In Search of a Trough
Posted: July 31, 2009 Filed under: Global Financial Crisis, The Great Recession, U.S. Economy | Tags: BEA, GDP, job markets, jobless recovery, minimum wage, Real economic Growth, wages Comments Off on In Search of a Trough
The U.S. economy still shrank in second quarter 2009 but at a much lower pace than was anticipated. That’s a pretty good indicator that the bottom or trough of The Great Recession may be near. Here’s the precise release from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).
Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — decreased at an annual rate of 1.0 percent in the second quarter of 2009, (that is, from the first quarter to the second), according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 6.4 percent.
While the many recent indicators show the recession is loosing some of its downward momentum, there are few economists ready to sing Happy Days are Here Again. The NYT’s coverage of the statistical release continues to bring up some of the same concerns we’ve discussed here before.
The economy’s long, churning decline leveled off significantly in the second quarter, as stock markets started to recover, corporate profits bounced back, housing markets stabilized and the rampant pace of job losses tapered off. Declines in business investment leveled off, and the economy was aided by big increases in government spending at the federal, state and local levels.
“We’re in a deep hole, and now we’ve got to dig ourselves out of it, which is a very difficult task,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial, said.
But consumer spending fell by 1.2 percent as Americans put more than 5 percent of their disposable income into savings. Economists are concerned that consumer spending, which makes up 70 percent of the economy, will not rebound as long as employers keep cutting jobs and trimming wages.
Is Something better than Nothing?
Posted: July 30, 2009 Filed under: Health care reform | Tags: health co-ops, medicare, single payer insurance, universal health care 3 CommentsForty-four years ago, then President Johnson handed former President Harry Truman the nation’s first medicare card. 
That was July 30, 1965. This measure was one of the biggest steps taken during LBJ’s Great Society programs and undoubtedly one of the biggest steps towards eliminating poverty among the elderly since the Social Security Program. Back then, its critics included George H.W. Bush and Barry Goldwater who were bandying about the ‘it’s socialism’ meme as freely as the critics of any health care reform do today. Note to Republicans, yet again. Socialism is when the government turns private assets into public assets. It’s about ownership of assets, not about providing agencies or government sponsored private monopolies the opportunity to provide third party services in failed markets. Do you consider your utility company to be an agent of socialism?
So, today, we have watered down (and that’s being generous) health reform in an era of huge democratic majorities in government. Still, we’re losing the argument for the best and most cost effective plan to hysteria around purposefully promoted misunderstanding. We stand on the verge of passing legislature that is something, which is more than nothing, but hardly much of an improvement over the very bad status quo. Is that really worth it?
The Hill reports that Waxman’s compromises have created furor among Liberals. Count me among those of us that know that the only true way to save money on health insurance, cover every one, get the benefits of risk pooling and the economies of scale that come from uniform process and paper work is with a universal health care plan. What are we getting now? Basically a foot in a closing door and that ain’t much.
That’s a problem, since the draft bill already promises to be a tough sell for liberals. It eschews two central Democratic priorities: the creation of a government-run public insurance plan option and a requirement that most employers provide health benefits.
…
Leaders also agreed to allow states to create health “co-ops” that would compete with the government-run “public option” and private insurers, which deals a blow to liberals.
But why is every one afraid of expanding Medicare?
Don’t sell Tinfoil Short … yet
Posted: July 30, 2009 Filed under: Equity Markets, Global Financial Crisis Comments Off on Don’t sell Tinfoil Short … yetI was taking a break from formulating exchange rate models (yeah, I know so much excitement, so little time over the
Something smells at Citigroup
summer) at the WSJ. Nothing grabs me quite like a market manipulation story. The headline is “Traders Blamed for Oil Spike”. So, stay with me here as I quote from that article.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission plans to issue a report next month suggesting speculators played a significant role in driving wild swings in oil prices — a reversal of an earlier CFTC position that augurs intensifying scrutiny on investors.
In a contentious report last year, the main U.S. futures-market regulator pinned oil-price swings primarily on supply and demand. But that analysis was based on “deeply flawed data,” Bart Chilton, one of four CFTC commissioners, said in an interview Monday.
The CFTC’s new review, due to be released in August, adds fuel to a growing debate over financial investors who bet on the direction of commodities prices by buying contracts tied to indexes. These speculators have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts that were once dominated by producers and consumers who sought to hedge against oil-market volatility.
So, you have to remember last summer and those terrible oil price hikes that seemingly came out of no where, right? Thankfully, there’s a commission being set up to look into this and to look into what kind of regulations should be placed on speculation in markets of these kinds.
The debate over speculators underscores the shifting nature of commodities trading in recent years. Before the mid-1990s, these markets were dominated by entities that had physical dealings with the underlying commodity, and “speculators” who often took the opposite position, providing liquidity to markets.
But a new group of investors has emerged in recent years. Those who want to bet on commodities prices have increasingly put their money in indexes that track the value of futures contracts, in which investors promise to pay a certain amount in the future for oil and other commodities. As of July 2008, financial investors had about $300 billion riding on these indexes, roughly four times the level in January 2006, according to the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based watchdog.
Separately, these investors may buy derivatives, not directly traded on futures exchanges, that let them make contrary bets to offset their risks.
Crude-oil prices surged in July 2008 to a record $145 a barrel, then dropped to about $33 in December. Oil now trades at around $68 a barrel.
Hopefully, you’re still with me on this because here comes the intrigue. I may be putting on my tinfoil hat at this point but if you watched TV news yesterday you probably saw the article about absolutely, positively, in trouble Citigroup owing $100 million in Bonuses to one Andrew Hall. Now, you may remember that we fund Citigroup right now and that they are in business even though they are on double secret probation. The scuttlebutt is that this bonus is due this guy, because he earned it, but it’s going to have to be paid with a sort’ve pass through of taxpayer funds. Ring any bells yet?
Okay, so here’s my tinfoil hat part. Do you know how this guy made all this money?
The trader, Andrew J. Hall, heads Citigroup’s energy-trading unit, Phibro LLC — a secretive operation, run from the site of a former Connecticut dairy farm, that occasionally accounts for a disproportionate chunk of Citigroup income.
So get this, first we all had to pay these HIGH, HIGH gas prices last year because energy traders ran up oil prices, NOW, we as taxpayers get to pay this guy’s bonus because Citigroup’s big profit center was, wait a minute, wait for it, yup, you got it ENERGY TRADING!.
I’m going long on Tinfoil, for this one. Karl Denniger, what say you?
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The Koolaid Kult Exposed
Posted: July 30, 2009 Filed under: president teleprompter jesus, Voter Ignorance Comments Off on The Koolaid Kult Exposed
This week’s The Economist came with the usual stuff. I almost left it on the pile of things to read later. Last night, in a fit of insomnia, I turned to Lexington’s weekly take on U.S. politics. The title surprised and beckoned. “The Obama Cult” is hopefully one of the first serious pieces in the Main Stream Media to take a look at the Elmer Gantry style political experience that was 2008.
Mr Obama has inspired more passionate devotion than any modern American politician. People scream and faint at his rallies. Some wear T-shirts proclaiming him “The One” and noting that “Jesus was a community organiser”. An editor at Newsweek described him as “above the country, above the world; he’s sort of God.” He sets foreign hearts fluttering, too. A Pew poll published this week finds that 93% of Germans expect him to do the right thing in world affairs. Only 14% thought that about Mr Bush.
Perhaps Mr Obama inwardly cringes at the personality cult that surrounds him. But he has hardly discouraged it. As a campaigner, he promised to “change the world”, to “transform this country” and even (in front of a church full of evangelicals) to “create a Kingdom right here on earth”. As president, he keeps adding details to this ambitious wish-list. He vows to create millions of jobs, to cure cancer and to seek a world without nuclear weapons. On July 20th he promised something big (a complete overhaul of the health-care system), something improbable (to make America’s college-graduation rate the highest in the world by 2020) and something no politician could plausibly accomplish (to make maths and science “cool again”).
So, what started this Brit to dissect what our country did to itself with the cult of personality during an especially challenging time in our history? You can take a look at Lexington’s blog and see that he was inspired by what he calls a prescient book by Gene Healy entitled “The Cult of the Presidency, Updated: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power.” This book was published by the Cato Institute and was written during the Bush years. Lexington’s blog summary makes me want to pick the book up and dive in despite Mr. Healy’s well known credentials as a libertarian scholar/philosopher. (Okay, so did I warn you enough that the original source is not a certified, PC, liberal meme?)
Gene Healy argues that because voters expect the president to do everything, candidates promise far more than they can possibly deliver.
When they inevitably fail to keep their promises, voters swiftly become disillusioned. Yet they never lose their romantic idea that the president should drive the economy, vanquish enemies, lead the free world, comfort tornado victims, heal the national soul and protect borrowers from hidden credit-card fees.
No president in the modern era has raised expectations like Barack Obama, so he is unusually likely to disappoint. The polls already show signs of disillusion, especially among independent voters.
I don’t buy the whole of Mr Healy’s argument, but he makes some interesting points. To win a presidential election in America, you have to say things you know to be untrue. If you make it too obvious, like John “I’ll make every school an outstanding school” Edwards, you will stumble. But the system rewards those who can peddle plausible snake oil, and excludes anyone who is scrupulous about telling the truth.
The book includes countless vignettes illustrating the oddness of those who are prepared to do what it takes to become president. One of the more surprising concerns Lyndon Johnson. When asked by a reporter in the Oval Office why America was in Vietnam, he unzipped his fly, waved the presidential member at his questioner and replied: “This is why!”
Market Rallies as K Street Wins
Posted: July 30, 2009 Filed under: Equity Markets, Global Financial Crisis, U.S. Economy Comments Off on Market Rallies as K Street Wins
I never really thought that we would see a truly “progressive” agenda coming out of the Washington, D.C. this year, but with such huge democratic majorities, I did have some thought we might get something done for the people for a change. Remember, those campaign promises last year did seem pretty liberal even though most of us here on TC doubted we’d see even half of them come to fruition. Now it’s looking apparent that what’s coming out is more corporate loot fest than progress for the people. Is that why we have a market rally in what still appears to be a very poor economy?
There’s an interesting hypothesis floating around The Hill today that Wall Street may have bought into the hope and change agenda and is now rallying because it appears to now be all hype and no change. I’m not sure if I’d consider this a good hypothesis as a financial economist, but as some one more firmly planted on the behavioral finance side of things than the rational markets gang, I’m willing to give the idea an airing.
The Democratic agenda in Washington has gone off the rails just as markets are enjoying their best run of the Obama presidency, and there’s a school of thought on Wall Street that it’s no coincidence.
While a string of better-than-expected earnings reports from U.S. companies has been credited for the upswing, analysts such as Axel Merk, the portfolio manger of Merk Investments, said the stalled agenda in Congress has also helped the Dow Jones Industrial Average spike above 9,000.
So what items on the liberal Wall-Street-Hating-agenda did they fear? Well, first and foremost on the list was legislation on executive compensation. I doubt the populist outrage against the bonus class has gone any where, but now that we have a Pay Czar to oversee the problem, nothing has happened. Yesterday, I talked about the Citibank Energy Trader, Andrew Hall waiting in the wings for his $100 million bonus for driving up our energy prices last year while Citibank itself has taken $45 million in TARP funds and remains on a some kind of double secret probation with its regulators. All this while that market’s regulator is investigating issues with the traders. The Hall bonus has floated around the MSM and the news programs while CNBC, the Wall Street equivalent to the Hornet’s Honeybees here in New Orleans, continues to champion big pay for risk taking and innovation. I guess adding a little liquidity to the market was worth the worst financial crisis since The Great Depression in their eyes.
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