Tag: Economy

Two Non-Wall Street Economists Share Their 2023 Projections

Posted on by phoffman@channelchek.com

Image Credit: Engin Akyurt (Pexels)

Inflation, Unemployment, the Housing Crisis, and a Possible Recession: Two Economists Forecast What’s Ahead in 2023

With the current U.S. inflation rate at 7.1%, interest rates rising and housing costs up, many Americans are wondering if a recession is looming.

Two economists discussed that and more in a recent wide-ranging and exclusive interview for The Conversation. Brian Blank is a finance professor at Mississippi State University who specializes in the study of corporations and how they respond to economic downturns. Rodney Ramcharan is an economist at the University of Southern California who previously held posts with the Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund.

Both were interviewed by Bryan Keogh, deputy managing editor and senior editor of economy and business for The Conversation.

Are we headed for a recession in 2023?

Brian Blank: The consensus view among most forecasters is that there is a recession coming at some point, maybe in the middle of next year. I’m a little bit more optimistic than that consensus.

People have been calling for a recession for months now, and this seems to be the most anticipated recession on record. I think that it could still be a ways off. Consumer balance sheets are still relatively strong, stronger than we’ve seen them for most periods.

I think that the labor market is going to remain hotter than people have expected. Right now, over the last eight months, the labor market has added more jobs than anticipated, which is one of the strongest streaks on record. And I think that until consumer balance sheets weaken considerably, we can expect consumer spending, which is the largest part of the economy, to continue to grow quickly.

[But this] doesn’t mean that a recession is not coming. There’s always a recession somewhere down the road.

Rodney Ramcharan: Indeed, yes, there’s a likelihood that the economy is going to contract in the next nine months. The president of the New York Fed expects the unemployment rate to go up from 3.5% currently to somewhere between 4% to 5% in the next year. And I think that will be consistent with a recession.

In terms of how much worse it can be beyond that, it’s going to depend on a number of things. It could depend on whether the Fed is going to accept a higher inflation rate over the medium term or whether it’s really committed to getting the inflation rate down to the 2% rate. So I think that’s the trade-off.

Will unemployment go up?

Blank: [Unemployment] hasn’t risen much, and maybe it’ll pick up to somewhere close to 4%. Many are expecting something like four and a half percent. And I think that’s certainly possible. And I think that we can see small upticks in the coming months.

But I don’t think it’s going to rise as quickly as some people are expecting, in part because what we’ve seen so far is a lack of labor force participation. Until more people enter the labor market, I think there are going to be plenty of jobs to go around.

What is your outlook on interest rates?

Ramcharan: As people find it more and more difficult to find jobs, or to get jobs as they begin to lose jobs, I think that’s going to dampen spending. And we’re seeing that now as the cost of borrowing has gone up sharply, and the Fed is expecting that.

The expectation is the federal funds rate will go up to 5% by next year. If you tack on another couple of points, because of the risk involved, then the cost to borrow to buy a home could potentially get up to 8% for some people. And that could be very expensive.

And the flip side of this for businesses is there’s potentially going to be a slowdown in cash flow. If consumers are not spending, then the revenues that businesses depend on to make investments might not be there.

The additional piece in this puzzle is what the banks will then do. I think banks are going to begin to curtail the extension of credit. So not only will interest rates go up for the typical consumer and the typical business, it’s also likely that they are more likely to experience denial of credit, and so that should together begin to slow spending quite a bit.

After massive increases in housing prices, what caused them to suddenly drop?

Ramcharan: As the Fed lowered interest rates, there was a massive shift among the population for various reasons. They decided that housing was the right investment or the right thing. And so when 50 million people all collectively decide to buy homes, the supply of homes is reasonably constrained in the short run. And so that led to this massive increase in house prices and in rents.

In the last three months, the housing market has cooled sharply. We’re now seeing house prices beginning to fall. I would imagine, going forward, the housing market cooling is going to be a major driver behind the slowdown in the inflation rate and in real estate investment trusts. So that’s positive.

Our recent election just changed the composition of Congress. How will that affect the economy?

Blank: Certainly, when we have a divided Congress, we’re less likely to see decisions made that involve passing legislation that might support the economy. And I think it’s likely the Republican House is going to become a little bit more conservative with spending.

And so if we do start to see a downturn, I think you’re less likely to see legislation that might help support an economy that could be in need of it. That is going to make the job of the Federal Reserve more important.

How certain are these predictions?

Ramcharan: I just want to be careful here and let your viewers know that we’re making these statements based on theory, because the inflation that we’re experiencing now comes about from a pandemic, and there really is no evidence, there’s no data available, that people can look to to say, “What happens to an economy after a pandemic?” That data does not exist.

So we’re trying to piece together the data we do have with the theories we do have, but there’s a huge band of uncertainty about what’s going to happen.

Watch the full interview here.

The Fed Still Has a Long Way to Go To Reel in Wage Inflation

Posted on by phoffman@channelchek.com
Image Credit: Andrew Hudson (Flickr)

Employers Added 263,000 Jobs in November, How this Impacts Future Fed Decisions

There were many more jobs created and filled in the U.S. during November than expected. This may, on the surface, seem like a good thing for the economy, markets, and job seekers. But any expectation that the Fed is past the tipping point and is winning in the battle against conditions that increase prices will have to be curbed for a while.

The number of new hires points to unmet demand in filling positions, and the increase in wages directly adds to the cost of goods sold. Unmet high labor demand is inflationary and part of why the Fed is clear that it is not done.

Fed Chair Powell spoke last Wednesday in a lengthy address outlining the challenges that face the Fed and the avenues it is most likely to take. There is nothing in the strong November jobs report that alters what Powell has said. In fact, it may underscore the resiliency of the economy that the Fed is looking to temper. If you weren’t of the belief that the Fed would push Fed Funds beyond 5%, there is evidence that the Fed may need three 0.50% increases or more before it steps back.

Background

The Fed Chair and other Fed officials have reiterated in recent days that they are likely to lift rates and hold them at levels high enough to slow economic activity and hiring to bring inflation down from 40-year highs.

The just-released employment report for November was expected to come in far below the level reported. Digging even deeper into the numbers, it showed continued rampant hiring and elevated wage growth. The Fed had been hoping to keep a wage-price spiral at bay and get ahead of the supply-demand issues pushing wages and prices up.  

The November Unemployment Report

The headline number showed that employers added 263,000 jobs in November while the unemployment rate held steady at 3.7%. But the revised wage data in Friday’s release could concern Fed officials because it points to an acceleration in pay gains in recent months. For the three months that ended in November, average hourly earnings rose at a 5.8% annualized rate. This is a surprising increase from an initially reported 3.9% annualized rate for the three months that ended in October. Economists had expected the U.S. economy had gained 200,000 jobs last month.

At the same time, senior Fed officials have made sure it is no surprise if they lessen the size of rate increases in coming meetings. The next FOMC is the Dec. 13-14 meeting; the Fed is expected to move 0.50% rather than another 0.75%.

Most major stock market indices have traded lower, taking a bearish tone from the report and signs the Fed still is a little behind in its effort to squelch inflation-feeding activity.

Of interest to investors, the sectors with the most job gains were the leisure and hospitality and healthcare industries, both of which had been hard hit during the pandemic, and in government, where employment levels are still 2% below where they stood in February 2020.

Take Away

“To be clear, strong wage growth is a good thing,” Powell said this week. “But for wage growth to be sustainable, it needs to be consistent with 2% inflation.”

The accelerated pace of job growth in November, coupled with upwardly revised October statistics, makes clear to the markets the persistent challenge facing the Federal Reserve. The central bank has repeated that it needs to see some slack in the labor market in order for inflation to fall. This could come from reduced labor demand or increased labor supply, or both.

Jerome Powell Gives “Progress Report”

Posted on by phoffman@channelchek.com
Image Credit: Federal Reserve (Flickr)

“By Any Standard Inflation Remains Much Too High,” Says Powell

The Federal Reserve has a blackout period for its governors. It begins the second Saturday preceding an FOMC meeting. During this period the members cannot give any sort of public address on topics that will be under consideration at the Committee meeting. Today, Fed Chair Powell gave an address titled, Inflation and the Labor Market. These are the two missions of the Fed. This address may be the last the markets hear from Powell until after the December 14th FOMC session.

The stock and bond markets were hoping to hear that the Fed will be backing off significantly. Instead, what was delivered by Powell was more consistent with his previous talks which don’t back away from full commitment to bringing down prices. Although he did suggest that they have covered the bulk of the ground, they will need to.

Current Status

Powell referred to the address given on the last day of November 2022 as a “progress report on the Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) efforts to restore price stability to the U.S. economy for the benefit of the American people.” The report made mention several times that a healthy economy with ample job growth consistent with inflation targets is consistent with low price inflation. In fact Powell lead with the words, “the report must begin by acknowledging the reality that inflation remains far too high.”

Powell said that he and other Fed governors are “acutely aware that high inflation is imposing significant hardship, straining budgets and shrinking what paychecks will buy.” He continued, “price stability is the responsibility of the Federal Reserve and serves as the bedrock of our economy. Without price stability, the economy does not work for anyone. In particular, without price stability, we will not achieve a sustained period of strong labor market conditions that benefit all.”

Inflation

Powell said that 12-month personal consumption expenditures (PCE) inflation through October ran at 6.0 percent (figure 1). While October inflation data received so far showed a welcome surprise to the downside. He cautioned that “these are a single month’s data, which followed upside surprises over the previous two months. As figure 1 makes clear, down months in the data have often been followed by renewed increases.” Powell said. He reminded that, “it will take substantially more evidence to give comfort that inflation is actually declining. By any standard, inflation remains much too high.”

In order to reach the Fed’s goal, Powell says they need to raise interest rates to a sufficiently restrictive level to return inflation to 2 percent. He relents that there is considerable uncertainty about what rate will be sufficient.  Although he says they are much closer now than at the beginning of the year.

Powell said of himself and his associates, “we are tightening the stance of policy in order to slow growth in aggregate demand. Slowing demand growth should allow supply to catch up with demand and restore the balance that will yield stable prices over time. Restoring that balance is likely to require a sustained period of below-trend growth.”

Housing Prices

The rise in the price of all rents and the rise in the rental-equivalent cost of owner-occupied housing is called housing services inflation. Unlike goods inflation, housing services inflation has continued to rise and now stands at 7.1 percent over the past 12 months, according to Powell. Housing inflation tends to lag other prices around inflation turning points, but because of the slow rate at which the stock of rental leases turns over. The market rate on new leases is a timelier indicator of where overall housing inflation will go over the next year or so. Measures of 12-month inflation in new leases rose to nearly 20 percent during the pandemic but have been falling sharply since about midyear (figure 3).

As the above chart shows, overall housing services inflation has continued to rise as existing leases turn over and jump in price to catch up with the higher level of rents for new leases. Powell thinks this is likely to continue well into next year. But as long as new lease inflation keeps falling, we would expect housing services inflation to begin falling sometime next year. Importantly, a decline in this inflation underlies most forecasts of declining inflation.

Labor costs is the largest of the three inflation categories covered in Powell’s address. It represents more than half of the core PCE index. Powell used it to explain the future evolution of core inflation.  

Chair Powell said, “ [the] demand for workers far exceeds the supply of available workers, and nominal wages have been growing at a pace well above what would be consistent with 2 percent inflation over time. Thus, another condition we are looking for is the restoration of balance between supply and demand in the labor market.”

The Fed Chair said some of the labor force participation gap can be explained as workers who are still out of the labor force because of Covid related issues. But recent research by Fed economists finds that the participation gap is now mostly due to excess retirements—that is, retirements in excess of what would have been expected from population aging alone.

Economic Conditions Summed Up

In order to bring inflation down to 2%, the Fed Chair said he was happy that growth in economic activity has slowed. Also that bottlenecks in goods production are easing and goods price inflation appears to be easing as well. Housing services inflation will probably keep rising well into next year, but if inflation on new leases continues to fall, we will likely see housing services inflation begin to fall later next year. Finally, the labor market, which is especially important for inflation in core services ex housing, shows only tentative signs of rebalancing, and wage growth remains well above levels that would be consistent with 2 percent inflation over time. Despite some promising developments, we have a long way to go in restoring price stability.

Monetary Policy

Powell said in his address, “returning to monetary policy, my FOMC colleagues and I are strongly committed to restoring price stability. After our November meeting, we noted that we anticipated that ongoing rate increases will be appropriate in order to attain a policy stance that is sufficiently restrictive to move inflation down to 2 percent over time.”

He admitted that monetary policy affects the economy and inflation with uncertain lags, and the full effects of rapid tightening are yet to be felt. With this, he says it makes sense to moderate the pace of the rate increases.

Powell said, “The time for moderating the pace of rate increases may come as soon as the December meeting. Given our progress in tightening policy, the timing of that moderation is far less significant than the questions of how much further we will need to raise rates to control inflation and the length of time it will be necessary to hold policy at a restrictive level. It is likely that restoring price stability will require holding policy at a restrictive level for some time. History cautions strongly against prematurely loosening policy. We will stay the course until the job is done.”

Paul Hoffman

Managing Editor, Channelchek

Sources

https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20221130a.htm

Is Rising Unemployment Good for the Economy?

Posted on by aweinsoff@channelchek.com
Image Credit: Anna Shvets (Pexels)

Rising Unemployment: Economists Sometimes Say it’s Good for the Economy, But Are They Right?

interest rates are up, which means that projections for growth are down. Put simply, the proverbial something is close to hitting the fan.

Business closures and job losses are likely to become another hurdle for the global economy – and that points to rising unemployment. Yet, while most people would think of rising unemployment as a bad thing, some economists don’t entirely agree.

Economists have long pointed to a counterintuitive positive relationship between unemployment and entrepreneurship, born of the fact that people who lose their job often start businesses. This is often referred to within economic literature as necessity-based or push-factor entrepreneurship.

This article was republished with permission from The Conversation, a news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It represents the research-based findings and thoughts of Daragh O’Leary, PhD Researcher in Economics, University College Cork

Where it Gets Tricky

There is certainly good evidence for the existence of this contradictory relationship. The graph below shows the rates of UK business creation in blue and unemployment in red. As you can see, unemployment started to increase during the global financial crisis of 2007-09 and business creation followed not long after.

UK new business creation and unemployment, 2006-2020

This relationship between business creation and unemployment has previously been used by some as a justification for cold social policies towards the unemployed on the rationale that “the market fixes itself” in the long run. They see business closures and job losses not as human miseries that require government help, but necessary evils that are needed to reallocate the money, people and other resources back into the economy in more efficient ways .

But my latest research has found that rising unemployment is not quite the silver bullet for reigniting the economic engine that it’s cracked up to be. I looked at 148 regions across Europe from 2008 to 2017. Although I did find evidence that unemployment can stimulate business creation over time, this only seems to happen in higher performing regions within higher performing economies such as the Netherlands, Finland and Austria.

In lower performing regions within lower performing economies such as Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, the relationship between unemployment and business creation actually appears to be negative. In other words, rather than inducing business creation, unemployment simply seems to lead to more unemployment.

The reason why higher performing regions in wealthier areas have a positive relationship between job losses and business creation is that they enjoy what are known as “urbanisation economies”. These are positive benefits derived from the scale and density of economic activity occurring within that area, including wider arrays of services, greater pools of customers and greater numbers of transactions relative to other areas of the economy.

For example, a firm located in a capital city like London will benefit from more abundant access to consumers, suppliers and lenders as well as larger labour pools. The higher population density in these areas also makes it more likely that firms and workers will learn faster as they observe the activities of their many neighbours. In more peripheral areas with fewer of these characteristics, the opposite is true. This is why unemployment affects different places differently.

What it Means

One consequence is that economists need to stop explaining how economies perform differently based solely on national factors. And it’s not just unemployment where this becomes apparent. For example, Ireland’s longstanding low rate of corporation tax (12.5%) has been cited as a reason for its high foreign direct investment, which accounts for roughly 20% of private sector employment.

Yet while just over 43% of all Irish enterprises in 2020 were located in either Dublin or Cork, counties like Leitrim in the north accounted for fewer than 1% of enterprises. So while national measures can help induce entrepreneurship and increase the overall size of the pie, the pie is shared very unequally. Just as rising unemployment can benefit some areas while hindering others, the same is true of government interventions.

Rural areas like County Leitrim have benefited far less from Ireland’s low corporation tax than more urbanised regions further south. Julia Gavin/Alamy

We therefore need to stop viewing the free market and government intervention as either wrong or right. In some contexts one is going to be more helpful, while in other contexts it will be the opposite. Recognizing this reality would improve on much of the polarized debate in politics and economics, in which those on the right can come across as cold and ignorant, while those on the left can seem self-righteous and sanctimonious, viewing capitalism and markets as dirty words.

How does this apply to today’s gathering downturn? It would make sense for governments to prioritize supporting businesses in more peripheral regions, while leaving those in wealthier urban areas to fend for themselves.

The famous economist John Kenneth Galbraith gave what I believe to be one of the best pieces of commentary on this topic, saying:

Where the market works, I’m for that. Where government is necessary, I’m for that … I’m in favor of whatever works in the particular case.

If we are to survive this upcoming recession and get things going again, we are going to need to acknowledge that centralized “one-size-fits-all” policies won’t be useful everywhere. The solutions to economic recovery are in some cases government intervention and in others the free market, but not always one or the other.

The Week Ahead – NY Fed’s Inflation Forecast, Michael Burry’s Holdings, and PPI

Posted on by phoffman@channelchek.com

There is Potential for a Change in Sentiment Spurred by this Week’s Wholesale Inflation Report

One economic number doesn’t make a trend. The members of the Federal Open Market Committee know this, and certainly, the Chair, Jay Powell, understands. As it relates to last week’s CPI report, he may wish that one lower-than-expected inflation data point could prevent him from needing to do more, but it simply isn’t enough info from which the Fed can glean any actionable information.

As we head into the first trading session of a new week, it’s uncertain what the reaction of interest rates will be. They dropped substantially in response to last Thursday’s inflation data coming in better than expected. However, there was no chance of follow-through or reversal as Friday’s Veteran’s Day holiday left the bond markets closed.

With this, inflation numbers continue to be the most significant for both stock and bond investors. On this coming Tuesday, November 15, wholesale prices will be reported as the Producer Price Index (PPI). This release could have more weight in trade action than usual.

Thursday is another big day on the calendar as the markets will be grappling with a larger-than-normal volume of economic releases.

Monday 11/14

  • 11:00 AM ET, The NY Federal Reserve Bank’s one and five-year inflation forecast. This is not an event that is usually paid much attention to by market participants. However, considering there are many parties interested in what members of the Federal Reserve System are now thinking, a dramatic shift from the previous forecast could inspire the financial markets to adjust accordingly.

Previously the one-year inflation expectation was 5.7%. The five-year inflation forecast was 2.2%.

Tuesday 10/15

  • 8:30 AM ET, The Producer Price Index (PPI) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is an inflation gauge that measures the average change over time in the prices received by U.S. producers of goods and services. The prices are typically considered input costs for final products and can impact CPI, it may also impact company costs of production and, therefore, profits. The trend has been lower, YOY PPI has been running at 8.5%, and last month, it rose 0.4%, the expectation is for another 0.4% increase.
  • Michael Burry, and Warren Buffet’s holdings. The SEC requires investment funds to file a 13-f disclosing their publicly traded security positions. It is required every 45 days, making all of the information a minimum of 45 days old. Looking at a successful investor’s 13F filings can be revealing, especially when looking at industries they’ve been hot on or comparing one holding period to another.

Wednesday 10/16

  • 11:00 AM ET, The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) creates a statistic from several mortgage loan indexes. The Mortgage Applications index measures applications at mortgage lenders. It’s considered a leading indicator and is especially important for single-family home sales and housing construction. Both are considered foundational in a strong economy. Last week the Purchase Index was 162.6.
  • 11:00 AM ET, The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) also provides an average 30-year mortgage level which is consistently calculated so that it is an oranges-to-oranges comparison from previous periods. Last period the rate was 7.14%.
  • 12:30 PM ET, Export Prices (MoM), this data set reflects changes in prices of goods and services that are produced in and exported from the United States in the given month compared to the previous one. Last reading, this came in at a negative 0.8%.
  • 12:30 PM ET, Import Prices (MoM) The import price index m/m measures the price changes of the respective month compared to the previous month. Last month they fell 1.2% (not adjusted for fx), this month, expectations are for a decline of 0.5%.
  • 12:30 PM ET, U.S. Retail Sales have been flat, neither rising nor falling. As we head toward Thanksgiving and Black Friday sales levels, the market will be taking more and more interest in how strong the consumer is. Expectations for October are for a rise of 0.8 percent overall, an increase from 0.0 percent. When excluding vehicles, the projection is for an increase of 0.4%, up from 0.1%. and up 0.4 when also excluding gasoline.
  • 1:15 PM ET, Capacity Utilization is expected to remain unchanged at an 80.3% use of available manufacturing capacity. Reading well above, this may be considered inflationary as production could be using less efficient means.
  • 1:15 PM ET, Industrial Production is expected to have been weaker at a 0.2% increase compared to a 0.4% increase.
  • 2:00 PM ET, NAHB Housing Market Index this is expected to continue weakening, the October number was 38.
  • 2:00 PM ET, Business inventories are expressed in dollar value held by manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers. The level of inventories in relation to sales is an important indicator of the near-term direction of production activity. Rising inventories can be an indication of business optimism that sales will be growing in the coming months. However, if unintended inventory accumulation occurs, then production will probably have to slow while those inventories are worked off. Last month’s inventories increased by 0.8%.

Thursday 10/17

  • 12:30 PM ET, Housing Starts, last month housing starts had declined for the seventh consecutive month by 8.7%. 

Friday 10/18

  • 2:00 PM ET, Leading Economic Indicators are expected to show a decline of 0.3% vs. a decline of 0.4% the prior month.

What Else

The focus on signs of economic weakness or receding inflation will be high, and reactions may be extra sensitive. The following week is shortened in terms of trading. The focus will be on how strong the consumer shows they will be for the holidays.

Paul Hoffman

Managing Editor, Channelchek

The Week Ahead – Inflation Data Worries and Election Outcome

Posted on by phoffman@channelchek.com

Federal Reserve President Speeches With Elections and CPI to Shape the Week’s Trading

Yes, the stock markets are open on Veterans Day (Friday). But bond trading, which the stock market has been more keenly focused on this year, will be taking the day off along with other U.S. government services. Equity traders can get a sense of interest rate sentiment on Friday by turning to the Chicago Board of Options and viewing tickers ZF=F (5 yr. USTN), ZN=F (10 yr. USTN), ZB=F (30 yr. USTB).

All markets are open on Election Day, and the outcome, as measured by House seats and Senate seats distributed among the major political parties, has the potential to be market-moving.

It’s a quiet week for economic numbers, except for Thursday, when the CPI report is released. This has the potential of changing those calling for a 50 bp hike at the next meeting to up their expectations or those still forecasting 75bp to lower their call. Certainly, the Fed governors will be watching this and all measures of inflation up to the December 14-15 meeting. There are a number of Fed governors speaking this week; this could alter the tone; however, the next meeting is far out into the future.

Election Day.

Monday 11/7

  • 3:00 PM ET the amount of consumer installment credit for September, including credit cards, auto loan, and student loans outstanding, indicate current consumer spending and borrowing patterns. The markets tend to ignore this number as we are already in November and this report measures September
  • 3:40  PM ET, the Federal Reserve Bank Presidents Mester (Cleveland) and Collins (Boston), will be speaking. Both are considered fairly hawkish.
  • 6:00 PM ET, the Federal Reserve Bank President Harkey (Philadelphia) will be speaking.

Tuesday 11/8

  • Election Day.
  • Meet the Management; Noble Capital Markets hosts Management of Entravision Communications (EVC) in West Palm Beach, FL. This is a no-cost-to-attend, in-person breakfast meeting with investors. If interested, click here.
  • Meet the Management, Noble Capital Markets hosts Management of Entravision Communications (EVC) in Boca Raton, FL. This is a no-cost-to-attend, in-person lunch meeting with investors. If interested, click here.

Wednesday 11/9

  • It can be expected that the newswires will be filled with Election Day outcomes and market-moving conjecture.
  • 7:00 AM ET Mortgage Applications. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) creates a statistic from several mortgage loan indexes. The Mortgage Applications index measures applications at mortgage lenders. It’s considered a leading indicator and is especially important for single-family home sales and housing construction. Both are considered foundational in a strong economy.
  • 10 Year Treasury Note Auction is held in the middle of each month and settles on or around the 15th (depending on weekends). The yield is a benchmark for 30-year mortgages and has recently been noted by investment markets because it has been trading at a yield lower than shorter maturities. This inversion of the yield curve has some market players suggesting a recession is expected in the future. Any surprises at the auction will reverberate through the stock market.
  • 10:30 AM ET, EIA Petroleum Status Report.
  • 11:00 AM ET, Federal Reserve President Barkin  (Philadelphia) speaks.
  • Meet the Management; Noble Capital Markets hosts Management of Entravision Communications (EVC) in Winter Park, FL. This is a no-cost-to-attend, in-person breakfast meeting with investors. If interested, click here.
  • Meet the Management; Noble Capital Markets hosts Management of Entravision Communications (EVC) in Orlando, FL. This is a no-cost-to-attend, in-person lunch meeting with investors. If interested, click here.

Thursday 11/10

  • 8:30 AM ET, U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) is the inflation indicator most widely broadcast. With inflation being a primary focus, this will be the big number coming out this week. The number represents a basket of goods considered typical for an urban consumer and is taken as the change in the cost of that basket of goods. A percentage is derived from the change. CPI is also reported with food and energy removed as it is considered that other non-economic factors influence these prices. The September report indicated CPI rose 0.4% for the month and 8.2% YOY. Expectations are for an increase to 0.7% for October and a YOY rate of 8.0%.
  • 8:30 AM ET U.S. Jobless Claims which represent the prior week’s employment are expected to have increased to 221,000 from 217,000. From jobless claims, investors can gain a sense of how tight or how loose the job market is. If wage inflation takes hold, interest rates will likely rise, and bond and stock prices will fall. Remember, the lower the number of unemployment claims, the stronger the job market, and vice versa.
  • 10:30 AM ET, EIA Natural Gas Status Report.

Friday 11/11

  • Veterans Day, the stock market is one, the futures markets are open, and the bond market and other U.S. government-related offices are closed.
  • 10 AM ET Consumer Sentiment, November (preliminary). This barometer, reported by the University of Michigan,  questions households each month on their assessment of current conditions and expectations of future conditions. This “preliminary” release is for the month of November and is expected to have fallen to 59.6 versus 59.9 last month.

What Else

It is a light week for economic releases and Fed governor addresses, but the election outcome and CPI have the potential to whip markets around.

We’re entering the holiday shopping season when there will be a number of measures that investors focus on that will give a hint as to how strong the consumer is in the current economy.

Paul Hoffman

Managing Editor, Channelchek

Sources

https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/calendar.htm

http://global-premium.econoday.com/byweek.asp?cust=global-premium

https://www.channelchek.com/news-channel/noble_on_the_road___noble_capital_markets_in_person_roadshow_series

https://www.econoday.com

The New Effort to Re-Anchor the US Dollar to US Gold Stock

Posted on by phoffman@channelchek.com
US Sailors, Coastal Riverine Group, Restoring Command Anchor with Gold Paint, Credit: US Pacific Fleet (Flickr)

Can the Dollar Once Again Be Anchored by Gold? One Congressman Believes It Can

On October 7, 2022, US congressman Alex Mooney (a Republican from West Virginia) introduced a bill (the Gold Standard Restoration Act, H.R. 9157) that stipulates that the US dollar must be backed by physical gold owned by the US Treasury. The initiative clearly indicates that the increasingly inflationary US dollar is triggering efforts to get better money.

It should be noted that there have already been many legislative changes to make precious metals more attractive as a means of payment in recent years: in many US states, the value-added and capital gains taxes on gold and silver, but also on platinum and palladium, have been abolished. Mr. Mooney’s proposal is divided into three sections.

The first section of the bill establishes the need for a return to a gold-backed US dollar. For example, it is said that the US dollar—or more precisely, the bill refers to “Federal Reserve Notes”—that is, banknotes issued by the US Federal Reserve (Fed)—has lost its purchasing power on a massive scale in the past: Since 2000, it has dropped by 30 percent, and since 1913 by 97 percent. The bill also argues that with an inflation target of 2 percent, the Fed will not preserve the purchasing power of the US dollar but will have it halved after just thirty-five years. Moreover, the bill points out that it is in the interest of US citizens and firms to have a “stable US dollar.” The bill highlights that the inflationary US dollar has been eroding the industrial base of the US economy, enriching the owners of financial assets, while endangering workers’ jobs, wages, and savings.

The second section of the bill describes in more detail the technical process for re-anchoring the US dollar to the US official gold stock. It states that (1) the US secretary of the Treasury must define the US dollar banknotes using a fixed fine gold weight thirty days after the law goes into effect, based on the closing price of the gold on that day. The Fed must (2) ensure that the US banknotes are redeemable for physical gold at the designated rate at the Fed. (3) If the banks of the Fed system fail to comply with peoples’ exchange requests, the exchange must be made by the US Treasury, and in return, the Treasury takes the Fed’s bank assets as collateral.

The third section specifies how a “fair” gold price in US dollar can develop in an orderly manner within thirty days after the bill has taken effect. To this end, (1) the US Treasury and the Fed must publish all of their gold holdings, disclosing all purchases, sales, swaps, leases, and all other gold transactions that have taken place since the “temporary” suspension of the redeemability of the US dollar into gold on August 15, 1971, under the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944. In addition, (2) the US Treasury and the Fed must publicly disclose all gold redemptions and transfers in the 10 years preceding the “temporary” suspension of the US dollar’s gold redemption obligation on August 15, 1971.

What to Make of This?

The bill’s core is the idea of re-anchoring the US dollar to physical gold based on a fair gold price freely determined in the market. (By the way, this is an idea put forward by the economist Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) in the early 1950s.) In this context, the bill refers to US banknotes. However, banknotes only comprise a (fractional) part of the total US dollar money supply. But since US bank deposits can be redeemed (at least in principle) in US banknotes, not only US dollar cash (coins and notes) could be exchanged for gold, but also the money supply M1 or M2 as fixed and savings deposits could be exchanged for sight deposits, and sight deposits, in turn, could be withdrawn in cash by customers, and the banknotes could then be exchanged for gold at the Fed.

As of August 2022, the stock of US cash (“currency in circulation”) amounted to $2,276.3 billion. Assuming that the official physical gold holdings of the US Treasury amount to 261.5 million troy ounces, and the market expected US cash to be backed by the official US gold stock, a gold price of about $8,700 per troy ounce would result. This would correspond to a 418 percent increase compared to the current gold price of $1,680. If, however, the market were to expect the entire US money supply M2 to be covered by the official US gold stock, then the price of gold would move toward $83,000 per troy ounce—an increase of 4.840 percent compared to the current gold price. Needless to say, such an appreciation of gold has far-reaching consequences.

All goods prices in US dollars can be expected to rise (perhaps to the extent that the price of gold has risen). After all, the purchasing power of the owners of gold has increased significantly. Therefore, they can be expected to use their increased purchasing power to buy other goods (such as consumer goods, but also stocks, houses, etc.). If this happens, the prices of these goods in US dollar terms will be pushed up—and thus, the initial purchasing power gain that the gold dollar holders have enjoyed by being tied to the increased gold price will melt away again. Moreover, if US banks were willing to accept additional gold from the public in exchange for issuing new US dollar, reanchoring the US dollar in gold would increase the upward price effect.

A re-anchoring of the US dollar in the US official gold stock will result in a far-reaching redistribution of income and wealth. In fact, it would be fatal for the outstanding US dollar debt: US dollar goods prices would rise, caused by a rise in the US dollar gold price at which the US dollar is redeemable for physical gold, thereby eroding the US dollar’s purchasing power. In the foreign exchange markets, the US dollar would probably appreciate drastically against those currencies that are not backed by gold and against currencies which are backed by gold, not as fine compared to the fineness of the gold backing of the US dollar. The purchasing power of the US dollar abroad would increase sharply, while the US export economy would suffer. US goods would become correspondingly expensive abroad, while foreign companies gain high price competitiveness in the US market.

Once the US dollar is re-anchored in gold, today’s chronic inflation will end; monetary policy–induced boom-and-bust cycles will come to an end; the world will become more peaceful because financing a war in a gold-backed monetary system will be very expensive, and the general public will most likely not want to bear its costs. However, there is still room for improvement. A “Gold Standard Restoration Act” will deserve unconditional support if and when it paves the way toward a truly “free market for money.” A free market in money means that you and I have the freedom to choose the kind of money we believe serves our purposes best; and that people are free to offer their fellow human beings a good that they voluntarily choose to use as money.

In a truly free market, people will choose the good they want to use as money. Most importantly, in a truly free market in money, the state (as we know it today) loses its influence on money and money production altogether. In fact, the state (and the special interest groups that exploit the state) no longer determine which kind of gold (coins and bars, cast or minted) can be used as money; the state is no longer active in the minting business and cannot monopolize it anymore; there is no longer a state-controlled central bank to intervene in the credit and money markets and influence market interest rates. That said, let us hope that the Gold Standard Restoration Act proposed by Mr. Mooney will pave the way to reforming the US dollar currency system—and that it will eventually move us toward a truly free market in money.

About the Author

Dr. Thorsten Polleit is the Chief Economist of Degussa and an Honorary Professor at the University of Bayreuth. He also acts as an investment advisor.

November’s FOMC Meeting – Will December Be the Same?

Posted on by phoffman@channelchek.com

Image Credit: Federal Reserve (Flickr)

The FOMC Votes to Raise Rates for Sixth Time (2022)

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voted to raise overnight interest rates from a target of 3.00%-3.25% to the new level of 3.75% – 4.00% at the conclusion of its November 2022 meeting. The monetary policy shift in bank lending rates was as expected by economists and the markets. The recent focus has been more on what the next move in December might look like. There were no clues given in the statement following the meeting. Many, including some members of Congress that recently wrote a letter to Chair Powell, have urged the Fed to be more dovish, while others suggest the central bank is still behind and hasn’t moved aggressively enough. A third contingent believes there may be more work to be done, but there should first be a pause to see what the impact has been of five aggressive moves.

The statement accompanying the policy shift also included a discussion on U.S. economic growth continuing to remain positive. There was little changed. Language from that statement can be found below:

Fed Release November 2, 2022

Recent indicators point to modest growth in spending and production. Job gains have been robust in recent months, and the unemployment rate has remained low. Inflation remains elevated, reflecting supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic, higher food and energy prices, and broader price pressures.

Russia’s war against Ukraine is causing tremendous human and economic hardship. The war and related events are creating additional upward pressure on inflation and are weighing on global economic activity. The Committee is highly attentive to inflation risks.

The Committee seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2 percent over the longer run. In support of these goals, the Committee decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate to 3-3/4 to 4 percent. The Committee anticipates that ongoing increases in the target range will be appropriate in order to attain a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2 percent over time. In determining the pace of future increases in the target range, the Committee will take into account the cumulative tightening of monetary policy, the lags with which monetary policy affects economic activity and inflation, and economic and financial developments. In addition, the Committee will continue reducing its holdings of Treasury securities and agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities, as described in the Plans for Reducing the Size of the Federal Reserve’s Balance Sheet that were issued in May. The Committee is strongly committed to returning inflation to its 2 percent objective.

In assessing the appropriate stance of monetary policy, the Committee will continue to monitor the implications of incoming information for the economic outlook. The Committee would be prepared to adjust the stance of monetary policy as appropriate if risks emerge that could impede the attainment of the Committee’s goals. The Committee’s assessments will take into account a wide range of information, including readings on public health, labor market conditions, inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and financial and international developments.

Take-Away

Higher interest rates can weigh on stocks as companies that rely on borrowing may find their cost of capital has increased. The risk of inflation also weighs on the markets. Additionally, investors find that alternative investments that pay a known yield may, at some point, be preferred to equities. For these reasons, higher interest rates are of concern to the stock market investor. However, an unhealthy, highly inflationary economy also comes at a cost to the economy, businesses, and households.

The next FOMC meeting is also a two-day meeting that takes place December 14-15. If the updates to GDP, the pace of employment, and overall economic activity is little changed, the Federal Reserve is expected to move again, perhaps not in as big of a step.

Paul Hoffman

Managing Editor, Channelchek

Sources

https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases.htm

https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2022.10.31%20Letter%20to%20Fed%20re%20Monetary%20Policy.pdf

https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2022.10.31%20Letter%20to%20Fed%20re%20Monetary%20Policy.pdf

Here is what the FOMC is Looking At

Posted on by phoffman@channelchek.com
Image Credit: Dan Perl (Flickr)

The Many Factors that Come Into a Fed Rate Decision are Mind Boggling

What do the FOMC members look at as they’re changing interest rates and whipping up new policy stances?

The Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC, meets eight times a year. There are 12 members; seven are board members of the Federal Reserve System, and five are Reserve Bank presidents, including the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who serves as president of the committee. The group, as a whole, is arguably among the most powerful entities in the world. What is it that this group, that impacts all of us, focus on? And what specifically will they weigh into their decision at the current meeting?

Labor markets and prices are top on the Fed’s list and specifically part of their mandate. Also feeding into the mandate are contributing factors like housing, growth trends, and risks to monetary policy.

Prices (Inflation Rates)

Inflation remains elevated. In September, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) picked up to 0.4%. Energy prices declined in each month of the third quarter, dropping a cumulative 11.3% since June. The Fed will have to discern if this is sustainable or a function of oil reserve releases that will need replacing. Food prices continued high, although at a slower 0.8% increase during September.  

Core CPI inflation (which strips out energy and food) started the third quarter at a somewhat slow pace—increasing just 0.3% in July. The trend went against the Fed as it rose by 0.6% in both August and September. Price growth for services was the largest contributor to an increase in core CPI in the third quarter.

One of the two mandates of the Federal Reserve is to keep inflation at bay. Chairman Powell has said they are targeting a 2% annual inflation level. While nothing that has been reported in price increases since the last meeting has approached that low of a target, the Fed also has to consider their tightening moves do not work to lower demand (especially in food and energy) rapidly.

The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation is the PCE price index; this is the measure they use with their 2% target. The PCE price index typically shows lower price growth than CPI because it uses a different methodology in its calculation, but the drivers of both measures remain similar. Over the year ending September, the headline PCE price index rose 6.2 percent, while the core PCE price index was up 5.1 percent.

Jobs (Employment and Wages)

Labor markets are still tight. The economy has added an additional 3.8 million jobs this year through September. This includes 1.1 million during the most recent quarter. During the third quarter, the U.S. economy exceeded pre-pandemic employment levels. The unemployment rate hasn’t budged much, and as of September, the rate held at a comfortable 3.5 percent rate.

The broadest measure of unemployment—the U-6 rate is a measure of labor underutilization that includes underemployment and discouraged workers, in addition to the unemployed. The U-6 rate has also remained behaved all year. It stood at 6.7 percent in September, the lowest rate in the history of the series (starting in January 1994).

When the Fed pushes on a lever for one of its mandates, in this case it is tightening to reign in inflation, it has to watch the impact on its other mandate, in this case, the job market. So far, there is nothing that has occurred on the employment side that should tell the Fed they have gone too far too fast.

.In fact, the labor numbers may suggest they should discuss whether they have moved nearly fast enough. Competition for employees continued as the economy added an additional 3.8 million through September 2022 (1.1 million during the third quarter). Notably, during the third quarter, the economy surpassed pre-pandemic employment levels as of August 2022.

Image: FOMC participants meet in Washington, D.C., for a two-day meeting on September 20-21, 2022, Federal Reserve (Flickr).

Housing Markets

Housing demand decreased in the third quarter as affordability (lending rates + prices), with economic uncertainty weighed on homebuyers. During September, 90% of all home sales were of existing homes. This pace declined 1.5 percent over the month (down 23.8 percent on a twelve-month basis). New single-family home sales dropped a large 10.9% in September; this was the seventh monthly decline.

Homes available for sale have now risen from all-time lows; this includes new and existing.

Over the past few years, home prices have increased dramatically; this was fueled by Fed policy. Prices still remain above longer-term trendlines. The Case-Shiller national house price index measures sales prices of existing homes; this was up 13% over the year ending August 2022. For reference, for the 12 months ended August 2021, prices rose 20%. The prior year they had only increased 5.8%.

Housing plays a huge role in economic health. The Fed is well aware of all the housing-related inputs to the 2008 financial crisis and the part easy money plays in market crashes. Orchestrating an orderly slowdown to the boom in housing is certainly critical to the Fed’s success.

Other Risks to Economy

Eight times a year, information related to each of the 12 Federal Reserve districts is gathered and bound in a publication known as theBeige Book. This summary of economic activity throughout the U.S. is provided approximately two weeks before each FOMC meeting, so members have a chance to evaluate economic activity over the diverse businesses the U.S. engages in.

U.S. Inflation can arise from conditions outside of the control of the U.S. For example Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has added upward pressure to inflation this year. This impact may have to be determined and netted out of calculations and policy as the Fed can’t fight this inflation pressure with monetary policy.  An example would be the Fed can’t alter global food shortages brought on by war.

Dollar strength or weakness comes from many things. One of the most impactful is the difference in interest rates net of inflation between countries and their native currency. If the Fed raises rates when a competing currency has not, there is a chance there will be more demand for the alternative currency, which would weaken the dollar. Further complicating this for the Federal Resreve is a lower dollar is inflationary as it causes import prices to rise, a stronger dollar can reduce domestic economic activity as exports fall. The U.S. dollar has been rising and is now at its strongest in 20 years.

Commodity Prices were elevated in the first half of this year, mostly by energy.  Although there was some relief from gas prices over the summer, energy is expected to rise into the colder months. They may rise further as the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves are used less to control prices, this may be curtailed.  The White House’s two goals of sharply reducing Russian revenue and avoiding further disruptions to global energy supplies while at the same time reducing oil use and production within the U.S. are a tanglement the Fed needs to consider. These can be very impactful to costs and economic activity, yet The Fed has no direct levers to impact these economic inputs.  

World economies play a part in our own economic pace. If the Fed were to tighen aggressively while the global business is slowing, the impact of the tightening might be more pronounced than if the world economies are booming. Demand for goods and services impacts prices; the U.S. doesn’t live in a vacuum, and demand for our production and our demand for foreign production all must weigh on the Feds outlook for global economic health.

According to the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook, global growth is expected to slow to 3.2 percent in 2022 and just 2.7 percent in 2023.  At the same time, central banks around the world are tightening monetary policy to fight high global rates of inflation.  In addition, there has been financial instability in some major world economies. These rising risks to the global growth outlook may feed back into the U.S. outlook by weakening international demand for U.S. goods and service exports. On the positive economic side, China is considering easing its Zero-COVID policy, which could eventually ease the supply chain impact to inflation. 

Take Away

The original question was, “What do the FOMC members look at as they’re changing interest rates and whipping up new policy stances?” The answer is they have to look at everything. The recent mix of “everything” shows growth and employment in the U.S. have sustained at an even keel. Will previous rate hikes to calm inflation eventually take their toll? This is probably the big question the FOMC will be evaluating. Other domestic issues, including housing and the financial markets, are certainly to be weighed as well – a  market crash of any magnitude could quickly slow economic activity.

The Fed has little control over what goes on overseas but must be aware of and hedge its policy to allow for.

All told, the Federal Reserve has a very difficult job. The report of the new monetary policy stance should hit the wire at 2 pm ET today (November 2).

Paul Hoffman

Managing Editor, Channelchek

Sources

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/consumer-prices-increase-6-2-percent-for-the-year-ended-october-2021.htm

www.bea.gov

Was the Recession Transitory?

Posted on by phoffman@channelchek.com
Image Credit: Andrea Piacquado (Pexels)

Can We Wave Goodbye to Recession Talk Now that Q3 GDP is Positive?

Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the “advance estimate,” has shown we were not in a recession during the third quarter; instead, the economy expanded. This is a dramatic turn-around from the final data for the previous first two quarters of 2022, which show the U.S. economy contracted during each. Since the Spring, in the stock market, bad economic news has been met with buying, and good news has been met with selling. This GDP report has the power to change that back to more normal investor behavior.

The third quarter production report shows the economy expanded at an annual rate of 2.6%  despite nearly 325 basis points of Fed tightening from a base close to zero earlier this year. This report should be great news for the stock market as it shows that a large part of the economy is growing even while stimulus and easy money is being removed. In addition to the headline news related to overnight bank lending rates, each Thursday after the market closes, the Fed releases information on how large its balance sheet is. This balance sheet holdings report can be viewed as how much money they have at work in the system, effectively acting as stimulus. They have been pulling money out at a pace that many expected would also doom growth. It has not, this too should be taken as a positive sign for stock market investors.

This positive GDP report also helps veterans of the market that did not like playing word games by referring to two-quarters of economic recession (lower case “r”) as something other than a Recession (upper case “R”). This definition had in the past always been automatic, without needing the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) to decide when to put a light-shaded bar on our economic timeline charts. We expected that they had the same definition.

GDP Plus Recessions in Gray

Image: Gross Domestic Product Product since 1947-Apris 2022. Gray bars indicate declared recessions.

In 2022 market watchers were all expected to say, “I don’t know what a recession is, I’m not an NBER economist.” This is because, for some reason,, the National Bureau of Economic Research decided not to use the standard metric and definition, it decided instead to be less scientific. The bureau, for the first time declared there is “no fixed rule about what measures contribute information to the process or how they are weighted in our decisions.” In other words, every set of economic conditions is different, and there is no specific threshold that must be met before a recession is declared. We no longer have to even talk about a recession until maybe next year.

Will they declare this quarter an Expansion (upper case “E”)? We’ll see.

Why this GDP Report is Important

Economic growth of nations is measured as the cost of all goods and services sold and provided from domestic-based resources. After all, wealth comes from output, not increases in currency in circulation. GDP measures this output. As you might imagine, an entire economy’s worth of output is a lot of number crunching by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). So they do two preliminary numbers before the final. This allows them a couple of months to harvest all the needed data. The final GDP report for this quarter is unlikely to show 2.6% growth as it will have been revised twice, but it is likely to approximate this first look.  

Source: Investopedia

Take Away

Good news (economic strength) has been viewed harshly by the market this year as it has been looked at with an eye toward the Fed needing to be more aggressive. Bad news has been embraced and actually caused market rallies.

The most recent GDP report has the power to change this. Despite the historically aggressive Federal Reserve tightening, the economy has grown. Perhaps fears of a deeper recession will pass, and stocks will regain their historic trend of always reaching new highs.

Paul Hoffman

Managing Editor, Channelchek

Sources

https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2022/09/22/when-will-this-officially-be-called-a-recession/?sh=357b1a558a0b

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gdp.asp#:~:text=GDP%20can%20be%20determined%20via,approach%2C%20and%20the%20income%20approach.

New Home Size as a Leading Indicator for Recession

Posted on by phoffman@channelchek.com
Image Credit: Tannert11 (Flickr)

Housing Is Getting Less Affordable. Governments Are Making It Worse

The average square footage in new single-family houses has been declining since 2015. House sizes tend to fall just during recessionary periods. It happened from 2008 to 2009, from 2001 to 2002, and from 1990 to 1991.

But even with strong economic-growth numbers well into 2019, it looks like demand for houses of historically large size may have finally peaked even before the 2020 recession and our current economic malaise.  (Square footage in new multifamily construction has also increased.)

According to Census Bureau data, the average size of new houses in 2021 was 2,480 square feet. That’s down 7 percent from the 2015 peak of 2,687.

2015’s average, by the way, was an all-time high and represented decades of near-relentless growth in house sizes in the United States since the Second World War. Indeed, in the 48 years from 1973 to 2015, the average size of new houses increased by 62 percent from 1,660 to 2,687 square feet. At the same time, the quality of housing also increased substantially in everything from insulation, to roofing materials, to windows, and to the size and availability of garages.

Meanwhile, the size of American households during this period decreased 16 percent from 3.01 to 2.51 people.

Yet, even with that 7 percent decline in house size since 2015, the average new home in America as of 2021 was still well over 50 percent larger than they were in the 1960s. Home size isn’t exactly falling off a cliff. US homes, on a square-foot-per-person basis, remain quite large by historical standards. Since 1973, square footage per person in new houses has nearly doubled, rising from 503 square feet per person in 1973 to 988 square feet person in 2021. By this measure, new house size actually increased from 2020 to 2021.

This continued drive upward in new home size can be attributed in part to the persistence of easy money over the past decade. Even as homes continued to stay big—and thus stay comparatively expensive—it was not difficult to find buyers for them. Continually falling mortgage rates to historical lows below even 3 percent in many cases meant buyers could simply borrow more money to buy big houses.

But we may have finally hit the wall on home size. In recent months we’re finally starting to see evidence of falling home sales and falling home prices. It’s only now, with mortgage rates surging, inflation soaring, and real wages falling—and thus home price affordability falling—that there are now good reasons for builders to think “wow, maybe we need to build some smaller, less costly homes.”  There are many reasons to think that they won’t, and that for-purchase homes will simply become less affordable. But it’s not the fault of the builders.

This wouldn’t be a problem in a mostly-free market in which builders could easily adjust their products to meet the market where it’s at. In a flexible and generally free market, builders would flock to build homes at a price level at which a large segment of the population could afford to buy those houses.  But that’s not the sort of economy we live in. Rather, real estate and housing development are highly regulated industries at both the federal level and at the local level. Thanks to this, it is becoming more and more difficult for builders to build smaller houses at a time when millions of potential first-time home buyers would gladly snatch them up.

How Government Policy Led to a Codification of Larger, More Expensive Houses

In recent decades, local governments have continued to ratchet up mandates as to how many units can be built per acre, and what size those new houses can be. As The Washington Post reported in 2019, various government regulations and fees, such as “impact fees,” which are the same regardless of the size of the unit, “incentivize developers to build big.” The Post continues, “if zoning allows no more than two units per acre, the incentive will be to build the biggest, most expensive units possible.”

Moreover, community groups opposed to anything that sounds like “density” or “upzoning” will use the power of local governments to crush developer attempts to build more affordable housing. However, as The Post notes, at least one developer has found “where his firm has been able to encourage cities to allow smaller buildings the demand has been strong. For those building small, demand doesn’t seem to be an issue.”

Similarly, in an article last month at The New York Times, Emily Badger notes the central role of government regulations in keeping houses big and ultimately increasingly unaffordable. She writes how in recent decades,

“Land grew more expensive. But communities didn’t respond by allowing housing on smaller pieces of it. They broadly did the opposite, ratcheting up rules that ensured builders couldn’t construct smaller, more affordable homes. They required pricier materials and minimum home sizes. They wanted architectural flourishes, not flat facades. …”

It is true that in many places empty land has increased in price, but in areas where the regulatory burden is relatively low—such as Houston—builders have nonetheless responded with more building of housing such as townhouses.

In many places, however, regulations continue to push up the prices of homes.

Badger notes that in Portland, Oregon, for example, “Permits add $40,000-$50,000. Removing a fir tree 36 inches in diameter costs another $16,000 in fees.” A lack of small “starter homes” is not due to an unwillingness on the part of builders. Governments have simply made smaller home unprofitable.

“You’ve basically regulated me out of anything remotely on the affordable side,” said Justin Wood, the owner of Fish Construction NW.

In Savannah, Ga., Jerry Konter began building three-bed, two-bath, 1,350-square-foot homes in 1977 for $36,500. But he moved upmarket as costs and design mandates pushed him there.

“It’s not that I don’t want to build entry-level homes,” said Mr. Konter, the chairman of the National Association of Home Builders. “It’s that I can’t produce one that I can make a profit on and sell to that potential purchaser.”

Those familiar with how local governments zone land and set building standards will not be surprised by this. Local governments, pressured by local homeowners, will intervene to keep lot sizes large, and to pass ordinances that keep out housing that might be seen by voters as “too dense” or “too cheap-looking.”

Yet, as much as existing homeowners and city planners would love to see nothing but upper middle-class housing with three-car garages along every street, the fact is that not everyone can afford this sort of housing. But that doesn’t mean people in the middle can only afford a shack in a shanty town either — so long as governments will allow more basic housing to be built.

But there are few signs of many local governments relenting on their exclusionary housing policies, and the result has been an ossified housing policy designed to reinforce existing housing, while denying new types of housing that is perhaps more suitable to smaller households and a more stagnant economic environment.

Eventually, though, something has to give. Either governments persist indefinitely with restrictions on “undesirable” housing — which means housing costs skyrocket — or local governments finally start to allow builders to build housing more appropriate to the needs of the middle class.

If current trends continue, we may finally see real pressure to get local governments to allow more building of more affordable single-family homes, or duplexes, or townhouses. If interest rates continue to march upward, this need will become only more urgent. Moreover, as homebuilding materials continue to become more expensive thanks to 40-year highs in inflation—thanks to the Federal Reserve—there will be even more need to find ways to cut regulatory costs in other areas.

For now, the results have been spotty. But where developers are allowed to actually build for a middle-class clientele, it looks like there’s plenty of demand.

About the Author

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Ryan has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in public policy and international relations from the University of Colorado. He is the author of Breaking Away: The Case for Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities (forthcoming) and Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre. He was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. 

Can We Expect a Stock Market Rally After the FOMC Meeting on November 2nd?

Posted on by phoffman@channelchek.com
Image Credit: AlphaTradeZone (Pexels)

Will the November Fed rate announcement cause a stock market rally?

The next time the Federal Reserve is expected to adjust the target range of the Fed Funds overnight lending rate is Wednesday, November 2nd. Few have doubt at this point that this will again be a 0.75% increase. That level is already baked into equities. Stock market strength and direction shouldn’t veer much from the rate move but could dramatically turn as a result of the Fed’s forward guidance. If Chairman Powell & Co. suggests a slower benchmark lending rate increase, it would be a very welcome sign for investors.

Focus on the Post Meeting Announcement

There are already signs the Fed may slow the pace of Fed Funds increases. There are also indications it may alter its quantitative tightening (QT) in a way that could quicken a yield curve steepening. In other words, the speed of QT may increase. To date, the real rate of return on bonds, of most all maturities, is viewed as unnatural as they are below zero (Yield – Inflation = Real Rate). While an increase in QT may do more to raise rates and reduce the money supply, the effect is stealthier; it doesn’t provide a panicky headline for investors to react to abruptly. 

Some Fed governors have already shown signs that they believe the best course from here is to slow the ratcheting up of the funds level and perhaps even stop raising Fed Funds rates early next year. A hiatus would allow them time to see if the moves have had an impact and give members a chance to see if further moves are prudent. The Fed always runs the risk of overreacting and going too far when tightening; this “oversteering” by previous Feds has occurred a high percentage of the time as they contend with a lag between monetary policy shifts and economic reaction.  

Where We Are, Where We’re Going

In the most aggressive pace since early 1980, so far in 2022, the Fed raised its benchmark federal-funds rate by 0.75 points at each of its past three meetings. The most recent move was in late September. This left the overnight interest rate at a range between 3% and 3.25%.

The stock market wants the Fed to slow down. It rallied in July and August on expectations that the Fed might slow the pace of increase. Slowing, at least at the time, would have conflicted with the central bank’s inflation target because easy financial conditions stimulate spending, economic growth, and related inflation pressures. This rally in stocks may have prompted Powell to redraft a very public speech to economists in late August. He spoke about nothing else for eight minutes at Jackson Hole except for his resolve to win the fight against higher prices.

But sentiment related to how forceful the FOMC now needs to be may be shifting. Fed Vice Chairwoman Lael Brainard, joined by other officials, have recently hinted they are uneasy with raising rates by 0.75 points beyond next month’s meeting. In a speech on Oct. 10th, Brainard laid out a case for pausing rate rises, noting how they impact the economy over time.

Others that are concerned about the danger of raising rates too high include Chicago Fed President Charles Evans. Evans told reporters on Oct. 10th that he was worried about assumptions that the Fed could just cut rates if it decided they were too high. He felt a need to share his thought that promptly lowering rates is always easier in theory than in practice. The Chicago Fed President said he would prefer to find a rate level that restricted economic growth enough to lower inflation and hold it there even if the Fed faced “a few not-so-great reports” on inflation. “I worry that if the way you judge it is, ‘Oh, another bad inflation report—it must be that we need more [rate hikes],’… that puts us at somewhat greater risk of responding overly aggressive,” Evans said.

Kansas City Fed President Esther George also had something to say on this topic last week. She said she favored moving “steadier and slower” on rate increases. “A series of very super-sized rate increases might cause you to oversteer and not be able to see those turning points,” according to the Kansas City Fed President.

Others like Fed governor Waller don’t view steady 0.75% increases as a done deal but instead something to be reviewed, “We will have a very thoughtful discussion about the pace of tightening at our next meeting,” Waller said in a speech earlier this month.

The caution surrounding oversteering isn’t unanimous; at least one Fed official wants to see proof that inflation is falling before easing up on the economic brake pedal. “Given our frankly disappointing lack of progress on curtailing inflation, I expect we will be well above 4% by the end of the year,” said Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker.

The ultimate result is likely to come down to what Mr. Powell decides as he seeks to fashion a consensus. In the past, votes, while not always unanimous, tend to defer to the Chairperson at the time.

Take-Away

If, after the next FOMC meeting, the Fed is entertaining a lower 0.50% rate rise in December (not 0.75%), they will prepare the markets (bond, stock, and foreign exchange) for the decision in the moments and weeks following their Nov. 1-2 meeting. If this occurs, it could cause stocks to perform well just before election day and perhaps make up some lost ground in the year’s final two months.  

Paul Hoffman

Managing Editor, Channelchek

Sources

https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/waller20221006a.htm

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fed-set-to-raise-rates-by-0-75-point-and-debate-size-of-future-hikes-11666356757?mod=hp_lead_pos1

https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/federal-reserve-system-philadelphia.htm

The Week Ahead – Housing, Manufacturing, and Fed District Reporting

Posted on by phoffman@channelchek.com

Could This Week’s Economic Data Impact November’s FOMC Meeting?

There are three economic releases investors will focus on this coming week. These will provide information on housing, manufacturing, and how the economy in each Federal Reserve District is doing (Fed’s Beige Book).

Moving out a little further on the calendar, expectations for another 75 basis point rate hike at the November 1-2 FOMC meeting are widely held. The confidence in the Fed move, even though two weeks away, can be attributed to higher-than-expected inflation reports last week and the constant pounding of the drum by Fed policymakers, saying that taming inflation will remain the FOMC’s priority.

What’s on Tap for investors:

Monday 10/17

  • 8:30 AM Empire State Manufacturing Index, will be reported. Expectations are for manufacturing to have shrank -2.5%. The Empire Manufacturing Survey gives a detailed look at how busy New York state’s manufacturing sector has been and where things are headed. Since manufacturing is a major sector of the economy, this report has a big influence on the markets. Some of the Empire State Survey sub-indexes also provide insight into commodity prices and inflation. The bond market can be sensitive to the inflation ramifications of this report. The stock market pays attention because it is the first clue on the U.S. manufacturing sector, ahead of the Philadelphia Fed’s business outlook survey.
  • 8:45 Noble Capital Markets’ Michael Kupinski, Director of Research, provides indepth report on current state and outlook of the Digital Media segment of the Media and Entertainment sector.

Tuesday 10/18

  • 10:00 AM Housing Market Index will be released. Expectations are for the number to be 44, down from 46 the prior month. The housing market index has consistently been lower than expectations, including September’s 46, which was an 8-year low. N.Y. Fed 5-year inflation expectations for one- and three-year-ahead inflation expectations had posted steep declines in August, from 6.2 percent and 3.2 percent in July to 5.7 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively. Investors will be watching to see if the declining expectations continue. The housing market index is a monthly composite that tracks home builder assessments of present and future sales as well as buyer traffic. The index is a weighted average of separate diffusion indexes: present sales of new homes, sales of new homes expected in the next six months, and traffic of prospective buyers of new homes.

  • 9:45 AM Industrial Production has three components that could impact thoughts on the economic trend. Industrial Production as a whole is expected to have risen 0.1% versus down -0.2% in the prior period. Manufacturing output is expected to have risen by 0.2%, and Capacity Utilization is expected to be unchanged at 80%.

Industrial production and capacity utilization indicate not only trends in the manufacturing sector but also whether resource utilization is strained enough to forebode inflation. Also, industrial production is an important measure of current output for the economy and helps to define turning points in the business cycle (start of recession and start of recovery).

  • Comtech Telecommunications (CMTL) with Noble Capital Markets in NYC in-person roadshow for investors. Interested parties can find out more at this link.

Wednesday 10/19

  • 7:00 AM Mortgage Applications. The composite index is expected to show a decline of -2.0% for the month. The purchase applications index measures applications at mortgage lenders. This is a leading indicator for single-family home sales and housing construction.
  • 8:30 AM Housing Starts and Permits. The consensus for starts is 1.475 million (annualized), and Permits are expected to come in at 1.550 million (annualized). Housing starts to measure the initial construction of single-family and multi-family units on a monthly basis. Data on permits provide indications of future construction. A housing start is registered at the start of the construction of a new building intended primarily as a residential building.
  • 2:00 PM, the Beige Book will be released. This report is produced roughly two weeks before the Federal Open Market Committee meeting. In it, each of the 12 Fed districts compiles anecdotal evidence on economic conditions from their districts. It is widely used in discussions at the FOMC monetary policy meetings where rate decisions are made.
  • EIA Petroleum Status Report. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) provides weekly information on petroleum inventories in the U.S., whether produced here or abroad. The level of inventories helps determine prices for petroleum products, this has been a big focus for investors because of its implications for prices.

Thursday 10/20

  • 8:30 AM Jobless Claims for the week ending 10/15. Claims are expected to be 235 thousand. Jobless claims allow a weekly look at the strength of the job market. The fewer people filing for unemployment benefits, the more they have jobs, and that sheds light for investors on the economy. Nearly every job comes with an income that gives a household spending power. Spending greases the wheels of the economy and keeps it growing.
  • 8:30 AM Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index. This index has been bouncing back and forth between contraction and expansion. It’s the former that’s expected for October, where the consensus is minus 5.0.
  • 10:00 AM Existing Home Sales. The consensus is for sales to have been 4.695 million (annualized). The previous number was 4.8 million. The pace has declined every month since January.
  • 10:00 AM Leading Indicators. The consensus is for a decline of -0.3%. The index of leading economic indicators is a composite of 10 forward-looking components, including building permits, new factory orders, and unemployment claims. It attempts to predict general economic conditions six months out.
  • Engine Gaming Media (GAME) with Noble Capital Markets in St. Louis in person roadshow for investors. Interested parties can find out more at this link.
  • 10:30 AM EIA Natural Gas Report. This is a weekly report and has gotten much more attention since the war in Ukraine and gas pipeline issues that impact much of Europe. The abundance or lack of energy impacts prices not just for the consumer, but also manufacturers. This report has the ability to move markets as a result.
  • 4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet. The Fed’s balance sheet is a weekly report presenting a consolidated balance sheet for all 12 Reserve Banks that lists factors supplying reserves into the banking system and factors absorbing reserves from the system. This report will allow investors to see how far along the Federal Reserve has gotten on its quantitative tightening program.

Friday 10/21

  • 1:00 PM Baker Hughes Rig Count. The expectation is for 985 in North America and 769 in the U.S. It’s all about potential supply; the count tracks weekly changes in the number of active operating oil & gas rigs. Rigs that are not active are not counted.

What Else

This week the Biden administration has plans to take new steps to lower gasoline prices. This includes potentially releasing more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and imposing limits on exports of energy products. The initiative comes a week after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies agreed to cut oil production by up to 2 million barrels per day.

Corporate earnings season starts to heat up with widely watched names that can set the market tone. Those to watch out for include: Monday – Bank of America, Charles Schwab, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Johnson & Johnson, Lockheed Martin, IBM, Netflix, United Airlines, American Airlines, Procter & Gamble, and Tesla. Investors can also expect a key GDP release from China and a vital inflation reading from the U.K.

Paul Hoffman

Managing Editor, Channelchek

Sources

https://www.investopedia.com/what-to-expect-for-the-markets-next-week-4584772

https://www.econoday.com/