Central banks are stealing from the average citizen

What happens when fiscal irresponsibility gets rewarded with bailouts? You get more fiscal irresponsibility. Let's stop rescuing greedy financiers and investors.

By Bill Fleckenstein

As regular readers know, I have been a longtime critic of the Federal Reserve. Not too far back, that view was a decidedly minority one.

But as our credit bubble undergoes an ugly unwinding, it's dawning on folks that central banks lie at the epicenter of the problem. Andy Xie nailed it in Tuesday's Financial Times, which is why I've chosen to begin my column with quotes from his article "It's time for central banks to stop bailing out markets."

The bailout stops here

He writes: "The global credit bubble is bursting. This bubble is primarily leverage financing for owning risky assets. The people who were responsible for what happened played with other people's money, marketed arcane financial products with false promises of fat profits, but stuffed their own pockets with big bonuses. Neither these masters of the universe nor their greedy but naive investors deserve to be bailed out. They deserve what is coming to them.

"The central banks should focus on price stability, not financial market stability, and should provide liquidity only to contain the multiplier effect of the bubble bursting on the economy. Nor should central banks stimulate to avoid recession at any cost. Business cycles are not bad. Excesses must be followed with cleansing. . . .

"Markets have been taking more risk than they should because they believe that central banks will come to their aid during times of crisis, like now. The penchant of Alan Greenspan, former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, to flood the market with liquidity during financial instability is the genesis of this 'central bank put.' As long as this expectation remains, financial bubbles will occur again and again. Now is the time to act. Let the crooks go bankrupt. Central banks should bury the Greenspan 'put' for good."

All I can say is amen to that -- and hope this is how events turn out. Of course, given how central banks have behaved in the past decade, I'm not holding my breath. But perhaps this article in the Financial Times will help crystallize for them what it is they need to do. It's always possible that this time around, the central banks will let capitalism work. That could help hasten the cleansing process -- aka creative destruction -- which would be a positive development, for sure.

Illiquid versus insolvent

Similarly, folks should read what Nouriel Roubini says at RGE Monitor about the current crisis, because I think he hits the nail on the head.

Rather than being a liquidity crisis like the 1998 failure of Long-Term Capital Management -- which was more like a run on the bank and was stemmed by the powers that be -- Roubini describes the current situation as a "liquidity crisis that signals a more fundamental debt, credit and insolvency crisis among many economic agents in the U.S. and global economy."

For folks in a hurry, the last paragraph of Roubini's piece captures the essence of the problem. In the meantime, the last few lines nicely sum it up:

"We are indeed at a 'Minsky Moment' and this recent financial turmoil is the beginning of a much more serious and protracted U.S. and global credit crunch. The risks of a systemic crisis are rising: Liquidity injections and lender-of-last-resort bailout of insolvent borrowers -- however necessary and unavoidable during a liquidity panic -- will not work; they will only postpone and exacerbate the eventual and unavoidable insolvencies."

Video on MSN Money

The latest Fed cuts
The Fed cuts discount window rate by 50 basis points, with CNBC's Steve Liesman.

Turning to the intersection of big-bank and little-guy bailouts, a contact in the housing ATM notes that more folks than ever are electing not to pay their mortgages. Apparently, the thinking goes something like: "Gee, if some folks are not paying their mortgages and are going to get bailed out, why shouldn't I? Particularly if I have a little equity in my house."

That is the danger that's been created by the government talking about bailing out the housing market: A multitude of people decide to join the party and not pay. This is a slippery slope we've been going down for a long time, and it looks at long last like the problem will be too big to bail out. Bottom line: The dislocation and pain are starting to be felt throughout the financial system. We are headed to a lot of financial turmoil, and there's no getting around that.

Could the fall of Rome hit home?

Lastly, in a sad commentary about where we are as a country, U.S. Comptroller General David Walker was quoted Tuesday (also in the Financial Times), as follows: "Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr. Walker warned there were 'striking similarities' between America's current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including 'declining moral values and political civility at home, an overconfident and overextended military in foreign lands, and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government.' "

Unfortunately, it seems to me that he is dead right.