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December 1, 2023

America, Jump-Started: World War II R&D and the Takeoff of the US Innovation SystemDaniel Gross and Bhaven SampatAmerican Economic Review

During World War II, American defense innovation spending was responsible for 1 in 8 American patents. Areas where defense research dollars were spent produced 40% to 50% more patents annually by the 1970s relative to pre-war levels.

In this paper, we study the long-run effects of the largest R&D shock in U.S. history. In World War II, the newly-created Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) led an expansive effort to develop technologies and medical treatments for the Allied war effort. From 1940 to 1945, OSRD engaged industrial and academic contractors in more than 2,200 R&D contracts at over $9 billion (2022 dollars), despite no pre-war tradition of funding extramural (externally-performed) R&D. At the height of the war, the U.S. government was funding the research behind nearly 1 of every 8 U.S. patents—more than five times pre-war and modern levels, and nearly twice the level at the peak of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s. The immediate effect of these investments was a range of technological advances which were not only instrumental to the success of the Allied campaign, but also of wide civilian value after the war ended. Its longer-run impact was to reshape the U.S. innovation system.

The Fed Is Tightening More Than It SaysBenn Steil and Elisabeth HardingBarrons

QT is tightening monetary policy more than the Fed realizes; under the current trajectory, @BennSteil estimates that the policy rate is 5.76%, after adjusting for the balance sheet shrinkage, relative to its headline of 5.38%.

The figure shows the path through time of two interest rates. The lower line shows the path of the Fed’s policy rate going back to April 2022, and its projected path forward over the coming two years. The upper line shows what we call the “QT-equivalent policy rate,” which accounts for the effect of QT. The QT-equivalent rate is the policy rate needed without QT to have an effect on financial conditions equivalent to that produced by the actual policy rate with QT. What we find is that today’s policy rate of 5.375% is, under the current QT roll-off schedule, having roughly the same impact on financial conditions as a policy rate of 5.763% without QT. That’s a gap of 39bps, or 39 hundreds of a percent. But the effect of QT rises sharply going forward, as $95 billion in assets continue to roll off the balance sheet each month, before reaching a high of 100 basis points—or one full percent—in May 2025.

The Most Important Inflation Indicator Shows More Cooling AheadJoseph PolitanoApricitas Economics

The continued rise in rents is now the primary driver of CPI inflation; however, rent inflation is decelerating, with the New Tenant Rent Index now having a rate of change in line with its pre-pandemic level. @JosephPolitano

Earlier this year, the New Tenant Rent Index (NTR) was showing significant disinflation in rent prices that have since begun passing through to decelerations in CPI shelter prices—and recently released NTR data through the third quarter suggests that even more stabilization is yet to come. Growth in Gross Labor Income—the aggregate wages and salaries of all workers in the economy—continues to decline as the labor market slows toward normal pre-pandemic growth rates. Given how tight the relationship between cyclical growth in employment/wages and housing inflation is, a deceleration in NTR has naturally followed the slower labor market of the last year.

Inflation Adjusted House Prices 3.0% Below PeakBill McBrideCalculated Risk

According to @calculatedrisk, real home prices are 3% under the recent peak. According to his affordability index the monthly payment for the same house is up 88% over the past two years.

Affordability was worse in September than in August, as house prices and mortgage rates both increased. In September 2023, houses were the least “affordable” since 1982 when 30-year mortgage rates were over 14%. We already know affordability will be even worse in October since mortgage rates have increased further. For September: a year ago, the payment on a $500,000 house, with a 20% down payment and 6.11% 30-year mortgage rates, would be around $2,427 for principal and interest. The monthly payment for the same house, with house prices up 4.0% YoY and mortgage rates at 7.20% in September 2023, would be $2,822 - an increase of 16%. However, if we compare to two years ago, there is huge difference in monthly payments. In September 2021, the payment on a $500,000 house, with a 20% down payment and 2.90% 30-year mortgage rates, would be around $1,665 for principal and interest. The monthly payment for the same house, with house prices up 15.1% over two years and mortgage rates at 7.20% in September 2023, would be $3,125 - an increase of 88%!

Foreign Official and Foreign Private Investors in Treasuries Have Different GoalsTorsten SløkApollo

Torsten Sløk @apolloglobal forecasts that foreign official institutions will stop selling Treasuries given recent dollar weakening.

For decades, the biggest foreign holders of US Treasuries were central banks and sovereign wealth funds around the world. Foreign official institutions were buying Treasuries because many countries, in particular emerging markets, were intervening to limit the appreciation of their domestic currencies because a domestic currency that is too strong hurts exports. In other words, the foreign official sector was not buying Treasuries for yield reasons but for FX reasons to support the US dollar and thereby domestic exports. With the Fed raising rates and the dollar going up, that has now changed. Foreign central banks no longer need to buy US Treasuries and US dollars to depreciate their currencies. And foreign private buyers find US yield levels attractive despite high hedging costs. The bottom line is that with the Fed raising rates and the dollar going up, yield-insensitive central banks have been selling Treasuries to limit the weakening of their domestic currencies.

China Secretly Transforms Huawei Into Most Powerful Chip War WeaponBloomberg StaffBloomberg

Huawei is the center of China’s efforts to circumvent American export controls, benefiting from an elaborate network of shell companies.

To see how deeply Huawei and the Chinese government are now entwined, look no further than the launch in August of the new Mate 60 Pro smartphone. Huawei timed the release of the phone to coincide with US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s visit to China in part because of direct encouragement from a senior official at the top of the regime, according to a person familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters. Huawei never disclosed technical details, but a teardown of the handset conducted by TechInsights for Bloomberg News found it was powered by SMIC’s advanced 7-nanometer processor. That suggests China is roughly five years behind the current most advanced technology. Export controls imposed by the Biden administration in 2022 were aimed at keeping China at least eight years behind.

November 30, 2023

Intergenerational Mobility in American History: Accounting for Race and Measurement ErrorZachary WardAmerican Economic Review

Intergenerational income mobility in US is greater than in the19th and early 20th century, as previous estimates overestimated historical mobility due to bad samples and measurement error.

This paper’s main message is that historical mobility was lower than previously estimated in linked data. To show why, I account for two measurement issues: unrepresentative samples and measurement error. First, I account for unrepresentative samples by adding Black families, who historical studies routinely drop. Second, I address measurement error by using multiple father observations to more accurately capture his permanent economic status. Using linked census data from 1850 to 1940, I show that accounting for race and measurement error can double estimates of intergenerational persistence. Updated estimates imply that there is greater equality of opportunity today than in the past, mostly because opportunity was never that equal.

Elon Musk Today Claims Wealth Equal to 2.5 Million Times Median Household Income; His Predecessor Daniel Ludwig in 1982 Claimed Only 85 Thousand TimesBrad DeLongBrad DeLong's Grasping Reality

.@delong cites evidence that wealth inequality has increased markedly since 1982, and argues that, since wealth and income fluctuate together, it’s implausible that top-income shares have not risen.

Here is my take: In the US in 1982, the top of the first Forbes 400 list was Daniel Ludwig with nominal $2 billion. That was 85,000 times the then-median nominal family income of $23,430. In 2023, the top of the Forbes 400 was Elon Musk with nominal $251 billion. That was 2,500,000 times the now-median nominal family income of $98,705. Now: ($251B/$99K)/($2B/$23K) = 29.8 How the f*** is the ratio of the top to the median to explode by a factor of 30 while the Auten/Splinter measures show “little change in after-tax top income shares”? Until someone comes up with an explanation for how this could be—how a 30x multiplication since 1982 of the ratio of the top of the Forbes 400 to median household income is consistent with “top income shares are lower and have increased less since 1980 than other studies… increasing government transfers and tax progressivity have resulted in… little change in after-tax top income shares…”—I am going to presume the chances are 99% that there are big things wrong in the numbers in Auten/Splinter.

The Fed’s Remittances to the Treasury: Explaining the 'Deferred Asset'Miguel Faria e Castro and Samuel Jordan-WoodFederal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

According to @mfariacastro @samajordanwood, the Federal Reserve should return to positive net income in 2025 and will resume transfers to the Treasury in 2027.

Remittances rose considerably in the aftermath of the balance sheet expansion following the global financial crisis of 2007-08; they went from 0.2% of GDP and 1.3% of government receipts in 2007 to 0.6% and 3.4%, respectively, in 2015. Remittances then fell due to the 2015-18 tightening cycle, but they rose again in 2020 as the Fed slashed interest rates and resumed its balance sheet expansion (additionally, GDP fell in 2020, which partly explains the positive jump). Between 2021 and 2022, remittances as a percent of GDP dropped from 0.5% to 0.3%. Once the Fed returns to earning a positive net income, it will pay down the value of the deferred asset until it reaches zero, at which point the Fed will resume sending remittances to the Treasury. As of Nov. 8, 2023, the Fed had accumulated a deferred asset of $116.9 billion. In April 2023, the New York Fed estimated that the Fed will return to positive net income in 2025. Combining those New York Fed projections with the latest data on net income, we estimate that the Fed will carry this deferred asset until mid-2027, after which it will resume transfers to the Treasury.

Bidenomics and the Guys in the BarPaul KrugmanKrugman Wonks Out

.@paulkrugman notes that Average Hourly Earnings have outpaced CPI since 2019, and argues “most workers’ wages have risen significantly more” than inflation.

What we can say, with considerable certainty, is that while prices have gone up a lot since the pandemic began, most workers’ wages have risen significantly more. I’m told that real people know that inflation is still running hot, whatever the government numbers may say. Actually, the American Farm Bureau Association, a private group, tells us that Thanksgiving dinner cost 4.5% less this year than last. Gasbuddy.com, another private group, tells us that prices at the pump are down more than 30% since their peak last year. Neither turkeys nor gas prices are good measures of underlying inflation, but both show that the narrative of inflation still running wild is just not true. While the public’s negative view of the economy is a major puzzle, acknowledging that puzzle is no reason to soft-pedal the evidence that the U.S. economy is currently doing very well — indeed, much better than even optimists expected a year ago.

November 29, 2023

Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?Jeremy HorpedahlEconomist Writing Every Day

“Are you better off than you were four years ago?” @jmhorp finds that PCE-adjusted average wages for nonsupervisory workers are up 5% since Jan. 2020. By Nov. 2024, he expects average real wages to be up 4% vs. the start the Biden administration.

The data are quite clear: over the past 4 years, inflation-adjusted wages are up! This is also true if you start roughly right before the pandemic (December 2019 or January 2020 or thereabouts). And not only are inflation-adjusted wages up, they are up roughly the same amount as they were in the years before the pandemic. CPI-adjusted wages are a touch below: about 3% growth over 4 years, versus roughly 4% from 2015-2019. But PCE-adjusted wages are right on track, at around 5% cumulative 4-year growth. It’s true right now that if we start the data in January 2021, at the beginning of the Biden Presidency, CPI-adjusted wages are down slightly: about 1%. But PCE-adjusted wages are up slightly: also about 1%. But unless there is a major reversal of the trajectory of either wage or price growth, by next year these will both be positive (even if only slightly).

Why Americans Dislike the EconomyStephen MiranCity Journal

.@SteveMiran when examining the change in real wages, argues that taking into account the changing composition of the labor force is absolutely essential; when he does so, he finds that inflation-adjusted wages and salaries are down 3.7% since 2020.

To get a clearer picture of the economy, therefore, we need to adjust for the changing composition of the workforce and consider changes to wages in each type of job and industry. A BLS statistic, the National Compensation Survey’s Employment Cost Index, does just this. According to ECI, inflation-adjusted wages have shrunk by 3.7% since the end of 2020. While real wages rose in response to falling energy prices late last year, they have been roughly flat since. Worse, the drop in real wages erased all gains made in the late 2010s. Real wages today stand at 2015 levels, meaning Americans’ paychecks don’t go any further now than they did eight years ago.

U.S. Suicides Reached a Record High Last YearJulie WernauWall Street Journal

Almost 50,000 people killed themselves in the United States in 2022. At 14.3 deaths per 100,000, that’s the highest rate since 1941. Suicide rates for young people declined to their pre-pandemic level.

Nearly 50,000 people in the U.S. lost their lives to suicide in 2022, according to a provisional tally from the National Center for Health Statistics. The agency said the final count would likely be higher. The suicide rate of 14.3 deaths per 100,000 people reached its highest level since 1941. Suicide rates for children 10-14 and people 15-24 declined by 18% and 9%, respectively, last year from 2021, bringing suicide rates in those groups back to prepandemic levels.

How the U.S. and EU Could Harmonize Their Approaches to Trade in EVs and SteelBrad SetserCouncil on Foreign Relations

.@Brad_Setser argues the US and EU should harmonize trade and industrial policy specifically in terms of EV and steel to create domestic manufacturing capacity and offset Chinese mercantilism.

Europeans are frustrated that European batteries and cars don’t qualify for U.S. consumer EV subsidies in a straightforward way (though the “leased vehicle” exception provides ample ground for trade), as well as the persistence of national security tariffs that apply to close security allies. Americans are frustrated by the contortions created by the EU’s desire to respond to China's distortions by only using measures that fit within the narrow confines clearly allowed by the WTO (The U.S. also takes a more expansive view than the EU about what the WTO allows). These competing approaches to managing the Chinese threat have led to the fracturing of the transatlantic markets for not only clean energy goods, but also dirty goods like steel that need to become clean to lower global carbon emissions.

The US Retains the Economic Advantage in its Rivalry with ChinaMartin WolfFinancial Times

Martin Wolf notes that the US and its close allies remain relatively dominant with 67% of global GDP and absolutely dominant in finance and capital flows.

The China bloc accounts for half of the world’s (non-Antarctic) land mass, compared with 35% for the US bloc. It is also home to slightly more of the world’s people (46%, against 43%). But it still generates only 27% of the world’s GDP, nearly all of that in China itself, compared with 67% in the US bloc. Unsurprisingly, the China bloc is more important in industry than in GDP. Thus, its share of world industrial output was 38% in 2022, against 55% for the US bloc. Many countries wish to see the US and its allies, the dominant powers of the last two centuries, taken down more than just a peg or two. But they are more united and economically powerful than China’s group of malcontents. The event likely to change this balance quickly would be a US decision to tear its alliances to pieces.

November 28, 2023

Trade Hyperglobalization is Dead. Long Live…?Arvind Subramanian, Martin Kessler, and Emanuele ProperziPeterson Institute for International Economics

The decline in trade as a percent of global GDP in the aftermath of the global financial crisis has largely been driven by China, as China’s imports from the world have lagged both China’s GDP growth and the growth in global trade. @arvindsubraman

Hyperglobalization refers to the exceptional period between 1992 and 2008 during which global exports grew at close to 10% a year in nominal terms while GDP increased by only 6% a year. As a result, the share of exports in national economies grew from less than 20% to more than 30% in a little bit more than 15 years. The hyper in hyperglobalization does not come from the level of trade relative to GDP, which remains high, or from levels compared with the theoretical potential of trade, which are low. Rather it comes from the change in the level of trade, which was positive before the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and stagnant or slightly negative thereafter. After the GFC, a puzzling wedge emerged. China’s trade-to-GDP ratio plummeted by more than 30pp, from 71% to a trough of about 35%. But its global export market share continued to rise at the same heady pace, reaching nearly 15% of total exports and 22% of manufactured exports by 2022.

Global Water Scarcity: H2O No!Vanessa CookBank of America

Globally, demand for water is up 40% over the past forty years and will increase another 25% by 2050. Since 1970 water supply has halved. @BankofAmerica

Some 75% of our planet is covered with water, but less than 1% is usable, and even this is depleting quickly. Why? Water demand is up approximately 40% over the past 40 years and is estimated to increase another 25% by 2050, yet supply has more than halved since 1970. Water supply is declining in both quality and quantity. Some 80% of global sewage is dumped into the sea without adequate treatment and microplastics have been found in 83% of tap water. Well over half (57%) of global freshwater aquifers are beyond the tipping point, and even poor infrastructure limits supply as one-third of all fresh water running through pipes globally is lost to leakage. For every +1°C increase in global temperatures, there is a 20% drop in renewable water sources. To put this in context, the average global temperature has increased by at least 1.1°C since 1880, and July 2023 was the hottest month on record.

Do Banks Lend to Distressed Firms?Miguel Faria-e-Castro, Pascal Paul, and Juan SánchezFederal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Banks lend to firms to help them recover sunk costs. Between 2014-19, bank lending to zombie firms reduced economy-wide productivity by 0.25%. @mfariacastro @vediense @pascalpaul

Our study builds on an intuitive idea: to recover its past investment, a lender has incentives to offer more favorable lending terms to a firm close to default to keep the firm alive. In contrast to standard intuition, we find that evergreening allows a firm with worse fundamentals—less productive and with more debt—to borrow at relatively better terms. Based on detailed U.S. loan-level data for the years 2014-19, we provide empirical support for our theory at a time when the banks were relatively well capitalized and the economy was growing steadily. Using a dynamic model of the U.S. economy, we find that evergreening has material effects on the performance of the overall economy, resulting in lower borrowing rates, higher levels of debt, and depressed overall productivity.

Just How Bad Is the US Cost-of-Living Squeeze? We Did the MathReade Pickert and Jennah HaqueBloomberg

While Americans are now seeing real wage gains vs. the start of 2020, the price level is up 19.3%, about as much as the cumulative rise in prices between 2010-20.

It now requires $119.27 to buy the same goods and services a family could afford with $100 before the pandemic. Since early 2020, prices have risen about as much as they had in the full 10 years preceding the health emergency. It’s hard to find an area of a household budget that’s been spared: Groceries are up 25% since January 2020. Same with electricity. Used-car prices have climbed 35%, auto insurance 33%, and rents roughly 20%.

The Clearest Sign of India’s Very Good YearMatthew ThomasWall Street Journal

The rupee has lost less than 1% of its value against the dollar as the Indian central bank’s efforts are supported by 6% growth and foreign investment inflows.

The rupee has lost less than 1% of its value against the dollar this year, compared with a decline of more than 3% for the Chinese yuan, a roughly 9% fall in the South African rand, and an 11% slide in the Japanese yen. One dollar currently buys around 83 rupees. Solid management by the Reserve Bank of India, the country’s central bank, deserves much of the credit. The central bank spent decades building up the country’s foreign-exchange reserves to more than $600 billion by the first half of 2022, one the largest pools of central-bank reserves in the world. India’s central bank has had a lot of help. The economy is on track to grow more than 6% this year, bringing its gross domestic product close to $4 trillion—within reach of Germany’s, the world’s fourth-largest.

November 27, 2023

Third-Country Effects of U.S. Immigration PolicyAgostina Brinatti and Xing GuoUniversity of Michigan

Immigration restrictions on skilled immigration during Trump’s first term drove an uptick in skilled immigration to Canada. This inflow was associated with Canadian firms expanding in both domestic and foreign markets. @AgosBrinatti

By the end of 2018, there was a decrease of 140,000 H-1B approvals (relative to trend) and an unprecedented spike in H-1B denial rates. Denial rates increased from about 6% in 2016 to 16% in 2018. Our event-study estimates imply that a 10 percentage point increase in H-1B denial rates increases Canadian applications by 30%. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that for every four forgone H-1B visas, there is an associated increase of one Canadian application. We find that firms that were relatively more exposed to the immigrant inflow increased sales. Consistent with the increase in production, we find that a firm hired approximately 0.5 additional native workers per new immigrant. We also find that the earnings per native worker at relatively more exposed firms dropped. This result together with the fact that more exposed firms are intensive in occupations that were more impacted by U.S. restrictions, is consistent with earnings per native worker in more affected occupations declining compared to less affected ones.

2024 US Equity Outlook: “All You Had To Do Was Stay”David Kostin, Ben Snider, Ryan Hammond, Cormac Conners, Lily Calcagnini, Jenny Ma and Daniel ChavezGoldman Sachs

.@GoldmanSachs forecasts a 6% total return for the S&P 500 in 2024, with the Magnificent 7 growing sales at a CAGR of 11% vs. 3% for the rest of the S&P 500.

The massive outperformance of the “Magnificent 7” mega-cap tech stocks has been a defining feature of the equity market in 2023. The stocks should collectively outperform the remainder of the index in 2024. The 7 stocks have faster expected sales growth, higher margins, a greater re-investment ratio, and stronger balance sheets than the other 493 stocks and trade at a relative valuation in line with recent averages after accounting for expected growth. However, the risk/reward profile of this trade is not especially attractive given elevated expectations. Analyst estimates show the mega-cap tech companies growing sales at a CAGR of 11% through 2025 compared with just 3% for the rest of the S&P 500. The net margins of the Magnificent 7 are twice the margins of the rest of the index, and consensus expects this gap will persist through 2025.

AI Is the Latest Shiny New ToyTorsten SløkApollo

Torsten Sløk @apolloglobal draws parallels between the current P/E of the Magnificent 7 and similar ratios from the 2000 tech bubble and the 1972 Nifty Fifty.

The divergence between the S&P7 and the S&P493 continues. Investors buying the S&P 500 today are buying seven companies that are already up 80% this year and have an average P/E ratio above 50. In fact, S&P7 valuations are beginning to look similar to the Nifty Fifty and the tech bubble in March 2000.

Pro DollarizationJohn CochraneThe Grumpy Economist

.@JohnHCochrane argues dollarization is the closest Argentina can likely get to an independent central bank. He notes that Argentina will need a way to access dollars.

Precommitment is, I think, the most powerful argument for dollarization (as for eurorization of, say, Greece): A country that dollarizes cannot print money to spend more than it receives in taxes. A country that dollarizes must also borrow entirely in dollars and must endure costly default rather than relatively less costly inflation if it doesn't want to repay debts. Ex post inflation and devaluation is always tempting, to pay deficits, to avoid paying debt, to transfer money from savers to borrowers, to advantage exporters, or to goose the economy ahead of elections. If a government can precommit itself to eschew inflation and devaluation, then it can borrow a lot more money on better terms, and its economy will be far better off in the long run. An independent central bank is often advocated for precommitment value. Well, locating the central bank 5,000 miles away in a country that doesn't care about your economy is as independent as you can get!

Related: Milei’s Challenge

China's Current Account Surplus Is Likely Much Bigger Than ReportedBrad SetserCouncil on Foreign Relations

.@Brad_Setser finds “With reasonable adjustments, China’s ‘true’ current account surplus might be $300B larger than China officially reports,” or around $800B.

[In the official reports] both the goods surplus, which is much smaller in the balance of payments than in the customs data, and balance on investment income, which remains in deficit even with the rise in U.S. interest rates, are suspicious. With reasonable adjustments, China's “true” current account surplus might be $300 billion larger than China officially reports. That's real money, even for China. The model implies China's overall income balance should now be back in a surplus of around $70 billion thanks to the rise in U.S. short-term interest rates. So without the unexplained deficit in investment income and the discrepancy between customs goods and balance of payments goods, and China’s current account surplus would now be around $800 billion, over 4 percent of its GDP.

A Brighter Demographic Story for ChinaHan FeiziAsia Times

Han Feizi argues China’s deepening pool of human capital will offset demographic drag. 40% of China’s college graduates are STEM majors. Given current graduation rates, by 2043 China will have more STEM-educated workers than the rest of the world.

At the turn of the century, China produced one million college graduates. This represented 6% of the age cohort which we calculate by dividing graduates by births 24 years prior (the average age at college graduation is 23.7 in China). This has increased dramatically to 11.6 million graduates for the class of 2023, 63% of the age cohort. Over 40% of China’s college graduates are STEM majors. This compares to 18% in the US, 35% in Germany, and 26% in the OECD. While we await graduation statistics for 2024 and beyond, we believe recent university expansions have enrolled an additional 3 million students per year since 2017, taking them out of both the job and family formation market until graduation. This just so happens to coincide with both the sudden decline in births and the increase in youth unemployment.

November 21, 2023

The Wealth of Working NationsJesus Fernandez-Villaverde, Gustavo Ventura, and Wen YaoWorking Paper

Japan achieved GDP growth per working-age adult of 31.9% between 1998 and 2019, slightly faster than the US at 29.5%. @King_ofSweden

Due to population aging, GDP growth per capita and GDP growth per working-age adult have become quite different among many advanced economies over the last several decades. Countries whose GDP growth per capita performance has been lackluster, like Japan, have done surprisingly well in terms of GDP growth per working-age adult. Indeed, from 1998 to 2019, Japan has grown slightly faster than the U.S. in terms of per working-age adult: an accumulated 31.9% vs. 29.5%. Furthermore, many advanced economies appear to be on parallel balanced growth trajectories in terms of working-age adults despite important differences in levels. Motivated by this observation, we calibrate a standard neoclassical growth model in which the growth of the working-age adult population varies in line with the data for each economy. Despite the underlying demographic differences, the calibrated model tracks output per working-age adult in most economies of our sample. Our results imply that the growth behavior of mature, aging economies is not puzzling from a theoretical perspective.

When Will Balance Sheet Runoff End and How Will the Fed Know When to Stop?Manuel Abecasis and Praveen KorapatyGoldman Sachs

A @GoldmanSachs forecast argues the FOMC will not moderate the pace of balance sheet reductions until late 2024. They write that the reduction is “likely already anticipated by financial markets” and therefore fully reflected in current rates.

We continue to expect the Fed’s balance sheet runoff to have modest effects on interest rates, broader financial conditions, growth, and inflation. Our rule of thumb derived from a range of studies is that 1% of GDP of balance sheet reduction is associated with a roughly 2bp rise in 10-year Treasury yields. In total, our projections for runoff imply that balance sheet normalization will have exerted around 20bp worth of upward pressure on 10-year yields since runoff started. Together with our rule of thumb that a 25bp boost to 10-year term premia from balance sheet reduction has roughly the same impact on financial conditions and growth as a 25bp rate hike, this implies that the total runoff process should have the effect of a little under one rate hike.

Regs Will Increase Until Liquidity ImprovesJoseph WangFed Guy Blog

.@FedGuy12 writes that a recent SEC proposal for mandatory repo clearing will likely reduce Treasury liquidity by increasing the cost of repo.

The Fed’s recent Treasury market conference offered three notable insights that suggest Treasury market liquidity will continue its structural decline. First, dealer balance sheet constraints have moved from ones that could be solved through central clearing to those that would require other adjustments. Secondly, mandatory Treasury repo clearing may reduce market liquidity by raising the cost of financing due to higher collateral haircuts. Lastly, mutual funds may not become significant marginal investors in cash Treasuries as regulations encourage them to invest using Treasury futures. The official sector appears to be making adjustments that will make it more difficult for the market to absorb the upcoming deluge of Treasury issuance. At a high level, cash Treasuries can be held by investors using borrowed money or cash investors. The leveraged investors are more nimble participants as cash investor participation depend on asset inflows or the liquidation of other asset holdings. Going forward it looks like the costs of leveraged financing will increase due to mandatory cleared repo and a limited supply of repo financing that is constrained by regulatory costs. Major investors that could participate in the cash market remain incentivized to instead use Treasury futures. The Treasury market looks to continue its trend of becoming less liquid and more volatile.

What We Know About Unauthorized Immigrants Living In The U.S.Jeffrey Passel and Jens Manuel KrogstadPew Research Center

10.5mm unauthorized immigrants lived in the US in 2021, under the 2007 peak of 12.2mm. This represented about 3% of the total U.S. population and 22% of the foreign-born population, among the lowest shares since the 1990s.

The unauthorized immigrant population in the United States reached 10.5 million in 2021, according to new Pew Research Center estimates. That was a modest increase over 2019 but nearly identical to 2017. The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2021 remained below its peak of 12.2 million in 2007. It was about the same size as in 2004 and lower than every year from 2005 to 2015. The U.S. foreign-born population was 14.1% of the nation’s population in 2021. That was very slightly higher than in the last five years but below the record high of 14.8% in 1890. As of 2021, the nation’s 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants represented about 3% of the total U.S. population and 22% of the foreign-born population. These shares were among the lowest since the 1990s.

Managing Economic and Financial Entanglements With ChinaMatt KleinThe Overshoot

China’s surplus is growing relative to GDP. @M_C_Klein notes the negative employment consequences of this has been offset by US government spending which has sustained domestic American demand and shored up private sector balance sheets.

China’s surplus in manufactured goods net of commodity imports has continued to grow relative to the economic output of China’s trade partners, thanks in large part to China’s growth relative to the rest of the world. Even though the value of Chinese exports fell in 2023, this has had no impact on China’s overall balance because the amount of money spent on imports is down as well. The past few years have even seen a renewed surge in China’s surplus (properly measured) relative to China’s own GDP thanks to exceptionally weak growth in consumer spending and the sustained plunge in homebuilding. Federal spending—financed in large part by borrowing—has helped shore up private sector balance sheets and sustain demand, even as some spending elements have contained provisions that should put a floor on sales for American producers. This policy mix helps explain why China’s growing surplus has not attracted much ire, or even notice, in the U.S.

Over 75% of Foreign Money Invested into Chinese Stocks in 2023 Has LeftHudson LockettFinancial Times

Three-quarters of the foreign money invested in China’s stock market in 2023 has left the country so far this year. Net investment inflows in terms of equities are at an 8-year low.

More than three-quarters of the foreign money that flowed into China’s stock market in the first seven months of the year has left, with global investors dumping more than $25bn worth of shares despite Beijing’s efforts to restore confidence in the world’s second-largest economy. The sharp selling in recent months puts net purchases by offshore investors on course for the smallest annual total since 2015, the first full year of the Stock Connect programme that links up markets in Hong Kong and mainland China.

Milei’s ChallengeChris MarshMoney: Inside and Out

Dollarization might be helpful for Argentina but it doesn’t solve the Central Bank of Argentina’s (BCRA) balance sheet problem; currently, it is monetizing its interest bill, driving inflation. @GeneralTheorist argues for another debt writedown.

All that matters for understanding the BCRA balance sheet is the fact that the interest on BCRA securities now exceeds 100% annualised—in fact, 133%. In other words, the value of LELIQs outstanding, measured in local currency, will more than double over the next 12 months. In fact, these are rolled every one or two weeks, so properly compounding the story is even worse. But let’s say it increases by 1.3 times over the next 12 months. Then the BCRA interest bill is nearly 20% of GDP. BCRA has no choice but to monetise their interest bill—creating yet more units of local currency, requiring even more money to be sterilised, acting like a dog chasing her tail. If Milei had not been elected, with his determination to fix the central bank balance sheet, it is possible that hyperinflation would have been the next phase of monetary madness.

November 20, 2023

Have Interest Rates Risen Fundamentally?Jesper RangvidRangvid's Blog

Jesper Rangvid finds that the NY Fed’s estimate of low underlying interest rates seems robust and that the resilient economy is likely due to post-pandemic savings and expansionary fiscal policy.

The underlying level of interest rates cannot be observed but must be estimated. There are two well-known estimates. One, from the NY Fed, suggests that underlying interest rates are still very low, while the other, from the Richmond Fed, suggests that they have been rising recently. My reading of this is that the estimate from the NY Fed – at least for now – appears more robust. Low equilibrium interest rates have important implications. Let me conclude by mentioning at least two of them. If underlying equilibrium real interest rates had risen, monetary policy would not be tight right now and would explain why we have not yet experienced a recession. On the other hand, if r* has not risen, monetary policy is tight. I’m leaning towards the latter. I think the economy has been amazingly resilient because people saved a lot coming out of the pandemic, coupled with a very expansionary fiscal policy that is also supporting growth, not that monetary policy is not tight. Second, if underlying real interest rates are low, interest rates should fall when inflation is under control and monetary policy rates are lowered. Perhaps interest rates will not become quite as low as before the pandemic (e.g. negative interest rates in Europe), but should be significantly lower than today.

US Sustainability RevisitedChris MarshMoney: Inside and Out

.@GeneralTheorist forecasts that, absent fiscal consolidation, federal debt will reach 113% of GDP by 2030, and that gross financing needs will exceed $11 trillion every year from 2024-2030.

We re-run our analysis allowing for the changing structure of issuance as the Treasury leans more on bill and shorter tenor issuance in the near-term consistent with the signal from the most recent QRF round. Interest paid on debt increasing to about 3.8% in 2030. The average interest on debt approaches 3.5% at the end of the horizon. Of course, because debt-to-GDP is close to 100% throughout, these two measures are very similar. Debt-to-GDP is expected to increase to 113% of GDP by 2030 while the gross financing need (GFN), a measure of the rolling 4Q ahead deficit plus maturing securities including bills, at first increases to nearly 45% of GDP in 2025 as T-bill issuance accelerates, but declines to about 35% of GDP in the baseline as issuance shifts to longer tenors.

Microsoft Infrastructure - AI & CPU Custom Silicon Maia 100, Athena, Cobalt 100Dylan Patel and Myron XieSemi Analysis

Microsoft is spending at least $50bn annually on data centers going forward to power its AI push. @dylan522p notes this is “the largest infrastructure buildout that humanity has ever seen.”

Microsoft is currently conducting the largest infrastructure buildout that humanity has ever seen. While that may seem like hyperbole, look at the annual spend of mega projects such as nationwide rail networks, dams, or even space programs such as the Apollo moon landings, and they all pale in comparison to the >$50 billion annual spend on datacenters Microsoft has penned in for 2024 and beyond. This infrastructure buildout is aimed squarely at accelerating the path to AGI and bringing the intelligence of generative AI to every facet of life from productivity applications to leisure.

The Startling Evidence on Learning Loss Is InNew York Times Editorial BoardNew York Times

The New York Times editorial board notes that pandemic era education policy “may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education.” They highlight an ongoing problem with chronic absenteeism.

This fall, The Associated Press illustrated how school attendance has cratered across the United States, using data compiled in partnership with the Stanford University education professor Thomas Dee. More than a quarter of students were chronically absent in the 2021-22 school year, up from 15 percent before the pandemic. That means an additional 6.5 million students joined the ranks of the chronically absent. The problem is pronounced in poorer districts like Oakland, Calif., where the chronic absenteeism rate exceeded 61%. But as the policy analyst Tim Daly wrote recently, absenteeism is rampant in wealthy schools, too. Consider New Trier Township High School in Illinois, a revered and highly competitive school that serves some of the country’s most affluent communities. Last spring, The Chicago Tribune reported that New Trier’s rate of chronic absenteeism got worse by class, reaching nearly 38% among its seniors.

Singapore Family Office Applicants Face 18-Month Wait Amid Tighter ScrutinyMercedes Ruehl and Leo LewisFinancial Times

The queue to set up a family office in Singapore can now be a year and a half as the rich seek to get money out of the PRC. The number of Singapore-registered family offices has jumped from 50 in 2018 to 1,100 last year.

The number of Singapore-registered family offices, which manage tens of billions of dollars of private wealth, has leapt from just 50 in 2018 to 1,100 at the end of 2022, according to the Monetary Authority of Singapore. But lawyers and advisers involved in setting up family offices said the pace of new registrations has slowed, with demand now falling as processing times stretch from less than six months to in some cases as long as 18 months. The extended wait time, the people said, was the result of a backlog of existing applications and greater scrutiny under new, stricter criteria from Singaporean authorities.

The Era of Total U.S. Submarine Dominance Over China Is EndingAlastair GaleWall Street Journal

The Chinese submarine fleet is improving rapidly in quantity and quality, as it has picked up technology from Russia and boosted its productive capacity.

Early this year, China put to sea a nuclear-powered attack submarine with a pump-jet propulsion system instead of a propeller. It was the first time noise-reducing technology used on the latest American submarines had been seen on a Chinese submarine. A few months earlier, satellite images of China’s manufacturing base for nuclear-powered submarines in the northeastern city of Huludao showed hull sections laid out in the complex that were larger than the hull of any existing Chinese submarine. A second modern construction hall at the plant was finished in 2021, indicating plans to boost output. At the same time, the western Pacific is becoming more treacherous for U.S. submarines. Beijing has built or nearly finished several underwater sensor networks, known as the “Underwater Great Wall,” in the South China Sea and other regions around the Chinese coast. The networks give it a much better ability to detect enemy submarines.

November 17, 2023

Where Have All the Foreign Buyers Gone for U.S. Treasury Debt?Chelsey Dulaney and Megumi FujikawaWall Street Journal

The Treasury market will become increasingly stressed as the US runs record peacetime deficits at the same time the Fed is letting its portfolio run down $60B/month. @Brad_Setser notes foreign buyers are unlikely to step in at the pace supply is rising.

The U.S. Treasury market is in the midst of major supply and demand changes. The Federal Reserve is shedding its portfolio at a rate of about $60 billion a month. Overseas buyers who were once important sources of demand—China and Japan in particular—have become less reliable lately. Meanwhile, supply has exploded. The U.S. Treasury has issued a net $2 trillion in new debt this year, a record when excluding the pandemic borrowing spree of 2020. “U.S. issuance is way up, and foreign demand hasn’t gone up,” said Brad Setser, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “And in some key categories—notably Japan and China—they don’t seem likely to be net buyers going forward.” In response to recent demand weakness, Treasury has shifted to issuing shorter-term bonds that are in higher demand, helping to restore market stability. Foreigners, including private investors and central banks, now own about 30% of all outstanding U.S. Treasury securities, down from roughly 43% a decade ago.

Olivier Blanchard on Debt ExplosionsRobert Armstrong and Ethan WuFinancial Times

.@ojblanchard1 has a pessimistic outlook for the endgame for the surging American debt ratio: “My sense is it’s going to boil slowly,” he writes, “I don’t know how it ends; not smoothly, is my guess.”

The factor which is probably most relevant, which is what finance people call the term premium. You can think of it in two ways. The first one is in terms of [Treasury bond] flow supply and flow demand. At this stage, there is a lot of supply and for various reasons there is less demand. There is QT, which is increasing supply from the Fed. It’s conceivable that that’s part of it. And the fact that long rates vary so much on news about the US Treasury changing the maturity of its issuance makes me think that it is probably relevant. The second one is to think of the term premium as a risk premium. I don’t think that’s it, because in that case we would see the nominal rates go up, but not rates on inflation-indexed bonds. But these rates have gone up as well. As hard as it is to imagine, there might be an emerging credit spread on T-bonds or a failed auction. And then Congress and the president would have to sit down and decide to do the right thing. A scary alternative scenario is that Donald Trump is elected, that he puts a lackey at the Fed, who monetises some of the debt, and we get high inflation.

2024 US Economic Outlook: Final DescentDavid MericleGoldman Sachs

David Mericle @GoldmanSachs forecasts that US real GDP will grow 1.8% in 2024 on a Q4/Q4 basis, or 2.1% on a full-year basis. He expects rate cuts in Q4 of next year with a terminal rate of 3.5-3.75%.

We expect the FOMC to deliver its first rate cut in 2024 Q4 once core PCE inflation falls below 2.5%. We then expect one 25bp cut per quarter until 2026 Q2, when the fed funds rate would reach 3.5-3.75%. While we see rate cuts next year as optional in that they are not necessary to avoid recession, we expect the FOMC to conclude that while neutral might not be as low as the 2.5% median longer run dot, it probably is not as high as 5.25-5.5%, so some amount of normalization makes sense as inflation falls. We expect the equilibrium rate to be higher than last cycle because the post-financial crisis headwinds are behind us, much larger fiscal deficits that boost aggregate demand are likely to persist, the funds rate is approaching equilibrium from above rather than below, and the r* narrative is changing.

The Grind AheadGreg Jensen, David Gordon, Daisuke O, Jackson RumerBridgewater Associates

Bridgewater argues that higher rates will drive deteriorating corporate and household balance sheets, and lead to a slow-growth dynamic they call “the grind.”

Higher short and now long rates continue to flow through to credit and interest costs. This is setting up a dynamic that we are calling “the grind”— a gradual decline in growth and in the health of corporate and household balance sheets —that we expect to be a dominant driver of economies and markets over the next 12-18 months. Earlier in the tightening cycle, short-term interest rates rose and dragged long-term interest rates higher. Then, beginning in October 2022 and lasting almost a year, there was a reprieve. Hikes in short-term interest rates continued, but bond yields traded sideways, reflecting market expectations for future easing combined with the Treasury circumventing the pressure on long rates by issuing T-bills. In recent months both conditions have shifted, initiating the next stage of the tightening cycle, led by long rates.

40% of Companies in Russell 2000 Have Negative EarningsTorsten SløkApollo

Citing that 40% of Russell 2000 firms have negative earnings, Torsten Sløk @apolloglobal argues that “if the economy enters a recession, a lot of middle-market companies will be vulnerable to the combination of high rates and slowing growth.”

During recessions, the share of unprofitable firms rises. This is not surprising. But even before the economy has entered a recession, the share of companies in the Russell 2000 with no earnings is at 40%. The bottom line is that if the economy enters a recession, a lot of middle-market companies will be vulnerable to the combination of high rates and slowing growth.

How Worried Should the Democrats be About the Polls?John Burn-MurdochFinancial Times

US voting behavior is becoming less racially polarized, as young black men swing from Biden to Trump. @jburnmurdoch @StackStrat

Btw 2012 and 2020, the Democratic share of the black vote fell from 97 to 91%, according to the gold-standard data on demographic voting patterns from Catalist. And this is not just the unwinding of the Obama effect — the decline between 2016 and 2020 was as large as that from 2012 to 2016. Polls put Biden’s share of the black vote at just 80% today, a record low, dipping to 70% among young black men.

November 16, 2023

Technology and Labor Displacement: Evidence from Linking Patents with Worker-Level DataLeonid Kogan, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Lawrence Schmidt and Bryan SeegmillerNational Bureau of Economic Research

An @NBERpubs study finds that, unlike labor-saving technologies that drive earnings declines and job losses for all affected workers, labor-augmenting technologies disproportionately impact white-collar, older, and higher-paid workers. @DimitrisPapan20

Improvements in labor-saving (automation) technologies are negatively related to the wage earnings of workers in affected occupation–industry cells. For instance, an increase in our exposure measure from the median to the 90th percentile is associated with a 2.5 pp decline in the total earnings of the average worker over the next five years. These earnings losses are concentrated on a subset of workers, since exposed workers experience a 1.2pp increase in the probability of involuntary job loss over the next five years. Importantly, the magnitude of these wage declines or job loss probabilities are essentially unrelated to observable measures of worker skill—measured by age, level of wage earnings relative to other workers in the same industry and occupation, and college education. Perhaps surprisingly, but consistent with our model, new labor-augmenting technologies also lead to a decline in earnings for exposed workers, though the average magnitudes are smaller. An increase in our exposure measure from the median to the 90th percentile is associated with a 1.3pp decline in earnings growth and a 0.5pp increase in the likelihood of involuntary job loss. However, unlike in the case of labor-saving technology, the effects of exposure to labor-augmenting technologies are fairly heterogeneous: it disproportionately affects white-collar workers (defined as those with college degrees, or those employed in non-manufacturing industries or in occupations emphasizing cognitive tasks); older workers; and workers that are paid more relative to their peers (other workers with similar characteristics in the same industry and occupation).

RIP Federal Funds Market, 1928-2023Joseph WangFed Guy Blog

New rules will likely effectively end the relevance of the Fed funds market leaving the Secured Overnight Financing Rate as the official policy rate. @FedGuy12

The Federal Funds market has been in an undead state for over a decade, but may now finally wither away and allow Secured Overnight Funding Rate to become the official policy rate. Almost all lending in the funds market is from Federal Home Loan Banks, who are ineligible for interest on reserves and lend in the funds market to earn a return on their cash. Regulators are encouraging Federal Home Loan Banks to shift the composition of their cash investments away from fed funds and into interest bearing deposit accounts. The Fed funds market will likely shrink as Federal Home Loan Banks shift their cash investments towards interest bearing deposit accounts.

Related: Neutralizing QT and Probing LCLoR

Signs of a Broadening Labor Market Slowdown?David Michael TinsleyBank of America

According to @BankofAmerica microtransaction data, the proportion of customers with a 3-month gap in payroll deposits is now above its level during 2018-19, suggesting a weakening labor market.

Pay disruptions have been rising over most of 2023 Using Bank of America data, we define the ‘Payroll Disruptions Rate’ as the proportion of customers who previously had 12 months of regular payroll payments into their accounts, but then had three months of no payments, relative to the total number of customers with 12 consecutive months of payroll. The rate has been rising over most of 2023. Even with a drop back in the latest October data, the Payroll Disruptions Rate is higher than the two years prior to the pandemic. Pay disruptions will likely occur for a number of reasons. Most obviously if someone loses their job and takes over three months to find another. If someone exited their job for other reasons, such as the need to take care of children, this would also increase the Payroll Disruptions Rate, as would someone taking over three months to set up a direct payment into their account. But a persistent rise in the rate, is likely to indicate a weakening labor market. It remains to be seen if the October drop is just noise, or a more consequential break in the upward trend.

Why Xi Can No Longer Brag About the Chinese EconomyGreg IpWall Street Journal

China’s “large and adaptive manufacturing base” is an increasingly important military advantage versus the atrophied US defense industrial base. @greg_ip @danwwang

China’s manufacturing prowess is also a formidable military asset. Its gigantic and modernized shipyards already build 46% of the world’s ships, enabling it to churn out several new warships and submarines a year. By contrast the U.S. shipbuilding industry, despite a century of protection, has less than 1% of world capacity, leaving the Navy to rely on just a handful of shipyards that lack the necessary workforce to handle rising demand. Deliveries are consistently late and over budget. The shift in warfare toward cheaper, unmanned vehicles also favors China, the world’s largest producer of drones. Dan Wang, a visiting scholar at Yale Law School’s Tsai China Center said the U.S. leads mainly in knowledge-intensive technologies such as artificial intelligence and biotech rather than physical products. “Imagine a future scenario in which these countries are in serious conflict and trade stops, who do you want to bet on: the country with all the large language models and biotech and business software, or the country with large and adaptive manufacturing base? My money would be on the latter.”

Taiwan ‘Most Dangerous’ Issue in China-US Relations, Xi Tells Biden In MeetingJack Lau and Lawrence ChungSouth China Morning Post

Noting Taiwan is the “most dangerous” issue in the Sino-American relationship, Xi told Biden, “China will eventually be reunified and inevitably be reunified” and highlighted the conditions under which the CCP would use force to do so. @SCMPNews

Chinese President Xi Jinping has told his US counterpart Joe Biden to stop arming Taiwan and denied Beijing has imminent plans for military aggression, in a candid exchange on the “most dangerous” issue in the bilateral relationship. During his four-hour meeting with Biden on Wednesday in California, Xi said Beijing’s preference was for peaceful reunification with Taiwan, but went on to talk about conditions in which force could be used, according to a senior US official.

November 15, 2023

The Active Role of the Natural Rate of Unemployment During Cyclical RecoveriesRobert Hall and Marianna KudlyakNational Bureau of Economic Research

Robert Hall and @MariannaKudlyak argue the natural rate of unemployment has fallen in the aftermath of the financial crisis to 3.5%.

The decade-long expansion starting in 2009 combined near constant inflation with continuing declines in unemployment from 10% to 3.5%. Phillips curves constructed with constant natural rates and constant slopes became untenable as this process unfolded. Our investigation of the recovery starting in 2009 concludes in favor of a declining natural rate. The logical basis for this conclusion is that the anchored inflation rate must have converged to the Fed’s target rate of 2% over such a long period of stable inflation so close to that target. A bedrock principle of the New Keynesian model is that in an economy with actual inflation equal to its anchor, the observed unemployment rate must equal the natural rate.

Asymmetric Amplification and the Consumer Sentiment GapRyan Cummings and Neale MahoneyBriefing Book

When the opposing party holds the White House, Republicans have 2.5 times more negative sentiment than Democrats. Adjusting for this asymmetry closes 30% of the current gap between predicted and reported economic sentiment. @nealemahoney

When a Republican is in the White House, Republican survey respondents feel about 15 index points better than predicted about the economy, whereas Democrats feel around 6 index points worse. When a Democrat is President, Republicans feel about 15 index points worse than the economy, but Democrats only feel around 6 index points better. This roughly +/- 15 point swing for Republicans versus the +/- 6 point swing for Democrats is what we term asymmetric amplification. (Independents’ views are roughly halfway between those of Republicans and Democrats.) We find that adjusting for asymmetric amplification shrinks the current gap between observed and predicted consumer sentiment by 30 percent.

While All Inflation Feels Bad, Housing Inflation Is the WorstGreg IpWall Street Journal

Since January 2021, CPI has increased 17%, but the monthly principal and interest cost of owning the median US home is up 113%. @greg_ip

Inflation, we just learned, eased in October, extending a two-week rally in stocks and bonds. And yet the University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment keeps falling. Gasoline is down about a third since its mid-2022 peak. Grocery prices haven’t fallen, but they are only up 2% in the past year; dairy, eggs, chicken, and meat are flat. Even if they don’t drop, maybe a long spell of not going up will loosen their grip on our psyche. Housing is an entirely different matter. Since January 2021, home prices, despite a late 2022 dip, have risen 29%, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller national home price index, and mortgage rates have nearly tripled. The buyer of the typical home thus faces a monthly principal and interest payment of nearly $2,200, more than double the level of early 2021, the National Association of Realtors calculates.

The Case for Loosening Is Getting StrongerMartin WolfFinancial Times

Martin Wolf predicts that the hiking cycle is likely over. He thinks the central banks, especially in the US, have largely achieved their inflation goals.

Central banks must look ahead and remember the lags between their actions and economic activity. In doing so, they might also cast one eye on monetary data. Annual growth of broad money (M3) is firmly negative. Monetary data cannot be targeted. But it must also not be ignored. In brief, it looks increasingly plausible that this tightening cycle has come to an end. It also looks quite likely that the beginning of the subsequent loosening is closer than central banks are suggesting. If that turns out not to be the case, there is some risk that it will come too late to avoid a costly slowdown and even a return to too low inflation. Yet none of this is certain: policymaking is now at a truly difficult point in the cycle.

Gen Z Really Does Have a Work Ethic ProblemJean TwengeGeneration Tech

The self-reported work ethic of US high school seniors has plummeted: 54% of 18-year-olds were willing to work overtime at the start of 2020. This dropped to 36% by 2022, the lowest level in the 46-year history of the survey. @jean_twenge

What was each generation’s work ethic like when they were young? Nationally representative surveys like Monitoring the Future can show us this – it has asked U.S. 12th graders, most of whom are 18 years old, about their work attitudes since 1976. Up until a few years ago, the work ethic news was positive for Gen Z (those born 1995-2012, and 18 years old 2013-2030). After declining from Boomers to Millennials, work ethic made a comeback among Gen Z 18-year-olds in the 2010s. Until it didn’t. The number of 18-year-olds who said they wanted to do their best in their job “even if this sometimes means working overtime” suddenly plummeted in 2021 and 2022. In early 2020, 54% of 18-year-olds said they were willing to work overtime. By 2022, it was 36%. That’s a (relative) drop of 33% in just two years.

PE Firms Trapped in China After $1.5 Trillion Betting SpreeCathy Chan and Preeti SinghBloomberg

Private equity firms have assets of at least $1.5T in China; currently, secondary buyers are demanding extreme discounts, in some cases exceeding 60%, to take on these assets.

Private equity firms that amassed more than $1.5 trillion of assets in China in just two decades are now struggling to offload once-promising investments they were counting on for hefty returns. With public markets in a slump and offering unattractive valuations, buyout firms are exploring private sales. But mounting concerns about the risks of investing in mainland China have left so-called secondary buyers demanding discounts of 30% to more than 60%, according to people familiar with the market. Haircuts in Europe and the US are closer to 15%.

November 14, 2023

The Unexpected Compression: Competition at Work in the Low Wage Labor MarketDavid Autor, Arindrajit Dube, and Annie McGrewNational Bureau of Economic Research

Updated work by @davidautor documents that, since the pandemic, real hourly wage gains for the bottom 10% have reversed nearly 40% of the cumulative increase in inequality since 1980. @nberpubs

Labor market tightness following the height of the Covid-19 pandemic led to an unexpected compression in the US wage distribution that reflects, in part, an increase in labor market competition. Disproportionate wage growth at the bottom of the distribution reduced the college wage premium and reversed almost 40% of the rise in 90-10 log wage inequality since 1980, as measured by the 90-10 ratio. The Unexpected Compression as measured by the fall in the 90-10 log wage ratio was nearly half of the Great Compression of the 1940s. The rise in wages was particularly strong among workers under 40 years of age and without a college degree. The post-pandemic rise in labor market tightness—and the consequent wage compression— represent a profound shift in US labor market conditions, seen most clearly in the rise of the wage-separation elasticity among young non-college workers.

Macro Outlook 2024: The Hard Part Is OverJan Hatzius, Dominic Wilson, Joseph Briggs, Vickie Chang, Devesh Kodnani, and Giovanni PierdomenicoGoldman Sachs

Jan Hatzius @GoldmanSachs argues the prospect of a recession in the US is not elevated relative to historic patterns.

We continue to see only limited recession risk and reaffirm our 15% US recession probability. We expect several tailwinds to global growth in 2024, including strong real household income growth, a smaller drag from monetary and fiscal tightening, a recovery in manufacturing activity, and an increased willingness of central banks to deliver insurance cuts if growth slows. More disinflation is in store over the next year. Although the normalization in product and labor markets is now well advanced, its full disinflationary effect is still playing out, and core inflation should fall back to 2-2½% by end-2024. The market outlook is complicated by compressed risk premia and markets that are quite well-priced for our central case.

Not That 70's ShowMichael CembalestJ.P. Morgan

Michael Cembalest @jpmorgan argues an energy shock is a lower risk to the American economy than it was in the past. He notes that the oil intensity of the American economy has declined, and that US crude imports are down 75% from their 2005 peak.

Energy risks to the US are generally much lower than in the 1970’s. The US is a net energy exporter vs its net import position in the 1970s. The oil intensity of US GDP growth is 65% lower than it was in the 1970’s. Annual global oil consumption growth has declined from 8%-10% in the early 1970s to 0%-2% today. Geopolitical benefits to OPEC of an oil embargo would be less clear now: 75% of Saudi oil exports go to Asia, China gets half its oil from the Middle East and the US gets most of its imported oil from Canada, Mexico, and other non-OPEC sources. Saudi Arabia also has spare capacity to bring online if needed. The Biden Administration, in an act of geopolitical malpractice, opted not to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve before the conflict erupted; the SPR is down ~50% from its peak and at its lowest level since 1983.

Recent and Near-Term Fiscal Policy: Headwind or Tailwind?Brigid Meisenbacher and Daniel WilsonFederal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

A @sffed analysis argues the fiscal tailwind is fading and going forward fiscal policy will be effectively neutral.

What accounts for the large increase in the deficit during the pandemic recession? As Figure 2 implies, [the pandemic] spending increase, especially in 2021, was largely the result of discretionary policy. In particular, several major spending bills, including the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, were enacted over the course of 2020. These pieces of legislation included spending on small business support, unemployment benefits, and other household transfers, aid to state and local governments, and health care. To be clear, this spending surge and the resulting “excess” cyclical response of the deficit do not say anything about whether this was good or bad policy. Nonetheless, the large increase in the deficit was likely a strong tailwind to stimulate economic growth during the pandemic recovery.

Public R&D Spillovers and Productivity GrowthArnaud DyevreLondon School of Economics

New research from @ArnaudDyevre finds a 1% decline in public R&D spillovers caused a 0.17% decline in productivity growth in the United States. Notably, the decline in public R&D can explain a third of the deceleration in TFP since 1995.

Using a unique firm-level dataset with patent and balance-sheet information covering 70 years (1950-2020), I estimate the impact of the decline in public R&D in the US on long-run productivity growth. I first document three new facts about publicly-funded innovations: they are (i) more reliant on science, (ii) more likely to open new technological fields, and (iii) more likely to generate knowledge spillovers, especially toward smaller firms. I then use two instrumental variable strategies–a historical shift-share IV and a patent examiner leniency instrument–to estimate the impact of the decline in public R&D on the productivity of firms through spillovers. I find that a 1% decline in public R&D spillovers causes a 0.17% decline in productivity growth. Public R&D spillovers are three times as impactful as private R&D spillovers for firm productivity and their impact persists at the sector level. Moreover, smaller firms experience larger productivity gains from public R&D spillovers.

Furman On CPI ReportJason Furman@jasonfurman

Overall CPI inflation was flat in October but remains above 3% Y/Y; the economy slowing might bring inflation back to target without further tightening. @jasonfurman

The CPI data was a pleasant surprise. Headline was 0 inflation in October, which happened because volatile gasoline fell 5%. More important, core CPI (excluding food and energy) was 2.8% annualized in October, lower than expected. Not out of woods: still 3%+ over 3/6/12 months. Looking at core but with new rents instead of all rents you get annual rates of: 1 month: 1.8% 3 months: 1.3% 6 months: 0.8% 12 months: 1.6% (Would caution that I don't expect all rent ever to slow to this extent since marginal rent still above all rent.) Here is overall inflation. Annual rate: 1 month: 0.5% 3 months: 4.4% 6 months: 3.1% 12 months: 3.2%. Overall this is reassuring about no reacceleration of inflation. But it remains true that we've only had two unambiguously good inflation prints in 2-1/2 years (June & July). And IF inflation is running at 3%+ that would mean more work to do. A slowing economy may do that work.

November 13, 2023

Are Real Wages Rising?Joseph PolitanoApricitas Economics

Real hourly compensation is above 2019 levels but below the 2015-19 trend line. @JosephPolitano

Cumulative growth in hourly compensation has exceeded inflation since the end of 2019, though it remains slightly below the trend of strong growth seen in the latter half of the 2010s. The real wage distribution has compressed—that is, lower-wage workers have seen proportionally larger gains than higher-wage workers, although this effect is lessened by the fact that low-income households have faced greater inflation than high-income households.

The Low-Wage Pay Surge Is Over, Threatening the Consumer BoomAmara OmeokweWall Street Journal

Wage growth for workers in the bottom quartile dropped to 5.9% in October from 7.2% in January, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

Workers in the bottom quarter of the wage distribution received a 5.9% raise in October compared with a 7.2% increase in January, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Workers overall saw a smaller decline over the same time frame, from growth of 6.3% to 5.8%. The measure is based on the 12-month moving average of median wage growth, on an hourly basis.

The Death of Small Cap Equities?Chris SatterthwaiteVerdad

.@verdadcap uses Gross Profits/Assets as a proxy for quality, and notes that there has been a sharp deterioration in quality for US small caps. Chris Satterthwaite writes that foreign small caps have similar quality but lower price than US small caps.

Examined our favorite quality metric, gross profit/assets (GP/A), over time by sector for “small” US companies, which we define as between $400M and $4B in market cap today, or the equivalent percentile rank by market cap historically. We made the decision to exclude the health-care industry entirely given the significant proliferation of unprofitable pharma and biotech stocks, which tripled in proportion from 5% of small stocks in 1995 to 16% of stocks in 2021. We were curious whether the degradation in quality still held once we excluded this mix shift impact. The chart below shows the contribution to aggregate small-cap US GP/A by sector (e.g., IT GP/A multiplied by IT proportion of total market cap). Most notable is the broad-based decline in quality from the early 2010s to today. The most impacted sectors include IT, consumer discretionary, and industrials. We find it notable that US large caps trade at a premium to the rest of the world, while the median US small cap stock.

As Long As The US Is Outlet For China's Surplus Rumors Of Decoupling Are OverstatedBrad Setser@Brad_Setser

.@Brad_Setser argues “the right measure of Sino-American decoupling is when the United States is no longer the outlet for China’s surplus.” Cumulatively, global surpluses and deficits have to match, and the US is supplying the majority of global deficits.

Now that Europe's current account is back in balance, and Japan is back in surplus, the question of who balances China's current account surplus begs to be answered. There is a risk here, namely that the global economy -- albeit with frictions -- remains relatively integrated. Global politics is far more fractured. There isn't an easy way to solve this dilemma so long as China and others need outlets for their surpluses and equally the US external deficit far exceeds what now can be financed by G-7 countries. Politics and economics diverge, even if the mechanics of measuring bilateral trade and financial flows don't quite capture it.

Prominent Chinese Economist Justin Lin Paints a Rosy Picture of China’s Greying PopulationJosephine MaSouth China Morning Post

Justin Lin Yifu argues China’s rapidly aging population won’t be a headwind for economic growth as increasing levels of human capital will increase productivity growth. @scmpnews

Our analysis of micro-data of the provinces and aggregate data from previous censuses, as well as sample surveys of 1 percent of the population, showed that a shrinking and ageing population has no significant negative impact on economic growth. In 2001, China officially entered an ageing society [with 7 percent of the population over 65 years old]. Since then, many people in China have become increasingly wary that they may ‘get old before becoming affluent.’ China is ushering in a new and higher-quality human capital dividend that is conducive to technological innovation and industrial upgrading.

November 10, 2023

The Threat from China's Capital FlightMatt KleinThe Overshoot

.@M_C_Klein estimates that Chinese capital flight is at least $500b annually; he suspects that the official Chinese current account surplus is understated by a similar amount.

There are enough oddities within China’s official balance of payments statistics to suggest that the country’s actual current account surplus may be nearly 3x the official figure. If so, that would make China’s current account surplus not just the largest that it has ever been in absolute terms, but about as large as it has ever been relative to the rest of the world’s economy. Perhaps surprisingly, the emergence of this massive surplus has coincided with downward pressure on the Chinese yuan, with the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) selling $43 billion in foreign exchange reserves in 2023 Q3. The likeliest explanation is that the Chinese are now pulling about $500 billion/year out of the country. In other words, capital flight pressures have intensified over the past few years, perhaps in response to the Chinese government’s increasingly arbitrary exercises of power against its subjects.

Here’s What We Know About Generative AI’s Impact On White-Collar WorkJohn Burn-MurdochFinancial Times

.@jburnmurdoch cites evidence from separate studies showing that AI Tools boost performance most for less-skilled workers and that the introduction of ChatGPT negatively impacted opportunities for freelancers.

Boston Consulting Group staff randomly assigned to use GPT-4 when carrying out a set of consulting tasks were far more productive than their colleagues who could not access the tool. Not only did AI-assisted consultants carry out tasks 25% faster and complete 12% more tasks overall, their work was assessed to be 40% higher in quality than their unassisted peers. Employees right across the skills distribution benefited, but in a pattern now common in generative AI studies, the biggest performance gains came among the less highly skilled in their workforce. This makes intuitive sense: large language models are best understood as excellent regurgitators and summarisers of existing, public-domain human knowledge. The closer one’s own knowledge already is to that limit, the smaller the benefit from using them.

The Short-Term Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Employment: Evidence from an Online Labor MarketXiang Hui, Oren Reshef, and Luofeng ZhouuWorking Paper

.@xianghui90 @oren_reshef and @Zhou_Yu_AI find that the release of ChatGPT led to a 2% drop in the number of jobs of freelancers’ on the Upwork platform and a 5.2% drop in their monthly earnings.

Across the board, we find that freelancers who offer services in occupations most affected by AI experienced reductions in both employment and earnings. The release of ChatGPT led to a 2% drop in the number of jobs on the platform and a 5.2% drop in monthly earnings. The results are robust to several alternative tests, including a similar reduction in the employment outcomes of freelancers offering design and image-editing services following the introduction of image-focused generative AI. In addition, we find that offering high-quality service does not mitigate the negative effect of AI on freelancers, and in fact, present suggestive evidence that top employees are disproportionately hurt by AI.

Another Month of ModerationDavid Michael Tinsley, Anna Zhou, Taylor Bowley, and Liz Everett KrisbergBank of America

According to @BankofAmerica microtransaction data, consumer spending moderated in October with lower-income households seeing the biggest slowdown.

Lower-income households showed the biggest slowdown in Y/Y spending growth with card spending per household close to zero Y/Y for those with a household income below $50k, down from +1.75% Y/Y in September. In contrast, spending growth for higher-income households (above $125k) fell 0.2% Y/Y in October. from -0.1% Y/Y in the prior month. Some of this narrowing reflects falling gasoline prices, which tend to benefit lower-income cohorts relatively more as they have a higher weight of gasoline in their overall spending. One possible explanation for the narrowing gap between lower- and higher-income spending growth may be the converging after-tax wages and salary growth for these two cohorts. According to Bank of America's internal data, after-tax wages and salaries were up 0.4% Y/Y in October for higher-income households and grew by 2.6% Y/Y for lower-income households.

November 9, 2023

America’s Population Projected to Shrink by 2100, Census Figures ShowPaul Overberg and Rosie EttenheimWall Street Journal

According to new Census Bureau projections, the US population will stop growing by 2080 at 370mm and start to shrink by 2100. Nigeria and Pakistan are expected to be more populous than the US around mid-century.

Slowing growth would produce a peak U.S. population of almost 370 million before an ebb to 366 million in the final years of the century, according to the bureau. The projections outline a nation growing slowly compared with recent decades. Annual growth rates have fallen from 1.2% in the 1990s to 0.5% today and would fall to 0.2% by 2040. Small differences add up through compounding: The projected U.S. population in 2040 is 355 million, 25 million fewer than projected for that date in 2015. The difference is more than the current population of Florida. In 2022, preliminary data showed the U.S. birthrate was about 19% lower than in 2007. Death rates remain about 9% higher than 2019, the last year before the pandemic. By 2038, deaths would exceed births under the most likely scenario.

Why American Manufacturing is Increasingly InefficientEconomist StaffThe Economist

Productivity in America’s manufacturing sector has been in decline since 2011. Fourteen out of nineteen manufacturing sub-sectors, from machinery to textiles, saw declines during the 2010s.

America’s GDP jumped by 4.9% at an annualised rate in the third quarter of the year. Nearly 80% of output is now made up of services, but one might expect manufacturing at least to pull its weight, given its supposed powers. In fact, labour productivity in manufacturing fell by 0.2% at an annualised rate, meaning that the boost to growth was driven by services. To make matters worse, productivity in the manufacturing sector has been in secular decline since 2011—the first decade-long fall in the available data. During the 1990s and 2000s manufacturing productivity soared, with the production of computers and electronics, especially semiconductor chips, leading the way. Gains seem to have topped out at around the time things went wrong more broadly, in the early 2010s. All told, more than a third of the overall slowdown in manufacturing since 2011 is accounted for by computers and electronics.

High and Rising US Federal Debt: Causes and ImplicationsKaren DynanAspen Economic Strategy Group

Assuming that real GDP growth of 2% continues, balancing the primary budget would require spending reductions and revenue increases equal to 3.3% of GDP between 2027-2052. @KarenDynan

Figure 5 shows different vintages of CBO’s federal-debt projections to offer additional perspective on how those downturns (as well as other factors) affected federal debt. Looking at just the actual realizations of debt to date, shown by the solid portion of the red line, one can see the surges in debt that occurred during the Great Recession period and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The other lines in Figure 5 show CBO’s projections just prior to these episodes. The level of federal debt and its projected trajectory remained higher after each episode, even though, in both cases, the deficit (not shown) shrank considerably as the economy normalized.

Generation Z and the Transformation of American Adolescence: How Gen Z’s Formative Experiences Shape Its Politics, Priorities, and FutureDaniel Cox, Kelsey Eyre Hammond, and Kyle GrayAmerican Enterprise Institute

An @AEI survey finds Gen Z is socially isolated relative to prior generations with only 56% of them reporting having had a romantic partner as a teenager, compared with 69% of Millennials and 78% of Baby Boomers.

American teenagers are increasingly less likely to have a romantic partner—a boyfriend or girlfriend—than they once were 56% of Gen Z adults report having had a boyfriend or girlfriend as a teenager, while 41% say they did not have this experience. Nearly seven in 10 (69%) millennials and more than three-quarters of Generation Xers (76%) and baby boomers (78%) say they had a boyfriend or girlfriend for at least some part of their teen years. Working a part-time or summer job was once a ubiquitous experience for cash-strapped teenagers, but today’s teens are less likely to take on these responsibilities. 58% of Gen Z adults say they had a part-time job at some point during their teen years. Close to four in 10 (38%) Gen Z adults say they did not have a part-time job as a teenager. For previous generations, part-time work was much more prevalent. Seven in 10 (70% ) millennials, nearly eight in 10 (79%) Generation Xers, and 82% of baby boomers worked in a part-time position as a teenager.

November 8, 2023

Inching Toward EquilibriumBob Prince and Shane MurphyBridgewater Associates

Bridgewater analysis finds the US economy is close to a sustainable equilibrium, but equity earnings yields vs. bonds may indicate poor future equity returns.

The short-term interest rate is a key variable in managing these conditions and is once again the central bank’s primary policy lever (since interest rates are far enough above zero). The central bank pulls the lever in order to steer the economy toward equilibrium. This is challenging when you start from a major disequilibrium because policy actions affect changes in spending, output, and inflation with significant lags (the process can take years), and in the meantime, markets are responding to central bank actions and having their own impact on the path of the economy. Recently, equity yields have changed little as bond yields have risen significantly, such that equity pricing has moved further from equilibrium. The last time we were here was 2000, which was followed by a decade of poor equity returns.

Setser On Foreign Demand For TreasuriesBrad Setser@Brad_Setser

.@Brad_Setser finds that aggregate foreign demand for US bonds is in line with or above the post-crisis mean, but forecasts, “the bulk of new note issuance will need to be absorbed domestically (and obviously the Fed is adding to net supply)”

There is a lot of interest in foreign demand for US Treasuries (and US bonds generally) these days, given the scale of forthcoming issuance. And in aggregate foreign demand for US bonds has actually been pretty strong, in line or above the post-global crisis norm. The higher frequency data from the Fed (and now the Treasury) based on the valuation-adjusted monthly survey data tells the same story -- solid overall demand, with a modest shift toward Agencies in the last 12ms. Treasury demand appears to be coming largely from private investors -- which makes sense given that reserve growth has been weak and Treasuries offer an absolute yield pickup. China on net has sold Treasuries in the last 12ms of data even adjusting for Belgium/Euroclear. Foreign demand for long-term Agencies has been quite strong -- and China was a net buyer there over the last 12ms of data.

Why Did So Many Economists Get Disinflation Wrong?Paul KrugmanKrugman Wonks Out

.@paulkrugman argues disinflation has gotten us close to the Fed’s 2% target without a recession or a large rise in unemployment. He also notes that trying to lower the price level to its pre-inflationary level is “almost always” a bad idea.

If you want a measure that’s closer to how people currently spend their money, you want the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices. “Core” inflation is actually the highest, because owners’ equivalent rent, for technical reasons, tends to lag far behind actual market rents — which rose a lot last year but have leveled off. One reason the Fed prefers that P.C.E. deflator over the Consumer Price Index, by the way, is that it puts less weight on those questionable housing prices. The bottom line is that disinflation is real — indeed, spectacular. Are we all the way back to 2 percent inflation? Probably not, although there’s a real angels dancing on the head of a pin feel to the debate over the right measure of underlying inflation, and even over what that term really means. But we’ve gotten most of the way there, without a recession or even a large rise in unemployment.

The Global Network Behind The Fentanyl CrisisJamie Smyth, Christine Murray, Joe Leahy, and Sun YuFinancial Times

Fentanyl margins remain very attractive; $800 in raw materials can manufacture over $200,000 worth of fentanyl, or up to $1.2mm in NYC. 2/3 of 110,000 overdoses in the US last year were caused by fentanyl.

The American overdose crisis has claimed nearly 110,000 lives last year. More than two-thirds of those deaths were caused by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times as potent as heroin. A kilogram of precursor can be purchased from Chinese manufacturers for about $800, which is enough to manufacture 415,000 fentanyl pills. Each pill can be sold wholesale for as low as 50 cents in the US. Street dealers can make as much as $3 per pill in New York City, say US prosecutors. US efforts to disrupt the fentanyl supply chain are resulting in increased seizures. Analysis by the Wilson Center in August showed that fentanyl seizures at the US-Mexico border increased 164% from 2020 to 2022. By the end of August, there had already been seizures of nearly 10,000kg in 2023 — far surpassing last year’s total of 6,400kg. Most experts believe fentanyl seizures are up because the overall volume of smuggling is increasing rather than any sustained success in the battle against the cartels.

November 7, 2023

Fiscal Influences on Inflation in OECD Countries, 2020-2022Robert Barro and Francesco BianchiNational Bureau of Economic Research

Robert Barro and @Francesco_Bia find that 40-50% of pandemic-era OECD government financing came from the effect of unexpected inflation on the real value of public debt, consistent with the fiscal theory of the price level.

We show for a sample of 21 economies—20 non-Euro-zone OECD countries and an aggregated version of 17 Euro-zone countries—that headline and core inflation rates in 2020-2022 responded positively to a theory-motivated government-spending variable. This variable includes cumulated increases in spending-GDP ratios divided by the pre-pandemic level of the debt-to-GDP ratio and by the average duration of the outstanding debt. In contrast, across 17 Euro-zone countries, differences in the government-spending variable do not generate significant differences in inflation rates. We also find in the sample of 21 economies that, while positive and statistically significant, the coefficient that gauges the response of the inflation rate to the scaled measure of government spending is significantly less than one, the value predicted when all of the extra spending is “paid for” through surprise inflation. The point estimates of coefficients of 0.4-0.5 suggest that 40-50% of the extra spending was financed through inflation, whereas the remaining 50-60% was paid for through the more conventional method of intertemporal public finance that involves increases in current or prospective government revenue or cuts in prospective future spending.

If Markets Are Right About Long Real Rates, Public Debt Ratios Will Increase For Some Time. We Must Make Sure That They Do Not ExplodeOlivier BlanchardPeterson Institute for International Economics

.@ojblanchard1 writes that the rapid and unexpected move up in rates means that advanced economies will need to move towards primary balance quickly to avoid an explosion of debt-to-GDP ratios.

Stabilizing the debt ratio implies reducing primary deficits to zero. For both economic and political reasons, there is no way governments can do this quickly. A drastic, immediate consolidation would most likely be catastrophic, both economically in triggering a recession, and politically, by increasing the share of votes going to populist parties. In the United States, where the primary deficit is around 4 percent and (r - g) looks positive at this point, the challenge is even stronger. And, given the current budget process dysfunction, one must worry that the adjustment will not take place any time soon. Thus, the debt ratio is likely to increase for quite some time. We have to hope that it will not eventually explode.

Relief After RefundingPraveen Korapaty, Simon Freycenet, Ravi Raj and Gustavo PereiraGoldman Sachs

.@GoldmanSachs writes that the sharp drop in rates last week was driven by portfolio positioning, and suggests that investors have recently overweighted the impact of Treasury supply on rates.

UST yields declined sharply over the course of the week—the benchmark 10y yield, which was only 5bp below its recent high as of last Tuesday’s close is now over 40bp lower. This move lower was aided by a trio of factors. First, the refunding meeting suggested less duration supply was in the offing relative to what many investors expected. We have been of the view for a while now that investors were overestimating the effects of supply on market-clearing yield levels, and the dominance of price-sensitive marginal investors meant more volatility in longer-term bond yields with swings in the macro outlook rather than simply higher yields. Second, following last month’s strong economic momentum, macro data have finally begun to show signs of cooling—both ISM reports and the labor market report surprised to the downside. Third, we think positioning was somewhat short in at least a portion of the investor base, particularly at the long end (we do think there are substantial structural overweights at shorter maturities).

U.S. Wage Growth Is Slowing, SomewhatMatt KleinThe Overshoot

Nominal wage gains are running ahead of the pre-pandemic period and are now in line with the pre-crisis period and the late 1990s according to @M_C_Klein. He notes wage growth has slowed without an increase in unemployment.

The biggest source of underlying inflationary pressure in the U.S. economy—unusually rapid wage growth—has been receding rapidly in recent months, although not by enough (yet) for policymakers to be confident that they are on track to reaching their 2% yearly inflation goal. The question is whether this process will continue, and if not, what that would mean for interest rates. American workers’ wages are still rising faster than in the decade before the pandemic, but the pace of increases has slowed sharply and is now comparable to the late 1990s and 2006-2007. So far, wage growth has slowed substantially without much increase in joblessness or precarity. That is good news for workers, as well as a welcome vindication for those of us who believed that much of the outsized pay gains in 2021H2-2022H1 were one-offs associated with job market churn, reset expectations of working conditions, and sectoral shifts. The question is whether the slowdown we have already experienced is sufficient to satisfy Fed officials—and if not, what it would take for wage growth to slow even more.

Credit Card Delinquencies Continue to Rise—Who Is Missing Payments?Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Daniel Mangrum, Belicia Rodriguez, Joelle Scally, Wilbert van der Klaauw, and Crystal WangFederal Reserve Bank of New York

The @NewYorkFed household debt report for Q1 2023 finds the largest annual increase in credit card balances since 1999. Credit card delinquencies are now above pre-pandemic levels.

Delinquency rates on most credit product types have been rising from historic lows since the middle of 2021. The transition rate into delinquency remains below the pre-pandemic level for mortgages, which comprise the largest share of household debt, but auto loan and credit card delinquencies have surpassed pre-pandemic levels and continue to rise. While the growth in auto loan delinquency has appeared to moderate over recent quarters, credit card delinquency rates have risen at a sharper pace. Even though the increase in delinquency appears to be broad-based across income groups and regions, it is disproportionately driven by Millennials, those with auto or student loans, and those with relatively higher credit card balances.

Migrants Are Flocking to the U.S. From All Over the GlobeSantiago PérezWall Street Journal

Arrests at the American SW border of migrants from China, India, and other distant countries tripled to 214,000 during the fiscal year ending in September according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants from all over the world are making their way to the Southwest border, with U.S. and Mexican authorities reporting a surge in apprehensions of people from Asia and Africa as human smuggling networks widen their reach across the globe. Arrests at the Southwest border of migrants from China, India, and other distant countries, including Mauritania and Senegal, tripled to 214,000 during the fiscal year that ended in September from 70,000 in the previous fiscal year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. Fewer than 19,000 migrants from Asia and Africa were apprehended in the fiscal year ended September 2021. “The increase in migration from Asia and Africa is remarkable,” said Enrique Lucero, head of the migrant support unit of the Tijuana city government, across from San Diego. “These days, we are dealing with 120 nationalities and 60 different languages.”

November 6, 2023

What About Japan?YiLi Chien, Harold Cole and Hanno LustigFederal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

A new @stlouisfed piece contends that the Japanese government takes on both duration and currency risk as it borrows short to invest in long-duration assets including foreign equities, domestic equities, and foreign debt. @HannoLustig

We show that Japan’s government has engineered a sizeable duration mismatch on its consolidated balance sheet. The Japanese government implements a sizeable carry trade, and it earns high realized asset returns while its borrowing rates decline. Japan’s government has realized an ex-post excess return of about 2.13% per annum above its funding cost by going long in long-duration risky assets, financed with mostly short-duration funding in the form of bank reserves, T-bills, and bonds. This investment strategy has allowed the government to earn more than 3% of GDP from its risky investments.

Just One MoreJoseph WangFed Guy Blog

.@FedGuy12 argues the bond bear market is likely to resume, as issuance remains at a historical high, the Fed has left the market, and private demand looks weak.

The share of bills is set to gradually rise next year, but the trajectory of the increase may not be aggressive enough to support the market. Under Treasury Borrowing Advisory Council’s recommendation, the amount of new money raised next calendar year through coupons would be around $1.8t. Assuming $2.5t in privately held borrowing for 12 calendar months, net bill issuance next year looks to be around $700b. This would take some pressure off the market by increasing the share of bills to around 22% of marketable debt outstanding. A recession and rate cuts would likely boost Treasury demand, but current U.S. economic strength suggests they are more likely to occur later next year after the market is forced to digest a significant amount of issuance. The more likely sequence may be a sharp rise in yields that then leads to both a recession and rate cuts, which together finally create strong demand for Treasuries.

Trend Decline in Foreign Ownership of US TreasuriesTorsten SløkApollo

Torsten Sløk @apolloglobal notes that over the last decade, the foreign ownership of US government bonds has fallen from 33% to 23%.

A decade ago, foreigners owned 33% of US government debt. That number has now declined to 23%.

Can Corporate America Cope With Its Vast Debt Pile?Harriet ClarfeltFinancial Times

$1.3T of speculative-grade corporate borrowing is facing refinancing over the next three years, at rates more than double their 2021 lows. Moody’s predicts the US default rate will peak at 5.4% in January but could soar as high as 14%.

Average funding costs for the $8.6tn market in the highest quality corporate bonds, known as investment grade, are now above 6%, according to Ice BofA data. Although that is three times their lows of below 2% in late 2020, market participants are relatively sanguine about the health of these high-quality companies. There is more concern about less creditworthy borrowers in the $1.3tn non-investment grade market, often called junk or high-yield. Coupons now average 9.4%, more than double their lows in late 2021. Moody’s predicts the US default rate will peak at 5.4% in January, but if conditions worsen it could soar as high as 14%.

The Price of Money Is Going Up, and It’s Not Only Because of the FedJamie Rush, Martin Ademmer, Maeva Cousin, and Tom OrlikBloomberg

A @markets analysis suggests the natural rate of interest in the US will rise to 2.7% by 2050, implying 10-year Treasury yield somewhere between 4.5-5%, though higher investment levels could leave the yield at 6%.

Our model shows a rise of about a pp from a trough of 1.7% in the mid-2010s to 2.7% by 2050. In nominal terms, that means 10-year Treasury yields could settle somewhere between 4.5% and 5%. And the risks are skewed toward even higher borrowing costs than our baseline suggests. If the government doesn’t get its finances in order, fiscal deficits will stay wide. The fight against climate change will require massive investment. BloombergNEF estimates getting the energy network in shape to achieve net-zero carbon emissions will cost $30 trillion. And leaps forward in artificial intelligence and other technologies might yet boost productivity—resulting in faster trend growth. High government borrowing, more spending to fight climate change, and faster growth would all drive the natural rate higher. According to our estimates, the combined impact would push the natural rate to 4%, translating to a nominal 10-year bond yield of about 6%.

Foreign Firms Pull Billions in Earnings Out of ChinaJason Douglas and Weilun SoonWall Street Journal

Foreign firms repatriated at least $160B of their Chinese earnings over the past 6 quarters. Historically, foreign firms have reinvested their Chinese earnings.

Foreign firms yanked more than $160 billion in total earnings from China during six successive quarters through the end of September, according to an analysis of Chinese data, an unusually sustained run of profit outflows that shows how much the country’s appeal is waning for foreign capital. The torrent of earnings leaving China pushed overall foreign direct investment in the world’s second-largest economy into the red in the third quarter for the first time in a quarter of a century.

Millennials Aren’t Having Kids. Here Are The Reasons WhyAndrew Van DamWashington Post

A @washingtonpost analysis finds 34.6% of American women 25-44 have never had a child, up 13pp from 1980. Single-child families have stayed steady at ~ 20% over that time period, while families with 4 or more children declined significantly.

Women in their early 20s embraced childlessness first, with a sharp rise beginning around 2002. That happens to be when the first millennials, born in 1981, entered that age group. For women in their later 20s, the jump in childlessness happened in 2006, just as the first millennials arrived. As you ascend the age spectrum, the millennial echo follows. When the oldest millennials hit their 40s, even 40-year-olds become more likely to go childless. Just about every source we consulted pointed to the broader economic climate. If women are able to follow through on their delayed family plans, much of the rise in childlessness could be erased, but with older millennials in their 40s, time for a reversal may be running out.

Why Biden Is Behind, and How He Could Come BackNate CohnNew York Times

Trump is leading Biden in five of six swing states driven by a decline in Biden support among young non-white voters. @Nate_Cohn

The deterioration in Mr. Biden’s standing is broad, spanning virtually every demographic group, yet it yields an especially deep blow to his electoral support among young, Black, and Hispanic voters, with Mr. Trump obtaining previously unimaginable levels of support with them. Mr. Biden barely leads at all among nonwhite voters under 45, even though the same voters reported backing Mr. Biden by almost 40 points in the last election.

November 3, 2023

Is the Fed Peaking Too Soon?Matt KleinThe Overshoot

Noting strong nominal wage growth, @M_C_Klein argues that short-term interest rates may need to stay at current levels or rise to prevent borrowing and spending from accelerating.

While there has been a significant deceleration in the rate of price increases from around 6% a year to 3% a year, the growth rate of the dollar value of spending and incomes has slowed by much less (from 7% a year to 6% a year). So far, this has translated into a massive acceleration in the growth rate of Americans’ living standards. I can think of two basic reasons why the (simple-minded) benign forecast that we will stay in a world with 6% nominal and 3% real growth might not turn out to be correct: Financial constraints force nominal spending to slow. Real constraints worsen the tradeoff between total spending and inflation. The short version is that while real growth may slow, it is much less clear why nominal growth would slow.

Women Have Gained Ground In The Nation’s Highest-Paying Occupations, But Still Lag Behind MenKiley Hurst and Richard FryPew Research Center

According to @pewresearch analysis, women made up 35% of workers in the 10 highest-paying occupations in 2021, up from 13% in 1980. 47% of the US workforce is female.

Women now make up 35% of workers in the United States’ 10 highest-paying occupations – up from 13% in 1980. They have increased their presence in almost all of these occupations, which include physicians, lawyers, and pharmacists. Women remain the minority in nine of the 10 highest-paying occupations. The exception is pharmacists, 61% of whom are women. More broadly, the share of women across all 10 of these occupations (35%) remains well below their share of the overall U.S. workforce (47%). Women remain in the minority among those receiving certain bachelor’s degrees required for some high-paying occupations. Mathematics or statistics: 42% of recipients today are women, unchanged from 1980. Physics: 25% of recipients are women, versus 13% in 1980. Engineering: 23% of recipients are women, versus 9% in 1980.

Canadian Conservatives Have Found A Way To Win Back Young VotersJohn Burn-MurdochFinancial Times

A third of US under-30s voted Republian in the 2022 mid-terms, relative to 40% support for Canadian Conservatives. @jburnmurdoch argues this is driven by Canada’s Conservatives taking on housing affordability as their key issue.

You don’t double your vote share and surge into the lead simply by not being the other guy. Instead, the explanation appears to lie in a bold and explicitly pro-youth policy position: the Canadian Conservatives have come out as the party of housebuilding. Housing affordability crises are widespread across the West, but Canada’s is especially acute, now ranking as the second most important issue facing the country behind the wider cost of living crisis. For months, Canadian voters have said they don’t think the government is focused enough on tackling the problem, creating space for the opposition to make its own pitch. Canadian Tory leader Pierre Poilievre has grasped the opportunity with both hands. The 44-year-old, who assumed the party leadership just over a year ago, has made housing one of his principal causes, outlining proposals that would withhold funds from cities that don’t build enough houses, and give extra money to those that do.

China Hunts For New Industrial ‘Pillars’ To Replace A Wobbly Property MarketChuqin JiangSouth China Morning Post

China is seeking to offset the slowdown in their property sector with new industrial “pillars” like information technology, high-end equipment, and EVs. @SCMPNews

Last year, the added value of strategic emerging industries such as new-generation information technology, high-end equipment, and new energy vehicles made up more than 13% of GDP, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Chang, from Fitch Bohua, said the automotive industry is particularly notable as China became the largest exporter of vehicles in the first half of 2023. The total number of exported cars reached 2.34 million, an increase of 77% compared to the same period last year. The added value of the automobile manufacturing industry increased by 11.4%, year on year, in the first nine months of 2023, 7.4pp higher than the added value of all industries with annual revenue above 20 million yuan (US$2.73 million) in the same period. As of the end of September, China had 18.2 million new energy vehicles on the road, leading the EV revolution with a 60% share of global electric car sales.

Pettis On China's Export StrategyMichael Pettis@michaelxpettis

Noting manufacturing is 27% of China’s GDP relative to 18% of global GDP, @michaelxpettis argues that China’s aggressive export strategy will likely drive increased political stress around trade policy particularly in Europe.

Chinese policy-makers are trying to prevent property-sector contraction from forcing them to cut back on overall investment by shifting investment from the degraded property sector towards manufacturing. But manufacturing already accounts for an outsized 27% of China's GDP, compared to 14% for the rest of the world, and absorbs a huge amount of low-cost investment. What's more, its biggest constraint is weak demand, not scarce capital. What is more, while expansion in property must be absorbed internally, expansion in manufacturing can only be absorbed internally if there is an equivalent expansion in consumption. Otherwise, it must be absorbed by the rest of the world. China comprises roughly 18% of global GDP but already accounts for 30% of global manufacturing. If manufacturing replaces property as the engine of economic activity, this suggests China's share of global manufacturing must rise faster than its share of global GDP.

It’s U.S. vs. China in an Increasingly Divided World EconomyJason Douglas and Tom FairlessWall Street Journal

China is offsetting reduced exports to the US and Europe with exports to the rest of the world, especially Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa.

Chinese factories are replacing Western chemicals, parts, and machine tools with those from home or sourced from developing nations. China’s trade with Southeast Asia surpassed its trade with the U.S. in 2019. China now trades more with Russia than it does with Germany, and soon will be able to say the same about Brazil. German and Japanese automakers like Volkswagen and Toyota now account for about 30% of China’s auto market, down from almost 50% three years ago, as Chinese brands have expanded, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. U.S. imports from China in mid-2018 accounted for as much as 22% of all its imports. In the 12 months through August, that had shrunk to 14%, according to Census Bureau data, though in dollar terms bilateral trade has grown.

November 2, 2023

Preferred Habitats and Timing in the World’s Safe AssetAlexandra Tabova and Francis WarnockNational Bureau of Economic Research

Alexandra Tabova and Francis Warnock find that two of three major purchasers of Treasuries, US private purchasers and foreign private purchasers, have elastic demand curves, implying that rates will tend to go higher as Treasury issuance increases.

Our results have implications for a pressing question as we transition to a post-QE world: Who will buy Treasuries as the Fed reduces the size of its portfolio? Perhaps foreign governments, but they have not materially added to their Treasury portfolios in almost a decade. Moreover, they tend to hold shorter duration bonds, while the Fed’s portfolio is tilted more towards longer durations. More likely it will be private investors, whether U.S. or foreign, whose purchases react to yields and whose portfolios are tilted towards longer duration bonds.

US Treasury To Slow Pace Of Longer-Dated Debt IssuanceKate Duguid and Mary McDougallFinancial Times

Following weak demand for long-dated Treasuries, the US Treasury is slowing the pace of longer-term issuance, and increasing the issuance of short-dated notes.

The Treasury said on Wednesday that it would continue to increase issuance of shorter-dated notes at the pace it set three months ago while slowing the pace of 10- and 30-year bond issues. To satisfy its borrowing needs, the Treasury will raise the auction sizes of the two- and five-year notes by $3bn per month, with a rise in 10-year note auctions by $2bn and in 30-year bond auctions by $1bn. In August, the Treasury had increased its 10-year auctions by $3bn and its 30-year auctions by $2bn. In its quarterly refunding auctions next week, the Treasury Department will sell $112bn worth of debt, lower than the $114bn put on offer in the previous quarter. Primary dealers had anticipated the Treasury would auction $114bn this quarter too.

R versus G and the National DebtMarc GoldweinCommittee for a Responsible Federal Budget

Noting for the past 15 years R < G, @MarcGoldwein argues that in a world where R > G, at current debt stocks and primary deficits, the US will face a debt spiral.

Debt Sustainability = When national debt grows slower than gross domestic product (GDP) or expected to stop growing before getting too high. Average interest rate on government debt (R) describes the growth of current debt, while G the average growth rate of U.S. economy represents its erosion (relative to GDP). When R<G, debt may be sustainable even when non-interest spending exceeds revenue. When R<G, one-time borrowing has little effect on long-term debt-to-GDP. For the last 15 years, R has been below G.

America's Return to Strong GrowthJoseph PolitanoApricitas Economics

Cumulative real GDP growth in the year ending Q3 was 2.9%, “returning to levels more in line with the high growth years in the 2010s.” @JosephPolitano

Cumulative real GDP growth over the last year to 2.9%, continuing to bounce back from its 2022 lows and returning to levels more in line with the high growth years of the 2010s. In fact, these numbers are so strong that GDP could shrink by 0.8% annualized in Q4 and still match the median FOMC participants’ growth projections from last month. Year-on-year growth in nominal, non-inflation-adjusted, economic output picked up again to 6.3%, but even still the inflation gap between real and nominal GDP growth shrank to the smallest level since early 2021.

Attenuating Innovation (AI)Ben ThompsonStratechery

.@benthompson sees President Biden’s executive order proscribing AI development as “blocking progress and hindering the solutions to our greatest challenges.”

If you accept the premise that regulation locks in incumbents, then it sure is notable that the early AI winners seem the most invested in generating alarm in Washington, D.C. about AI. This despite the fact that their concern is apparently not sufficiently high to, you know, stop their work. No, they are the responsible ones, the ones who care enough to call for regulation; all the better if concerns about imagined harms kneecap inevitable competitors. In short, this Executive Order is a lot like Bill Gates’ approach to mobile: rooted in the past, yet arrogant about an unknowable future; proscriptive instead of adaptive; and, worst of all, trivially influenced by motivated reasoning best understood as some of the most cynical attempts at regulatory capture the tech industry has ever seen.

Labor Shock and Pay Raises Fuel a Dining TransformationJustin FoxBloomberg

In response to higher wages associated with the pandemic, the US restaurant sector has significantly improved productivity: from a 1.2%/year rate from 2014-20, productivity jumped 21% in 2021 and has retained most of those gains. @foxjust

It does seem as if employers in the sector have made peace with having fewer workers — and not unreasonable to think that higher minimum wages are playing some role in their calculations. The shock of the pandemic and the accompanying labor shortages allowed for and in many cases required a rethinking of how to do business in a way that the pre-pandemic wage increases did not, and restaurants overall appear to have found a way to do this with less labor. The best measure of this is real output per hour worked, aka labor productivity. After years of little to no growth at full-service restaurants, it rose at a 1.2% annualized rate from 2014 to 2020, then jumped 21% in 2021. It receded a little last year, but most of its gains are still intact.

These Five Countries Are Key Economic ‘Connectors’ in a Fragmenting WorldEnda Curran, Shawn Donnan, and Maeva CousinBloomberg

According to a Bloomberg analysis, five countries (Vietnam, Poland, Mexico, Morocco, and Indonesia) are disproportionately benefiting as “connectors” in a balkanizing global economy.

In collaboration with Bloomberg Economics, Bloomberg Businessweek took a dive into trade and investment data and found five nations straddling the new geopolitical fault lines: Vietnam, Poland, Mexico, Morocco, and Indonesia. As a group, these countries logged $4 trillion in economic output in 2022—more than India and almost as much as Germany or Japan. Despite their very different politics and pasts, they share an opportunistic desire to seize the economic windfall to be had by positioning themselves as new links between the US and China—or China, Europe, and other Asian economies. They represent 4% of global gross domestic product, yet they’ve attracted slightly over 10%, or $550 billion, of all so-called greenfield investment since 2017.

November 1, 2023

The Economic Consequences of the Israel-Hamas WarMartin WolfFinancial Times

Even though the oil intensity of the global economy has declined by 60% since the 1970s, Martin Wolf writes that the world remains extremely vulnerable to an oil shock.

The World Bank envisages scenarios with small, medium, and big disruptions to supplies: the first would, it assumes, reduce supply by up to 2mn barrels a day (about 2% of world supply), the second would reduce it by 3-5mn barrels a day and the last would reduce it by 6-8mn barrels a day. Corresponding oil prices are estimated at $93-$102, $109-$121 and $141-157, respectively. The last would bring real prices towards their historic peaks. If the Strait were to be closed, the outcomes would be far worse. We are still in the fossil fuel era. A conflict in the world’s biggest oil-supplying region could be very damaging.

The Economy Is Great. Why Are Americans in Such a Rotten Mood?Greg IpWall Street Journal

Noting a disconnect between consumer economic sentiment and the “misery index” of unemployment plus inflation, @greg_ip argues Americans’ pessimism “may reflect dissatisfaction with the country as a whole.”

Some 69% of respondents to a Wall Street Journal survey in August said the country is headed in the wrong direction. Can inflation be the whole story? After all, since peaking at 9.1% in June last year, based on the consumer-price index, inflation has fallen to 3.7%. Some gauges put underlying inflation at around 3%, and the Federal Reserve thinks it is headed gradually to 2%, relieving it of any need to raise interest rates for now. And yet, sentiment is up only moderately since inflation began falling. The puzzle deepens when I plot the University of Michigan index since 1978 against the “misery index”—the simple sum of inflation and the unemployment rate. Based on historic correlations, sentiment has been more depressed this year than you would expect given the level of economic misery. I suspect a lot of pessimism about the economy is “referred pain.” Just as part of your body can hurt because of injury to another, pessimism about the economy may reflect dissatisfaction with the country as a whole.

Inflation Adjusted House Prices 3.1% Below PeakBill McBrideCalculated Risk

According to @calculatedrisk, houses in October were the least “affordable” since 1982 when the 30-year mortgage rate was >14%.

I’ve put together my own affordability index. I used median income from the Census Bureau (estimated 2023), assumed a 15% down payment, and used a 2% estimate for property taxes, insurance, and maintenance. For house prices, I used the Case-Shiller National Index, Seasonally Adjusted (SA). For mortgage rates, I used the Freddie Mac PMMS (30-year fixed rates). For August: a year ago, the payment on a $500,000 house, with a 20% down payment and 5.22% 30-year mortgage rates, would be around $2,201 for principal and interest. The monthly payment for the same house, with house prices up 2.6% YoY and mortgage rates at 7.07% in August 2023, would be $2,749 - an increase of 25%. However, if we compare to two years ago, there is huge difference in monthly payments. In August 2021, the payment on a $500,000 house, with a 20% down payment and 2.84% 30-year mortgage rates, would be around $1,652 for principal and interest. The monthly payment for the same house, with house prices up 15.9% over two years and mortgage rates at 7.07% in August 2023, would be $3,107 - an increase of 88%!

The Stunning Resilience of Emerging MarketsKenneth RogoffProject Syndicate

Despite rising interest rates, @krogoff attributes the resilience of emerging markets to large foreign exchange reserves and increased central bank independence.

One notable innovation has been the accumulation of large foreign exchange reserves to fend off liquidity crises in a dollar-dominated world. India’s forex reserves, for example, stand at $600 billion, Brazil’s hover around $300 billion, and South Africa has amassed $50 billion. Crucially, emerging-market firms and governments took advantage of the ultra-low interest rates that prevailed until 2021 to extend the maturity of their debts, giving them time to adapt to the new normal of elevated interest rates. But the single biggest factor behind emerging markets’ resilience has been the increased focus on central-bank independence. Once an obscure academic notion, the concept has evolved into a global norm over the past two decades. This approach, which is often referred to as “inflation targeting,” has enabled emerging-market central banks to assert their autonomy, even though they frequently place greater weight on exchange rates than any inflation-targeting model would suggest. Owing to their enhanced independence, many emerging-market central banks began to hike their policy interest rates long before their counterparts in advanced economies. This put them ahead of the curve for once, instead of lagging behind. Moreover, emerging markets never bought into the notion that debt is a free lunch, which has thoroughly permeated the US economic-policy debate, including in academia. The idea that sustained deficit finance is costless due to secular stagnation is not a product of sober analysis, but rather an expression of wishful thinking.

Chinese Scientists Create Chip That Can Perform AI Task 3,000 Times Faster Than Nvidia’s A100: StudyZhang TongSouth China Morning Post

.@SCMPNews reports that Chinese scientists have created a light-based chip that can perform some select task up to 3000 times faster than a Nvidia A100 chip.

Chinese scientists have produced a chip that is significantly faster and more energy efficient than current high-performance AI chips when it comes to performing some tasks such as image recognition and autonomous driving, according to a new study. Although the new chip cannot immediately replace those used in devices such as computers or smartphones, it may soon be used in wearable devices, electric cars, or smart factories and help boost China’s competitiveness in the mass application of artificial intelligence, researchers wrote in a paper published in the journal Nature.

October 31, 2023

Detroit Is Paying Up to End the UAW Strike. Now Carmakers Will Live With the CostsMike ColiasWall Street Journal

All of the Big Three have reached tentative agreements with the UAW which will boost the top pay for production workers to about $42 an hour. A Ford executive estimated the contract would raise costs by $850-900 per vehicle.

The tentative agreements, to be voted on in the coming weeks, include a 25% general wage increase over four years, which with cost-of-living increases would boost the top pay for production workers to about $42 an hour. By the end of the contract’s term in 2028, most of the Detroit companies’ unionized workers would make in the mid-$80,000s annually, before overtime pay. Ford executives are already talking about the need to offset the higher expenses in this latest deal. The automaker has said the UAW contract would add $850 to $900 per vehicle in additional costs. “We have work to do,” Ford Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said last week. “We have to identify efficiencies. We have to increase productivity. It is a record contract.”

Older Americans Are Winning the Economic War of the GenerationsPeter CoyNew York Times

Since 1960, older Americans have increased their consumption relative to younger Americans. @petercoy, citing arguments by @Kotlikoff, writes that this has likely lowered domestic investment.

The horizontal axis is age, from birth to 85-plus. The vertical axis compares consumption at each age with the average labor income of people ages 30 to 49 in that year. So, for example, people age 40 in 2021 had total consumption of 0.7, which is to say around 70 percent of average labor income for people ages 30 to 49. The last data point in each chart covers all ages 85 and up, not just age 85. (That’s why there’s such a jump in 2021 from age 84.) Here’s why that matters for the economy: When a larger share of resources are in the hands of the elderly — those eager to spend sooner rather than later — the economy’s saving rate, which provides funds for new investment, drops.

China Leads Record Central Bank Gold Buying in First Nine Months of YearHarry DempseyFinancial Times

So far this year central banks have purchased 800 metric tons of gold, up 14% y/y. The People’s Bank of China has bought 181 metric tons taking gold to 4% of its reserves.

China has spearheaded record levels of central bank purchases of gold globally in the first nine months of the year, as countries seek to hedge against inflation and reduce their reliance on the dollar. The “voracious” rate of buying has helped bullion prices defy surging bond yields and a strong dollar to trade just shy of $2,000 a troy ounce. Overall, gold demand excluding bilateral over-the-counter flows was 6% weaker year-on-year at 1,147 tonnes.

Does Wage Theft Vary by Demographic Group? Evidence from Minimum Wage IncreasesJeffrey Clemens and Michael StrainNational Bureau of Economic Research

Underpayment of workers relative to the minimum wage increases in the aftermath of minimum wage increases and disproportionately impacts workers aged 16-21. @MichaelRStrain @AEIecon

Using Current Population Survey data, we find evidence that the incidence of underpayment rises substantially for workers across all racial and ethnic groups, in particular among the young, in the wake of minimum wage increases. The overall rise in the underpayment in the wake of minimum wages is equivalent to between 10 and 20% of realized wage gains across the full sample. In addition, we find evidence of two sources of heterogeneity in the rise in underpayment experienced by members of different racial and ethnic groups. Among young workers (those ages 16 to 21), we find evidence that the burden of underpayment falls disproportionately on African American workers. Underpayment may thus blunt the impact of minimum wage increases on wage gaps between young African American workers and other groups of young workers.

Why Less Engaged Voters Are Biden’s Biggest ProblemNate CohnNew York Times

The Democrats’ success in 2022 and 2023 special elections was driven by high-propensity voters. Currently, Trump is leading with lower-propensity voters who will likely vote in 2024. @Nate_Cohn

According to the Times/Siena data, the 2020 general electorate was probably more Democratic and more supportive of Mr. Biden in 2020 than the 2022 midterm electorate, since a slightly higher proportion of Democrats and Biden ’20 voters skipped the midterms than Republican or Trump ’20 voters. On that basis, one would ordinarily assume that a higher-turnout election in 2024 would help Mr. Biden and Democrats, by drawing those drop-off voters back to the polls. Yet according to the same data — the same survey respondents — a higher-turnout election would not help Mr. Biden today, even though it would draw more Biden ’20 and more Democratic voters to the polls.

October 30, 2023

Britain’s Graduates Are Being Short-Changed While America’s Are RichJohn Burn-MurdochFinancial Times

US college graduates earn 40% more than their British counterparts despite comparable skill levels. @jburnmurdoch argues that this is driven by “much higher and more lucrative demand” for talent in the US economy relative to the UK.

Britons who left the education system at 18 without a degree were paid an average of £14 an hour in 2022 (about $18 after adjusting for price differences). Their US counterparts earned only marginally more, at $19 an hour. Last year [British graduates’] median hourly earnings were £21, or just over $26. US graduates pocketed almost $36 an hour. On the eve of the global financial crisis 15 years ago, British graduates made just 8% less than US grads; that gap has ballooned to 27%. Across most of Britain, more than a third of graduates are working in jobs that do not require a degree — even in London, the figure is 25%. America has mountains of highly lucrative and skilled jobs chasing the best candidates, while Britain has mountains of skilled candidates chasing a small number of world-class graduate employment opportunities.

Neutralizing QTJoseph WangFed Guy Blog

.@FedGuy12 notes that the rising level of reserve and Treasury General Account balances will ease financial conditions over the next several months.

Declining RRP [reverse repo] balances will eventually overwhelm QT and lead to a net increase of money in the financial system. After [money market funds] lend money to the Treasury, the money moves from the RRP to the Treasury General Account [TGA] and then into the banking system through fiscal spending. In our two-tiered monetary system, this mechanically increases reserves (money for banks) and deposits (money for non-banks) in a manner similar to QE. However, the Fed’s QT program has also been pushing in the opposite direction and draining reserves at a rate of around $240b a quarter. The interaction between the two forces has resulted in a modest increase in bank reserves.

When Will There Be No More Excess Savings Left?Jesper RangvidRangvid's Blog

Jesper Rangvid notes that inflation has broadly tracked excess savings in the US with a one-year lag and suggests “fiscal stimulus has been an important driver of inflation, at least in the US.”

Inflation and excess savings have followed remarkably similar trends after the pandemic. Figure 6 shows excess savings (based on the 2016-2019 trend) and core CPI inflation one year later (note that inflation refers to the 2nd y-axis and the upper x-axis). The correlation is striking. Core inflation follows accumulated excess savings with a lag of one year. One year after excess savings started rising in 2020, inflation rose. Excess savings peaked in autumn 2021, as mentioned, and inflation peaked a year later. Since then, excess savings have declined and so has inflation with a one-year lag. It is tempting to conclude that excess savings caused this inflation episode. As you may recall, I agree that fiscal stimulus (which increased people’s disposable income and thus caused the accumulation of excess savings) contributed to this inflation episode, although I also believe that monetary policy and supply chain challenges played a role.

Weekly

Week of November 27, 2023

Third-Country Effects of U.S. Immigration PolicyAgostina Brinatti and Xing GuoUniversity of Michigan

Evaluating the Success of the War on Poverty since 1963 Using an Absolute Full-Income Poverty MeasureRichard Burkhauser, Kevin Corinth, James Elwell, and Jeff LarrimoreJournal of Political Economy

The US won the War on Poverty on LBJ’s terms, cutting the absolute full-income poverty rate from 19.5% in 1963 to 1.6% in 2019. During these years the share of working-age adults who earned < half of their income from market sources more than doubled.

We evaluate progress in the War on Poverty as President Lyndon B. Johnson defined it, which established a 20% baseline poverty rate and adopted an absolute standard. While the official poverty rate fell from 19.5% in 1963 to 10.5% in 2019, our absolute full-income poverty measure—which uses a fuller income measure and updates thresholds only for inflation—fell from 19.5% to 1.6%. However, we also show that relative poverty reductions have been modest. Additionally, government dependence increased over this time, with the share of working-age adults receiving under half their income from market sources more than doubling.

America, Jump-Started: World War II R&D and the Takeoff of the US Innovation SystemDaniel Gross and Bhaven SampatAmerican Economic Review

Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?Jeremy HorpedahlEconomist Writing Every Day

Why Americans Dislike the EconomyStephen MiranCity Journal

2024 US Equity Outlook: “All You Had To Do Was Stay”David Kostin, Ben Snider, Ryan Hammond, Cormac Conners, Lily Calcagnini, Jenny Ma and Daniel ChavezGoldman Sachs

.@GoldmanSachs forecasts a 6% total return for the S&P 500 in 2024, with the Magnificent 7 growing sales at a CAGR of 11% vs. 3% for the rest of the S&P 500.

AI Is the Latest Shiny New ToyTorsten SløkApollo

Torsten Sløk @apolloglobal draws parallels between the current P/E of the Magnificent 7 and similar ratios from the 2000 tech bubble and the 1972 Nifty Fifty.

Elon Musk Today Claims Wealth Equal to 2.5 Million Times Median Household Income; His Predecessor Daniel Ludwig in 1982 Claimed Only 85 Thousand TimesBrad DeLongBrad DeLong's Grasping Reality

China's Current Account Surplus Is Likely Much Bigger Than ReportedBrad SetserCouncil on Foreign Relations

.@Brad_Setser finds “With reasonable adjustments, China’s ‘true’ current account surplus might be $300B larger than China officially reports,” or around $800B.

Trade Hyperglobalization is Dead. Long Live…?Arvind Subramanian, Martin Kessler, and Emanuele ProperziPeterson Institute for International Economics

Week of November 20, 2023

The Wealth of Working NationsJesus Fernandez-Villaverde, Gustavo Ventura, and Wen YaoWorking Paper

Japan achieved GDP growth per working-age adult of 31.9% between 1998 and 2019, slightly faster than the US at 29.5%. @King_ofSweden

Have Interest Rates Risen Fundamentally?Jesper RangvidRangvid's Blog

Jesper Rangvid finds that the NY Fed’s estimate of low underlying interest rates seems robust and that the resilient economy is likely due to post-pandemic savings and expansionary fiscal policy.

When Will Balance Sheet Runoff End and How Will the Fed Know When to Stop?Manuel Abecasis and Praveen KorapatyGoldman Sachs

Regs Will Increase Until Liquidity ImprovesJoseph WangFed Guy Blog

.@FedGuy12 writes that a recent SEC proposal for mandatory repo clearing will likely reduce Treasury liquidity by increasing the cost of repo.

Microsoft Infrastructure - AI & CPU Custom Silicon Maia 100, Athena, Cobalt 100Dylan Patel and Myron XieSemi Analysis

Microsoft is spending at least $50bn annually on data centers going forward to power its AI push. @dylan522p notes this is “the largest infrastructure buildout that humanity has ever seen.”

US Sustainability RevisitedChris MarshMoney: Inside and Out

.@GeneralTheorist forecasts that, absent fiscal consolidation, federal debt will reach 113% of GDP by 2030, and that gross financing needs will exceed $11 trillion every year from 2024-2030.

Managing Economic and Financial Entanglements With ChinaMatt KleinThe Overshoot

Over 75% of Foreign Money Invested into Chinese Stocks in 2023 Has LeftHudson LockettFinancial Times

Three-quarters of the foreign money invested in China’s stock market in 2023 has left the country so far this year. Net investment inflows in terms of equities are at an 8-year low.

What We Know About Unauthorized Immigrants Living In The U.S.Jeffrey Passel and Jens Manuel KrogstadPew Research Center

Week of November 13, 2023

Perspectives on the Labor ShareLoukas KarabarbounisNational Bureau of Economic Research

Analysis by Loukas Karabarbounis finds that labor’s share of US national income declined 5pp btw 1929-2022, and labor’s share globally has declined 6pp since 1980. He proposes capital-augmenting technology as the most likely driver of these declines.

The headline estimate for the United States is a roughly 5pp decline of the labor share between 1929 and 2022. The decline after World War II is even larger, at around 7pp. The great majority of U.S. industries exhibited labor share declines in recent decades. The United States is not unique, as we observe labor share declines in most countries of Europe and Asia and in emerging markets. It helps to organize factors affecting the labor share in five categories: technology, product markets, labor markets, capital markets, and globalization. The factors that have contributed to the labor share decline are intertwined. My view is that the most plausible causes have technological origin. Developments such as the information age and automation, manifesting through changes in the cost of capital and the structure of product markets, caused the labor share to decline. If technological advancements continue to favor capital indefinitely, the natural outcome is a transition to a world in which capital on its own produces the entire global income.

Database

Week of November 27, 2023

Evaluating the Success of the War on Poverty since 1963 Using an Absolute Full-Income Poverty MeasureRichard Burkhauser, Kevin Corinth, James Elwell, and Jeff LarrimoreJournal of Political Economy

Week of November 20, 2023

The Wealth of Working NationsJesus Fernandez-Villaverde, Gustavo Ventura, and Wen YaoWorking Paper

Japan achieved GDP growth per working-age adult of 31.9% between 1998 and 2019, slightly faster than the US at 29.5%. @King_ofSweden

Microsoft Infrastructure - AI & CPU Custom Silicon Maia 100, Athena, Cobalt 100Dylan Patel and Myron XieSemi Analysis

Microsoft is spending at least $50bn annually on data centers going forward to power its AI push. @dylan522p notes this is “the largest infrastructure buildout that humanity has ever seen.”

US Sustainability RevisitedChris MarshMoney: Inside and Out

.@GeneralTheorist forecasts that, absent fiscal consolidation, federal debt will reach 113% of GDP by 2030, and that gross financing needs will exceed $11 trillion every year from 2024-2030.

Managing Economic and Financial Entanglements With ChinaMatt KleinThe Overshoot

What We Know About Unauthorized Immigrants Living In The U.S.Jeffrey Passel and Jens Manuel KrogstadPew Research Center

The Startling Evidence on Learning Loss Is InNew York Times Editorial BoardNew York Times

Week of November 13, 2023

Perspectives on the Labor ShareLoukas KarabarbounisNational Bureau of Economic Research

The Unexpected Compression: Competition at Work in the Low Wage Labor MarketDavid Autor, Arindrajit Dube, and Annie McGrewNational Bureau of Economic Research

Updated work by @davidautor documents that, since the pandemic, real hourly wage gains for the bottom 10% have reversed nearly 40% of the cumulative increase in inequality since 1980. @nberpubs

Technology and Labor Displacement: Evidence from Linking Patents with Worker-Level DataLeonid Kogan, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Lawrence Schmidt and Bryan SeegmillerNational Bureau of Economic Research

Are Real Wages Rising?Joseph PolitanoApricitas Economics

Real hourly compensation is above 2019 levels but below the 2015-19 trend line. @JosephPolitano

Where Have All the Foreign Buyers Gone for U.S. Treasury Debt?Chelsey Dulaney and Megumi FujikawaWall Street Journal

The Death of Small Cap Equities?Chris SatterthwaiteVerdad

The Low-Wage Pay Surge Is Over, Threatening the Consumer BoomAmara OmeokweWall Street Journal

Wage growth for workers in the bottom quartile dropped to 5.9% in October from 7.2% in January, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

40% of Companies in Russell 2000 Have Negative EarningsTorsten SløkApollo

Public R&D Spillovers and Productivity GrowthArnaud DyevreLondon School of Economics

How Worried Should the Democrats be About the Polls?John Burn-MurdochFinancial Times

US voting behavior is becoming less racially polarized, as young black men swing from Biden to Trump. @jburnmurdoch @StackStrat

Week of November 6, 2023

Fiscal Influences on Inflation in OECD Countries, 2020-2022Robert Barro and Francesco BianchiNational Bureau of Economic Research

If Markets Are Right About Long Real Rates, Public Debt Ratios Will Increase For Some Time. We Must Make Sure That They Do Not ExplodeOlivier BlanchardPeterson Institute for International Economics

.@ojblanchard1 writes that the rapid and unexpected move up in rates means that advanced economies will need to move towards primary balance quickly to avoid an explosion of debt-to-GDP ratios.

Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long-Term TrendsGerald Auten and David SplinterWorking Paper

Gerald Auten and David Splinter have updated their income inequality estimate and find that the after-tax income share of the top 1% in the US has been steady since the 1960s, disproving Piketty-Saez-Zucman’s claims otherwise.

Using administrative tax data in combination with the Survey of Consumer Finances and other data sources, this paper develops new estimates of the distribution of income in the U.S. since the 1960s. Our analysis examines levels and trends in all parts of the distribution in addition to top income shares. Our estimates for pre-tax income, based on distributing total national income, show that the top one percent share declined from 11.1% to 9.4% from 1962 to 1979 and then increased to 13.8% by 2019. Viewed over the full period, the top share increased by only 3 percentage points. While our pre-tax income measure includes labor and investment income, it provides an incomplete picture of economic resources available to individuals. A broader measure that includes Social Security benefits and other transfers lowers top one percent shares and results in a smaller increase. Our estimates for after-tax income indicate that the top one percent share increased only 1.4 percentage points since 1979 and only 0.2 percentage points since 1962.