Showing posts with label Secular slowdown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Secular slowdown. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

10/7/19: Financialising Stagnant Growth: From Japanified Economy to Christine Lagarde


Monetary policy since the GFC of 2008 has been characterised by the near-zero (and even negative) policy rates, negative bank rates, negative Government debt yields and rampant asset price inflation. The result has been zombification of the advanced economies.

Here is the latest advanced estimate of the Eurozone real GDP growth based on the CEPR/Banca d'Italia Eurocoin indicator:
Current forecast for 2Q 2019 growth in the Eurozone, based on Eurocoin indicator is for 0.17% q/q expansion. June Eurocoin sits at 0.14%, the lowest since September 2013. The growth rate forecast has now been sub-0.25% (below 1% annual) in five months (through June 2019) and counting. Meanwhile, the link between growth and inflation has been weakening, as shown in the chart below:


Both, from the point of view of view of the current data relative to 1Q 2019 and to 2Q 2018 and to Q1 2018, growth rates are shrinking, per above. The ECB, however, remains stuck in the proverbial hard corner (chart next):

 Five years into zero policy rates, inflation is gradually creeping up (chart above), but growth is nowhere to be seen (chart next):

Worse, tangible fundamentals (captured by the models, like Eurocoin) of economic growth are becoming less and less consistent with actual growth outruns - a feature of the economy that is becoming dependent on things other than real investment and real demand for generating expansion in GDP. Both, the chart above and the chart below, highlight this troubling fact.
All of this suggests that we are in the period in economic development that is fully consistent with the secular stagnation thesis: traditional tools of monetary and fiscal policies are no longer sufficient in generating real economic growth. Instead, these tools help sustain economies overloaded with debt. It is an extend-and-pretend model of economic development: as long as corporates and households can be supported in carrying existent debt loads through monetary accommodation, the economy remains afloat (no recession, nor crisis blowout), but the levels of debt are so prohibitively high that no new debt can be accumulated to generate economic expansion.

The markets know as much. Investors know that zombie loans (loans with no capacity of servicing them should interest rates rise) mean zombie banks. Zombie banks mean zombie new borrowing markets. Zombie new borrowing markets mean zombie real investment by households and companies. Zombie investment means zombie demand. Zombie demand means deflationary supply. Rinse and repeat.

This knowledge in the markets is tangible. It takes a change in investors expectations (as in recent changes in outlook toward the reversal of the monetary tightening in the U.S. and Europe) to reprice assets. No actual value added growth enters the equation. Assets are no longer being priced on their productive capacity. And the markets are now fully finacialised. Which is to say, they are now fully monetary policy-driven.

Enter Christine Lagarde, the new head of the ECB. Lagarde's appointment is hardly an accident or a politically correct nod to women in leadership. It is the only logical choice of the financialised zombie economics of the monetary policy. To re-start borrowing or debt cycle, the EU is hoping for mutualisation of the sovereign debt markets. In other words, it is hoping to leverage the only unencumbered asset the EU still has: surplus countries' bonds. Lagarde's job at the ECB will be to run the creation of the eurobonds, bonds that will proportionally link euro area members' bonds into a single product to be monetised by the ECB as a support for market pricing. There is probably EUR 2-3 trillion worth of the international and monetary demand for these, opening up the room for more borrowing and more fiscal spending.

Sunday, March 25, 2018

24/3/18: Secular Stagnations Visit Morgan Stanley


Morgan Stanley jumps onto the secular stagnations thesis band wagon: http://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/ruchir-sharma-trends-2018 and adds an obvious cross-driver to the equation: monetary policy heading for the end of the Great Liquidity Wash.


Tuesday, March 20, 2018

19/3/18: Drivers of the low labor force participation rate: U.S. data since 2001


Why doesn't U.S. economic expansion 'feel' like an economy is at full employment? Because of the low participation rate that has effectively reduced unemployment to superficially low levels without creating sufficient amount of quality jobs to offset the rise in working age population since the end of the Great Recession.

Here is a chart, via @ernietyedeschi, showing that the U.S. economic expansion has only recently started reducing the sticky non-participation drivers that remain in play since 2001:


The above is a fundamental problem for a range of advanced economies, not just the U.S. as I have noted in a number of previous posts, as well as a factor related to the secular stagnation thesis on both, demographic side (demand side secular stagnation) and technology / wages side (supply side secular stagnation).

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

24/11/15: Europe's Dead Donkey of Productivity Growth


Remember the mythology of European productivity miracles:

  1. The EU is at least as competitive as the U.S. (with Lisbon Agenda completed, or rather abandoned);
  2. The EU growth in productivity is structural in nature (i.e. not driven by capital acquisition alone and not subject to cost of capital effects); and
  3. The EU productivity growth is driven by harmonising momentum (common markets etc) at a policy level, with the Euro, allegedly, producing strong positive effects on productivity growth.
Take a look at this chart from Robert J. Gordon's presentation at a recent conference:
The following observations are warranted:
  • EU convergence toward U.S. levels of productivity pre-dates major policy harmonisation drives in Europe and pre-dates, strongly, the creation of the Euro;
  • EU productivity convergence never achieved parity with the U.S.;
  • EU productivity convergence was not sustained from the late 1990s peak on;
  • The only period of improved productivity in the EU since the start of the new millennium was associated with assets bubble period (interest rates and credit supply).
Darn ugly!

But it gets worse. Since the crisis, the EU has implemented, allegedly and reportedly, a menu of 'structural' reforms aiming at improving competitiveness.  Which means that at least since the end of the crisis, we should be seeing improved productivity growth differentials between Europe and the U.S. And the EU case for productivity growth resumption is supported by the massive, deeper than the U.S., jobs destruction during the crisis that took out a large cohort of, supposedly, less productive workers, thereby improving the remainder of the workforce levels of productivity.

Here is a chart from the work by John Van Reenen of LSE:


Apparently, none of this happened:
  • EU structural reforms have been associated (to-date) with much lower productivity growth post-crisis than the U.S. and Japan;
  • EU jobs destruction during the crisis has been associated with lower productivity increases than in the U.S. and Japan;
  • All EU programmes to support growth in productivity, ranging from the R&D supports to investment funding for productivity-linked structural projects have produced... err... the worst outcome for productivity growth compared to the U.S. and Japan.
And the end result?

I know, I know... a Genuine Productivity Union, anyone?...