Economisch kort – Fed verbergt aankomende financiële crisis
In deze Economisch kort constateert Daniel Lacalle dat de Amerikaanse FED probeert te maskeren dat er een financiële crisis komen gaat. Van eigen makelij.
Publicatie 25 juli
Daniel Lacalle schrijft er verder over:
The United States economy recovered at a 6.5% annualized rate in the second quarter of 2021, and gross domestic product (GDP) is now above the pre-pandemic level. This should be viewed as good news until we put it in the context of the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus in recent history.
With the Federal Reserve purchasing $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and $80 billion in Treasuries every month, and the deficit expected to run above $2 trillion, one thing is clear: The diminishing effect of the stimulus is not just staggering, the increasingly short impact of these programs is alarming.
The GDP figure is even worse considering the expectations. Wall Street expected a GDP growth of 8.5% and most analysts had trimmed their expectations in the past months. The vast majority of analysts were sure that real GDP would comfortably beat consensus estimates. It came massively below.
What is wrong?
In recent times, mainstream economists only discuss the merit of stimulus plans based on the size of the programs. If it is not more than a trillion US dollars it is not even worth discussing. The government continues to announce trillion packages as if any growth at any cost was acceptable. How much is squandered, what parts are not working and, more importantly, which ones generate negative returns on the economy are issues that are never discussed. If the eurozone grows slower than the United States it is always blamed on an allegedly lower size of stimulus plans, even if the reality of figures shows otherwise, as the European Central Bank (ECB) balance sheet is significantly larger than the Fed’s relative to each economies’ GDP and the endless chain of fiscal stimulus plans in the eurozone is well documented.
In the United States, we should be extremely concerned about the short and diminishing impact of monster stimulus plans. Paul Ashworth at Capital Economics warned that this is more evidence that stimulus provided surprisingly little bang-for-its-buck, and reminded that “with the impact from the fiscal stimulus waning, surging prices weakening purchasing power, the delta variant running amok in the south and the saving rate lower than we thought, we expect GDP growth to slow to 3.5% annualized in the second half of this year”.
The so-called consumption boom that many expected for 2021 and 2022 after the high savings increase of the lockdowns is now more than questioned.
Real consumption probably contracted in May and June, the consensus has made downward revisions to income growth estimates, and the saving rate is estimated to have fallen to 10.9% in the second quarter, very close to the trend-average of 9%.
Furthermore, residential investment contracted by 9.8% and Federal non-defense spending contracted by 10.4% even with massive deficit spending.
The 0.8% monthly increase in headline durable orders in June was also a lot smaller than consensus had expected. Excluding transport, it was worse, at just 0.3% month-on-month rise.
Verder lezen van dit artikel kan hier, op het Blog van Daniel Lacalle
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BLAH BLAH die bhla een katholieke zogenaamde professor in de economie en geldmarkten…m.a.w. geloof in mij en ik ben rijk en gij blijft een arme sloeber.