Category: Economic Crisis

Low Interest Rates Increased Zombie Firms After Economic Crisis of 2008

ZombieFirmsIncreaseGraph2018-10-03.png

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) Italian clothing maker and retailer Stefanel SpA became famous for its knitted coats and cardigans.

Many economists, investors and bankers know Stefanel as something starkly different: a zombie company. It has posted an annual loss for nine of the last 10 years and restructured its bank debt at least six times, including several grace periods when Stefanel only had to pay interest on what it owed.
After booming during Italy’s post-World War II expansion, Stefanel and its lumbering factories were overwhelmed by Spanish fast-fashion giant Zara and then battered by the economic slowdown that hit Italy in 2008.
Stefanel is still alive but staggering. So are hundreds of other chronically unprofitable, highly indebted companies being kept afloat with new infusions from lenders and shareholders, especially in Southern Europe.
Economists and central bankers say zombies undercut prices charged by healthier competitors, create artificial barriers to entry and prevent the flushing out of (p. A10) weak companies and bad loans that typically happens after downturns.
Now that the European economy is in growth mode, those zombies and their related debt problems could become a drag on the entire continent.
“The zombification of the corporate sector and banks [is] a risk for future living standards,” Klaas Knot, a European Central Bank governor and the head of the Dutch central bank, said in an interview.
. . .
In some ways, zombie firms are an unintended side effect of years of easy money from the ECB, which rolled out aggressive stimulus policies, including negative interest rates, to support lending and growth. Those policies have been sharply criticized in some richer eurozone countries for making it easier for banks to keep struggling corporate borrowers alive.

For the full story, see:
Eric Sylvers and Tom Fairless. “Zombie Companies Haunt Europe’s Economic Recovery.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, November 16, 2017): A1 & A10.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date Nov. 15, 2017, and the title “A Specter Is Haunting Europe’s Recovery: Zombie Companies.”)

Central Banks Epitomize the Administrative State

(p. A15) The promise of the modern central bank is that it will make its corner of the economic-policy world technocratic and academic–in a word, boring.
The lesson of the past decade is that this promise is a lie. The developed world’s four major central banks–the Fed, the Banks of England and Japan, and the European Central Bank–have executed a series of extraordinary policy maneuvers to rescue us from the 2008 financial panic, with debatable success. These include ultralow or negative interest rates; the purchase of sovereign debt in mind-boggling quantities; forays into commercial debt, equity and real-estate markets; and ventures into mortgages, small-business loans and other similar instruments. Central banks have also taken on vast new supervisory powers over the financial system. Each of these measures has had profound effects on our economies: debtors win, savers lose; large, bond-issuing companies get credit, smaller firms don’t; owners of assets accumulate wealth, wage earners see their salaries endangered by inflation. Such distributional choices are normally left to elected leaders, but no one elects a central bank.
Mr. Tucker reminds us how this happened. He places the development of modern central banking firmly within the wider story of administrative governance in the 20th century and its expansion at the expense of electoral accountability. “Central banks might well be the current epitome of unelected power,” he writes, “but they are part of broader forces that have been reshaping the structure of modern governance.” His brief account of the Fed’s history starts not at the usual spot–the 1907 panic and its aftermath–but with the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission, in 1887, taken by some as the first step in the development of America’s modern bureaucracy.

For the full review, see:
Joseph C. Sternberg. “BOOKSHELF; ‘Unelected Power’ Review: Monetary Mavericks; The question is not whether recent interventions by central banks were effective, but whether they were legitimate.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, June 28, 2018): A15.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date June 27, 2018, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘Unelected Power’ Review: Monetary Mavericks; The question is not whether recent interventions by central banks were effective, but whether they were legitimate.”)

The book under review, is:
Tucker, Paul. Unelected Power: The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018.

China Fears It Can Only Walk Forward by Using Keynes

(p. B1) HONG KONG — Wang Shidong and his two partners were still finishing graduate school two years ago when they raised $45 million in less than two months to start a venture capital fund. His wife, an elementary-school teacher in their home village, was “terrified” that he got to manage so much money, Mr. Wang said.
Things are different this year. After three months and visits with more than 90 potential investors all over China, Mr. Wang and his partners raised only $3 million for a second fund. In June, they shut down the firm.
Their fund, East Zhang Hangzhou Investment Management Ltd., was one of nearly 10,000 founded over the past three years amid a technology gold rush powered in part by China’s government-guided economic growth engine. Now they have become the latest sign (p. B2) that China’s engine is slowing down.
“All industries, institutions and individuals are running short of cash,” said Zhang Kaixing, founder and chief executive of an online asset management company in Shenzhen called Jinfuzi, which means “golden ax.” Jinfuzi, which manages over $4.5 billion in assets, is the type of investor that technology funds court.
“Many investors in private equity and venture capital funds want to take their money back,” Mr. Zhang said.
. . .
“In China we believe in Keynesian economics,” said Mr. Zhang, the Jinfuzi chief executive, referring to the economic theory that favors a bigger role for government. “If what’s going on in China were happening in the U.S., it would have been called a recession. But in China, the government will step in to interfere in significant ways.”
Under President Xi, even economics has become a delicate topic. Many people in China are not willing to speak publicly because even economists aren’t allowed to make downward forecasts.
Yet in private conversations, investors, entrepreneurs and economists admit that with the high debt level and a trade war with the United States, the room for government maneuvering is shrinking. The degrees of pessimism vary, but many of them are bracing for a tough ride ahead.
. . .
Venture funds like East Zhang came into existence in part because, starting in 2014, Beijing made innovation and entrepreneurship top priorities. Leaders hoped that start-ups would help elevate China from a manufacturing power to a technology power. Corporations, banks and wealthy individuals fought to give money to venture funds to invest in start-ups.
“We ended up with a lot of dumb money, managed by inexperienced investors,” said Ran Wang, chief executive of the investment bank CEC Capital Group in Beijing.

For the full story, see:
Li Yuan. “Latest Sign of China’s Slowdown: A Technology Cash Crunch.” The New York Times (Tuesday, July 17, 2018): B1 & B2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 16, 2018.)

Plenty of Good Blue-Collar Jobs

(p. A1) ELKHART, Ind.–The self-proclaimed RV capital of the world gives a glimpse of what the American economy looks like when operating at full tilt.
High-school students around here skip college for factory jobs that offer great pay and benefits. For-hire signs sprout like roadside weeds. And workers are so flush that car dealers can’t keep new pickups on the lot.
At the same time, the strains are showing. Employers can’t hang on to employees, and house prices are zooming. The worker shortage prompted a local Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant to offer $150 signing bonuses. A McDonald’s failed to open for lunch last fall because managers couldn’t corral enough hands at $8 an hour to serve the lines waiting at the door.
No place in the U.S. has seen a labor-market turnaround like this metropolitan region of 110,000 workers, a mix of blue-collar whites, Mexican immigrants and Amish. “It’s like 1955,” said Michael Hicks, a Ball State University economist. “If you show up and have minimal literacy skills, you can find a job here.”

For the full story, see:
Bob Davis. “Economy’s Future Plays Out in Rust Belt.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, April 6, 2018): A1 & A9.
(Note: the online version of the story was updated April 13 [sic], 2018, and has the title “The Future of America’s Economy Looks a Lot Like Elkhart, Indiana.”)

Chinese Economy “on the Brink of a Precipitous Downturn?”

(p. A15) Reporters in China often run up against Potemkin projects–gleaming science parks sitting half empty, new districts with eerily few residents, solar-powered cities where most of the panels are disconnected. These wasteful investments, designed to fulfill local-government ambitions to boost construction and drive short-term growth, can be a nuisance when researching stories about innovation or environmental foresight. But what if such projects are not a distraction but the story itself? What if China’s economy is, in fact, on the brink of a precipitous downturn? That is the question Dinny McMahon asks in “China’s Great Wall of Debt.”
Mr. McMahon, a former Beijing-based correspondent for this newspaper, suggests that China has powered ahead for as long as it has not because it is immune to crises but because its government has so far managed to intervene to stave them off. When China’s stock market plunged in 2015, the central government directed fund managers to buy instead of sell and pressured journalists to write only optimistic reports. One reporter who strayed from the official line was trotted out on state television to apologize.
Such intervention has created a false sense of confidence, Mr. McMahon argues, which in turn has led to a bad case of economic bloating.

For the full review, see:
Mara Hvistendahl. “”BOOKSHELF; The Chinese Growth Charade; Ghost cities, shadow banks, white-elephant state projects: The country’s pursuit of growth at all costs may come at a high price.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, March 14, 2018): A15.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 13, 2018, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘China’s Great Wall of Debt’ Review: The Chinese Growth Charade; Ghost cities, shadow banks, white-elephant state projects: The country’s pursuit of growth at all costs may come at a high price.”)

The book under review, is:
McMahon, Dinny. China’s Great Wall of Debt: Shadow Banks, Ghost Cities, Massive Loans and the End of the Chinese Miracle. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.

Stronger Labor Market May Increase Productivity

(p. B3) . . . the provocative conclusion of new research from the McKinsey Global Institute, the in-house think tank of the consulting giant, . . . suggests we should change how we think about the advancements that make society richer over time. It implies that as the economy returns to full employment, an outburst of faster growth in productivity — and hence economic growth — is a real possibility.
. . .
For years, McKinsey researchers have tried to understand what drives productivity growth from the ground up. They’ve studied how innovations that enable a company to make more goods and services per hour of labor spread across the economy.
The latest wrinkle is that the researchers now believe that productivity growth depends not just on the supply side of the economy — what companies produce and what technologies they use to do it — but also significantly on the demand side. That is to say, productivity advancements don’t happen in a vacuum just because technology is available. They also happen because companies need to increase production to match demand for their goods, and a shortage, either of workers or of materials, forces them to think creatively about how to do so.
. . .
. . . consider how this dynamic might apply in the restaurant industry (or retail, or tourism).
The basic technology for self-serve kiosks has been around for years. But when the unemployment rate was at its post-crisis highs, employers could have their pick of good workers at relatively low prices. Now, with the jobless rate at 4.1 percent, good workers are harder to find. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, companies have been more open to installing technology that may have a significant upfront cost and require reworking how a restaurant is organized, but allow more sales without hiring more workers.

For the full commentary, see:
Neil Irwin. “Why Researchers Believe a Productivity Boom Is Now a Real Possibility.” The New York Times (Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018): B3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has a date of Feb. 21, 2018, and has the title “The Economy Is Getting Hotter. Is a Productivity Boom Next?”)

The McKinsey report discussed above, is:
Remes, Jaana, James Manyika, Jacques Bughin, Jonathan Woetzel, Jan Mischke, and Mekala Krishnan. “Solving the Productivity Puzzle.” Report McKinsey Global Institute, Feb. 2018.

Is a Michelin Star the Best Metric of Good Food?

(p. A4) MONTCEAU-LES-MINES, France — It is like giving up your Nobel, rejecting your Oscar, pushing back on your Pulitzer: Jérôme Brochot, a renowned and refined chef, decided to turn in his Michelin star.
He is renouncing the uniquely French distinction that separates his restaurant from thousands of others, the lifetime dream of hundreds. But Mr. Brochot’s decision was not a rash one, born of arrogance, ingratitude or spite. Rather, it was for a prosaic, but still important, reason: he could no longer afford it.
. . .
Even in a region famed for its culinary traditions, this declining old mining town deep in lower Burgundy could not sustain a one-star Michelin restaurant. Mr. Brochot, a youthful-looking 46, had gambled on high-end cuisine in a working-class town and lost.
. . .
Already Mr. Brochot’s strategy appears to be working. He has cut his prices and is offering a more down-to-earth cuisine of stews, including the classic blanquette de veau, and serving cod instead of the more expensive sea bass.
It had depressed him deeply, he said, to have to throw away costly bass and turbot, like gold even in France’s street markets, at the end of every sitting because his customers couldn’t afford it. “There was a lot of waste,” he said.
“Since we changed the formula, we’ve gotten a lot more people,” Mr. Brochot said. Above all, the effect has been psychological. “In the heads of people, a one-star, it’s the price,” he said.
On a recent Friday afternoon, most of the tables had diners, including Didier Mathus, the longtime former mayor, a Socialist.
. . .
“Maybe the star scared people,” Mr. Mathus said. “I understand. He’s saying, ‘Don’t be scared to come here.’ Here, it’s simple people, with modest incomes.”

For the full story, see:
ADAM NOSSITER. “Rejected Honor Reflects Hardships of ‘the Other France’.” The New York Times (Thurs., December 28, 2017): A4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 27, 2017, and has the title “Chef Gives Up a Star, Reflecting Hardship of ‘the Other France’.”)

The System Is “Rigged” by the “Unelected Permanent Governing Class”

(p. 10) With its broad historical scope, Eisinger’s book lacks the juicy, infuriating details of “Chain of Title,” David Dayen’s chronicle of foreclosure fraud — another instance of white-collar crime that went largely unpunished. With its emphasis on institutions and incentives, it doesn’t serve up the red meat of Matt Taibbi’s “The Divide,” a stinging indictment of the justice system’s unequal treatment of corporate executives and street-level drug offenders. But for someone familiar with the political landscape of the contemporary United States, Eisinger’s account has the ring of truth.
After decades in which Wall Street masters of the universe were lionized in the media and popular culture, star investment bankers — rich, usually white men in nice suits — just don’t match the popular image of criminals. Democrats as well as Republicans cozied up to big business, outsourcing the Treasury Department to Wall Street and the Justice Department to corporate law firms. Even after the financial system collapsed, the Obama administration’s priority was to bail out the megabanks — to “foam the runway,” in Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s words. The Justice Department became increasingly staffed by intelligent, status-seeking, conformist graduates of the nation’s top law schools — all of whom had friends on Wall Street and in the defense bar. In that environment, the easy choice was to play along, strike a deal with an impressive-sounding fine (to be absorbed by shareholders) that held no one responsible, and avoid risking an acquittal or a hung jury. (The book’s title comes from then-U.S. Attorney James Comey’s name for prosecutors who had never lost a trial.) Corruption can take many forms — not just bags of cash under the table, but a creeping rot that saps our collective motivation to pursue the cause of justice. As Upton Sinclair might have written were he alive today: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his résumé depends upon his not understanding it.
There’s just one problem. While the “unelected permanent governing class” may have been willing to look the other way when highly paid bankers wrecked the economy, many of the workers who lost their jobs and families who lost their homes were not. Outside the Beltway, the fact that the Wall Street titans who blew up the financial system suffered little more than slight reductions in their bonuses only reinforced the perception that the “system” is “rigged” — with the consequences we know only too well. Many people simply want to live in a world that is fair. As Eisinger shows, this one isn’t.

For the full review, see:
JAMES KWAK. “Getting Away With It.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, JULY 9, 2017): 10.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date JULY 5, 2017, and has the title “America’s Top Prosecutors Used to Go After Top Executives. What Changed?”)

The book under review, is:
Eisinger, Jesse. The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017.

Venezuelan Communist Economy Continues to Collapse

EmptyShelvesVenezuela2017-09-11.jpg“Empty cases and shelves in a grocery store in Cumaná, Venezuela, last year.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 6) CARACAS, Venezuela — Food shortages were already common in Venezuela, so Tabata Soler knew painfully well how to navigate the country’s black market stalls to get basics like eggs and sugar.

But then came a shortage she couldn’t fix: Suddenly, there was no propane gas for sale to do the cooking.
And so for several nights this summer, Ms. Soler prepared dinner above a makeshift fire of broken wooden crates set ablaze with kerosene to feed her extended family of 12.
“There was no other option,” said Ms. Soler, a 37-year-old nurse, while scouting again for gas for her stove. “We went back to the past where we cooked soup with firewood.”
Five months of political turmoil in Venezuela have brought waves of protesters into the streets, left more than 120 people dead and a set off a wide crackdown against dissent by the government, which many nations now consider a dictatorship.
An all-powerful assembly of loyalists of President Nicolás Maduro rules the country with few limits on its authority, vowing to pursue political opponents as traitors while it rewrites the Constitution in the government’s favor.
But as the government tries to stifle the opposition and regain a firm grip on the nation, the country’s economic collapse, nearing its fourth year, continues to gain steam, leaving the president, his loyalists and the country in an increasingly precarious position.
. . .
In one nine-day stretch in late July and early August, the price of the bolívar, the national currency, fell by half against the dollar on the black market, cutting earnings for people who make the minimum wage to the equivalent of just $5 per month.
. . .
“Bolívars are like ice cubes now,” said Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez, who leads the Latin America practice at Greenmantle, a macroeconomic advising firm, and teaches at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. “If you’re going to go to the fridge and take one, it’s something you have to use right now, because soon it’s going to be gone.”

For the full story, see:
ANA VANESSA HERRERO and NICHOLAS CASEY. “In Venezuela, That Empty Feeling.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., SEPT. 3, 2017): 6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date SEPT. 2, 2017, and has the title “In Venezuela, Cooking With Firewood as Currency Collapses.”)

Deregulation Can Stimulate Dynamism and Economic Growth

(p. A15) Various estimates suggest that had U.S. productivity growth not slowed, GDP would be about $3 trillion higher than it is today.
. . .
Many economists contend that properly counting free digital services from companies like Google and Facebook would substantially boost productivity and GDP growth. One of the highest estimates, calculated by economists Austan Goolsbee and Peter Klenow, stands at $800 billion. That’s a big number, but not big enough to fill a $3 trillion hole.
. . .
In his 2016 book, “The Rise and Fall of American Growth,” Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon contends that the current economy fails to measure up to the great inventions of the past, and that innovation today is more incremental than transformative. He has argued vigorously that the transformative effects of technologies like electric lighting, indoor plumbing, elevators, autos, air travel and television are unlikely to be repeated. Technological innovation, he argues, will not be sufficiently robust to counter the headwinds of slowing population growth, rising inequality and exploding sovereign debt.
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has resurrected Alvin Hansen’s 1938 theory of secular stagnation. Morgan Stanley economist Ruchir Sharma has argued that a 2% economy is the new normal. Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has repeatedly said that the growing share of social benefits and entitlements in GDP crowds out national savings and reduces investments required to boost productivity growth.
The growth dividends from disruptive technology often require time before they are widely diffused and used. To Mr. Gordon’s point, economic historians respond that the Industrial Revolution did not improve British living standards for almost a century. Likewise the productivity boost spurred by the transformative innovations of the early 20th century took decades to kick in.
In the short term, as companies try to develop online capabilities while maintaining a physical presence, some costs are duplicated.
. . .
It’s possible that economic dynamism and entrepreneurship are no longer driving the U.S. economy. Startups are being created at a slower pace. From 1996 to 2007 the ratio of new firms to the total number of firms oscillated between 9.6 and 11.2. Today it has dropped to 7.8. Existing firms do innovate and contribute to improved productivity, but the declining share of young firms suggests a less dynamic economy.
Concurrently, the most recent numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirm that churn in the U.S. labor market remains weak across industries, regions and age groups. People are simply not moving or changing jobs for better alternatives.
. . .
The real debate is about policies that favor productivity and GDP growth. Predicting future innovation is hazardous, but deregulation and streamlined licensing requirements will facilitate job mobility. Tax reform that encourages and rewards investment should stimulate capital investment.
. . .
These necessary policy changes provide options for improving productivity and GDP growth. Waiting for the data debate to resolve itself gets us nowhere.

For the full commentary, see:
Brian Switek. “The Great Productivity Slowdown; It began long before the financial crisis, and it has worsened markedly in the past six years.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., May 5, 2017): A15.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 4, 2017.)

The Goolsbee and Klenow article mentioned above, is:
Goolsbee, Austan, and Peter J. Klenow. “Valuing Consumer Products by the Time Spent Using Them: An Application to the Internet.” American Economic Review 96, no. 2 (May 2006): 108-13.

Fed Throws Seniors Under Bus

(p. A1) The average one-year CD hasn’t paid more than 1% since 2009, according to Bankrate.com.
The drop in interest rates since the financial crisis cost U.S. savers almost $1 trillion in lost income from savings accounts, CDs and bonds from the start of 2008 through 2015, taking into account money saved on debt costs, according to April 2016 research (p. A2) by insurer Swiss Re.
There are few signs of imminent improvement. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note has risen since the election to nearly 2.6%, but it is still below the 2.9% it yielded when U.S. stocks hit their low on March 9, 2009.
. . .
Lawmakers such as House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) have criticized the Fed’s low-rate policy as harmful to savers. Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) in 2013 said it amounted to “throwing seniors under the bus.”

For the full story, see:
Corrie Driebusch and Aaron Kuriloff. “Stocks Have Tripled Since Crisis, but Low Rates Are Still Squeezing Savers.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., MARCH 9, 2017): A1-A2.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 8, 2017, and has the title “Stocks Have Tripled Since Crisis, but Low Rates Are Still Squeezing Savers.”)