Author: Simon Johnson

One World Recession, Ready or Not

The usual grounds for optimism these days is the fact that the Obama Administration is clearly going to propose a big fiscal package with two components: a large conventional stimulus (spending plus tax cuts); and a big housing refinance scheme, in which the Treasury will potentially become the largest-ever intermediary for mortgages.

These ideas are appealing under the circumstances, but this Fiscal First approach also has definite limitations, for both domestic and foreign reasons.  Continue reading “One World Recession, Ready or Not” →

When Will the G7 Intervene?

The dollar is depreciating in eye-catching and headline-grabbing fashion.  The Japanese authorities are signalling that they are prepared to intervene.  The G7 (remember them?) has the established role of coordinated intervention in major currency markets when things get out of hand.  So where are they now and when will they come in?

The answer is: you may have to wait a long time.  This round of dollar weakening is the direct result of easing monetary policy in the US.  The Fed doesn’t usually talk about the dollar (leaving this to the Treasury, which has a tradition of obfuscation on the issue), but dollar depreciation is fully consistent with (1) wanting to prevent deflation, and (2) hoping to stimulate growth through exports.  The spinmasters would probably also say that actions to restore confidence in the global financial system are reducing demand for dollars as a safe haven, and this is reflected in currency markets.

You may or may not agree with this logic, but from a US perspective there can be little interest in immediate intervention.  The Japanese are obviously unhappy when their exchange rate appreciates beyond 95 yen to the dollar, but their G7 partners are pretty unsympathetic at that level – Japan has been running a massive current account surplus (hence its reserves of over $1trn) and has long been in line for some appreciation.  At 85 yen to the dollar, things would start to get more animated, and almost everyone would support intervention at 80.

The dollar-euro thinking is even more interesting.  The US (and my former colleagues at the IMF) are obviously pressing for a big fiscal stimulus in Europe.  But key European governments are just as obviously demonstrating the desire to free ride, i.e., you put through a hefty fiscal package of $850bn and I’ll get back to growth through selling you more BMWs.  While the US will of course observe every diplomatic nicety in this situation, privately the outgoing and incoming administrations must be enjoying the fact that dollar depreciation puts the European Central Bank – and particularly the Germans’ export driven economy – very much on the spot.

Personally, I think the euro-dollar rate would have to move much further, probably close to 1.6 dollars per euro, for the intervention conversation to get serious.  Of course, if markets become “disorderly” so that prices jump around in an unusual way, there are always grounds for intervening.  But, on the other hand, in this situation you can rationalize almost any short-term exchange rate movement as the market adjusting to new fundamentals.  And you can look very pointedly at the European Central Bank when you say this.

Expansionary Monetary Policy is Infectious

The Federal Reserve’s announcement yesterday makes it clear that we should see its leadership as radical incrementalists.  They will move in distinct incremental steps, some small and some larger, but they will do whatever it takes to prevent deflation.  And that means they will do what it takes to make sure that inflation remains (or goes back to being?) positive.  If they need to err on the side of slightly higher inflation, then so be it.  This is pretty radical (and a good idea, in my opinion.)

What effect does this have on the rest of the world?  Continue reading “Expansionary Monetary Policy is Infectious” →

Baseline Scenario, 12/15/08

Baseline Scenario for 12/15/2008: pdf version

Peter Boone, Simon Johnson, and James Kwak, copyright of the authors

Summary

1) The world is heading into a severe slump, with declining output in the near term and no clear turnaround in sight.

2) Consumers in the US and the nonfinancial corporate sector everywhere are trying to “rebuild their balance sheets,” which means they want to save more.

3) Governments have only a limited ability to offset this increase in desired private sector savings through dissaving (i.e., increased budget deficits that result from fiscal stimulus). Even the most prudent governments in industrialized countries did not run sufficiently countercyclical fiscal policy in the boom time and now face balance sheet constraints.

4) Compounding these problems is a serious test of the eurozone: financial market pressure on Greece, Ireland and Italy is mounting; Portugal and Spain are also likely to be affected. This will lead to another round of bailouts in Europe, this time for weaker sovereigns in the eurozone. As a result, fiscal policy will be even less countercyclical, i.e., governments will feel the need to attempt precautionary austerity, which amounts to a further increase in savings.

5) At the same time, the situation in emerging markets moves towards near-crisis, in which currency collapse and debt default is averted by fiscal austerity. The current IMF strategy is designed to limit the needed degree of contraction, but the IMF cannot raise enough resources to make a difference in global terms – largely because potential creditors do not believe that large borrowers from an augmented Fund would implement responsible policies.

6) The global situation is analogous to the problem of Japan in the 1990s, in which corporates tried to repair their balance sheets while consumers continued to save as before. The difference, of course, is that the external sector was able to grow and Japan could run a current account surplus; this does not work at a global level. Global growth prospects are therefore no better than for Japan in the 1990s.

7) A rapid return to growth requires more expansionary monetary policy, and in all likelihood this needs to be led by the United States. But the Federal Reserve is still some distance from fully recognizing deflation and, by the time it takes that view and can implement appropriate actions, declining wages and prices will be built into expectations, thus making it much harder to stabilize the housing market and restart growth.

8) The push to re-regulate, which is the focus of the G20 intergovernmental process process (with the next summit set for April 2), could lead to a potentially dangerous procyclical set of policies that can exacerbate the downturn and prolong the recovery. There is currently nothing on the G20 agenda that will help slow the global decline and start a recovery.

9) The most likely outcome is not a V-shaped recovery (which is the current official consensus) or a U-shaped recovery (which is closer to the private sector consensus), but rather an L, in which there is a steep fall and then a struggle to recover.

[Details after the jump]: Continue reading “Baseline Scenario, 12/15/08” →

Forecasting the Official Forecasts

The IMF is signalling that it will further revise down its global growth forecast.  This is after cutting the forecast sharply in October and again in November.  Their latest published view is growth in 2009 will be 2.2% year-on-year, and 2.4% fourth quarter on fourth quarter.  This view is dated November 6, 2008, so you should think of it as reflecting what the IMF knew at the end of October.

I obviously can’t predict exactly what the next forecast will look like, as there is a lot of economic ground to cover between now and mid-January.  But here are some considerations to keep in mind. Continue reading “Forecasting the Official Forecasts” →

Remember Sovereign Wealth Funds?

An interview with Representative Jim Moran in the National Journal reminds me that we haven’t heard much about sovereign wealth funds recently.  These are the large pools of money (in foreign currency) that were created as a result of large cumulative current account surpluses in some parts of the world (e.g., oil exporters, China, Singapore).  They were quite controversial back in mid-2007, with concerns being raised – by Congress and others – regarding various aspects of their operation.

There are still some issues around the lack of transparency of these funds, although a great deal of progress on this dimension has been made (including in and around the IMF) and we learned to worry more about black boxes in other parts of the financial system.  But these funds might be coming back as a discussion item; for example: can they, should they, would you want them to, invest in US banks to help speed a turnaround?

Personally, I think the underlying current account surpluses are going to fall – this is one likely implication of the decline in world trade for next year that the World Bank is forecasting and the counterpart of what must be an increase in US savings (and thus a fall in our current account deficit).  The accumulated stocks, in the form of sovereign wealth funds, will remain but they are no longer on explosive growth paths and this should take most of the edge off the conversation.  But how open the US remains to various kinds of capital flows – and on what exact terms – will be a prominent issue on the Congressional agenda as we move into 2009.  We do, after all, want people to buy the debt we will issue to fund the fiscal stimulus.

Global Fiscal Stimulus: Will This Save Weaker Eurozone Countries?

Finally, the global economic policy ship begins to turn.  We are now seeing fiscal stimulus package announcements every week, if not every day.  And packages that we previously knew about are re-announced for emphasis and with an expanded mandate.  In all likelihood, we are looking at a fiscal stimulus in the order of 1-2 percent of world GDP, which is exactly what the IMF has been calling for.  Is this a modern miracle of international policy coordination?

The problem is – the IMF started calling for this in January 2008 when, with the benefit of hindsight, it would really have made a difference.  Fiscal policy is slow.  Even when everyone wants to move fast, when you can get the legislation through right away, and when there are “ready to go” projects, infrastructure spending will take at least 6-9 months to have perceptible effects in most economies. 

In the US we have some additional ways to boost spending, most notably as support to local and state governments, extending food stamps and the like (see my recent testimony to the Senate Budget Committee for further illustrations), and in most other countries that kind of government activity comes by way of “automatic stabilizers,” i.e., it happens without discretionary packages of the kinds that make headlines.  Still, the general point holds – the big fiscal stimulus package you put in place today is a bet on how the economy will be doing in a year or so.  And a year ago would have been a good time to start – remember that the NBER has just determined that the US recession actually started in December 2007 (but they were able to make the call only now, demonstrating how hard it is to forecast the present, let alone the future.)

My concern today, however, is not about the appropriateness of the overall package in the US, China or other emerging markets – in a crisis, erring on the side of “too much, too late” is better than “too little, too little.”  The problem is that in Europe we need not just a general fiscal stimulus (and more interest rate cuts), but also specific targeted measures that will provide appropriate, largely unconditional support to governments with weaker balance sheets (read: Greece, Ireland, Italy, but don’t exclude others from consideration). 

Monetary policy was consolidated in Europe (i.e., there is one currency for the eurozone) but fiscal policy substantially was not.  This imbalance is going to be addressed, one way or another, and perhaps under great stress.  Much progress has been made towards sensible policies in the US and some parts of Europe over the past two months, and calamity can still be avoided.  Let us not fall at the final hurdle.

Update: I talked with Madeleine Brand of NPR about some of these issues earlier today; audio recording and transcript are here.

Is This A Crisis Or Just A Recession?

The world seems quiet.  Sure, we have record job losses in the US, a likely decline in global trade for 2009, and what seems like to be a Great Leap Downwards for Chinese growth.  But no one is quite as worried as they were a month ago, let alone two months ago.  It feels, perhaps, like a “regular” global recession (albeit not something we have seen in 20+ years), in which growth decelerates markedly, but then we start to rebound in a timely manner.

Now, I’m happy to accept that as part of my current baseline view (and we will revise our forecast accordingly).  But there are serious downside risks to this forecast, i.e., we could move again into crisis mode.  The three places I look at on a daily basis for crisis-promoting potential are: Continue reading “Is This A Crisis Or Just A Recession?” →

Next MIT Class on Global Crisis: Tuesday, December 2nd

Tomorrow, Tuesday December 2, at 4:30pm (please note special start time for this week), we will webcast our next MIT class on the global crisis.  The session will run until 7pm, as usual, with a break around 5:30pm.

This is the last class on the crisis that we will broadcast & record, at least for now.  (There will also be a class on Tuesday, December 9, which will review the crisis to date; I’ll post summary materials but that session will not be recorded.)

On December 2nd, I plan for us to cover the following topics:

  1. The Citigroup Bailout, including whether this is or is not good value for the taxpayer (search this website for Citigroup to see readings).  Robert Rubin’s interview with the Wall Street Journal on Saturday is also essential reading (the WSJ article requires a subscription; the blog naked capitalism provides a free summary and some reactions worth discussing.
  2. The situation in Europe, which continues to worsen.  We’ll review the latest developments in the real economy and indications of various kinds of pressures (think: Italy, but the UK, Spain and other countries may well come up).
  3. Prospects for global financial system reform.  We can see fairly clearly the strategy of President-Elect Obama’s team with regard to fiscal policy, and we can infer some implications for monetary policy.  But what is their likely global strategy, with or without the IMF?  How does this fit with what the rest of the G7 or emerging markets or any other influential players want?  Can we see a full overhaul of the global system coming soon?  If not, why not?  (Search for Global Reform on this website for readings.)

Feel free to post questions here or email to us, through this website.  We’ll cover as many as possible in the classroom discussion.

Details on the webcast and some potentially useful background follow: Continue reading “Next MIT Class on Global Crisis: Tuesday, December 2nd” →

Waiting for the European Central Bank, And Waiting

The European Central Bank is widely expected to cut interest rates, perhaps by 50 basis points (half of a percentage point), this week. They could, of course, follow the lead of the Bank of England or the Swiss National Bank and go for a much larger cut (150 basis points and 100 basis points respectively on their most recent rounds). But they probably won’t and not because the economic outlook in the eurozone looks so different from those other parts of Europe or because the the ECB’s Governing Council knows something we don’t or because their interest rates are already low (actually, at 3.25%, they are definitely on the high side.)

The difference really lies in two factors: extreme views about inflation, and the nature of decision-making within the ECB.  Belief that a resurgence of inflation is always imminent is, of course, Germanic but not limited to Germany.  Within the 15 central banks represented on the ECB’s Governing Council, there will always be at least one or two who see unions as looking for an excuse to push up wages.  We can debate whether or not this view is correct under today’s circumstances, but that is irrelevant – these inflation hawks still appear to strongly hold such beliefs.

Of course, there are inflation hawks among all groups that make monetary policy.  But the consensus-seeking process at the ECB is such that even just a few such people can serve as an effective brake on rapid action.  The existence of such views has plainly not prevented the ECB from taking dramatic action on some fronts (e.g., in terms of liquidity provision the ECB arguably moved farther and faster than the Fed last year), but for core monetary policy issues – i.e., when the price stability “mission” is at stake – a couple of outliers can really slow things down (particularly if one or more are members of the Executive Board.)

if the ECB puts through a fairly standard interest rate cut, then it is Business As Usual in the eurozone.  Combined with the rather anemic (or largely smoke and mirrrors) fiscal stimulus in the EU, on top of Europe’s well-known labor market inflexibility (i.e., it is hard to reduce your wage costs, even if business turns down sharply), then the eurozone is in for a rough ride. 

If the ECB surprises the market with a dramatic interest rate cut, at least we will know they are firmly in catch-up mode.  But even then, I’m afraid it is probably too late to have much effect on the recession in 2009.  Under the best of circumstances, interest rate moves affect the real economy with a lag of at least a year.  And the current disruption in the credit market is far from helping monetary policy be effective.

While we will no doubt look back on this crisis as having its epicenter in the U.S., it’s the lack of coherent policy response (monetary, fiscal, regulatory) in Europe over the past year that has really helped turn this into a sustained global crisis.

International Implications of the Citigroup Bailout

The Citigroup bailout was a good deal for Citi shareholders (who wouldn’t appreciate a big transfer from the taxpayer during this holiday season?) and a great deal for Citigroup management.  But it also has three global implications that perhaps have not yet been fully thought through.

1. The Citi deal shifts pressure from US financial institutions, at least for a while.  But to the markets it raises the question: who or what is next?  And the indications again point to the eurozone.  Credit default swap spreads indicate increasing differentiation between Germany on the one hand and, say, Greece (or Ireland or Italy or Spain) on the other hand.  I don’t want to single out Greece, but the recent IMF Article IV Report has some very interesting debt path simulations (the report’s Figure 3) – if you update these in the light of current global circumstances, you can see why Greece may well need a bailout before too long (remember: their government debt is in euros and cannot be inflated away, unlike in the US or UK, for example.)  The market view is that some European governments could not really afford the generous bank bailouts they provided in October.

2. For all the increased discussion among politicians and academics about reforming the global system, to preempt the next crisis, why would the most powerful people on Wall Street want this?  The Citi deal shows that the clout of the US financial industry has, if anything, actually increased over the past eighteen months.  “Wall Street owns the upside and the taxpayer owns the downside” is an old saying which seems more appropriate now – and on a bigger scale – than ever.  There is no harm in proposing changes to deficient national regulatory systems and international, rather creaky, Bretton Woods structures.  But strong forces just found out that these structures are completely compatible with rather juicy bailouts (and there may be more to come), so don’t expect rapid or meaningful real reform. 

3. If we are now at the next stage of bailouts and of figuring out who can afford to do the bailing, then existing resources – in and around the IMF – for helping emerging markets are really not enough.  The G7’s strategy proposal to emerging markets is clearly: “finance, don’t adjust (much),” i.e., keep on growing one way or another.  This might or might not be a good idea, but it will only work if backed by enough official loan support when needed – this is what many countries will need to sustain a current account deficit or offset capital outflows and keep growth on track.  IMF available resources, even with the recent loan from Japan, are only around $200bn.  You really cannot save many banks/countries with that amount of money these days – the IMF lent over $40bn this month alone.

Bank Recapitalization Options and Recommendation (After Citigroup Bailout)

By Peter Boone, Simon Johnson, and James Kwak (pdf version is here)

Summary

1.       Debt and equity prices for U.S. banks at the close on Friday, November 21, indicated that the market is testing the resolve of the government to support the banking system. Allowing major banks to fail is not an option, as was made explicit in the G7 statement in mid-October. Significant recapitalization will be necessary to stem the pace of global deleveraging (the contraction of loans and sale of assets by banks around the world). However, the administration’s strategy is not clear.

2.       While full bank recapitalization is not a panacea, it is an important part of the policy mix that will get us through mid-2009, at which point a broader set of expansionary fiscal and – most important – monetary policies can begin to take effect.

3.       The response this weekend by the U.S. authorities in providing financial support to Citigroup is a partial, overly generous, and nontransparent recapitalization, including a large guarantee for distressed assets – which is very close to the asset purchases that Treasury only last week said it would not do.  This U-turn confuses the market (again), leaves the fate of other major banks unclear, and implies much larger contingent liabilities and little upside for the taxpayer.  This approach will be difficult to repeat multiple times because of likely political backlash.

4.       The most important goal now is to put in place a stable, transparent set of rules for bank recapitalization, with sufficient political support and limits on the scope for further policy changes.  Mr. Paulson’s seemingly haphazard approach has become a part of the system problem.

5.       While all recapitalization options have problems, the “least bad” is requiring firms to raise more capital and, for those that cannot, injecting capital through substantial purchases of common stock by the government. These can be managed through a special purpose agency or control board, which is designed to keep credit from becoming politicized and to sell the equity stakes when market conditions are sufficiently supportive.

6.       Another TARP-type round, on slightly tougher terms than October, may serve as an emergency stop-gap measure, but it will not solve the underlying problems and any positive effects could be short-lived.

Continue reading “Bank Recapitalization Options and Recommendation (After Citigroup Bailout)” →