America’s imaginary net worth

When Americans stopped saving money, we were told not to worry, because, really, we were all rich. We were misinformed.

By Andrew Leonard

Topics:Stock Market, Globalization, How the World Works

Do you remember, back in early 2006, when we learned that the personal savings rate for Americans had turned negative in 2005, for the first time since the Great Depression, how the news was dismissed by some optimists as misleading, because the net worth of Americans — as represented by their homes and stock portfolios — was steadily appreciating?

What, you say, your can’t recall anything that happened before the onset of the Great Recession? The Bush years are a blur to you now? Well, here are some reminders.

Economist Nariman Behravesh, in the Wall Street Journal:

The alarm about the negative U.S. saving rate has been overdone. First, it is a very narrow measure of household finances. A more complete measure is household net worth, that is, assets minus liabilities. By this measure, U.S. consumers are in great shape.

Investment guru Ken Fisher, in Worth Magazine:

Our official saving rate doesn’t reflect reality. See it this way: The rate headed south as Americans shifted savings from the CDs, money markets and bank accounts of past decades into appreciating assets including businesses, stocks, real estate, pensions and more — growing their net worth. It’s not about spending profligately, but about saving in a new and better way and boosting productivity.

Alan Reynolds at Townhall:

I am not opposed to more saving, or to virtue in general. But last year’s low personal savings rate was no “crisis.” And the sensational analogy with 1933 was sensationally ridiculous.

Reynolds gets a special award for noting, in reference to the worry that net worth locked up in a home might be tough to get at for retirees, that “you don’t have to sell your home to spend a fraction of the equity. Just take out a bigger mortgage, a home equity loan or a reverse mortgage.”

And just for fun, here’s an unbylined comment from MarketMinder:

It’s safe to say consumers are in better financial shape than they have ever been. Don’t bother with negative savings mumbo jumbo. Toss it in the heap with the other economic statistics to ignore.

Memories, memories. On Thursday, the Federal Reserve reported that “U.S. households suffered a record-large 9 percent drop in wealth” in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Household net worth dropped by $5.1 trillion from the prior quarter to $51.5 trillion. For the full year, net worth dropped by $11.2 trillion, reflecting steep declines in the housing and stock markets.

The 9 percent drop in one quarter was the largest drop since records started being kept. And what did Americans have as a cushion to prepare themselves for this calamitous plunge in the value of their stocks and real estate? Absolutely nothing, because of that negative savings rate that so many analysts told us was not a problem.

As for me, I think the last sentence of my post from Jan. 30, 2006, holds up pretty well.

We aren’t saving any money for a rainy day. When the storm does hit, it is going to hurt.

: Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard

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Evicted from park, the movement vowed to shut down the financial trading center. Salon reports from scene

VIDEO

By Justin Elliott

Pine and Broadway

Topics:Occupy Wall Street, Stock Market

: Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More Justin Elliott

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Because what happens in Germany and Greece is a bigger threat to the U.S. economy than anything Congress could do

By Andrew Leonard

One of the worlds heaviest waves breaks in Tahiti

Topics:European Financial Crisis, Stock Market, Wall Street, How the World Works

The sense of panic and confusion in Europe seems to grow by the hour. Let’s review the last day or so of events.

Germany’s economics minister warned that, to save the euro, Greece might have to go through some sort of “insolvency procedure.” Bloomberg News promptly reported that there is now a “98 percent” probability that Greece will default.
An Italian bond sale went badly, forcing Italy’s borrowing costs sharply higher. Investors were heartened, however, by the news that Italy’s foreign minister was begging China to bail out the country with a significant investment. This was the same foreign minister who had previously warned against China’s “reverse colonialism.”
The price of insuring against the default of bonds issued by Portugal, Italy and France jumped.
Bank stocks in France tanked. French banks own about $57 billion in Greek debt — and much, much more in Spanish and Italian debt.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel smacked down her own economics minister, and declared that she wouldn’t allow Greece to go into “uncontrolled insolvency.”
“I think we will do Greece the biggest favor by not speculating much, but instead encouraging Greece to implement the commitments it has made,” Ms. Merkel told RBB Inforadio, a public broadcaster in the Berlin region. “What we don’t need is unrest in the financial markets — the uncertainties are already big enough,” she said.
Merkel’s promise calmed the waters — for the moment. French bank stocks — and the U.S. stock market — suddenly rebounded.

: Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard

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Despite hopes that the worst was behind the stock market, index closes down more than 400 points

By Stan Choe, Associated Press

A trader strides across the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the closing bell, Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2011. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 429.92 points. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) (Credit: AP)

Topics:Stock Market, U.S. Economy

Just when Wall Street seemed to have settled down, a barrage of bad economic reports collided with fresh worries about European banks Thursday and triggered a global sell-off in stocks.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 419 points — a return to the wild swings that gripped the stock market last week.

Stocks were only part of a dramatic day across the financial markets. The price of oil fell $5, gold set another record, the 10-year Treasury hit its lowest yield, and the average mortgage rate fell to its lowest in at least 40 years.

The selling began in Asia, where Japanese exports fell for a fifth straight month, and continued in Europe, where bank stocks were hammered because of worries about debt problems there, which have proved hard to contain.

On Wall Street, the losses wiped out much of the roughly 700 points that the Dow had gained over five days. Some investors who bought in the middle of last week decided to sell after they were confronted with a raft of bad news about the economy:

– More people joined the unemployment line last week than at any time in the past month. The number of people filing claims for unemployment benefits for the first time rose to 408,000, or 9,000 more than the week before.

– Inflation at the consumer level in July was the highest since March. More expensive gas, food, clothes and other necessities are squeezing household budgets at a time when most people aren’t getting raises.

– Sales of previously occupied homes fell in July for the third time in four months — more trouble for a housing market that can’t seem to turn itself around. This year is on pace to be the worst since the late 1990s for home sales.

– Manufacturing has sharply weakened in the mid-Atlantic states, according to a report from the Federal Reserve. Manufacturing had been one of the economy’s strongest industries since the recession ended in 2009, but its growth has slowed this year.

The manufacturing news was especially bleak on an already bad day, said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at brokerage BTIG. He called the Fed report “an atrocious set of numbers.”

“That really set the market on its head,” he said.

Wall Street and other financial markets have wrestled for several weeks with fears that a new recession might be in the offing. Morgan Stanley economists said in a report Thursday that the U.S. and Europe are “dangerously close to recession.”

“It won’t take much in the form of additional shocks to tip the balance,” they wrote.

Worries about European debt also hang over the market. A default by any country would hurt the European banks that hold those European government bonds, plus American banks that have lent to their European counterparts.

Renewing the fears, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that U.S. regulators are looking at the U.S. arms of big European banks to make sure they have enough money for day-to-day operations.

“I don’t want to pretend that the market knows what it’s thinking about too much,” said David Kelly, chief market strategist at JPMorgan Funds. “We live in an environment of sell now and ask questions later. The European market was off very heavily this morning before the markets opened. But honestly there wasn’t any news of any substance. We always collect whatever crumbs we can find and point to them.”

Asian markets started Thursday’s drop. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell 1.3 percent. The main stock indexes in South Korea and India each dropped a little more, then Europe more than that — 4.5 percent in Britain and 5.8 percent in Germany.

In the United the United States, the Dow fell 419.63 points, or 3.7 percent, to 10,990.58. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 53.24, or 4.5 percent, to 1,140.65. The Nasdaq composite fell 131.05, or 5.2 percent, to 2,380.43.

The Dow is down 13.6 percent since stocks began falling July 21 — four weeks that have rattled Americans watching their retirement savings and other investment accounts shrivel.

Lee Applegate, a retired sales executive from Cincinnati, watched the latest market plunge uneasily but said he was planning to stay the course with his investments. He and his wife have several retirement accounts.

He remembers the mistake he made in pulling his money out of stocks in early 2009, just before the market started its two-year surge. Since March 9 of that year, the S&P 500 is up 68.6 percent.

“I think things are going to get worse before they get better,” Applegate said. “But I’m still going to ride it out.”

Last week was one of the wildest in Wall Street history. The Dow moved more than 400 points on four straight days for the first time. But stocks had been relatively stable this week because investors were calmed by strong earnings reports.

The Dow had fallen 76 points Tuesday and risen four points Wednesday — the first time in nearly three weeks that the average rose or fell by less than 100 points on two straight days.

That ended Thursday. And with stocks down big, money flooded into U.S. Treasurys and gold, both considered safer investments.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note briefly fell below 2 percent for the first time, hitting 1.98 percent, before rising to 2.07 percent. Low yields show that investors are willing to accept a lower return on their money in exchange for safety.

The price of gold reached yet another high — almost $1,830 per ounce. Gold keeps setting records, with some investors looking for stability and others simply looking to cash in.

The price of oil fell $5.20 to $82.38 per barrel after the economic reports raised concern among traders that demand for gasoline would fall. One survey this week found Americans have already cut back on gas 21 weeks in a row.

And the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage fell to its lowest on record. The rate on the 30-year fixed, the most popular mortgage, hit 4.15 percent — the lowest in at least 40 years and barely beating the record from last November. The last time long-term rates were lower was in the 1950s, when 30-year loans weren’t even widely available.

Nicole Sherrod, a managing director at broker T.D. Ameritrade, said the market volatility has led more clients to put automatic protections in place to sell a stock or an investment fund once it falls below a certain value.

“Our clients are saying that this is not a buy and hold market,” she said. “This is a buy and protect market.”

In addition, computer systems that are programmed to analyze charts, capitalize on tiny changes in price and execute trades with no human intervention are making the market rougher.

High-frequency trading programs make up about half of the trading volume in a normal market day but 70 percent or more on a volatile one.

AP Business Writers Dave Carpenter in Chicago and Matthew Craft and David K. Randall in New York contributed to this report.

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The Dow index is down 4 percent an hour before market close

By SARAH DiLORENZO and Daniel Wagner, Associated Press

Specialist Michael O'Mara, center, works with traders at the closing bell, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Friday, Aug. 12, 2011. A wild week ended relatively calmly on Wall Street Friday as the Dow today gained 126 points to 11,269 and the S&P was up 6 points, while the Nasdaq composite added 15 points. The key averages were down 1 percent or more for the week. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) (Credit: AP)

Topics:Stock Market, European Financial Crisis

European bank stocks tanked Thursday as fears over the anemic pace of the global economic recovery and the institutions’ ability to get access to funding intensified.

Most bank stocks across Europe were underperforming in already fragile markets, with British bank Barclays and French bank Societe Generale leading the way down, ending the day with losses of 11.5 and 12 percent, respectively. Germany’s Commerzbank fell 10 percent.

Analysts said the plunge seemed to be, at least in part, a reaction to increasing signs that banks are struggling with liquidity — or access to the cash they need to run their day-to-day operations. Banks typically fund their activities with very short-term loans, and the seizing up of the credit markets where they get those loans was one of the hallmarks of the 2008 crisis. First banks refused to lend to one another, and eventually companies and consumers weren’t able to get loans.

A number of European banks are already dependent on last-resort credit from the European Central Bank because of a reluctance among financial institutions to lend to one another since many are heavily exposed to bad debt like that of Greece, Portugal, Italy and other foundering countries.

The European Central Bank said Thursday that one bank had borrowed $500 million a day earlier for seven days through the bank’s dollar lending program at 1.1 percent. The bank was not identified.

A request for dollars from the ECB suggests that at least one big bank is having trouble obtaining funds. Analysts said fears about one bank’s troubles are enough to spark concerns about the entire industry because traders are already worried about banks’ sovereign debt holdings.

“These are worrying signs,” said Neil MacKinnon, an economist at VTB Capital in London. “You could think of it as a mini-Lehman moment: There is the risk that a major eurozone bank might be a casualty.”

In 2008, the investment bank Lehman Bros. filed for bankruptcy, causing the global credit markets to freeze up almost overnight. Banks refused to lend to each other because they feared more failures and greater losses. Companies and consumers were unable to get loans.

Last week the European Central Bank opened its credit window and let banks borrow as much as they wanted for six months, an unusually long time that gives them more certainty about their funding. The ECB allotted 114 banks euro49.75 billion, more than expected.

In a move that could compound liquidity fears, U.S. regulators said they were stepping up scrutiny of European banks’ U.S.-based subsidiaries, according to two people familiar with the situation. Banks are meeting more frequently than usual with supervisors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the New York State Banking Department, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential matters of bank supervision.

Analysts said that regulators are pressing the foreign-based banks to park more of their dollars in the U.S., in case their European parents falter and start draining them. Federal Reserve data show that foreign-based banks are storing more cash here — $127 billion near the beginning of August, up from $86.1 billion in June.

A similar spike occurred before the 2008 crisis, analysts with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said in a research note Thursday.

Protecting foreign bank subsidiaries has been a priority for regulators since that crisis. Lehman’s bankruptcy filing fed the global panic in part because the legal and financial status of its European operations were not clear to other banks and investors.

Poor economic news in the U.S. also seemed to be driving the flight from banks, which was also seen on Wall Street. Shares of big U.S. banks plunged faster than the broader market indexes. Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley dropped about 7 percent, while Citigroup Inc. skidded nearly 9 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average was down more than 4 percent.

“People are putting the pieces together,” said Will Hedden, a sales trader with IG Index.

Some of those pieces are an increase in claims for unemployment benefits in the U.S. and Morgan Stanley’s decision to cut its global growth forecasts for 2011 and 2012. Many European banks hold substantial amounts of Greek debt, and have begun to take writedowns on those holdings.

Banks have also been undermined by Tuesday’s revelation from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy that the two countries’ finance ministers would come up with a proposal to slap a tax on all trading transactions.

A transaction tax — a small percentage taken from foreign exchange and share transactions, for instance — has been proposed as a source of money to pay for bank bailouts but could hurt trading volumes — a key source of revenue for many of Europe’s banks.

If banks and investors had been holding their breath hoping for a panacea from Sarkozy and Merkel, they were disappointed, and Thursday’s dive could reflect the realization that there’s no easy way out of Europe’s problems.

“All we got was more taxes and more bureaucracy and more austerity,” said MacKinnon.

A Finnish deal to get collateral from Greece to secure its rescue loans to the debt-ridden country has also raised renewed concerns over Europe’s handling of its debt crisis.

Many of Europe’s banks, including Societe Generale and Commerzbank, have already taken big writedowns over their holdings of Greek debt and anything that makes Greece’s second financial bailout less likely has been viewed with dismay. Commerzbank, Germany’s largest commercial holder of Greek debt, wrote off euro760 billion ($1.1 billion) in Greek bonds, all but wiping out its second-quarter earnings.

Last month’s decision by eurozone countries to grant Greece a second financial bailout, worth a total of euro109 billion ($157 billion), called for banks, pension funds and other private institutions that hold Greek debt to take their share of the pain.

Daniel Wagner reported from Washington. Pan Pylas in London and David McHugh in Frankfurt contributed to this story.

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France, Italy, Spain and Belgium disallow the practice in an effort to calm markets

By Greg Keller and Angela Charlton, Associated Press

President of the European Central Bank Jean-Claude Trichet listens to a journalist's question during a news conference after a council meeting in Frankfurt, central Germany, Thursday, Aug. 4, 2011. The European Central Bank decided to keep the main interest rate unchanged at 1.5 percent. (AP Photo/dapd, Mario Vedder) (Credit: AP)

Topics:European Financial Crisis, Stock Market

France, Italy, Spain and Belgium are banning short-selling on select stocks amid efforts to calm market turmoil that has sent bank shares gyrating wildly and aggravated worries about Europe’s huge debts.

The European Union’s markets supervisor, the ESMA, announced the move late Thursday night after boosting surveillance of stormy markets earlier in the day. The move capped two days of whipsaw trading that saw French banks’ market value fall and rise by billions of euros.

In a short sale, a trader hopes to make a profit by betting on the decline in the price of a share. The practice has been blamed for contributing to market volatility.

The ESMA said in a statement that the four countries “have today announced or will shortly announce new bans on short-selling or on short positions” as of Friday.

The French market regulator, the AMF, announced late Thursday that it is banning for 15 days net short-selling on 11 stocks, including those of banks Societe Generale, BNP Paribas and Credit Agricole and leading insurers.

Belgium’s market authority said it would ban short-selling on financial shares such as leading banks and insurers as of Friday. Belgium had already banned naked short selling, basically a bet on a decline in the price of a share without borrowing the share, since August 2008.

Several countries banned short selling amid the financial crisis of 2008 to try to tame volatility. But some experts said the bans actually contributed to a feeling of uncertainty.

French bankers and officials scrambled to soothe investors’ nerves after days of suggestions that France could be the next major economy to lose its coveted triple-A credit rating. By late in the day, those efforts appeared to have an effect, but economists said the rebound remained very fragile.

The European Union’s markets supervisor said Thursday that regulators were increasing surveillance of financial markets following the days of steep selloffs.

Bank of France head Christian Noyer blamed “unfounded rumors” for plunges in the shares of top banks, including Societe Generale and BNP Paribas, and said the country’s financial institutions were sound. The country’s market regulator warned of sanctions against anyone who fuels or profits from rumors that fed the sell-off.

Noyer said that French banks’ first-half earnings “confirmed their solidity in a difficult economic environment” and that the banks’ capital cushions were healthy.

French bank stocks fell Thursday until strong U.S. jobs data helped propel solid gains on Wall Street late in the European trading day. BNP Paribas closed up 0.3 percent and Societe Generale rose 3.7 percent.

France is taking pains to assure markets that it won’t be the next to see its credit rating downgraded.

Attention will be on France’s release of second-quarter GDP figures on Friday. Some have warned that France could suffer if it has to spend significant new money to bail out more struggling eurozone states.

The leaders of the eurozone’s biggest economies, Germany and France, announced they will meet Tuesday to discuss solutions to Europe’s financial difficulties.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s office said that the two will come up with “joint proposals” on the governance of the eurozone before the end of the summer. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman said the meeting would focus on suggestions for how to improve the zone’s economic policy and crisis management.

All three leading credit rating agencies reaffirmed their triple-A assessment of France, and analysts said they could not identify a trigger for the market turmoil.

“There’s nothing behind it, it’s a market of malintentioned speculators trading on pure rumors,” said Marc Touati, an economist at French trading firm Assya Compagnie Financiere.

After Societe Generale, France’s second-biggest bank, saw its share price drop nearly 15 percent Wednesday, the bank asked the French market regulator to investigate the rumors that it was on the ropes because of its heavy exposure to debt from troubled eurozone economies.

Societe Generale CEO Frederic Oudea called the rumors “totally unfounded” and “irrational.” Speaking on France-Info radio, he urged calm and insisted that the bank’s fundamentals are sound.

Oudea said Societe Generale had already accounted for its exposure to Greece’s debts in its second quarter earnings.

France’s growth prospects are considerably better than those of Italy and Spain’s, but its economic expansion is slowing and it’s failed for years to reduce a deficit that stood at 7.1 percent last year. No other eurozone economy with a triple-A rating has a higher debt than France’s — around 85 percent of national income.

Adding to market worries, French presidential elections scheduled for the spring of 2012 may make it difficult for the government to implement further austerity measures at a time when the economy is slowing.

Elsewhere in Europe, Greece announced a rise in unemployment after a series of unpopular austerity measures aimed at dragging it out of debt that sparked troubles across the eurozone.

And Italy’s finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, told lawmakers Thursday that tough and speedy measures are needed over the next two years to balance the budget in 2013. The market turbulence has seen Italy’s borrowing costs in the markets spike up to uncomfortably high levels.

Gabriele Steinhauser in Brussels and Melissa Eddy in Berlin contributed to this report.