Although a bipartisan agreement will be hard to achieve in the current Washington environment, both parties should recognise that a package of entitlement reforms is less dangerous than an explosion of US interest rates in the coming years.

By John Plender. After two and a half years of relentless financial pounding, the crisis literature is becoming mountainous. To command the weary reviewer’s attention, any new book on the aberrations of the financial community has to have a clear focus and make a compelling case. In Too Big To Save? Robert Pozen, chairman of mutual fund group MFS Investment Management and a former vice-chairman of Fidelity Investments, pulls off the trick. 

American subsidies are justified as necessary to promote home ownership in the US. Indeed, the rate of home ownership in the US rose to 68 per cent by 2006. Yet, without these governmental subsidies, the rate of home ownership in Canada also rose to 68 per cent in 2006. This comparison suggests that the large American subsidies for home purchases have led to higher home prices in the US rather than significant increases in the rate of US home ownership.

If Glass-Steagall were reinstated, we would be recreating the short-term funding weakness that forced Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers into insolvency.

By Robert Pozen. On Monday, President Barack Obama pressed 12 large US banks – all recipients of federal assistance – to increase their lending to businesses and consumers. In fact, during the third quarter of 2009, total loans at US banks fell by $210bn (€144bn, £129bn), or 3 per cent, the biggest quarterly decline since 1984.

In short, while any tax credit for new jobs is bound to involve some unnecessary government expenditure, a proper design can substantially restrict the ability of employers to game the system. Moreover, the cost of the tax credit can be dramatically reduced to the extent that the new jobs go to workers currently drawing unemployment benefits. It makes more sense to incentivise companies to hire the unemployed than to pay those same people not to work.

SDRs have less potential than suggested by China. They could not become a viable global currency in their present form. Swaps with the IMF for SDRs would provide central banks with a convenient way to diversify their portfolios without depressing the market for US dollars. However, these swaps would have to be of limited volume because they effectively transfer the risk of dollar depreciation from central banks to the IMF.

original article: Chatter about a New Global Currency Is Overblown

The US Treasury is already hiring experts to help buy troubled assets from financial institutions, but the most important question behind the bail-out plan remains open: what is the right price for these assets since they are not actively traded?