Expectations for better results are continuously dashed; GDP growth never reaches escape velocity; housing is at best bumping along the bottom; the engine of job growth has shifted from first gear to neutral; unemployment is UP, not down, from 8.8 percent in March to 9.2 percent last month.
Perhaps it would be useful to take a moment and just catalogue what's going wrong.
Liquidity trap/zero lower bound; fading stimulus: As Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong point out, this is key. The usual anti-recessionary move by the Federal Reserve is to lower the interest rate until they get some traction in investment, home buying, etc. But what if that doesn't work, because industry has so much excess capacity (including cash reserves), there's huge supply excess in the job and housing markets, and after binging on debt, folks want to deleverage?
Well, the Fed can keep jacking down rates, but they can't go below zero (or else lenders would be paying you to borrow their money). And that's where things have stood for a while now. So traditional monetary policy is ineffective.
That leaves fiscal policy, i.e., stimulus, which is facing two big problems right now. First, the Recovery Act is winding down, so no help there. But worse, the realization that we need to do more in this space is under attack by politicians of all stripes. The Republicans want to argue the Recovery Act failed, and prominent Democrats either seem to largely agree or at least don't want to get near anything Keynesian. I haven't seen such a lack of stimulus since my days of dating back in high school.
The weak job market: It's a 70 percent consumption economy, and if jobs and paychecks are scarce and fiscal/monetary stimuli are fading, ain't much good gonna happen. It's a self-reinforcing weak demand cycle.
Productivity and technology: There used to be something called "labor hoarding" where even when demand faltered, firms would hold on to many of their workers, either because of union contracts or because they wanted to make sure their workforce was around when things began to pick up (imagine that?!).
Now, firms engage in a "just-in-time-inventory" approach to hiring. It's a more lean approach, hiring up when demand spikes and laying off when it tapers. You squeeze more productivity out of the folks you keep, and avoid committing to permanent hires for as long as you can.
There might be something else going on here too. I've heard anecdotes that lead to me wonder whether the pace of "labor-saving technology" is accelerating, especially in manufacturing. It's been going on forever, of course, but I have a feeling that the capital insensitivity of production is increasing at a faster rate. More to come on this in later posts as I learn more about it.
China's absorbing what little demand we can muster. When countries go all mercantile at a time like this, managing their currency to grab export shares here and block imports over there, it makes it that much harder for us to tap an important escape hatch: a lower dollar stimulating exports.
Bad tax incentives that encourage overseas production often in emerging economies that manage their currencies (see above).
Destabilizing uncertainty in the business community based on page 745 of the Affordable Care Act, which phases in on July 17, 2092... kidding!
Actual uncertainty regarding the debt ceiling.
Headwinds: Oil, Japan supply disruptions, Greek debt -- these are all fading to one degree or another, but with all these other fragilities, even little bumps on the road can break an axle.
The absence of union power in tandem with high unemployment, leads to weak bargaining power so that whatever growth there is bypasses the broad middle class and goes right to the top of the income scale, where demand ends up narrowly concentrated.
I'm sure I'm forgetting other aspects of the problem and if I come up with more, I'll update.
But the funny thing is that when I hear most people talk about this stuff, or when I go on TV to do so, hardly any of these reasons come up. Instead, it's all debt and deficits, too much government spending, the absence of business confidence, high taxes, regulations, the Recovery Act (and not that it was too small!), the Fed (and not that they haven't done enough!).
We're into some deep misdiagnosis, which does not bode well for the cure.
This post originally appeared at Jared Bernstein's On The Economy blog.
Instead of giving zero percent interest loans to banks, they(the FED etc.) should give low interest loans to home owners and would be home owners and students.
We need money creation i.e. loans and we need it at the bottom of society in a non-usurious form. Credit cards won't work.
Partial list:
Grover Norquist.
Arthur Laffer
Mitch McConnell
Jon Kyl
Roy Blunt
John Boehner
Eric Cantor
Kevin McCarthy
Paul Ryan
The U.S. has waged a war on jobs - Fortune Management
"As long as Wall Street and venture capitalists continue to reward corporations for off-shoring and downsizing, we continue to play the fool when we express shock that the U.S. economy is not creating many new jobs.
By Jeffrey Pfeffer, guest contributor
FORTUNE -- The U.S. seems to be shocked that its economy isn't creating many jobs, and each monthly report on the unemployment rate and the number of new jobs somehow stimulates more handwringing. I'm not an economist, labor or otherwise, but simple observation suggests one significant contributor to the nation's job crisis -- for a long time, maybe even decades, we have been waging war on jobs and those who hold them.
At a board meeting of a human capital software company I had attended, the managing director of a major venture capital firm asked the CEO to describe the company's outsourcing strategy. The VC then proceeded to tell us that it was increasingly common for the venture community to evaluate investment opportunities partly by whether the company had a strategy for off-shoring work to less expensive locales.
The logic was that shrewd business people -- the sort that deserved financial backing -- would have thought through how to lower their labor costs, even while their product or service was being developed, and then over time as the business grew and matured..."
- Outsourcing.
- Crooks in Wall Street getting away with so much even investors don't really know who to believe any more.
- The government spending trillions in the past 2-3 years with really nothing to show for it. But hey, the Wall St crooks and unions are thankful for those trillions.
- Healthcare law which cast so much uncertainty for small businesses.
- Outsourcing.
- Outsourcing.
- Outsourcing.
This is the corporate/republican talking points memo, and our MSM is owned and operated by these same people. We have no reality based dialogue except the internet. And that pretty much spells the end of our democracy.
Interest rates are too low. We're in a liquidity trap.
Get rid of the capital gains tax for a year. Then cut it in half. Lower taxes so people invest and not put in gold or some other nonproductive commodity.
Public should be putting their money in the 'Banks' , not forced to put it in gold and stocks.
not high wages as possible [ in order to afford it ].
And to multiply the effect, more bang for the buck, as possible.
Federal money to hire at least 2-300,000 tutors for the schools that
need it the most would do this. Many would be part time but the
$ 5-10k would help their families a great deal. The cost would
be roughly $ 5 billion a year.
More kids would stay in school with a bit more individual treatment,
we'd get their attention and prevent many from crime, with all
the many costs, from cops to judges and jails. More would
become taxpayers rather than eating up taxes, often
for many years.
Things like this, rather simple and low tech, put many more
to work than slower and expensive things like building bridges
[ which we need too ].
There is no way American workers can compete with workers in foreign countries who get lower wages and few if any benefits.
Unemployed and underemployed American workers do not have money for more than the necessities.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/iron+law+of+wages
Iron law of wages | Define Iron law of wages at
Dictionary.com
"the doctrine or theory that wages tend toward a level sufficient only to maintain a subsistence standard of living. "
We would call such a man, "a fool," and we would wait for the end of the story where a smarter man from outside came in, removed the foolish farmer by whatever means, and profited immensely from the same fields as the foolish farmer always could have done. That IS how this story ends.
But, right now, "we print gobs of money," and so, "there's money in it," and so, "there's money in it under the table for ME-ME-ME" because "I'm at the top of the food chain, I AM part of that uber-privileged 1%, because I CAN vote for things in Congress and I AM ENTITLED to all those 'payments,' which, because I say so, are not the Bribes talked about in Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution. So there."
"Ike" Eisenhower warned us that we would have to be "a vigilant populace," and we have not been. The halls of power, throughout Washington DC, are filled with verminous corruption in both political parties equally ... in all three branches of Government. History tells us plainly that the true enemy which every nation must fear most is, "The Enemy Within."
Then you noted the omission of a quite significant problem - and possibly a major factor in choosing labor-savings over actual laborers. Bravo!
Fanned AND faved...
Each of these principles generally effect each of the others, and each is very important.
These subjects need to be understood by the General Public.
Economics is not that complicated.
It is interlocked with understandable cause and affect principals of various economic action options that can be totally understood by almost any High School Graduate, and/or most High School Drop outs.
US citizens must start creating real wealth by taking actions that result in a net transfer of gold, currency and/or commodities from parties outside of the USA into the USA, such as re-industrialization.
The USA needs to generate wealth, not re-distribute and spend the remainder of the existing wealth by selling assets created by previous generations of US citizens to foreigners and then distributing that wealth to the poor!
I support this portion of your post.
We do this by having an executive administration that invests in manufacturing and export capable goods and services and infrastructure.
Now, if your a Japanese company who has 100 employees making a $1.00 an hour busting their ass and fingers at slave conditions making iphones components, Nintendos, radios, autoparts, camera equipment etc..... and then turn around sell those goods at little to no tax in the U.S. to Americans how in the hell can an American electronics company exist ?
Answer : They can't. They cannot compete under that design.
They will send their manufacturing to Japan.
The imports from Japan need to be taxed sufficiently to alter U.S. economic growth.
* JOBS in manufacturing NEED to be HERE in the U.S. through Unions or taxed to stop Off-Shoring to make Off-shoring too expensive.
Call it protectionism call it anti-business, call it whatever you want but it's the right thing to do.
NAFTA/CAFTA and FREE TRADE is BULLSHIT. It's Anti-American.worker