This is from the asia times:
David P Goldman was global head of fixed-income research for Banc of America Securities and global head of credit strategy at Credit Suisse
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JK13Dj01.html
In a normal business cycle, falling output leads to lower yields on low-risk bonds, which in turn encourages investors to add risk to their portfolios by investing in businesses. If the safest of all investments, namely US Treasuries, suddenly offer much higher real yields, comparable to the boom years of the late 1990s, why should investors take risk?
In any of these scenarios, the result of global de-leveraging is dire: the more the US government tries to bail out businesses and households, the more bailing out the economy will need. The Bush administration's response to the financial crisis, and the likely content of the Obama administration's economic program, will deepen and prolong the economic downturn.
It is not generally remembered that the premise of the Reagan administration's tax cuts was Robert Mundell's work on the optimal level of government debt. Mundell, who won the Nobel Prize in 1991 for his work on international economics, observed that an increase in government debt might represent an improvement in market efficiency, if it corresponded to an increase in incomes. That might occur if a reduction in taxes caused an increase in the deficit, while stimulating economic growth. In that case, Mundell argued, a tax cut would increase efficiency if the additional revenues arising from the growth effect were larger than the interest on the bonds issued to cover the ensuing deficit.
In 1981, Ronald Reagan had a very different starting point: 1. The personal savings rate stood at 10%. 2. The current account was in surplus. 3. The top marginal tax rate was 70%.
The capacity of the US and the world to finance an increase in the federal deficit was much greater, and the incentives arising from reducing the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 40% were much greater than any incentives that might be envisioned from tax cuts from the present level.
Even the best-designed economic policy would be hard-put to provide growth incentives without a substantial increase in the savings rate and a corresponding reduction of consumption, implying a very sharp economic contraction. If the Treasury tries to spend its way out of recession, the results are likely to be very disappointing.
Blog: http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/index.html Blog: http://kencan7.blogspot.com/index.html