作者：Walden Bello文章發於：烏有之鄉
更新時間：2008-11-30 福蜀濤譯
《海峽評論》
週二飛進紐約，我有種兩年前抵達貝魯特那種進入戰區的感覺，當時正值以色列轟炸貝魯特的高峰。
看到我是教政治經濟學的，海關即發表議論道：「哇，你們這行的，現在要改寫那些教科書了？」
巴士司機用這樣的言語歡迎乘客：「女士們先生們，紐約還是紐約，但華爾街像貿易雙塔一樣不見了。」
通常輕鬆的電視晨間節目似乎也不得不以壞消息開場，有位主持人把這一昏暗場面歸罪「貪得無饜的華爾街大亨。」
這個大都會受到震撼，過去兩週的驚天動地事，許多人還無法理解其意義。
☆美國眾院否決布希總統七千億援救瀕臨破產金融機構議案後，投資人一片恐慌，9月29日，第二個黑色星期一，華爾街股價大跌778點，上兆美元的資金化為煙雲。
☆美國史上最大的銀行破產案，即最大的存貸機構華盛頓互惠銀行（Washington Mutual）破產，接著是華爾街最著名投資銀行之一的雷曼兄弟公司的崩盤。
☆華爾街馬上轉歸國營，與金融相關的戰略決策，全由美國聯邦儲備局(fed，「聯儲局」)與財政部下達，其中包括援救「美國國際集團」(AIG)，擺在眼前驚人的事實是美國政府在經營全球最大的保險公司。
去年十月以來，整個市場中超過五兆美元的資金蒸發了，其中一兆多美元為華爾街巨擘的資金。
通常的說法已不足以解釋這樣的局面，非常的情況得有非常的說法。不過首先要問……
否極泰來了嗎？
沒有，過去一周兩個極端行動－－一方面任由雷曼兄弟與華盛頓互惠銀行到閉，另一方面接管「美國國際集團」－－如有任何意義，不過說明面對危機時當局沒有任何戰略，只是像消防隊一樣，哪裡有火到哪裡滅火。
七千億美元買下銀行房貸債券不是什麼策略，只是拚命提振大家對這個體系的信心，防止對銀行與金融體系的信任瓦解，阻住銀行客戶潰散，以防引發1929年的「大蕭條」。
什麼造成全球資本主義中樞的崩潰？是貪婪嗎？
通常所謂的貪婪有一定影響。年年在瑞士阿爾卑斯搞全球菁英嘉年華的世界經濟論壇創始人兼執行主席施瓦布（Klaus Schwab），年初在達沃斯(Davos)對與會捧場人士說：「我們必須為過去的罪惡付出代價。」言下正有此意。
是華爾街聰明反被聰明誤？
確實如此。金融投機客自恃聰明，搞出越來越複雜的金融合約，像證券化後從各式風險中獲利的衍生商品，包括極不穩定期貨工具，如「信用違約掉 期」(credit default swap， CDS，債券市場中最常見的信用衍生商品。)說穿了，就是賭銀行的公司債務人無力償債，這一不受監管的幾兆美元交易，正是搞垮「美國國際集團」的交易。
2005年12月17日，《國際金融評論》宣布2005年度最佳銀行(證券業最負盛名的獎項)時這樣說：「(雷曼兄弟)不僅在各個銀行領域有業務，同時率 先進入熱門領域……開發新產品，針對債務人的需求調整交易形式……雷曼兄弟在熱門領域最有創意，行事方式別處看也看不到。」
對此，我不予置評。
是缺少監管嗎？
沒錯，每個人現在都承認華爾街創新與規畫越來越複雜金融工具的能力，遠遠超過政府的監管能力，不是政府無力監管，而是新自由主義與放任態度當道， 政府無力設計有效的機制加以監管。金融衍生商品的大規模交易從旁引發這次危機，而美國國會2000年通過立法，同意金融衍生商品交易不受「證券交易委員 會」監管時就埋下危機的因子。
難道不是有更多的狀況？體系上的問題？
預見危機的索羅斯（George Soros)指出，我們目前遭遇到的是「全球資本主義體系……」「大循環體系」的危機。
把這位死硬投機客的看法加以闡釋，我們看到的是全球資本主義矛盾或真正危機之一的加劇，那就是生產過剩的危機，也就是所謂的資本累積過剩與產能過剩的危機。
資本主義一向就要建立最大的生產力，而由於社會的貧富差距限制了人們的購買力，生產力遠超過人們的消費力。利潤因此減少。
然而生產過剩的危機與最近發生的事情有關係嗎？
關係可多了。不過要了解這層關係，我們必須回溯到所謂當代資本主義的黃金時代，即1945至1975年。
這段期間，不管是先進或低度開發的經濟體，都有高速的成長。這一部份要歸因二次世界大戰大規模破壞後歐洲與東亞的重建，一部份要歸因新的社會經濟 型態，即新凱因斯式國家的型態。後者的關鍵在國家控管市場活動，積極運用財政與貨幣政策把通膨與衰退維持在最小程度內，另外就是維持相對較高的工資，刺激 並維繫住需求。
那麼哪裡出了問題？
1970年代中期，高速成長的時期結束，先進經濟體為停滯膨脹(滯脹)即低成長高通膨所困，這是不該在新古典經濟學中出現的。
滯脹好歹只是更深層原因的表相：德國與日本的重建，新興工業經濟體如巴西、台灣、南韓的快速成長又帶來龐大的新生產力，加劇了全球的競爭，同時一國國內和國與國間的貧富不均限制了購買力與需求的成長，因而降低了利潤。情況因1970年代油價大漲益形惡化。
資本主義如何設法解決生產過剩危機？
資本從三個方面試圖避開生產過剩難題：重建新自由經濟，全球化與金融化。
重建新自由經濟是怎麼一回事？
重建新自由經濟在北半球是雷根主義與柴契爾主義，在南半球是結構調整。目標是激出資本積累，要達成這樣的目標需(一)取消政府對資本與財富的成長、運用及流通的限制，(二)將所得由窮人及中產階級那兒重新分配給富人，理由是這樣會刺激富人投資，因而帶動經濟成長。
這一公式的問題在：把收入重新分配給富人，這樣就掏空窮人與中產階級的收入，因而抑制了需求，不見得就一定會引誘富人投資到生產上。事實上，富人是把他們新增的財富拿去投機。
實際上，在北半球南半球普遍接受新自由主義的1980與90年代，就成長率而言紀錄並不好：90年代全球平均成長1.1%，80年代1.4%，相形之下，政府乾預政策盛行的60與70年代分別還有3.5%與2.4%的成長率。新自由經濟無法擺脫滯脹。
全球化如何給用來對付危機？
全球資本對付滯脹的第二條途徑是「全面的積累」，即全球化，也就是將半資本主義、非資本主義或前資本主義地區快速整合到全球市場經濟中來。著名的 德國前衛經濟學家羅莎．盧森堡(Rosa Luxemburg)很早就指出這是提高大都會經濟體利潤率所必須。如何做？就得靠廉價勞工，靠有限的新市場，靠新出現的廉價農工源料，還要靠可以拿來投 資基本建設的處女地。透過貿易自由化，透過拆除全球資本流動的障礙，透過取消海外投資的限制，整合的目標達成了。
過去25年來，中國當然是非資本主義地區給整合到全球資本主義經濟中最顯著的一個例子。
應付利潤的下滑，《財富》500大名單中有不少公司把大部份作業移到中國，利用所謂的「中國價格」，即從中國似乎不虞匱乏的廉價勞工取得的成本優勢。 21世紀第一個十年的中期，美國公司約40-50%的利潤係因海外作業與銷售而來，其中主要來自中國。
全球化為何沒有壓制住危機？
這條避開滯脹的途徑，其問題仍在加深了生產過剩情形，原因是它增加了生產力。過去25年，中國的製造能力大幅提高，這對價格與利潤發生遞減效果。 果然到1997年左右，美國公司的利潤停止增長。另據經濟學家歐哈拉(Philip O'Hara)的指數，《財富》500大的獲利率從1960-69的7.15%減到1980-90的5.30%，到1990-99的2.29%，再減到 2000-02的1.32%。
金融化能解決危機？
對付生產過剩造成的結果，新自由經濟與全球化的效果都有限，為維持並提高獲利，第三條途徑就至關緊要：金融化。
在新古典經濟學的理想世界中，金融體係是一種機制，透過這一機制把存戶、擁有多餘資金者跟需要他們的資金來投資生產的企業家結合。而在近代資本主 義的實際世界中，由於生產過剩致使投資工業農業的利潤降低，大量游離過剩資金給投資並再投資到金融部門，即金融部門自己投資自己。
結果日益呈現兩塊領域，一塊是極為活絡的金融經濟，一塊是停滯的實體經濟。正如一位金融業的執行長指出的，「過去這些年，金融經濟與實體經濟越行越遠。實體經濟有成長……，但怎麼也不能與金融經濟的成長相提並論……直到金融經濟爆掉。」
這位觀察家沒有告訴我們的是，實體經濟與金融經濟脫鉤不是偶然的－－崩掉的金融經濟正是為了解決實體經濟生產過剩所帶來的滯脹。
金融化這一途徑有什麼樣的問題？
投資金融部門的作業無異在既有價值中再擠出一點價值。誠然它可能創造點利潤，但它不能創造新的價值－－唯工業、農業、貿易、服務業能創造新價值。
由於利潤不是來自實際創造的價值，投資變得非常不穩定，股票、債券與其他各式各樣的投資工具，其價格可以遠遠超出實際價值，舉一路上揚的網路公司股票為例，主要係因其在金融上面高估而上揚，然後就崩掉。
利潤端賴脫離商品價值而一路上漲的價格，只要算準時機，在現實逼得非來一次「校正」前售出即可獲利，所謂「校正」就是跌回商品實際價值。
一項資產的價格高漲而遠遠超出其實際價值時，就是所謂泡沫形成的時候。
為何金融化會如此的不穩定？
獲利率全看投機，金融部門從一個泡沫移到另一個泡沫，從一個瘋狂投機到另一個瘋狂投機，一點也不奇怪。
因為是由瘋狂投機帶動，自1980年代資本市場自由化而不受監管後，金融驅動的資本主義經歷約百次的金融危機。
這次華爾街崩盤之前，著名的危機有1994-95墨西哥金融危機，1997-98亞洲金融危機，1996俄羅斯金融危機，2001年華爾街股市狂跌，以及2002年阿根廷金融危機。
克林頓主政時期的財政部長魯賓(Robert Rubin)五年前預言，「金融危機勢不可免，可能更為嚴重。」
泡沫如何形成、成長、爆掉？
先容我們以1997-98的亞洲金融危機為例。
首先在國際貨幣基金(IMF)與美國財政部鼓勵下，開立資本帳戶並開放金融自由；
接著短時間內追求高額利潤的海外基金湧入，高獲利意味基金只會投向不動產和股市；
過度投資導致股價與不動產價格大跌，導致基金恐慌性撤離－－1997年不到幾星期就有一千億美元撤離東亞經濟體；
IMF緊急援救海外投機客；
實體經濟崩盤－－1998年全東亞經濟的蕭條。
儘管出現普遍的不穩定，各國與全球管控資本體系的努力仍遭到反對，多半系基於意識型態的反對。
再來看看目前的泡沫。它怎麼形成的？
目前華爾街崩盤的根源在1990年代的科技泡沫，當時網路公司股價飆升後崩盤，結果造成七兆美元的損失和2001-02年的衰退。
「聯儲局」在格林斯潘任主席時的寬鬆貨幣政策助長科技泡沫，而當美國陷入衰退，為防長期衰退，格林斯潘在2003年6月把基本利率調到45年來的最低點1% ，並維持這樣的利率一年。這又助長另一個泡沫：不動產泡沫。
早在2002年初，「經濟政策研究中心」的前衛經濟學家貝克(Dean Baker)就警告有不動產泡沫。然而遲至2005年，時任「經濟顧問協會」主席的「聯儲局」主席柏南克(Ben Bernanke)仍將美國房價上揚歸因於「強勁的基本面」而非投機。 2007年夏天次貸危機爆發，他完全不知所措也就不足為怪了。
它如何成長的？
聽聽一位主要市場玩家索羅斯的現身說法：「房貸機構鼓勵抵押權債權人把抵押權再押出去，提走多出的金額。他們降低借貸標準，推出新產品，像可調整 抵押貸款，『只付利息』抵押貸款，以及一種超低的『先期優惠利率』。房價以兩位數字開始成長，這又增強在房地產上的投機。投機性增強，房價跟著上漲，屋主 以為自己有錢了；結果消費激增，維繫住最近幾年的經濟。」
再仔細看看這一過程，次貸危機不是供應大過實際的需求。 「需求」多半是開發商與金融商在拚命投機中營造出來，他們要從過去十年充斥美國的海外資金中攫取最大利潤，其中許多資金來自亞洲。高額的抵押與其他方式的 貸款給了數百萬無力負擔的人，讓他們以很低的「先期優惠」利率支付，然後再調高利率，由接手屋主繼續償付。
然而次貸玩不下去後怎麼會變成這麼大一個問題？
因為這些資產當時與其他資產一起由第一手抵押債權人「證券化」後成了複雜的衍生商品，叫做「擔保債務憑證」（collateralized debt obligations, CDOs），與第一手抵押債權人一起工作的有不同層次的中間人，他們把風險說的很低，盡快的把這一產品倒給其他銀行與機構投資者。這些機構再倒給其他銀行 與海外金融機構。他們的想法是趕快銷售，賺進豐厚利潤，而把風險塞給整條線上的買家。
當次貸、可調整抵押貸款及其他房貸的利率上調時，遊戲就玩不下去了。據索羅斯的估計，未償次級房貸有六百萬件，其中40%在今後兩年可能無法履行債務。
而在未來幾年中，可調整抵押貸款與其他「彈性貸款」會有五百萬件無法履行債務。像病毒一樣，價值數兆美元的證券(「擔保債務憑證」)早已給注入全球金融體系。全球資本主義龐大的循環系統已遭致命感染。
華爾街巨擘又怎麼會像骨牌一樣垮掉呢？
對雷曼兄弟、美林、房利美(Fannie Mae)、房地美(Freddie Mac)與貝爾斯登(Bear Stearns)而言，這些病毒證券所值遠超過他們擁有的資金而把他們拖垮。還有更多公司，一旦帳簿經校正而浮出他們擁有多少這類資產時也會倒閉(因為不 少這類持股都「不在收支帳上」)。
當其他像信用卡與各式各樣風險保險等投機活動一旦被卡住時，應還有許多公司會加入他們的倒閉行列。 「美國國際集團」大肆涉入無人監管的「信用違約掉期」領域而倒地，「信用違約掉期」這種金融衍生商品就是讓投資人去賭一家公司無法履行債務的可能性，這個 完全不受監管的「信用違約掉期」市場已大到有45兆美元規模，比美國政府公債市場大上五倍多。 「美國國際集團」一垮，這龐大的資產馬上出問題，這才是逼得華府改變主意，讓雷曼兄弟倒而救「美國國際集團」的原因。
現在會發生什麼事？
我們大可這樣說，會有更多的破產事件與政府接管，而外國的銀行與機構的命運也會跟他們美國同行一樣；華爾街的崩盤會加深並延長美國的衰退；而在亞洲與其他地方，就算不會更糟，美國的衰退至少會帶給他們衰退。
所以會有上面的說法，是因為中國主要出口市場是美國。中國從日本、南韓與東南亞進口原料與半製成品供出口美國的產品之用。全球化使大家不可能「分開」。美國、中國與東南亞像三個人犯一樣都給煉在一起了。
總而言之……？
華爾街的崩盤不光是貪婪或政府未對一個活絡部門進行監管造成。它的源頭在生產過剩的危機，1970年代中期以來，這一危機拖累全球資本主義。
投資活動的金融化是擺脫滯脹的一條途徑，另外兩途徑是重建新自由經濟與全球化。重建新自由經濟與全球化的效果有限，金融化就成了提高獲利率最具吸 引力的機制。然而金融化經證實是條危險途徑，它導致投機泡沫，投機泡沫只為少數人帶來短暫的榮景，最後以公司倒閉、實體經濟衰退告終。
關鍵問題在：這次衰退有多深、多長？美國經濟是否需要另一個投機泡沫救它出衰退？果然這樣，那下一個泡沫在何處形成？有人說在軍工複合體，也有如 克蕾恩 Naomi Klein，(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/aug/30 /comment.hurricanekatrina)所說在「資本主義災難復合體」 （disaster capitalism complex，指巨大災難帶來的投資機會，如美國紐奧良發生的卡翠納颶風），不過那是另一道題目了。
(原題：A Primer on Wall Street Meltdown；作者Walden Bello現任「免除債務聯盟」主席，菲律賓大學社會系教授。原文10月2日刊
http://opinion.inquirer.net /viewpoints/columns/view_article.php ?article_id=163889)
Many on Wall Street and the rest of us are still digesting the momentous events of the last 10 days. Between one and three trillion dollars worth of financial assets have evaporated. Wall Street has been effectively nationalized. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department are making all the major strategic decisions in the financial sector and, with the rescue of the American International Group (AIG), the U.S. government now runs the world’s biggest insurance company. At $700 billion, the biggest bailout since the Great Depression is being desperately cobbled together to save the global financial system.
The usual explanations no longer suffice. Extraordinary events demand extraordinary explanations. But first…
Is the worst over?
No. If anything is clear from the contradictory moves of the last week — allowing Lehman Brothers to collapse while taking over AIG, and engineering Bank of America’s takeover of Merrill Lynch — there’s no strategy to deal with the crisis, just tactical responses. It’s like the fire department’s response to a conflagration.
The $700 billion buyout of banks’ bad mortgaged-backed securities is mainly a desperate effort to shore up confidence in the system, preventing the erosion of trust in the banks and other financial institutions and avoiding a massive bank run such as the one that triggered the Great Depression of 1929.
Did greed cause the collapse of global capitalism’s nerve center?
Good old-fashioned greed certainly played a part. This is what Klaus Schwab, the organizer of the World Economic Forum, the yearly global elite jamboree in the Swiss Alps, meant when he said in an interview earlier this year: “We have to pay for the sins of the past.”
Was this a case of Wall Street outsmarting itself?
Definitely. Financial speculators outsmarted themselves by creating more and more complex financial contracts like derivatives that would securitize and make money from all forms of risk — including such exotic futures instruments as “credit default swaps” that enable investors to bet on the odds that the banks’ own corporate borrowers would not be able to pay their debts! This is the unregulated multi-trillion dollar trade that brought down AIG.
On December 17, 2005, when International Financing Review (IFR) announced its 2005 Annual Awards — one of the securities industry's most prestigious awards programs — it had this to say: "[Lehman Brothers] not only maintained its overall market presence, but also led the charge into the preferred space by...developing new products and tailoring transactions to fit borrowers' needs…Lehman Brothers is the most innovative in the preferred space, just doing things you won't see elsewhere."
No comment.
Was it lack of regulation?
Yes. Everyone acknowledges by now that Wall Street’s capacity to innovate and turn out more and more sophisticated financial instruments had run far ahead of government’s regulatory capability. This wasn’t because the government was incapable of regulating but because the dominant neoliberal, laissez-faire attitude prevented government from devising effective regulatory mechanisms.
But isn’t there something more that is happening?
We’re seeing the intensification of one of the central crises or contradictions of global capitalism: the crisis of overproduction, also known as overaccumulation or overcapacity.
In other words, capitalism has a tendency to build up tremendous productive capacity that outruns the population’s capacity to consume owing to social inequalities that limit popular purchasing power, thus eroding profitability.
But what does the crisis of overproduction have to do with recent events?
Plenty. But to understand the connections, we must go back in time to the so-called Golden Age of Contemporary Capitalism, the period from 1945 to 1975.
This was a time of rapid growth both in the center economies and in the underdeveloped economies — one that was partly triggered by the massive reconstruction of Europe and East Asia after the devastation of World War II, and partly by the new socio-economic arrangements institutionalized under the new Keynesian state. Key among the latter were strong state controls over market activity, aggressive use of fiscal and monetary policy to minimize inflation and recession, and a regime of relatively high wages to stimulate and maintain demand.
So what went wrong?
This period of high growth came to an end in the mid-1970s, when the center economies were seized by stagflation, meaning the coexistence of low growth with high inflation, which wasn’t supposed to happen under neoclassical economics.
Stagflation, however, was but a symptom of a deeper cause: the reconstruction of Germany and Japan and the rapid growth of industrializing economies like Brazil, Taiwan, and South Korea added tremendous new productive capacity and increased global competition. Meanwhile social inequality within countries and between countries globally limited the growth of purchasing power and demand, thus eroding profitability. The massive increase in the price of oil aggravated this trend in the 1970s.
How did capitalism try to solve the crisis of overproduction?
Capital tried three escape routes from the conundrum of overproduction: neoliberal restructuring, globalization, and financialization.
What was neoliberal restructuring all about?
Neoliberal restructuring took the form of Reaganism and Thatcherism in the North and structural adjustment in the South. The aim was to invigorate capital accumulation, and this was to be done by 1) removing state constraints on the growth, use, and flow of capital and wealth; and 2) redistributing income from the poor and middle classes to the rich on the theory that the rich would then be motivated to invest and reignite economic growth.
This formula redistributed income to the rich and gutted the incomes of the poor and middle classes. It thus restricted demand while not necessarily inducing the rich to invest more in production.
In fact, neoliberal restructuring, which was generalized in the North and South during the 1980s and 1990s, had a poor record in terms of growth: global growth averaged 1.1% in the 1990s and 1.4% in the 1980s, whereas it averaged 3.5% in the 1960s and 2.4% in the 1970s, when state interventionist policies were dominant. Neoliberal restructuring couldn’t shake off stagnation.
How was globalization a response to the crisis?
The second escape route global capital took to counter stagnation was “extensive accumulation” or globalization. This was the rapid integration of semi-capitalist, non-capitalist, or precapitalist areas into the global market economy. Rosa Luxemburg, the famous German revolutionary economist, saw this long ago as necessary to shore up the rate of profit in the metropolitan economies: by gaining access to cheap labor, by gaining new, albeit limited, markets, by gaining new sources of cheap agricultural and raw material products, and by bringing into being new areas for investment in infrastructure. Integration is accomplished via trade liberalization, removing barriers to the mobility of global capital and abolishing barriers to foreign investment.
China is, of course, the most prominent case of a non-capitalist area that was integrated into the global capitalist economy over the last 25 years.
To counter their declining profits, many Fortune 500 corporations have moved a significant part of their operations to China to take advantage of the so-called “China Price” — the cost advantage of China’s seemingly inexhaustible cheap labor. By the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, roughly 40-50% of the profits of U.S. corporations were derived from their operations and sales abroad, especially China.
Why didn’t globalization surmount the crisis?
This escape route from stagnation has exacerbated the problem of overproduction because it adds to productive capacity. A tremendous amount of manufacturing capacity has been added in China over the last 25 years, and this has had a depressing effect on prices and profits. Not surprisingly, by around 1997, the profits of U.S. corporations stopped growing. According to one index, the profit rate of the Fortune 500 went from 7.15% in 1960-69 to 5.3% in 1980-90 to 2.29% in 1990-99 to 1.32% in 2000-2002.
What about financialization?
Given the limited gains in countering the depressive impact of overproduction via neoliberal restructuring and globalization, the third escape route became very critical for maintaining and raising profitability: financialization.
In the ideal world of neoclassical economics, the financial system is the mechanism by which the savers or those with surplus funds are joined with the entrepreneurs who have need of their funds to invest in production. In the real world of late capitalism, with investment in industry and agriculture yielding low profits owing to overcapacity, large amounts of surplus funds are circulating and being invested and reinvested in the financial sector. The financial sector has thus turned on itself.
The result is an increased bifurcation between a hyperactive financial economy and a stagnant real economy. As one financial executive notes, “there has been an increasing disconnect between the real and financial economies in the last few years. The real economy has grown…but nothing like that of the financial economy — until it imploded.”
What this observer doesn’t tell us is that the disconnect between the real and the financial economy isn’t accidental. The financial economy has exploded precisely to make up for the stagnation owing to overproduction of the real economy.
What were the problems with financialization as an escape route?
The problem with investing in financial sector operations is that it is tantamount to squeezing value out of already created value. It may create profit, yes, but it doesn’t create new value. Only industry, agricultural, trade, and services create new value. Because profit is not based on value that is created, investment operations become very volatile and the prices of stocks, bonds, and other forms of investment can depart very radically from their real value. For instance, in the 1990s, prices of stock in Internet startups skyrocketed, driven mainly by upwardly spiraling financial valuations rooted in theoretical expectations of future profitability. Share prices crashed in 2000 and 2001 when this strategy got completely out of hand. Profits then depend on taking advantage of upward price departures from the value of commodities, then selling before reality enforces a “correction.” Corrections are really a return to more realistic values. The radical rise of asset prices far beyond any credible value is what what fosters financial bubbles.
Why is financialization so volatile?
With profitability depending on speculative coups, it’s not surprising that the finance sector lurches from one bubble to another, or from one speculative mania to another.
And because it’s driven by speculative mania, finance-driven capitalism has experienced scores of financial crises since capital markets were deregulated and liberalized in the 1980s.
Prior to the current Wall Street meltdown, the most explosive of these were the string of emerging markets crises and the U.S.tech stock bubble’s implosion in 2000 and 2001. The emerging markets crises primarily included the Mexican financial crisis of 1994-95, the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, the Russian financial crisis in 1998, and the Argentine financial collapse that occurred in 2001 and 2002, but they also rocked other countries including Brazil and Turkey.
One of President Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretaries, Wall Streeter Robert Rubin, predicted five years ago that “future financial crises are almost surely inevitable and could be even more severe.”
How do bubbles form, grow, and burst?
Let’s first use the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, as an example. First, capital account and financial liberalization took place Thailand and other countries at the urging of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the U.S. Treasury Department. Then came the entry of foreign funds seeking quick and high returns, meaning they went to real estate and the stock market. This overinvestment made stock and real estate prices fall, leading to the panicked withdrawal of funds. In 1997, $100 billion fled the East Asian economies over the course of just a few weeks.
That capital flight led to an IMF bailout of foreign speculators. The resulting collapse of the real economy produced a recession throughout East Asia in 1998. Despite massive destabilization, international financial institutions opposed efforts to impose both national and global regulation of financial system on ideological grounds.
What about the current bubble? How did it form?
The current Wall Street collapse has its roots in the technology-stock bubble of the late 1990s, when the price of the stocks of Internet startups skyrocketed, then collapsed in 2000 and 2001, resulting in the loss of $7 trillion worth of assets and the recession of 2001-2002.
The Fed’s loose money policies under Alan Greenspan encouraged the technology bubble. When it collapsed into a recession, Greenspan, to try to counter a long recession, cut the prime rate to a 45-year low of one percent in June 2003 and kept it there for over a year. This had the effect of encouraging another bubble — in real estate.
As early as 2002, progressive economists such as Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research were warning about the real estate bubble and the predictable severity of its impending collapse. However, as late as 2005, then-Council of Economic Adviser Chairman and now Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke attributed the rise in U.S. housing prices to “strong economic fundamentals” instead of speculative activity. Is it any wonder that he was caught completely off guard when the subprime mortgage crisis broke in the summer of 2007?
And how did it grow?
According to investor and philanthropist George Soros: “Mortgage institutions encouraged mortgage holders to refinance their mortgages and withdraw their excess equity. They lowered their lending standards and introduced new products, such as adjustable mortgages (ARMs), ‘interest-only’ mortgages, and promotional teaser rates.” All this encouraged speculation in residential housing units. House prices started to rise in double-digit rates. This served to reinforce speculation, and the rise in house prices made the owners feel rich; the result was a consumption boom that has sustained the economy in recent years.”
The subprime mortgage crisis wasn’t a case of supply outrunning real demand. The “demand” was largely fabricated by speculative mania on the part of developers and financiers that wanted to make great profits from their access to foreign money that has flooded the United States in the last decade. Big-ticket mortgages were aggressively sold to millions who could not normally afford them by offering low “teaser” interest rates that would later be readjusted to jack up payments from the new homeowners.
But how could subprime mortgages going sour turn into such a big problem?
Because these assets were then “securitized” with other assets into complex derivative products called “collateralized debt obligations” (CDOs). The mortgage originators worked with different layers of middlemen who understated risk so as to offload them as quickly as possible to other banks and institutional investors. These institutions in turn offloaded these securities onto other banks and foreign financial institutions.
When the interest rates were raised on the subprime loans, adjustable mortgage, and other housing loans, the game was up. There are about six million subprime mortgages outstanding, 40% of which will likely go into default in the next two years, Soros estimates.
And five million more defaults from adjustable rate mortgages and other “flexible loans” will occur over the next several years. These securities, the value of which run into the trillions of dollars, have already been injected, like virus, into the global financial system.
But how could Wall Street titans collapse like a house of cards?
For Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Bear Stearns, the losses represented by these toxic securities simply overwhelmed their reserves and brought them down. And more are likely to fall once their books — since lots of these holdings are recorded “off the balance sheet” — are corrected to reflect their actual holdings.
And many others will join them as other speculative operations such as credit cards and different varieties of risk insurance seize up. The American International Group (AIG) was felled by its massive exposure in the unregulated area of credit default swaps, derivatives that make it possible for investors to bet on the possibility that companies will default on repaying loans. According to Soros, such bets on credit defaults now make up a $45 trillion market that is entirely unregulated. It amounts to more than five times the total of the U.S. government bond market. The huge size of the assets that could go bad if AIG collapsed made Washington change its mind and intervene after it let Lehman Brothers collapse.
What’s going to happen now?
There will be more bankruptcies and government takeovers. Wall Street’s collapse will deepen and prolong the U.S. recession. This recession will translate into an Asian recession. After all, China’s main foreign market is the United States, and China in turn imports raw materials and intermediate goods that it uses for its U.S. exports from Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Globalization has made “decoupling” impossible. The United States, China, and East Asia in general are like three prisoners bound together in a chain-gang.
In a nutshell…?
The Wall Street meltdown is not only due to greed and to the lack of government regulation of a hyperactive sector. This collapse stems ultimately from the crisis of overproduction that has plagued global capitalism since the mid-1970s.
The financialization of investment activity has been one of the escape routes from stagnation, the other two being neoliberal restructuring and globalization. With neoliberal restructuring and globalization providing limited relief, financialization became attractive as a mechanism to shore up profitability. But financialization has proven to be a dangerous road. It has led to speculative bubbles that produce temporary prosperity for a few but ultimately end up in corporate collapse and in recession in the real economy.
The key questions now are: How deep and long will this recession be? Does the U.S. economy need another speculative bubble to drag itself out of this recession? And if it does, where will the next bubble form? Some people say the military-industrial complex or the “disaster capitalism complex” that Naomi Klein writes about will be the next bubble. But that’s another story.
Walden Bello, a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist, is professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines and senior analyst at the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South. He is the author of, among other books, Dilemmas of Domination: The Unmaking of the American Empire (New York: Henry Holt, 2005)
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