So remind me, why will clients continue to do business with Goldman Sachs?
I know, it is a stupid question; investors and corporations will continue to do business with Goldman even after the bank has been charged with an alleged fraud for the same reasons they always have: because they hope, like every gambler, to beat stacked odds and because they flatter themselves that they are not the sucker at the table.
Don’t count on the profitability of the financial services sector as a leading indicator of anything. Well, anything other than financial services compensation.
A stupendous recovery in profits is underway at U.S. banks, brokerages and insurance companies, but the big picture shows that for the rest of us that rebound may prove sterile.
Data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis shows the sector had an absolutely cracking 2009, with profits rising in the fourth quarter by 240 percent against the same period a year before.
It will take more than a recovery in housing to reignite inflation in the U.S. economy, a state of play that argues for the continued threat of deflation and a Federal Reserve that is pinned to the mat, unable, even if willing, to raise interest rates.
The strong disinflationary forces in the United States are deeper and wider than a simple, if bloody, aftermath of a housing bubble.
Many took encouragement from a report by Reis Inc that apartment rents in the United States rose in the first quarter for the first time in a year and a half even as the apartment vacancy rate stayed at an all-time high of 8 percent. Besides indicating a possible recovery in jobs and household formation, which tracks jobs, there is a hope that stabilization in housing values and rents would remove a powerful disinflationary force.
It will take more than a recovery in housing to reignite inflation in the U.S. economy, a state of play that argues for the continued threat of deflation and a Federal Reserve that is pinned to the mat, unable, even if willing, to raise interest rates.
The strong disinflationary forces in the United States are deeper and wider than a simple, if bloody, aftermath of a housing bubble.
Many took encouragement from a report by Reis Inc that apartment rents in the United States rose in the first quarter for the first time in a year and a half even as the apartment vacancy rate stayed at an all-time high of 8 percent. Besides indicating a possible recovery in jobs and household formation, which tracks jobs, there is a hope that stabilization in housing values and rents would remove a powerful disinflationary force.
It was the strongest U.S. employment report in three years and yet just beneath the surface was plenty of evidence that inflation pressure from the labor market is more of a fond hope than a real threat.
Nonagricultural payrolls rose in March by 162,000, the most in exactly three years and for only the third time since the recession began later that year. Of course, the United States probably needs about 200,000 new jobs a month just to bring unemployment down by a point in a year’s time. No sooner do jobs become available than sidelined would-be workers start seeking employment again. That kept the unemployment rate at 9.7 percent, while the key broader measure of the unemployed, the underemployed, the discouraged and the marginally attached — those game for work but unable to find it, get to it or find child-care while they go — hit a whopping 16.9 percent.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why, in an economic recovery with a growing job market, average hourly earnings actually fell by two cents an hour, or 0.1 percent from the month before.
It was the strongest U.S. employment report in three years and yet just beneath the surface was plenty of evidence that inflation pressure from the labor market is more of a fond hope than a real threat.
Nonagricultural payrolls rose in March by 162,000, the most in exactly three years and for only the third time since the recession began later that year. Of course, the United States probably needs about 200,000 new jobs a month just to bring unemployment down by a point in a year’s time. No sooner do jobs become available than sidelined would-be workers start seeking employment again. That kept the unemployment rate at 9.7 percent, while the key broader measure of the unemployed, the underemployed, the discouraged and the marginally attached — those game for work but unable to find it, get to it or find child-care while they go — hit a whopping 16.9 percent.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why, in an economic recovery with a growing job market, average hourly earnings actually fell by two cents an hour, or 0.1 percent from the month before.
That whole Age of Frugality thing didn’t last long, did it?
U.S. real personal consumption grew in February at a respectable 0.3 percent clip, the fifth straight such monthly rise, a fact widely greeted as news that the recovery is on course. The fly in this tasty soup, however, is income, which in real terms didn’t increase at all, not even by one tenth of a percent.
American’s did this neat trick — spending more while earning the same — the old fashioned way: they cut back on luxuries … like saving.
Savings as a percentage of disposable personal income fell to 3.1 percent from 3.4 percent the month before and down from a recent peak of 6.4 percent in May 2009. In fact, the last time the savings rate was lower was October 2008 when a market maelstrom was convincing so many people, apparently falsely, that something rather dangerous and important was wrong with the economy. In real terms, consumption is only very slightly below where it peaked in 2007.
That whole Age of Frugality thing didn’t last long, did it?
U.S. real personal consumption grew in February at a respectable 0.3 percent clip, the fifth straight such monthly rise, a fact widely greeted as news that the recovery is on course. The fly in this tasty soup, however, is income, which in real terms didn’t increase at all, not even by one tenth of a percent.
American’s did this neat trick — spending more while earning the same — the old fashioned way: they cut back on luxuries … like saving.
Savings as a percentage of disposable personal income fell to 3.1 percent from 3.4 percent the month before and down from a recent peak of 6.4 percent in May 2009. In fact, the last time the savings rate was lower was October 2008 when a market maelstrom was convincing so many people, apparently falsely, that something rather dangerous and important was wrong with the economy. In real terms, consumption is only very slightly below where it peaked in 2007.
Sometimes it’s what doesn’t happen that is most illuminating.
When Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg first slashed executive compensation at U.S. firms that benefited most from a government bailout the cry was that this would hurt these weakened firms when they could least afford it, as the best and brightest would leave for better money elsewhere, where the free market still ruled.
Well, the door didn’t hit them on their way out, but mostly because they stayed rooted to their desk chairs.
Feinberg evaluated the compensation of 104 top executives at affected companies in 2009, reducing pay for most to levels far below financial industry norms and their own former earnings.
Yet here we are in 2010 and about 85 percent are still working for the same firms, still toiling for the kinds of wages that may well make them wish they’d gone into the law rather than finance. Remember all those articles in glossy magazines about how impossible it is to make it in New York City on $500,000 a year?
Rather than inflation, it may turn out that economic volatility is the true test facing equities in the years to come.
Coming in the wake of an almost unprecedented set of circumstances and policies, the outlook for growth and inflation is extremely murky. For equity investors that means there is far less certainty over both the outlook for profits and how to value them than they had grown used to in the 25 years to the onset of the current crisis.
It is not simply that very low interest rates and bloated central bank balance sheets may cause inflation. That is true, but it is also possible that Japanese-style deflation takes hold. There is a higher chance now of wild swings in inflation, growth and monetary policy than any time in the post-World-War-Two period.
