por admin » Mié Ene 16, 2013 11:28 am
A traves de la historia US tiene la reputacion de vender deuda mala.
Segun el autor del libro desde 1700 US ha estado vendiendo mala deuda y la historia se repite y se repite. Desde las cosechas de algodon, construccion de casas y ferrocarriles. A quien mas se le podria haber ocurrido vender monedas de un valor de $1 trillon. US esta jugando un juego de confianza, mientras sigan comprando por que los inversionistas piensan que su dinero esta seguro, US sigue imprimiendo.
Jan. 16, 2013, 10:51 a.m. EST
America has a talent for selling ‘really bad debt’
Commentary: Throughout history, we’ve left creditors high and dry
By Al Lewis
DENVER (MarketWatch) — Scott Reynolds Nelson, a history professor at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., came out with a book last September called “A Nation of Deadbeats.”
Subtitled “An Uncommon History of America’s Financial Disasters,” it chronicles crises as far back as the 1700s. Most of these episodes left the foreign creditors wondering whether Americans would ever pay their debts.
'A Nation of Deadbeats' by Scott Reynolds Nelson Slave owners in the 1800s, for instance, borrowed heavily from overseas investors, promising higher returns from cotton production. These projections fell short and the slave owners defaulted en masse.
Railroads in the 1850s created what Nelson argues were the first collateralized debt obligations. They sold bonds based on mortgages for homesteads along the tracks. Overseas investors snapped them up and then they went belly up.
History truly repeats. As the lending cycle accelerates, bankers, brokers, money lenders and insurers eventually lose their wits. Greed, if not sheer momentum, overwhelms them, and soon they can no longer tell good loans from bad. When the music stops, they hide from creditors, file bankruptcies and lobby for government rescues. Read Brett Arends’ column on the recent history of Americans walking away from debts
This impulse may be universal to human societies, but Americans have a special knack for it.
“We are supremely talented at selling really bad debt,” Nelson explained in a telephone interview. “It’s an American gift. We have always had an amazingly slick sell-side. It’s selling the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s selling land in the West that we don’t own.”
Scott Reynolds Nelson Considering this historical context, President Barack Obama should have never said, “We are not a deadbeat nation” as he did on Monday in drumming up support for another monumental raising of America’s $16.4 trillion debt ceiling.
Even if this claim is technically true, it is the sort of denial that can only rouse suspicions. It is like having to say “I am not an alcoholic,” or “I do not beat my wife.” It comes off like President Bill Clinton: “I did not have sex with that woman.” President Richard Nixon: “I am not a crook.” Or Tour de France loser Lance Armstrong: “I have never doped.”
“America is definitely a nation of deadbeats,” Nelson said.
Where else would Treasury officials have to come out and say, no, we aren’t actually going to mint a trillion dollar coin?
The next phase in the bitter between the White House and congressional Republicans began in earnest Monday, with President Obama and GOP leaders digging in over spending and the debt limit. Jerry Seib has details on The News Hub. Photo: Getty Images.
This fiscal solution seemed ripped from the satirical and always hysterical pages of the “The Onion.” But it was actually getting so much traction that Treasury officials had to officially respond on Saturday: “Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit.”
This was another remark that should have never been uttered since most sentient beings can intuitively surmise that a trillion-dollar coin can only mean “heads I win, tails you lose” on an astronomical scale.
In times like these, it’s better for officials to just keep their mouths shut.
America, after all, is playing a confidence game with the rest of the world. We keep borrowing, because they keep lending. They keep lending because they think their money is safer here than any place else.
Yes, here, in the land of magically minted trillion-dollar coins. Yes, here, where the federal government issues debt and the Federal Reserve buys it. Yes, here, in the land of Enron, MF Global and a guy named Bernie Madoff who once assured the world that, “In today’s regulatory environment, it’s virtually impossible to violate the rules.”
municipalities, companies, consumers, entrepreneurs, dreamers, hucksters and fraudsters have always left lenders and investors high and dry. Like most historians, Nelson can only marvel at the short memories of those who don’t read history books.
America is “a nation of deadbeats,” as he illustrates in his book. But it is “not a deadbeat nation” as the president correctly asserted. The nation, itself, has never defaulted on its obligations, even if many of its public and private institutions have. The “full faith and credit of the United States’ still means something even if we are headed for another bloody fight over its already unimaginable debt ceiling.
“That is true,” Nelson conceded. “The federal government is not a deadbeat — yet.”
Al Lewis is a columnist for Dow Jones Newswires.