the economy, which are pronouncements in the media.

I strongly believe that public pronouncements of doom, starting last October with Henry Paulson and continuing now to almost daily excess by Obama (today's statement:  the economy is in a "virtual free fall") have measurably contributed to job losses in this country.  Many people who are on the street without a job today can probably trace their unemployment to "just in case" cuts made more in response to government assurances of doom as on actual declines in output.

I can't prove this, of course, but I will present one pretty good pointer that I might not be totally full of it.  With the January jobs report, the recent recession has become one of the five worst since WWII in terms of jobs losses as a percentage of the work force (I know you may, from reading the paper and listening to Obama, think it is the worst, but it is still only the fourth or fifth worst).  Let me compare the job losses and the output declines at this point in the recession for these 5 recessions:

As you can see, we have had far more job losses relative to output losses than any major post-war recession.  This does not mean that more output losses are not coming, but it means that, perhaps unique to this recession, job losses are preceding rather than following output losses -- in other words, job losses are occurring more than in any other recession based on the expectation of output losses, rather than in reaction to them.  I wonder who it is that is setting these expectations?

Wow, using panic to achieve political aims and in the process accelerating job losses.  And they say we libertarians are heartless!

Data updated by the Minn. Fed here.  They actually have job losses through 13 months, but I jused 12 months because there are only quarters for the output numbers.

Update: Via the Washington Times:

Just Friday, Mr. Obama said a report that 600,000 jobs were lost in January meant "it's getting worse, not getting better. ... Although we had a terrible year with respect to jobs last year, the problem is accelerating, not decelerating." Last week he said, "A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."

But he isn't the only Democrat ramping up the rhetoric while talking down the economy. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said last month that our economy "is dark, darker, darkest." Rep. David R. Obey of Wisconsin said, "This economy is in mortal danger of absolute collapse." And Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said of the economic-stimulus bill, "If we don't pass this thing, it's Armageddon."

Kevin Drum, quoting Joe Klein, hopes the press (which we know to be so terribly biased against leftish ideas and new government spending) doesn't smear Obama's economic plan like they did Clinton's.

I won't get into all that, but I want to ask a related question:  To what extent does current legislation actually represent an Obama plan at all?  Maybe the press coverage has been poor, but hasn't Obama really been forced to put a happy face on and accept the half-baked mess that comes out of Congress?  Hasn't Obama really taken the role as Majority Whip, trying to wrangle votes for an existing piece of legislation, rather than actually crafting its framework?

I would define one of the key aspects of Presidential leadership as bringing some adult supervision to Congress, and particularly his own party in Congress.  Bush CERTAINLY never was able or willing to do so, and I don't see evidence of Obama doing so either.  Congress is running amuck, and every week seems to add another $100 billion in random pork to the bill.  In content, my perception is that the stimulus bill is Nancy Pelosi's bill but Obama's blame.  Or am I missing something?  Has the Administration had more involvement in the crafting of this bill than it appears?

Update: Jane Hamsher at Huffpo (HT to a commenter) argues that my understanding above is a result of furious Administration spin:

The story of the morning seems to be that the Obama team is unhappy with Nancy Pelosi and the House committee chairs for delivering up such a liberal, pork-laden bill that they themselves really had nothing to do with.

"Anonymous staffers" are fanning out to fuel the fiction that "during the transition Summers, his deputy Jason Furman, and the White House's top Congressional liason, Phil Schiliro, laid out the broad principles they wanted the bill to adhere to, but when it came to actual content, they deferred to the chairmen."

Except that it's not true.  The Obama transition team has been working on the substance of the bill from day one.  Their first step was to go to the Association of Mayors, the National Governors' Associations and other non-congressional groups and say "give us all your shovel-ready projects."  That and other provisions written by the Obama team became the spine of the bill.  It went through only three committee markups, and moved through the House at lightening speed in a way that made many House chairs unhappy, with the notable exception of Dave Obey (now also under attack) who helped push it through quickly.

The House bill is notable not only for its size but also because it had no earmarks, which are the lifeblood of House members, the way they show their constituents what they're doing for them.  As one person knowledgable about the writing of the bill says, "if you're in the House why would you write a bill without earmarks unless you didn't write the bill?"

But with public opinion quickly turning against the bill, and the House Republicans claiming the moral high ground as they held formation to oppose him, how could Obama be distanced from responsibility for elements of the bill under GOP attack and remain above the fray?  That seemed to be the locus of White House concern, and according to those familiar with what happened, the "polarizing" Nancy Pelosi was designated to take the fall.

Interesting.  Well, I don't often comment on politics per se  (vs. actual proposals) because I am so naive about this stuff.  Hamsher could in turn be shilling for Pelosi.  I just don't know enough.

By the way Hamsher tends to imply that it is a good bill with bad PR.  Phhhth.  It is an awful bill, and I am willing to bet that I have read more of it and the CBO report than she.

Isn't this exactly the type of government policy that helped promote the housing bubble and in turn led to our current recession?

WASHINGTON (AP) "” The Senate voted Wednesday night to give a tax break of up to $15,000 to homebuyers in hopes of revitalizing the housing industry, a victory for Republicans eager to leave their mark on a mammoth economic stimulus bill at the heart of President Barack Obama's recovery plan.

Republicans:  We want to prove we can do stupid, populist sh*t too!

Update: Via TJIC, more hair of the dog:

Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance company under U.S. government control, will loosen rules for homeowners seeking to lower their loan payments by refinancing.

Fannie Mae will drop some credit-score requirements, reduce income-documentation standards and waive the need for appraisals in some cases"¦

Barack Obama, in the Washington Post:

By now, it's clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression

Sorry, maybe I am just cynical from having politicians call 8 of the last 3 recessions the worst economy since the Great Depression**, but I don't think this is the worst crisis since the 1930's.  It's not even the worst since I was born.  The late 70's were worse, the early 80's were worse, and from a financial/banking crisis point of view, the late 80's were worse.

What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives -- action that's swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis.

Actually what I have come to expect is arrogance, a desire to turn any crisis into increased power for Washington, and general incompetence.  So far, I have not been disapointed.

Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits.

OK, I will take that bet.  5 million more jobs with the base being the January employment numbers.

I won't get back into all the Keynsian arrogance in the rest of the piece -- suffice it to say that the overwhelming assumption is that the government can spend money more productively than can individuals.  But check out this economic jumble:

In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. They know that we have tried it those ways for too long. And because we have, our health-care costs still rise faster than inflation. Our dependence on foreign oil still threatens our economy and our security. Our children still study in schools that put them at a disadvantage. We've seen the tragic consequences when our bridges crumble and our levees fail.

Is he really implying that our economic problems were cause by use of fossil fuels, health care costs, aging bridges, and classrooms with out enough computers?  Why yes, he seems to be saying just that.  The rest of the piece is dedicated to just those things as a solution to the problem. Seriously, what does any of this have to do with a recession spurred by 1) banking liquidity crisis 2) loss of consumer new worth through falling home prices and 3) panicky statements by senior government officials.  The answer, of course, is nothing.   Basically Obama is pursuing the old "this crisis will be solved by all the piecemeal programs I was pushing before the crisis" argument.

I am sure there are folks who believe these things, if done well, might increase GDP 10 years from now, but is there anyone who really thinks this will create 3 million jobs in the next 18 months?  I am reminded of the old joke, how do you make a million dollars in real estate?  Start with 10 million.  In the same vein, how does the government create 3 million new jobs?  By destroying 5 million others.

By the way, speaking of bait and switch, these solutions Obama focuses on - health information, energy projects, school rebuilding, and highways - account for at most 6.5% of the total tax cuts and spending programmed by the stimulus bill for the first 2 years (34.1 of 525.5 billion, which is a bit outdated because it is based on a CBO report of last week, and has not kept up with the new pork added by Congress since then).

I just can't believe this guy actually represents change for people.  To me, he sounds like a total flashback of every politician from the 1970s, who used to flail around with just this type of rhetoric.  What's next, Whip Unemployment Now?

**Footnote I think I am going to try to trademark "Worst Economy Since the Great Depression" like Pat Riley trademarked "threepeat."  Or maybe just trademark "WESGD."  Here are a couple of past examples:

Clinton / Gore 1992: "Mr. Gore lambasted Mr. Bush for what he called 'the worst economic performance since the Great Depression'".  The US unemployment rate peaked around 7.8% in 1992 and was headed down towards the 6's by the time Clinton was inaugurated.   The 1991-1992 recession turned out to be one of the shortest on record.

John Kerry, 2004: "In his Sept. 2 speech in South Carolina, Kerry claimed the U.S. is suffering 'the greatest job loss since the Great Depression.'"  The 2004 unemployment rate peaked at 5.8% and was headed down into the fours during Bush's second term.  The 2003-4 recession was almost as short as the '92 recession.

For perspective, via Carpe Diem, initial jobless claims as a percentage of the labor force:

The CBO is out with its scoring of the stimulus bill (pdf).  Kevin Drum seems to think it refutes my statement that it would be impossible to have any kind of real infrastructure impact in the next 1-2 years.  Drum says:

Specifically, they estimate that in the spending portion of the bill, $477 billion out of $604 billion would be disbursed either this fiscal year or in the next two fiscal years. That's 79% of the total.

I guess opinions can vary on this, but that strikes me as pretty good. What's more, most of the spending that comes in FY2012 or later is either for projects that simply take more than two years to complete (highways, school repairs) or infrastructure improvements that have long-term paybacks (renewable energy programs). There are a few other items in the out years that are more arguable, but they add up to a pretty small portion of the bill.

This is correct on its face.  But here is the issue, and what drives me crazy about politicians and their enablers like Drum.  This is being sold as an infrastructure bill.  And even by Drum's admission, all the infrastructure spending is in the out years, well beyond any reasonable time frame for the recession.

Picking through the report, the "spending"  (I object to calling tax cuts "spending") in the next two years, the recession window, is mainly in these categories ( I get slightly different numbers than Drum)

• Tax cuts of $223.2 billion (lost revenue + outlays)
• Transfer payments $202.2 billion
  • Unemployment & Child Support:  $42.2 billion
  • Health Insurance Assistance:  $36.6 billion (lost revenue + outlays)
  • Medicaid: $76.9 billion
  • Food Assistance:  $10.8 billion
  • Health and Human Services (unspecified):  $14.9 billion
  • Employment and job training:  $2.9 billion
  • School/College loans:  $14.7 billion
  • Housing assistance:  $3.2 billion
• State government "stabilization":  $31.4 billion
• Defense:  $6.2 billion
• Other: $62.5 billion
  • Increase in department budgets  $28.4 billion (estimated, may be low)
  • Real infrastructure spending (mainly schools, federal buildings, highways, and other transit)  $26.7 billion (at most!)
  • Green energy / energy programs  $7.4 billion (at most!)

So do you see my point. The reason so much of this infrastructure bill can be spent in the next two years is that there is no infrastructure in it, at least in the first two years!  42% of the deficit impact in 2009/2010 is tax cuts, another 44% is in transfer payments to individuals and state governments.  1% is defense.  At least 5% seems to be just pumping up a number of budgets with no infrastructure impact (such as at Homeland Security).  And at most 6% is infrastructure and green energy.  I say at most because it is unclear if this stuff is really incremental, and much of this budget may be for planners and government departments rather than actual facilities on the ground.

So don't call this an infrastructure bill.  This is a tax cut and welfare bill, at least in 2010 and 2011.   I guess I can understand a rush to do things like the welfare pieces, but that would argue for splitting the bill, into an emergency transfer payment appropriation and a infrastructure appropriation that can be studied and debated in more depth.

But that is never going to happen, because what we see is a unique kind of political synergy.  The bundling of these two very difference spending streams gives yields two political advantages:

1. The infrastructure piece, despite being less than 10% of the bill, allows politicians to call this "investment" and "green energy" and "infrastructure" which sell better with sections of the public than "welfare" and "transfer payments."  The minority infrastructure pieces allow Congress and Obama to call the bill new and forward looking, rather than the imitation of 1970s legislation that it really is.
2. The emergency pieces of the bill allow politicians to stuff numerous bureaucracy increases and pork spending into the bill that would not stand up to scrutiny.  Despite the fact that much of this spending will not occur for years, they can keep saying "rush, emergency, hurry" to deflect scrutiny and criticism.

Update: The National Review has a lot more detail here.

From the AZ Republic:

The owner of a glass company accused of a $132,000 scheme to smash Scottsdale school bus windows and profit from the repairs has been indicted.

A Maricopa County grand jury returned the Jan. 22 indictment against Troy Jason Vollberg, 34, who was arrested Friday by Scottsdale police....

documents accuse Vollberg, owner of Tri-State Glass, of being the mastermind behind an effort nearly two years ago to bilk the Scottsdale Unified School District out of hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace broken bus windshields.

Investigators claim Vollberg paid Scott Sloan $5,000 to find a person to knock out the glass, and then paid Mike Olivares $15,000 in April 2007 to break out the front windshields of 70 school buses in a Scottsdale bus yard.

Vollberg, whose company was a subcontractor for the school district, charged the district $134,000 to repair the windshields.

Police documents say Vollberg pocketed the money and used it for a "trip to Las Vegas and new tires for his truck."

Arrested for acting on the broken windows fallacy!  If only we could do the same with the Congressional authors of the stimulus bill.

From the WSJ, via TJIC:

The stimulus bill currently steaming through Congress looks like a legislative freight train, but given last week's analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, it is more accurate to think of it as a time machine. That may be the only way to explain how spending on public works in 2011 and beyond will help the economy today.

According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, a mere $26 billion of the House stimulus bill's $355 billion in new spending would actually be spent in the current fiscal year, and just $110 billion would be spent by the end of 2010. This is highly embarrassing given that Congress's justification for passing this bill so urgently is to help the economy right now, if not sooner.

And the red Congressional faces must be very red indeed, because CBO's analysis has since vanished into thin air after having been posted early last week on the Appropriations Committee Web site. Officially, the committee says this is because the estimates have been superseded as the legislation has moved through committee. No doubt.

In addition to suppressing the CBO analysis, Democrats have derided it. Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D., Wis.) called it "off the wall," never mind that CBO is now run by Democrats. Mr. Obey also suggested that it would be a mistake to debate the stimulus "until the cows come home." We'd settle for a month or two, so at least the voters can inspect the various Congressional cattle they're buying with that $355 billion.

The reason this is so was explained by yours truly last week.  In short:

A year from now, any truly new incremental project in the stimulus bill will still be sitting on some planners desk with unfinished environmental impact assessments, the subject of arguments between multiple government agencies, tied up in court with environmental or NIMBY challenges, snarled in zoning fights, subject to conflicts between state, county, and city governments, or all of the above.  Most of the money will have been spent by planners, bureaucrats, and lawyers, with little to show for in actual facilities.