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With the debate in the US shifting to deficit reduction, as in the UK, policy-makers are dooming us to a slow, jobless recovery
Last week, the commerce department released data on GDP for the first quarter that showed the economy growing at just a 1.8% annual rate. This brought the growth rate over the last year to just 2.3%, slightly less than the 2.5% growth rate needed to keep pace with the growth in the labour force.
It might have been expected that this closely watched number set off all sorts of alarm bells about the weakness of the recovery. Instead, it was buried in the business pages with the headlines dismissing the weakness as the result of bad weather.
The weather line should not have provided much consolation. Even a generous assessment of the impact of weather would not lead to a counterfactual of more than 2.7% growth for the quarter. This would raise the rate for the last year to around 2.5%, still a dismal pace for an economy recovering from a steep downturn.
The professional excuse makers seem to rely heavily on the weather. The drop in fourth quarter GDP in the UK was also attributed to the weather. But these folks apparently forgot that weather-related weakness should mean a sharp bounceback in the following period.
With the first quarter growth in the UK just offsetting the fourth-quarter decline, it is clear that weather does not explain economic weakness there, nor can weather explain the poor growth in the United States. The basic problem is that the US economy, like the UK economy, simply lacks much momentum and is likely to weaken further as the impact of the deficit cutting is increasingly felt.
Those boasting of the strong recovery have touted the fact that the unemployment rate has fallen by 1.3 percentage points since its peak in October of 2009. However, this decline is almost entirely attributable to people dropping out of the labour force, rather than people finding jobs. The employment to population ratio, the percentage of the population that holds jobs, is the same today as it was in October of 2009 and only 0.3 percentage points above the low hit last fall. In short, we have not been creating jobs at a sufficiently rapid pace to bring down the unemployment rate.
While the picture to date is bad, it is likely to get worse over the next year. The runup in oil prices is directly pulling money out of people's pockets every time they go the gas station. This could explain the fact of a sharp increase in weekly unemployment claims over the last three weeks to levels that are inconsistent with job growth.
In addition, house prices are again falling at double-digit annual rates, now that the first time buyers' tax credit has expired. At the current pace, homeowners stand to lose another $2tn in equity by the end of 2011, compared with the tax credit-induced peak reached in the summer of 2010. This will further depress consumption, as well as leading to more problems for banks due to underwater mortgages.
With the budget cutters reducing expenditures at all levels of government, there is yet another factor depressing growth. Finally, there are both personal and business tax cuts that are scheduled to expire at the end of 2011. These may be extended in some form, but if not, this will also slow growth over the next year.
If economic policy was driven by economic reality, then there would be a serious debate in Washington right now about possible routes for boosting demand. This would include calls for more fiscal stimulus, more aggressive monetary policy and a reduction in the value of the dollar in order to boost net exports.
Unfortunately, none of these items are on the table. The debate in Congress is over the best way to reduce the deficit "“ in other words, how much and how quickly we want to slow growth further. At his press conference last week, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke essentially swore off any further monetary stimulus and expressed his willingness to fight inflation that is not there. And no one in Washington seem seems to understand that amount we import is affected by the price of imports, so lowering the value of the dollar never enters the discussion.
This is a great recipe for continued slow growth and high unemployment. And few in Congress or the media seem to give a damn.
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See also
22 Apr 2011
US debt and China: a tale of two deficits
22 Feb 2011
Further fiscal folly
6 Nov 2009
America's jobless chill
8 Nov 2010
Ben Bernanke's too timid QE2
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2 May 2011 2:40PM
Blame George Bush and Gordon Brown.
And never elect a person whose initials are GB ever again...
2 May 2011 2:44PM
Too bad. Don't spend what you can't afford by running deficits, and these problems go away.
2 May 2011 2:46PM
The bankers get all.Parliament spends all.Cameron neglects all.The people pay all.Osborne takes all.
2 May 2011 2:47PM
As long as the Bankers are making a good profit, keeping up their bonuses and telling us we've never had it so good, everything will be dandy.For every Madoff theres a billion people doing a longer sentance with no guarantee of three square meals a day and a bunk to idle away the time.
2 May 2011 2:48PM
There is a deliberate strategy in effect to strip working people of their assets (via ultra-low interest rates and various types of loan sharking) and cut off all sources of financial and material relief to the unemployed and their dependents so that they are forced to accept whatever work is given them under whatever working conditions and at whatever pay rate the corporations offer them. It's as simple as that.
2 May 2011 2:48PM
I just wish the political classes will wholly admit that the unbalanced concentration on neo-liberalism in the past three decades has to be replaced with a more balanced middle way between capital and labour.We see what happens when various sectors are unregulated (the unions in the 70's,the bankers now) and given too much power and carte blanche to do their thing (excessive socialism,excessive capitalism).In the midst of such unrelented cutting,a new consensus surely has to emerge soon.
2 May 2011 2:51PM
"The employment to population ratio, the percentage of the population that holds jobs, is the same today as it was in October of 2009 and only 0.3 percentage points above the low hit last fall. In short, we have not been creating jobs at a sufficiently rapid pace to bring down the unemployment rate."
Even adopting Baker's own attempts to paint the figures as being terrible, the last sentence is refuted by the one preceding it. Unemployment is falling. Not as fast as might be desirable of course, but still falling. this is the opposite of his repeated predictions.
The solution of Baker and his fellow travellers is always the same: boost demand by higher government spending funded by a more borrowing.
Now everyone agrees that short term growth can be boosted in this way. Nobody denies it. Why then don't governments always just borrow as much as they possibly can and spend in this way?
Because the downside of a loose fiscal policy is that it will require a tighter monetary policy (ie higher interest rates). Higher costs of borrowing mean higher costs for business and lower growth.
It is all a question of balance. So where is Baker's careful considered analysis of where the balance should be struck, with evidence and figures, graphs and precedents?
There is none. All we get is the same mantra. "Borrow more and boost demand". That is simply not adequate economic analysis in the pages of a supposedly serious newspaper.
the paper thin consideration of UK specific conditions, whose problems he previously attributed to a house building boom (!), is simply embarrassing.
the Guardian can surely do better that Baker and Blanchflower.
2 May 2011 2:56PM
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