Usually, this simply means that fluctuations in the markets may have little to no real bearing on the underlying realities we think of as making up the economy. Or that there are many important structural factors that make the markets’ outlook different from how ordinary citizens view the country’s overall economic health.
Even beyond the markets, there has been some data to suggest that the worst fears about the economy in late March and April were too pessimistic. (Take May’s jobs report, for instance, which showed a surprising decline in unemployment even after accounting for a classification problem with laid-off workers.) But the overall state of unemployment is still quite bad by historical standards, which mirrors numerous important economic indicators that are almost uniformly down — to a significant degree — from last summer:
Obviously, not every coreindicator has dropped off a cliff in the face of this recession. Inflation, as measured by the sticky-price consumer price index (excluding ever-volatile food and energy expenditures), has dipped some since February — from 2.8 percent year-over-year to 2.1 percent — but remains in a relatively normal range. New building permits (a sign of construction investment and activity) have rebounded from an initial dip and are almost back at last year’s level. And measures of credit risk, such as the TED spread, have stabilized, indicating a low implied risk of commercial-bank defaults.
And yet stock indices continue to rebound much faster than the rest of the economy.
Why? As is usually the case in economics, it’s complicated — and everyone has a pet theory. A few include the idea that investors are betting on a quick “V-shaped” recovery (rather than the longer, slower “swoosh” shape many economists have predicted) and banking on corporate profits eventually rebounding in the medium and long run. (And why not? The Federal Reserve’s actions have made it clear this is a priority.)
Some prominent tech companies at the top of the market (such as Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet) actually have reason to think the pandemic could shift business in their favor, with so much emphasis placed on digital shopping, communication and entertainment. And the rise of algorithm-based trading has insulated markets somewhat from the shocks that could be created by big news events, such as political developments or the protests against racial injustice currently sweeping across the country, since dispassionate algorithms don’t get worried or scared by the news the way humans do.
But Tara Sinclair, an economics professor at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Indeed Hiring Lab, told me she thinks the markets are also providing a better place for wealthy people to stash their money than alternatives like bonds or banks.
“People, particularly the rich, have cut back their spending, so they need to park their funds somewhere like the stock market (especially since interest rates are rock bottom),” she said in an email. “Inequality can mean that even with millions out of work, there might still be a glut of funds from the high-earning and/or high-wealth individuals.”
As Paul Krugman of The New York Times pointed out relatively early in the crisis, the yield on Treasury bonds is so low (see the chart above) that stocks are an attractive option — even in the midst of a recession caused by a once-in-a-generation pandemic.
“Recent stock market performance could be more about something like a savings glut rather than optimism on the future value of companies,” Sinclair told me. “It may be more about the S&P 500 being better than anywhere else to put funds rather than about actual optimism.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean there’s no optimism driving investors’ actions, though. “Maybe (hopefully?) people are investing for the longer term and are viewing the current economic situation as substantially temporary,” Sinclair wrote.
And it’s worth noting that, despite everything, the markets are not totally separate from the virus that continues to afflict every corner of the world.
When news of the coronavirus first hit, the VIX — a measure of market volatility perhaps better known as the “fear index” — spiked to 82.7, its highest level ever. (The previous high was 80.9, which it hit in November 2008, when the Great Recession sparked a massive selloff.) News of a COVID-19 resurgence earlier this month caused the VIX to surge to 40.8, another abnormally high number — outside of recessions, the VIX usually floats between 10 and 20. Despite the rising indices, uncertainty rules the stock market right now.
What that means down the line is anybody’s guess. But for now, Wall Street has shown a shocking amount of resilience even as almost every other economic indicator has tanked. If nothing else, let this be the final confirmation that, once and for all, the stock market is not the economy.
That era is drawing to a close. In many countries, interest rates are so low, even negative, that central banks can’t lower them further. Tepid economic growth and low inflation mean they can’t raise rates, either.
Since World War II, every recovery was ushered in with lower rates as the Fed moved to stimulate growth. Every recession was preceded by higher interest rates as the Fed sought to contain inflation.
But with interest rates now stuck around zero, central banks are left without their principal lever over the business cycle. The Eurozone economy is stalling, but the European Central Bank, having cut rates below zero, can’t or won’t do more. Since 2008, Japan has had three recessions with the Bank of Japan, having set rates around zero, largely confined to the sidelines.
The U.S. may not be far behind. “We are one recession away from joining Europe and Japan in the monetary black hole of zero rates and no prospect of escape,” said Harvard University economist Larry Summers. The Fed typically cuts short-term interest rates by 5 percentage points in a recession, he said, yet that is impossible now with rates below 2%.
Workers, companies, investors and politicians may need to prepare for a world where the business cycle rises and falls largely without the influence of central banks.
“The business cycle we’re used to is a bad guide to business cycles going forward,” said Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates LP, the world’s biggest hedge fund.
In November, Fed chairman Jerome Powell warned Congress that “the new normal now is lower interest rates, lower inflation, probably lower growth…all over the world.” As a result, he said, the Fed is studying ways to alter its strategy and develop tools that can work when interest rates approach zero.
Fed chairman Jerome Powell on Capitol Hill in November.PHOTO: SAM CORUM/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
Central banks are calling on elected officials to employ taxes, spending and deficits to combat recessions. “It’s high time I think for fiscal policy to take charge,” Mario Draghi said in September, shortly before stepping down as ECB president.
There are considerable doubts that any new tools can restore the influence of central banks, or that countries can overcome obstacles to more robust fiscal policy, particularly political opposition and steep debt.
Business cycles in the future may resemble those of the 19th century, when monetary policy didn’t exist. From 1854 to 1913, the U.S. had 15 recessions, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the academic research group that dates business cycles. Many were severe. One slump lasted from 1873 to 1879, and some historians argue it lingered until 1896.
Fed’s Fading Influence
U.S. recessions were more frequent before the Federal Reserve took control over interest rates, using them as a lever to slow inflation or boost the economy. Low rates have weakened the central bank by giving it little room to reduce rates further.
The Fed’s sway over the economy has also been weakened by a decline in durable manufacturing and construction, which are sensitive to rates, and the growth in services, which aren’t.
Sources: National Bureau of Economic Research (recessions); Sidney Homer and Richard Sylla (interest rates 1854-1933); Federal Reserve (interest rates 1934-present); U.S. Commerce Department (value-added shares of GDP)
Kathryn Tam/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The causes of business cycles were diverse, Wesley Claire Mitchell, an NBER founder, wrote in 1927. They included “the weather, the uncertainty which beclouds all plans that stretch into the future, the emotional aberrations to which business decisions are subject, the innovations characteristic of modern society, the ‘progressive’ character of our age, the magnitude of savings, the construction of industrial equipment, ‘generalized overproduction,’ the operations of banks, the flow of money incomes, and the conduct of business for profits.”
He didn’t mention monetary or fiscal policy because, for all practical purposes, they didn’t exist. Until 1913, the U.S. hadn’t had a central bank, except for two brief periods. As for fiscal policy, U.S. federal spending and taxation were too small to matter.
When central banks were established, they didn’t engage in monetary policy, which means adjusting interest rates to counter recession or rein in inflation. Many countries were on the gold standard which, by tying the supply of currency to the stock of gold, prevented sustained inflation.
The Fed was established in 1913 to act as lender of last resort, supplying funds to commercial banks that were short of cash, not to manage inflation or unemployment. Not until the Great Depression did that change.
In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt took the U.S. off the gold standard, giving the Fed much more discretion over interest rates and the money supply. Two years later, Congress centralized Fed decision-making in Washington, better equipping it to manage the broader economy.
Modern times
Macroeconomics, the study of the economy as a whole instead of individuals and firms, was born from the work of British economist John Maynard Keynes. He showed how individuals and firms, acting rationally, could together spend too little to keep everyone employed.
In those circumstances, monetary or fiscal policy could generate more demand for a nation’s goods and services, Mr. Keynes argued. Just as a dam regulates the flow of a river to counter flooding and drought, monetary and fiscal-policy makers must try to regulate the flow of aggregate demand to counter inflation and recession.
The Employment Act of 1946 committed the U.S. to the idea of using fiscal and monetary policy to maintain full employment and low rates of inflation.
The next quarter-century followed a textbook script. In postwar America, rapid economic growth and falling unemployment yielded rising inflation. The Fed responded by raising interest rates, reducing investment in buildings, equipment and houses.
The economy would slide into recession, and inflation would fall.
The Fed then lowered interest rates, investment would recover, and growth would resume.
The textbook model began to fray at the end of the 1960s. Economists thought low interest rates and budget deficits could permanently reduce unemployment in exchange for only a modest uptick in inflation. Instead, inflation accelerated, and the Fed induced several deep and painful recessions to get it back down.
By the late 1990s, new challenges emerged. One was at first a good thing. Inflation became both low and unusually stable, barely fluctuating in response to economic growth and unemployment.
The second change was less beneficial. Regular prices were more stable, but asset prices became less so. The recessions of 2001 and 2008 weren’t caused by the Fed raising rates. They resulted from a boom and bust in asset prices, first in technology stocks, then in house prices and mortgage debt.
After the last bust, the Fed kept interest rates near zero from 2008 until 2015. The central bank also purchased government bonds with newly created money—a new monetary tool dubbed quantitative easing—to push down long-term interest rates.
Despite such aggressive stimulus, economic growth has been slow. Unemployment has fallen to a 50-year low, but inflation has persistently run below the 2% target the Fed set. A similar situation prevails abroad.
In Japan, Britain and Germany, unemployment is down to historic lows. But despite short-and long-term interest rates near and sometimes below zero, growth has been muted. Since 2009, inflation has averaged 0.3% in Japan and 1.3% in the Eurozone.
The textbook model of monetary policy is barely operating, and economists have spent the last decade puzzling why.
One explanation focuses on investment, the main driver of long-term economic growth. Investment is financed out of saving. When investment is high relative to saving, that pushes interest rates up because more people and businesses want to borrow. If saving is high relative to investment, that pushes rates down. That means structurally low investment coupled with high saving by businesses and aging households can explain both slow growth and low interest rates.
Richard Clarida, the Fed’s vice chairman, cited another reason during a speech in November. Investors in the past, he said, demanded an interest rate premium for the risk that inflation would turn out higher than they expected. Investors are now so confident central banks will keep inflation low that they don’t need that premium. Thus, central banks’ success at eradicating fear of inflation is partly responsible for the low rates that currently limit their power.
While the Fed’s grip on growth and inflation may be slipping, it can still sway markets. Indeed, Mr. Dalio said, the central bank’s principal lever for sustaining demand has been its ability to drive up asset prices as well as the debt to finance assets, called leverage. Since the 2008 crisis, low rates and quantitative easing have elevated prices of stocks, private equity, corporate debt and real estate in many cities. As prices rise, their returns, such a bond or dividend yield, decline.
That dynamic, he said, has reached its limit. Once returns have fallen close to the return on cash or its equivalent, such as Treasury bills, “there is no incentive to lend, or invest in these assets.” At that point, the Fed is no longer able to stimulate spending.
Less than zero
A central bank can always raise rates enough to slow growth in pursuit of lower inflation; but it can’t always lower them enough to ensure faster growth and higher inflation.
The European Central Bank has tried—cutting interest rates to below zero, in effect charging savers. Its key rate went to minus 0.5% from minus 0.4% in September. At that meeting and since, resistance has grown inside the ECB to even more negative rates for fear that would reduce bank lending or have other side effects.
In December, Sweden’s central bank, which implemented negative rates in 2015, ended the experiment and returned its key policy rate to zero. Fed officials have all but ruled out ever implementing negative rates.
In a new research paper, Mr. Summers, who served as President Clinton’s Treasury secretary and President Obama’s top economic adviser, and Anna Stansbury, a Ph.D. student in economics at Harvard, say very low or negative rates are “at best only weakly effective…and at worst counterproductive.”
They cited several reasons why. Some households earn interest from bonds, money-market funds and bank deposits. If rates go negative, that source of purchasing power shrinks. Some people nearing retirement may save more to make up for the erosion of their principal by very low or negative rates.
Moreover, the economy has changed in ways that weaken its response to interest-rate cuts, they wrote. The economy’s two most interest-sensitive sectors, durable goods manufacturing, such as autos, and construction, fell to 10% of national output in 2018 from 20% in 1967, in part because America’s aging population spends less on houses and cars. Over the same period, financial and professional services, education and health care, all far less interest sensitive, grew to 47% from 26%.
They concluded the response of employment to interest rates has fallen by a third, meaning it is harder for the Fed to generate a boom.
The U.S. isn’t likely to plunge into another financial crisis like 2008, Mr. Dalio said, as long as interest rates remain near zero. Such low rates allow households and companies to easily refinance their debts.
More likely, he said, are shallow recessions and sluggish growth, similar to what Japan has experienced—what he called a “big sag.”
Former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke this month estimated that through quantitative easing and “forward guidance,” committing to keep interest rates low until certain conditions are met, the Fed could deliver the equivalent of 3 percentage points of rate cuts, enough, in addition to two to three points of regular rate cuts, to counteract most recessions.
Mr. Clarida warned, however, that quantitative easing may suffer from diminishing returns in the next recession. Moreover, the next recession is likely to be global, he said this month, and if all major countries weaken at the same time, it will push rates everywhere toward zero. That would make it harder for the Fed or any other central bank to support its own economy than if only one country were in trouble.
Fiscal fix
With central banks so constrained, economists say fiscal policy must become the primary remedy to recessions.
History shows that aggressive fiscal policy can raise growth, inflation and interest rates. The U.S. borrowed heavily in World War II. With help from the Fed, which bought some of the debt and kept rates low, the economy vaulted out of the Great Depression. Once wartime controls on prices and interest rates were lifted, both rose.
Today, mainstream academic economists are again recommending higher inflation and deficits to escape the low-growth, low-rate trap.
Advocates of what is called modern monetary theory say the Fed should create unlimited money to finance government deficits until full employment is reached. Some economists call for dialing up “automatic stabilizers,” the boost that federal spending gets during downturns, via payments to individuals and state governments as well as infrastructure investment.
Yet fiscal policy is decided not by economists but by elected officials who are more likely to be motivated by political priorities that conflict with the economy’s needs. In 2011, when unemployment was 9%, a Republican-controlled Congress forced Mr. Obama to agree to deficit cuts. In 2018, when unemployment had fallen to 4%, President Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress slashed taxes and boosted spending, sharply raising the budget deficit. Mr. Trump has pressured Mr. Powell to cut rates more and resume quantitative easing, which the Fed chairman has resisted.
Fiscal policy in the Eurozone is hampered by rules that limit the debt and deficits of its member countries. It is also hamstrung by divergent interests: Germany, the country that can most easily borrow, needs it least. In recent years it has refused to open the taps to help out its neighbors.
Still, Mr. Dalio predicted that a weakened Fed will eventually join hands with the federal government to stimulate demand by directly financing deficits.
Once central banks have agreed to finance whatever deficits politicians wish to run, however, they may have trouble saying no when the need has passed.
The experience abroad and in the U.S.’s past suggests that once politicians are in charge of monetary policy, inflation often follows. In the 1960s and 1970s, presidents Johnson and Nixon pressured the Fed against raising rates, setting the stage for the surge in inflation in the 1970s. Such a scenario seems remote today, but it may not always be.
Democrats shouldn’t put themselves in a fiscal straitjacket.
On Thursday, the best House speaker of modern times reclaimed her gavel, replacing one of the worst. It has taken the news media a very long time to appreciate the greatness of Nancy Pelosi, who saved Social Security from privatization, then was instrumental in gaining health insurance for 20 million Americans. And the media are still having a hard time facing up to the phoniness of their darling Paul Ryan, who, by the way, left office with a 12 percent favorable rating.
There’s every reason to expect that Pelosi will once again be highly effective. But some progressive Democrats object to one of her initial moves — and on the economics, and probably the politics, the critics are right.
.. The issue in question is “paygo,” a rule requiring that increases in spending be matched by offsetting tax increases or cuts elsewhere.
You can argue that as a practical matter, the rule won’t matter much if at all. On one side, paygo is the law, whether Democrats put it in their internal rules or not. On the other side, the law can fairly easily be waived, as happened after the G.O.P.’s huge 2017 tax cut was enacted.
But adopting the rule was a signal of Democratic priorities — a statement that the party is deeply concerned about budget deficits and willing to cramp its other goals to address that concern. Is that a signal the party should really be sending?
.. Furthermore, there are things the government should be spending money on even when jobs are plentiful — things like fixing our deteriorating infrastructure and helping children get education, health care and adequate nutrition. Such spending has big long-run payoffs, even in purely monetary terms.
Meanwhile, the federal government can borrow money very cheaply — the interest rate on inflation-protected 10-year bonds is only about 1 percent. These low borrowing costs, in turn, reflect what seems to be a persistent savings glut — that is, the private sector wants to save more than it’s willing to invest, even with very low interest rates.
Or consider what happened after Democrats enacted the Affordable Care Act, going to great lengths to pay for the additional benefits with tax increases and spending cuts. A majority of voters still believed that it increased the deficit. Reality doesn’t seem to matter.
.. Anyway, the truth is that while voters may claim to care about the deficit, hardly any of them really do. For example, does anyone still believe that the Tea Party uprising was a protest against deficits? From the beginning, it was basically about race — about the government spending money to help Those People. And that’s true of a lot of what pretends to be fiscal conservatism.
.. In fact, even the deficit scolds who played such a big role in Beltway discourse during the Obama years seem oddly selective in their concerns about red ink. After all those proclamations that fiscal doom was coming any day now unless we cut spending on Social Security and Medicare, it’s remarkable how muted their response has been to a huge, budget-busting tax cut. It’s almost as if their real goal was shrinking social programs, not limiting national debt.
.. So am I saying that Democrats should completely ignore budget deficits? No; if and when they’re ready to move on things like some form of Medicare for All, the sums will be so large that asking how they’ll be paid for will be crucial.
These days our accumulated wealth is our savings – and far from being a way to protect us from financial shocks, they are toxic and slowly killing the world’s economies.
Firstly there is the sheer scale of savings held by individuals, companies and governments. Earlier this year the International Monetary Fund felt the need to add it all up and declared it a savings glut.
It says institutional investors such as pension funds, insurance companies and mutual funds, along with the sovereign wealth funds of oil-rich nations and central banks, hold around $100 trillion in assets under management.
.. The unprecedented size of these savings might not matter if investors only wanted a modest return. Unfortunately investors are greedy and there are simply not enough things to invest in that can offer the high returns they demand.
.. Then there is the way most people, businesses and governments have accumulated their savings. Just a quick look at the $100tn total and we can see that most of it is the result of tax avoidance.
The Japanese are famous for their savings and investments. But middle-income families can only save because they don’t pay enough tax for officials in Tokyo to provide basic services. Every year the Japanese government runs a 10% budget deficit, such that its accumulated debt is worth almost 250% of GDP.
.. The next thing that makes savings toxic is the way investors have bullied governments into making them safe.
.. The protection offered to the stock market is illustrated by Janet Yellen, the boss of the US Federal Reserve, who said last year that the threat of a stock market slump was a key factor in the central bank keeping interest rates at historical lows.
.. But when investment banks demand between 10% and 15% returns and pension funds think we should be grateful they only want 6% to 9%, the IMF is supporting a rip-off perpetrated by today’s savers on tomorrow’s taxpayers. Instead it should use its intellectual muscle to shift the debate and support higher taxes on wealth.
