Economisch kort – noodzaak van een adempauze in interventies
In deze Economisch kort bepleit Daniel Lacalle om de economie haar natuurlijke paden te laten volgen.
Publicatie 20 augustus
Recent macroeconomic data from the United States should worry us. Amid the reopening and the biggest fiscal and monetary stimulus in recent history, and with all the possible tailwinds from policy decisions, consumer confidence has plummeted to the lowest level since 2016.
Retail sales have fallen sharply again in July, and the employment or industrial production data are far more than disappointing considering the level of stimulus and that GDP has returned to pre-pandemic level.
The use of industrial capacity, at 76%, is 4% below the average for the 1972-2020 period, and the labor participation rate, at 61.6%, has been stagnant for ten months and at 1980 levels.
The total savings rate as a percentage of disposable income has almost vanished from 33.8% to 9.4%.
Let’s put it in the context of a re-opening that has been in place for more than a year, a fiscal stimulus equivalent to three trillion dollars, and a monetary stimulus of 1.7 trillion dollars in 2021. The United States would go into a severe recession if it were not “doping ” the economy.
We cannot ignore the slowdown in China, where even the official data reflect a slowdown in the expansion process. If we take the typical difference between official and real data, we will see that, for example, gross capital formation has slowed down rapidly in 2021.
This is important because the entire recovery of the eurozone relies on fiscal and monetary impulse in addition to the European Recovery Fund.
The recovery of the euro area keeps some positive momentum simply because it is more delayed. The GDP of the euro area is still 4% below pre-pandemic levels (7% in the case of Spain) and employment is well below the levels of comparable economies, considering that we must add the workers in furloughed jobs that are still above six million while unemployment, at 7.1% estimated for August, is recovering slowly.
Verder lezen van dit artikel kan hier, op het Blog van Daniel Lacallle
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