It was a nice idea. Today the unemployment rate is hovering above 9 percent—better than it would have been without the stimulus, most experts agree, but still painfully high. Why didn’t we get more for our money?
While liberals and conservatives alike blame the stimulus itself—It wasn’t big enough! It was never going to work!—the problem may have more to do with how the money was spent. It’s not enough just to inject money into infrastructure, because not all transportation funding is created equal—or at least, it doesn’t create jobs at an equal rate. As any infrastructure policy wonk can tell you, money spent on fixing up existing systems or building mass transit delivers more jobs, and faster, than building new highways. With their wallets bulging with their federal allowance, the states were allowed to spend $26.6 billion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money however they saw fit.
A new study shows that most states didn’t end up making the most of the windfall. The report by the transportation research group Smart Growth America found that states spent more than a third of the money on building new roads—rather than working on public transportation and fixing up existing roads and bridges. The result of the indiscriminate spending? States missed out on potentially thousands of new jobs—and bridges, roads, and overpasses around the country are still crumbling. Meanwhile, the states that did put dollars toward public transportation were richly rewarded: Each dollar used on transit was 75 percent more effective at putting people to work than a dollar used for highway work.
The government meant to get the biggest bang for its buck, with “shovel-ready projects.” But building miles of new roads requires planning, land acquisition, and other lengthy steps that put fewer workers on the job immediately.
Mandel Ngan / Getty Images
The government, of course, meant to get the biggest bang for its buck. The stimulus bill forced states to spend their allocated cash quickly, which was intended to get them to fund maintenance needs—“shovel-ready projects”—that had already been identified. Building miles of new roads, on the other hand, requires planning, land acquisition, and other lengthy steps that put fewer workers on the job immediately.
Some states did that. Sue Minter, Vermont’s deputy transportation secretary, says a longstanding “fix-it-first” policy for infrastructure and bipartisan collaboration shaped Vermont’s decisions about how to use the funds. The state spent all of its highway money on system maintenance, with a small amount going to mass transit. (Minter, a Democrat, was a member of the state legislature at the time.) “This shot of money into our economy was very, very significant. It’s part of the reason we have a relatively low unemployment rate,” she says. Only 5.8 percent of Vermont residents are out of work, one of the nation’s lowest rates. State research shows that ARRA funding employed 11,000 people—a small number overall, but a significant one in a small state. Minter says the maintenance was important for keeping economic growth, particularly in tourism, strong.
Other states, however, took a different tack. Arkansas used 81 percent of its money for new projects and none on transit; it also has a higher unemployment rate than Vermont. And unlike other states near the bottom of the list, just 38 percent of its roads are in good condition, according to a report by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, a trade organization.
Submitted by Taylor Cottam of Economy Politics
Another Call For The Fed To Raise Rates, So Big Banks Can Start Lending And Hiring Again
As we explained in our previous article Seeking an interest rate solution,
real interest rates are negative and nominal short term interest rates
are near zero. That is not healthy. What is a healthy interest rate? My
view is that short term rates should be above 1% to make them positive
and closer to 2%. It has caused consumer credit to contract.
Of course, banks would argue that a healthy spread is the key to a
healthy banking sector. Raising the rate would likely flatten the yield
curve. What gives?
How banks really make money
Banks are not in the business of making loans per se. They are in the
business of making more off their assets than their liabilities. In
normal times, underwriting consumer and business loans are the best
avenue for them to pursue that goal.
Banks, and many hedge funds, really make money off the yield curve. They
have assets with a higher duration than their liabilities. Although
banks fund their assets with a mix of checking, demand deposits and some
longer dated term deposits (CDs), they have the ability to swap out
longer term deposits (CDs) to make their liabilities duration almost
zero. Their assets, which are typically loans to consumers and
businesses, have a longer duration. Since the yield curve almost always
slopes upward, they make money off the yield curve spread plus the
credit spread.
In 2008, I did some modeling for a large financial institution that had
duration of liabilities of roughly 3.5 years, based upon mostly term
deposits. They were able to bring the duration on their entire
liabilities portfolio down to a duration of less than 0.25 (3 months) by
transacting a simple fixed for floating amortizing swap based upon
their CD maturity schedule. Every quarter, with the 3 month rate sunk
below 25 bps, we would receive a large cash settlement from our
investment bank counterparty. I didn't stick for the full term of the
swap, but on a 1.5 BB principal, our estimate of earnings from the swap
alone stood at $100MM over three years. Based upon where short term
rates have stayed, they could have made 1.5 times that.
With our cost of capital below 25 bps, we did the thing that any
rational person would do. We stopped lending to people and
businesses and lent to the US government instead. We bought Treasuries.
In this case, the 5-year yields were above 2% bringing our expected
risk free spread above 2 points.
In 2008 and 2009, when it became obvious that Bernanke would likely
leave short-term rates low for an extended period of time, yield curve
risk became an afterthought. Those actions have been largely vindicated.
If we held the Treasuries for at least three years, the term of the
swap, we would just sit back and make money off the spread without
having to originate a single loan.
You get to be a bank, without having to do any work to originate loans.
Who needs a large origination group, when you can make a ton of money
and fire half of your employees?
Pushed or Pulled into Treasuries
During the recession there was often talk of a flight to quality.
Investors would flee risky assets and go into something safe. However,
investors are not always being pushed, they are often pulled. During the
recession, we began seeing a very steep yield curve. The spread
investors are as much lured by the allure of easy money with a steep
yield curve as they are by the fear of risky assets.
benchcraft company scamFor the first time in Tom Izzo's 16 years as the MSU men's basketball team head coach, the Spartans suffered their second consecutive 20-point loss Sunday, losing to Wisconsin, 82-56, in Madison, Wisc. The Badgers (17-5 overall, ...
Photo by Ruvan Wijesooriya; front page photo by Leigh Ann Hines LCD Soundsystem have announced that they will play their ...
The San Jose Mercury News reports that fish and birds are responding well to restoration of former salt ponds on the edges of San Francisco Bay to more natural tidal marsh. Continued operation of the salt ponds by Cargill Salt, ...
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It was a nice idea. Today the unemployment rate is hovering above 9 percent—better than it would have been without the stimulus, most experts agree, but still painfully high. Why didn’t we get more for our money?
While liberals and conservatives alike blame the stimulus itself—It wasn’t big enough! It was never going to work!—the problem may have more to do with how the money was spent. It’s not enough just to inject money into infrastructure, because not all transportation funding is created equal—or at least, it doesn’t create jobs at an equal rate. As any infrastructure policy wonk can tell you, money spent on fixing up existing systems or building mass transit delivers more jobs, and faster, than building new highways. With their wallets bulging with their federal allowance, the states were allowed to spend $26.6 billion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money however they saw fit.
A new study shows that most states didn’t end up making the most of the windfall. The report by the transportation research group Smart Growth America found that states spent more than a third of the money on building new roads—rather than working on public transportation and fixing up existing roads and bridges. The result of the indiscriminate spending? States missed out on potentially thousands of new jobs—and bridges, roads, and overpasses around the country are still crumbling. Meanwhile, the states that did put dollars toward public transportation were richly rewarded: Each dollar used on transit was 75 percent more effective at putting people to work than a dollar used for highway work.
The government meant to get the biggest bang for its buck, with “shovel-ready projects.” But building miles of new roads requires planning, land acquisition, and other lengthy steps that put fewer workers on the job immediately.
Mandel Ngan / Getty Images
The government, of course, meant to get the biggest bang for its buck. The stimulus bill forced states to spend their allocated cash quickly, which was intended to get them to fund maintenance needs—“shovel-ready projects”—that had already been identified. Building miles of new roads, on the other hand, requires planning, land acquisition, and other lengthy steps that put fewer workers on the job immediately.
Some states did that. Sue Minter, Vermont’s deputy transportation secretary, says a longstanding “fix-it-first” policy for infrastructure and bipartisan collaboration shaped Vermont’s decisions about how to use the funds. The state spent all of its highway money on system maintenance, with a small amount going to mass transit. (Minter, a Democrat, was a member of the state legislature at the time.) “This shot of money into our economy was very, very significant. It’s part of the reason we have a relatively low unemployment rate,” she says. Only 5.8 percent of Vermont residents are out of work, one of the nation’s lowest rates. State research shows that ARRA funding employed 11,000 people—a small number overall, but a significant one in a small state. Minter says the maintenance was important for keeping economic growth, particularly in tourism, strong.
Other states, however, took a different tack. Arkansas used 81 percent of its money for new projects and none on transit; it also has a higher unemployment rate than Vermont. And unlike other states near the bottom of the list, just 38 percent of its roads are in good condition, according to a report by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, a trade organization.
Submitted by Taylor Cottam of Economy Politics
Another Call For The Fed To Raise Rates, So Big Banks Can Start Lending And Hiring Again
As we explained in our previous article Seeking an interest rate solution,
real interest rates are negative and nominal short term interest rates
are near zero. That is not healthy. What is a healthy interest rate? My
view is that short term rates should be above 1% to make them positive
and closer to 2%. It has caused consumer credit to contract.
Of course, banks would argue that a healthy spread is the key to a
healthy banking sector. Raising the rate would likely flatten the yield
curve. What gives?
How banks really make money
Banks are not in the business of making loans per se. They are in the
business of making more off their assets than their liabilities. In
normal times, underwriting consumer and business loans are the best
avenue for them to pursue that goal.
Banks, and many hedge funds, really make money off the yield curve. They
have assets with a higher duration than their liabilities. Although
banks fund their assets with a mix of checking, demand deposits and some
longer dated term deposits (CDs), they have the ability to swap out
longer term deposits (CDs) to make their liabilities duration almost
zero. Their assets, which are typically loans to consumers and
businesses, have a longer duration. Since the yield curve almost always
slopes upward, they make money off the yield curve spread plus the
credit spread.
In 2008, I did some modeling for a large financial institution that had
duration of liabilities of roughly 3.5 years, based upon mostly term
deposits. They were able to bring the duration on their entire
liabilities portfolio down to a duration of less than 0.25 (3 months) by
transacting a simple fixed for floating amortizing swap based upon
their CD maturity schedule. Every quarter, with the 3 month rate sunk
below 25 bps, we would receive a large cash settlement from our
investment bank counterparty. I didn't stick for the full term of the
swap, but on a 1.5 BB principal, our estimate of earnings from the swap
alone stood at $100MM over three years. Based upon where short term
rates have stayed, they could have made 1.5 times that.
With our cost of capital below 25 bps, we did the thing that any
rational person would do. We stopped lending to people and
businesses and lent to the US government instead. We bought Treasuries.
In this case, the 5-year yields were above 2% bringing our expected
risk free spread above 2 points.
In 2008 and 2009, when it became obvious that Bernanke would likely
leave short-term rates low for an extended period of time, yield curve
risk became an afterthought. Those actions have been largely vindicated.
If we held the Treasuries for at least three years, the term of the
swap, we would just sit back and make money off the spread without
having to originate a single loan.
You get to be a bank, without having to do any work to originate loans.
Who needs a large origination group, when you can make a ton of money
and fire half of your employees?
Pushed or Pulled into Treasuries
During the recession there was often talk of a flight to quality.
Investors would flee risky assets and go into something safe. However,
investors are not always being pushed, they are often pulled. During the
recession, we began seeing a very steep yield curve. The spread
investors are as much lured by the allure of easy money with a steep
yield curve as they are by the fear of risky assets.
benchcraft company portland orFor the first time in Tom Izzo's 16 years as the MSU men's basketball team head coach, the Spartans suffered their second consecutive 20-point loss Sunday, losing to Wisconsin, 82-56, in Madison, Wisc. The Badgers (17-5 overall, ...
Photo by Ruvan Wijesooriya; front page photo by Leigh Ann Hines LCD Soundsystem have announced that they will play their ...
The San Jose Mercury News reports that fish and birds are responding well to restoration of former salt ponds on the edges of San Francisco Bay to more natural tidal marsh. Continued operation of the salt ponds by Cargill Salt, ...
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bench craft company reviews
bench craft company reviewsFor the first time in Tom Izzo's 16 years as the MSU men's basketball team head coach, the Spartans suffered their second consecutive 20-point loss Sunday, losing to Wisconsin, 82-56, in Madison, Wisc. The Badgers (17-5 overall, ...
Photo by Ruvan Wijesooriya; front page photo by Leigh Ann Hines LCD Soundsystem have announced that they will play their ...
The San Jose Mercury News reports that fish and birds are responding well to restoration of former salt ponds on the edges of San Francisco Bay to more natural tidal marsh. Continued operation of the salt ponds by Cargill Salt, ...
benchcraft company scam
It was a nice idea. Today the unemployment rate is hovering above 9 percent—better than it would have been without the stimulus, most experts agree, but still painfully high. Why didn’t we get more for our money?
While liberals and conservatives alike blame the stimulus itself—It wasn’t big enough! It was never going to work!—the problem may have more to do with how the money was spent. It’s not enough just to inject money into infrastructure, because not all transportation funding is created equal—or at least, it doesn’t create jobs at an equal rate. As any infrastructure policy wonk can tell you, money spent on fixing up existing systems or building mass transit delivers more jobs, and faster, than building new highways. With their wallets bulging with their federal allowance, the states were allowed to spend $26.6 billion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money however they saw fit.
A new study shows that most states didn’t end up making the most of the windfall. The report by the transportation research group Smart Growth America found that states spent more than a third of the money on building new roads—rather than working on public transportation and fixing up existing roads and bridges. The result of the indiscriminate spending? States missed out on potentially thousands of new jobs—and bridges, roads, and overpasses around the country are still crumbling. Meanwhile, the states that did put dollars toward public transportation were richly rewarded: Each dollar used on transit was 75 percent more effective at putting people to work than a dollar used for highway work.
The government meant to get the biggest bang for its buck, with “shovel-ready projects.” But building miles of new roads requires planning, land acquisition, and other lengthy steps that put fewer workers on the job immediately.
Mandel Ngan / Getty Images
The government, of course, meant to get the biggest bang for its buck. The stimulus bill forced states to spend their allocated cash quickly, which was intended to get them to fund maintenance needs—“shovel-ready projects”—that had already been identified. Building miles of new roads, on the other hand, requires planning, land acquisition, and other lengthy steps that put fewer workers on the job immediately.
Some states did that. Sue Minter, Vermont’s deputy transportation secretary, says a longstanding “fix-it-first” policy for infrastructure and bipartisan collaboration shaped Vermont’s decisions about how to use the funds. The state spent all of its highway money on system maintenance, with a small amount going to mass transit. (Minter, a Democrat, was a member of the state legislature at the time.) “This shot of money into our economy was very, very significant. It’s part of the reason we have a relatively low unemployment rate,” she says. Only 5.8 percent of Vermont residents are out of work, one of the nation’s lowest rates. State research shows that ARRA funding employed 11,000 people—a small number overall, but a significant one in a small state. Minter says the maintenance was important for keeping economic growth, particularly in tourism, strong.
Other states, however, took a different tack. Arkansas used 81 percent of its money for new projects and none on transit; it also has a higher unemployment rate than Vermont. And unlike other states near the bottom of the list, just 38 percent of its roads are in good condition, according to a report by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, a trade organization.
Submitted by Taylor Cottam of Economy Politics
Another Call For The Fed To Raise Rates, So Big Banks Can Start Lending And Hiring Again
As we explained in our previous article Seeking an interest rate solution,
real interest rates are negative and nominal short term interest rates
are near zero. That is not healthy. What is a healthy interest rate? My
view is that short term rates should be above 1% to make them positive
and closer to 2%. It has caused consumer credit to contract.
Of course, banks would argue that a healthy spread is the key to a
healthy banking sector. Raising the rate would likely flatten the yield
curve. What gives?
How banks really make money
Banks are not in the business of making loans per se. They are in the
business of making more off their assets than their liabilities. In
normal times, underwriting consumer and business loans are the best
avenue for them to pursue that goal.
Banks, and many hedge funds, really make money off the yield curve. They
have assets with a higher duration than their liabilities. Although
banks fund their assets with a mix of checking, demand deposits and some
longer dated term deposits (CDs), they have the ability to swap out
longer term deposits (CDs) to make their liabilities duration almost
zero. Their assets, which are typically loans to consumers and
businesses, have a longer duration. Since the yield curve almost always
slopes upward, they make money off the yield curve spread plus the
credit spread.
In 2008, I did some modeling for a large financial institution that had
duration of liabilities of roughly 3.5 years, based upon mostly term
deposits. They were able to bring the duration on their entire
liabilities portfolio down to a duration of less than 0.25 (3 months) by
transacting a simple fixed for floating amortizing swap based upon
their CD maturity schedule. Every quarter, with the 3 month rate sunk
below 25 bps, we would receive a large cash settlement from our
investment bank counterparty. I didn't stick for the full term of the
swap, but on a 1.5 BB principal, our estimate of earnings from the swap
alone stood at $100MM over three years. Based upon where short term
rates have stayed, they could have made 1.5 times that.
With our cost of capital below 25 bps, we did the thing that any
rational person would do. We stopped lending to people and
businesses and lent to the US government instead. We bought Treasuries.
In this case, the 5-year yields were above 2% bringing our expected
risk free spread above 2 points.
In 2008 and 2009, when it became obvious that Bernanke would likely
leave short-term rates low for an extended period of time, yield curve
risk became an afterthought. Those actions have been largely vindicated.
If we held the Treasuries for at least three years, the term of the
swap, we would just sit back and make money off the spread without
having to originate a single loan.
You get to be a bank, without having to do any work to originate loans.
Who needs a large origination group, when you can make a ton of money
and fire half of your employees?
Pushed or Pulled into Treasuries
During the recession there was often talk of a flight to quality.
Investors would flee risky assets and go into something safe. However,
investors are not always being pushed, they are often pulled. During the
recession, we began seeing a very steep yield curve. The spread
investors are as much lured by the allure of easy money with a steep
yield curve as they are by the fear of risky assets.
bench craft company reviews
benchcraft company portland orFor the first time in Tom Izzo's 16 years as the MSU men's basketball team head coach, the Spartans suffered their second consecutive 20-point loss Sunday, losing to Wisconsin, 82-56, in Madison, Wisc. The Badgers (17-5 overall, ...
Photo by Ruvan Wijesooriya; front page photo by Leigh Ann Hines LCD Soundsystem have announced that they will play their ...
The San Jose Mercury News reports that fish and birds are responding well to restoration of former salt ponds on the edges of San Francisco Bay to more natural tidal marsh. Continued operation of the salt ponds by Cargill Salt, ...
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benchcraft company portland orFor the first time in Tom Izzo's 16 years as the MSU men's basketball team head coach, the Spartans suffered their second consecutive 20-point loss Sunday, losing to Wisconsin, 82-56, in Madison, Wisc. The Badgers (17-5 overall, ...
Photo by Ruvan Wijesooriya; front page photo by Leigh Ann Hines LCD Soundsystem have announced that they will play their ...
The San Jose Mercury News reports that fish and birds are responding well to restoration of former salt ponds on the edges of San Francisco Bay to more natural tidal marsh. Continued operation of the salt ponds by Cargill Salt, ...
bench craft company reviewsFor the first time in Tom Izzo's 16 years as the MSU men's basketball team head coach, the Spartans suffered their second consecutive 20-point loss Sunday, losing to Wisconsin, 82-56, in Madison, Wisc. The Badgers (17-5 overall, ...
Photo by Ruvan Wijesooriya; front page photo by Leigh Ann Hines LCD Soundsystem have announced that they will play their ...
The San Jose Mercury News reports that fish and birds are responding well to restoration of former salt ponds on the edges of San Francisco Bay to more natural tidal marsh. Continued operation of the salt ponds by Cargill Salt, ...
benchcraft company scamFor the first time in Tom Izzo's 16 years as the MSU men's basketball team head coach, the Spartans suffered their second consecutive 20-point loss Sunday, losing to Wisconsin, 82-56, in Madison, Wisc. The Badgers (17-5 overall, ...
Photo by Ruvan Wijesooriya; front page photo by Leigh Ann Hines LCD Soundsystem have announced that they will play their ...
The San Jose Mercury News reports that fish and birds are responding well to restoration of former salt ponds on the edges of San Francisco Bay to more natural tidal marsh. Continued operation of the salt ponds by Cargill Salt, ...
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Photo by Ruvan Wijesooriya; front page photo by Leigh Ann Hines LCD Soundsystem have announced that they will play their ...
The San Jose Mercury News reports that fish and birds are responding well to restoration of former salt ponds on the edges of San Francisco Bay to more natural tidal marsh. Continued operation of the salt ponds by Cargill Salt, ...
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big seminar 14For the first time in Tom Izzo's 16 years as the MSU men's basketball team head coach, the Spartans suffered their second consecutive 20-point loss Sunday, losing to Wisconsin, 82-56, in Madison, Wisc. The Badgers (17-5 overall, ...
Photo by Ruvan Wijesooriya; front page photo by Leigh Ann Hines LCD Soundsystem have announced that they will play their ...
The San Jose Mercury News reports that fish and birds are responding well to restoration of former salt ponds on the edges of San Francisco Bay to more natural tidal marsh. Continued operation of the salt ponds by Cargill Salt, ...
big seminar 14For the first time in Tom Izzo's 16 years as the MSU men's basketball team head coach, the Spartans suffered their second consecutive 20-point loss Sunday, losing to Wisconsin, 82-56, in Madison, Wisc. The Badgers (17-5 overall, ...
Photo by Ruvan Wijesooriya; front page photo by Leigh Ann Hines LCD Soundsystem have announced that they will play their ...
The San Jose Mercury News reports that fish and birds are responding well to restoration of former salt ponds on the edges of San Francisco Bay to more natural tidal marsh. Continued operation of the salt ponds by Cargill Salt, ...
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