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Archive for the ‘GDP’ Category

GDP Deflator at a Five Decades Low While Income Inequality Is at Record Highs

From this chart sent out this morning by David Rosenberg, we can see that the GDP deflator is at a five decades low.

I tend to believe that the modifications to the inflation measures, including the deflator, that have accumulated by the federal bureaucracy over the past ten years are greatly understating the actual inflation in the economy.

There are very positive benefits for the government to do this. The lower the deflator, the better and higher the real GDP figures will appear. And a low measure of official inflation reduces increases in payments in Social Security and other programs with Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA), including official debt payments on the bonds and the TIPS.

Gold gives the lie to this, which is why it is so hated by financial engineers and statists.

On the other hand, the inequality of income distribution in the US is at level not seen since the 1920′s.

There is some good reason to think that government tax and fiscal policies, as well as the monopolistic makeup and subsidized growth of the Banking sector facilitates this wealth transfer and concentration, which has a highly negative impact on real economic growth.

There will be a change, and the trends will be reversed. How they are reversed and what changes will accompany those reversals are very much open to debate, and divergent historical examples. But these changes almost invariably involve a shift from individualism to statism.

“Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”

John F. Kennedy

Change will come if the system remains as unsustainable as it is now. And what gives me a somewhat pessimistic view is that people never seem to learn the lessons of history.

First Quarter 2010 GDP Advance

Posted by Karl Denninger

So the data is out….

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2010, (that is, from the fourth quarter to the first quarter), according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 5.6 percent.

Well, that’s not what the previous quarter was, but it’s also no surprise.

The deceleration in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected decelerations in private inventory investment and in exports, a downturn in residential fixed investment, and a larger decrease in state and local government spending that were partly offset by an acceleration in PCE and a deceleration in imports.

The inventory cycle is about done, residential fixed investment hasn’t turned around at all and in fact is still declining, and state and local government spending is down – they’re out of money!

There are some interesting data points inside the release.  Of note:

• Durables were up big – 11.3%.  Most of this is probably improvement in vehicles, if the reports from the first quarter automakers are to be believed.  Considering that they were in all-on crash mode last year and into the end of 2009, this is good for them – not so good for anything else.

• In domestic private investment the only place we saw gains was in “equipment and software.”  Residential and non-residential structures were both down big, seasonally adjusted (10.9% and 14%, respectively.)  But the CapEx cycle that everyone is counting on for continued expansion is slowing q/o/q; it was up 19% last quarter, and is now up 13.4%.  While that’s a significant positive print if this was a short spurt and is now tapering off we got trouble in the back half of the year.  The jury remains out on this one.

• Net exports were up nicely.  Hint-hint: Policies that strengthen or stabilize the dollar will help this continue – like, for example, abandoning ZIRP!
• Government spending is very interesting.  The Federal government, of course, continues to spend.  But most of the government’s deficit spending isn’t going into direct expenditures – it is instead going into transfer payments and handouts of various sorts, as the total federal spending was up only 1.4%.  State and local spending were down big, as they’re simply out of money.

• Finally, disposable personal income was up just 1.5%.  Where is all the federal borrowing going? 

I’m concerned with these numbers – quite concerned in fact.  The Federal Government borrowed (and presumably spent) $462 billion in excess of tax receipts over the first three months of 2010. 

But PCE – personal consumption expenditures – was up $83 billion and federal spending was up only 3.5 billion. 

Where did the other $375 billion go?

Into a black hole of covering existing obligations, it appears, and the final private demand GDP deficit covered by this is almost exactly 10% (GDP for the quarter is ~3.650 trillion, so $375 billion is roughly 10% of that.)

What does this mean?  It means we’ve not turned the corner on this graph, which was current as of 12/31/2009 (and which I can’t get an accurate read on until the end of this year):

I don’t like it folks.  All the claims of “economic recovery” are in fact claims of “government is propping up 10% of final demand, and that propping up is disappearing into a black hole.”

There’s no evidence in this report that the economy is recovering – that is, that the artificial “borrowed and spent” support the government has been providing for the last two years is being replaced with actual final demand.

The positives in the GDP report are automobiles (strong this quarter) and a positive, but weakening CapEx cycle in business spending. 

But the key item for me in this series, which is evidence that the federal government’s replacement of final private demand is moderating and being picked up by private economic activity, is utterly absent. In fact the influence of those dollars, as shown by the final print compared to last quarter, is waning.

One-sentence summary: The rocket is running out of fuel.

We need this to continue – if it reverses, we’re cooked and fast.  Bernanke needs to raise rates to above that of the ECB.  He may get some help if a few European nations collapse, of course – but if they wind up at zero, we need to be at 1%, and that divergence needs to be established right now.  We do NOT want a skyrocketing dollar, but because we import too much of our raw materials and it is the “value added” that we get to keep, we want cheaper imports of those materials – and we get that by being able to buy them with a stronger buck.  The specific issue here is energy (oil prices); we can’t have oil going back over $100, and the best way to prevent it is to get rid of ZIRP.

Heh, Someone Gets It (Buiter)

Posted by Karl Denninger

Hattip Zerohedge:  (The original article is here)

Note the structural deficit number.  This is what happens when you allow this to go on for a decade:

Which in turn leads to this:

That red line is actual private demand expressed as the delta (or change) in GDP.

I don’t have accurate debt and GDP numbers on a contemporary basis for the rest of the nations that Buiter cites, and besides, I focus on the United States anyway.

Buiter posits that The Fed could eventually be “forced” to monetize – that is, try to inflate it away.

This is where Buiter and I part company, because it is impossible to inflate out of a mess like this when you have social spending indexed to inflation – and our entitlement programs all are in one form or another, with the most-ridiculous, Medicare, rising at much higher rates than general inflation.

As such attempting to “inflate out” won’t work – it will instead result in Weimar-style hyperinflation which, as it did in Weimer, will inevitably result in political and economic collapse.

Note that Bernanke has said “we cannot grow out of this“; he has (belatedly, but surprisingly) finally “gotten it.”

It would have been nice if he “got it” three years ago, of course.  It might have altered his view on bailing out people and providing artificial support instead of demanding ab-initio not only the legal ability but the legislative mandate to close all of the so-called “too big to fails” and use the funds we have blown to pay off depositors instead.

Yes, that would have resulted in a Depression being “recognized.” 

But we’re in one now, as the above chart shows conclusively, and we have in fact been in one for two years.  There is no evidence we’re going to get out of it either – the only way that can happen is if private final demand replaces the government borrow-and-spend, and for that to happen deficit spending must decline while GDP continues to advance.

When you’re borrowing from $115 to $333 billion a month and pumping it into the economy – that is, from roughly 9% to 30% of GDP – there’s zero evidence that this can or will occur, and in fact despite all the market and media crooners claiming “it’s getting better” the mathematical facts say exactly the opposite – it is in fact getting worse, as government replacement of private final demand with borrowed money is going up, not down.

That recognition of the math is starting to seep into the consciousness of economic analysts at major international banks is an important signpost. 

The next one will be when recognition of the same math starts to poke through the mainstream media – despite strident claims otherwise from Geithner and others. 

Once that second signpost is reached there will no longer be time or opportunity for government to proactively respond.  The market will, at that point, take final and irrevocable control.

If Obama has any intelligence at all he will fire Summers and Geithner immediately and in doing so stick them with responsibility for refusal to deal with the truth, close or break up the too-big-to-fails (via executive order if he can’t get a bill passed immediately – yes, I know that will raise howls of protest but this truly is a national emergency!) and demand reimposition of Glass-Steagall and mark-to-market – right here, right now, forevermore.

The tough choices are never popular, but mathematics doesn’t care about popularity, and as recognition is now seeping into the “mainstream economists” employed by major multinational financial institutions it is simply a matter of time before they ENFORCE austerity and withdraw their support for the markets if it is not forthcoming.

All I can say is “see, I told you so!”

The Wheels On The Bus Go Flying Down The Street

Posted by Karl Denninger

We’re told, of course, that the economy is improving.

The “strongest indicator” that is incessantly pointed to (and which is a part of the “leading economic indicators”) is, of course, stock prices.

But who’s buying stocks and driving their prices higher?

The outperformance of risk assets over the past year suggests investors appear to believe that all credit problems have been solved – but nothing could be further from the truth, says Leigh Skene at Lombard Street Research.

…

Surprisingly, says Mr Skene, surveys show that the usual investors in major rallies – pension funds, hedge funds and retail investors – have not been net buyers of equities. And he says the most likely explanation for this anomaly in the biggest stock market rally since the 1930s is that major investment banks are the anxious buyers.

That’s a problem folks.

In fact, it’s a serious problem.

There are only two possible explanations for this in terms of “theme” – first, that they believe that the authorities will be able to spur people to “lever up” again (exactly how we get into this mess in the first place, and which will inevitably create a bigger bust) or that they are “too big to fail’ and thus can continue to borrow at zero from The Fed and pass these shares back and forth between one another until they can goad those traditional investors to come back in and buy from them at ever higher prices – at which point, of course, the average American is again the bagholder.

Mr. Skene posits (and I agree) that one of these possibilities ultimately means prices “revert to the mean” (ex-leverage), which is very bad, the second, if they succeed, will destroy the average American and their pension and insurance funds.

The actual result of the policies that we’ve seen by nations has not been to “fix” anything.  Indeed, all we’ve done is shift the problem from private parties (who deserve to fail when they screw up) to governments – where failures are far more serious, even catastrophic.  PIMCO’s El-Erian has suggested that:

The Greek debt crisis is now morphing into something much broader. …… The heads of the European Central Bank and IMF have made the trip to Germany that is reminiscent of the Ben Bernanke-Hank Paulson trip to Congress in the midst of the US financial crisis.

Markets are now catching up to the reality of over-burdened public finances in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

Yeah, like ours (America’s) – shall we once again post this chart?

Again, the reality is this: We have shifted the burden of economic expansion – and maintenance of final demand – from private actors to government.  This is exactly the mistake made in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and elsewhere. 

The problem with trying to paper over a solvency crisis is that you can’t accomplish it.  Illiquidity and insolvency are two different things; one can be fixed with temporary sources of funds and time, the other has to be absorbed somewhere. 

By shifting these liabilities to governments, the absorption is forced onto the taxpayer.  This means that the taxpayer – and recipient of government services must absorb much higher taxation, much lower service provision (including government salaries, pensions, handouts such as welfare, social programs and similar) or both.

If that adjustment is not immediately made then you get a graph that looks like the above.  Effectively, the nation shifts to attempting to pay for today’s expenses with its credit card, instead of with its tax receipts.

This can go on for some period of time but it cannot go on forever. 

But all of the western governments who got involved in “bailout world” failed to immediately transmit the costs of these bailouts to taxpayers through higher taxes and lower service provision, most likely because they (correctly) deduced that the people would not sit for it, and if they tried to do so there was a very material risk that the people would rise and lynch someone – and it would require luck for those lynchings to be confined to the banksters who had compelled governments to bail them out through their acts of extortion.

Trichet is caught in a nasty box:

Bonds and stocks plunged across Europe in the past week as Chancellor Angela Merkel delayed approving a rescue plan for Greece and Standard & Poor’s downgraded Greece, Portugal and Spain. European policy makers may need to stump up as much as 600 billion euros ($794 billion) in aid or buy government bonds if they are to stamp out the region’s spreading fiscal crisis, according to economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc.

“Loans are not transfers and loans come at a cost” Trichet said today. Strict conditionality “needs to be given to assure lenders, not only that they will be repaid but also that the borrower will be able to stand on its own feet over a multi- year horizon,” he said.

Remember, Greece was supposed to be a €30 billion problem! 

Suddenly it has transmuted into €600 billion, or twenty times as large?

See what happens when you lie to people folks?  When you try to conceal what’s really going on?

What’s worse is that just as in the US the problem over in Europe is too much debt – and the so-called “solution” is even more loans – that is, more debt!

As I have said for more than three years now you cannot fix a drinking problem with a case of whiskey, nor can you fix a debt problem with more credit – that is, more debt.

To put this all in perspective – despite the claims of Treasury and others in our government – in the 29 days thus far this month Treasury has added $113 billion to the Federal Debt.

Annualized (assuming no additions for the next two days) this is $1.36 trillion “run rate”, or approximately 10% of GDP – still.

Where’s the “private economy” pick-up for final demand we keep being told about?  We’ve had two full years now where approximately 10% of final demand has been filled by government deficit spending, and there is zero evidence that this has fallen off.  For April to post a $113 billion debt addition is outrageous – remember, April is income tax month and is a month that frequently shows surplus for this reason!

In 2008 April ran a $60 billion surplus; in 2007, $9 billion, in 2006 $6 billion, in 2005 $12 billion.  In 2004 there was a $2 billion deficit; 2003 recorded a $395 million surplus; 2002 $21 billion and 2001 $112 billion. 

Point made?  I think so.

Oh, in 2009?  $111 billion of net deficit was recorded in April.

These numbers, unlike the so-called “budget” numbers, are not subject to being gamed.  The Treasury’s actual “debt to the penny” is reported to the public every day.

But for today, it’s “risk on”, at least for the “too big to fails” who can (and have) sucked off the Federal Reserve’s ZIRP and used it to drive “confidence” by pumping stock prices – even if it hasn’t created a single job and government has utterly failed to put the economy in a position where it can support the level of GDP being produced on its own.

Economists: The stimulus didn’t help

By Hibah Yousuf, staff reporter

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The recovery is picking up steam as employers boost payrolls, but economists think the government’s stimulus package and jobs bill had little to do with the rebound, according to a survey released Monday.

In latest quarterly survey by the National Association for Business Economics, the index that measures employment showed job growth for the first time in two years — but a majority of respondents felt the fiscal stimulus had no impact.

NABE conducted the study by polling 68 of its members who work in economic roles at private-sector firms. About 73% of those surveyed said employment at their company is neither higher nor lower as a result of the $787 billion Recovery Act, which the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers says is on track to create or save 3.5 million jobs by the end of the year.

That sentiment is shared for the recently passed $17.7 billion jobs bill that calls for tax breaks for businesses that hire and additional infrastructure spending. More than two-thirds of those polled believe the measure won’t affect payrolls, while 30% expect it to boost hiring “moderately.”

But the economists see conditions improving. More than half of respondents — 57% — say industrial demand is rising, while just 6% see it declining. A growing number also said their firms are increasing spending and profit margins are widening.

Nearly a quarter of those surveyed forecast that gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, will grow more than 3% in 2010, and 70% of NABE’s respondents expect it to grow more than 2%.

Still, the survey suggested that tight lending conditions remain a concern. Almost half of those polled said the credit crunch hurts their business.

A Sobering View Of Macro Economic Reality

Posted by Karl Denninger

In 2001, we had a recession, right?

We recovered, right?

Are you sure?

Are you curious as to why manufacturing has continued to shift to China, why the only “good jobs” in this country seemed to be centered on ripping someone off in some way (e.g. subprime or “liar loan” mortgage brokers, stock brokers, guys selling bogus CDS against money they didn’t have, etc) and why employment never really recovered – with the employment rate of the population failing to move materially higher after the 2000 recession, you might want to read the rest of this missive.

And by the way, the employment trend of the previous month?  Revisions made that worse – here’s the previous month’s graph:

If you remember last month I said that changes in this data were “encouraging.”  This month however the revisions caused some negative impact on the previous month’s data; this is what that same chart looks like now:

Oops.  That’s still below zero, isn’t it?  So despite all the cheerleading in the media about the positive report in point of fact we are, on balance, below where we were last month as that big positive spike got revised away!

Now let’s not be too negative – the situation has improved – from the bottom.  For example, the “not in labor force” chart now looks like this:

But last month it looked like this:

You wouldn’t know this from the orgasmic response on CNBS Friday.  But the data is what it is, and despite actual improvement this last month the improvement in the situation last month not only revised away all the improvement from this month, it revised away even more!

Leave it to government to report a number that’s “good”, then is revised away the next month beyond the improvement in the next month in the series, meaning that in point of fact you’ve moved backward, not forward.

But that’s not the reason for this missive.  Oh no.  This Ticker is dedicated to exposing what we did in the 2000-2009 decade at a macro economic level, and why those who are calling “end of recession” need to go drink a bottle of arsenic-laced gin before they wind up really hurting people making real decisions in the economy – that is, you, I, and every business person in America.

If you remember in 2001 we had a recession.  I put forward the following (rather confusing) base graph of federal debt expressed as month-over-month change, going way back to the 1990s.  Click for a big copy, and have a big monitor:

The reason I’m going to confuse you with the above is that I am shortly to bring light to this matter.  That is, I’m going to reduce this raw squiggle to something understandable – that is, the annual rate of change of federal debt (all-in, including on-sheet transfer payments) since the early 1990s.

Notice something: Federal debt additions through the 1990s actually shrunk – that is, the “rate of change” was negative.  But look what happened when we went into the recession in 2001 – The Federal Government began spending a lot more money (on balance sheet) and despite the putative recovery beginning in 2002 they never stopped doing so.  That is, the “Keynesian” stimulus that is allegedly necessary to lift the economy from recession was never retracted from the economy. And, as you can see, in the last two years this “stimulus” has gone nearly-vertical.

How much of the economy did this amount to?  That’s easy:

Note that post-recession in 2001 federal spending exceeded the Euro-zone target of 3% continually, hovering between 4-6%.  This is in stark contrast to the years prior to 2001, when it was in fact falling – that is, private industry was supporting the economy.

Also note what has happened during the last two years – Federal Deficit spending was 9.65% and 12.11% of GDP, respectively.

Here’s the problem – deficit spending like this produces false final demand, in that it implies the ability to do so forever.  We of course know this not to be true – witness Iceland and Greece, neither of which were able to continue the charade ad-infinitum.  Nor will we be able to; we have survived thus far without “feeling the consequences” because others are willing to loan us ever-increasing amounts of capital at ever-lower rates of interest. 

So what does this look like overlaid?  That’s pretty simple too:

Your green line is nominal (as reported) GDP.  Deficits are in blue, and actual private economic GDP – that is, the total output generated by private business activity, is in red.

1990s economic growth was real.  The 2000s economic growth was not – it never exceeded 2% in real terms.  And now?  We’re in full-on economic Depression territory – whether you hear it admitted on ToutTV or not.

If you’re wondering why your neighbor (and perhaps yourself) managed to go bankrupt playing the Home Equity Withdrawal game, why that new Escalade and boat in your driveway have turned into a noose around your neck, and why despite claims of “recovery!” on ToutTV and in the print media you can’t seem to find a good-paying job, now you (should) understand. 

Simply put: You were lied to for ten years and you’re still being lied to by all of these clowns, and listening to them now, as it did in 2003, will only lead you to personal financial ruin.

Remember when I said “we will have a Depression” – that given what the government did in 2001-03 timeframe it was inevitable?

We’re in one now.

So why has the market rallied so strongly?  For the same reason it did in 2003 – the Federal Government has stepped in to replace final demand by consumers and private enterprise.  That “stabilization” is neither permanent or healthy – indeed, it always causes malinvestment, where capital is put not into productive enterprise but rather tries to “chase” some sort of speculative return because that is the only game left in town.

In the 1990s there was plenty of speculative froth and lies, but at least people were trying to speculate on something that was real – The Internet and the rise of the personal computer in American Business as more than a tool for word processing in lawyers’ offices.

But in the 2000s Government interference in what should have been a 10% drop in GDP prevented it – and resulted in massive malinvestment in the speculative froth in housing.  Fact is that the actual economic value of a home does not rise or fall – it is a place to sleep, hang your hat, take a shower and cook dinner.  The “multiplier” beyond that – that is, all alleged “value” beyond shelter, is pure malinvestment.  Government and The Fed encouraged and stoked it with a “free money machine” – not from The Federal Reserve but from the fiscal side of the table – that is, from Treasury and Congress.

Now we’re doing it again, writ large.

Consider this – we’re spending nearly 12% of GDP in borrowed money that we don’t have.  Last month we borrowed and spent $333 billion – that is 28% of GDP!

Got that yet?  Government borrowing was nearly one third of the economy last month! 

Now I’m quite sure that next month will show marked improvement - for one month anyway.  It always does, being April (tax day) and all.  But marked improvement for one month doesn’t change what’s going on here, nor the actual GDP of the economy – not what the BEA reports, but what private supply and demand produces.

If you believe that we can continue to hold GDP at a positive “reported rate” while spending 12% of it via deficits, or even half of that, you’re welcome to believe that.  But history says that the crash that comes as a consequence when the imbalances build to the point that something breaks takes the market and economy lower that it would have gone had the intervention not been applied.

What we’re doing now is unprecedented, other than during a global war (e.g. WWII) when it was literally “buttholes and elbows” together with the entire nation laboring for one purpose – to avoid obliteration.

To apply such extraordinary “stimulus” via borrowing other people’s capital simply to avoid having those who made malinvestments being forced to declare bankruptcy, thereby resetting valuations of all items in the economy to sustainable levels, is both outrageous and doomed to fail.

We can argue time frames, but what can’t be argued is the outcome.  We must stop this insanity, as we are building up even greater distortions than we had in 2006 and 2007 – indeed, we have managed to take five years of insanity (2003-2007) and compress it into two! 

Does this mean we’re due for it all to blow up now?  Not necessarily, although it might.  But it does mean that the damage when it does come apart will be at least as bad as it was in 2008 – and this assumes we stop today.

We will not, of course, which is why one needs to be prepared for what is inevitably to follow when the government’s ability to continue this charade is interrupted, whether by forces within or without.