Credit crunch, bailouts and unemployment - according to Steve Keen

Steve Keen, Australian post-Keynesian economist and one of only about 16 (previously estimated at 12) out of 20,000 econ pros to have predicted the "credit crunch" (aka GFC - Global Financial Crisis), looks at economic models and produces his own. The one I find most striking is the last, Fig. 22:

There are several implications I see here:

1. It is better to bail out borrowers than banks
2. The disruption takes c. 15 years to settle
3. Whatever is done or not done, we are left with permanently elevated levels of unemployment

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.

Currents in the sea of debt

Michael Panzner, author of "Financial Armageddon" (a book I reviewed 3 years ago when I began to relay advance warnings of the credit crisis), is a great miner of news and comment. Here he has unearthed an article that analyses the apparent improvement in USA household debt figures.

It seems that there has been over $400 billion in defaults; and many of those who haven't defaulted (yet) have continued to increase their debt. If the economy continues to struggle, perhaps a portion of the latter will also renege on their financial obligations.

One coming blow to the US economy is a fresh wave of mortgage problems. Traditionally (and unlike in the UK), domestic mortgages were fixed for the entire term of the loan, but in the late greedy rush to make fortunes in fees, banks and brokers offered housebuyers "option ARMs" (adjustable rate mortgages with an initial very low interest rate fixed for a few years). These loans are due to start coming off their "teaser rates" over the next couple of years.

That's when many homeowners may either be forced to default, or choose to do so because they calculate that falling house prices will catch them in a negative equity trap. In many (not all) cases, they may be able to default and leave their credit problems behind, because the loan may be of a kind that is attached to the property only - the lender can't pursue the borrower for any debt left over after selling the house. So all the beleaguered borrower has to do is send back the keys - the slang for this is "jingle mail".

Lots of American houses are built of wood. Standing empty and uncared for, they are likely to deteriorate quickly, even if they haven't been trashed by resentful ex-owners as a parting slap to the repossession teams. And there is still plenty of land to build new houses, so an existing property in poor condition may never find a new buyer - especially if it's in an area blighted by unemployment and rising crime, like former "Car City" Detroit.

The bankers have been sustained by huge financial backing from the government, but it may not be possible to light that match twice. Put "financial crisis" and "second wave" into your Web browser and you'll find lots of material to support the view that we are merely in the eye of the storm (another phrase now frequently used, e.g. by Tim Wood here).

I therefore remain cautious about investment, yet fearful that governments will try to escape their obligations through inflation.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.

The Impending Geek Shortage

In his recent editorial (“Why a liberal arts degree? The Big Shaggy”), David Brooks of the New York Times writes, “… many people have the ability to produce a technical innovation; … Very few people have the ability to create a great brand;…”

Polite words almost fail me.

Mr. Brooks’ argument is that manipulating emotion by words is a rarer and higher-order skill than ‘simple’ problem-solving. This view was shared by the ancient Greek philosophers, who looked down on the people who made things as ‘mere artisans’. It is also the stated view of Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, Simon Jenkins of the Guardian (UK), and the late writer Norman Mailer.

To be consistent, this alternate reality means ignoring the hard work and dedication of legions of scientists and engineers, and treating our comfortable existence as the Natural state of things.

It is also the apparent view of our nation’s scientifically- and technologically-illiterate middle managers, administrators, money manipulators and politicians. Starting in the 1970’s, they collectively watered down science and mathematics education, reduced funding for research and de-emphasized manufacturing.

This ‘service-based’ economy allowed us the illusion of confusing the movement of wealth with its creation, and brought the nation to bankruptcy. Lawyers, accountants, bankers, hedge fund managers, and the like all have incomes which are vastly larger than those of the typical scientist, and yet they produce absolutely nothing of any substance.

Unfortunately for them, the energy, economic, environmental and societal problems that we face are largely scientific and technological. Simply put, without a lot of such work, most of us would starve.

At most universities, the number of majors in any one of psychology, sociology, communications, pre-law, and other non-technical fields dwarfs the total in the hard sciences and mathematics combined. Exactly where will we get the experts that we badly need?

Faber on inflation, war, and physical and financial security

May I recommend that you watch the following video in full, even if you are not an economics buff?

Dr Marc Faber is a highly respected investment and economics commentator. He has a wry sense of humour that verges on what the Germans call galgenhumor - the sort of joke you make when you are about to be hanged. His thesis is that prices have become very volatile because of manipulation of interest rates and the money supply, and that in the West we are now so far in debt that governments will see no option but to create very significant inflation.

Accordingly (he thinks), the things people would usually regard as safe stores of value - cash and bonds - will turn out to be places to lose your wealth. Equities may not make much in real terms - and may well lose a lot at certain points (he looks for example at the Mexican experience from the late 70s to the 90s) - but are likely to recover again. Nimble investors may even do very well by exiting and re-entering the stockmarket at the right points.

Faber also considers how the Eastern economies are coming to dominate manufacturing production and consumption, so that although they seem poor compared with us they are not spending the majority of their money on services, as we do in the West. Further, they are not generally so indebted (if we ignore Japan). Faber thinks that at some stage we should all have a significant proportion (he gives a ballpark figure of 50%) of our investments in the East - though he stresses that's not a signal to get in right now.

He is also bullish long-term on gold, merely because of what he thinks will happen to our currencies as governments in the West try to inflate their way out of the debt trap. Interestingly and untypically of many of Faber's audiences, many of the people he is talking to here themselves hold significant amounts of physical gold. (I have just come back from a haircut here in Birmingham and a shop has just opened next door, specialising in buying gold - not so much an outlet as an inlet, you may say.)

Other investment themes are covered in the last few minutes of the video, and include agricultural land and infrastructure companies working e.g. in India, where the majority of the population is still rural and cities will have to be built.

Faber considers geopolitical aspects as well, and thinks that there will be growing international tensions. He is quite clear and non-humorous about how big cities are very vulnerable and that those who can afford to do so should have somewhere to live far away from them. It's worth pointing out that he has taken his own advice and lives in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand - and close to borders with several other countries.



DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.

Another expert predicting sharp market falls

Bob Janjuah of RBS is talking about the S&P 500 halving from its current level - over 1,700 - to somewhere in the 800s. If this is reflected in the Dow then the Dow will do what (in Dec 2008) I suggested it might, i.e. fall to around 4,000 points.

The interviewer describes Janjuah as an uber-bear, but in fact some other commentators have said the same for quite some time, and it's not even the most pessimistic figure I've seen. Though if and when it comes, the index may have to be interpreted in the light of inflation - and what the true inflation rate really is, is another issue.

Given this scenario, Janjuah says he is interested in gold, "value" (income-producing) stocks of large, financially solvent companies, and emerging market equities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.

Is it time to get out of cash?

For a long time - years - I have counselled caution to clients, and thought cash was not a bad place to be. That has been correct for the last decade or so. If you had hopped in and out of the market at just the right times, you might have done very well, but equally you could have lost very heavily. The FTSE still hasn't got near to its peak of 1999, and when you consider inflation, in real terms we are still far below.

But we may be moving on to a new phase. Governments in the USA, the UK and now the European Union have poured quite staggering amounts of cash into the banking systems to prevent their collapse. Some commentators now think that we are heading for an inflationary period that will devalue savers' money (and interest rates on deposits are not matching the official inflation figures).

There is an argument for investing now, not to make a genuine gain, but because over time stocks and shares may not lose as much in real terms as cash at the bank. This is the view of Dr Marc Faber, for example (see excerpts from a recent interview here), even though he believes that the monetary system will eventually collapse (and presumably be replaced by a new currency).

There are other ways to protect against inflation, notably National Savings Index-Linked Certificates, which are backed by the government and will return growth in line with RPI plus 1% per annum or so. We can argue about how exactly inflation is measured - and that is relevant - but their definition of inflation will have to be fairly reasonable, we hope.

More speculative investors may be eyeing gold (which has already quadrupled in price since 2000), silver, oil, agricultural land etc - but commodities are risky and there are already funds investing in these areas with the advantage of borrowing very cheap money, thanks to the state-supported banks.

If you would like personal advice, do please get in touch.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.

Can Osborne do it?

The UK's new Chancellor, George Osborne, is committed to finding £6 billion of cuts by the this weekend. That sounds like a lot, but given the scale of the challenge facing the country I think this target is a tiny sop to the markets that showed such concern on Friday (and which failed to recover today).

An economics professor was brought onto BBC News 24 this lunchtime; he pointed out that UK government spending runs at £700 billion per annum and UK GDP is something like £1,500 billion. £6 billion is peanuts, less than 1% of current spending.

A recent OECD study (this link is to John Mauldin's post on "Business Insider") suggests that we need to do far more to stabilise the economy. Even if we set ourselves a leisurely 20 years to bring debt-to-GDP down to 2007 (pre-crisis) levels, Britain would have to make savings of 3.5% of GDP. So using figures already given, I make that £52.5 billion per year.

Government statistics say that median earnings in the public sector in 2009 were £539 per week, or a shade over £28,000 per year. Let's assume that for every pound in pay you need to allow another pound in overheads. So every job cut saves £56,000 per annum. If we want to save 3.5% of GDP, we need to lose over 936,000 jobs.

Actually, it's worse than that, because there's the loss of tax (and NIC) revenue when you make someone unemployed; plus the additional cost of unemployment benefits, probably higher medical costs because of the health impact of joblessness, and so on. So, make that a target of more like 2 million jobs to lose? Especially if, on average, you cut less-well-paid jobs (teaching assistants and so on). That's out of a total of 6 million public sector employees, if you take John Redwood's figure; or 8 million if you take the first comment on that post, by Mark Wadsworth; i.e. a loss of a quarter to a third of the public workforce.

That's if you do it over 20 years. According to the OECD's report, doing it in 10 years would mean savings of 5.8% of GDP; or 10.6% over 5 years. Unimaginable.

Then there's the fact that we're starting from an annual budget deficit, not a balanced budget. Even before the credit crunch, the UK's deficit was running at 2.7% of GDP. According to the post by John Mauldin above, in 2011 the deficit is expected to be 9%!

So, it's just not to come from public sector layoffs alone. And even there, some of the cuts will impact the private sector, e.g. outsourced IT projects in the NHS, the education system and the widely-hated national ID card system.

The Welfare State is going to be hit hard. But how? State Pension Age raised to 70? Family payments for special needs children cut? Unemployment benefit payable for a limited period only, as in the USA (though even there they're having to extend the benefit period on an emergency basis)?

Or will we, despite desperate and hugely unpopular efforts by this new government, eventually end with default on a massive scale, either straightforward or by hyperinflation? Increasingly, this seems a distinct possibility.

I fear that George Osborne's attempts at reassuring the markets will not succeed for long. And if the Opposition makes maximum political capital out of the disaster, quite possibly the voters will reinstate Labour in five years' time, in the hope of mitigating the pain; which, if the next government plays along, may ignite the final financial crisis.

We must hope for the best and support this coalition in what must be far more serious measures than have been telegraphed to us so far.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.