As the economist Irving Fisher observed way back in 1933, when highly indebted individuals and businesses get into financial trouble, they usually sell assets and use the proceeds to pay down their debt. What Fisher pointed out, however, was that such selloffs are self-defeating when everyone does it: if everyone tries to sell assets at the same time, the resulting plunge in market prices undermines debtors’ financial positions faster than debt can be paid off. So deflation in asset prices can turn into a vicious circle. And one consequence of what he called a “stampede to liquidate” is a severe economic slump.
That’s what’s happening now, with debt deflation made especially ugly by the fact that key financial players are highly leveraged — their assets were mainly bought with borrowed money. As Paul McCulley of Pimco, the bond investor, put it in a recent essay titled “The Paradox of Deleveraging,” lately just about every financial institution has been trying to reduce its leverage — but the plunge in asset values has nonetheless left these institutions with more debt relative to their assets than before.
Greg Mankiw is not too happy with the bailout/takeover. He writes:
The problem is far from over, as the future of these institutions and a large segment of the financial system is still to be determined. The worrisome part is that this future will be determined by a political system that both created the GSEs and failed to provide sufficient oversight, even when many economists suggested reform was needed. To believe that the Congress will do a good job of it would be the triumph of hope over experience.
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