Tag: Economics

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Monday Business Edition

G.D.P. Shocker: U.S. on Verge of Double-Dip Recession

Posted by John Cassidy, The New Yorker

July 29, 2011

When healthy, the American economy grows at an annual rate of close to three per cent. The Commerce Department’s latest report on the gross domestic product (pdf) shows that between April and June, it expanded at an annual rate of 1.3 per cent, and between January and March it grew at an annual rate of just 0.4 per cent. The first-quarter figure is particularly stunning. Previously, the Commerce Department had estimated growth in the period at 1.9 per cent. What is to prevent a similar downward revision to the second-quarter figures? Nobody can say.

Consumer spending, which is the driving force of the American economy-it makes up more than two thirds of G.D.P.-has stalled badly. After expanding at an annual rate of more than two per cent for the previous year and a half, it was essentially flat in the second quarter. Unless consumers spend more readily in the second half of the year, there is no prospect of an economic rebound. But with gas prices still high, unemployment ticking up again, and their elected representatives in Washington paralyzed, it seems unlikely that American families will be flocking back to the malls anytime soon.

…

Retail sales hardly grew at all in June. Wall Street analysts who had been predicting growth of close to three per cent for the rest of the year are now busy trimming their estimates. Industrial production, the other item that the N.B.E.R. watches closely, has also been showing weakness. The Fed’s index of industrial production declined slightly in April and May, before rising slightly in June. Manufacturing, the biggest component of industrial production, had its weakest quarter since the previous recession ended in mid-2009.

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In one sense, the new G.D.P. figures are even worse than they seem. Bear in mind that they are all annualized. This means the government statisticians take the actual growth rate in the quarter and (roughly speaking) multiply it by four. Reversing the process (dividing by four) reveals that the economy expanded by just 0.1 percent in the first quarter and by roughly 0.3 per cent in the second quarter. These figures are so small as to be trivial.

Zandi (no Keynsian he) has predicted a loss of 1.1 million jobs from current policy, an analysis reinforced by Goldman Sachs.

We know what happens from implementing austerity policies in a Lesser Depression from the examples in Britain-

British Economy, After Austerity, at Zero Growth in the Past Nine Months

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Tuesday July 26, 2011 8:15 am

What’s amazing about this debt limit debate, and the headlong rush to austerity, is that we have empirical evidence of what can result, in this kind of economy, when you massively roll back spending. We even know what happens when you do that amid the threat of a debt downgrade rather than the fundamentals of the financial markets. All you have to do is look to Britain, which has never been the same since their austerity package was unveiled by the Tories.

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Britain rolled back demand during a time when the economy was already weak, and they are suffering through the consequences. Instead of looking at this as a problem to be avoided, US policymakers are on the verge of emulating it. And not even in a good way: the British plan was at least somewhat balanced, with tax increases along with the spending cuts. This shows that the idea of a “balanced approach” is still flawed, because either way, you’re reducing demand during a time with a demand shortfall.

And in States–

Conservative Budget Cuts Bad for State Economies

• Bigger State Spending Cuts == Higher Unemployment Rates
• Each 10% Cut == .04% Increased Unemployment
• Bigger State Spending Cuts == More Private Employment Losses
• Each 10% Cut == 1.6% Lost Private Employment
• Bigger State Spending Cuts == Weaker Economies
• Each 10% Cut == 1.6% Economic Contraction

State spending data are adjusted for inflation using the GDP price index. National changes have been removed from data on state unemployment rates, private payroll employment, and inflation-adjusted GDP growth to more clearly identify state-level economic performance. The analysis in the three charts weights each state’s data by population size to give a better reflection of a national average effect of cutting state government spending on economic performance. Weighting the analysis as such does not materially change the significance or size of the effect of cutting state spending.

AUSTERITY DOES NOT REDUCE THE DEFICIT OR DEBT!

Sure Cure for the Debt Problem: Economic Growth

By CATHERINE RAMPELL, The New York Times

Published: July 30, 2011

Before its economy crashed, Ireland was a star of this sort of debt reduction. In the 1980s, Ireland’s debt dwarfed its economy. Over the next two decades, though, that debt shrank to about a quarter of gross domestic product, largely because the economy went gangbusters.

“Ireland went from being, you know, the emerging market in a European context, to a very dynamic economy,” says Carmen Reinhart, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and co-author of “This Time Is Different,” a history of debt crises.

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The same happened during the prosperous 1990s, which began with deficits and ended with surpluses. Former President Bill Clinton is often credited for that turnabout, as he engineered higher tax rates. But most economists attribute the surplus years primarily to extraordinarily rapid growth.

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While it may be difficult or impossible to grow our way out of debt, the G.D.P. figures announced on Friday suggest that we could quite possibly shrink our way into bankruptcy. The austerity measures that Congress is debating would almost certainly slow growth further. That, in turn, might actually worsen the debt problem – the exact opposite of what their proponents suggest.

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The problem is that reducing spending or raising taxes just now would hurt the already fragile economy. Another recession would not only be painful for ordinary Americans but would actually worsen the debt problem by reducing tax revenue.

Don’t believe it? Consider this: Of the $12.7 trillion in additional federal debt that was accumulated over the last decade, about a third came from the souring economy.

Back in the Great Depression, Washington tightened its belt with disastrous results. Congress severely reduced spending in 1937, plunging the economy back into the hole. Ultimately, that meant even more federal borrowing.

Leaving aside the moral bankruptcy of starving the poor and elderly to death while leaving the wealthiest one tenth of one pecent untouched and accelerating their robbery of the middle class, this is bad, bad, bad economic policy.

And Barack Obama and the Democrats know it.  The People know it too.

Obama Approval Drops to New Low of 40%

Similar to his approval rating for handling the debt ceiling negotiations

by Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup

July 29, 2011

PRINCETON, NJ — President Obama’s job approval rating is at a new low, averaging 40% in July 26-28 Gallup Daily tracking. His prior low rating of 41% occurred several times, the last of which was in April. As recently as June 7, Obama had 50% job approval.

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Though Americans rate Obama poorly for his handling of the situation, they are less approving of how House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are handling it. Gallup does not include ratings of Congress or congressional leaders in its Daily tracking, and thus, there is no overall job approval rating of Boehner, Reid, or Congress directly comparable to Obama’s current 40% overall job approval rating.

Obama’s job approval rating among Democrats is 72%, compared with 34% among independents and 13% among Republicans. In the prior three weeks, his average approval rating was 79% among Democrats, 41% among independents, and 12% among Republicans.

Americans’ Ratings of the Economy Also More Negative Amid Stalemate

The debt crisis may be contributing to a generally sour mood for Americans that stretches beyond political ratings. For example, Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index, which is also tracked daily, averaged 49 July 2628, down 8 points in the last week and down 19 points since early July. The current index score is the worst Gallup has measured since March 2009.

The index consists of two questions, measuring Americans’ ratings of current economic conditions and their assessments of whether the economy is getting better or worse. Currently, 52% say economic conditions are poor, the highest since August 2010. And 75% of Americans say economic conditions are getting worse, a level not seen since March 2009.

Electoral victory my ass.

Monday Business Edition

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Economy Faces a Jolt as Benefit Checks Run Out

By MOTOKO RICH, The New York Times

Published: July 10, 2011

Close to $2 of every $10 that went into Americans’ wallets last year were payments like jobless benefits, food stamps, Social Security and disability, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics. In states hit hard by the downturn, like Arizona, Florida, Michigan and Ohio, residents derived even more of their income from the government.

By the end of this year, however, many of those dollars are going to disappear, with the expiration of extended benefits intended to help people cope with the lingering effects of the recession. Moody’s Analytics estimates $37 billion will be drained from the nation’s pocketbooks this year.

…

“If we don’t get more job growth and gains in wages and salaries, then consumers just aren’t going to have the firepower to spend, and the economy is going to weaken,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, a macroeconomic consulting firm.

Job growth has remained elusive. There are 4.6 unemployed workers for every opening, according to the Labor Department, and Friday’s unemployment report showed that employers added an anemic 18,000 jobs in June.

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Consumers account for an estimated 60 to 70 percent of the country’s economic activity, but two years into the official recovery, businesses are still complaining that people simply are not spending enough.

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Because benefit payments tend to be spent right away to cover basic needs like food and rent, they provide a direct boost to consumer spending. In a study for the Labor Department, Wayne Vroman, an economist at the Urban Institute, estimated that every $1 paid in jobless benefits generated as much as $2 in the economy.

Government Aid Dissipating, Damaging Economic Performance

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Monday July 11, 2011 6:55 am

The Times story tells a simple tale, one rooted in elementary macroeconomic theory, and one which has escaped everyone in Washington. If you reduce benefits on those who have the highest propensity to spend money, that money gets taken out of the economy, and GDP suffers. And GDP has a direct bearing on unemployment. Our automatic stabilizers actually worked decently during the Great Recession. In fact, most of the stimulus went to tax cuts and beefing up those stabilizers, through aid to states and expanded benefits (in fact, too much so, as public investment in jobs was barely a sliver of the total stimulus). No doubt Republicans will see this article as some evidence of lazy Americans living on the dole, but it’s a direct result of an intelligently designed system to provide a safety net when the bottom drops out of the economy.

Herr Doktor Professor–

Regular readers of this blog know that I make a big deal of the failure of interest rates to rise despite massive government borrowing. There’s a reason for that: what happens to interest rates is a key indicator of which economic model, and hence which economic policies, are right.

The Very Serious position has been that government borrowing will drive up rates, crowd out private investment, and impede recovery. A Keynes-Hicks analysis, by contrast, says that when you’re in a liquidity trap, even large government borrowing won’t drive up rates – and hence won’t crowd out private investment. In fact, it will promote private investment by raising capacity utilization and giving firms more reason to expand.

…

What we usually get in response to this seemingly decisive data are a series of excuses – most recently, that rates were low because the Fed was buying all the bonds. Well, that program has ended, and interest rates are still low.

More Herr Doktor Professor on excuses–

The fact is, the United States economy has been stuck in a rut for a year and a half.

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The truth is that creating jobs in a depressed economy is something government could and should be doing.

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Our failure to create jobs is a choice, not a necessity – a choice rationalized by an ever-shifting set of excuses.

Excuse No. 1: Just around the corner, there’s a rainbow in the sky.

• Remember “green shoots”? Remember the “summer of recovery”? Policy makers keep declaring that the economy is on the mend – and Lucy keeps snatching the football away. Yet these delusions of recovery have been an excuse for doing nothing as the jobs crisis festers.

Excuse No. 2: Fear the bond market.

• Two years ago The Wall Street Journal declared that interest rates on United States debt would soon soar unless Washington stopped trying to fight the economic slump. Ever since, warnings about the imminent attack of the “bond vigilantes” have been used to attack any spending on job creation.

  But basic economics said that rates would stay low as long as the economy was depressed – and basic economics was right. The interest rate on 10-year bonds was 3.7 percent when The Wall Street Journal issued that warning; at the end of last week it was 3.03 percent.

Excuse No. 3: It’s the workers’ fault.

• (I)f there really was a mismatch between the workers we have and the workers we need, workers who do have the right skills, and are therefore able to find jobs, should be getting big wage increases. They aren’t. In fact, average wages actually fell last month.

Excuse No. 4: We tried to stimulate the economy, and it didn’t work.

• Everybody knows that President Obama tried to stimulate the economy with a huge increase in government spending, and that it didn’t work. But what everyone knows is wrong.
  
  …
  
  What happened to the stimulus? Much of it consisted of tax cuts, not spending. Most of the rest consisted either of aid to distressed families or aid to hard-pressed state and local governments. This aid may have mitigated the slump, but it wasn’t the kind of job-creation program we could and should have had. This isn’t 20-20 hindsight: some of us warned from the beginning that tax cuts would be ineffective and that the proposed spending was woefully inadequate. And so it proved.

Neoliberal Economics has as much credibility as Stalinist Genetics.

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

I often quote Herr Dockor Professor when I agree with him because he’s got a Nobel Prize and I…

Well, I have many accomplishments I’m quite proud of but a Nobel Prize in Economics is not among them.

Recently he’s published two summaries of his pieces on macroeconomics that I’d like to draw to your attention before they scroll away and get hard to find-

Macro Readings, Self-Referential Edition, June 10, 2011

• The humbling of the Fed (wonkish), September 22, 2008
• Macro policy in a liquidity trap (wonkish), November 15, 2008
• Optimal fiscal policy in a liquidity trap (ultra-wonkish), December 29, 2008
• A Dark Age of macroeconomics (wonkish), January 27, 2009
• Liquidity preference, loanable funds, and Niall Ferguson (wonkish), May 2, 2009
• China’s Water Pistol, March 15, 2010
• Myths of Austerity, July 1, 2010
• Self-defeating Austerity, July 7, 2010
• More On Friedman/Japan, October 29, 2010
• The Instability of Moderation, November 26, 2010
• Reposted: Sam, Janet, and Debt, June 8, 2011

Macro Readings Update, June 13, 2011

(note: He includes some duplicates I have omitted.  Also I have arranged them chronologically.)

• A history lesson for Alan Meltzer, May 4, 2009
• America’s Chinese disease (not quite what you think), October 19, 2009
• Core Logic, February 26, 2010
• Japan 1998, August 31, 2010
• The Doctrine of Immaculate Transfer, January 12, 2011
• "Currency Wars" and the Impossible Trinity (Wonkish), May 9, 2011

Now just because I’m drawing them to your attention does not constitute endorsement.  I think Krugman’s criticisms of Modern Monetary Theory miss the mark almost entirely and he makes frequent category errors, too charitably ascribing to ignorance positions that are mercenary at best and motivated by pure evil in other cases.

Still, it’s not every Nobel Prize winning professor who gives away his lectures for free.