If you’re inclined to sit on the fence these days in the delicate art of anticipating the next phase of the business cycle, you’ll get no argument from the latest update on the Chicago Fed National Activity Index, a monster index of indexes that encompasses 85 measures of U.S. economic activity. This benchmark has weakened this year but it’s still not flashing a formal prediction of economic contraction. But it’s a precarious existence on this side of the line.
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A Mixed Bag For Recession Risk
A new recession may be coming. Maybe it’s already here. Then again, maybe not. Calling major turns in the business cycle in real time is perhaps the most coveted of skills in all of economics. It’s also one of the most elusive gifts among self-proclaimed seers. That doesn’t stop anyone from trying, including this recent warning that dark days ahead are a virtual certainty. The risk of trouble certainly looks higher to most observers, and it’s not just in the U.S. Menzie Chinn of Econbrowser alerts us that the global economy “is close to stall speed.” Perhaps, although it’s still not obvious that the trend in the U.S. has definitively rolled over. For some perspective, let’s review some of the latest indicators.
Dissecting The Historical Equity Risk Premium For Clues About The Future
What is the historical equity risk premium? It’s a simple question, and a crucial one. Looking at the past alone is no panacea for predicting the future, but it’s an obvious place to start. If you’re focused on making informed decisions about portfolio design and management, understanding where capital markets have been provides some useful context.
Saving The Euro: Part 16-A/4.b (subsection F)
Managing a currency by popular vote every other week (or day) is water torture and almost surely doomed to fail. But with no other choice, the odyssey that is the euro rolls on, which means that the voting, the deal making, the deliberations, the polling–the rise and fall of governments–endures.
A Revival In Rational Expectations Theory?
Economic theory tied to rational expectations has taken a beating in recent years, at least in some circles. Remember this contentious skewering from Paul Krugman in 2009? Defenders of the faith responded with all guns firing, including this take-no-prisoners response from “freshwater” economist John Cochrane. Whatever you think of ratex, it earned some lofty recognition yesterday with the news that the Nobel economics prize was awarded to a pair of Americans.
Is The Levered ETF Tail Wagging The Market Dog?
Douglas Kass of Seabreeze Partners tells Andrew Ross Sorkin that levered ETFs “have turned the market into a casino on steroids. They accentuate the moves in every direction — the upside and the downside.”
Sometimes (Macro) History Bites
By now there should be broad agreement on one point in the grand debate on macroeconomics. A recession born of a severe financial crisis is an especially destructive force, and one that isn’t easily solved. Irving Fisher outlined the basic problem more than 80 years ago in his prophetic paper “The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions. The blowback cycle of unusually deep recessions and protracted recoveries after acute turmoil in the financial sector is a familiar syndrome, as economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff detail in This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
Book Bits For Saturday: 10.8.2011
● The Coming Jobs War
By Jim Clifton
Review via MoneyWeb
Clifton asserts that job creation will surpass all other issues to dominate politics. He likens the challenges to the second world war while further asserting that the war has already begun… It seems likely that “job creation” is destined to become the leader among business publication categories adding to the pressure on politicians everywhere. Few companies have Gallup’s experience in discerning data. The book points out that the world has 7 billion people with 5 billion being of working age. Of those, 3 billion desire full-time formal employment while globally there are only 1.2 billion jobs that meet his criteria, “pay check from an employer and steady work that averages 30-plus hours per week”.
Private Sector Jobs Rose 137,000 Last Month… Whew!
The labor market pulled back from the brink last month. Private-sector job growth rebounded in September for a net gain of 137,000, a dramatically higher pace over August’s meager 42,000 rise, the Labor Department reports. The case for expecting a recession’s near, in other words, has fallen a notch or two. But while September’s job market improved, the growth rate is still weak. The unchanged 9.1% unemployment rate for September makes this point loud and clear.
The Calm Before The Storm?
The Treasury market’s inflation forecast has been a reliable barometer of the ebb and flow of crisis and recovery in recent years. In July and August of 2008, just ahead of the implosion of Lehman Brothers that triggered a financial panic, the yield spread between the nominal less inflation-indexed 10-year Treasuries was falling sharply. That was a warning sign of trouble ahead. In early 2009, by contrast, this inflation forecast started trending higher, telling us that the worst had passed. When inflation expectations softened again in the spring of 2010, the shift sent a message that the economy faced new challenges. Later on in the year, when this market forecast hit bottom at the end of August 2010 and started climbing soon after, it represented a vote of confidence that the Fed’s newly announced QE2 monetary stimulus would have some traction in the economy. And earlier this year, when inflation expectations turned down again, starting in April, that was a sign that a new macro storm was lurking.