Greg Ip

Don’t cut the deficit now—but explain how, eventually, you will

Jon Berkeley

FOR years America’s fiscal problems had a surreal quality. No one disputed that an ageing population and health-care inflation could bust the budget, but that prospect was decades away and procrastination seemed painless. No longer. A giant hole has opened in the budget because of stimulus, bail-outs and a recession that has savaged economic growth and tax revenue. On current policies the publicly held federal debt, 41% of GDP last year, will double in the next decade (see article). Total government debt will move well above the G20 average. In a few years the AAA rating of Treasury bonds, the world’s most important security, could be in jeopardy. Read the rest of this entry »

Unprecedented levels of government debt may require radical solutions

Illustration by Bill Butcher

[Greg Ip] STUDENTS at National Defence University in Washington, DC, were recently given a model of the economy and told to fix the budget. To get the federal debt down, they jacked up taxes and slashed spending. The economy promptly tanked, sending the debt to higher levels than before. The lesson: “You’ll never get re-elected and you may do more harm than good,” concluded Eric Bee, an air-force colonel who took part in the exercise.

This is the ugly arithmetic of America’s public finances. Recession and aggressive fiscal stimulus have hugely swollen the federal deficit. Stimulus was essential to cushion a collapse in private demand. In spite of that, the economy has barely emerged from recession and unemployment is still rising, feeding speculation that more stimulus is needed. Yet at the same time voters are growing alarmed at the tide of red ink, and it may be only a matter of time before markets do, too. Read the rest of this entry »

New figures suggest that America has at last moved out of recession

Getty Images

[Greg Ip] ON October 29th the government reported that gross domestic product rose at an annualised rate of 3.5% in the third quarter compared to the second. This was the first increase since the second quarter of 2008. It backs up other evidence that the recession ended in the third quarter or just before, though the official decision, by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a group of academic economists, is still some way off. Robert Gordon, a member of this group, is confident that the recession, which began in December 2007, ended in June. But at 18 months that would still make it the longest since 1933.

Consumers are sceptical. Read the rest of this entry »

America’s debt crisis will be chronic, not acute

Illustration by Belle Mellor

[Greg Ip] AS AMERICA’S financial crisis recedes, the rumblings of its next crisis can be heard. The federal government has wrapped its guarantees around banks and the housing market. It has borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars to stimulate the enfeebled economy, while tax revenues crumble. And in the years to come the cost of retirees’ benefits will explode. “There is every reason to worry that the banking crisis has simply morphed into a long-term government-debt crisis,” says Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University.

But what kind would it be: acute or chronic? Read the rest of this entry »

A slump in September prompts thoughts of new stimulus

[Greg Ip] AFTER riding a wave of improvement since the spring, the economy stumbled in September according to the latest figures. Non-farm employment sank by 263,000, which was 62,000 more than in August, and the unemployment rate rose by 0.1% to 9.8%. Car sales tumbled as the federal “cash-for-clunkers” programme expired. Manufacturing activity cooled a bit.

All this is probably an air pocket; overall economic output almost certainly began to rise in the third quarter of the year and employment will eventually follow. Leading indicators such as the stockmarket and new claims for unemployment benefits are signalling recovery. But it is taking a painfully long time. Read the rest of this entry »

Guarantees offered during the crisis pose lasting risks to America

[Greg Ip] THE visible costs of the financial crisis are well known: bank recapitalisations, stimulus spending and shrunken tax revenues. Another set of liabilities—the guarantees thrown up around financial systems a year ago to quell panic and keep credit flowing—has received far less attention. Guarantees are popular because they entail no immediate cost. But they leave the sovereign balance-sheet exposed to lurches in the financial system’s fortunes. Read the rest of this entry »

Unlike any since the Depression

Categories:

Monetary policy

[Greg Ip] IN MY many years of reporting on the Federal Reserve, I have turned more times than I can count to Allan Meltzer. Volume One of his history of the Federal Reserve (he’s still working on Volume Two) is one of the most thumbed books on my shelf, and I consider him one of the leading authorities on 20th century economic history. Naturally I was intrigued by his criticism of comparisons between the current period and the Great Depression in the Wall Street Journal.

It’s a fascinating piece but I have several qualms with it. Read the rest of this entry »

The original article is linked here.

The enormous deficit is complicating the president’s ambitious plans

Illustration by Claudio Munoz

IT WAS a rare victory for fiscal rectitude. On July 21st the Senate stripped the funding for seven more F-22 fighter jets from a big spending bill, bowing to Barack Obama’s threat to veto the aircraft.

But it was overshadowed by the much bigger setback Mr Obama had suffered a few days earlier. Three committees in the House of Representatives had presented a plan to provide health cover for the uninsured with the help of hefty tax increases on the rich. On July 16th Douglas Elmendorf, Congress’s chief budget scorekeeper, stunned Washington when he said the bill would not only fail to tame health-care costs, but would permanently shift them higher. It would add $239 billion to the deficit in the next decade and far more thereafter. The next day conservative Democrats joined Republicans on two committees in voting against the bill, though it still passed.

That Mr Elmendorf’s comments made such an impact signifies the growing political potency of the deficit. By a big margin, Americans think Mr Obama is paying too little attention to it, according to one recent poll (see chart). The proportion who consider it the most important issue facing the country has risen from 12% last December to 24% in June, according to another poll by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News. Read the rest of this entry »

The original article is linked here.

The economy and employment

On the turn?

The gloom about jobs is overdone, but the outlook remains tenuous

AFTER ebbing steadily since the start of the year America’s monthly job losses figure abruptly jumped from 322,000 in May to 467,000 in June, deflating talk of an imminent exit from recession. Hand-wringing in Washington quickly followed. Read the rest of this entry »

The original article is linked here.

Sovereign credit-default swaps

Muffled signals

Credit derivatives on countries are behaving oddly

GOVERNMENTS in the rich world are announcing record-breaking deficits and their credit ratings are under threat. Yet the market that should be most worried is not. An index of credit-default-swap (CDS) spreads on the seven biggest rich economies maintained by Credit Derivatives Research (CDR), a research outfit, has widened in recent weeks, but still signals half the risk it did in February, before the full scale of the damage to public finances became clear (see chart). The trend holds true even for Britain, which is threatened with a credit-rating downgrade, and Ireland, which on June 8th suffered its second sovereign downgrade in three months.

Dave Klein at CDR admits to being puzzled by the trend. Read the rest of this entry »