The Daily Reckoning
Melbourne, Australia
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
"
The Daily Reckoning PRESENTS: It is an old wisdom that the scale of the
boom excesses essentially determines the severity of the following process
of economic and financial readjustment. But what will the coming
correction hold for the U.S. economy after the fall of the housing market?
Dr. Richebächer explores..."
MONETARY ANARCHYby Dr. Kurt Richebächer
The encouragement of mere consumption is no benefit to commerce because
the difficulty lies in supplying the means, not in stimulating the desire
for consumption; and production alone furnishes those means. Thus, it is
the aim of good government to stimulate production, of bad government to
encourage consumption.
- Jean-Baptiste Say, A Treatise on Political Economy, 1803
From discussing politics back to discussing economics. Just as before,
though, it remains a dialogue among the deaf. The great majority of
economists has its eyes stubbornly focused on apparently positive features
for the U.S. economy, like the sharp fall in the oil price, abundantly
available liquidity, tame inflation, low and falling interest rates and
strong profits.
A minority of economists, in contrast, keeps just as stubbornly stressing
that the economy's famous gross imbalances and structural distortions and
the associated debt explosion are inexorably undermining economic growth.
In this view, the ongoing housing downturn will finally abort U.S. growth
and drive the economy into recession, with major adverse spillover effects
on consumer borrowing and spending.
Generally, however, optimism distinctly prevails about the U.S. economy.
It is not the old buoyant optimism. Yet it is optimism in the sense that
some true malaise, like a crash in the asset markets and a recession, let
alone a deep and prolonged recession, are absolutely out of the question.
Thanks to its superior dynamism and flexibility, the U.S. economy has time
and again bounced back smartly from periodic downshifts, and so it will
again.
Let us start with the hard facts. For six, seven and more months, U.S.
economic data are overwhelmingly surprising on the downside, and moreover,
the surprises have been going from bad to worse. Real GDP has successively
fallen from 5.6% in the first quarter of 2006 to 2.5% in the second and
1.6% in the third.
That's bad enough, but what rescued the latter quarter from total disaster
was a rather quixotic statistical event. While auto firms slashed their
output, it soared in the real GDP account, owing to sharp price cuts on
gas guzzlers. In this way, falling vehicle output contributed fully 0.72
percentage points to third-quarter real GDP growth, after subtracting 0.31
percentage points. The price index for gross domestic purchases increased
2% in the third quarter, compared with an increase of 4% in the prior
quarter.
It is an old wisdom that the scale of the boom excesses essentially
determines the severity of the following process of economic and financial
readjustment. It has been comfortingly argued that the U.S. housing boom
of the last few years has been less fierce than prior booms, which all
ended without steep price declines.
Certainly, there are different possibilities of measurement. For us, the
most important, and also easiest, measure of excess is the associated
credit expansion. The use of credit in the wake of this housing bubble has
been simply bizarre, outpacing all past experiences by far. Over decades
until 2000, outstanding total mortgages accumulated to $4.8 trillion. In
the second quarter of 2006, they amounted to $9.3 trillion. Mortgage
growth over the last five years was almost equivalent to its growth over
the prior five decades.
The second highly important point to see is that this housing boom was the
first one in the United States to impact the economy at a vastly broader
scale than just the building activity. As private households, using the
rising house prices as collateral for mortgage equity withdrawals,
stampeded as never before into debt to finance additionally other kinds of
spending, the whole economy developed into an outright bubble economy.
New single-family homes and multifamily homes rose in 2005 from a trough
of fewer than 1.5 million units in recession year 2001 to a postwar high
of 2.2 million units. Over the same period, the constant quality price
index for new homes rose 30%, and the purchase-only price index of
existing homes published by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise
Oversight (OFHEO) rose by 50%.
Boosting the net worth and the borrowing facilities of private households,
this drove consumer spending to persistent considerable excess over income
growth. In correlation, personal saving plummeted into negative territory,
unprecedented for an industrialized economy.
It was a boom that plainly went to extraordinary excess in various ways.
As a rule, this suggests a very severe aftermath of painful corrections.
The first effects of the housing bust have definitely been bigger and more
abrupt than most experts had expected. Yet hopes are riding high for a
benign adjustment. To quote Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald L. Kohn
from a recent speech: "The economy will grow at a moderate pace for a
while, somewhat below the rate of increase of its potential, and then
growth will begin to strengthen."
Among his comforting arguments were first, the overbuilding in 2004 and
2005 was small enough to be worked off over coming quarters; second, this
situation stands in sharp contrast to some past downturns in the housing
markets that followed actions by the Federal Reserve to tighten credit
conditions; third, as the inventory overhang in residential building and
automobiles are worked off, economic growth should pick up again.
Mr. Kohn does not even mention that through the cash-out refinancing boom,
this housing bubble had unprecedented spillover effects on the economy as
a whole. In 2005, private households raised $1,080 billion through
mortgages. Of this amount, they only spent $95.1 billion on higher
residential building. Spending on goods and services rose altogether by
$539.9 billion, against an increase in disposable income by $354.5
billion. In other words, about one-third of the increase in consumer
spending depended on mortgage borrowing.
Actually, it strikes us how promptly the change in the housing market has
impacted mortgage borrowing. It peaked in the third quarter of 2005 at
$1,225.9 billion at annual rate. Falling steadily, it was down to $819.6
billion in the second quarter of 2006. This sharp decline was, however, to
a small part offset by higher consumer credit.
Mr. Kohn stresses that monetary conditions remain quite supportive of
borrowing and spending. Clearly, interest rates are so low that they exert
zero restraint on borrowing. But more importantly, falling house prices no
longer remain supportive for such borrowing. Remarkably, the sharp decline
in new mortgage borrowing since the third quarter of last year has
occurred even though house prices were still rising, albeit at sharply
slowing rates. As the price climate is sure to deteriorate for some time
to come, it seems a reasonable assumption that this initial sharp slowdown
in mortgage borrowing has some way to go yet.
While this suggests further sharp falls in house prices, this may well
take some time to materialize, because the housing market is notoriously
sluggish in its reactions. In contrast to financial markets, its initial
response to a change in the market situation is not in price, but on how
long unsold homes stay on the market until the prices are lowered to
realize desired sales. Sellers tend to resist downward price adjustments
as long as they can. Instead, the market becomes illiquid. For sure,
lenders will notice and adjust their lending conditions.
Mr. Kohn also takes comfort from the fact that the present housing
downturn, in sharp contrast to past ones, is not caused by credit
tightening. As he rightly stresses, "The Federal Reserve has returned
short-term interest rates only to more normal levels and long-term rates
are unusually low relative to those short-term rates." We think, though,
that he is drawing a totally false conclusion. All downturns caused by
tight money were followed by vigorous recoveries. A downturn happening
despite low interest rates and loose money seems to us the most worrying
kind.
Regards,
Dr. Kurt Richebächer
for The Daily Reckoning
Post Edited (12-18-06 23:59)