Employment growth still slow

For those still in doubt on whether the Fed should or should not raise interest rates, the news today send a clear message. Only 142K jobs created in August, and unemployment steady at 6.1%. BLS report here. Graph below shows monthly change in non-farm employment.

Employment, as noted before, is above the pre-recession level, but not by much, and given the growth of population, it's not surprising that the labor market is not doing particularly well. So inflation hawks have clearly misplaced expectations.

The US Net International Investment Position (IIP)

The graph below shows the Net International Investment Position (IIP) as a share of GDP for the US, since 1976. The last report by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is available here. Note that by the first quarter of the year the IIP corresponded to US$ 5.5 trillion, or slightly more than 30% of GDP.

The IIP position has been negative since the late 1980s, which is the reason why economists argue that the US is a debtor country. The negative position follows as a result of the persistent current account (CA) deficits, which imply that foreigners accumulate dollars and dollar denominated assets. A negative IIP means that foreigners have more financial claims on residents than vice versa, and is seen often as a problem for most countries.

The conventional view also suggests that CA deficits are not dangerous if they finance domestic investment, which leads to growth, and presumably higher exports, even though this is often not explained by mainstream authors that tend to forget that most countries borrow in foreign currency. In this case, in which the CA deficits allow for higher exports in the future, a negative IIP is seen as sustainable. On the other hand, if the CA is used to finance consumption, then the negative IIP would be unsustainable. Many analysts think that the US IIP is not sustainable and from time to time someone suggests that a run of the dollar is possible. For example, Paul Krugman famously predicted that a run on the dollar would eventually occur, what he termed a 'Wile E. Coyote moment,' in which agents holding dollars would finally get that the floor was gone, and the dollar would depreciate sharply (this was before the Lehman's collapse and the run for dollar denominated assets, and the appreciation of the dollar; subsequently the gradual depreciation of the dollar returned, but so far no Wile E. Coyote moment).

Some mainstream authors are also puzzled by the fact the US, in spite of having persistent CA deficits and a large and negative IIP, has consistently had a positive net investment income position. In other words, interest and profits resulting from holding foreign assets has exceeded the payments of income to owners of US assets. Hausmann and Sturzenegger argued creatively (let's call it that) that the reason for this 'paradox' is that the CA does not measure well the net international investment position, since insurance and liquidity services go unaccounted. Their adjusted measure to add those invisible services, which they refer to as 'dark matter'* would explain the paradox, and why the US IIP is sustainable after all.

Note, however, that once one takes into account that the US holds the reserve/vehicle currency much of the discussion about the dangers of the CA deficits, the sustainability of IIP and the paradox of the positive net investment income position sort of vanishes. US debts are in dollars, which implies that there is no possibility of default in a fiat system. Chartalism holds in the open economy too.

The US does not need to export to obtain dollars, and how it uses the accumulation of financial claims on the US by foreigners is not crucial for sustainability. Holding the key currency does NOT come without consequences, but those are not the ones often suggested by the mainstream. Certainly given US policy choices there has been a loss of industrial jobs in the Rust Belt, yet as noted in another post, not with a significant loss in terms of technological advantage for US corporations. The consequence, thus, of the hegemonic position of the dollar, together with other policy choices (e.g. financial deregulation, lower taxes for the wealthy, deregulation of labor markets, etc.) has been one that affected the balance between labor and capital domestically.

Also, there is no need for dark matter, or other neologisms, to understand why the US has positive net investment income flows. By definition, the key currency is the risk free asset, and hence investments denominated in other currencies must pay a risk premium. Yes, sure BOP accounts are imperfect, like NIPA or any other measure of the economy. But there is no need to revamp the BOP accounts to get that the US CA deficit and the negative IIP are not really unsustainable.

* Hausmann has a flair for coining terms for ideas or problems that were well known by heterodox authors, and to incorporate them inconspicuously in the mainstream discourse. He refers to the notion that developing countries cannot borrow long term in their own currency as "the original sin." Note that the original sin is exactly the notion suggested by Prebisch, Kaldor, Thirlwall and others, that argue that since these countries cannot borrow internationally, and must pay with exports in the long run, then the CA becomes a constraint for economic growth.

How well has Brazil done during the Workers' Party administration?

First, let me be absolutely clear. I do in general favor the current administration in Brazil, as much as other left of center governments in South America. But I do understand some of the critiques from the left (not the right wing conservatives that are against social spending and more redistribution of income). A good example of the limits to the current experience in the region are provided by the Brazilian case.

Recently a post (in Portuguese; full disclosure one of the authors is a friend) went viral in Brazil. It showed how much Brazil has grown during Lula/Dilma, from the Workers' Party (PT, in Portuguese) compared to the rest of the world, and advanced economies, and the same exercise done for the Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC), from the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB in Portuguese) period.

Clearly, the FHC period (1995-2002) is worse than the Lula/Dilma period (2003-2014), in which the last year is an estimate (all data, as in the viral post, from the IMF's World Economic Outlook). In the Workers' Party period Brazil was growing faster and keeping pace with the rest of the world, and catching up, growing faster than advanced economies.

However, as noted in this blog several times (Dean Baker has been one of the few others that noted this in the US; part of debunking the BRICS myth) Brazil has not grown really that fast. Instead of comparing with advanced economies and the rest of the world, the picture changes a bit if one does it with developing countries, as shown below.

Note that while it is true, as it should be, that Brazil catches up with the advanced economies during the Lula/Dilma period and not so during the FHC one, it is also the case that the Brazilian performance when compared to developing countries is far from stellar. In that sense, there is a certain frustration about the lost possibilities. Mind you, conservative views that Brazil needs to return to more rigid fiscal surpluses, and tighter inflation targeting (presumably with an independent central bank, and higher rates of interest) are NOT the solution. But that is the topic of another post, I guess.

PS: I should note that there is also a frustration on part of the left in the US with Obama, and the notion that an opportunity was lost. In that respect, there is a similarity between left of center critics of the Workers' Party and the US counterparts.

Riccardo Bellofiore on why Italy’s stagnation could be future for Euro Zone

From The Guardian

This summer Italy fell into a triple-dip recession. After the 2008/09 collapse, the economy stagnated, heading back into recession during 2011 and never really recovering. The philosophy of Giulio Tremonti, who was the economic minister at the time, was to wait and see, until speculation killed Berlusconi’s government. Prime ministers Mario Monti and Enrico Letta followed Brussels’ self-defeating diktat for fiscal rigour, but even with moderate deficits the public debt/GDP ratio soared. The situation remained under control only thanks to the zero rate of interest and rhetoric by the European central bank president, Mario Draghi. Then came along Matteo Renzi, and Italian economic policy was all talk, talk, talk. While turning the screw of authoritarian parliamentary and electoral reforms, future lower taxes and liberalisations are promised to compensate for public cuts and to attract foreign investments. The €80 monthly tax break to lower-paid workers did not raise household consumption, and was instead spent on tariffs and local taxes. Yet in the past few weeks the outlook has changed, with 2014 second-quarter data showing France flat and Germany experiencing negative growth. Greece, Spain and Portugal registered rosier figures only because they were recovering from severe austerity. The eurozone cannot but be driven by the three biggest economies alone. This is a continental crisis within an anaemic global economy. However, an old Gramscian truth about Italy must be remembered: the “backwardness” of its capitalism is paradigmatic. Europe’s exit from the crisis needs the same policies that Italy needs, and without them Italy’s stagnation is the future for the entire continent.

Read rest here.

Mundell-Fleming, Independent Central Banks, Inflation and Openness

Bucknell's Academic West (Bertrand Library in the background)

Teaching international finance this semester, after a long while. At Utah I taught mostly intermediate macro and Latin American Development for undergrads (and macro and history of thought for graduate students), and the eventual elective. But here the course was up for grabs, so to speak. Decided to use Peter Montiel's International Macroeconomics, since his books always provide competent presentations of the mainstream views, plus having worked at the IMF and World Bank, he always tries to cover real problems with plenty of developing country examples.

The limitation of the book is, as it should be expected, that the mainstream analytical view is, as Montiel's (p. x) says: "a generalized and modernized [sic] version of the original Mundell-Fleming model." The book does present in the last chapter the 'modern' intertemporal approach to the current account. In a later post I'll discuss the limitations of the Mundell-Fleming model, but for those interested check this paper by Serrano and Summa. In other words, Montiel's book can present the mainstream views, but lacks any critical perspective, which is not uncommon, but certainly problematic given the poor state of the mainstream understanding of how the economy works.

It is illustrative of the lack of alternatives in the book, the presentation of the relation between openness and inflation. Montiel's follows the evidence on an inverse relation between openness (that can be measured in many ways: import share, imports plus exports over GDP, etc.) and inflation presented in David Romer's well-known paper (see here). Montiel argues that in closed economies governments might tend to run fiscal deficits, that if monetized, would lead to inflation. In a more open economy, the higher deficits and inflation would lead to higher rates of interest, since international creditors faced with a risky government would demand a higher premium. In this context, "the higher interest rates that the government has to pay would tend to discourage excessively expansionary fiscal policies, thus reducing pressures on central banks to expand the money supply." If the central bank is more autonomous or independent from the Treasury then you should expect also less inflation (that would be Bernanke's explanation for the Great Moderation; here).

Many problems, as you can see. Yes, for Montiel inflation is caused by excess demand (fiscal deficits) and by increasing money supply, which seems to be what the central bank controls (let alone that all central banks control really the rate of interest). Worse, in a sense, is the notion that fiscal deficits in domestic currency (presumably, since nothing is said), may cause foreign investors to punish the government. Note that what should have investors concerned would be the current account surplus (which provides foreign reserves) and the amount of foreign reserves held by the central bank. The evidence on interest rates and fiscal deficits, by the way, is less than forthcoming for Montiel's story (see here).

A simple alternative suggests that inflation more often than not is caused by cost pressures, rather than excess demand, and that two of the main sources of cost pressures are the prices of imported goods and wage pressures. In a more open economy, in which firms are faced with competition from foreign firms, and workers might be afraid of losing their jobs, then wage resistance might be subdued. Note that over the last few decades unionization rates have declined and that also constrains the ability of workers to demand higher wages (see here). In this case, lower inflation in the globalized economy has been predicated on a weaker labor force that faces more international competition, and is more willing to accept stagnant wages. Inequality and stagnant wages, rather then well-behaved governments and independent central banks are behind the Great Moderation in this story.

Two ex-graduate students of mine, Perry and Cline (yes, someone was paying attention after all), teamed up and provided some empirical evidence in favor of the alternative story (go here). If you want to see alternative views on inflation, implicit in this discussion, go to the linked posts and papers here.

Ben Fine on British Coal Industry's Contribution To Work of Paul Sweezy

My research has delved me into the plethora of work produced by the 'Monthly Review School'. Interestingly enough, I came across this article by Ben Fine, which I found to be quite illuminating. 

From the abstract:

Paul Sweezy has been a central figure in the understanding and development of Marxist political economy both in the United States and more widely in the West. For a long period, much like his counterparts in the United Kingdom, Maurice Dobb and Ronald Meek, his was almost a lone voice along with his close collaborators, most notably Paul Baran. Much has changed in the last twenty years with the renewed intellectual interest in Marxism following the student activisim of the sixties-so much that Marxism has even attained the status of academic respectability. This has meant that whilst there was always opposition to the Sweezy problematic (as represented by the “Monopoly Capital” or Monthly Review school), only in recent years has it been substantially criticised and counterbalanced by alternative schools of Marxism. In particular, there has been a lessening sympathy for underconsumptionist theory; for the notion that monopoly and competition are inversely related; for the validity of the concept of the potential surplus and its compatibility with value theory; and, as a more general aspect of the latter, that monopoly and competition and accumulation can be analyzed independently of the labour (value-producing) process, whatever the merits of Braverman’s (1974) seminal contribution. In addition, unfortunately on the margins of political economy, rather than its occupying a central position of debate as within the often supposedly separated discipline of economic history, Sweezy has been a prime mover in the debate on the transition from feudalism to capitalism’ which has subsequently given way to the “Brenner Debate” [...] The purpose of this article could hardly be to provide a “political economy of Sweezy.” For this, the present author cannot claim adequate acquaintance with Sweezy ’s intellectual and political biography. Indeed, here we rely exclusively upon the articles of Sweezy that have appeared in the academic journals. As a study of the evolution of Sweezy’s political economy, we have made use then of only a few of the pieces of the jigsaw that make up his intellectual biography, although we also have available some overall picture of the “final product,” as represented in his mature works.

Read rest here (subscription required).

Tim Dickinson on The Biggest Tax Scam Ever

Today, Tim Dickinson was on Democracy Now talking about the ways in which US Corporations have engineered a global scam to avoid tax obligations.  His article in Rolling Stone provides extensive details.

By Tim Dickinson

In July, the American pharmaceutical giant AbbVie, maker of the world's top-selling drug – the arthritis treatment Humira – reached a blockbuster deal to acquire European rival Shire, best known for the attention-deficit medication Adderall. The merger was cheered by Wall Street, not for what the deal will do to advance pharmaceutical science, but because it will empower the bigger firm, AbbVie, to renounce its U.S. citizenship. At $55 billion, the AbbVie deal is the largest in a cavalcade of corporate "inversions." A loophole in American tax law permits companies with just 20 percent foreign ownership to reincorporate abroad, which means that if a big U.S. firm acquires a smaller company located in a tax haven, it can then "invert" – that is, become a subsidiary of its foreign-based affiliate – and kiss a huge share of its IRS obligations goodbye. AbbVie shareholders will continue to control 75 percent of the company, which will still be managed by executives outside Chicago. But the merged company will now file its tax returns on the island of Jersey – a speck of land in the English Channel, where Shire is incorporated. AbbVie, which racked up more than $10 billion in Humira sales last year, will slash its effective corporate tax rate from 22 percent to 13. The cost to the U.S. Treasury? Possibly as much as $1.3 billion by the year 2020.

Read rest here, and for an article by David Cay Johnston on the issue, see here.

Leo Panitch on how the US still decides the future of global capitalism

Leo Panitch offers an antidote to the growing consensus that the new development bank launched by the BRICS manifests a significant challenge to US hegemony.

From The Guardian:

International attention has been diverted away from this year’s G20 meetings in Australia by the declaration from the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, at their meeting in Fortaleza Brazil this July, that they would launch a new “Brics bank”. Created by the US Treasury in the wake of the Asian financial crisis at the end of the 1990s, the G20 was designed to get the major “emerging market” states to take responsibility alongside the G7 for the “new international financial architecture”. This was seen as providing legitimacy for the continuing central role of the US in superintending a greatly expanded but increasingly volatile global capitalism

Read rest here.

Elise Gould on Why America’s Workers Need Faster Wage Growth

In the previous post, see here, Matias shared an EPI video on the need for significant wage growth to curb inequality, specifically starting with raising the minimum wage. As a follow up, below is from a briefing paper by EPI economist Elise Gould.

By Elise Gould

The last year has been a poor one for American workers’ wages. Comparing the first half of 2014 with the first half of 2013, real (inflation-adjusted) hourly wages fell for workers in nearly every decile—even for those with a bachelor’s or advanced degree. Of course, this is not a new story. Comparing the first half of 2014 with the first half of 2007 (the last period of reasonable labor market health before the Great Recession), hourly wages for the vast majority of American workers have been flat or falling. And even since 1979, the vast majority of American workers have seen their hourly wages stagnate or decline—even though decades of consistent gains in economy-wide productivity have provided ample room for wage growth. The poor performance of American workers’ wages in recent decades—particularly their failure to grow at anywhere near the pace of overall productivity—is the country’s central economic challenge. Indeed, it’s hard to think of a more important economic development in recent decades. It is at the root of the large rise in overall income inequality that has attracted so much attention in recent years. A range of other economic challenges—reducing poverty, increasing mobility, and spurring a more complete recovery from the Great Recession—also rely largely on boosting hourly wage growth for the vast majority.

Read rest here.

If you care about inequality, raise the minimum wage

From the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Yes wages in general should grow, starting with the minimum wage. A no brainer.

Gerald Epstein on the Fed Signaling a Possible Policy Shift

Jerry Epstein was interviewed by the Real News Network. Among other things he said that:

"Typically in the past the Federal Reserve has been inviting a lot of investment bankers and financial market economists to the Jackson Hole Conference. This year's a little different. Janet Yellen and the Fed people didn't invite so many investment bankers. Instead, they invited a bunch of labor economists, which was a big change. Nevertheless, despite signals of an apparent shift in attention towards bringing unemployment down, Fed policy still remains toothless in helping out working Americans."

Full transcripts here.

Amato and Fantacci on reforming international money

New Cambridge Journal of Economics paper by Massimo Amato and Luca Fantacci.

From the abstract:

In the face of the current crisis, there is growing demand for regulation, often invoked in terms of a ‘return to Bretton Woods’. The Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 was indeed the last explicit attempt to define a rule for international settlements. In fact, post-World War II currency negotiations gave place to a confrontation between two alternative visions of the international monetary system. The two plans set forth by the U.S. and by the U.K. embody two alternative principles: the first aims at producing international liquidity on the basis of a reserve currency (White’s plan for an International Stabilization Fund); the second aims at providing a pure means and measure for the multilateral clearing of current accounts in the form of a currency unit (Keynes’s plan for an International Clearing Union). The former has undoubtedly prevailed. However, it is questionable whether it is the most appropriate way to manage global imbalances. Indeed, the principle eventually embodied in the Bretton Woods system, and persisting even after its demise, tends to identify money with a reserve asset, making possible, and even necessary, the accumulation of global imbalances, despite original intentions to reabsorb them. On the contrary, the principle that inspired the alternative plan was intended to deprive money of the character of a reserve asset, thus making it the rule for international exchanges, rather than an object of regulation among others. This paper outlines the two principles both in historical perspective and in the perspective of future reforms, particularly in relation to the recent proposal by the governor of the People’s Bank of China to go back to the principles of the Keynes plan.

Read rest here (subscription required).

Labor productivity comparisons

A simplified graph with the GDP per worker employed in 2013 (i.e. labor productivity) in US dollars converted to Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is shown below.

Note that it is better than per capita income (which is more of a measure of living standards) as a measure of the economic potential of an economy, and that labor productivity avoids the pitfalls of Total Factor Productivity (TFP). The measure in PPP rather than market exchange rates distorts things a bit (but that is another issue). The graph with all the countries, and the link to the Conference Board data set here.

PS: Picture changes a little with productivity per hours worked, which is also available. For example, Norway would be slightly more productive if we used the labor productivity per hour measure.