FOMC: No Change, Just Chillin’ Like Penicillin
by ilene - September 21st, 2010 3:32 pm
FOMC: No Change, Just Chillin’ Like Penicillin
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker
In the most surprising move since Rosanne replaced Becky with a different actress and just acted like we should all shut up and watch and not freak out or anything, the FOMC announced today that the Fed Funds target rate would remain at zero.
I know, I’ll give you a moment for the shock to wear off.
Here’s the statement:
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in August indicates that the pace of recovery in output and employment has slowed in recent months. Household spending is increasing gradually, but remains constrained by high unemployment, modest income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Business spending on equipment and software is rising, though less rapidly than earlier in the year, while investment in nonresidential structures continues to be weak. Employers remain reluctant to add to payrolls. Housing starts are at a depressed level. Bank lending has continued to contract, but at a reduced rate in recent months. The Committee anticipates a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability, although the pace of economic recovery is likely to be modest in the near term.
Measures of underlying inflation are currently at levels somewhat below those the Committee judges most consistent, over the longer run, with its mandate to promote maximum employment and price stability. With substantial resource slack continuing to restrain cost pressures and longer-term inflation expectations stable, inflation is likely to remain subdued for some time before rising to levels the Committee considers consistent with its mandate.
The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions, including low rates of resource utilization, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations, are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate for an extended period. The Committee also will maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its securities holdings.
I don’t have much else to add here. I’m too busy counting up all those interest rate dollars piling up in my money market account.
Source:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
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DiggThe Stagnating Labor Market, 1: Dropping Out Of The Labor Force
by ilene - September 20th, 2010 5:07 pm
The Stagnating Labor Market, 1: Dropping Out Of The Labor Force
By Mike Konczal, courtesy of The New Deal 2.0
New research from the Roosevelt Institute examines the current unemployment crisis.
Arjun Jayadev and I have another working paper out of Roosevelt Institute, this time focusing on the labor market in the current recession. The paper is: The Stagnating Labor Market (pdf). I hope you check it out; I’m going to talk about the main things we found in two posts.
Dropping Out of The Labor Force
This is what the labor market loops like. It is normally a dynamic machine where people transition between employed, unemployed, and out of the labor force. But recently sand has been thrown in the gears, and people’s transitioning between these states is slowing, with more and more people ending up in not in the labor force and staying there.
Here is one of the scariest chart I’ve seen in this recession:
It’s a little complicated, so let me explain. This is the percent of unemployment who leave unemployment every month and where they go. In normal times, you’ll see 25%+ of unemployed transition to employed. This is robust to several ways of calculating this number. This high number is the result of, and a justification for, our comparatively weak social safety net for the unemployed.
But notice what has happened in this recession: Starting in January 2009 it is more likely an unemployed person will drop out of the labor force instead of finding a job. More people are leaving unemployment by simply leaving the formal labor force rather than ending up with a new job. This has massive implications for how we all should view the unemployment numbers.
And notice that the sudden new normal of unemployed leaving the labor force instead of finding a job has been buffered by a sharp drop in the number of people leaving the labor force; this is no doubt in large part to the extension of unemployment insurance, which has incentivized people to continue looking for a job instead of leaving the formal economy.
To see if this is a new historical development, we use the data constructed by Robert Shimer’s and available on his webpage (with an update from Shimer that goes to Q1 2010). The data from June 1967 and December 1975 were tabulated by Joe Ritter and made available…
Preserve and Protect: The Jaws Of Death
by ilene - September 19th, 2010 2:25 pm
Courtesy of Gordon T. Long of Tipping Points
Preserve and Protect: The Jaws Of Death
The United States is facing both a structural and demand problem – it is not the cyclical recessionary business cycle or the fallout of a credit supply crisis which the Washington spin would have you believe.
It is my opinion that the Washington political machine is being forced to take this position, because it simply does not know what to do about the real dilemma associated with the implications of the massive structural debt and deficits facing the US. This is a politically dangerous predicament because the reality is we are on the cusp of an imminent and significant collapse in the standard of living for most Americans.
The politicos’ proven tool of stimulus spending, which has been the silver bullet solution for decades to everything that has even hinted of being a problem, is clearly no longer working. Monetary and Fiscal policy are presently no match for the collapse of the Shadow Banking System. A $2.1 Trillion YTD drop in Shadow Banking Liabilities has become an insurmountable problem for the Federal Reserve without a further and dramatic increase in Quantitative Easing. The fallout from this action will be an intractable problem which we will face for the next five to eight years, resulting in the ‘Jaws of Death’ for the American public.
The ‘Jaws of Death’ is the crushing squeeze of a shrinking gap between incomes and a rising burden of the real cost of debt burdens. Many may say there is nothing new in this, but I would respectfully disagree. There is a widespread misperception of what is actually evolving that stops voters from forcing politicians to address America’s substantial underlying dilemma. It also stops investors from positioning themselves correctly.
Any solutions of real substance are presently considered political suicide. It is wiser to wait for a crisis event to unfold. As White House Chief of Staff and a primary Obama political strategist, Rahm Emanuel has said on numerous occasions: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste”. It doesn’t take much intelligence to understand this also implies looking for a crisis as a political shield, for example from an almost insurmountable political problem such as a generational reduction in the US standard of living.
Before I delve into misperceptions of…
The New Deal Meets ‘The Wire’
by ilene - September 10th, 2010 5:08 pm
The New Deal Meets ‘The Wire’
By Bryce Covert, courtesy of New Deal 2.0
What does Wall Street have to do with “The Wire“? Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Tom Ferguson took to the streets of Baltimore with the Real News Network to explain. There, boarded-up buildings and screaming police sirens demonstrate what happens when communities are left on the hook for bankers’ bets turned sour. Ferguson explains how “collateral damage” accumulated when unaffordable loans that were pushed on the people of Baltimore collapsed and brought down the price of houses around them. He points out that without a steady tax base, no one will make loans to the city, which, like many others, is desperate for funds. “It’s really a Catch-22,” says Ferguson.
What the people of “The Wire” really need are New Deal programs, he proposes. The administration should “move vigorously to put people back to work. You should have seen cranes and construction stuff everywhere,” he says. Obama should have revived the CCC and other programs to get us back to full employment — because as he points out, that’s the only real panacea to get us out of crisis.
And where is Wall Street now? “The invisible hand is just waving goodbye,” quips Ferguson. Watch the full interview:
Jobs Decrease by 54,000, Rise by 60,000 Excluding Census; Unemployment Rises Slightly to 9.6%; A Look Beneath the Surface
by ilene - September 4th, 2010 3:13 am
Jobs Decrease by 54,000, Rise by 60,000 Excluding Census; Unemployment Rises Slightly to 9.6%; A Look Beneath the Surface
Courtesy of Mish
This morning the BLS reported a decrease of 64,000 jobs. However, that reflects a decrease of 114,000 temporary census workers.
Excluding the census effect, government lost 7,000 jobs. Were the trend to continue, this would be a good thing because Firing Public Union Workers Creates Real Jobs.
Unfortunately, politicians and Keynesian clown economists will not see it that way. Indeed there is a $26 billion bill giving money to the states to keep bureaucrats employed. This is unfortunate because we need to shed government jobs.
Birth-Death Model
Hidden beneath the surface the BLS Black Box – Birth Death Model added 115,000 jobs, a number likely to be revised lower in coming years. Please note you cannot directly subtract the number from the total because of the way the BLS computes its overall number.
Participation Rate Effects
The civilian labor force participation rate (64.7 percent) and the employment-population ratio (58.5 percent) were essentially unchanged from last month’s report. However, these measures have declined by 0.5 percentage points and 0.3 points, respectively, since April.
The drop in participation rate this year is the only reason the unemployment rate is not over 10%. The drop in participation rates is not that surprising because some of the long-term unemployed stopped looking jobs, or opted for retirement.
Nonetheless, I still do not think the top in the unemployment rate is in and expect it may rise substantially later this year as the recovery heads into a coma and states are forced to cut back workers unless Congress does substantially more to support states.
Employment and Recessions
Calculated Risk has a great chart showing the effects of census hiring as well as the extremely weak hiring in this recovery.
click on chart for sharper image
The dotted lines tell the real story about how pathetic a jobs recovery this has been. Bear in mind it has taken $trillions in stimulus to produce this.
June, July Revisions
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised from -221,000 to -175,000, and the change for July was revised from -131,000 to -54,000.
Those revisions look good but it is important to note where the revisions comes from. The loss of government jobs in June was revised from…
Reflections on the “Recovery”
by ilene - September 4th, 2010 1:52 am
Reflections on the "Recovery"
Courtesy of Mish
One year ago the official unemployment rate was 9.7%. Today it is 9.6%.
One year ago U-6 unemployment was 16.8%. Today U-6 is 16.7%
click on chart for sharper image
For more details on the jobs report, please see Jobs Decrease by 54,000, Rise by 60,000 Excluding Census; Unemployment Rises Slightly to 9.6%; A Look Beneath the Surface
For all the trillions of dollars in stimulus and additional trillions of dollars in bank bailouts and trillions of dollars of expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet, this is all we have to show for it.
Moreover, the economy is clearly slowing already by many economic reports including new home sales, existing home sales, the regional Fed manufacturing surveys, sentiment measures, and consumer spending trends. The only major discrepancy is ISM.
This week, none of that matters. However, I would like to point out that bear market rallies end, not on bad news, but on good news. It will be interesting to see how much more good news there is, and the market’s reaction to it.
CURIOUS RESPONSE TO VERY NEGATIVE ISM SERVICES REPORT
by ilene - September 3rd, 2010 9:00 pm
CURIOUS RESPONSE TO VERY NEGATIVE ISM SERVICES REPORT
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
The
The headline figure came in at 51.5 which was 1.5 points lower than expected – still expanding, but down sharply month on month. A look under the hood shows more alarming trends, however. Just like the manufacturing report on Wednesday the leading indicators in the services report were weaker than expected. New orders tanked 4.3 points to 52.4. Inventories and backlog also showed declines. The employment index, which includes government employees showed a contraction.
This is much more in-line with the regional reports and is likely a better representation of the US
Death By Globalism
by ilene - September 1st, 2010 5:48 pm
Interesting article discussing the failings of economists on both sides of the "Great Stimulus Debate," who a stimulus will really benefit (not us), inflation and deflation, and how globalization has proven ruinous for the U.S. – Ilene
Death By Globalism
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS writing at CounterPunch
Have economists made themselves irrelevant? If you have any doubts, have a look at the current issue of the magazine, International Economy, a slick publication endorsed by former Federal Reserve chairmen Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, by Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, by former Secretary of State George Shultz, and by the New York Times and Washington Post, both of which declare the magazine to be “ahead of the curve.”
The main feature of the current issue is “The Great Stimulus Debate.” Is the Obama fiscal stimulus helping the economy or hindering it?
Princeton economics professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi represent the Keynesian view that government deficit spending is needed to lift the economy out of recession. Zandi declares that thanks to the fiscal stimulus, “The economy has made enormous progress since early 2009,” an opinion shared by the President’s Council of Economic Advisors and the Congressional Budget Office.
The opposite view, associated with Harvard economics professor Robert Barro and with European economists, such as Francesco Giavazzi and Marco Pagano and the European Central Bank, is that government budget surpluses achieved by cutting government spending spur the economy by reducing the ratio of debt to Gross Domestic Product. This is the “let them eat cake school of economics.”
Barro says that fiscal stimulus has no effect, because people anticipate the future tax increases implied by government deficits and increase their personal savings to offset the added government debt. Giavazzi and Pagano reason that since fiscal stimulus does not expand the economy, fiscal austerity consisting of higher taxes and reduced government spending could be the cure for unemployment.
If one overlooks the real world and the need of life for sustenance, one can become engrossed in this debate. However, the minute one looks out the window upon the world, one realizes that cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and housing subsidies when 15 million Americans have lost jobs, medical coverage, and homes is a certain path to death by starvation, curable diseases, and…
Forget a Double Dip. We’re Still in One Long Big Dipper.
by ilene - August 15th, 2010 4:38 pm
Forget a Double Dip. We’re Still in One Long Big Dipper.
Courtesy of Robert Reich
It’s nonsense to think of the economy heading downward again into a double dip when most Americans never emerged from the first dip. We’re still in one long Big Dipper.
More people are out of work today than they were last year, counting everyone too discouraged even to look for work. The number of workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose last week to highest level since February. Not counting temporary census workers, a total of only 12,000 net new private and public jobs were created in July — when 125,000 are needed each month just to keep up with growth in the population of people who want and need to work.
Not since the government began to measure the ups and downs of the busines cycle has such a deep recession been followed by such anemic job growth. Jobs came back at a faster pace even in March 1933 after the economy started to “recover” from the depths of the Great Depression. Of course, that job growth didn’t last long. That recovery wasn’t really a recovery at all. The Great Depression continued. And that’s exactly my point. The Great Recession continues.
Even investors are beginning to see reality. Starting in February the stock market rallied because corporate profits were rising briskly. Investors didn’t mind that profits were coming from payroll cuts, foreign sales, and gimmicks like share buy-backs — none of which could be sustained over the long term. But the rally died in April when investors began to see how paper-thin these profits actually were. And now the stock market is back to where it was at the start of the year.
What to do? First, don’t listen to Wall Street and the right.
Forget the Neo-Hoover deficit hawks who day we have to cut government spending and trim upcoming deficits. We didn’t get into this mess and aren’t remaining in it because of budget deficits. In fact, the only way to reduce long-term deficits is to restore jobs and growth so government revenues rise and expenses like unemployment insurance drop.
Ignore the government haters who say we have to void or delay upcoming regulations of Wall Street and big business. We got here because Wall Street went bonkers, the housing bubble burst, and the middle class couldn’t continue to spend because their health-care bills were soaring…
THE ADS BUSINESS CONDITIONS INDEX PLUMMETS
by ilene - August 15th, 2010 2:21 pm
THE ADS BUSINESS CONDITIONS INDEX PLUMMETS
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
The latest reading on the ADS Business Conditions Index from the Philly Fed shows a dramatic turn for the worse in recent weeks. This is consistent with several other leading indicators. Details on the index can be found below:
The Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti business conditions index is designed to track real business conditions at high frequency. Its underlying economic indicators (weekly initial jobless claims; monthly payroll employment, industrial production, personal income less transfer payments, manufacturing and trade sales; and quarterly real GDP) blend high- and low-frequency information and stock and flow data. Both the ADS index and this web page are updated as data on the index’s underlying components are released.
The average value of the ADS index is zero. Progressively bigger positive values indicate progressively better-than-average conditions, whereas progressively more negative values indicate progressively worse-than-average conditions. The ADS index may be used to compare business conditions at different times. A value of -3.0, for example, would indicate business conditions significantly worse than at any time in either the 1990-91 or the 2001 recession, during which the ADS index never dropped below -2.0.
The vertical lines on the figure provide information as to which indicators are available for which dates. For dates to the left of the left line, the ADS index is based on observed data for all six underlying indicators. For dates between the left and right lines, the ADS index is based on at least two monthly indicators (typically employment and industrial production) and initial jobless
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