infrastructure investment Archives - the patient investor

June 30, 2017

Investment the key to growth

Elliot Clarke at Westpac recently highlighted the importance of investment in sustaining economic growth:

The importance of sustained investment in an economy cannot be understated. Done well, investment in real capacity begets greater production volume and employment as well as a productivity dividend. Its absence in recent years is a key factor behind sustained soft wage inflation and the US economy’s inability to consistently grow at an above-trend pace despite the economy being at full-employment and household balance sheets having more than fully recovered post GFC.

The graph below highlights declining US investment in new equipment post GFC.

S&P 500

source: Westpac

There are three factors that may influence this:

Accelerated tax depreciation allowances after the GFC encouraged companies to bring forward capital spending in order to stimulate the recovery. But the 2010 to 2012 surge is followed by a later trough when the intended capital expenditure was originally planned to have taken place.
Low growth in personal consumption, especially of non-durable goods and of services, would discourage further capital investment.

US Net Debt & Equity Issuance

The level of stock buybacks increased as companies sought alternative measures to sustain earnings (per share) growth. The graph below shows debt issuance has soared while net equity issuance remains consistently negative.

US Net Debt & Equity Issuance

source: Westpac

Net capital formation (the increase in physical assets owned by nonfinancial corporations) declined between 2015 and 2017. While this is partly attributable to the falling oil price curtailing investment in the Energy sector, continuation of the decline would spell long-term trouble for the economy.

US Net Capital Formation

The cycle becomes self-reinforcing. Low growth in personal consumption leads to low levels of capital investment ….which in turn leads to low employment growth…..leading to further low growth in personal consumption.

Major infrastructure investment is needed to break the cycle. In effect you need to “prime the pump” in order to create a new virtuous cycle, with higher investment leading to higher growth.

It is obviously important that infrastructure investment target productive assets, that generate income, else taxpayers are left with increased debt and no income to service it. Or assets that can be sold to repay the debt. But the importance of infrastructure investment should be evident to both sides of politics and any attempt to obstruct or delay this would be putting political ahead of national interests.

Australia

Australia is in a worse position, with a dramatic fall in investment following the mining boom.

Australia: Business Investment

source: RBA

If we examine the components of business investment, it is not just Engineering that has fallen. Investment in Machinery & Equipment has been declining for the last decade. And now Building Investment is also starting to slow.

Australia: Components of Business Investment

source: RBA

You’ve got to prime the pump…. You’ve got to put something in before you can get anything out.

~ Zig Ziglar

October 17, 2016

Australia: Infrastructure spending nosedives

From Andrew Hanlan at Westpac:

Infrastructure Activity

Total real infrastructure activity contracted by almost 10% in the June quarter 2016, to be 26% below the level of a year ago. That was the fourth year of contraction…..

Infrastructure construction work is declining rapidly. First, we had the end of the mining boom as existing projects reached completion while demand, mainly from China, contracted. This was followed by falling demand in the oil & gas sector, ending the development boom in that sector. If you think the apartment boom — driven by investor demand from China — is going to fill the hole, think again.

May 13, 2015

China: Cement Production

Whoops. Try again. Chinese cement production. (From Capital Economics this AM) pic.twitter.com/k5W7pdRR2c

— A Evans-Pritchard (@AmbroseEP) May 13, 2015

Lowest cement production in more than 10 years reflects the decline in infrastructure investment. Not good news for Australian resources stocks. Where cement production goes, iron ore and coal are likely to follow.

February 1, 2015

An Unconventional Truth by Nouriel Roubini – Project Syndicate

Nouriel Roubini argues for increased infrastructure investment to accompany monetary easing, else the benefits of the latter will not last:

Simply put, we live in a world in which there is too much supply and too little demand. The result is persistent disinflationary, if not deflationary, pressure, despite aggressive monetary easing.

The inability of unconventional monetary policies to prevent outright deflation partly reflects the fact that such policies seek to weaken the currency, thereby improving net exports and increasing inflation. This, however, is a zero-sum game that merely exports deflation and recession to other economies.

Perhaps more important has been a profound mismatch with fiscal policy. To be effective, monetary stimulus needs to be accompanied by temporary fiscal stimulus, which is now lacking in all major economies. Indeed, the eurozone, the UK, the US, and Japan are all pursuing varying degrees of fiscal austerity and consolidation.

Even the International Monetary Fund has correctly pointed out that part of the solution for a world with too much supply and too little demand needs to be public investment in infrastructure, which is lacking – or crumbling – in most advanced economies and emerging markets (with the exception of China). With long-term interest rates close to zero in most advanced economies (and in some cases even negative), the case for infrastructure spending is indeed compelling. But a variety of political constraints – particularly the fact that fiscally strapped economies slash capital spending before cutting public-sector wages, subsidies, and other current spending – are holding back the needed infrastructure boom.

All of this adds up to a recipe for continued slow growth, secular stagnation, disinflation, and even deflation. That is why, in the absence of appropriate fiscal policies to address insufficient aggregate demand, unconventional monetary policies will remain a central feature of the macroeconomic landscape.

Again, I add the warning that infrastructure investment must be in productive assets, that generate market related returns. Otherwise we are merely swapping one set of problems (a shortfall in aggregate demand) for another: high public debt without the revenue to service or repay it.

February 1, 2015

Infrastructure opportunity | Michael Pettis’ CHINA FINANCIAL MARKETS

Interesting view from Michael Pettis:

Excess liquidity and risk appetite makes it easy to lock in cheap, long-term funding for investment projects. Countries that have weak infrastructure, or whose infrastructure is in serious need of improvement, have today an historical opportunity to build or replenish the value of their infrastructure with very cheap capital. This is truly the time for governments to identify their optimal infrastructure needs and to lock in the financing.

May 23, 2014

How Hitler’s roads won German hearts and minds | VOX

Interesting conclusion from Hans-Joachim Voth and Nico Voigtländer, writing at VOX.

Long before the Nazi regime committed its singular crimes, it had become remarkably popular in Germany (Evans 2006). Voting records from 1933 and 1934 reveal the effect of one factor that, according to many historians, boosted support for the regime – the building of the Autobahn. Using detailed information on the geography of road-building, we isolate the effect of construction on voting behaviour by analysing the ‘swing’ in favour of the regime over a nine-month period (November 1933 to August 1934). We find that opposition declined much faster where the new ‘roads of the Führer’ ran.

Direct economic benefits for residents in Autobahn districts may have played a role, but they were probably small. More importantly, the new roads provided concrete proof of the regime’s actions, delivering on its promise to get ‘Germany moving again’. Within a couple of months of taking power, a highly ambitious highway construction project was under way at 17 different locations all over the country, affecting more than 100 electoral districts. In other words, the visible progress of road construction made the regime’s ability to follow through on its promises salient for many Germans.

Combined with effective propaganda trumpeting the regime’s successes, the roads succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of many Germans. Nor were they the only ones to be impressed. When the US Army rolled into Germany at the end of World War II, one of the officers taken with the ease of transport on motorways was Dwight D. Eisenhower. When he became President of the United States, he lead the initiative to built the country’s interstate highway system.

July 23, 2013

EconoMonitor » Beijing’s New Leaders Are Right to Hold Back

Michael Pettis argues that China cannot stimulate its economy out of trouble:

There are still bulls out there who insist that China is out of the woods and making a strong recovery, for example former Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Stephen Grenville, who argues in his article strangely titled China doomsayers run out of arguments:

“The missing element from the low growth narrative is that unemployment would rise, provoking a stimulatory policy response. China would extend the transition and put up with low-return investment recall that when unemployment was the issue, Keynes was prepared to put people to work digging holes and filling them in rather than have unemployment rise sharply. To be convincing, the low-growth scenario needs to explain why this policy response will not be effective.”

It seems to me that the reason why simply “provoking a stimulatory policy response” won’t help China has been explained many times, even recently by former China bulls. Of course more stimulus will indeed cause GDP growth to pick up, as Grenville notes, but it will do so by exacerbating the gap between the growth in debt and the growth in debt-servicing capacity. Because too much debt and a huge amount of overvalued assets is precisely the problem facing China, it is hard to believe that spending more borrowed money on increasing already excessive capacity can possibly be a useful resolution of slower Chinese growth.

July 31, 2012

No End To Long-Term Unemployment – Business Insider

J BRADFORD DE LONG, professor of economics at University of California at Berkeley, argues for expansionary monetary and fiscal policy.

At its nadir in the winter of 1933, the Great Depression was a form of collective insanity. Workers were idle because firms would not hire them; firms would not hire them because they saw no market for their output; and there was no market for output because workers had no incomes to spend.

I have been arguing for four years that our business-cycle problems call for more aggressively expansionary monetary and fiscal policies, and that our biggest problems would quickly melt away were such policies to be adopted. That is still true. But, over the next two years, barring a sudden and unexpected interruption of current trends, it will become less true.

But private sector deleveraging means expansionary monetary policy is as effective as pushing on a string. And fiscal policy needs to focus on productive infrastructure investment, not just stimulus spending that runs up public liabilities without any assets to show for it on the other side of the balance sheet.

via No End To Long-Term Unemployment – Business Insider.