Matt Yglesias

Feb 11th, 2009 at 10:15 am

Obama on Sweden

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In response to a very good question for ABC News’ Terry Moran, President Barack Obama specifically addressed why he’s rejected a “Swedish” approach to the financial crisis:

There are two countries who have gone through some big financial crises over the last decade or two. One was Japan, which never really acknowledged the scale and magnitude of the problems in their banking system and that resulted in what’s called “The Lost Decade.” They kept on trying to paper over the problems. The markets sort of stayed up because the Japanese government kept on pumping money in. But, eventually, nothing happened and they didn’t see any growth whatsoever.

Sweden, on the other hand, had a problem like this. They took over the banks, nationalized them, got rid of the bad assets, resold the banks and, a couple years later, they were going again. So you’d think looking at it, Sweden looks like a good model. Here’s the problem; Sweden had like five banks. [LAUGHS] We’ve got thousands of banks. You know, the scale of the U.S. economy and the capital markets are so vast and the problems in terms of managing and overseeing anything of that scale, I think, would — our assessment was that it wouldn’t make sense. And we also have different traditions in this country.

Obviously, Sweden has a different set of cultures in terms of how the government relates to markets and America’s different. And we want to retain a strong sense of that private capital fulfilling the core — core investment needs of this country.

And so, what we’ve tried to do is to apply some of the tough love that’s going to be necessary, but do it in a way that’s also recognizing we’ve got big private capital markets and ultimately that’s going to be the key to getting credit flowing again.

Obama makes two arguments here, one about scale and one about national tradition. I think the argument about tradition is clearly true—this is a big barrier to a Swedish-style solution. But I don’t think it’s a valid objection for the President to offer. What he’s describing is precisely the situation I fear; a situation in which public officials are refusing to do what needs to be done out of what amounts to ideological rigidity. This is the United States of America, so we can’t have widespread nationalization even if we should. The argument about scale is different. You could see it being the case that what works in a small open economy wouldn’t work in a large somewhat open one. There are, in fact, lots of situations like that. The sort of unilateral fiscal stimulus we’re attempting isn’t really appropriate to small open economies. So I could be convinced that this is correct. On the other hand, it’s not clear to me what about the Obama/Geithner alternative to nationalization actually meets this problem. It’s inherently more difficult to conduct oversight and administration in the United States, which really could make it harder to make nationalization work. But the Obama/Geithner alternative will also work poorly unless oversight and administration can be made to work. This amounts to saying “just because nationalization worked in Sweden doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily work here, so I’ll try something else that also might not won’t work.” The reasoning doesn’t go through without the first consideration—we’re not nationalizing the banks because, damnit, we don’t do that sort of thing in the United States. To which I say that nationalizing the banks’ losses doesn’t exactly fit in with American cultural ideas about rugged individualism either.

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See also Paul Kedrosky (who I largely agree with but I wouldn’t quite get so irate), Felix Salmon (who’s grateful that unlike Geithner, Bush, or Paulson Obama can at least explain himself in a cogent way), Paul Krugman (who says nationalization is more American than Obama thinks, but who has no credibility since he’s on the Swedish payroll) and Tyler Cowen (who I think agrees with Obama).

My bottom line: Visit the Nordic countries and you’ll be impressed that their civilian public agencies are much more effective than ours. Arguments which observe that things their institutions can do, our institutions might well screw up are valid. At the same time, there are things that require effective public agencies to do that need to be done. In fields like educating poor children, we’re simply not doing them, and a price is paid. But it’s a price that most middle class Americans don’t see or pay personally. If it turns out that we can’t manage a financial panic adequately, we’ll all be paying the price. I don’t think assuming failure in advance and therefore adopting unlikely-to-work policies makes sense. Abraham Lincoln and FDR both asked the government to do things it didn’t have the ability to do; that meant they had to build the institutions.






82 Responses to “Obama on Sweden”

  1. James Gary Says:

    I don’t like this Obama. He just thinks he’s smarter than the rest of us. Talks about all these foreign countries, trying to make us feel dumb. Just wants to give our money to lazy poor people and immigrants. I want the old president back.

  2. JT Says:

    For the sake of argument let us assume that Obama has two goals in mind:
    First to make sure that Wall Street recoups most if not all the loss of value when their Ponzi scheme collapsed and
    To do the bare minimum socially to keep the streets free of blood.
    Now my question:
    What has the president done which has in any way run counter to his prime goals?
    Whom has he appointed to power who has demonstrated the willingness to act counter to those goals?
    Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!

    And no I take no comfort in the fact that we have a president who at least knows where Sweden is.
    Rather thin gruel considering the Rape Room he has established at Treasury.

  3. Don Williams Says:

    Obama’s reply is highly misleading. The USA follow’s Paredo’s law just as much as does Europe: a small number of individuals/organizations control most of the resources in every industry.

    We may have many banks but the $170 TRILLION in Derivatives are held by only Five Big Banks: JP Morgan, Citibank, Bank of America, Wachovia/Wells Fargo, and HSBC USA.

    Same law applies to campaign donations. While there were many people chipping into Obama’s campaign, there were a few donors chipping in a LOT. And they, oddly enough, are the SAME Five Big Banks.

    Does anyone see a pattern?

  4. Myles Says:

    Until such time as every single congressional Dem. pledges to keep their hands off the daily operation of the banks (i.e. ‘arm’s-length’) and killing all potential of return to profit, I am dead set against nationalizations. The prospect of the Dems spending all the time screaming about things like bank charges or interest rates or minority loans or whatever and diverting the bank management’s attention from what they need to be doing, which is returning it to profit, is too terrifying to contemplate.

  5. El Cid Says:

    I’m awaiting the Republican battle-cry that this means the crazy left wants to turn the US of A into Sweden, with its Saabs, and Walpurgis Night, meatballs, lingonberry, and with IKEA as the official replacement to Wal-Mart.

  6. Econobuzz Says:

    I think Obama’s answer — especially reference to the Japanese case — implicitly accepts that the banks are insolvent. But, the most interesting sentence to me is:

    The markets sort of stayed up because the Japanese government kept on pumping money in. But, eventually, nothing happened and they didn’t see any growth whatsoever.

    This is exactly what many observers are afraid will happen with the Geithner approach. If one could be sure that the “stress test” would be honest, fair to taxpayers, and transparent, and result in moving the management out, recapitalizing, and then, when possible, re-privatizing, there would be no resistance to the plan among Obama supporters.

    Some Obama supporters allege this MIGHT happen under the plan; but an increasing number suspect it WON’T happen, because of the administration’s fear that the banks and their republican supporters will raise holy hell. Some Obama supporters, like myself, are not willing either to blindly trust Geithner and his cronies, or to assume that Obama has learned his lesson and has dropped his “let’s all get along” approach designed to keep republicans on board at any cost.

    If someone credible were running the show — someone who had taxpayers’ interests in mind and didn’t care about what bankers and republicans think — Obama would be far better served. Geithner is not the man.

  7. Don Williams Says:

    Re Econobuzz’s comment “If someone credible were running the show — someone who had taxpayers’ interests in mind and didn’t care about what bankers and republicans think — Obama would be far better served. Geithner is not the man. ”
    ——————
    This appears to be to be “cognitive dissonance”. Geithner was chosen by Obama. Geithner serves at the pleasure of the President.

    If Obama “had taxpayers’ interests in mind and didn’t care about what bankers and republicans think” then Geithner wouldn’t be a problem.

  8. SomeCallMeTim Says:

    What’s the distance in words between this post and the one about the importance of factoring in a measure the politically plausible when dealing with the economic crisis?

  9. Steve LaBonne Says:

    I’m awaiting the Republican battle-cry that this means the crazy left wants to turn the US of A into Sweden, with its Saabs, and Walpurgis Night, meatballs, lingonberry, and with IKEA as the official replacement to Wal-Mart.

    I’m OK with that just as long as nobody tries to make me eat lutefisk.

  10. magellan Says:

    My disappointment in team Obama is palpable to say the least. I naively believed that the outpouring of contributions from millions of Americans could change the dynamic of political power in America.

    Yesterday I was re-educated on the harsh reality that the power of the organized and connected always wins, even if their aggregate contributions are much smaller than a disorganized and disjointed majority.

    It’s becoming clear that as in Japan in the 90s, a corrective course will not be set until the political power of the big banks wanes enough that beholden Washington politicians can act.

    It’s going to be a long decade…

  11. Econobuzz Says:

    To amplify on why I think “trust” is at issue here, not economics, had Geithner gone on to describe the stress test as one that would (a) be fair FIRST to taxpayers, (b) move management out in cases of clear insolvency, (c) recapitalize and restructure simultaneously to encourage infusion of private capital, and (c) all with the goal of re-privatizing capitalization and finding new management and investors, I would not be worried — even though that falls short of nationalization.

    I don’t think the problem here is avoiding nationalization. That is tough but straightforward. There IS a way to do that that avoids panic (except among a few bankers) and minimizes the impact on taxpayers.

  12. Econobuzz Says:

    If Obama “had taxpayers’ interests in mind and didn’t care about what bankers and republicans think” then Geithner wouldn’t be a problem.

    Good point. I think Geithner started out — before saying anything — as someone who folks SUSPECTED might not have taxpayers’ interests in mind, but was chosen by Obama for his expertise.

    Geithner, as Obama’s spokesman, is now on the verge of convincing many Obama supporters that not only he but also Obama might not have taxpayers’ interests in mind. That’s a problem.

  13. SavageView Says:

    Until such time as every single congressional Dem. pledges to keep their hands off the daily operation of the banks (i.e. ‘arm’s-length’) and killing all potential of return to profit, I am dead set against nationalizations. The prospect of the Dems spending all the time screaming about things like bank charges or interest rates or minority loans or whatever and diverting the bank management’s attention from what they need to be doing, which is returning it to profit, is too terrifying to contemplate.

    I agree. I know I draw get comfort from the economic policy decisions made by Republicans between Jan 2001 and Jan 2007.

  14. Ted Says:

    I think Obama’s rationale in this interview strongly suggests that he’s approaching the Geithner plan as “Take One.”

    What he says is “nationalization would be complicated and politically very difficult.” That logically leads to the conclusion that you should try other things first. It wouldn’t lead to the conclusion that you take nationalization off the table. And I don’t think he has.

  15. Jonas Says:

    Good points. The picture at the start of the article, however, is from Oslo, Norway. Not Stockholm, Sweden.

    Not that it makes much of a difference. Norway actually experienced a somewhat similar banking crisis at about the same time as their neighbors to the east. And the Norwegian government bought up the bad banks there as well, wiping out stockowners.

  16. Peter K. Says:

    Ted:
    I think Obama’s rationale in this interview strongly suggests that he’s approaching the Geithner plan as “Take One.”

    What he says is “nationalization would be complicated and politically very difficult.” That logically leads to the conclusion that you should try other things first. It wouldn’t lead to the conclusion that you take nationalization off the table. And I don’t think he has.

    Also, I tend to hope he and Geither are threatening and bullying the 14 largest banks and the hedge funds who are responsible for this mess, and will be receiving 2.5 trillion in “encouragement.”

    If you don’t invest and pay-in to calm everyone’s nerves and get things moving again, we’ll nationalize you. They need to knock some heads and make some threats. At least privately.

  17. burritoboy Says:

    “And we want to retain a strong sense of that private capital fulfilling the core — core investment needs of this country.

    And so, what we’ve tried to do is to apply some of the tough love that’s going to be necessary, but do it in a way that’s also recognizing we’ve got big private capital markets and ultimately that’s going to be the key to getting credit flowing again.”

    I think Matthew is quite correct that we will need to build government institutions that will be able to achieve much higher levels of effectiveness than what we’ve been able to get out of US government agencies in general throughout our history. But there’s every indication that Obama knows this and is, in general, acting upon it.

    Personally, I think the US needs a real economic planning agency that is the beginnings of our own MITI. But that’s me. Achieving that politically will take a great deal of finesse.

    But, generally, we can’t ignore that every very large industrial economy is structured the same: the US, Japan, Germany, the UK, even PRChina (through Hong Kong and links with Taiwan and Singapore) have extremely large pivate capital markets. US history has generally shown that private-public partnership is what has been most effective.

    Obviously, what was most effective in the past doesn’t necessarily translate into what will work in the future. But it’s hard for me to see how the US will operate without extremely large private capital markets in the long-term, so I would agree with the general thrust of Obama’s comments here.

  18. WHS Says:

    Obama’s abbreviated case for nationalization is very strong, and it indicates that he does understand the factors in play. Clearly, he’s not dismissed the possibility out of hand.

    With that in mind, I don’t understand at all why him opting for another course suggests to so many people that he is in the hands of Wall Street. Believe it or not, there is in fact a case to be made against nationalization, and announcing that you might intend to nationalize before it becomes absolutely necessary could cause plenty of problems by itself. He correctly identifies the two major obstacles to nationalization in his summary (it’s politically taxing and there are so many banks in the US that unforseeable consequences are very probable). Nothing in this says “Operating in bad faith” except maybe Geithner’s original, fuzzy speech, which is obviously superseded by Obama.

  19. ELS Says:

    It strikes me that if we did a Swedish style solution, the necessary scale of the mop-up would create a lot of jobs, and isn’t that something we would like to do?

  20. JT Says:

    But DTM,
    We have given private capital an opportunity to step up and they have proven they will not invest their money without getting fire sale prices that nobody will sell at or guv’ment guarantees against any loss.
    And if we honestly appraise the bad debt then the relevant firms are indeed insolvent.
    If it were not terrified of the resulting runs bringing down the entire banking structure then the Fed would have already done its duty and closed a raft of bigger banks.
    Obama simply wants to shovel yet more taxpayer money into the banks’ maw. To date the banks have used the funds not to inject capital into the private sector through loans but to build up their reserves. Thus after getting Trillion$$$ they will say “But you can’t nationalize us because we have all these reserves!”
    In effecting solvency the taxpayer will have payed such huge amounts that we have simply made good the bank losses.
    Indeed it is clear that this is Obama’s intent.
    At the end of which all we’ll have is truly crippling public debt.
    Now lean over and grab your ankles cause the banks are coming back for sloppy seconds.

  21. Peter K. Says:

    Matt:

    My bottom line: Visit the Nordic countries and you’ll be impressed that their civilian public agencies are much more effective than ours.

    What’s also impressive is that for whatever reason Sweden has no corruption, unlike, say, Illinois. If Obama had thrown that in to flatter Sweden, it would have blown people’s minds.

  22. DAS Says:

    But it’s a price that most middle class Americans don’t see or pay personally.

    I beg to differ. A middle class person stuck for a whole day at the DMV because he’s moved to a new state and needs to change his license is not “paying the price” of a poorly run government agency in the same way as a poor kid with an education that is teh suxor, but that Middle Class person is still paying a price in a palpable manner that sticks with him.

    A large part of why we had such a problem electing Democrats into office from about 1968-2006 was that middle class people were paying a personal price for government agencies not running very smoothly. Here the Democrats were (and are) running as the party of “well-run government agencies can do all sorts of things to benefit you” while the average person’s primary experience with government agencies was long lines (most states — even NJ — have finally figured out how to run their DMVs … NY being an exception), pointless tax audits, lots of paperwork, more long lines, parking tickets, speed traps and liquor laws dating back to the days of Carry A. Nation. And the kicker is that Democrats, dominating the corrupt machine politics of big cities, are really at the center of a lot of bad governance.

    If Obama really does want to be a transformative politician he will indeed have to show that we can build truly effective “Nordic”-style public institutions in this country (and if you build them, they will come and vote Democratic). It certainly is the case that we do have to act on our economic problems in a time frame that is too short to really build such institutions (how many really are “shovel ready”). But Obama, at some point, is indeed gonna have to say “no, we are not like Sweden, so the Swedish solution won’t work here … but let’s try to build public institutions that way the next time we get into trouble, we can get out of trouble like the Swedish did instead of risking the problem the Japanese had … it may involve some unpleasantness now — like eating lutefisk — but in the long term that ounce of prevention will be worth a pound of cure”

  23. JT Says:

    DTM,
    I take your point but does it really make a difference? These are simply variations on what has been tried and has failed.
    The PublicPrivate (just what we need now, another Fed lite) is simply a cover for the Public guaranteeing the Private against future losses. In the real world this is called re-inflating the bubble.
    We know what needs to be done about the insolvent banks, that Obama himself is aware of the historical models for both what to do and what not to do, but seems perversely determined to try the bad ideas (and here I’ll be charitable) in the hope that hey, maybe this time the apple won’t fall to earth?
    Or perhaps “Well we’ll just have to wast a Trillion trying all the bad ideas first in order to soften political opposition to nationalization.” Really?
    I certainly understand the opposition to nationalizing the banks. I don’t want the banking sector being micro managed from DC. As if that were the only alternative.
    And if I owned appreciable stock in Citi I’d oppose it for that reason.
    But the bank managements have had their chance and I have yet to hear a single sound argument why the bad banks should not be nationalized as a first step to their reorganization.

  24. SocraticGadfly Says:

    JT, DTM, and Don Williams hit all the key points.

    Obama — and the Geithner/Summers dynamic duo — are all neolibs who are in the tank for their ideological masters on the Street.

    I (yes, self-righteous) didn’t vote for “him” because I saw that eight-nine months ago.

    Folks, already for the midterms, it’s not to early to think about the GREEN option, if you have one, on the ballot.

  25. Mr. Six Says:

    I wonder whether Obama, Geithner, and other advisors have looked at the current staffing in Treasury (after the somewhat reported departure of a number of career regulators who were replaced by people moving from the banking and investing sectors) and concluded that there may not be enough institutional competence (or simply enough staff) to nationalize even the relatively small number of large and shaky banks that would necessary. In other words, in addition to the arguments that Obama has already made, he and his team may have reached the conclusion that there aren’t enough good people in Treasure, or enough good people, to be able to manage a nationalization competently.

  26. Fred Says:

    “Visit the Nordic countries and you’ll be impressed that their civilian public agencies are much more effective than ours.”

    How can that be, when they lack diversity? Everyone knows that a diverse workforce is more effective, which is why we give preference to blacks and other non-Asian minorities in our civil service hiring. You’d think that a civil service comprised almost solely of Nordic whites would be a chaotic failure.

  27. M Says:

    Either myglesias has just discovered boldtype or my RSS reader’s been broken for over a year.

  28. Dave Says:

    Here’s the real reason why Obama is avoiding the Swedish solution: it would require setting aside so much money that it would crowd out any of his other spending priorities. He’d rather try to muddle through, hoping that banks can titrate out their losses slowly enough and the market for illiquid assets will recover fast enough to restore solvency.

  29. The Raging Platypus Says:

    Mr. Six,
    I think you’re on to something here. Ambinder seems to agree – it looks like they don’t think the current staff makeup of the Treasury can handle something of this scale adequately:

    http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/02/why_geithner_wont_nationalize_the_banks.php

  30. bob in fla Says:

    I agree about the need to beef up Treasury enough to do a good job of whatever nationalizations will need to be done. Geithner has had the job for, what? About a week? He doesn’t even have his second & third tiers of management in place yet, who will need to assess the personnel they have & build the teams necessary to audit & run the takeovers. Obama has been in office for barely 3 weeks. Of course he is buying time. He desperately needs it.

    Meanwhile, it appears the 20 largest banks will be given a ’stress teat’ – AKA a thorough audit – under the radar, the still credit worthy banks will be offered low interest loans from the Fed to partially finance takeover of some of the toxic assets (where it might bring those banks back to solvency), & other existing private funds may be more inclined to invest more. And some banks will be taken over outright.

    It’s a gamble, sure thing. But if it works, it could end up saving us taxpayers a ton. If it doesn’t, plan B. I hope we all know Obama enough to know there is a plan B, right?

  31. bob in fla Says:

    James Gary @#1:

    He IS smarter than the rest of us. Seems to me that is one of the reasons we elected him.

  32. Paul Tobin Says:

    We have a system that does not work& hasn’t for along while any variation of the system will fail also it is the sad truth.Why be apologetic to those who have been screwing us for so long.Now Obamas quarter backing, the plays are being called from the side lines.Are we ready to give up our comfortably for a solution that will benefit us all .

  33. Wendell Says:

    Yesterday, I was infuriated by Obama’s statement, because he was clearly grasping the problem–but resisting the sensible solution because the political lift was too heavy.

    Today, I’m not so certain: check out http://www.eurointelligence.com/article.581+M5b55b38d58a.0.html He really knows whereof he speaks; the settings are altogether different; and what worked there isn’t a neat analogue of what we’re confronting, which is why he opposes a mindless mirroring. In other words, Obama’s refusal to follow the Swedish model is probably the right answer for not quite the right (expressed) reason.

    So, though, what to do? I’m now coming around to this:
    http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2009/02/good-banknew-bank-vs-bad-bank-a-rare-example-of-a-no-brainer/#more-452

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Heads in the Sand

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