08/09 外国からの人材受け入れ マクロ経済にはプラス

小黒一正 一橋大学准教授
若年世代への寄与大 財政・成長の両方に効果

 急速な少子高齢化や経済のグローバル化の進展に伴い、日本経済は大きく変動し、いまや次第に衰退しつつある。加えて、約190%にも及ぶ公的債務(国内総生産=GDP比)は先進国最悪の水準であり、毎年1兆円程度のペースで膨張する社会保障予算は財政破綻リスクを高めている。足元の対策も必要だが、もはや残された時間は少なく、現行制度を微修正する「その場しのぎ」の対応ではこの危機を乗り切ることはできない。昨今の政治経済の混迷と閉塞(へいそく)状況は、この事実を明確に表している。

 つまり「対症療法」はあきらめ、一刻も早く、日本経済再生のための思い切った改革に着手する必要がある。その決断と責任がいまの政治には求められている。必要な改革は、大きく2つある。まず一つは、崩壊する財政・社会保障の再生である。もう一つは、成長戦略の推進だ。本稿では、両者に資する政策として「外国人材活用策」の効果について簡単に紹介したい。

 まず、多様な外国人材が活躍する次のような「20XX年」の日本経済の姿を思い浮かべてほしい。

 企業や大学・研究機関などでは、日本の大学への留学経験者を中心に、高度な知識や最先端の技術をもつ多くの熟練外国人材が活躍している。多くの企業の取締役の約半数は外国人である。多様な文化や発想がぶつかり合い、次々と新しいビジネスやサービス・製品が開発され、経済は活力に満ちている。

 小中学校の英語教師は英語を母国語とする外国人で、次世代の子どもは幼いころから英語能力に磨きをかけており、大学進学時には海外に留学する者も多い。政府は、世界で活躍する一流の学者・技術者が日本の企業や大学で就業する際には、様々な優遇措置を設けて支援している。他方で、病院や介護施設、工場・スーパーでも、多くの外国人が働いている。

 現在、ドイツ、フランス、英国、米国の総労働人口に占める外国人労働人口の割合は5%以上であるのに対して、日本は約1%にすぎない。20XX年には、熟練・未熟練の外国人材は日本経済の活力の一翼を担い、日本全体の総労働人口のうち、5%程度が外国人材という時代になる。

 さて、多くの人々は、外国人材の受け入れ拡充は経済的にネガティブな影響を及ぼすと考えがちである。それは、熟練人材の受け入れは自国経済に一定の利益をもたらすものの、未熟練人材の受け入れは自国労働者の賃金低下を招き、経済に不利益をもたらすリスクがあるという見方からだ。これは根強い「通説」だが、企業側の視点が抜けており、マクロでは異なる。というのは、一般に、熟練・未熟練にかかわらず、労働者の増加は賃金を低下させるが、その恩恵から企業側の利潤は増加する。このため、企業利潤の増加が、賃金減少を上回るならば経済全体では利益をもたらす。


 このとき、政府によって適切な再分配が行われるならば、未熟練の外国人材の受け入れは日本経済に寄与する。ただし問題は、家族を呼び寄せるなどして滞在が長期化するケースである。この場合、教育や社会保障といった権利のうちどの範囲までを付与し、日本社会に組み込んでいくのかという「社会的統合」に関する議論が発生する。

 しかし、社会的統合には、いくつかのメリットもある。例えば、公的年金の負担軽減や、税収・消費拡大への寄与である。少子高齢化で年金・医療などの支え手が減少していく中で、短期的に、若い外国人材の受け入れはその補完としての役割が期待できる。ただ、長期的には、受け入れた外国人材が労働市場から引退すると年金の受け取り手となるため、将来の財政・社会保障を圧迫するデメリットをもつ。

 そこで、筆者は、秋田大学の島澤諭准教授との共同研究として(1)2015年以降、毎年15万人の外国人材を受け入れた場合と(2)毎年7.5万人の外国人材を受け入れた場合の各世代の効用をモデル分析で試算してみた。ここでいう「効用」は、各世代がその生涯賃金(税や保険料を差し引いた手取り賃金に年金を加えたもの)をベースに、生涯消費などから得る満足感を表す。試算結果が左の図表である。

 これによると、外国人材の受け入れによる労働人口増加で税・保険料の負担が軽減される一方、国民総所得(GNI)を押し上げて消費が増えるため、1980年生まれ以降の世代の効用が改善していることが読み取れる。つまり、恒久的な外国人材の受け入れは、メリットがデメリットを上回り、長期的に日本経済にプラスの効果をもつのだ。

 前述の再分配の問題は、具体的には、不利益を被った自国労働者に対して、必要な補償がなされるか否かということに帰結する。このような課題に対しては、既に海外においていくつかの対応策がとられている。第一は、未熟練の外国人材を活用する企業に対して、その活用で得た利潤増加分を超過しない範囲で一定の追加課税を行い、それを財源として、自国労働者に再分配する政策である。例えば、シンガポールでは、業種や熟練・未熟練の区分により金額が異なるが、外国人を雇う企業に一定の雇用税(Foreign Worker Levy)を課している。

 第二は、未熟練の外国人材に一定の追加課税をするという政策である。そもそも、未熟練の外国人材が他国に職を求める動機には、母国よりも高い賃金を獲得できるという見込みがあるはずだ。そこで、未熟練の外国人材が得る利益(日本と母国の賃金差)を超過しない範囲で、未熟練の外国人材に一定の追加課税を行い、それを財源として、自国労働者に再分配するというものである。

 以上は、外国人労働者と自国労働者が代替的で、外国人材の受け入れが自国労働者の賃金を低下させるケースだが、両者が補完的であるケースも考えられる。その場合、外国人材受け入れ拡充は、そもそも自国労働者の賃金低下を招かない。中村二郎・日本大学教授らの実証分析によると、一定の留意が必要であるものの、通説とは反対にむしろ、比較的競合すると考えられる低学歴の日本人労働者の賃金を引き上げる効果をもつ可能性を示唆している(『日本の外国人労働力』09年刊)。

 外国人材の受け入れ拡充は、ほかにもいくつかのメリットが期待できる。

 一つは、日本企業の「国内回帰」促進である。企業活動のグローバル化が進む中で、各国当局が自国法で海外企業を裁くケースが増えてきている。このため、日本企業が巨額の制裁金を科され、事業撤退を迫られるケースも発生している。海外移転の目的が労働コスト縮減であるなら、未熟練の外国人材の積極的な受け入れによって比較的安価な労働力を利用できる地域が国内に出現すれば、海外リスクの低減を求める日本企業の「国内回帰」促進に資するだろう。その場合、国内の設備投資の拡大も期待できよう。

 企業の国内回帰に付随して、様々な需要も喚起される。まず、設備投資拡大に付随して、生産拠点に配置される外国人材の管理を担う部門などの雇用拡大も期待できる。また、外国人材の居住施設や、その家族の消費サービスなどの需要も発生し、その供給も必要となろう。

 いずれにせよ、少子高齢化の進展により、いまのところ、確実に日本経済は縮小均衡に向かいつつある。また、人口減少が引き続き、財政・社会保障や労働市場をはじめ、日本経済に様々なひずみをもたらしていくことは確実であるが、政治の対応は鈍い。

 いま、日本全体が生き残りに精いっぱいで、長期的視点で日本の将来を考える余裕がなくなっている。このままでは、中長期的に日本経済は停滞する可能性が高い。財政・社会保障の再生と成長戦略が改革の王道であることは言うまでもなく、外国人材の活用はこの両者に資する可能性を秘めている。いまこそ、将来世代の利益も視野に、外国人材活用策のあり方も含め早急に議論を行い、思い切った改革を進める時期にある。



〈ポイント〉
○外国人労働者受け入れで企業の利潤は増加
○日本人の賃金低下しても再分配で補償可能
○日本企業の国内回帰を促進するメリットも




source: nikkei

14/09 リーマン2年 二極化世界 日米欧、デフレ圧力消えず 新興国急成長、バブル化も

 2008年9月15日のリーマン・ショックから2年が経過する。先進各国は緊急財政出動や金融緩和で危機を乗り切り、その後は中国など新興国の成長を取り込む形で回復過程に入りつつある。だが、日米欧とも過去の負の遺産が重く、新興国にもバブル化の懸念がつきまとう。


構造変化一段と


 米証券大手リーマン・ブラザーズの破綻を境に世界経済は冷え込み、09年の世界経済成長率は戦後初めてのマイナスを記録した。先進各国は09年を財政出動や金融緩和でしのぎ、ギリシャ危機をきっかけに深刻化した今春の欧州金融不安も資金供給の緊急避難措置で何とか乗り切った。

 この間に世界は大きく変わった。先進国が財政悪化や過去の負の遺産にあえぎ低成長を余儀なくされるなか、中国をはじめとする新興国は世界経済のけん引役すら期待されるようになった。株価の変化がそれを物語る。

 自動車市場でみると、世界の構造変化が一段とはっきりする。米調査会社によると、世界の自動車販売台数はリーマン・ショック後にピーク時に比べて15%落ち込んだが、10年1~6月期には2年前と同水準まで回復した。これを支えたのが中国で、同期の新車販売台数は2年前比7割増の約900万台となった。

 国際通貨基金(IMF)によるとドル換算した10年の名目国内総生産(GDP)見通しは世界合計で61兆7800億ドルで、2年前に比べて5600億ドル程度増。内訳を見ると、先進国は7100億ドル減の41兆5600億ドルだが、新興・途上国は1兆2700億ドル増の20兆2200億ドルだった。

 各国は新興国市場の取り込みに躍起で、世界では輸出が有利になるような「通貨安競争」も起きている。かつて「強いドルは国益」と言い続けた米国はもう「強いドル」を口にせず、金融不安を抱える欧州はユーロ安もあって輸出が好調だ。

 金融緩和余地が限られるうえ、日米関係が基軸の日本は円売り・ドル買い介入にも踏み切りにくく、結果的に円の独歩高を招いている。構造的なデフレ圧力が残る日本には、厳しい戦いだ。


「低迷10年続く」


 世界経済はどうなるのか。先月末、米連邦準備理事会(FRB)のラインハート元金融政策局長とその妻のメリーランド大教授の共作論文が話題を集めた。米ワイオミング州ジャクソンホールで開かれたシンポジウムに提出され、「崩落の後で」と題されていた。「過去の大不況などから類推しても、金融危機後の経済低迷は10年は続く」。論文は指摘する。

 背景にあるのが日米欧の負の遺産だ。米国は過去の過剰消費に伴う個人などの債務、欧州は金融システム不安、日本は構造的デフレ圧力がのしかかる。日米欧は現段階で合計約1兆ドルの需要不足(供給過剰)状態との試算もある。

 特に住宅バブルの崩壊などで打撃を受けた欧米は日本の1990年代にも似て、実体経済と金融システムが「負の相乗効果」をもたらす懸念がある。経済協力開発機構(OECD)は9日、日米欧の成長率を5月時点から軒並み下方修正した。

 一方の新興国。引き締め気味の政策に転じたとはいえ、中国などでは不動産バブルの恐れが消えない。80年代の日本、90年代以降の米国と二重写しになる。投機マネーが流れ込む他のアジア諸国にも危険は潜む。

 先進国のデフレと新興国のバブルという逆方向の懸念を抱えながら走る世界経済。リーマン・ショックを境に顕在化したその姿は、世界が単線的な成長路線に戻るわけではないことを示しているように見える。

11/09 The Loneliest Analyst

September 11, 2010

By ANDREW MARTIN and LOUISE STORY
Lutz, Fla.

RICHARD X. BOVE is a bank analyst who likes to take what he calls “extreme positions.” He occasionally moves the stock market, which has earned him a certain amount of prestige and notoriety — but has also gotten him fired several times.

One recent Tuesday morning, for instance, Mr. Bove opined from his bright-orange home office, in this town just north of Tampa, that new government rules would curb mortgage profits and, therefore, bank profits, too.

It wasn’t a particularly extreme pronouncement, by Bove standards. Yet shares of Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, started to drop, and his phone lighted up.

“That’s what makes the game fun, right?” he says.

But for the last two years, Mr. Bove has been engaged in a lonely legal battle to retain his ability to say whatever he likes, an ordeal that he says has been anything but fun. BankAtlantic, a Florida bank, sued him, accusing him of defamation after he wrote a report about the banking industry in July 2008, just as the financial crisis was starting to boil over. The bank contended that the report falsely suggested that the institution was in trouble.

The case was settled three months ago , and Mr. Bove didn’t pay a dime to BankAtlantic. Still, it was hardly a resounding victory for Mr. Bove or, for that matter, freedom of speech on Wall Street, where some say the need for independent, probing voices has never been more apparent.

Although Mr. Bove is among the best-known analysts on Wall Street, most of his colleagues deserted him after BankAtlantic filed its suit. None of the professional associations that represent analysts or the securities industry rallied to his side, and his employer ultimately abandoned him. And Mr. Bove, 69, is stuck with nearly $800,000 in legal fees.

“Even though from a legal standing I won, from a real-world point of view I lost big,” he says.

The Bove report that led to the lawsuit, titled “Who Is Next?,” ranked 107 bank companies from riskiest to least risky, using two financial ratios as benchmarks on two lists. BankAtlantic Bancorp, the publicly traded holding company that controls BankAtlantic, was ranked 10th on one list, 12th on the other.

Alan B. Levan, the chairman and C.E.O. of BankAtlantic Bancorp, has often clashed with disgruntled investors and critics in his 40-year career in Florida real estate and banking. He says he filed his suit against Mr. Bove to protect his bank’s reputation.

“In the last three years, every business in America has been under extreme pressure because of the economy,” says Mr. Levan, 65. “In that kind of a scenario, when rumors begin that are inaccurate or portray a business in a light that is not true, then, in times of stress, companies need to correct those misconceptions immediately because otherwise it can become quite dangerous.”

As it turns out, however, Mr. Bove’s rankings have proved to be largely correct. On the first set of rankings, 8 out of the 20 companies he said were most at risk have failed, and most of the others’ stock prices have spiraled downward and remain low. On the second list of rankings, 9 of the top 20 banks are gone.

BankAtlantic Bancorp’s stock trades at just under $1, down from its record high of $100 at the end of 2004. The company continues to struggle under the weight of its huge Florida real estate holdings, and some analysts say tighter banking regulations will only add to financial pressure at the company.

Maclovio Pina, a banking analyst at Morningstar, says BankAtlantic is likely to continue to struggle. “It’s a murky future, in our view,” he says.

While it is not unusual for bank executives to grumble about analysts, it’s highly unusual for them to sue. For one thing, many lawyers believe that it is hard to successfully sue someone over his or her opinions. It’s also a challenge to prove that a report from a single analyst actually hurt a company’s business.

But the BankAtlantic suit, closely watched in the banking industry, seemed to capture the angst that many bank leaders felt in 2008, when even some of the most venerable institutions faced the precipice.

Mr. Levan was not the only bank executive to blame others as his company’s stock tanked. A chorus of banking chiefs at the likes of Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley publicly blamed skeptics and investors betting against them as the reason their shares fell.

Few banking executives, however, have pushed their complaints as far as Mr. Levan.

IF Mr. Levan is sensitive about his bank, it may be because he built it from a sleepy savings and loan into Florida’s second-largest bank, behind BankUnited. He controls the bank and the holding company along with a small group of associates, including his son, Jarett Levan, who was named chief executive of the bank in 2007.

The ownership structure is complex: Alan Levan and his associates control a company called BFC Financial, which owns shares in BankAtlantic Bancorp, the company that, in turn, owns BankAtlantic. Mr. Levan and his associates control BFC and BankAtlantic through special classes of voting shares.

“We don’t like different classes of shares,” says Paul Hodgson, senior research associate at the Corporate Library, which monitors corporate governance practices. “We don’t think they are good for public shareholders, and our reasoning behind that is that it’s too easy for the controlling shareholder to run the company for their financial benefit rather than the benefit of public shareholders.”

Mr. Levan says that he doesn’t agree with such criticisms. His company’s stock structure has allowed him to remain independent while many other Florida banks have been absorbed by out-of-state banks or gone out of business. He notes that the stock structure is similar to that of The New York Times Company.

Mr. Levan moved to Florida after a brief stint on Wall Street and started in the real estate business. In the mid-1980s, he entered banking by buying up shares of BankAtlantic, then the Atlantic Federal Savings and Loan Bank. By 1987, he was running the place.

As C.E.O., Mr. Levan oversaw 20 years of expansion. He rebranded BankAtlantic as “Florida’s most convenient bank,” keeping branches open on weekends. The bank’s strong branch network is one of the company’s best assets, analysts say, providing it with a stable source of funding.

Along the way, Mr. Levan has often gone to great lengths to protect his bank’s fortunes and his own reputation.

In the 1980s, for example, after several quarters of losses, BankAtlantic was in such dire straits that Mr. Levan had to scramble financially to keep it afloat, according to court documents.

Mr. Levan, who was running partnerships that invested in Florida real estate, persuaded thousands of small investors in his deals to swap their stakes for debt in BFC. He then turned around and sold that real estate, giving him money to bolster BankAtlantic’s finances, court records show.

Some of the investors later sued Mr. Levan, arguing that they had been cheated. A judge in a related case supported that view, writing that the transactions were a deal that “a person even mildly familiar with investments would conclude was unfair.”

ABC News broadcast a critical report on Mr. Levan’s real estate deals, and he sued the network, accusing it of slander. ABC ultimately won, after the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

More recently, as BankAtlantic’s loan portfolio was battered in the recession, Mr. Levan took several steps to shore up the bank’s finances and to appease regulators, including an announcement this month that the bank was seeking to raise $125 million in capital.

He has also shifted troubled assets from BankAtlantic to its holding company. Because regulators don’t require the holding company to be as financially sound as BankAtlantic, the maneuver appeased regulators while shifting the burden to the holding company.

In 2008, Mr. Levan sold $101.5 million of distressed commercial loans from the bank to the holding company for 93.5 cents on the dollar. Since then, the loans have lost half their value, but the transfer prevented that downturn from more seriously undermining BankAtlantic.

Legislators and regulators, as part of the recent financial overhaul, are planning new regulations that would require holding companies, as well as their subsidiaries, to be more financially sound.

As his career ascended, Mr. Levan was in the news over a personal matter. In 1988, three gun-toting thieves broke into his Coral Gables home, kidnapped his first wife and their daughter and demanded nearly a quarter of a million dollars in ransom. Mr. Levan paid the kidnappers, and his family was later found unharmed in the trunk of their Mercedes-Benz, according to The Miami Herald.

A former colleague at BankAtlantic says that while Mr. Levan has a friendly, slow-talking demeanor, he is fast to size up situations and always ready to jump into combat. He doesn’t respond well to criticism and has a tendency to continue battles for too long, says this person, who requested anonymity because he didn’t want to alienate Mr. Levan.

Mr. Levan disputes that observation. “If anything has become clear from recent events, it is that we have encouraged and tolerated dissenting views almost to a fault,” he says. “We survived the last banking crisis, when giants failed, by being flexible in our approach to complex issues and ahead of the curve.”

MR. BOVE, who grew up in New York City, is a bit of an anomaly among bank analysts. He is twice as old as many of his competitors and relishes talking to the news media; many others aren’t allowed to make such appearances or do so only grudgingly. And he works out of his home for a small securities firm, with grandchildren and dogs cavorting outside his door, rather than at a big bank in Manhattan.

He has been covering banking for about three decades, even as many of his contemporaries have moved on to careers in money management and other more lucrative work. “For some reason I really like what I do, and I just don’t want to do anything else,” he says.

Even in the midst of the BankAtlantic litigation, Mr. Bove continued to crank out at least one report a day and sometimes as many as five. He says he tries to capture the big picture rather than focus on the granular financial details found in earnings statements.

“What’s the reason to pay me to be the 14th guy to tell you what is going to happen in the second quarter at Citigroup?” he says. “There’s just no utility for a guy at a boutique that operates pretty much on his own to replicate the work of other analysts.”

A high point in Mr. Bove’s career came in 2005. That August, he issued an eight-page report titled “This Powder Keg Is Going to Blow.” He argued that loose lending standards had created the housing bubble and that it was going to come to an abrupt and painful end.

“When I wrote that, people thought I was nuts,” he recalls. “Now if I would have stayed with that until 2008, I’d be America’s hero.”

After correctly parsing the looming banking crisis, Mr. Bove felt that by the spring of 2008, the worst had passed. He made a major blunder by encouraging investors to buy up bank stocks at the time and remained bullish through the summer, when he released “Who Is Next?” Bank shares collapsed months later, before rallying again in 2009.

Even as he has bounced from one firm to another, he has maintained a healthy list of clients. Banks and mutual funds are his biggest clients, followed by hedge funds, he says.

Some bank executives who have known Mr. Bove over the years hold him in high regard.

“We certainly haven’t always agreed with his assessments,” says John A. Allison IV, the former chief executive of BB&T, the major regional bank based in Winston-Salem, N.C. “My experience was that he gave a very thoughtful overview. I would rate him highly.”

Mr. Bove has his share of detractors, too, who criticize him for ubiquitous media appearances and a predilection for changing his views too quickly. Several suggest that Mr. Bove is inconsistent, making a brilliant insight one week, a mediocre one the next.

But Andy Kessler, a former Wall Street analyst, says it’s common for analysts to change their style to cater to their clients. “If your clients are mostly hedge funds, you’re going to give lots of short-term analysis,” he says.

Mr. Bove moved with his wife, Christel, who is blind from multiple sclerosis, and their seven children to Florida from New York in 1994. It was after that when he says he encountered Mr. Levan, in a series of meetings in the late 1990s. Mr. Bove recalls Mr. Levan being upbeat about BankAtlantic’s prospects.

“I don’t remember ever having a contentious or negative meeting with BankAtlantic,” says Mr. Bove. As for Mr. Levan: “He was a very personable individual. He was friendly. He was open. I thought he answered the questions in a very frank manner.”

THE oddity of the BankAtlantic lawsuit, Mr. Bove says, is that he was actually trying to show that he was more bullish on banks than other analysts, which turned out to be a mistake, given the financial crisis that followed. The subtitle of “Who Is Next?,” in fact, is “Not as Many Candidates as One Would Think.”

After the report was filed, it took just eight days for BankAtlantic to file its lawsuit. Mr. Levan said in a statement at the time: “If there is anyone who knows ‘Who Is Next?,’ it would be the folks at the F.D.I.C., with mountains of detailed financial information about every institution enjoying deposit insurance. They, however, keep what they know to themselves — for good reason.”

The bank wanted Mr. Bove to correct his report, which had ranked the holding company, not BankAtlantic itself. Mr. Levan argues that the media misinterpreted the report and reported that the bank, rather than the holding company, was in trouble. The distinction is important, he said, because the bank has remained well capitalized. Those capital levels kept regulators happy, even as some analysts questioned the health of the holding company.

To a certain extent, Mr. Levan is simply splitting hairs: it’s the holding company that is publicly traded, and its assets are almost entirely made up of BankAtlantic assets, so the fortunes of the two entities are tightly linked.

Mr. Bove said that if he hadn’t fought the lawsuit, he and other analysts would find their work and careers undermined by constant flurries of suits.

“I’m trying to protect my ability to do my job,” he says. “Any company could direct my research if I had allowed this to go through.”

Still, other than a few pundits, no one stepped forward to help him, Mr. Bove says. Several associations that represent stock analysts or the securities industry declined Mr. Bove’s requests to help him pay his legal bills, he says. Those groups — the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association; the New York Society of Security Analysts; and the CFA Institute — declined to comment.

Mr. Bove’s former employer, the investment bank Ladenburg Thalmann, chose to settle its end of the case by paying BankAtlantic $350,000, without admitting to any wrongdoing, and leaving Mr. Bove to defend himself; he said he quit the firm in February because of disagreements over the lawsuit. He now works for Rochdale Securities.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, an independent securities watchdog, started an investigation of Mr. Bove in 2008, demanding his records on BankAtlantic and questioning him for half a day. He was never penalized.

Ladenburg declined comment, as did the authority, which also declined to say why it began its investigation of him.

John C. Coffee Jr., a law professor at Columbia University, likens Mr. Bove to a news reporter who is sued over an article. But, he says, the press typically rallies around reporters whose First Amendment rights are challenged, while securities analysts are a much less cohesive group.

Nonetheless, Mr. Coffee says the stakes in the Bove case were high because a negative outcome could “chill free and robust debate.”

“Anyone who is forced to settle in a case like that increases the chances that a combative C.E.O. will sue the next analyst who challenges him,” Mr. Coffee adds.

As part of his lawsuit against Mr. Bove, Mr. Levan maintained that BankAtlantic was financially healthy. While it is true that BankAtlantic has met its regulator’s financial requirements, the holding company, which has absorbed a large chunk of BankAtlantic’s troubled assets, has lost money for the last 12 quarters. And it was the holding company that Mr. Bove was ranking, not the bank subsidiary housed inside of it.

Although Mr. Levan said in an interview that his bank didn’t apply for federal bailout money during the financial crisis, the bank’s own financial filings show that it did apply. Asked about this, Mr. Levan sent an e-mail clarifying the matter: “We filed an application to keep our options open but withdrew it prior to the time it was acted upon. At no time did we ever make a determination to accept federal monies.”

In February this year, Mr. Levan approached some of BankAtlantic’s debt holders and asked them to sell their securities back to the bank for 20 cents on the dollar. Investors balked, led by a New York hedge fund called Hildene Capital Management.

“In light of BankAtlantic’s protests of any criticism of its performance, its current proposal seems out of step with its fanatical defense of its financial condition,” wrote John Scannell, chief operating officer of Hildene, in a February letter. “For example, BankAtlantic seemed so concerned with any implication that it was experiencing distress, it sued noted banking analyst Dick Bove in 2008.”

Instead of asking the debt holders to accept a discount, Mr. Scannell says he suggested that Mr. Levan and his son take big pay cuts. Mr. Levan says he doesn’t recall details of his conversations with Hildene, but says the firm didn’t influence his decision to ultimately give up on the debt exchange offer.

Last month, a federal judge in a shareholder lawsuit against BankAtlantic’s holding company questioned Mr. Levan’s integrity, ruling that Mr. Levan had made false statements in 2007 about the extent of bad loans. The plaintiffs argue that Mr. Levan did so intentionally in order to artificially bolster the stock price.

Mr. Levan denies that accusation and doesn’t agree with the judge’s assessment, either, but on Thursday the judge turned down Mr. Levan’s request to reconsider the matter. The case is pending.

Mr. Levan, meanwhile, is dueling with investors of other companies in which his company owns stakes — Benihana, the restaurant chain, and Woodbridge Holdings, formerly known as the Levitt Corporation, the home builder famous for building Levittown on Long Island.

BankAtlantic entered into settlement talks with Mr. Bove in his case in March. In the case, Mr. Levan said Mr. Bove’s report had damaged the bank’s reputation.

But “at the end of the day, that may not have been a strong case for them,” says Thomas F. Holt Jr., a lawyer for Mr. Bove. If the case had gone to court, Mr. Holt said, he planned to counter BankAtlantic’s argument by putting the bank’s reputation on trial.

Mr. Levan disagrees with that assessment. “There was nothing Mr. Holt said he was going to say or do that had any bearing on our view of the case against Mr. Bove,” he says.

MR. LEVAN says he and BankAtlantic got exactly what they wanted out of the lawsuit against Mr. Bove. As part of the settlement, Mr. Bove issued a statement reiterating that his rankings didn’t include BankAtlantic. (But they did include its holding company.)

Yet Mr. Levan may not have won everything he sought. For one, he said the bank did not sue Mr. Bove for money; however, e-mails from BankAtlantic’s lawyer show that the company sought as much as $650,000 from the analyst. In addition, BankAtlantic had sought a much more strongly worded statement than Mr. Bove ultimately issued, the e-mails show.

Regardless, Mr. Levan remains upbeat about his bank. He and his son rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange last month, and Mr. Levan contends that his company is “a fantastic banking story of a bank that really did extremely well in this recession.”

Mr. Bove, meanwhile, says his feud with Mr. Levan was mostly dispiriting. He’s particularly frustrated with government regulators, whom he believes ignored red flags at BankAtlantic for years.

As he continues to churn out opinions about bank stocks, Mr. Bove says he has no intention of opining on BankAtlantic Bancorp again. Nothing personal, he says, but the banking company is simply too small to interest his clients.

“It’s a purely economic decision,” he says.

13/09 E.U. Raises Growth Forecast for 2010

September 13, 2010
E.U. Raises Growth Forecast for 2010
By MATTHEW SALTMARSH
PARIS — The European Commission lifted its growth forecast for the region significantly on Monday in the wake of strong output data during the second quarter, and said that the recovery was starting to broaden across sectors.

In the latest of its twice-yearly economic forecasts, the commission predicted a growth rate for 2010 of 1.7 percent in the 16-nation euro area, and 1.8 percent for the 27-member European Union. Those were upward revisions of around three-quarters of a percentage point compared to the last forecast in May.

It stressed that the recovery was uneven across countries; the upgrade was based on new more positive assessments of France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Britain, which account for about 80 percent of the Union’s gross domestic product.

This unevenness reflects differences in production structures, the scale of adjustment challenges and ongoing rebalancing within the E.U. and euro area.

But it added that the recovery was broadening “across sectors and demand components.” In particular, it noted a better contribution of private investment and consumption to growth in the second quarter of 2010, exceeding the combined contributions of inventories and net exports.

“This rebalancing is encouraging, especially as the weaker external environment in the second part of the year is set to have a dampening effect on E.U. export growth,” the report said.

It noted, however, that financial markets were still fragile, having recovered only partly from the tensions experienced in the spring, when investors fled certain European bonds, fearing defaults.

Overall, the new assessment appeared to help bolster European markets. The broad Euro Stoxx 50 index and the FTSE 100 in London both added 1.1 percent after midday. The euro advanced to $1.2812 from $1.2678 late Friday. Yields on benchmark euro-zone government bonds pushed higher — including those of Germany — suggesting that investors retain fears about sovereign risk.

The commission stressed that the pace of growth would moderate during the second half, reflecting the softening of the global economy and the fading of the temporary factors that kick-started the recovery. It forecast a 0.5 percent expansion in the E.U. and euro area in the third quarter, and 0.4 percent for the third quarter followed by 0.3 percent in the fourth.

“The European economy is clearly on a path of recovery,” the economic and monetary affairs commissioner, Olli Rehn, said. “The rebound of domestic demand bodes well for the job market.”

Going forward, financial stability and fiscal consolidation are the priorities, he said.

The commission presented a picture of still-benign inflation, forecasting a 1.8 percent rate this year for the Union and 1.4 percent in the euro area. Those forecasts were little changed from May.

Just as the outlook in Europe appears to be improving, the global picture is worrying some analysts and policy makers.

Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, said Monday that while growth in emerging markets is strong, it remains subdued in the developed countries.

At a news conference in Basel, Switzerland, he repeated that he does not expect the advanced economies to slip back into recession, and also that he does not see a significant risk of deflation.

Separately, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Monday that its July index of composite leading indicators pointed to “clearer signs of a moderation in the pace of expansion to last month’s assessment.”

The index is a collation of economic indicators that provides early signals of turning points in business cycles in advanced economies. It fell by 0.1 percentage point in July from June, when it also fell. During the three months before June, the index had risen.

In Canada, France, Italy, Britain, China and India there are stronger signals of a slower pace of growth in coming months, while there are also stronger signals that the expansion may lose momentum in Japan, the United States and Brazil, it said.

Additional reporting by Jack Ewing in Basel, Switzerland.

12/09 At Goldman, Partners Are Made, and Unmade

By SUSANNE CRAIG

On Wall Street, becoming a partner at Goldman Sachs is considered the equivalent of winning the lottery.

This fall, in a secretive process, some 100 executives will be chosen to receive this golden ticket, bestowing rich pay packages and an inside track to the top jobs at the company.

What few outside Goldman know is that this ticket can also be taken away.

As many as 60 Goldman executives could be stripped of their partnerships this year to make way for new blood, people with firsthand knowledge of the process say. Inside the firm, the process is known as “de-partnering.” Goldman does not disclose who is no longer a partner, and many move on to jobs elsewhere; some stay, telling few of their fate.

“I have friends who have been de-partnered who are still there, and most people inside think they are still partners,” said one former Goldman executive, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. “It is something you just don’t talk about.”

Goldman has roughly 35,000 employees, but only 375 or so partners. The former Treasury Secretaries Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Robert E. Rubin, and former Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey, now chief executive of financial firm MF Global, were all partners.

It can take years to make partner, and being pushed from the inner circle can be wrenching.

“Being partner at Goldman is the pinnacle of Wall Street; if you make it, you are considered set for life,” said Michael Driscoll, a visiting professor at Adelphi University and a senior managing director at Bear Stearns before that firm collapsed in 2008. “To have it taken away would just be devastating to an individual. There is just no other word for it.”

The financial blow can be substantial as well. Executives stripped of partnership would retain their base salary, roughly $200,000, but their bonuses could be diminished, potentially costing them millions of dollars in a good year.

While gaining the coveted status of partner, and then losing it, is certainly not unheard-of at private financial and law firms on Wall Street, Goldman’s partnership process stands out for its size and intricacy.

Goldman weeds out partners because it is worried that if the partnership becomes too big, it will lose its cachet and become less of a motivational tool for talented up-and-comers, people involved in the process say. If too many people stay, it creates a logjam.

The average tenure of a partner is about eight years, in part because of natural attrition and retirements. Goldman insiders also note they have what they call an “up-and-out” culture, leading to the active management of the pool.

The process of vetting new candidates for partner and deciding which existing partners must go began in earnest in recent weeks, according to people with knowledge of the process, which takes place every two years. They spoke on the condition of anonymity. The 2010 partners will most likely be announced in November.

Candidates are judged on many qualities, primarily their financial contribution to the firm. But lawyers and risk managers — who are not big revenue producers — can also make it to the inner circle.

The executives responsible for running the partner process this year are the vice chairmen, J. Michael Evans, Michael S. Sherwood and John S. Weinberg; the head of human resources, Edith W. Cooper; and the bank’s president, Gary D. Cohn.

Goldman typically removes 30 or so partners every two years, said those people who described the process. The number is expected to be significantly higher this year because fewer senior executives have left the firm as a sluggish economy and uncertain markets limit their opportunities elsewhere.

Removing partners like this is unique to Goldman among publicly traded firms. When companies go public, they shed the private partnership system, and ownership of the company is transferred to shareholders. Goldman’s ownership was also transferred to shareholders, but it created a hybrid partner model as an incentive for employees.

Those whom Goldman does not want to keep are likely to be quietly told in the coming weeks. Each situation is handled differently, the people with knowledge of the process say. Some partners are given time to find other jobs outside the firm. Others are told they will not be made partner and are asked to consider what they want to do next within the company.

While Goldman is on track to remove many more executives than usual, the process is in its early stages and no final decisions have been made, these people caution.

A Goldman spokesman declined to comment on how it selects and removes partners.

The process is at the heart of Goldman’s culture, a way for the firm to reward and retain top talent. Goldman was one of the last of the big Wall Street partnerships to go public, selling shares in 1999.

When it was private, the partners were the owners, sharing in the profits, and in some cases having to put in money to shore up losses. To retain that team spirit as a public company, Goldman continued to name partners. In 1999, there were 221.

Yet there are differences from past practices. When Goldman was a private partnership, it was rare that a partner would be asked to leave.

“Once you made partner, you typically retired as a partner,” said another former Goldman executive who used to be involved in the process. “If we asked someone to leave, it was because we had really screwed up and the person wasn’t pulling their weight.”

It has been a rough year for Goldman. In July, it paid $550 million to settle civil fraud accusations that it had duped clients by selling mortgage securities while failing to make critical disclosures. The firm did not admit or deny guilt.

Still, even in the worst of years, the chance to ascend into the private partnership at Goldman is a huge honor. Candidates can be up for partnership two or even three times before finally being chosen.

Partners get investment opportunities not offered to other employees, and are typically the highest paid at the firm. Goldman will even book tables for them at fashionable New York restaurants.

A big payday is not guaranteed, however. When the firm does not do well, partners tend to bear the brunt of it.

Top Goldman executives did not receive bonuses in 2008, the peak of the financial crisis. But in 2007, a banner year for Goldman, the firm set aside $20.19 billion for compensation and benefits, and its chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, took home $68.5 million in stock and cash.

Candidates for partner are vetted by current partners. The review process is known inside Goldman as “cross-ruffing,” a reference to a maneuver in bridge. A few hundred people are typically nominated within the whole company, and the number is eventually whittled down to about 100.

Each department compiles a list of potential candidates, with photos and performance reviews. Partners in another department review it. Candidates are not interviewed, and in many cases are unaware they are even up for partner.

When final decisions are made, it is usually Mr. Blankfein who breaks the good news to the new partners. Few candidates ever find out why they missed the cut.

And Goldman announces only inductees, not those who have been removed. Still, there may be a few telltale signs this year.

Goldman recently moved to a new building, just steps away from the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan. Outer offices are hard to come by, and typically given only to partners. Goldman insiders are already speculating that de-partnered executives who decide to stay will have to give up their window view.

11/09 Tom Friedman: We’re No. 1(1)!

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
I want to share a couple of articles I recently came across that, I believe, speak to the core of what ails America today but is too little discussed. The first was in Newsweek under the ironic headline “We’re No. 11!” The piece, by Michael Hirsh, went on to say: “Has the United States lost its oomph as a superpower? Even President Obama isn’t immune from the gloom. ‘Americans won’t settle for No. 2!’ Obama shouted at one political rally in early August. How about No. 11? That’s where the U.S.A. ranks in Newsweek’s list of the 100 best countries in the world, not even in the top 10.”

The second piece, which could have been called “Why We’re No. 11,” was by the Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson. Why, he asked, have we spent so much money on school reform in America and have so little to show for it in terms of scalable solutions that produce better student test scores? Maybe, he answered, it is not just because of bad teachers, weak principals or selfish unions.

“The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation,” wrote Samuelson. “Students, after all, have to do the work. If they aren’t motivated, even capable teachers may fail. Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a ‘good’ college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school ‘reform’ is that if students aren’t motivated, it’s mainly the fault of schools and teachers.” Wrong, he said. “Motivation is weak because more students (of all races and economic classes, let it be added) don’t like school, don’t work hard and don’t do well. In a 2008 survey of public high school teachers, 21 percent judged student absenteeism a serious problem; 29 percent cited ‘student apathy.’ ”

There is a lot to Samuelson’s point — and it is a microcosm of a larger problem we have not faced honestly as we have dug out of this recession: We had a values breakdown — a national epidemic of get-rich-quickism and something-for-nothingism. Wall Street may have been dealing the dope, but our lawmakers encouraged it. And far too many of us were happy to buy the dot-com and subprime crack for quick prosperity highs.

Ask yourself: What made our Greatest Generation great? First, the problems they faced were huge, merciless and inescapable: the Depression, Nazism and Soviet Communism. Second, the Greatest Generation’s leaders were never afraid to ask Americans to sacrifice. Third, that generation was ready to sacrifice, and pull together, for the good of the country. And fourth, because they were ready to do hard things, they earned global leadership the only way you can, by saying: “Follow me.”

Contrast that with the Baby Boomer Generation. Our big problems are unfolding incrementally — the decline in U.S. education, competitiveness and infrastructure, as well as oil addiction and climate change. Our generation’s leaders never dare utter the word “sacrifice.” All solutions must be painless. Which drug would you like? A stimulus from Democrats or a tax cut from Republicans? A national energy policy? Too hard. For a decade we sent our best minds not to make computer chips in Silicon Valley but to make poker chips on Wall Street, while telling ourselves we could have the American dream — a home — without saving and investing, for nothing down and nothing to pay for two years. Our leadership message to the world (except for our brave soldiers): “After you.”

So much of today’s debate between the two parties, notes David Rothkopf, a Carnegie Endowment visiting scholar, “is about assigning blame rather than assuming responsibility. It’s a contest to see who can give away more at precisely the time they should be asking more of the American people.”

Rothkopf and I agreed that we would get excited about U.S. politics when our national debate is between Democrats and Republicans who start by acknowledging that we can’t cut deficits without both tax increases and spending cuts — and then debate which ones and when — who acknowledge that we can’t compete unless we demand more of our students — and then debate longer school days versus school years — who acknowledge that bad parents who don’t read to their kids and do indulge them with video games are as responsible for poor test scores as bad teachers — and debate what to do about that.

Who will tell the people? China and India have been catching up to America not only via cheap labor and currencies. They are catching us because they now have free markets like we do, education like we do, access to capital and technology like we do, but, most importantly, values like our Greatest Generation had. That is, a willingness to postpone gratification, invest for the future, work harder than the next guy and hold their kids to the highest expectations.

In a flat world where everyone has access to everything, values matter more than ever. Right now the Hindus and Confucians have more Protestant ethics than we do, and as long as that is the case we’ll be No. 11!

12/09 Paul Krugman, China, Japan, America

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Last week Japan’s minister of finance declared that he and his colleagues wanted a discussion with China about the latter’s purchases of Japanese bonds, to “examine its intention” — diplomat-speak for “Stop it right now.” The news made me want to bang my head against the wall in frustration.

You see, senior American policy figures have repeatedly balked at doing anything about Chinese currency manipulation, at least in part out of fear that the Chinese would stop buying our bonds. Yet in the current environment, Chinese purchases of our bonds don’t help us — they hurt us. The Japanese understand that. Why don’t we?

Some background: If discussion of Chinese currency policy seems confusing, it’s only because many people don’t want to face up to the stark, simple reality — namely, that China is deliberately keeping its currency artificially weak.

The consequences of this policy are also stark and simple: in effect, China is taxing imports while subsidizing exports, feeding a huge trade surplus. You may see claims that China’s trade surplus has nothing to do with its currency policy; if so, that would be a first in world economic history. An undervalued currency always promotes trade surpluses, and China is no different.

And in a depressed world economy, any country running an artificial trade surplus is depriving other nations of much-needed sales and jobs. Again, anyone who asserts otherwise is claiming that China is somehow exempt from the economic logic that has always applied to everyone else.

So what should we be doing? U.S. officials have tried to reason with their Chinese counterparts, arguing that a stronger currency would be in China’s own interest. They’re right about that: an undervalued currency promotes inflation, erodes the real wages of Chinese workers and squanders Chinese resources. But while currency manipulation is bad for China as a whole, it’s good for politically influential Chinese companies — many of them state-owned. And so the currency manipulation goes on.

Time and again, U.S. officials have announced progress on the currency issue; each time, it turns out that they’ve been had. Back in June, Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary, praised China’s announcement that it would move to a more flexible exchange rate. Since then, the renminbi has risen a grand total of 1, that’s right, 1 percent against the dollar — with much of the rise taking place in just the past few days, ahead of planned Congressional hearings on the currency issue. And since the dollar has fallen against other major currencies, China’s artificial cost advantage has actually increased.

Clearly, nothing will happen until or unless the United States shows that it’s willing to do what it normally does when another country subsidizes its exports: impose a temporary tariff that offsets the subsidy. So why has such action never been on the table?

One answer, as I’ve already suggested, is fear of what would happen if the Chinese stopped buying American bonds. But this fear is completely misplaced: in a world awash with excess savings, we don’t need China’s money — especially because the Federal Reserve could and should buy up any bonds the Chinese sell.

It’s true that the dollar would fall if China decided to dump some American holdings. But this would actually help the U.S. economy, making our exports more competitive. Ask the Japanese, who want China to stop buying their bonds because those purchases are driving up the yen.

Aside from unjustified financial fears, there’s a more sinister cause of U.S. passivity: business fear of Chinese retaliation.

Consider a related issue: the clearly illegal subsidies China provides to its clean-energy industry. These subsidies should have led to a formal complaint from American businesses; in fact, the only organization willing to file a complaint was the steelworkers union. Why? As The Times reported, “multinational companies and trade associations in the clean energy business, as in many other industries, have been wary of filing trade cases, fearing Chinese officials’ reputation for retaliating against joint ventures in their country and potentially denying market access to any company that takes sides against China.”

Similar intimidation has surely helped discourage action on the currency front. So this is a good time to remember that what’s good for multinational companies is often bad for America, especially its workers.

So here’s the question: Will U.S. policy makers let themselves be spooked by financial phantoms and bullied by business intimidation? Will they continue to do nothing in the face of policies that benefit Chinese special interests at the expense of both Chinese and American workers? Or will they finally, finally act? Stay tuned.


Ross Douthat is off today.