Council on Foreign Relations

Weak economic data, a Washington debt standoff, a downgrade of U.S. federal debt, and rising European default fears helped send the S&P 500 stock index down 16% between July 22 and August 6.  As the figure above shows, equity prices of late imply the worst earnings growth rate expectations in 25 years—such expectations even turned negative last week.  This dour outlook stems partly from renewed risk-aversion, which ironically redirected cash into downgraded U.S. debt, but it also reflects a sharp rise in concerns about where new profits will come from.  Operating margins and profits are near all-time highs, but revenues are still below their 2008 peak and real consumer spending has grown by only 2% over the past year.  Corporations currently have strong balance sheets and the lowest net debt-to-revenue ratio on record, but this is largely the result of cost-cutting which may have run its course.  In short, either stocks are very cheap or growth prospects very dim.

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The rapidly approaching August 2^nd deadline, as proclaimed by the U.S. Treasury, for raising Congress’s self-imposed debt ceiling is producing a flurry of deficit-reduction plans – or, more accurately, plans for having plans.  Whereas a U.S. default triggered by a failure to raise the debt ceiling is the worst possible way to address the country’s unsustainable deficits, as it would cause borrowing rates to soar and pummel growth prospects, raising the debt ceiling without a credible deficit-cutting agreement still poses real risks of imminent, damaging market turmoil.  This is because of the regrettable but real power of the credit ratings agencies, whose downgrade pronouncements trigger automatic selling and purchase-restriction directives hardwired into public and private investment fund guidelines.  S&P has announced that it needs to see a $4 trillion deficit reduction commitment over 10 years—consistent with stabilizing U.S. debt as a percentage of GDP—in order to sustain the United States’ AAA rating.  Speaker Boehner’s plan aims at only $3 trillion in cuts; Senator Reid’s plan at $2.7 trillion.  Rep. Ryan’s plan is, from a practical perspective, meaningless, as its big spending cuts don’t materialize until well after 10 years.  President Obama’s budget also falls well short of the mark, relying on wildly optimistic near-term growth forecasts to juice the GDP denominator (see the Geo-Graphic here).  As the spending graph above-left shows, both Ryan and Obama set the country off on a path of much higher spending than the average over the past 50 years.  In short, debt ceilings and ratings agencies may be stupid inventions, but they will drive us into a major economic crisis if Congress doesn’t take serious action now.

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“How China’s external current account surplus will evolve in the coming years is one of the key questions on the economic outlook for China and the global economy both,” said a World Bank official in Beijing recently. The IMF presented its own answer to that question in a July 2010 report on the Chinese economy, forecasting a gentle, steady rise in China’s current account surplus, relative to its GDP, as shown in the top figure above. The forecast comfortingly shows the surplus staying well below its 2007 peak. Yet since China’s economy is growing much faster than the world economy, the IMF understates the upward trajectory of China’s growing imbalances with the rest of the world. This we show in the bottom figure, which projects China’s surplus relative to world GDP using the IMF’s own assumptions. By this measure, China’s surplus will surpass its 2008 peak within two years. If China continues to recycle dollars abroad at this pace, the global economy will become considerably more vulnerable to shocks from capital flow reversals.

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The shape of U.S. labor market declines and recoveries—as measured by the current level of employment relative to the prior peak—has changed dramatically over the past two decades. From the 1940s through the 1970s, they exhibited a V-shape of sharp declines and rapid recoveries, as seen in the chart above. By the 1990s they took on a U-shape, signifying longer, persistent unemployment. “During times like the 1950s and 1960s, a rising level of educational attainment kept up with this rising demand for skill,” MIT economist David Autor writes, “but since the late 1970s and early 1980s, the rise in U.S. education levels has not kept up with the rising demand for skilled workers.” The labor demand differential is particularly stark today: unemployment among the college-educated stands at 4.5%, compared with 14.7% for those without high school degrees.  Unemployment compensation, the main tool in the U.S. arsenal to address joblessness, was created back in 1935 to buffer relatively short stints of unemployment, but the need today continuously to extend benefits is a sign that policy has got to address the skills mismatch far more effectively.

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All countries with central banks exercise monetary sovereignty, right?  Nobel economist Paul Krugman certainly thinks so.  “Wow,” he wrote, after reading Benn Steil and Manuel Hinds say otherwise in the Financial Times on May 24, “Have these guys ever talked to anyone in Sweden, which doesn’t need euros to create more kronor?” Fortunately, we have the data, which is better than talk.  Since Mr. Krugman throws Australia into the mix, we will too.  As the figures above illustrate, when the Swedish and Australian central banks expanded credit dramatically during the recent financial crisis their net foreign assets plummeted.  And this is not merely a crisis effect, as the three decades of Australian data show. So it turns out that you do indeed need euros and (American) dollars to create kronor and Australian dollars.  A country that plows on creating credit without them eventually becomes a ward of the IMF.

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