China's conundrum: Selling FX reserves to support the yuan threatens deflation. But falling yuan fuels capital flight http://t.co/XGz6S4HPz6
— Colin Twiggs (@Colin_Twiggs) August 29, 2015
AND capital flight causes collapsing stock and real estate prices, which could lead to…… deflation.
Credit expansion cannot increase the supply of real goods. It merely brings about a rearrangement. It diverts capital investment away from the course prescribed by the state of economic wealth and market conditions. It causes production to pursue paths which it would not follow unless the economy were to acquire an increase in material goods. As a result, the upswing lacks a solid base. It is not a real prosperity. It is illusory prosperity. It did not develop from an increase in economic wealth [i.e. the accumulation of savings made available for productive investment]. Rather, it arose because the credit expansion created the illusion of such an increase. Sooner or later, it must become apparent that this economic situation is built on sand.
Hat tip to John Hussman
Amir Sufi, professor of Finance at the University of Chicago, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Policy. His statement titled “Who is the Economy Working For? The Impact of Rising Inequality on the American Economy” makes interesting reading.
“Only 76% of Americans aged 25 to 54 currently have jobs, compared to 80% in 2006 and 82% in 1999…..How did we get into this mess?”
The gist of his argument is:
“Richer Americans save a much higher fraction of their income, ultimately holding most of the financial assets in the economy: stocks, bonds, money-market funds, and deposits. These savings are lent by banks to middle and lower income Americans, primarily through mortgages.”
…And collapse of the housing market caused disproportionate harm to the middle and lower-income groups.
It is true is that middle and lower-income groups have a higher percentage of their wealth invested in their homes and are also far more exposed to mortgages than richer Americans. The source of funding for these mortgages, however, is not the wealthy — who are primarily invested in growth assets such as stocks — but the banks who create new credit out of thin air. The collapse of the housing market caused disproportionate hardship to middle and lower-income Americans because their wealth is concentrated in this area. The rich suffered from a collapse in stock prices, but the market has recovered to new highs while housing remains in the doldrums. That is one of the causes of rising wealth inequality.
Where I do agree with Amir is that credit growth without income growth is a recipe for disaster.
“A tempting solution to our current troubles is to encourage even more borrowing by lower and middle-income Americans. This group of Americans is likely to spend out of additional credit, which would provide a temporary boost to consumption. But unless borrowing is predicated on higher income growth, we risk falling into the same trap that led to economic catastrophe.”
The graph below compares credit growth to growth in (nominal) disposable income:
The ratio of credit to disposable income rose from 2:1 during the 1960s to almost 5:1 in 2009.
There is no easy path back to the stability of the 1960s. A credit contraction of that magnitude would destroy the economy. But regulators should aim to keep credit growth below the rate of income growth over the next few decades, gradually restoring the economy to a more sustainable level.
The worst possible policy would be to encourage another credit boom!
From Rex Nutting at MarketWatch:
For decades, economic growth in America was driven by a powerful and sustainable force: increased consumption paid for by the rising incomes for middle-class and working-class Americans.
But somewhere around 1980, that model broke down. Wages flattened out, but consumption didn’t. Americans cut back on their savings, and took on more debt — mostly mortgage debt — to satisfy their needs and desires.
It’s not a sustainable model, but it did persist for nearly 30 years until the credit bubble burst in 2007. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, and millions lost their homes when the credit spigot was shut off, forcing average families to cut back on their consumption and live within their means once again.
And now, with the economy only partially healed, it seems we’re going back to the lend-and-spend economy that failed us before.For the past six or seven years, most of what the Federal Reserve has done to fix the problem has been focused on getting the credit spigot turned back on: cutting interest rates and hectoring banks to start lending again, even though demand for loans was weak….
Read more at Middle class is drowning in debt, hobbling the economy – Rex Nutting – MarketWatch.
From Rex Nutting at MarketWatch:
For decades, economic growth in America was driven by a powerful and sustainable force: increased consumption paid for by the rising incomes for middle-class and working-class Americans.
But somewhere around 1980, that model broke down. Wages flattened out, but consumption didn’t. Americans cut back on their savings, and took on more debt — mostly mortgage debt — to satisfy their needs and desires.
It’s not a sustainable model, but it did persist for nearly 30 years until the credit bubble burst in 2007. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, and millions lost their homes when the credit spigot was shut off, forcing average families to cut back on their consumption and live within their means once again.
And now, with the economy only partially healed, it seems we’re going back to the lend-and-spend economy that failed us before.For the past six or seven years, most of what the Federal Reserve has done to fix the problem has been focused on getting the credit spigot turned back on: cutting interest rates and hectoring banks to start lending again, even though demand for loans was weak….
Read more at Middle class is drowning in debt, hobbling the economy – Rex Nutting – MarketWatch.
Great post by Leith van Onselen
Reproduced with kind permission from Macrobusiness.com.au.
Prosper Australia has provided a submission to the Senate Inquiry into Housing Affordability, which is well worth a look. The submission first provides nine metrics illustrating Australia’s residential property bubble, which include the following:
It took forty years from 1950 to 1990 for housing prices to double, but only fifteen years between 1996 and 2010 to double again. The surge in housing prices is driven by the tremendous growth in household debt, as owner-occupiers and investors take out ever larger mortgages to speculate on housing. The household debt to GDP ratio reached a record high of 98 per cent in 2010, the same year real housing prices peaked. In 2013, the mortgage and personal debt ratios were 86 and 9 per cent, respectively, for a combined household debt ratio of 95 per cent.
As mortgage debt escalated, investors’ net rental losses increased rapidly from 2001 onwards. In that year, net rental income losses were just over $1 billion, rising to $9.7 billion in 2008 as the cash rate peaked at 7.2 per cent. By 2010, when mortgage debt reached its historical peak relative to GDP, investor losses eased to $5.1 billion as the cash rate fell to a then historic low of 3 per cent in 2009 following the global financial crisis (GFC). The latest data shows income losses rose to $8.2 billion in 2011, the second largest absolute loss on record…
The housing market meets economist Hyman Minsky’s definition of a Ponzi scheme, as gross rental incomes minus expenses are clearly insufficient to meet principal and interest repayments. As 67 per cent of property investors are negatively-geared as of 2011, investment decisions are predicated upon expected rises in land values, not rents. This strategy will inevitably fail, as the escalation in real housing prices can only be sustained by a continual acceleration or exponential rise in mortgage debt.
The price to income (P/I) ratio, otherwise known as the median multiple, is another measure of residential property valuation…
From the mid-1990s onwards, housing prices outpaced household incomes, and the P/I ratio increased from 4 to 7 nationwide. It is impossible for household incomes to match the rise in housing prices during the boom phase of a property bubble, as wages grow more slowly, usually just above the rate of inflation…
Land is the largest tangible market in Australia… Our housing bubble is actually a residential land bubble, as the total land values to GDP ratio doubled between 1996 and 2010, when it reached a record high of 298 per cent ($4.1 trillion). In real terms, residential land values rose from $895 billion in 1996 to a peak of $3.2 trillion in 2010, a relative increase of 262 per cent. This ratio is closely matched by a similar rise in the value of the residential housing stock. The rise in residential land values, rather than structures, is responsible for almost all of the increase in the value of the housing stock…
Prosper then places the blame for Australia’s expensive housing on convergence of factors, with Australia’s inefficient tax system front-and-centre:
A convergence of factors are responsible: a large cohort of irrational investors gambling on housing prices, a FIRE sector willing and able to facilitate a credit boom, and low property and land taxes attracting speculators to this asset class…
A positive feedback loop has emerged between housing prices and mortgage debt, with rising prices prompting the take-up of more debt in an upwards spiral…
An inefficient taxation system, comprised of low property and land taxes, allows landowners to expropriate ‘geo-rent’ (economic rent derived from land) by capturing the uplift in land values generated by taxpayer-funded infrastructure and rising economic productivity… Government willingness to tax wages and business ahead of land has elevated its privileged status, resulting in larger capital sums being paid by owner-occupiers and investors.
It also advocates land tax reform, which it claims would significantly improve incomes, affordability, and productivity:
Counter-intuitively, reducing wage and business taxation and increasing land tax would not necessarily lower fundamental land prices, given the offsetting boost to disposable wages, profits and hence rents, but it would certainly lower bubble-inflated land prices. Land tax reform – urged on government by every independent tax review in living memory – would firmly correct the price to rent and income ratios. If Australia wishes to escape or ameliorate the profound financial destruction of a bursting land bubble, the solution lies in this equation…
Prosper also slams housing-related tax expenditures, which undermine the integrity of the tax system:
The generous scope of tax expenditures relating to the housing market has served to further increase prices. Tax expenditures are defined as a deviation from the commonly accepted tax structure, whether it is a tax exemption, concession, deduction, preferential rate, allowance, rebate, offset, credit or deferral. Australia has the highest rate of tax expenditures among our OECD peers, at more than 8 per cent of GDP. Tax expenditures are vulnerable to lobbying, and often compromise the fairness and efficiency of the tax system. Lavish tax expenditures for both owner-occupied and investment property has significantly worsened housing affordability because they allow landowners to capture greater amounts of geo-rent and prioritise unearned wealth and income over what is earned. Existing home owners capture the most benefit, ahead of first home buyers, investors and tenants.
These tax expenditures provide a strong incentive to speculate on housing prices, and are reinforced by already low property taxes. Investors perceive rental income as secondary to expected rises in capital prices, while first home buyers over-leverage themselves to enter a bubble-inflated market…
Tax expenditures, combined with the ongoing deregulation of the banking and financial system, has transformed the housing market into a casino. Residential property is commonly viewed as a speculative asset to flip, rather than shelter to raise a family in…
Finally, Prosper provides two recommendations to the Senate Inquiry:
Recommendation 1: Reform Land Value Tax. The ideal tool to moderate land bubbles and properly fund infrastructure already exists in the hands of state and territory governments: state land tax (SLT). Unfortunately, this tax has been so riddled with exemptions and concessional treatments it must be considered dormant…
We suggest the current government introduce a nationwide one per cent federal land tax (FLT) – fully rebatable on SLT paid – to oblige the states and territories to use their taxing powers properly. State governments could adjust their tax rules and keep every dollar the FLT raises, to the benefit of all Australians. The Commonwealth Parliament would be entitled to argue this intervention is for sound economic reasons and dissipate the political fallout. Placing state and territory finances on sound bases would vastly improve the federal system mandated by Australia’s Constitution. Transitional arrangements would need to be considered. Rebating all stamp duty paid against a hypothetical past SLT obligation would address concerns of fairness and equity…
Recommendation 2: Macroprudential Regulation. A range of macro-prudential tools are needed to moderate housing price inflation and subdue credit growth in a pro-cyclical financial system, such as those affecting the loan to value, (LVR), debt servicing (DSR) and debt servicing to income (DSTI) ratios.26 Quantitative restrictions should be placed on the share of new mortgages with moderately high LVRs…
To reduce systemic risk, a large rise in capital and liquidity ratios (buffers) is required to ensure banks can withstand a future economic downturn, bank run or large fall in the value of collateral. Research suggests the probability of a banking crisis can be reduced to a 1 in 100 year event by raising core equity (Tier 1) capital ratios to 11 per cent in isolation or raising core equity to 10 per cent with an addition rise in liquid assets of 12.5 per cent (the rise in liquid assets over total assets). For the Big Four banks, this would represent a rise of around 3 per cent in core equity…
The full submission is available here.
“Australia is a leveraged time bomb waiting to blow,” Albert Edwards, Société Générale’s London-based global strategist, said. “It is not just a CDO, but a CDO squared. All we have in Australia is, at its simplest, a credit bubble built upon a commodity boom dependent for its sustenance on an even greater credit bubble in China.”
From William Pesek at Rudd? Gillard? Australians have bigger problems – Columnists | IOL Business | IOL.co.za.
Alan Kohler: Debt was built up through 30 years of current account imbalances after currencies were finally unshackled from the gold standard in 1971, and the depression of the 70s came to an end in 1982.
Central banks, principally the Federal Reserve, complied in the process of debt build-up by holding down interest rates and allowing asset prices to rise, keeping balance sheets in the black.
The credit crisis of 2007-08 brought asset prices down rapidly and rendered banks suddenly insolvent, so they had to be recapitalised by governments. Now the governments of Europe, the US and Japan are insolvent, and the only question is when the central banks will monetise their debt – that is, print more money and buy their debts…..
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