GLOBAL ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

Leo Haviland provides clients with original, provocative, cutting-edge fundamental supply/demand and technical research on major financial marketplaces and trends. He also offers independent consulting and risk management advice.

Haviland’s expertise is macro. He focuses on the intertwining of equity, debt, currency, and commodity arenas, including the political players, regulatory approaches, social factors, and rhetoric that affect them. In a changing and dynamic global economy, Haviland’s mission remains constant – to give timely, value-added marketplace insights and foresights.

Leo Haviland has three decades of experience in the Wall Street trading environment. He has worked for Goldman Sachs, Sempra Energy Trading, and other institutions. In his research and sales career in stock, interest rate, foreign exchange, and commodity battlefields, he has dealt with numerous and diverse financial institutions and individuals. Haviland is a graduate of the University of Chicago (Phi Beta Kappa) and the Cornell Law School.


 

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THE GROWTH GAME: US UNEMPLOYMENT AND FEDERAL RESERVE POLICIES (c) Leo Haviland September 10, 2012

Nevertheless, compare the first several years of the US Treasury yield curve relative to current and forecast inflation statistics from the CBO. Real returns look negative. The two year UST note is about .25pc, with the five year UST .65pc (under one percent). So although US inflation has been low, the Fed’s yield repression interest rate policy (whatever its merits), which probably will extend at least through end 2014, tends to cheat savers in UST (and assist the US government debtor- “We, the people”, in a representative government). Lower interest rates for the UST benchmark help to slash yields for (lower real costs for) and thus benefit other debtors/borrowers (state, local, corporate, household). Creditors/lenders correspondingly suffer via reduced real return relative to inflation. Admittedly, marketplace gardeners can argue that the Fed’s current interest rate agenda benefits “all of us” over the long run.

The Fed’s ongoing worries about unemployment in particular (and economic strength in general) underline (reflect) its willingness to suppress policy rates.

Perspectives on the output gap intertwine with analysis of and opinions regarding appropriate employment and unemployment levels. Sustained high unemployment levels may reflect a large output gap, if the economy’s productive potential remains as substantial as most economic wizards believe. However, sustained high unemployment in the face of determined longstanding Federal Reserve easing (and political deficit spending) argues that the output gap (long run productive potential) is significantly less than the IMF and Federal Reserve contend. Suppose the output gap is less than the widespread faith. Then allegedly “normal” (long run) unemployment may be greater than the Fed asserts.

So suppose unemployment unfortunately will tend to remain historically high (above current theories regarding “normal” levels) in part due to the reduction in productive potential (GDP). If so, the Fed’s well-intentioned highly accommodative policies eventually run a noteworthy risk of helping greater than desirable inflation to blossom, even if this takes an extended time to develop.

Current high unemployment levels, as well as trends in some employment measures going back to calendar 2000 (and thus preceding the economic disaster that emerged in 2007), suggest that “normal” unemployment levels probably are quite a bit higher than the Fed and many others believe. If so, America’s productive potential and its output gap also probably are less than the Fed argues.

Dig into some other key employment statistics (from the BLS; Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey). Again look further backward in time than the dawn of the economic crisis in 2007. Like the official and U-6 unemployment data, both the employment-population ratio and the civilian labor force participation rate suggest that there has been a secular decline in America’s “employability potential” and productive capacity.

FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW to download this market essay as a PDF file.
The Growth Game- US Unemployment and Federal Reserve Policies (9-10-12)

SLACKING OFF- OUTPUT GAPS AND FED EASING © Leo Haviland, October 25, 2011

In marketplaces and elsewhere in culture, there are many gaps. We deal with information gaps. Individuals and institutions seek to fill in holes in their knowledge by gathering additional information and evaluating what they have accumulated.

Politicians demonstrate credibility and leadership gaps. The US fiscal deficit disaster situation is merely one of many examples.

One very important gap discussed by the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve Board, and other economic players is the output gap. Why not investigate that topic? The Fed and other key players make key decisions significantly influenced by their views on this measure.

Output gap estimates about any given current and future output gap situation (and therefore to some extent even regarding past gaps) probably are much less reliable than the Fed’s orations on the subject would have its audiences believe. The Fed is making decisions that are significantly based on very conjectural resource slack information.

Moreover, some evidence indicates the US output gap is less extreme than the Fed believes. What follows? The Fed’s sustained effort to pin interest rates near the floor (and thus beneath even low inflation levels) as well as its past money printing (quantitative easing) adventures fought to ignite and sustain economic recovery. However, if it has overestimated the US output gap significantly, its policies have increased the risk of creating not only inflation (however long it may take for that to appear), but also more inflation than it and many others see as desirable.

FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW to download this market essay as a PDF file.

Slacking Off – Output Gaps and Fed Easing (10-25-11)