Showing posts with label economic recovery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economic recovery. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 27, 2021

26/4/21: What Low Corporate Insolvencies Figures Aren't Telling Us

 

One of the key features of the Covid19 pandemic to-date has been a relatively low level of corporate insolvencies. In fact, if anything, we are witnessing virtually dissipation of the insolvencies proceedings in the advanced economies, and a simultaneous investment boom in the IPOs markets. 

The problem, of course, is that official statistics - in this case - lie. And they lie to the tune of at least 50 percent. Consider two charts:

And


The chart from the IMF is pretty scary. 18 percent of companies are expected to experience liquidity-related financial distress and 16 percent are expected to experience insolvency risk. The data covers Europe and Asia-Pacific. Which omits a wide range of economies, including those with more heavily leveraged corporate sectors, and cheaper insolvency procedures e.g. the U.S. The estimates also assume that companies that run into financial distress in 2020 will exit the markets in 2020-2021. In other words, the 16 percentage insolvency risk estimate is not covering firms that run into liquidity problems in 2021. Presumably, they will go to the wall in 2022. 

The second chart puts into perspective the IPO investment boom. Vast majority of IPOs in 2020-2021 have been SPACs (aka, vehicles for swapping ownership of prior investments, as opposed to generating new investments). The remainder of IPOs include DPOs (Direct Public Offerings, e.g. Coinbase) which (1) do not raise any new investment capital and (2) swap founders and insiders equity out and retail investors' equity in. 

The data above isn't giving me a lot of hope, to be honest of a genuine investment boom. 

We are living through the period of fully financialized economy: the U.S. government monetary and fiscal injections in 2020 totaled some $12.3 trillion. That is more than 1/2 of the entire annual GDP. Since then, we've added another $2.2 trillion. Much of these money went either directly (monetary policy) or indirectly (Robinhooders' effect) into the Wall Street and the Crypto Alley. In other words, little of it went to sustain real investment in productive capital. Fewer dollars went to sustain skills upgrading or new development. Less still went to support basic or fundamental research. 

In this environment, it is hard to see how global recovery can support higher productivity growth to bring us back to pre-pandemic growth path. What the recovery will support is and accelerated transfer of wealth:

  • From lower income households that saved - so far  - their stimulus cash, and are now eager to throw it at pandemic-deferred consumption; 
  • To Wall Street (via corporate earnings and inflation) and the State (via inflation-linked taxes).
In the short run, there will be headlines screaming 'recovery boom'. In the long run, there will be more structural unemployment, less jobs creation and greater financial polarization in the society. Low - to-date - corporate insolvencies figures and booming financial markets are masking all of this in the fog of the pandemic-induced confusion. 


Wednesday, May 6, 2020

6/5/20: The Glut of Oil: Strategic Reserves


The Giant Glut of Oil continues (see my analysis of oil markets fundamentals here: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2020/04/23420-what-oil-price-dynamics-signal.html)


China strategic oil reserves have also surged. U.S. oil reserves are now nearing total capacity of 630 million barrels, and China's reserves are estimated to be about 90% of the total capacity of 550 million barrels. Japan's reserves similar (capacity of ca 500 million barrels). Australia is using leased U.S. strategic reserves capacity to pump its own stockpiles, with its domestic storage capacity already full. 

Tuesday, May 5, 2020

5/5/20: A V-Shaped Recovery? Ireland post-Covid


My article for The Currency on the post-Covid19 recovery and labour markets lessons from the pst recessions: https://www.thecurrency.news/articles/16215/the-fiction-of-a-v-shaped-recovery-hides-the-weaknesses-in-irelands-labour-market.


Key takeaways:
"Trends in employment recovery post-major recessions are worrying and point to long-term damage to the life-cycle income of those currently entering the workforce, those experiencing cyclical (as opposed to pandemic-related) unemployment risks, as well as those who are entering the peak of their earnings growth. This means a range of three generations of younger workers are being adversely and permanently impacted.

"All of the millennials, the older sub-cohorts of the GenZ, and the lower-to-middle classes of the GenX are all in trouble. Older millennials and the entire GenX are also likely to face permanently lower pensions savings, especially since both cohorts have now been hit with two systemic crises, the 2008-2014 Great Recession and the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.

"These generations are the core of modern Ireland’s population pyramid, and their fates represent the likely direction of our society’s and economy’s evolution in decades to come."


Thursday, April 23, 2020

23/4/20: What Oil Price Dynamics Signal About Future Growth


My column at The Currency this week covers the fundamentals of oil prices and what these tell us about the markets expectations for economic recovery: https://www.thecurrency.news/articles/15674/supply-demand-and-the-dilemma-of-trade-what-the-collapse-in-oil-prices-tells-you-about-post-covid-10-economy.


Key takeaways:

  • "...current futures market pricing is suggesting that traders and investors expect much slower recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic than the V-shaped one forecast by the analysts’ consensus and the like of the IMF and the World Bank. 
  • "As a second order effect, oil markets appear to be pricing post-Covid-19 economic environment more in line with below historical trends global growth, similar to that evident in the economic slowdown of 2018-2019, rather than a substantial expansion on foot of the sharp Covid- shock."

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

14/4/20: Re-Opening America: A Long Road Ahead


In our Financial Systems class, yesterday, we were discussing the potential trajectories for 'exit' from COVID19 restriction and easing of economic constraints. Handily, yesterday, Morgan Stanley published this analytical timeline of the pandemic evolution:


Their analysis is based on the following assumed timings:

  1. They expect U.S. coastal regions to peak in the next 3-5 days (so March 15-17),
  2. The rest of the U.S. will lag these by "around 3 weeks", leading to a "second peak" that promises to be not as severe as the first peak.
  3. The MS are expecting the second peak to result in the US cases peaking at x4 China and x2 Italy.
  4. MS therefore describe the U.S. trajectory as having "a very long tail".
  5. Based on comparisons to Korea testing, the MS research suggests the earliest 'reopening' date for the U.S. as mid-to-late May.
Here is MS note on re-opening:
Bleak. 

Key takeaway on the future developments: "only a vaccine will provide a true solution to this pandemic" and that means that we are likely to see - best case scenario - scaled delivery of the vaccine for the 2021 flu season. 

This is a long road ahead...

Sunday, July 15, 2018

14/7/18: The Second Longest Recovery


One chart never ceased to amaze me - the one that shows just how unimpressive the current 'second longest in modern history' recovery (and only 9 months shy of it being the 'first longest') has been, and just how sticky the adverse shocks impacts can be in modern crises that can be best described by the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) environment:


The fact that the current recovery cycle has been weak is only one part of the story, however, that would be less worrying if not for the second part. Namely, that almost every successive recovery cycle in the past three decades has been weaker than the previous one.

Here is a handy summary of the recovery cycles in the last four recessions based on annual data, for real GDP and real GDP PPP-adjusted:




Tuesday, May 15, 2018

15/518: Four macro charts that explain Trumpvolution


The current growth cycle has been the second longest on record:

Source: FactSet

But it has been much shallower than the previous cycles: "real GDP growth in the current expansion lags the other three expansions—by a lot. As of the first quarter of 2018, real GDP has expanded by 21% since the beginning of the current expansion; this is far lower than the 36% compound growth we saw at this point in the 1991‑2001 expansion. The chart also shows that the growth path for the longest expansions has continued to shift lower over time; the 1961‑1969 expansion saw real GDP grow by 52% by the end of its ninth year, while the economy had grown by just 38% by the end of year eight of the 1982‑1990 expansion."

Source: FactSet

And here's a summary of why loading risks of recession onto households is not such a great idea: "Real consumption has grown by 23% since the summer of 2009, compared to growth rates of 41% and 50% at the same point in the expansions of 1991‑2001 and 1961‑1969, respectively. The reluctance of consumers to spend in this expansion is not surprising when you consider how much of the brunt of the last recession was borne by this group."

Households' net worth collapse in the GFC has been more dramatic and the recovery from the crisis has been less pronounced than in the previous cycles:

Source: FactSet

Hey, you hear some say, but the recovery this time around has been 'historic' in terms of jobs creation. Right? Well, it has been historic... as in historically low:
Source: FactSet

So, despite the length of the recovery cycle, current state of the economy hardly warrants elevated levels of optimism. The recovery from the Global Financial Crisis and the Great Recession has been unimpressively sluggish, and the burden of the crises has been carried on the shoulders of ordinary households. Any wonder we have so many 'deplorables' ready to vote populist? As we noted in our recent paper (see: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3033949), the rise of populism has been a logical corollary to (1) the general trends toward secular stagnation in the economy since the mid-1990s, and (2) the impact of the twin 2008-2010 crises on households.

Friday, August 4, 2017

3/8/17: New research: the Great Recession is still with us


Here is the most important chart I have seen in some months now. The chart shows the 'new normal' post-2007 crisis in terms of per capita real GDP for the U.S.

Source: http://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Monetary-Policy-Report-070617-2.pdf

The key matters highlighted by this chart are:

  1. The Great Recession was unprecedented in terms of severity of its impact and duration of that impact for any period since 1947.
  2. The Great Recession is the only period in the U.S. modern history when the long term (trend) path of real GDP per capita shifted permanently below historical trend/
  3. The Great Recession is the only period in the U.S. modern history when the long term trend growth in GDP per capita substantially and permanently fell below historical trend.
As the result, as the Roosevelt Institute research note states, " output remains a full 15 percent below the pre-2007 trend line, a gap that is getting wider, not narrower, over time".

The dramatic nature of the current output trend (post-2007) departure from the past historical trend is highlighted by the fact that pre-crisis models for forecasting growth have produced massive misses compared to actual outrun and that over time, as new trend establishes more firmly in the data, the models are slowly catching up with the reality:

Source: ibid

Finally, confirming the thesis of secular stagnation (supply side), the research note presents evidence on structural decline in labor productivity growth, alongside the evidence that this decline is inconsistent with pre-2007 trends:

On the net, the effects of the Great Recession in terms of potential output, actual output growth trends, labor productivity and wages appear to be permanent in nature. In other words, the New Normal of post-2007 'recovery' implies permanently lower output and income. 

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

3/5/16: U.S. Recovery: It's Poor, Judging by Historical Comparatives


Recent research note from Deutsche covering the U.S. economy posted an interesting chart on the U.S. growth dynamics since 1980:
The note, of course, makes the point about volatility of the GDP growth in the current recovery not being out of the ordinary. But the average rate of growth in the chart above is.  Which means one little thingy: the average rate of growth is structurally lower in the present episode than in the previous three post-recession recoveries. And that is before we look at the peak-to-trough falls in GDP during the recession which was more dramatic than in any previous recession plotted in the chart. Average rate of growth in the current recovery falls outside the -1STDEV range for two out of three previous recoveries.

So here we have it: recovery is not robust. Not even strong. It is, quite frankly, very poor.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

6/3/2014: A 'New Normal' of Ireland's economy


This is an unedited version of my Sunday Times article from February 23, 2014.


Jobs, domestic investment, exports-led recovery and sustainable long-term growth are the four meme that have captured the current Coalition, setting the early corner stones for the next election’s promises. Resembling the ages-old "Whatever you like, we’ll have it" approach to policymaking, this strategy is dictated by the PR and politics first, and economics last. For a good reason: no matter how much we all would like to have hundreds of thousands new jobs based on solid global demand for goods and services we produce, given the current structure of the Irish economy, these fine objectives are largely unattainable and mutually contradictory.

Firstly, restoring jobs lost in the crisis requires restarting the domestic economy and investment both of which call for an entirely different use of resources than the ones needed to sustain exports-led growth. Secondly, domestic and externally trading economies are currently undergoing long-term consolidation. Expansion or growth will have to wait until these processes are completed. Thirdly, replacing lost jobs with new ones will not lead to a significant decrease in our unemployment. Majority of current unemployed lack skills necessary to fill positions that can be created in a sustainable economy of the future.

Torn between these conflicting calls on our resources, Irish economy is now at a risk of slipping into a ‘new normal’. This long-term re-arrangement of the economy can be best described as splitting the society into the stagnant debt-ridden domestic core and slowly growing external sectors increasingly captured by the aggressively tax optimising multinationals. Only a major effort at reforming our policymaking and tax regimes can hold the promise of escaping such a predicament.


In simple terms, Ireland's main problem is that we lack new long-term sources for growth.

Let's face the uncomfortable truth: apart from a historically brief period of economic catching up with the rest of the advanced economies, known as the Celtic Tiger from 1992 through 1999, our modern economic history is littered with pursuits of economic fads. In the 1980s the belief was that funding elections purchases via state borrowing delivers income growth. The late 1990s were the age of dot.com ‘entrepreneurship', and property and public 'investment'. From the end of the 1990s through today, correlation between real GDP per capita growth and the growth rates in inflation-adjusted real exports of goods collapsed, compared to the levels recorded in the period from 1960 through 1989. In the early 2000s dot.coms fad faded and domestic lending bubble filled the void. Since the onset of the 2010s, the new promise of salvation came in the form of yet another fad - ICT services.

Decades of growth based on tax arbitrage and the lack of sustained indigenous comparative advantage and expertise left our economy in a vulnerable position. Ireland today has strong notional productivity and competitiveness in a handful of high value-added sectors dominated by multinationals. As past experience shows, these activities can be volatile. As the recent data attests, they are also starting to show strains.

Last week, the Central Statistics Office published the preliminary data on merchandise trade for 2013. The results were far from pretty. Year on year, total value of Irish goods exports fell to EUR86.9 billion from EUR91.7 billion in 2012, and trade surplus in goods shrunk by EUR5.25 billion. Overall, 2013 was the worst year for Irish goods exports since the crisis-peak 2009.

This poor performance is due to two core drivers: the pharmaceuticals patent cliff and stagnant growth in exports across other sectors, namely in traditional and modern manufacturing.

The data clearly shows that we are struggling to find a viable replacement for pharmaceuticals sector. If in 2012, trade balance in chemicals and related products category accounted for 105 percent of our trade surplus, in 2013 this figure rose to over 106 percent. Just as our exports in this category are falling, our trade balance becomes more dependent on them.

The strategy is to replace traditional pharma activity with biopharma and other sectors that are more research-intensive than traditional pharma. Alas, our latest data on patenting activity shows that Ireland remains stuck in the pattern of low R&D output with declining indigenous patent filings. Institutionally, we have some distance to travel before we can become a world-class competitor in R&D and innovation. The latest Global Intellectual Property Index published this week, ranks Ireland 12th in the world in Intellectual Property environment. Beyond this lies the problem that much of the innovation-linked revenues booked by the MNCs into Ireland relate to activity outside of this country and are channeled out of Ireland with little actual economic activity imprint left here.

From the point of view of our indigenous workforce, it is critical that Irish indigenous exporters aggressively grow in new markets. Yet, Irish exports to BRICS economies and to Asia-Pacific have fallen in 2013. Our trade deficit with these countries has widened by 87 percent to EUR858 million last year.

So far, the short-term support for falling goods exports has been provided by relatively rapidly rising exports of services. This process, however, is also showing signs of stress. While we do not have figures for trade in services for 2013, the IMF most recent assessment of the Irish economy shows that our share of the world exports of services remains stagnant. And the IMF projects growth in Irish trade balance on services side to slow down significantly after 2015.


While exports engine is still running, albeit in a lower gear, domestic side of the economy remains comatose under the huge weight of our combined public and private debt overhang.  Total government and domestically-held private sectors debts stood at 189 percent of our GDP in 2007. At the end of 2013 it was 252 percent. This does not include debts held outside our official domestic banking system or loans extended to Irish companies abroad. The good news is the cost of funding this debt is relatively low. The bad news is – it will rise in the longer term.

And, in the long run, the wealth distribution in Ireland is skewed in favour of the older generations. This leaves more indebted working age households out in the cold when it comes to saving for future retirement and funding current investment in entrepreneurship and business development.

Irish economy is heading for a major split. Across the demographic divide the generation of current 30-45 year-olds will go on struggling to sustain debts accumulated during the period of the Celtic Tiger. They will continue facing high unemployment rates for those who used to work in the domestic economy. A stark choice for these workers will be either re-skilling for MNCs-dominated exports-focused services sectors, emigrating or facing permanently reduced incomes. Even those, likely to gain a foothold in the new ICT-led economy will have to stay alert hoping that the footloose sector does not generate significant jobs volatility.

All in, the unemployment rates in the economy are likely to remain stuck at the ‘new normal’ of around 8-8.5 percent through the beginning of the next decade, contrasting the 5 percent full employment rate of joblessness in the first decade of the century.


At this point in time, it is hard to see the sources of growth that can propel Ireland to the growth rates recorded over the two decades prior to the crisis. Back then, Irish real GDP per capita grew at an annualised rate of some 4.7 percent. The latest trends suggest that our income is likely to grow at around 1 percent per annum over 2010-2025 period - the rate of growth that has more in common with Belgium and below that expected for Germany. Aptly, the IMF puts our current output gap – the distance to full-employment level of economic activity – at around 1.2 percent of GDP, which ranks our growth potential as only thirteenth in the euro area. This clearly shows the shallow growth potential for this economy even in current conditions.

Slow recovery in employment and continued deleveraging of the households mean that Ireland will be staying just below the Euro area average in terms of income and consumption, and above the EU average in terms of unemployment. In that sense, the economic mismanagement of the naughties will be reversed by not one, but two or more lost decades.

Ireland has some serious potential in a handful of domestic sectors, namely food and drink, and agrifood, as well as in the areas where our ability to create and attract high quality human capital can offer future opportunities for growth. We have a handful of truly excellent, globally competitive enterprises, such as CRH, Ryanair and Glanbia. But beyond this, we are not a serious player in the high value-added game of modern economic production. In sectors where we allegedly have strong expertise: pharma, biotech, ICT, and finance, Ireland has no globally recognised large-scale indigenous players.

Ending the lost decades on a note of rebirth of the Celtic Tiger will take much more than setting political agendas for ‘kitchen sink’ growth agendas. It will take big-ticket reforms of the domestic economy, tax system, and political governance. Good news is that we can deliver such reforms. Bad news is that they are yet to be formulated by our leaders.






Box-out: 

Recent research note from Kamakura Corporation provided yet more evidence of the damaging effects of the EU's knee-jerk reaction policies in the wake of the global financial crisis. Specifically, Kamakura study published last week focused on the July 2012-issued blanket ban on short selling in the European Credit Default Swaps (CDS) markets. CDS are de facto insurance contracts on sovereign bonds, actively used by professional and institutional investors for risk management and hedging. The study found that as the result of the EU ban, trading activity declined for eighteen out of 26 EU member states' CDS. Put in more simple terms, as the result of the EU decision, risk hedging in the sovereign debt markets for the majority of the EU member states' bonds was significantly undermined, leading to increased risk exposures for investors. At the same time, liquidity in the CDS markets fell, implying further shifting of risk onto investors in sovereign bonds. Kamakura analysis strongly suggests that investors holding sovereign debts of euro area ‘peripheral’ countries like Spain and Italy are currently forced to pay an excessive liquidity risk premium in CDS markets. At the same time, the EU regulators, having banned short selling can claim a Pyrrhic victory in public by asserting that they have reacted to the crisis by introducing tougher new regulations. In Europe, every political capital gain made has an associated financial, social or economic cost. This is true for economic decisions and financial markets regulations alike. Too bad that those who benefit from the former gains rarely face any of the latter costs.