The Great Debate UK

from Anooja Debnath:

When it comes to recessions, 40 is the new 50

If it were about age, 40-somethings would cringe. But it seems a dead certainty that 40 now means 50 -- or even higher -- when it comes to predicting the chances of a recession taking place.

Going by past Reuters polls of economists, every time the probability hits 40 percent, the recession's already started or is perilously close to doing so.

After the brief recovery period from the Great Recession, Reuters once again started surveying economists several months ago on the chances of developed economies stumbling back into the muck.

As the data get nastier and euro zone politicians wrangle over the sovereign debt mess, the probability goes higher. Just not high enough or fast enough.

The probability that Britain slides back into recession hit 40 percent in the Reuters poll this week, up from one in three last month.

The last time that happened was in July 2008, a few months before U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed. The British economy contracted by 2 percent that quarter, its second contraction of 2008. And we all know what happened next. If 40 is the new 50, we're in it.

"It is a very big thing to say we are going into recession ... it is one of those things people are cautious sticking their necks out about," said Alan Clarke, who said there’s a 75 percent chance of that happening.

from MacroScope:

The perils of predicting BoE policy

As we’ve noted extensively, economists often get it wrong. Leaving aside their collective failure to recognise an impending global recession, you might recall a shock interest rate hike from the Bank of England in January 2007.

This was another event that almost every economist polled by Reuters failed to spot, and there are signs that four years on, economists might be setting themselves up for a similar shock.

The consensus from the last Reuters BoE poll last week showed interest rates would stay on hold into the fourth quarter, even though UK money markets have priced in a 100 percent chance of a rate hike by May. Since the January meeting, some of the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee members have publicly stated their determination to fight strong inflation.

But going back to January 2007, the only analyst out of the 50 polled by Reuters who predicted that shock rate hike was Simon Ward, chief economist at Henderson Global Investors. If the MPC does indeed flay analysts’ consensus this year by hiking rates before April, he stands to repeat his 2007 feat by being the only economist in the last poll to forecast a hike in the first quarter.

“I have been a bit mystified as to why other people haven’t shifted (their views) as inflation figures have really shot up over the last few months,” Ward told Reuters.

He suspects a somewhat dovish speech last month from BoE Governor Mervyn King wrong-footed economists, based on the presumption that King wouldn’t have sounded so dovish unless he was confident that rates would stay on hold for a long time.

“I think that interpretation was incorrect, and King has been outvoted in the past. It’s not like the U.S., where there’s a certain amount of pressure to follow the chairman’s lead,” said Ward.

from MacroScope:

Banking on a Portuguese bailout?

Reuters polls of economists over the last few weeks have come up with some pretty firm conclusions about both Ireland and Portugal needing a bailout from the European Union.

Portuguese 10-year government bond yields have hovered stubbornly above 7 percent since the Irish bailout announcement, hitting a euro-lifetime high and giving ammunition to those who say Lisbon will be forced into a bailout.

And of those who hold that view, it’s clear that bank economists have been most vocal in expecting Ireland and Portugal to seek outside help.

Take last week’s poll in which economists said Portugal would follow Ireland in applying for EU funds. Bank-based economists who expected a Portuguese bailout outnumbered those who didn’t almost three-to-one. For non-bank economists – those working at research houses, brokers and wealth management firms – the margin was only two-to-one.

This division was even more marked in the Irish bailout poll we ran three weeks ago. Bank-based economists expecting an Irish bailout outnumbered those who didn’t more than two-to-one. Our sample of non-bank economists were split almost evenly on the subject.

Interestingly, market makers and primary dealers – or banks mandated by government debt agencies to deal their new government bond issues – were staunchest in expecting Irish and Portuguese bailouts.

Of the seven economists polled by Reuters who work for primary dealers of Portuguese debt, six said Lisbon would need to apply for a bailout. For analysts representing primary dealers of Irish debt, four out of five said a bailout was imminent.

from The Great Debate:

Why economists are part of the problem

Charles Ferguson is the director of Inside Job, a documentary about the financial crisis. The opinions expressed are his own.

Both Glenn Hubbard and Laura Tyson (pictured above, left to right) have played major roles in American economic policy, and both also, unfortunately, exemplify the disturbing, opaque conflicts of interest that pervade the economics discipline.

Over the last thirty years, academic economics has been penetrated by special interests, particularly financial services, in the same way that America’s political and regulatory systems have been compromised by campaign contributions and the revolving door.  In fact, the “revolving door” is now a triangular trip between industry, government, and academia.

Prominent economists are now routinely paid to testify in antitrust cases, criminal trials, and regulatory proceedings; to testify in Congress; to give speeches to the industries and firms they study; to serve on boards of directors and as advisors; and to write supposedly objective analyses of industries, companies and policies. These payments and the conflicts of interest they generate are rarely disclosed, except when required by Federal law.

These activities are not marginal; they are now, literally, a billion dollar industry, managed by firms such as the Law and Economics Consulting Group (LECG), The Analysis Group, Compass Lexecon, Charles River Associates, and others.  Professors’ income from such groups often dwarfs their academic salaries.  That neither universities nor most publications require such disclosure was one of the most shocking facts I learned while making Inside Job, my documentary on the financial crisis.

From 2001 to 2003, Glenn Hubbard was chair of the Council of Economic Advisors in the George W. Bush administration.  He was a major force behind the Bush administration’s tax cuts, over half of whose benefits went to the wealthiest 1% of the American population.  Since becoming dean of Columbia Business School, Hubbard has written and spoken widely on financial regulation, and has served as co-chair of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, whose other co-chair is John Thornton, who is chairman of the Brookings Institution – and the former president of Goldman Sachs.  Hubbard’s recent or current affiliations include but are not limited to Met Life ($250,000 per year), Capmark (a major commercial mortgage firm during the bubble, which went bankrupt in 2009), KKR, and Black Rock.  In our on-camera interview, Hubbard refused to disclose his current consulting clients.

from MacroScope:

The octopus and the economists

What do an eight-legged creature in an aquarium in Germany and 74 economists have in common? The consensus view that Spain would claim the World Cup -- until the economists, as they so often do, changed their minds.

If World Cup 2010 goes down as one of the most unpredictable and exciting competitions in recent history, bringing underdogs Holland and Spain to the final showdown, what was hopelessly routine was watching so-called expert opinion converge around the safest bet. At least among financial professionals, who have done so well of late predicting the future.

When Reuters first surveyed economists and forecasters in May on which team would be kissing the golden grail on July 11, 2010  in South Africa, it made for interesting reading. Spain would take it -- by a narrow margin, it has to be said -- followed by Brazil, Argentina and England. Improbable probability analysis, perhaps, but not boring.

Then as various teams got knocked out of the competition -- former champions Italy, France, and England -- in a miserable and well-deserved defeat to Germany, Reuters re-polled these same economists and a few more for good measure. And that's when they fell flat. Those brave forecasters slipped back to the easy choice, and as a group they picked Brazil. We all know what happened to them.

It's hard enough to accurately predict where GDP growth is headed, where a currency will trade, or where interest rates will go, let alone who's going to win a major sporting tournament. But what the economists should have done was go with their gut and hang on to their convictions instead of revising their views with each little new development, as they so often do.

But for all those last-minute changes, it has to be said the economists were better at it this time around than in 2006. Back then, fewer than 10 percent of them predicted Italy would win -- about the same proportion who managed to predict the biggest financial crisis in generations.