November 25, 2014
Andrew Sorkin criticized Senator Elizabeth Warren for her opposition to Antonio Weiss, President Obama’s nominee to be the under secretary of Treasury for domestic finance. Sorkin argues that Warren is mistaken about his role in corporate inversions done to evade U.S. taxes. He also argues that his background makes him uniquely well-suited for this position because it involves the sale of government debt and:
“If the interest on the securities the Treasury sells was just 20 basis points higher for a year because of uncertainty or mismanagement, it would cost taxpayers $32 billion — more than it would cost to fund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for 50 years. The bureau was, of course, inspired by Ms. Warren.”
Actually, it would take some very serious mismanagement to raise the interest rate on government debt by an average of 20 basis points over the course of a year. While the timing of any given auction might raise the cost for that auction by a few basis points, it would take extraordinary skill to consistently mistime auctions. Furthermore, since half of the debt is short-term, with interest rates near zero, it would be almost inconceivable that the timing would change its price by any significant amount.
The comparison of the cost of running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is an interesting one. It is worth noting that the extra interest cost here is a transfer of income from the government to people who own government bonds. Some of these people will be wealthy investors, but more than half will be held by pension funds and middle income families.
By contrast the failure of economic appointees with names like Greenspan, Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner to see an $8 trillion housing bubble (equivalent to @$10 trillion in the current economy) is likely to cost the economy around $10 trillion in lost output. Unlike the transfer in the case of higher interest rates, this is money that is effectively thrown in the garbage. This would be enough to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for 15,000 years.
So clearly it is important to get people with expertise in key policy positions. Unfortunately our leaders have largely failed to do so.
Note: The number of years the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could be funded by the lost output due to the collapse of the bubble was corrected from 1,500, thanks John.
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