Recovery Goes Jobless in August

 

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.

More evidence that the U.S. economy is grinding to halt was provided by the August non-farm payroll numbers today. According to the BLS (the Bureau of Labor Statistics), the U.S. economy produced no additional jobs in August, the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.1%, and average hourly earnings declined. The June and July numbers were revised downward with 58,000 less jobs than originally reported.

Almost every category lost jobs in August except for health care and social assistance, professional and business services, and mining and logging. Health care and social assistance added 30,000 jobs. This category was the one perennial gainer during the Great Recession and its aftermath. Even though many of these jobs are government related, they are classified as private sector by the BLS. Professional and business services added 28,000 jobs. A footnote in the report states that this number includes jobs from other unspecified categories (could those be government jobs that are included to make it look like private sector employment is better than it actually is?).  Mining and logging added another 6,000 jobs.

Year over year comparisons were even more dismal than the monthly numbers suggested. There were only 400,000 more people employed in the U.S. this August compared to August 2010 (see Household Data, Summary Table A on the BLS website for the details). This is the actual net number of new jobs created in the last year. This has averaged 33,000 a month. At the same time, the non-institutionalized civilian population has been growing at almost 150,000 per month. Yet, during this time period, the unemployment rate fell from 9.6% to 9.1%.  This has happened not because a lot of jobs were created, but because approximately 2.3 million people left the labor force.

Despite close to zero percent interest rates and the trillions of dollars of stimulus thrown at it, the U.S. economy seems incapable of producing jobs. The only thing that has prevented the reported unemployment rate from rising into the double digits is the large numbers of people exiting the labor force (they are not counted as unemployed). This doesn't happen when a real economic recovery takes place. People rush into the labor force as jobs become more plentiful. Unemployment rates also don't remain at the 9% level if the economy is doing well as has constantly been reported. Mainstream press claims to the contrary,  a "jobless recovery" just doesn't exist in the real world (nor are there tall midgets or thin obese people). Based on the jobs numbers, investors should assume that the U.S. has been in a chronic state of recession and chronic stimulus is needed to keep things from getting worse.   

Disclosure: None

Daryl Montgomery
Author: "Inflation Investing - A Guide
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. There is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.
 

Q2 GDP Up Only 0.7% Without Government Spending

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.



The Bureau of Economic Analysis revised second quarter GPD growth down from 2.4% to 1.6% today. Stimulus spending peaked in the second quarter and despite the big boost that it provided, the U.S. economy only expanded at a rate that indicates the U.S. standard of living isn't declining further.

The U.S. needs GDP growth (adjusted for inflation) at about 1.5% for the well-being of the average person to remain the same. This is because of population increases and other factors including some overstatement of the numbers. Actual growth, meaning more jobs and increased incomes for the American people, only takes place when the GDP number is above that level. The U.S. right now needs a substantial amount of actual growth just to make up for the decline from the Credit Crisis/Great Recession and to get back over eight million lost jobs. Despite $2.7 trillion in federal deficit spending in the last two years, it's just not happening.

At the bottom of the Credit Crisis/Great Recession GDP declined at a 6.8% annual rate. So far during the 'recovery' GDP growth has been:

2009 Q3  1.6%
2009 Q4  5.0%
2010 Q1  3.7%
2010 Q2  1.6%

Most of this has come from changes in inventories -in the first three quarters, approximately two-thirds of 'growth' came from this one factor. Indeed this also would have been true of the Q2 number as well if the inventory component hadn't been lowered. Inventories for Q2 were originally reported as being responsible for GDP growth of 1.05% (divided by the new 1.6% total, this would indicate inventories were 66% of Q2 GDP growth). However the inventory contribution to GDP was revised downward even though according to the BEA, "Private businesses increased inventories $63.2 billion in the second quarter, following an increase of $44.1 billion in the first quarter". The smaller increase in inventories in Q1 was responsible for GDP increasing by 2.64%. This is a peculiarity of GDP math. In 2009 Q4 inventories decreased (yes, decreased) by $36.7 billion and this created 2.83% GDP growth. A decrease in inventories also created a 1.10% increase in GDP in Q3 2009.

Government spending was supposedly responsible for 0.86% of GDP growth last quarter. Subtracting that from 1.6% leaves only a 0.74% increase in Q2 GDP. Describing this as anemic would be an understatement. The federal government however accounts for almost a quarter of the U.S. economy and its spending increased by 9.1% in Q2. This would seem to indicate that the federal government contributed a lot more to Q2 GDP growth than what the BEA claims. It also begs the question as to how good the GDP numbers will be when government spending significantly declines as it is scheduled to do in fiscal 2011.

Q2 GDP would also have also been a lot lower without big increases in 'Gross Private Domestic Investment', which was up a whopping 25%. 'Equipment and Software' was up by 24.9% between April and June. In the recently released durable goods report for July, it had a big drop, as did machinery and other components in this category.  Two years of stimulus spending is responsible for revving up the investment component of GDP in the second quarter, but economic reports from early in the third quarter indicate that its impact is already waning. We will have to wait though until just before the November election to see the first numbers for Q3 GDP.

Disclosure: No positions

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. There is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

July Durable Goods Add Support to Recession View

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.


After an existing home sales report yesterday revealed that the U.S. housing market is currently in worse shape than it was at the bottom of the Credit Crisis/Great Recession, July's durable goods report today further confirmed that the U.S. economy is sinking into a recession.

The headline number, an increase of 0.3%, seemed OK if not particularly good. Only a single item, a huge 76% increase in commercial aircraft sales, was responsible for keeping the number above zero however. Durable goods orders ex transportation fell 3.8% in July. The transportation number, particularly the aircraft sales component, is highly volatile. A strong number one month can be followed by a very negative number the next month. As for the rest of the components of the report, some were eyepoppingly bad.

Machinery orders, which fell 15%, were the weakest number in the report. It wasn't just the extent of the drop that made it so awful, but more importantly it was the biggest decline on record. Yes, the drop was larger than the decline that took place at the bottom of the Credit Crisis/Great Recession when the U.S. economy was falling off a cliff. Computer orders were down 12.7%. Capital goods orders were down 8.0%, the biggest drop since January 2009, just after the Credit Crisis/Great Recession bottom. Orders for electrical equipment and appliances were down 5.9%.

Altogether, July durable goods orders indicate that the manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy is rapidly turning south. This is particularly troubling because it was manufacturing that had the biggest upturn in the last year (the four times larger service sector didn't improve nearly as much). What will provide economic growth, now that manufacturing is weakening? An even more important question is: If some of the manufacturing numbers are as bad as or worse than the bottom of the Credit Crisis/Great Recession and this is also true of the real estate market, how is it possible that the U.S. economy is not currently in another recession?

Disclosure: No positions

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. There is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

A Tale of 3 PMIs: China, the EU, and U.S.

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.


Stock markets in Europe, Asia and the U.S. rallied strongly on August 1st even though reports from purchasing managers in China, the EU and the U.S. did not bode well for future economic activity.

In China, the HSBC PMI (purchasing managers index) for July was 49.4. This indicates Chinese manufacturing contracted last month (50 is the dividing point between expansion and contraction for all the PMI indices). The official Chinese government report though came in at 51.2, indicating a slight expansion was still taking place. China is the growth engine of the world economy and a downturn there has negative implications far and wide. Mainstream media tried to put a positive spin on the news by saying the Chinese government wanted to slow the Chinese economy down, so a drop in manufacturing activity is good news. What the government actually wanted to do was slow down the property bubble created by their massive stimulus program during the Credit Crisis. They did not wish to slow down activity related to exports, which is their bread and butter. That seems to be an unfortunate side effect of their actions however.

While the news out of China was unabashedly bad, traders in the EU were ebullient that the EU purchasing managers July number was revised up to 56.7 from a previous estimate of 56.5. This change is statistically meaningless. Based on the data available, it also looks like Germany was almost single-handedly responsible for the good number. Exports were the key. The big drop in the euro to 1.18 in early June (from around 1.50 late last year) would certainly have boosted exports from the EU since it made their goods much cheaper - and Germany's economy is export based. However, the report also indicated that export orders are slowing (as the euro rises) and new orders are well below this year's peak. The service providers in the report also had the most negative outlook for future activity in eight months.

The U.S. PMI was 55.5 for July, down from 56.2 in June. Of the components in the index, New Orders were down the most, dropping 5.0. The second biggest decline was in Production, which fell 4.4. The Backlog of Orders category was also lower by 2.5. All of these are indicators of future activity. The biggest increase in the report was Inventories, which were up 4.4. Looks like goods are being produced, but are piling up in the warehouse. Together, these components all seem to indicate that U.S. manufacturing will be slowing down later this year.

Manufacturing was the big success story of the stimulus spending that started during the Credit Crisis. This had a greater impact in China than in the Western economies because manufacturing is a greater component of their economy. In the U.S., the service sector is four times bigger than the manufacturing sector, so a buoyant manufacturing sector is not enough by itself to create a strong recovery. This is one reason the American economy remains lackluster despite $3 trillion in budget deficit spending in the last two years. Stimulus spending though will be declining in the U.S. and in the EU into the foreseeable future. We are already seeing what impact that will have based on the PMI reports coming out of China.

Disclosure: No positions.

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

Q2 GDP Report: 5 Important Things You Need to Know

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.


The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported today that GDP increased by 2.4% in the second quarter. First quarter GDP was revised up to 3.7%. The annual revisions for previous years indicated that the U.S economy contracted at an average annual rate of 0.2% between 2006 and 2009.

While 2.4% is in and of itself a fairly decent increase in GDP, the components that made up the increase are the key to interpreting how good it really is. To do this, it's necessary to know whether or not they are sustainable and even whether or not they are believable. Increases in some components are a negative because they ultimately lead to lower growth in the future. Inventories are the best example of this. Others, such as increased government spending are at best neutral because they don't indicate an improvement in the private economy. If spending isn't going to be increased further in the future, then this also indicates lower GDP going forward. Finally, some numbers simple don't match up with other government reports, observations of reality, or economic definitions. If they don't, they are obviously inaccurate.

So how do the GDP numbers stack up in the latest report?  Based on the official news release from the BEA, which can be found at: http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrelease.htm, it can be seen that:

1. Inventory increases added 1.05% to second quarter GDP. Based on the annual revision, they added 2.64% to first quarter GDP or 71% of the total increase. Inventories were also responsible for approximately two-thirds of the GDP increase in the fourth quarter of 2009. The entire economic 'recovery' has essentially been an inventory adjustment. This does not bode well for the future.

2. Government spending was up across the board in Q2. Federal spending increased by 9.2% in the second quarter versus 1.8% in the first quarter. State and local spending was up 1.3% this quarter versus a decline of 3.8% last quarter. The second quarter was when stimulus spending was at its maximum. So expect less of a contribution from government spending to future GDP and lower numbers as a result.

3. The most obvious fantasy figures in the report was the new home construction figure. This supposedly increased by a whopping 27.9%, even though the Commerce Department's New Residential Structures report (more commonly known as new home sales) indicated a 6% decline quarter to quarter and an 8% decline year over year. Nor is there any evidence of a massive increase in new home inventories or any real world evidence indicating a huge building boom. This number is impossible.

4. Somewhat suspicious is the increase in investment on business structures (commercial real estate). This was up for the first time since Q3 2008. The big increase in banks going under that is currently taking place is being caused by commercial loans going bad, yet commercial construction is now on an upswing? Perhaps work on the BP oil spill juiced up this number. Interestingly, the UK also reported a huge increase in construction spending last quarter as well, although there is little evidence of much construction going on there. BP is headquartered in the UK, but it spent its money to handle the oil spill in the U.S.

5. The most ridiculous claim of all was the revised figures for 2008 GDP. Based on original reports, GDP increased by almost 3% in 2008, a very good rate, even though it is universally acknowledge that the U.S. was experiencing the worst economic downturn since the 1930s Great Depression. GDP is supposed to decrease during a recession, not go up. In the revision in July 2009, GDP for 2008 was revised downward to plus 0.4%. In the current revision, GDP growth for 2008 is now listed as 0%. Perhaps after another 15 to 20 revisions it will get to a more reasonable number. The history of 2008 GDP indicates the U.S. can overstate its GDP by a total of 6% to 9% in its initial reporting. Keep that in mind when you read that GDP was up 2.4% last quarter.


Disclosure: No positions.

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.