Japan sees quite a GDP contraction in spite of the Bank of Japan buying 8% of the equity market

Overnight the agenda for today was set by news out of the land of the rising sun or Nihon. Oh and I do not mean the effort to reproduce the plot line of the film Alien ( Gaijin) for those poor passengers on that quarantined cruise ship. It was this reported by the Asahi Shimbun.

Gross domestic product declined by a seasonally adjusted 1.6 percent in the quarter from the previous three months, or an annualized 6.3 percent, the Cabinet Office figures showed.

The contraction of 6.3 percent was far worse than expectations of many private-sector economists, who predicted a shrinkage of 4 percent or so.

Just to clarify the quarterly fall was 1.6% or using the Japanese style 6.3% in annualised terms. What they do not tell us is that this means that the Japanese economy was 0.4% smaller at the end of 2019 than it was at the end of 2018. So quite a reverse on the previous trend in 2019 which was for the annual rate of growth to pock up.

The Cause

Let me take you back to October 7th last year.

After twice being postponed by the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the consumption tax on Tuesday will rise to 10 percent from 8 percent, with the government maintaining that the increased burden on consumers is essential to boost social welfare programs and reduce the swelling national debt. ( The Japan Times )

I pointed out back then that I feared what the impact of this would be.

This is an odd move when we note the current malaise in the world economy which just gets worse as we note the fact that the Pacific region in particular is suffering. We looked at one facet of this last week as Australia cut interest-rates for the third time since the beginning of the summer.

As you can see this was a risky move and it came with something of an official denial of the economic impact.

 about a quarter of the ¥8 trillion cost of the 2014 hike, according to the government and the Bank of Japan.

The 2014 rise in the Consumption Tax ( in rough terms the equivalent of VAT in the UK and Europe) had hit the Japanese economy hard, so the official claim of that the new impact would be a quarter was something I doubted. Now let us return to the Asahi Shimbun this morning.

Japan’s economy shrank in the October-December period for the first time in five quarters, as the sales tax hike and natural disasters pummeled personal consumption, according to preliminary figures released on Feb. 17.

The exact numbers are below.

Personal consumption, which accounts for more than half of Japan’s GDP, grew by 0.5 percent in the July-September period.

But the figure plunged to minus 2.9 percent for the three months from October, when the government raised the consumption tax rate to 10 percent from 8 percent.

We had previously looked at the boost to consumption before the tax rise as electrical appliances in particular were purchased. This will have flattered the economic data for the third quarter of last year and raised the GDP growth rate. But as you can see the party has had quite a hangover. On its own this would have led to a 2.2% decline in quarterly GDP.

The spinning has continued apace.

Yasutoshi Nishimura, minister in charge of economic revitalization, gave a positive outlook for personal consumption in a statement released on Feb. 17.

“The margin of decline in personal consumption is likely to shrink,” he said.

As John Lennon points out in the song Getting Better.

It can’t get no worse

As ever there is a familiar scapegoat which is the weather.

Destructive typhoons that hit eastern Japan and the warmer winter also fueled the slowdown in personal spending, such as purchases of winter clothes.

Although as @Priapus has pointed out there was an impact on the Rugby World Cup and the Japanese Grand Prix.

Investment and Exports

These will be on people’s minds as we try to look forwards. According to the Asahi Shimbun the situation for investment is also poor.

Investment in equipment by businesses, for example, shrank by 3.7 percent, a sharp decline from a rise of 0.5 percent in the preceding quarter, while housing investment tumbled 3.7 percent from an increase of 1.2 percent.

New housing starts have also been waning since the tax hike.

Many companies’ business performances are deteriorating, particularly in the manufacturing sector.

The business investment fall was presumably in response to the trade war and the deteriorating conditions in the Pacific economy we looked at in the latter part of 2019 and of course predates the Corona Virus. By contrast the Bank of Japan like all central banks will be more concerned about the housing market.

Switching to trade itself the position appears brighter.

In contrast, external demand pushed up GDP by 0.5 percentage point.

But in fact this was due to imports falling by 2.6% so a negative and exports fell too albeit by a mere 0.1%. That pattern was repeated for the annual comparison as exports were 2.2% lower than a year before and imports 4.3% lower. It is one of the quirks of the way GDP is calculated that a fall in imports larger than a fall in exports boosts GDP in this instance by 0.4%. Thus the annual comparison would have been -0.8% without it.

Comment

Sometimes the numbers are eloquent in themselves. If we look at the pattern for private consumption in Japan we see that it fell from 306.2 trillion Yen to 291.6 trillion in the first half of 2014 as the first tax rise hit. Well on the same seasonally adjusted basis and 2011 basis it was 294 trillion Yen in the last quarter of 2019. If we allow for the fact that 2014 saw a tax based boost then decline then consumption in 2019 had barely exceeded what it was before the first tax rise before being knocked on the head again. Or if you prefer it has been groundhog day for consumption in Japan since 2013. That is awkward on two counts. Firstly the Japanese trade surplus was one of the economic world’s imbalances pre credit crunch and expanding consumption so that it imported more was the positive way out of it. Instead we are doing the reverse. Also one of the “lost decade” issues for Japan was weak consumption growth which has just got weaker.

This leaves the Japanese establishment in quite a pickle. The government has already announced one stimulus programme and is suggesting it may begin another. The catch is that you are then throwing away the gains to the fiscal position from the Consumption Tax rise. This poses a challenge to the whole Abenomics programme which intended to improve the fiscal position by fiscal stimulus leading to economic growth. I am sure you have spotted the problem here.

Next comes the Bank of Japan which may want to respond but how? For newer readers it has already introduced negative interest-rates ( -0.1%) and bought Japanese Government Bonds like it is a powered up Pac-Man to quote the Kaiser Chiefs, But the extent of its monetary expansionism is best highlighted by this from Etf Stream earlier.

According to the BoJ funds flow report for Q3 2019, the bank now owns some 8% of the entire Japanese equity market, mostly through the current ETF-buying programme.

Hence the nickname of The Tokyo Whale.They think the rate of buying has slowed but I think that’s an illusion because it buys on down days and as The Donald so regularly tweets equity markets are rallying. Just this morning the German Dax index has hit another all-time high. But what do they do next? They cannot buy that many more ETFs because they have bought so many already. As you can see they are already a material player in the equity market and they run the Japanese Government Bond market as that is what Yield Curve Control means. Ironically the latter has seen higher yields at times in an example of how water could run uphill rather than down if the Bank of Japan was in charge of it. It will be wondering how the Japanese Yen has pretty much ignored today’s news.

Also as a final point. More and more countries are finding it hard to raise taxes aren’t they?

Podcast

 

 

 

Since the first quarter of 2018 the GDP of Germany has grown by a mere 1%

This morning has brought what has become pretty much a set piece event as we finally got the full report on economic growth in Germany in 2019.

WIESBADEN – The gross domestic product (GDP) did not continue to rise in the fourth quarter of 2019 compared with the third quarter of 2019 after adjustment for price, seasonal and calendar variations.

Regular readers of my work will have been expecting that although it did create a small stir in itself. This is because many mainstream economists had forecast 0.1% meaning that they had declare the number was below expectations, when only the highest Ivory Tower could have missed what was happening. After all it was only last Friday we looked at the weak production and manufacturing data for December.

Annual Problems

One quarterly GDP number may not tell us much but the present German problem is highlighted if we look back as well.

In a year-on-year comparison, economic growth decelerated towards the end of the year. In the fourth quarter of 2019, the price adjusted GDP rose by 0.3% on the fourth quarter of 2018 (calendar-adjusted: +0.4%). A higher year-on-year increase of 1.1% had been recorded in the third quarter of 2019 (calendar-adjusted: +0.6%).

As you can see the year on year GDP growth rate has fallen to 0.4%. The preceding number had been flattered by the fall in the same period in 2018. Indeed if we look at the pattern for the year we see that even some good news via an upwards revision left us with a weak number.

After a dynamic start in the first quarter (+0.5%) and a decline in the second quarter (-0.2%) there had been a slight recovery in the third quarter of the year (+0.2%). According to the latest calculations based on new statistical information, that recovery was 0.1 percentage points stronger than had been communicated in November 2019.

If we switch to the half year we see growth was only 0.2% which is how the running level of year on year growth is below the average for the year as a whole.

The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) also reports that the resulting GDP growth was 0.6% for the year 2019 (both price and seasonally adjusted).

Analysing the latest quarter

Trade

We can open with something that fits neatly with the trade war theme, and the emphasis is mine.

The development of foreign trade slowed down the economic activity in the fourth quarter. According to provisional calculations, exports were slightly down on the third quarter after price, seasonal and calendar adjustment, while imports of goods and services increased.

There is something of an irony here. This is because the German trade surplus was one of the imbalances in the world economy in the run-up to the credit crunch. So more imports by Germany have been called for which would also help the Euro area economy. Actually if we look back to last week’s trade release this may have been in play for a while now.

Based on provisional data, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) also reports that exports were up 0.8% from 2018. Imports rose by 1.4%. In 2018, exports increased by 3.0% and imports by 5.6% compared with the previous year. In 2017, exports were 6.2% and imports 8.0% higher than a year earlier.

Those numbers also show a clear trade growth deceleration and for those who like an idea of scale.

in 2019, Germany exported goods to the value of 1,327.6 billion euros and imported goods to the value of 1,104.1 billion euros.

Domestic Demand

There was something extra in the report which leapt off the page a bit.

 After a very strong third quarter, the final consumption expenditure of both households and government slowed down markedly.

That will change the pattern for the German economy if it should persist and it somewhat contradicts the rhetoric of ECB President Lagarde from earlier this week.

support the resilience of the domestic economy

I did point out at the time that the use of resilience by central bankers is worrying. This is because their meaning of the word frequently turns out to be the opposite of that which can be found in a dictionary.

If we switch to investment then they seem to be adopting the British model of prioritising housing.

Trends diverged for fixed capital formation. While gross fixed capital formation in machinery and equipment was down considerably compared to the third quarter, fixed capital formation in construction and other fixed assets continued to increase.

Ch-Ch-Changes

Yesterday the European Commission released its winter forecasts for the German economy. So let us go back a year and see what they forecast for this one.

Overall, real GDP growth is expected to strengthen to 2.3% in 2018 and remain above 2% in 2019.

In fact the message was let’s party.

Economic sentiment continues to improve across sectors, suggesting continued expansion in the coming quarters. Survey data show expectations of improving orders, higher output and greater demand.

Whereas in fact the punch bowl disappeared as growth faded from view.

Yesterday they told us this.

Overall, real GDP growth is forecast to rebound
somewhat to 1.1% in 2020, helped by a strong
calendar effect (0.4 pps.).

That is pretty optimistic in the circumstances perhaps driven by this, where they disagree with what the German statistics office told us earlier today.

Resilient domestic demand supported growth.
Private consumption increased robustly amid
record high employment and strong wage growth.

All rather Lennon-McCartney

Yesterday,
All my troubles seemed so far away,
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
Oh I believe in yesterday.

Comment

From the detailed numbers one can get a small positive spin as GDP increased by 0.03% in the final quarter of 2019. But the catch is that in doing so you note that the 107.19 of the index is below the 107.21 of the first quarter. Care is needed because we are pinpointing below the margin of error but if we look further back we see that the index was 106.18 at the end of the first quarter of 2018.

There are three main perspectives from that of which the obvious is that growth since then has been only very marginally above 1%. So the European Commission forecasts were simply up in the clouds. But we have another problem which is that looking forwards from then the Markit business surveys ( PMIs) were predicting “Boom! Boom! Boom!” in the high 50s as the economy turned down. They later picked up the trend but missed the turning point. Or if you prefer looked backwards rather than forwards at the most crucial time.

Now we await the impact of the Corona Virus in this quarter. Let me leave you with one more issue which is productivity because if yearly output is only rising by 0.4% then we get a broad brush guide by comparing with this.

The economic performance in the fourth quarter of 2019 was achieved by 45.5 million persons in employment, which was an increase of roughly 300,000, or 0.7%, on a year earlier.

The Investing Channel

Was the Irish election result a case of its the economy stupid?

Back in the day the presidential campaign of Bill Clinton came up with the phrase “Its the economy stupid” which worked on several levels. Firstly Bill got elected and secondly the phrase has echoed around since. But applying it to what has recently happened in Ireland is an example both of the phrase and the way we have these days to look beneath the official statistics.

Let me start the story by looking at GDP growth in Ireland.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, initial estimates indicate that GDP in volume terms increased by 1.7 per cent for the Q3 quarter of 2019. ( Central Statistics Office or CSO)

Something for an incumbent government to trumpet you might think and this continues with the annual comparison.

Initial estimates for the third quarter of 2019 indicate that there was an increase of 5.0 per cent in GDP in real terms in Q3 2019 compared with Q3 2018.

For these times that is quite a surge which puts Ireland far ahead of the Euro area average and the breakdown starts with a hint of a modern thriving economy.

 Information & Communication made the most positive contribution to the Q3 result, rising by 22.4 per cent with Agriculture recording an increase of 15.2 per cent.

Trouble,Trouble,Trouble

The Taylor Swift lyric appears as we look at some of the detail though.

 Capital formation decreased by 55.3 per cent or €25.2 billion in Q3 compared with the previous quarter.

That is quite a drop but you see we find the cause here with a similar number popping up elsewhere.

 Imports decreased commensurately by 22.5 per cent (€24.2 billion) in Q3 2019 compared with Q2 2019.

These are not the only conventional metrics which are lost in a land of confusion as Genesis would put it.

Exports increased by 2.4 per cent which meant that overall net exports increased by €26.8 billion quarter-on-quarter.

As you can see the economic growth story starts well but then has collapsing investment which is a warning and collapsing imports which is another warning accompanied by a triumph for net exports giving a strong signal.

Now let me bring in some context which is that if we look at Gross Value Added for the Irish economy it was 49.1 billion in the final quarter of 2014 and 79.7 billion in the third quarter of last year on a chain-linked basis. How could you not be re-elected with those numbers? Well regular readers may recall early 2015 which saw a 25.6% quarterly jump.

There are two major issues here which I looked at on December 18th 2017,

Data from the Fiscal Advisory Council (FAC) show that 2.5% of the 5.8% rise in Irish GDP (gross domestic product) in H1 2014, or 43%, came from contract manufacturing overseas, that has no material impact on jobs in the economy. Dell, the PC company, books its Polish output in Ireland for tax avoidance purposes. ( Finfacts )

Manufacturing has boomed but some of it has been the type of contract manufacturing described above. Next comes this issue.

These figures were affected by reduced levels of research and development costs, in particular intellectual property imports.

There is a large impact from intellectual property which sees money wash into and out of Ireland on such a grand scale it even affects the Euro area national account breakdown.

These have led the Central Bank of Ireland to develop this to try and help.

GNI* excludes the impact of redomiciled
companies and the depreciation of intellectual
property products and of leased aircraft from
GNI. When this is done, the level of nominal
GNI* is approximately two-thirds of the level
of nominal GDP in 2016.

Wealth and Debt

According to the Central Bank of Ireland there is a strong position here.

Household net worth reached a new high of €800bn in Q3 2019, which equates to €162,577 per capita. Household debt continued its downward trend, falling by €176m in Q3 2019.

If we look into the detail I note the following and the emphasis is mine.

The increase over Q3 2019 was driven by improvements in both households’ financial assets and housing assets. Financial assets rose by €11.5bn, due primarily to increases in the value of insurance and pension schemes. Housing assets rose to €545bn, an increase of €8.2bn over the quarter, the highest it has been since Q4 2008. Household liabilities remained unchanged at €147bn.

There has been success here too.

Household debt stood at €135bn, its lowest level since Q3 2005. This equates to €27,453 per capita. Household debt has decreased by a third, or €67.8bn, since its peak of €202bn in Q3 2008.

We can see by default that Irish companies borrow quite a bit.

Private sector debt as a proportion of GDP decreased by 2.4 percentage points to stand at 239 per cent in Q3 2019

Or do they as are the companies Irish?

 It should be noted that private sector debt in Ireland is significantly influenced by the presence of large multinational corporations (MNCs) and that restructuring by these entities has resulted in extremely large movements in Irish private sector debt, particularly from 2014 onwards.

Inflation

According to the official data there essentially has not been any in Ireland over the period we are looking at. The official Euro area measure was 101.8 last December after being set at 100 in 2015 so you can see I am guilty of only a slight exaggeration. But we are reminded of its flaw ( which even ECB policy makers are presently admitting) that is highlighted by this from the Irish Times on the 5th of this month.

House price growth is obviously one part of the equation; while it may be finally easing in Dublin, half a decade of double-digit growth has nonetheless pushed the cost of owning a home out of the reach of many.

Indeed as it goes on they have become both more expensive and unaffordable.

But in Ireland, and in many other countries across the globe, rising property prices have been compounded by wage stagnation. Pay rises have only returned in recent years and continue to significantly lag house price growth.

The inflation measure of the Euro area completely ignores the area of owner-occupied housing on the grounds of whatever excuse it thinks it can get away with.

Ireland has its own measure which tried to do better by including mortgage interest-rates but that valiant effort has been torpedoed by the advent of negative interest-rates and QE.

So here we see another problem for the official view as people are told there is no inflation and yet in Dublin the Irish Times tells us this.

Dublin has experienced the third-fastest rate of house price growth in the survey over the last five years, up by a staggering 61.9 per cent.

Although it has also had a relatively strong rate of income growth over the same period – up by 13.2 per cent – that still means there is a huge gap between the rates of increase.

In terms of house purchase real wages have not far off halved. No wonder people are unhappy and should be questioning the inflation data.

The official numbers do pick up rental inflation and both have it being around 17% since 2015. So even on the official data there has been a squeeze here too.

Comment

On today’s journey we have seen that the experience of an ordinary Irish person is very different to that of the official data. They are told it is a Celtic Tiger 2.0 but face ever more expensive housing costs and the concept of buying a home has changed fundamentally. Thus we see how what are fabulous looking metrics of surging GDP and virtually no inflation are for a type of virtual Ireland which is really rather different to the real one where housing costs have surged. This impacts in other sphere as for example national debt to GDP has plunged and Ireland has moved for being a recipient of EU funds to a net payer.

Context is needed as there have been economic improvements in Ireland for example the unemployment rate this January was 4.8% as opposed to the 16% of January 2012. Improved tax revenues have helped provide a budget with a surplus although this relies a bit on higher corporation tax from guess who?

The ECB now considers fiscal policy via QE to be its most effective economic weapon

Yesterday saw ECB President Christine Lagarde give a speech to the European Parliament and it was in some ways quite an extraordinary affair. Let me highlight with her opening salvo on the Euro area economy.

Euro area growth momentum has been slowing down since the start of 2018, largely on account of global uncertainties and weaker international trade. Moderating growth has also weakened pressure on prices, and inflation remains some distance below our medium-term aim.

In the circumstances that is quite an admittal of failure. After all the ECB has deployed negative interest-rates with the Deposit Rate most recently reduced to -0.5% and large quantities of QE bond buying. No amount of blaming Johnny Foreigner as Christine tries to do can cover up the fact that the switch to a more aggressive monetary policy stance around 2015 created what now seems a brief “Euro boom” but now back to slow and perhaps no growth.

But according to Christine the ECB has played a stormer.

 The ECB’s monetary policy since 2014 relies on four elements: a negative policy rate, asset purchases, forward guidance, and targeted lending operations. These measures have helped to preserve favourable lending conditions, support the resilience of the domestic economy and – most importantly in the recent period – shield the euro area economy from global headwinds.

It is hard not to laugh at the inclusion of forward guidance as a factor as let’s face it most will be unaware of it. Indeed some of those who do follow it ( mainstream economists) started last year suggesting there would be interest-rate increases in the Euro area before diving below the parapet. There seems to be something about them and the New Year because we saw optimistic forecasts this year too which have already crumbled in the face of an inconvenient reality. Moving on you may note the language of of “support” and “helped” has taken a bit of a step backwards.

Also as Christine has guided us to 2018 we get a slightly different message now to what her predecessor told us as this example from the June press conference highlights.

This moderation reflects a pull-back from the very high levels of growth in 2017, compounded by an increase in uncertainty and some temporary and supply-side factors at both the domestic and the global level, as well as weaker impetus from external trade.

As you can see he was worried about the domestic economy too and mentioned it first before global and trade influences. This distinction matters because as we will come too Christine is suggesting that monetary policy is not far off “maxxed out” as Mark Carney once put it.

For balance whilst there is some cherry picking going on below I welcome the improved labour market situation.

Our policy stimulus has supported economic growth, resulting in more jobs and higher wages for euro area citizens. Euro area unemployment, at 7.4%, is at its lowest level since May 2008. Wages increased at an average rate of 2.5% in the first three quarters of 2019, significantly above their long-term average.

Although it is hard not to note that the level of wages growth is worse than in the US and UK for example and the unemployment rate is much worse. You may note that the rate of wages growth being above average means it is for best that the ECB is not hitting its inflation target. Also we get “supported economic growth” rather than any numbers, can you guess why?

Debt Monetisation

You may recall that one of the original QE fears was that central banks would monetise government debt with the text book example being it buying government bonds when they were/are issued. This expands the money supply ( cash is paid for the bonds) leading to inflation and perhaps hyper-inflation and a lower exchange-rate.

What we have seen has turned out to be rather different as for example QE has led to much more asset price inflation ( bond, equity and house prices) than consumer price inflation. But a sentence in the Christine Lagarde speech hints at a powerful influence from what we have seen.

 Indeed, when interest rates are low, fiscal policy can be highly effective:

Actually she means bond yields and there are various examples of which in the circumstances this is pretty extraordinary.

Another record for Greece: 10 yr government bonds fall below 1% for the first time in history (from almost 4% a year ago)  ( @gusbaratta )

This is in response to this quoted by Amna last week.

 “If the situation continues to improve and based on the criteria we implement for all these purchases, I am relatively convinced that Greek bonds will be eligible as well.” Greek bonds are currently not eligible for purchase by the ECB since they are not yet rated as investment grade, one of the basic criteria of the ECB.

Can anybody think why Greek bonds are not investment grade? There is another contradiction here if we return to yesterday’s speech.

Other policy areas – notably fiscal and structural polices – also have to play their part. These policies can boost productivity growth and lift growth potential, thereby underpinning the effectiveness of our measures.

Because poor old Greece is supposed to be running a fiscal surplus due to its debt burden, so how can it take advantage of this? A similar if milder problem is faced by Italy which you may recall was told last year it could not indulge in fiscal policy.

The main target in President Lagarde’s sights is of course Germany. It has plenty of scope to expand fiscal policy as it has a surplus. It would in fact in many instances actually be paid to do so as it has a ten-year yield of -0.37% as I type this meaning real or inflation adjusted yields are heavily negative. In terms of economics 101 it should be rushing to take advantage of this except we see another example of economic incentives not achieving much at all as Germany seems mostly oblivious to this. There is an undercut as the German economy needs a boost right now. Although there is another issue as it got a lower exchange rate and lower interest-rates via Euro membership now if it uses fiscal policy and that struggles too, what’s left?

Mission Creep

If things are not going well then you need a distraction, preferably a grand one

We also have to gear up on climate change – and not only because we care as citizens of this world. Like digitalisation, climate change affects the context in which central banks operate. So we increasingly need to take these effects into account in central banks’ policies and operations.

Readers will disagree about climate change but one thing everyone should be able to agree on is that central bankers are completely ill equipped to deal with the issue.

Comment

This morning’s release from Eurostat was simultaneously eloquent and disappointing.

In December 2019 compared with November 2019, seasonally adjusted industrial production fell by 2.1% in the
euro area (EA19)……In December 2019 compared with December 2018, industrial production decreased by 4.1% in the euro area……The average industrial production for the year 2019, compared with 2018, fell by 1.7% in the euro area

The index is at 100.6 so we are nearly back to 2015 levels as it was set at 100 and we have the impact of the Corona Virus yet to come. Actually we can go further back is this is where we were in 2011. Another context is that the Euro area GDP growth reading of 0.1% will be put under pressure by this.

In a nutshell this is why the ECB President wants to discuss things other than monetary policy as even central bankers are being forced to discuss this.

 We are fully aware that the low interest rate environment has a bearing on savings income, asset valuation, risk-taking and house prices. And we are closely monitoring possible negative side effects to ensure they do not outweigh the positive impact of our measures on credit conditions, job creation and wage income.

But central bankers are creatures of habit so soon some will be calling for yet another interest-rate cut.

Let me finish with some humour.

Governors had to stop trashing policy decisions once taken and keep internal disputes out of the media, presenting a common external front, 11 sources — both critics and supporters of the ECB’s last, controversial stimulus package — told Reuters.

Yep, the ECB has leaked that there are no leaks….

 

 

 

UK GDP growth is services driven these days as manufacturing is in a depression

Today brings the UK into focus as we find out how it’s economy performed at the end of 2019. A cloudy perspective has been provided by the Euro area which showed 0.1% in the final quarter but sadly since then the news for it has deteriorated as the various production figures have been released.

Germany

WIESBADEN – In December 2019, production in industry was down by 3.5% on the previous month on a price, seasonally and calendar adjusted basis according to provisional data of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis)

France

In December 2019, output decreased in the manufacturing industry (−2.6%, after −0.4%), as well as in the whole industry (−2.8%, after 0.0%).

Italy

In December 2019 the seasonally adjusted industrial production index decreased by 2.7% compared with the previous month. The change of the average of the last three months with respect to the previous three months was -1.4%.

Spain

The monthly variation of the Industrial Production Index stands at -1.4%, after adjusting for seasonal and calendar effects.

These were disappointing and were worse than the numbers likely to have gone into the GDP data. Most significant was Germany due both to the size of its production sector and also the size of the contraction. France caught people out as it had been doing better as had Spain. Italy sadly seems to be in quite a mire as its GDP was already 0.3% on the quarter. So the background is poor for the UK.

Today’s Data

With the background being not especially auspicious then this was okay in the circumstances.

UK gross domestic product (GDP) in volume terms was flat in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2019, following revised growth of 0.5% in Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2019.

In fact if we switch to the annual numbers then they were better than the Euro area.

When compared with the same quarter a year ago, UK GDP increased by 1.1% to Quarter 4 2019; down from a revised 1.2% in the previous period.

Marginal numbers because it grew by 1% on the same basis but we do learn a several things. Firstly for all the hype and debate the performances are within the margin of error. Next that UK economic growth in the two halves of 2019 looks the same. Finally that as I have argued all along the monthly GDP numbers are not a good idea as they are too erratic and prone to revisions which change them substantially.

Monthly gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 0.3% in December 2019, driven by growth in services. This followed a fall of 0.3% in November 2019.

Does anybody really believe that sequence is useful? I may find support from some of the economics organisations I have been debating with on twitter as their forecasts for today were based on the November number and were thus wrong-footed. Although of course they may have to deal with some calls from their clients first.

If we look into the detail we see that in fact our economic performance over the past two years has in fact been much more consistent than we might otherwise think.

GDP was estimated to have increased by 1.4% between 2018 and 2019 slightly above the 1.3% growth seen between 2017 and 2018.

Growth, just not very much of it or if we note the Bank of England “speed-limit” then if we allow for margins of error we could call it flat-out.

Switch to Services

Our long-running theme which is the opposite of the “rebalancing” of the now Baron King of Lothbury and the “march of the makers” of former Chancellor Osborne was right yet again.

Growth in the service sector slowed to 0.1% in Quarter 4 2019, while production output fell 0.8%.

So whilst there was not much growth it still pulled away from a contracting production sector and if we look further we see that the UK joined the Euro area in having a poor 2019 for manufacturing and production.

Production output fell by 1.3% in the 12 months to December 2019, compared with the 12 months to December 2018; this is the largest annual fall since 2012 and was led by manufacturing output, which fell by 1.5%.

Meanwhile a part of the services sector we have consistently noted did well again.

The services sector grew by 0.3% in the month of December 2019 after contracting by 0.4% in November 2019. The information and communication sector was the biggest positive contributor on the month, driven by motion pictures, with a number of blockbuster films being released in December (PDF, 192.50KB).

That is something literally under my nose as Battersea Park is used regularly for this.

Balance of Payments

There is an irony here because if we look internationally they do not balance as there are examples of countries both thinking they have a surplus with each other.

The numbers such as they are had shown signs of improvement but like the GDP data actually had a case of groundhog day.

The total trade deficit narrowed by £0.5 billion to £29.3 billion in 2019, with a £9.7 billion narrowing of the trade in goods deficit, largely offset by a £9.2 billion narrowing of the trade in services surplus.

The latter bit reminds me that I wrote to the Bean Commission about the fact that our knowledge of services trade is really poor and today’s release confirms this is still the case.

The trade in services surplus narrowed £5.1 billion in Quarter 4 2019 largely because of the inclusion of GDP balancing adjustments.

Let me explain this as it is different to what people are taught at school and in universities where net exports are part of GDP. The output version of GDP counts it up and then drives the expenditure version which includes trade and if they differ it is the trade and in particular services numbers in this instance which get altered. If they had more confidence in them they would not do that. This way round they become not far off useless in my opinion.

 

Gold and UK GDP

In the UK statisticians have a problem due to this.

For many countries the effect of gold on their trade figures is small, but the prominence of the industry in London means it can have a sizeable impact on the UK’s trade figures.

Rather confusingly the international standard means it affects trade but not GDP.

Firstly, imports and exports of gold are GDP-neutral. Most exports add to GDP, but not gold. This is because the sale of gold is counted as negative investment, and vice versa for imports and the purchase of gold. So, the trade in gold creates further problems for measuring investment.

So as well as the usual trade figures they intend to produce ones ignoring its impact.

Because a relatively small numbers of firms are involved in the gold trade, publishing detailed figures could be disclosive. However, within those limitations, we are now able to show our headline import and export figures with gold excluded.

A good idea I think as the impact on the UK economy is the various fees received not the movement of the gold itself, especially it we did not own it in the first place.

Oh and my influence seems to have even reached the Deputy National Statistician.

Gold, in addition to being a hit song by Spandau Ballet, is widely used as a store of value.

Comment

For all the hot air and hype generated the UK economic performance has in the past two years been remarkably similar. Actually the same is pretty much true of comparing us with the Euro area.As it happens 2020 looks as though we are now doing better but that has ebbed and flowed before.

Looking beneath this shows we continue to switch towards services and as I note the downwards revisions to net services trade I am left wondering two things. What if the services surveys are right and the switch to it is even larger than we are being told? Also it displays a lack of confidence in the services surveys to revise the numbers down on this scale. We know less than sometimes we think we do.

Meanwhile on a much less optimistic theme manufacturing has been in a decade long depression.

Manufacturing output in the UK remained 4.5% lower in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2019 than the pre-downturn peak in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2008.

 

 

Are falling real wages the future for us all?

The issue of wage growth is something we have found ourselves returning to time and time again. The cause is in one sense very simple there has been a lack of it. There are two components of this of which the first is just simply low numbers but the second is another reversal for the economics establishment . This is where we have seen employment gains and in some cases record low levels of unemployment but the wage growth fairy has turned out to be precisely that. As an example if we look back we see that the UK Office for Budget Responsibility opened with equations that would have UK wage growth above 5% in today’s environment rather than the 3% we have.

Japan

The leader in the pack in this regard continues to be Japan so let us go straight to the data released at the end of last week.

The inflation-adjusted average monthly wage fell 0.9 percent from a year earlier in 2019, dragged down by an increase in part-time workers, the labor ministry said Friday.

Average monthly cash earnings per worker, including bonuses, fell 0.3 percent to ¥322,689 ($2,900) on a nominal basis, the first decline in six years, according to preliminary data by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. ( Japan Times)

If we for the moment stick with the fact that wages fell we can then note that this happened in spite of this.

The unemployment rate was unchanged in December from the previous month, at 2.2 percent, reflecting an ongoing labor shortage due to the rapidly graying population, government data showed Friday.

In the reporting month the number of unemployed was 1.45 million, down 140,000 from a year earlier, according to the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry. ( Japan Times January 31)

Although they do not mention it this equals the record low for the unemployment rate and we get more detail on the labour shortage below.

The number of people with jobs grew for the 84th straight month, up 810,000 from a year earlier at 67.37 million in December. Of those, 30 million were women, up 660,000 from a year earlier, and 9.02 million were 65 or over, up 470,000.

This is a success for the Japanese economy which has reached I think what economists used to call “full employment”. Actually if they saw the numbers below they would be predicting it would be party time for wage growth.

Separate data from the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry showed that the job availability ratio in December stood at 1.57, unchanged since September. The ratio indicates that there were 157 job openings for every 100 people seeking jobs.

But reality has not been kind to that particular and it has discombobulated some Ivory Towers so much that they believe in it regardless. A case of Restaurant at the end of the Universe thinking.

Reality is frequently inaccurate

If we go back to the wages data we started with there were two components beginning with a real fall but also a nominal one. The latter I point out because when we look at Japan’s public debt burden it is not going to be solved with income taxes with nominal incomes falling. It is the opposite of what we call inflating away the debt.

The situation is so troubling that a scapegoat is required which are part-time workers.

The proportion of workers that are part-time reached a record 31.53 percent, up 0.65 percentage point from the previous year.

For those who want to know how much the Japanese get paid here you are.

Average monthly wages for full-time workers increased 0.3 percent, to ¥425,288, while those of part-time workers stayed flat at ¥99,758.

December wages are especially important in Japan as they are the main bonus season meaning they are around 175% of the average. So bonuses are low and whilst we do not get much of a sectoral breakdown we see that total manufacturing wages were 2.6% lower in December in real terms.

The index for real wages is now 99.9 or slightly lower than the 2015 average. This is quite a critique of the official policy of Abenomics which was supposed to raise wages in both nominal and real terms but as you can see has not done so.

Regular readers will know I have been concerned since the advent of Abenomics that it was really just another version of Japan Inc under the covers. Well in that scenario Japanese companies would be doing well but not raising wages.

The retained earnings of Japanese companies combined hit a record ¥463 trillion last year. Corporate earnings — which remain near record levels despite the setbacks of the past two years — have clearly not been invested enough in manpower.  ( Japan Times )

Whereas according to the Nikkei Asian Review the longer-term picture is this.

The growing ranks of nonregular workers puts pressure on average nominal wages, which remain 13% below their peak in 1997. From 2012 to 2018 nominal wages grew only 2.6%, labor ministry figures show.

United States

Friday lunchtime in the UK produced this.

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 225,000 in January, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 3.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Notable job gains occurred in construction, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing.

This continued a pretty strong picture especially at this stage in the cycle.

After revisions, job gains have averaged 211,000 over the
last 3 months.

Now if we switch to wage growth we see this.

In January, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 7 cents to $28.44. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.1 percent. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees
were $23.87 in January, little changed over the month (+3 cents).

In nominal terms this is much better than in Japan but if we switch to real terms then we need to compare with this.

From 2018 to 2019, consumer prices for all items rose 2.3 percent.

I am taking the numbers as a broad sweep because we do not have the January data yet, But we see that whilst there is some real wage growth it is a bit under 1% per annum so not much.

Comment

The difference between the US and Japan is that there is some real wage growth in the former there is none in the latter. Can we explain that? There are two possible causes of which the first is demographics where Japan has a shrinking and ageing population whereas the US is growing. Also there is a structural issue where the Japanese are very resistant to price rises which in a reversal of the wages and prices spirals of the 70s and 80s in my home country seems to have infected wage growth too. The fear as Lily Allen would put it might be a case of the vapors.

I’m turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese, I really think so
Turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese, I really think so
I’m turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese, I really think so
Turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese, I really think…

For the economics establishment there is only pain because they continue to plough ahead with “output gap” style theories. Even worse because they failed in the GDP or economic output arena they switched to the labour market. It has turned out to be like playing 3 at the back in football and losing 3-0 and thus switching to 4 at the back and losing 5-0. That is because the labour market has is some places gone beyond what was called full employment and yet real wage growth is weak at best and has gone backwards in Japan which has a stellar employment situation at least according to conventional metrics.

Moving to the UK we finally got some real wage growth but we need to cross our fingers and there is still some distance to travel before we get right back where we started from. Hopefully we can at least regain the previous peak.

Podcast

 

The manufacturing sector of Germany has turned lower yet again

We have got used to seeing the economy of Germany stuttering recently. Although we only discovered it via later revisions it began in early 2018 which at the time we thought was still part of the “Euro boom”. Then 2019 became a difficult year and this morning has brought news that at the end of the year the pressure seems to have got even worse for manufacturing.

WIESBADEN – Based on provisional data, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reports that price-adjusted new orders in manufacturing decreased by a seasonally and calendar adjusted 2.1% in December 2019 on the previous month.

If we look at the break-down we find out more.

Domestic orders increased by 1.4% and foreign orders fell by 4.5% in December 2019 on the previous month. New orders from the euro area were down 13.9%, and new orders from other countries increased by 2.1% compared with November 2019.

So we have at the beginning a by now conventional trade war theme but then we note something worrying for the Euro area as a whole as there seems to be some economic contagion here. This will concern the new holder of the Grand Prix de l’Économie 2019 from Les Echos which is the President of the ECB Christine Lagarde.

There is a sectoral break-down too but I caution reading too much into it. This is because in the early part of 2018 various analysts told us that the break-down meant things would soon around and we know what happened next.

In December 2019 the manufacturers of intermediate goods saw new orders increase by 1.4% compared with November 2019. The manufacturers of capital goods saw a fall of 3.9% on the previous month. Regarding consumer goods, new orders fell 3.8%.

Indeed if we stick to economists expectations they seem to have been at it again according to the Financial Times.

 Economists polled by Reuters had expected an increase of 0.6 per cent.

Only 2.7% out….

There is a small amount of relief in finding out that the December drop was exacerbated by November being revised higher.

 For November 2019, revision of the preliminary outcome resulted in a decrease of 0.8% compared with October 2019 (provisional: -1.3%, because major orders from machinery and equipment that were reported later were not yet included).

However even so we see that the annual comparison is simply dreadful.

-8.7% on the same month a year earlier (price and calendar adjusted)

That compares to November which was 6% lower than a year before.

We get some perspective from the overall index which on a seasonally adjusted basis was 98.7 so for the first time we have a reading below the 100 average of 2015. In terms of a trend we see that things have been slip-sliding away since the 113.1 of December 2017. So that is quite a fall over two years. There has been a flicker of hope from domestic orders in the last couple of months but this has been swamped by the fall in foreign orders.

Turnover and Volume

The size of the fall is lower but we see a similar trend.

According to provisional results, price-adjusted turnover in manufacturing in December 2019 was down a seasonally and calendar adjusted 1.3% on the previous month. In November 2019, the corrected figure showed a decrease of 0.4%, compared to October 2019 (provisional: -0.5%).

We also see that the situation got worse in December.

Again we can see the overall picture because what is effectively a volume index  peaked at 108.9 in November 2017. Whereas in December it was 100.7 so not quite yet back to the average for 2015. However looking at the orders data above suggests we may see a fall below it this year.

Looking Ahead

On Monday we got the latest Markit PMI business survey and they opened with a hopeful sign.

Slower fall in new orders lifts PMI to 11-month
high in January.

This was based on a different picture to the official data we have looked at earlier as that was based on an improvement in export orders.

Principal upward pressure on the PMI in January came from a slower rate of decline in new orders, which in turn partly reflected the near stabilisation of export sales.

If we switch to actual production though we see this.

Output fell at the slowest rate for five months in January.
That said, the pace of decline remained notably faster than
that of new orders, with all three main industrial groupings .(consumer, intermediate and capital goods) recording lower production.

Again there is some potential for improvement as the rate of decline has slowed. Even so the overall situation is impacting an area which has been a strength of the German economy.

Employment continued fall sharply at the start of the year.
The rate of job shedding seen in January was unchanged
from the month before and has been exceeded only once (in
October 2019) since January 2010.

The summary tried to be upbeat for 2020.

Germany’s manufacturing sector showed more signs
of being on the way to recovery in January, with the PMI
climbing further from last September’s nadir to its highest for 11 months.

There was however quite a catch.

However, the picture has change somewhat in the short space of time since the survey was conducted [13-24 January], with the disruption to business in China from the coronavirus found to have an impact on German manufacturers’ exports and sentiment in the coming months.

The catch arrives with even the more optimistic tone for January leaving us with a spot reading of 45.3 which us well below the benchmark of 50.

The Service Sector

The business survey here was much more upbeat.

Germany’s service sector made a strong start to 2020,
recording faster growth in business activity, inflows of new
work and employment, latest PMI® data from IHS Markit
showed. Expectations towards output over the next 12
months also improved

So the German economy is to borrow a football analogy a story of two halves or as the survey puts it.

The result reflected the combination of a stronger increase in service sector business activity and a slower rate of decline in manufacturing production.

According to Markit the combination has gone from stagnation to slow growth.

Climbing from December’s 50.2 to 51.2, the Germany Composite* Output Index signalled a slightly faster, albeit modest rate of expansion.

Comment

The story here was summed up by Avril Lavigne.

Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?

Much of this is the way that we have regularly been promised a turnaround by the media and analysts when in fact the manufacturing sector has been heading south for a couple of years now. Today’s official data may be revised a little higher ( that seems to be a developing pattern ) but 2019 was a very poor year for German manufacturing. Now another reported improvement looks likely to have been knocked on the head by the impact of the Corona Virus in what is looking ever more like a perfect storm.

If we switch to the ECB we see that for once its monetary policy seems appropriate for Germany. It has slowed down and the ECB has cut its interest-rate and although if you read this from Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann on Tuesday it seems he does not think it will help much.

Recent years have demonstrated that traditional interest rate policy may reach its limits.

Also does this count as an emergency again?

Mr Weidmann continues to take a critical view of the large-scale purchases of government bonds in the euro area. “In my opinion, they should be used only in emergencies.”

The undercut is whether the easy monetary policy makes much difference to a manufacturing slow down driven by a trade war and now a viral outbreak? I do not.Also we need to remind ourselves that the exchange rate policy where the Euro is much lower than where a Deurschemark would be continues to benefit Germany.

So Germany is on a recession tightrope where services are pulling it up but manufacturing pulling it down. So just as the UK departs the European Union the Germans are behaving like us. Also spare a thought for Eurostat which produced a 0.1% GDP growth reading for the Euro area at the end off 2019 but did not known this about Germany.

The Investing Channel