Fiscal Headwinds: Is the Other Shoe About to Drop?

By Brian Lucking and Daniel Wilson

Conclusion

Federal fiscal policy has been a modest headwind to economic growth so far during the recovery. This is typical for recovery periods and in line with the historical relationship between the business cycle and fiscal policy. However, CBO projections and our estimate based on the countercyclical history of fiscal policy suggest that federal budget trends will weigh on growth much more severely over the next three years. The federal deficit is projected to decline faster than normal over the next three years, largely because tax revenue is projected to rise faster than usual. Given reasonable assumptions regarding the economic multiplier on government spending and taxes, the rapid decline in the federal deficit implies a drag on real GDP growth about 1 percentage point per year larger than the normal drag from fiscal policy during recoveries.

Health Care Cost Inflation on Track to Slow in 2014: Report

By Dan Mangan

June 18 (CNBC) — Already sluggish health-care inflation is expected to slow down even more in 2014 as consumers, employers and the federal government continue looking to cut medical costs, a new report said Tuesday.

And the rate of health-care inflationas distinct from total medical spendingcould drop further in future years as Obamacare rolls out and employers and consumers pay greater attention to costs, suggests the report by the professional services firm PwC.

In 2014, the health-care inflation rate is projected to slow to 6.5 percent, according to the new Medical Cost Trend: Behind the Numbers report by PwC’s Health Research Institute.

That’s 1 percent less than the 7.5 percent inflation rate for 2013 that HRI projected last year.

After accounting for changes in health insurance benefit designs that drive down cost, the net growth rate of inflation next year is projected to be just 4.5 percent, according to HRI The report based those projections on analysis of the large-employer market that covers around 150 million Americans.

But that’s not how the western educated offspring now in charge learned it…

Fitch says China credit bubble unprecedented in modern world history

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

June 16 (Telegraph) — China’s shadow banking system is out of control and under mounting stress as borrowers struggle to roll over short-term debts, Fitch Ratings has warned.

The agency said the scale of credit was so extreme that the country would find it very hard to grow its way out of the excesses as in past episodes, implying tougher times ahead.

“The credit-driven growth model is clearly falling apart. This could feed into a massive over-capacity problem, and potentially into a Japanese-style deflation,” said Charlene Chu, the agency’s senior director in Beijing.

“There is no transparency in the shadow banking system, and systemic risk is rising. We have no idea who the borrowers are, who the lenders are, and what the quality of assets is, and this undermines signalling,” she told The Daily Telegraph.

While the non-performing loan rate of the banks may look benign at just 1pc, this has become irrelevant as trusts, wealth-management funds, offshore vehicles and other forms of irregular lending make up over half of all new credit. “It means nothing if you can off-load any bad asset you want. A lot of the banking exposure to property is not booked as property,” she said.

Concerns are rising after a string of upsets in Quingdao, Ordos, Jilin and elsewhere, in so-called trust products, a $1.4 trillion (0.9 trillion) segment of the shadow banking system.

Bank Everbright defaulted on an interbank loan 10 days ago amid wild spikes in short-term “Shibor” borrowing rates, a sign that liquidity has suddenly dried up. “Typically stress starts in the periphery and moves to the core, and that is what we are already seeing with defaults in trust products,” she said.

Fitch warned that wealth products worth $2 trillion of lending are in reality a “hidden second balance sheet” for banks, allowing them to circumvent loan curbs and dodge efforts by regulators to halt the excesses.

This niche is the epicentre of risk. Half the loans must be rolled over every three months, and another 25pc in less than six months. This has echoes of Northern Rock, Lehman Brothers and others that came to grief in the West on short-term liabilities when the wholesale capital markets froze.

Mrs Chu said the banks had been forced to park over $3 trillion in reserves at the central bank, giving them a “massive savings account that can be drawn down” in a crisis, but this may not be enough to avert trouble given the sheer scale of the lending boom.

Overall credit has jumped from $9 trillion to $23 trillion since the Lehman crisis. “They have replicated the entire US commercial banking system in five years,” she said.

The ratio of credit to GDP has jumped by 75 percentage points to 200pc of GDP, compared to roughly 40 points in the US over five years leading up to the subprime bubble, or in Japan before the Nikkei bubble burst in 1990. “This is beyond anything we have ever seen before in a large economy. We don’t know how this will play out. The next six months will be crucial,” she said.

The agency downgraded China’s long-term currency rating to AA- debt in April but still thinks the government can handle any banking crisis, however bad. “The Chinese state has a lot of firepower. It is very able and very willing to support the banking sector. The real question is what this means for growth, and therefore for social and political risk,” said Mrs Chu.

“There is no way they can grow out of their asset problems as they did in the past. We think this will be very different from the banking crisis in the late 1990s. With credit at 200pc of GDP, the numerator is growing twice as fast as the denominator. You can’t grow out of that.”

The authorities have been trying to manage a soft-landing, deploying loan curbs and a high reserve ratio requirement (RRR) for banks to halt property speculation. The home price to income ratio has reached 16 to 18 in many cities, shutting workers out of the market. Shadow banking has plugged the gap for much of the last two years.

However, a new problem has emerged as the economic efficiency of credit collapses. The extra GDP growth generated by each extra yuan of loans has dropped from 0.85 to 0.15 over the last four years, a sign of exhaustion.

Wei Yao from Societe Generale says the debt service ratio of Chinese companies has reached 30pc of GDP – the typical threshold for financial crises — and many will not be able to pay interest or repay principal. She warned that the country could be on the verge of a “Minsky Moment”, when the debt pyramid collapses under its own weight. “The debt snowball is getting bigger and bigger, without contributing to real activity,” she said.

The latest twist is sudden stress in the overnight lending markets. “We believe the series of policy tightening measures in the past three months have reached critical mass, such that deleveraging in the banking sector is happening. Liquidity tightening can be very damaging to a highly leveraged economy,” said Zhiwei Zhang from Nomura.

“There is room to cut interest rates and the reserve ratio in the second half,” wrote a front-page editorial today in China Securities Journal on Friday. The article is the first sign that the authorities are preparing to change tack, shifting to a looser stance after a drizzle of bad data over recent weeks.

The journal said total credit in China’s financial system may be as high as 221pc of GDP, jumping almost eightfold over the last decade, and warned that companies will have to fork out $1 trillion in interest payments alone this year. “Chinese corporate debt burdens are much higher than those of other economies. Much of the liquidity is being used to repay debt and not to finance output,” it said.

It also flagged worries over an exodus of hot money once the US Federal Reserve starts tightening. “China will face large-scale capital outflows if there is an exit from quantitative easing and the dollar strengthens,” it wrote.

The journal said foreign withdrawals from Chinese equity funds were the highest since early 2008 in the week up to June 5, and withdrawals from Hong Kong funds were the most in a decade.

Summary and Critique of the Warren Mosler (MMT) vs. Bob Murphy (Austrian) Debate

>   
>   (email exchange)
>   
>   On Jun 12, 2013 4:40 PM, wrote:
>   
>   It looks like a good indicator of labor and it is daily.
>   
>   It also looks like a leading indicator of the stock market.
>   
>   Tax Data
>   

As expected, QE has failed again, and seems there’s no understanding that QE is in fact a tax that removes interest income from the economy.

Furthermore, the deceleration in jobs is consistent with the narrative that the FICA hikes and sequesters function to reduce aggregate demand, which, for all practical purposes, can only be overcome by an increased rate of private sector credit expansion, which the data tells me isn’t happening.

So after a weak Q4 due to cliff fears, a weak Q1 rebound to only 2.4% due to the tax increases, and now a weak and decelerating Q3 with GDP of about 1.5%, the 3 month average decelerates to only about 1.5% with a non trivial chance of going down from there.

In fact, if the govt deficit is too small and private sector credit expansion too weak to close the ‘spending gap’ it all goes into reverse until the automatic fiscal stabilizers increase the govt. deficit sufficiently to stabilize aggregate demand.

Just like in the Euro zone. And Japan, And the UK.

:(

Graph

US Auto Sales Total Annualized