Tag Archives: government spending

Stimulus Requires More Than Taking Your Foot Off the Brakes

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Last week I discussed how I think the President’s jobs proposal, the American Jobs Act, will be less than stimulating.  I updated it here.  I based my analysis on what economists call “back of the envelope” calculations – quick simple estimates of the key variables using rounded numbers.  Now the folks at Goldman Sachs research have put the proposal through their more sophisticated and complex econometric models.  And they come to … roughly the same conclusion.  Paul Krugman at the NY Times observes:

Goldman Sachs (no link) has a nice chart showing just how much fiscal policy has been a drag on the economy since the second half of last year, and also shows that the Obama jobs plan, even if enacted in full, would only be enough to put it in neutral:

Just worth bearing in mind.

The graph (the line) shows the effect that total government fiscal policy, including federal, state, and local, has had / will have on GDP growth rate.  In 2009, Q1-Q3, governments were having a very positive effect on GDP growth, adding up to 2.5 percentage points to the GDP growth rate.  By 2009 Q4, though, this stimulus effort had deteriorated and was starting to have a negative effect, slowing GDP.  Initially this was because state and local spending cuts were overwhelming the federal increases in spending.  But the 2009 stimulus bill ran it’s course and the feds joined the austerity party and started cutting spending along with state and locals in late 2010.  In 2011, our problems have been the austerity programs, the spending cuts at state, local, and federal level. Government has had it’s foot on the brakes trying to slow an already weak economy.  It’s worked. The economy is coming to a halt.

Unfortunately, the proposed jobs program isn’t really much of a stimulus. It’s too weak. It’s too small. And it’s focused too much on tax cuts that won’t be spent instead of spending.  The blue line above shows the likely effects.  Even if passed (a near impossibility given the Republican majority in the House), it will only reverse the contractionary effects of spending cuts without adding any new stimulus to grow GDP further.

Stimulus is supposed to be about speeding up GDP growth – hitting the accelerator.  Simply taking your foot of the brakes isn’t the same thing as hitting the gas.

 

The Obama Jobs Proposal Is Less Than Stimulating

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After over a year of Presidential and Congressional debate and sparring about how to reduce spending, cut deficits, and limit debts, the politicians in Washington have finally taken notice that we have a “jobs crisis”.  Specifically, we simply aren’t creating new employment fast enough to reduce our high levels of unemployment.

Timidity wrapped in strong words does not make boldness. The words on the teleprompter were bold and the President almost sounded passionate and concerned about jobs.  Unfortunately, in my opinion, this proposal is too timid. I see repeats of the errors of 2009 and the first stimulus bill, the ARRA.

First, let’s go over the details of the proposal.  The White House Fact Sheet is here. I’ll let Calculated Risk summarize the key parts for me:

1) Payroll tax cuts (approx $240 billion):

• Cutting payroll taxes in half for 160 million workers next year: The President’s plan will expand the payroll tax cut passed last year to cut workers payroll taxes in half in 2012 …
• Cutting the payroll tax in half for 98 percent of businesses: The President’s plan will cut in half the taxes paid by businesses on their first $5 million in payroll …

2) Schools and teachers / aid to states (approx $60 billion):

• Preventing up to 280,000 teacher layoffs, while keeping cops and firefighters on the job.
• Modernizing at least 35,000 public schools across the country,supporting new science labs, Internet-ready classrooms and renovations at schools across the country, in rural and urban areas.

3) Other infrastructure ($75 billion)

4) Extend unemployment insurance benefits ($49 billion).

5) Helping More Americans Refinance Mortgages (there are no details yet). “The President has instructed his economic team to work with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, their regulator the FHFA, major lenders and industry leaders to remove the barriers that exist in the current refinancing program (HARP) to help more borrowers benefit from today’s historically low interest rates.”

In total the whole package is estimated as a near $447 billion package of tax cuts and spending.  That sounds like a lot. And at first comparison it seems like a lot. The 2009 ARRA “stimulus” bill was approx. $780 billion spread out over 2.5 years. This “American Jobs Act” is supposed to be only a one year deal (part of the problem, by the way), so it sounds like it’s more in one year than the 2009 stimulus bill was.  But it’s not really.

For any government action, be it increased spending, tax cuts, or regulatory reform, to be a stimulus effect, it must provide a net change beyond what is currently happening.  That’s a major reason why this proposal fails as a stimulus.  Over half of the proposal, the $240 billion in payroll tax cuts provides no new stimulus beyond what’s happening this year already.  These payroll tax cuts, which should be called  cuts in funding for Social Security and Medicare, aren’t really a tax cut from what’s happening now.  It’s a proposal to delay the return to higher rates.  Payroll taxes were already cut temporarily for one year at the beginning of this year as part of the deal with Congress to extend income tax cuts for the highest-income bracket folks.  But that was only supposed to be a one-year cut.  This proposal basically extends that cut for another year and postpones the return to normal tax rate for another 12 months.  If these payroll tax reductions were enough to put people back to work in large numbers we would have seen it happen already.  We haven’t.  Deciding to delay applying the brakes as you had planned is a good thing, but it hardly qualifies in my book as hitting the accelerator.

In a similar fashion, the $60 billion in aid to states & local governments to help prevent teacher, police, and firefighter layoffs is a good and positive measure.  But it’s not really stimulus.  It’s a step that keeps the states and local governments from harming us further through their budget cuts.  I am concerned this only kicks the can down the road a little further, perhaps another 12-15 months, when state and local governments will repeat the layoff drive. Of course, if I were cynical, I’d observe that 12-15 months doesn’t really change the long-run growth picture for the U.S. but it’s enough to delay any second dip into recession until after the next presidential election.

We see the same dynamic in the extension of unemployment benefits.  Make no mistake, this is a seriously needed action for both economic and moral reasons.  But it won’t have a lot of stimulus bang – certainly less than the $49 billion sounds like.  That’s because it’s basically restoring the existing unemployment benefits that are expiring for the long-term unemployed.  Thus it will help prop up existing aggregate demand, but it’s not likely to deliver much new stimulus punch.

Part of the $60 billion  for schools and teachers (the White House doesn’t split it out) is aimed at infrastructure re-building for schools.  My estimate is that maybe it’s half of the $60 billion, or $30 billion.  That portion, along with the $75 billion in other infrastructure spending constitutes real stimulus.  It’s additional spending that will translate directly into new jobs. Those new jobs will then have a multiplier effect as these workers spend their money.  Unfortunately, both of these items together total maybe a little over $100 billion.  Even with estimates of spending multipliers on the high side at 2 or 3, it means a boost of maybe $200-300 billion in GDP.  But we’re in a more than trillion dollar hole of lost GDP potential.  So, yes, there’s some stimulus here, but it’s far too little.  Just like the 2009 stimulus bill was too small and too slow.

There are of course, some other items in the proposal.  I don’t see them having any effect.  There are proposals for some tax credits for small businesses to hire some businesses.  I don’t see that working.  Businesses hire because they are selling things, not because they can get a $5,000 tax credit.  There’s simply not enough aggregate demand for businesses to hire.  There’s also a pitch about helping Americans “refinance mortages”.  They tried this in 2009 and the program has been a miserable failure with very few refinancings done.  The incentives simply are wrong for the banks.  The proposal lacks specifics other than the President will “urge” agencies to do more.  I am skeptical.

So overall, I am disappointed.  Much of this stimulus proposal amounts to agreeing to delay the current contractionary policies.  That’s not the same as stimulus.   Too little. Too late.  And let’s remember, there’s not much chance that this Republican House of Representatives will pass much, if any, of this proposal.

State and Local Job Cuts are Accelerating, Making the Economy Worse and Cutting Education

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Nicholas Johnson at the Center on Budget and Policy Studies explains how state and local governments are cutting jobs and how a majority of those jobs lost are education jobs.

September 2, 2011 at 1:24 pm

Three Years of State and Local Jobs CutsToday’s jobs report shows that in August, cuts by states and local governments — especially school districts — wiped out private-sector job gains.

The state and local sector cut 15,000 jobs in August.  That comes on top of a whopping 66,000 jobs lost in July, according to revised figures released today — the worst single month of job loss for states and localities since the recession began in December 2007.  States and localities have eliminated 671,000 jobs since employment peaked in August 2008 (see first graph).

Not coincidentally, July was also the first month of the new fiscal year for most states, one in which they are facing the double-whammy of weak revenues (which remain well below pre-recession levels) and the expiration of temporary federal aid.

Three Years of School Job CutsSome 14,000 of the state and local jobs lost in August were in local school districts, bringing to 293,000 the total decline in school-district employment since August 2008 (see second graph).

Cuts in state education funding are a big reason behind these education-related job losses.  As we reported yesterday, the vast majority of states for which data are available are cutting basic education grants to local school districts to below pre-recession levels.  Some of the cuts exceed 20 percent.

These troubling numbers raise a disconcerting question:  What kind of an economic future will this country have if we keep cutting education?

The Federal Government HAS Been Cutting Spending – And That’s A Major Problem

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One of the my major frustrations as a blogger and as a follower of economic news is the way in which misinformation and falsehoods get repeatedly passed around as they were facts.  For example, one common meme that we hear a lot is that the  government, especially under Obama, has engaged in a massive spending spree.  The idea is pushed that government is growing out of control.  This idea has been pushed heavily by Republicans and Tea Partiers. It is often combined with the conclusion that “stimulus doesn’t work”.  The unfortunate part is that this idea of a government spending spree is completely untrue!

Look at this graph from the FRED database at the stlouisfed.org.  This shows the annual change in real dollars in government consumption and investment expenditures.  In other words, it shows how additional spending was added each year by all layers of government in the U.S.  During the recession, 2008 and 2009, governments were spending more.  They were spending approximately $60 billion a year more.  But notice that once the “official recession” ended in 2009 (the end of the shaded bars) governments began cutting back.  By late 2010 government has cut back so much that it is now spending less each year than the last year.

It’s no coincidence that this is the same exact timing when two things happened: the Republicans asserted control over the House of Representatives and began pushing to cutting spending, and the economy began to slow again and the recovery stalled. These two phenomena are related.  Cutting government spending when there is high unemployment and a slow economy is a sure-fire recipe for an even slower economy and even higher unemployment.

A critical thinking reader might ask “how can this be true (that government spending is lower than a year ago) if the federal government deficit is so large?”.   Well there’s two explanations.  The first is that the federal government deficit in the economy is largely due to the slow down in tax collections and the tax cuts that delivered little economic stimulus since they were saved, not spent.  Second, government in the U.S. is more than Washington D.C. There’s as much state and local government as there is national government, particularly when it comes to spending (as opposed to transfer payments).  State and local governments are cutting back and cutting back big time.  The 2009 “stimulus” bill of the national government actually had a large component that involved the national government transferring money to states and locals so they wouldn’t have to cut as much.  State and local governments cannot run deficits the way the national government can (they don’t have central banks).  That’s over now.  Now state and local governments are cutting big time – over 345,000 jobs lost at the state and local government level in just the last 12 months.  Of those, the majority are teachers in education.

Would a Balanced Budget Amendment Help or Hurt?

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One component of the deal to raise the debt-ceiling is a requirement that Congress vote later this year on a “Balanced Budget Amendment” to the Constitution.  Is such an amendment a good idea?  At first glance, the idea seems attractive to a lot of people for whom the debt and deficits are seen as the key problem facing the economy (I am not one of these people).  After all, if you believe debt is bad, and debt comes from having deficits, then why not just pass a law amendment to the constitution that prohibits deficits, right? Well there are several problems with the idea.  Some are strategic – it’s really not a good idea to force a balanced budget every year.  But other problems are practical – the amendment, particularly as proposed now, simply wouldn’t work and would set up perverse incentives. Let’s look at these problems.

First off, there’s a bit of false advertising on the part of advocates of the “balanced budget amendment”.  The reality of what has been proposed goes beyond requiring a balanced budget.  A balanced budget would simply require government revenues to equal government expenditures each year.  The currently proposed amendment is really a “balanced budget with a strict cap on spending amendment”.  It has two parts. Not only would the budget have to be balanced each year, but the government spending would limited to 18% of GDP unless overridden by a 2/3 majority of Congress. The spending cap would limit government expenditures even if the budget were balanced.  The advocates of the balanced budget amendment, most of whom are Tea Party Republicans, are really proposing to re-write the Constitution to make it impossible for a majority of the duly elected Congress to expand the government beyond the limits they want.  It’s a rewrite of democracy.

The amendment and the spending cap in particular are totally unworkable in a practical sense.  First, the amendment and spending cap assumes that GDP and government spending are independent variables.  They aren’t.  In fact, government spending (G) helps determine GDP both directly since it  is a component of GDP and indirectly since the other components, consumption spending (C) and investment spending (I) and net exports (X-M) are themselves partially functions of government spending.  GDP = C + I + G + (X-M) by definition.  If you cut G, you cut GDP.  Suppose GDP = 100 and G = 20.  That’s government spending is 20% of GDP.  That would be too high under the amendment and would require a cut of government spending – revenue increase would not be allowed.  So suppose government cuts it’s spending to 18.  Keep in mind such a cut would be monumental. That would be a 10% (2/20) cut in government spending and we just had a paralyzing debate in Washington over how to cut spending by only 2-5%.  Imagine trying to cut 10%!   But even if the government did it, it wouldn’t work.  Because cutting government spending from 20 to 18 would take GDP down also.  The cuts would reduce both numerator and denominator.  If spending were cut to 18, then GDP would be no higher than 98, still leaving government spending as 18.37% of GDP. It would still be above the limit and require even deeper cuts which would then also cut GDP.  The reality would be even grimmer because C, I, and net exports all are partially influenced by government spending.  If you cut government spending for example, the people who got paid that government money, be they defense contractors, Social Security beneficiaries, teachers, or Medicare doctors, experience lower incomes.  They then cut their consumption spending and investment spending.  This is called the multiplier effect.

The practical problems are even greater when revenue is considered.  Government revenue, or taxes, are effectively a % of GDP.  That’s because virtually all the money collected by the government comes from GDP-related activity. Virtually all government revenue is either income taxes, payroll taxes, corporate profits taxes, or excise taxes on things that are used in production like gas.  If GDP goes up, then taxes collected goes up. If GDP goes down, then taxes go down also. Government spending goes in the opposite direction. When GDP goes up, many spending categories decline like unemployment compensation, welfare, Medicaid, etc. When GDP goes down, those spending items go up automatically.  These are called automatic stabilizers and they’re a major reason why recessions after World War II had been so mild compared to the depressions experienced routinely before WWII.  A balanced budget amendment means getting rid of automatic stabilizers and making mild recessions into worse recessions or even depressions. As  Simon Johnson at Baseline Conspiracy  put it:

 It makes no sense to target, as a matter of constitutional process, two numbers that are both outcomes of deeper economic processes.

A second very serious practical problem is with measurement.  GDP, while it’s commonly used and accepted, is only an economic concept, not a legal one.  The definition and calculation of GDP is subject to interpretation and depends on the prevailing views of statisticians and economists during any such era.  Simon Johnson at Baseline Conspiracy explains:

But GDP is not a legal concept – rather it is an economic measure, the details of which change all the time, subject to the prevailing view of best practice among statisticians.  Just to take one example, the flow value of housing services for people who own their houses is “imputed” to create a number that is roughly equivalent to what renters pay.  The goal is to more accurately measure a key component of consumption, which comprises the largest category of spending within GDP.  But the emphasis here is on “roughly” – the models used are sometimes called into question and must be revised from time to time.  And imputed spending on housing is a big number – probably around $1 trillion in today’s economy (with total GDP at about $15 trillion).

If an enterprising future administration wanted to lower spending relative to measured GDP, they could convene a panel of experts that could duly find that our current practice of not valuing household services – like cooking and taking care of children – is a statistical aberration as well as an affront to people who work very hard.  That should add at least $5 trillion to our annual GDP.  Alternatively, a statistical adjustment in the other direction would force real and painful spending cuts.  The constitution is the wrong place to pursue such details.

GDP is too fuzzy and imprecise of a measure, with too much estimation involved, to be enshrined in the constitution.  As an analogy, suppose we decided that we wanted to avoid the recent acrimonious debate over raising the debt-ceiling.  Suppose we thought too many Congresspeople acted too childishly.  Imagine if there were a proposal for a constitution amendment that required only “mature and intelligent ” adults “with an IQ above average” be allowed to run for Congress.  How would mature be defined?  How would it be measured?  We would make Congress dependent on a test, an IQ test, that itself is subject to revision and interpretation.  Later administrations would pressure psychologists to change the IQ test to satisfy the needs of their party.  The same happens if we enshrine GDP as a requirement in the Constitution.

In policy terms, the balanced budget amendment is a very bad idea. A balanced budget requirement forces the government to act pro-cyclically instead of counter-cyclically.  This means instead of fighting a recession, the government’s actions would make the recession worse.  Granted there are provisions in the amendment to waive the balanced budget requirement if GDP drops 10%, but keep in mind how severe that is.  The Great Recession/Financial Crisis of 2007-09 was only a 6% drop in GDP.  Government wouldn’t have been able to counter it.  The stimulus program, which was too small to trigger recovery but did successfully stop the free-fall, wouldn’t have happened until the crisis had indeed become as bad as the Great Depression.  A balanced budget amendment means a return to the old days before World War II when the U.S. routinely experienced severe depressions and financial crises. Again Simon Johnson:

.. sometimes it makes a great of sense to apply an economic stimulus to an economy in freefall.  One such moment was 1930 (and 1931 and 1932), when no stimulus was applied.  Other moments were 2008 and 2009; both President Bush and President Obama initiated stimulus packages.  When credit for and confidence in the private sector evaporates, do you really want the government sector to be forced to make quick cuts – or raise taxes?..

The second policy objection to this balanced budget amendment is that it is really a back-door attempt to circumvent democratic debate and decision-making.  The amendment proposes to limit government as part of the economy to 18%.  But why 18%?  Supporters claim that is what the U.S. has spent on average in recent decades.  But why is that the right number?  The size of government is a political, democratic choice that is up to the population at the time.  If today’s population wants a smaller government, they can elect politicians to do that.  And if some future generation should decide that 18% is not the right number, that maybe they want a different set of priorities and to devote a larger share of the nation’s resources to public goods, why shouldn’t they be able to do that?  Many nations devote a much higher % of GDP to public goods instead of private consumption goods.  Their economies are successful and their people are satisfied with it.  Having the current crop of legislators set a limit on what future generations may choose or do is not consistent with the concept of responsive democratic government.  It makes no more sense to enshrine an 18% limit on government spending in the constitution than it does to constitutionally enshrine a fixed limit on the number of soldiers the government may have.  It should be up to the representatives of each generation.

I’m not the only one who’s opposed to a balanced budget amendment.  And, the opposition isn’t all “Keynesian Democrats” (I don’t qualify as one of those either).  Simon Johnson, the author I’ve quoted above, is a former Chief Economist for the IMF.  The IMF has historically advocated and pushed for balanced budgets, yet it opposes this kind of handcuffs of economic policy.  Further, a Republican economist, Bruce Bartlett, has articulated many of these same problems with the amendment.

A Look at Government Spending Trends. Not What the Deficit-Fearers Claim. It’s Really A Jobs Deficit.

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Rebecca Wilder at AngryBearBlog.com explains why the current deficit hysteria that has gripped Washington is misplaced (and offers some great graphs of historical spending patterns).  A little terminology for some readers.  ”cyclically endogenous” means the cause of the spending/revenue is not from some budget decision of this year’s Congress or President, but rather that the spending or revenue amount is the result of whatever the GDP and the economy did.  If GDP goes down and that causes some spending to go up, for example unemployment compensation, then that’s cyclically endogenous. (The bold emphasis is mine. You can click on graphs to enlarge them)

Readers here will know more about the US federal government income statement than I. However, given the near ubiquitous deficit hysteria, I wanted to illustrate the truth about the budget deficit. …

First things first, the fiscal deficit – receipts minus net outlays as a % of GDP – is big [by historical comparison]. In June 2011, the 12-month rolling sum of net receipts (the budget deficit) was roughly 8.5% of a rolling average of GDP. This is down from its 10.6% peak in February 2010, but the level of deficit spending clearly makes some nervous.

Why should they be nervous about the ‘level’ of the deficit? I don’t know, since recent ‘excess’ deficits are cyclically endogenous. The chart below illustrates the spending and tax receipt components of the US Treasury’s net borrowing (see Table 9 of the Monthly Treasury Statement). Weak tax receipts and big spending are driving the federal deficits (spending, as we will see below, has surged on items directly related to the business cycle).


In June, the 12-month rolling sum of tax receipts – mostly corporate and individual income taxes and social insurance and retirement receipts – was 15.6%, which is up from its 14.5% cyclical low in January 2010. On the spending side, net outlays in June 2010 were a large 24.2% of GDP and down just slightly from the 25.3% peak in February 2010.

Deficit hysteria should be more appropriately placed as “lack of jobs and tax receipts hysteria”. At this point, the budget could just as easily worsen as it could improve, given the fragile state of the US economy (see Tim Duy’s recent post at Economist’s View).

Why the wrong hysteria?

Reason 1. Taxes. Some would love to increase taxes – but the fact of the matter is, that tax receipts remain well below their long-term average of 18% of GDP. Tax receipts will not improve without new jobs since individual income taxes account for near 50% of total receipts.

Reason 2. The spending has been on cyclical items.

The best time to ‘worry’ about government spending is NOT when the economy is barely moving.

The chart below illustrates the big ticket items of the monthly outlays – roughly 87% of total outlays. The broad spending components are listed in Table 9 of theMonthly Treasury Statement. The long-term average shares of total spending are indicated in the legend.


The items health, medicare, and income security (inc security) are all above their respective long-term averages. But spending on income security outlays is the only spending component to have broken its trend, i.e., surge. According to the GAO’s budget glossary (link here, .pdf), this item includes the following cyclical spending:

Support payments (including associated administrative expenses) to persons for whom no current service is rendered. Includes retirement, disability, unemployment, welfare, and similar programs, except for Social Security and income security for veterans, which are in other functions. Also includes the Food Stamp, Special Milk, and Child Nutrition programs (whether the benefits are in cash or in kind); both federal and trust fund unemployment compensation and workers’ compensation; public assistance cash payments; benefits to the elderly and to coal miners; and low- and moderate-income housing benefits.

It’s spending on unemployment and food stamps that’s driving spending at the margin.

The same deal exists with the ‘smaller ticket items’. Of these <5% of total spending items, energy, environment, and veterans have arguably broken trend. I would surmise that some of the ‘veterans’ spending is tied to the business cycle, given the timing of the surge.

OK – so deficit hysteria is about, but it’s misplaced. One could argue for more, not less, spending to get the jobs growth, hence tax receipts, up.

Government Budget Cutting SLOWS the Economy – That’s Why It’s Called Contractionary Fiscal Policy

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America’s attention has been focused lately on the unnecessary debate in Congress over the debt-ceiling law.  Part of the motivation (at least the vocalized motivation) for cutting the deficit and trying to limit the national debt, according to both Republicans and the President, is that supposedly government deficits are holding back the economy. They assert that cutting the government’s spending will somehow stimulate the economy.  This is what all that Republican rhetoric about “jobs-killing spending” is about.  In more formal terms it’s referred to as a policy of “austerity”.   But it’s more than flawed thinking.  It’s flat out wrong.  Cutting government spending when there is significant unemployment and excess capacity will not stimulate the economy.  It will cause the economy to slow down and contract further.  That’s why we economists call it “contractionary fiscal policy”.

GDP, the total value of all goods and services produced, is how we measure the economy.  We can count GDP two ways.  Either we add up the total spending in the economy or we add up the total incomes (wages and profits, mostly).  Government spending is part of that spending – close to 25% in fact.  If the government spends less, it means less GDP.  It also means less income for people because what is one person’s spending is another person’s (or business’s) income.

Across the ocean, the British fell for this silly make believe idea that government austerity would create prosperity.  In 2010 they elected a Conservative government (actually a Conservative-New Democrat coalition).  The Conservatives, led by Prime Minister Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne (equivalent of the U.S Treasury Secretary), began to implement sharp cuts in government spending in mid-2010.  The results have been clear.  And bad.  The Guardian reports the results.  The British economy actually shrank by 0.5% in the 4th quarter of last year.  It barely avoided an official recession when growth in the 1st quarter with 0.5% growth. (the Brits define a recession as two negative quarters).  Now the 2nd quarter numbers are in and the economy is basically dead in the water:  0.2% annual growth rate.

 

Yes, contractionary fiscal policy, cutting the budget, is, well, contractionary. It makes things worse.  If you want to reduce government spending, do it when you have full employment, not when unemployment has been running over 9% for more than two years.  The examples are legion. Britain is only one. Three years ago Ireland thought it could budget-cut it’s way out of the Great Recession/Financial Crisis.  It only made things worse and grimmer in the emerald isle.  Austerity is making things worse for Greece.  There’s really no end to the examples.  What’s missing is any evidence from a developed country that austerity when unemployment is high actually helps.

This Is No Movie Folks. It’s Real and It’s Scary.

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I don’t enjoy scary movies. Never have.  I also don’t enjoy scary “amusement” park rides.*  I know I’m kind of a fluke in our U.S. culture this way.  I just find that there’s enough excitement, thrills, and fright in the real world if you just open your eyes.

An example of real world things to be scared of is the current debate  childish tantrum in Washington over increasing the debt limit. I’ll admit I haven’t taken it seriously until now.  A couple months ago I called it Kabuki Theatre of the Absurd. The law itself, the debt “ceiling” law, is absurd.  It is also redundant. Raising the debt ceiling should be a like sending a form letter.  Routine. Perfunctory. The law should be simply done away with. If Congress doesn’t want to borrow more money then the time and place to make that point constitutionally is when the budget is adopted.

The Republicans and Tea Party types were unable to accomplish their goals of gutting Social Security, Medicare, and other programs when the budget bill was debated last March-April.  They simply didn’t have the political support and they couldn’t agree on just who to cut.  So instead of doing the constitutional thing and either win more elections and gain seats (they actually lost a special election in May because of their plans to cut Social Security), or waiting until the next budget for next year, they’re trying to accomplish their goals under a subterfuge.  It’s not about the debt. It’s not about the deficit.  If it were about debt, deficits, and “fiscal responsibility”, then closing tax loopholes for high-income folks like hedge fund managers and the commodity speculators that drive up oil prices would be an option.  But the Republicans and Tea Partiers have expressly stated that even closing a tax loophole is unacceptable.  Only spending cuts are acceptable.  So the truth is it’s not about “fiscal responsibility”.  It’s about eliminating government programs that people want as the New York Times explains today (possible paywall on link).

So back to the debate tantrums being thrown in Washington. I still expect there to be a last-minute deal when powerful folks on Wall Street give the call to their friends in D.C. and tell ‘em to knock it off and do it. In the meantime, the Republicans, Tea Party types, and Obama administration are playing a game of chicken.  Except that this is a bit different from movie versions of chicken.  Jeff Frankels provides an excellent analysis. The problem is three-fold: it’s not movie fantasy – it’s real, the folks in the Republican car aren’t rational and are fighting among themselves, and when these cars go over the cliff there’s a good chance they take our entire economy with them. Quoting Jeff:

In the 1955 movie Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean and a teenage rival race two cars to the edge of a cliff in a game of chicken.  Both intend to jump out at the last moment.  But the other guy miscalculates, and goes over the cliff with the car.

This is the game that is being played out in Washington this month over the debt ceiling.  The chance is at least 1/4 that the result will be similarly disastrous.

…

The game is not symmetric.  The Republicans are the ones who are miscalculating.   Evidently they are confident of prevailing:  they rejected the President’s offer, even though he was willing to cut entitlement programs.

The situation is complicated because there are a number of different people crammed into the Republican car.    There is one guy who is obsessed with the theory that, come August 3, the federal government could retain its top credit rating if it continued to service its debt by ceasing payment on its other bills.  But this would mean failing to honor legal obligations that have already been incurred (paying suppliers for paper clips that have already been bought, paying soldiers their wages for last month’s service, sending social security recipients their checks, etc.).  This is like observing that the cliff is not a 90 degree drop-off, but only 110 degrees.   It doesn’t matter: the car would still go crashing into the ocean far below.   The government’s credit would still be downgraded and global investors would still demand higher interest rates to hold US treasuries, probably on a long-term basis.

There are other guys (and gals) in the car who are even more delusional.   They are dead set on a policy of immediately eliminating the budget deficit (e.g., those opposed to raising the debt ceiling no matter what, or those campaigning for a balanced budget amendment), and doing it primarily by cutting nondefense discretionary spending.  This is literally impossible, arithmetically.  But they honestly don’t know this.   It is as if they were insisting that the car can fly.   Sometimes it can be a good bargaining position to adopt a very extreme position.  But if you are demanding that the car flies, you are not going to get your way no matter how determined you are.

It seems likely that the man in the driver’s seat – House Speaker John Boehner – does realize that his fellow passengers don’t have the facts quite right.   But there is also a game of chicken going onwithin the Republican car.  The crazies have said they will oppose in the next Republican primary election any congressman who votes to raise the debt ceiling or to raise tax revenues.   (Yes, they think they would support someone who would eliminate the budget deficit primarily by cutting non-defense discretionary spending; but remember, this is arithmetically impossible.)   The guy who is riding shot-gun in the car – the one who believes the car can fly — is trying to put his foot on top of Boehner’s on the accelerator pedal.

Yes, people who cannot do basic arithmetic are in charge here. And they’re throwing a childish tantrum because they can’t get their way.  Only unlike a child who’s threatening to hurt themselves if they don’t get their way, these folks could potentially take us all down.

The facts are that nobody knows for sure what happens if Congressional Republicans don’t raise the debt ceiling by August 3. But it defies imagination to think it will be smooth sailing. It depends on how the Obama adminstration reacts.  There might be ways around it.  A couple of proposals exist. The government could dispute the constitutionality of the debt ceiling law or it could mint some super-large coins (such as billion-dollar coins) that would only be used as Marshall Auerbach has noted:

Or the President could, as we and others have suggested in the past), simply invoke the 14th amendment and refuse to enforce a statute that he believes violates the Constitution.

Professor Scott Fullwiler has suggested an even more creative way around the debt ceiling: Fullwiler notes that Fed is the monopoly supplier of reserve balances, but that the US Constitution bestows upon the US Treasury the authority to mint coins (particularly platinum coins). Future deficit spending by the federal government could thereby continue to be carried out by minting coins and depositing them in the Treasury’s account at the Fed (for more details see here).

Curiously, the President won’t pursue any of these options.

These options would keep financial markets on an even keel but could provoke a constitutional and legal crisis as the Tea Party types would not doubt file endless lawsuits challenging it.  But thinking about these options is largely academic since Obama shows no inclination to exercise these options or to explain why he doesn’t.   Obama shares responsibility because he’s let the Tea Party types and Republicans take this charade this far.

Let’s consider a more likely intermediate case.  As mentioned in another post, to immediately stop all new borrowing and instantly balance the budget, the government has to cut 40% of it’s spending right now.  The federal government accounts for $3.8 trillion of spending in 2011.  GDP is expected to be in the $15 trillion range.  If the government cuts 40% of that $3.8 trillion instantly, that’s a $1.5 trillion cut in spending. Government spending is part of GDP (despite what far right-wing types believe).  So an instant balancing of the budget on Aug 3 means a 10% cut in GDP.  When the economy collapsed in 2008 it was only approximately a 5% drop in GDP.  So the “intermediate” case of default is an instant recession twice as big as the “Great Recession” of 2008.  Apparently the Republicans and Tea Party types loved 2008-09 and the bailouts so much they want to repeat it and double down.

Now what’s the worse case?  Well add into the scenario a financial crisis to dwarf 2008.  See US bonds are AAA rated because there’s no chance of default.  If there’s a default, or even a slight increase in the possibility of a future default, then pension funds, banks, and central banks around the world no longer have safe, interest bearing assets.  Chaos. Pension funds have to sell bonds.  Bond prices drop. Interest rates rise. Banks lose capital as the bonds fall in value. Nobody knows which banks are worst off.  A mess to make 2008 look simple.  And guess what, we’ll be back to bank bailouts only with even more unemployment.

Why can’t we have grown-ups in Washington?  These kinds of scary scenarios should be fictional and in the movies.  It shouldn’t be national policy to deliberately default and crush the economy just to make some political policy victory that you couldn’t win straight up.

 

* racing cars in real life is different.  ;-)

GDP 1st Qtr 2011 – Revised

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I missed posting this a few days ago.  Bureau of Economic Analysis says first revision of the GDP estimate for 1st quarter 2011 was essentially unchanged from the initial “flash” estimate provided at the end of April.  The U.S. economy grew at approx. 1.8% annual rate.

While the overall growth rate was unchanged, there was some shuffling among the categories.  The revised numbers indicate that consumption spending (C) was weaker than initially thought, accounting for only 1.53 points of GDP’s 1.8 percent growth rate as opposed to the original 1.91.

Offsetting this lower estimate of Consumption spending was a larger than originally thought increase in Inventories (part of I, Investment spending).

This is not a good sign.  It says that consumers are slowing their spending more and that as a result firms ended the quarter with more inventory than expected.  That tends to signal an economy slowing more than businesses had expected.

There’s a lot of headwinds and “aftershocks” that are hitting the economy now. Among them:

  • continued high oil and gas prices
  • slowed production and sales in the auto industry due to supply chain bottlenecks from the Japanese nuclear meltdown, earthquake, and tsunami
  • continuing cuts in government spending at all levels.  State and local governments in particular are cutting a lot.  Congress and the President have evidently decided this year that it’s more important to cut government spending and borrowing (despite less than 3% interest rates) no matter how much it slows the economy and raises unemployment.  Together state, local, and federal government cuts in spending reduced GDP growth rate by 1.09 points.  In other words, if we had simply continued spending at the existing rate instead of cutting, we could have had at least a 2.9% GDP growth rate.
  • Europe is having a lot of difficulties with their ill-designed monetary union and their ill-advised austerity policies.  Europe is slowing dramatically and some countries are falling back into recession.  Not good for overall global growth or U.S. exports.
  • China is struggling to contain it’s inflation and may need to slow down it’s growth rate.
  • and most significant, unemployment and wages continue to play out a depression for workers. 

Downbound Again: GDP in 1st Quarter

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Yesterday the “flash” estimate for GDP growth in 1st quarter 2011 was released.  Not good. GDP only grew at a 1.8% annual rate, down from the 3.1% we experienced in the 4th quarter of 2010.  This is very disappointing, but not really surprising. Before I comment, I’ll let CalculatedRisk report and show one of his great graphs.

From the BEA:

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 1.8 percent in the first quarter of 2011 (that is, from the fourth quarter to the first quarter) according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis

GDP Growth RateClick on graph for larger image in graph gallery.

This graph shows the quarterly GDP growth (at an annual rate) for the last 30 years. The dashed line is the current growth rate. Growth in Q1 at 1.8% annualized was below trend growth (around 3.1%) – and very weak for a recovery, especially with all the slack in the system.

The graph really puts into context just how slow and disappointing this “recovery” has been.  The recession of 2007-09 (the blue shaded area) was worse than the recessions in the early 1980′s.  But look at how fast the economy was able to recover from those earlier recessions. Growth rates in 1981, 1983, and 1984 were well over 6% and at times over 8%. The economy truly “recovered” the ground lost in the recessions before settling down to the long-term growth trend (the dotted line).  In contrast, we are almost two years into this poorly-named “recovery” and we are struggling to even get up to the long-term growth rate.  We haven’t really recovered at all.

It’s worse, though.  The signs are pointing down.  To recover, we needed to have better than 4th quarter growth.  But instead, things are slowing down.  And they are slowing down despite having gotten some significant stimulus at the beginning of the first quarter.  Remember last December Congress and President extended the large Bush-era tax cuts for the top-bracket income earners.  Republicans told us it was necessary to grow the economy and create jobs.  We also cut the payroll tax for this year only for Social Security as an attempt to stimulate the economy.  The Federal Reserve implemented Quantitative Easing II program throughout the first quarter, promising us it would stimulate the economy. Yet despite these efforts to stimulate the economy, the economy is actually slowing.

Why?  Let’s look at the data.  There’s lots of culprits, but the most significant ones are drops in Investment spending and drops in Government spending. Again, Calculated Risk reports from the  BEA news release yesterday (emphasis mine):

• Investment: Nonresidential structures decreased 21.7 percent… and real residential fixed investment decreased 4.1 percent.

• Government spending subtracted 1.09 percentage points in Q1 (unusual)

Basically it’s two big things.  First, Investment spending is decreasing overall, not increasing.  The exceptions were increases in inventories (business probably expected more sales than they got) and sales of software grew.

The second one is the disappointing one.  Government spending dropped so much that it subtracted 1.09 percentage points from the growth rate.  In other words, instead of the weak 1.8% growth rate, we could have had at least a 2.9% growth rate if only we had kept government spending unchanged.  Instead we have been cutting government spending like mad.  The federal government’s 2009 stimulus bill is over. The spending’s gone and now total spending is declining.  More significant is that state and local governments are cutting spending big time.  And state and local governments are cutting business taxes so that they have cut to spending even more.

It’s really not a surprise.  We’ve known for at least 75 years that cutting government spending is contractionary – it slows the economy.  Yet our so-called leaders in Washington persist in cutting right now at a time when the economy needs help, not hindrance.  All the first quarter numbers have proven is that, yes, contractionary fiscal policy (cutting spending and cutting the deficit) is indeed contractionary.  Well duh.  What is amazing is how so many politicians and businesspeople and bankers keep claiming that somehow, someway, if we cut spending and the deficit, some magic “confidence fairy” will inspire the entire economy to grow despite a lack of demand.

As Brad Delong put it:

Contractionary fiscal policy is contractionary.

With overall government spending on the decline and with severe aftershocks from the Japanese earthquake and rising oil prices, we’re down-bound again.  Buckle up.