W, V, U, L or Z: What Direction Is The Economy Going?
by ilene - September 3rd, 2009 4:46 pm
Mark Sunshine discusses the possible shape of the eventual economic recovery – pick a letter, any letter. Welcome Mark!
W, V, U, L or Z: What Direction Is The Economy Going?
Courtesy of Mark Sunshine at The Sunshine Report
Almost every day I am asked about the economic recovery and whether or not it is sustainable.
People ask because there is a constant barrage of economic predictions by economists that pretend that they know what will happen in the future even thought they still can’t figure out what happened in the past. Listening to economists and TV talking heads it’s clear that while everyone has an opinion, no one really knows if the recovery will take the form of a “W”, “V”, “U”, “V” or “Z” (I am not really sure what a “Z” recovery is but some really confusing economists are predicting it).
This time around almost all of the TV pundits are going be able to claim that they are the economic Nostradamus of our time because sooner or later graphs of economic growth are going to have the profile of most, if not all, of the letters of the alphabet. For the foreseeable future, economic growth is going to be volatile and somewhat random and almost every prediction will be right.
There is going to be a level of randomness to the growth trajectory of the economy as it inevitably grows, then grows at a slower pace, then grows at a faster pace, then shrinks a little, and then grows again. Unfortunately, given the seriousness of the economy’s problems, I think it will be a while before the U.S. is back on a sustainable high growth trajectory that is sustainable (thereby making the L crowd right as well).
So, like a Rorschach Test, for the next few years there will be something for everyone in the economic statistics.
The U.S. economy is starting to bounce back because of the positive cumulative effects of (i) an inventory rebuilding cycle (i.e., production of new inventory is rising because inventory stocks in many industries are depleted and need to be replenished), (ii) a lot of fiscal and monetary stimuli and (iii) productivity growth (one tiny, positive side effect of layoffs). The bounce from inventory restocking will be temporary and, as a result, if all other things remain constant, growth will taper off to a much slower pace late in the 4th quarter…