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Moral Hazard

The Daily Reckoning

Paris, France

Friday, 10 January 2003

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*** Growth target reduced...U.S. has lost "decisive
momentum."

*** Reverse mortgages...How to play this new bull
market...not so fast...

*** How far are we from the bottom? Homeless people
freeze...and more!

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The U.N. has revised its world growth estimate for 2003,
says yesterday's news. It's expecting 2.75% growth.

Not too bad. It would be better, says the U.N. report but,
alas, the U.S. economy is "without decisive momentum.'

The decisive momentum in America has long been supplied by
consumers. For the last 5 decades, they just kept spending
their little derrieres off. Consumer spending as a
percentage of the economy has steadily increased...to 70%,
the highest ever. But lately, consumers can't seem to make
up their minds. Should they spend...or save? Buy or sell?
Laugh or cry? Consumer credit fell in November by $2.2
billion...the first time it has done that in 5 years. And
then came the "worst holiday shopping season in 30 years".

What if the American consumer suddenly decides he's bought
enough...spent enough...borrowed enough...and, generally,
had enough?

This is the whole world's worry. "Now is no time for
restrictive budgets," said France's president Jacques
Chirac, voicing an opinion that could have come from almost
any government official of any country in the world. Every
central bank is inflating...every government is providing
'fiscal stimulus'. And everyone is counting on the American
consumer to continue spending.

"He can't keep it up forever," we point out. As a consumer
economy ages...it takes more and more stimulation to
produce anything. In 2001, for example, it took $65 worth
of new debt for every single dollar of extra output.

Consumers are aging, too. And getting a little desperate.
The Kansas City Star reports that 'reverse mortgages' are
catching on among retired people. Instead of giving up
equity little by little by repeated refinancing, the
reverse mortgage allows them to get rid of all the
remaining equity...and get paid out over time.

The consumer ought to grow cautious...sell a few
shares...buy a little gold...and pay down his debts. Maybe
this will be the year he does so.

But let's see what happened on Wall Street. Eric?

------------

Eric Fry, checking in from the Big Apple...

- The bulls will not be denied their January rally...and
who are we to deny them their momentary respite? We would
sooner deny a condemned man his last cigarette. As the
"buy" orders poured into the NYSE yesterday, the Dow soared
181 points to 8,776. The Nasdaq jumped 31 points to 1,076.

- Meanwhile, bonds tumbled and gold rested. The 10-year
Treasury note dropped sharply yesterday, driving its yield
up to 4.16% from 3.98% on Wednesday. Maybe the President's
$687 billion spending plan isn't such a great thing for
bondholders after all. Gold slipped 60 cents to $353.70 an
ounce.

- It is no secret that the Daily Reckoning teams on both
sides of the Atlantic believe that gold ought to rise and
that the dollar ought to fall. One big reason the dollar
ought to continue weakening is that investing in U.S.
assets is no longer as pleasant an experience as it used to
be.

- Throughout the 1990s, the U.S. stock market was a sort of
financial geisha to foreign capital. The market was so
hospitable that foreign capital all but refused to leave.
But these days, the geisha is a gangster. The moment
foreign capital steps foot on our shores, it is accosted by
falling asset values denominated in a depreciating
currency. This inhospitable treatment seems to be
frightening foreign capital already, as evidenced by the
dollar's steep decline against the euro over the last 12
months. We should not be surprised if many more foreign
investors begin to pack up their valises and head home.

- "From across the seas," Jim Grant explains, "America is
perceived as a hegemonic power or, alternatively, as the
Great Satan. It is also seen as a kind of growth stock.
What growing enterprises do, in the course of growing, is
finance themselves, and the world is (or has been) more
than willing to lend and invest in the 50 states. However,
there are signs of a change in these perceptions and
proclivities. More and more, foreign dollars are finding
their way into government obligations instead of into the
kind of business investment that contributes to growth."

- At least SOME money is still flowing our way. That's the
good news. The bad news is that a T-bond is much easier to
sell than a factory. So if/as/when foreigners decide to
head for the exits, they'll be able to do so instantly, by
selling their vast holdings of bonds and stocks. The
dollar's fate - more than ever - rests in the hands of
foreign investors...

- "After nearly three years of doom and gloom, we as much
as anyone would like to believe that tech spending will
improve in earnest this year," writes Mark Veverka of
Barron's. "But we can't. The evidence simply isn't there to
support the notion that corporate buyers are ready to load
up on new hardware, software and services."

- Veverka cites the findings of a recent Goldman Sachs
information-technology (IT) spending survey. According to
the survey, IT spending will be bad in 2003...really,
really bad. "Contrary to reports of stabilizing IT spending
and investor optimism heading into 2003," Goldman's report
observes, "our latest survey (which was conducted prior to
the holidays in December) shows worsening across the board,
with some of our indicators hitting new lows and a bias
toward an expectation of further tightening."

- Specifically, the survey reveals that IT spending is
likely to FALL in 2003. That's a first. "Remember," writes
Veverka, "this is an industry that was used to seeing 14%
annual hikes in corporate IT spending during the boom...Now
respondents to the survey say they expect to spend LESS in
2003 than the year before."

- More worrisome, key components of the Goldman survey are
deteriorating rapidly. "For example, the percentage of
Goldman's respondents in December who expected spending to
decline swelled to 37%, from 23% in October and 16% in
August. In fact, the Goldman analysts say they have never
seen a more dramatic swing in their annual weighted survey
than the most recent one."

- Notwithstanding the grim IT-spending outlook anticipated
by the folks who actually do the spending (or not), Wall
Street analysts expect a recovery in the sector, as they
always do.

- Last week, a couple analysts from Deutsche Bank
Securities upped their earnings estimates for several
semiconductor companies. In a classic example of what
passes for research on Wall Street, the two analysts urged
their clients to buy stocks like Applied Materials and
Novellus Systems - not because sales will be improving in
2003, but only because the analysts expect the valuation
multiples on the stocks to fatten up a bit. Specifically,
they predict that Novellus will trade higher from its
current valuation of two and a half times book value to a
more opulent valuation of three and a half times book
value. For the record, NVLS is also selling for a rich 64
times estimated 2003 earnings.

- In earlier financial epochs, two and a half times book
value and 64 times forward earnings did not constitute
"compelling value." We can think of no reason why the
current epoch ought to be any different.

--------------

Back in Paris...

*** Jeremy Siegel, author of Stocks for the Long Run, is on
the front cover of this month's Worth magazine, promising
to tell us "How to Play the Next Bull Market."

We don't know, of course, but Siegel may be getting ahead
of himself. After stocks crashed in '29, investors thought
they were pretty safe buying 4 years later. Surely, stocks
had found the bottom. But, "it took another 8 years,
several bear markets, and then a war," explains Ray DeVoe,
"before the stock market really took off."

After the boom of the '60s, it took a long time again
before another bull market began...and even longer for
investors to take an interest in it. "From November '71
through October '79, investors made net withdrawals from
equity funds in every month but one," DeVoe points out.
"Not until November 1981 were there two consecutive months
of net inflows - even thought the S&P rose five of the six
years from '75 to through '80."

*** How far are we from 'the bottom?' Currently, Barron's
calculates the P/E of the S&P 500 at 34. The dividend yield
is 1.7% and the S&P sells for 4.2 times book value. Looking
at 14 cyclical bottoms (not big, bad bear bottoms such as
the one we're likely to have this time), ISI found that the
highest P/E of any of them was 16.3 in the fall of 1960.
The lowest dividend yield was 3.4% in October 1987. And the
highest price to book was 2.24 times, in October 1990. By
every measure, today's stocks are nearly twice as high as
the highest bear market lows ever recorded.

*** Today's Figaro reports that 4 'homeless' people have
died in Paris from exposure to cold since temperatures
dropped on Saturday. It might have said that 4 bums were
too drunk to come in from the cold...or 4 lunatics were too
crazy to do so. But this is the Age of Crowds...wherein
people no longer get what they deserve...but what society
gives them. More below...

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----------------------

The Daily Reckoning PRESENTS: The omnipresence of moral
hazard...and why man, unlike the fabled Homo Economicus,
cannot resist it.


MORAL HAZARD
by Bill Bonner


"We cannot guarantee success, but we can deserve it."

- George Washington


In a small town in the Midwest, a man would have to sneak
around, under the eyes of his neighbors, in order to get up
to something. Then, word would get around...and soon the
whole thing would be over.

But here in Paris, there are moral hazards on every street
corner, which is what we like about the place. Here, a man
can get into trouble and stay there for a long time before
it catches up to him. And if he has no vice when he arrived
in town, he can pick one up quickly and develop it into a
life-long companion.

After work, your editor could sit down at the Paradis, have
a few drinks and a cigarette, and then wander over to the
rue St. Denis and enjoy himself with Brigitte or Fran?oise
for a modest outlay.

If he were more ambitious about his vices, he could take up
gambling...stock market speculating...or even theft. He
might begin picking pockets on the metro and work his way
up...first to robbing his partners or defrauding
investors...and then, on to the big time, he could go into
politics.

There is a certain rhythm to moral hazards. Whether petty
or great, all are exhilarating at the beginning...and
heartbreaking at the end. For there is always a price to
pay.

"All the universe is moral," wrote Emerson early in the
19th century. Now, no one believes it...except us.

And yet, the cycle is same for market booms, empires, and
even an individual life. What tickles the fancy so much at
the d,but, saddens it at the finale.

"Whatever your weakness," says Richard Russell, "the market
will find it."

Greedy investors wait too long to sell - and lose their
money. Fear keeps others from ever buying in the first
place. Laziness gets others - who fail to do their homework
and get carried along by mob sentiments into buying the
most popular stocks at their most absurd prices.

"I ought to have sold at the top," says the one. "I ought
to have bought at the bottom," says the other. "I ought to
have looked at the balance sheet," says the third. "I ought
not to have drunk that last bottle," says the fifth.

But modern economists act as if the story had no moral...as
if there were no 'oughts.' Everything happens according to
cause and effect, they believe.

There is no such thing as a stock that is too expensive or
too cheap, they say...because the stock market is perfect.
It finds the exactly ideal price every minute of every day.

There is no such thing as moral failing either. A man
cannot be faulted for buying a stock at its perfect price.

And prices would be perfect, if the man were the man that
economists think he is. In their minds, man is a rational,
profit-optimizing machine. That is, he is unlike any man
anyone ever met...he is Homo Economicus...the mythical
creature of economists' imaginations...always making the
right decision after carefully weighing the available
information.

Real men rarely weigh anything carefully - except perhaps
sirloin steaks when they buy them by the pound. Many never
met a moral hazard that they didn't like.

And when they participate in collective undertakings - such
as politics, war, football games or stock market booms -
they immediately become even bigger boobs, making fools of
themselves as regularly as faucet drips.

Economists then imagine that the economy functions as a
sort of machine, too - with Homo Economicus popping up and
down like valve lifters. No moral hazards present
themselves...for a machine is as inert to larceny as it is
to a short skirt.

You can put a pack of cards or a fifth of whiskey in front
of a machine, come back an hour later, and the machine
still won't have touched them. Not so a human being. All he
needs is an opportunity, and he's on his way to Hell!

The term 'moral hazard' has a special meaning as well as a
general one.

"The idea is simple," explains Jeffrey Tucker in an article
published by the Mises Institute in December of 1998, "If
you are continually willing to protect people from the
consequences of their own errors, your benevolence will be
factored into the future decisions of the persons rescued.
In the long run, they will make even more errors. The
principle exists at all levels. The teacher who changes
grades when students plead hardship isn't helping in the
long run. The teacher is rewarding and thereby encouraging
poor study habits. He is creating moral hazard."

The new, collectivized world of the late 20th century was
full of accommodating teachers and forgiving wives.
Investors paid too much for stocks. Businesses and
consumers borrowed too much. And the whole world seemed to
believe what couldn't be true - that the dollar was more
valuable than gold. For nearly 20 years, gold went down
while the dollar went up.

Gold ought to have gone up. Since the beginning of Alan
Greenspan's term, the Monetary Base has almost tripled. In
the most recent few years of Mr. Greenspan's term, short-
term interest rates have been driven down to barely a fifth
of what they were two years ago.

"[L]owering rates or providing ample liquidity when
problems materialize, but not raising them as imbalances
build up, can be rather insidious in the longer run,"
concedes a working paper from the Bank of International
Settlements. "They promote a form of moral hazard that can
sow the seeds of instability and of costly fluctuations in
the real economy."

By the beginning of 2003, there were an estimated $9
trillion of U.S. dollar assets in foreign hands...and three
times as many in circulation as there had been in 1987. The
hazards had never been greater...nor ever so hard to see...

More Monday...

Bill Bonner

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