Tag Archives: growth

Italian Industrial Output Falls Sharply

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Well, this was really what I had been waiting for, not that I welcome the news, obviously, but simply that as far as I am concerned it is far from unexpected. People have been ‘writing off’ Italy’s grave structural problems far too easily IMHO:

Industrial production in Italy declined 0.9 percent month-on-month in October for an annual drop of 2.7 percent, national statistics agency ISTAT reported today.

The fall was driven by a 3.6 percent year-on-year drop in intermediate goods production and a 3.1 percent reduction in consumer goods output.

OTOH, the German Investor Confidence Index published by the ZEW Center for European Economic Research spiked dramtically upwards today showing how strong growth in China and the US and the falling euro is boosting expectations in Germany’s export sector. This is, I think, pretty much what we can expect to see from Germany in the months and years ahead: strong export growth when the global economy is booming, and weak domestic demand keeping overall growth tepid.

Locking Swords

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I’d simply love to be a fly on the wall in London this weekend. The G7 finance ministers are about to meet the central bankers, and as in by now well known, these two groups haven’t exactly been hitting it off too well lately, at least, and better said, in Germany and Japan they haven’t.

In particular I would like to hear John Snow’s contributions. Snow notoriously is banking on growth in Europe and Japan to ease the US out of its trade imbalance. But being pro-growth in the present context would seem to imply a stance on interest rates. The central bankers are worried about global liquidity and the danger of US yield curve inversion ( and here, for a very interesting discussion of the topic – certainly the best I’ve seen – from the Morgan Stanley GEF team). So one group want to put rates on hold, while the other wants to raise them, Snow is in the middle, but will he come off the fence?

Brad Setser has a post which has some relation to this.

Brad seems to take the view that a big part of the explanation on global imbalances is the US fiscal deficit. I beg to differ. Indeed I think Brad is in danger of putting himself on the wrong side of an old (1930s) argument that probably he wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of.

Let me explain: the important thing to watch is the global economy (not the local examples, US, Germany, Uk, China etc – Hat-tip to Andy Xie hear although I don’t have the direct link handy). Now what is important is the global equilibrium, in terms of the sustainable global growth rate. Now……. simply applying a restrictive fiscal policy and a tighter monetary one in the US would bring the budget into balance and the external trade deficit down, but what would happen to the level of employment (in the US and globally)? What would be the knock-on consequence for growth in China? Would this be a ‘better’ equilibrium than we have now, would it be more sustainable? Somehow I doubt it. And I think that is why we need to address this issue globally.

Which takes me back to being a fly on the wall in London……

The Most Bizarre Monetary Policy DecisionOf Recent Times?

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This was Wolfgang Munchau writing in the Financial Times a week ago:

“The pre-announced interest rate rise that the European Central Bank is due to agree this Thursday must rank as one of the most bizarre monetary policy decisions of recent times. The economic recovery in the eurozone remains fragile, as last week’s German confidence indicators have shown. Even the ECB’s own forecast for headline inflation is relatively optimistic, while core inflation remained unchanged at 1.5 per cent in October.”

and he issued a warning:

“It is still not too late to propose ECB reform as part of the next treaty revision. For as long as EU leaders maintain the status quo, they have the central bank they deserve.”

Central bank independence seems to be once more ‘a l’ordre du jour’, and the ECB may well live to find to its cost that there is one thing worse than actually playing the game, it’s playing the game and losing. Now why?
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Sobering News

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First off, Dave at MacroBlog has a good summary of the core of the economic policy programme adopted by the new German government. He also has some to-the-point comments about ECB credibility issues

But the big news today must surely be the surprising state of the European consumer . Perhaps the most indicative reading on the situation comes from a report from business consultants Deloitte which states that spending on xmas gifts is expected to fall this year by an average 3 per cent (year-on-year) across nine European countries. Revealingly they find that 49 per cent of Europeans believe their economies are currently in recession.

Now that German domestic consumption is declining comes as no surprise. Economic theory offers us sound explanations as to why this might be the case, nonetheless the pace at which this decline is progressing is pretty striking:

Third quarter growth figures for Europe’s largest economy released yesterday showed that after five years of stagnation, Germany’s economy is locked in a schizophrenic phase. On the one hand the country’s robust exports, which rose 4.7 per cent from the second quarter, are finally translating into stronger investments, up 2.2 per cent.

But consumption, an essential ingredient of a healthy recovery, fell for the third consecutive quarter, pressed by high unemployment, stagnating disposable income and a broader crisis of confidence.

Hanging as a twin threat over this one-legged recovery are the prospect of an imminent rise in eurozone interest rates and Ms Merkel’s pledge to cut spending and raise taxes to restore the country’s public finances by 2007.

However, the recent news from France does come as a surprise. Economic data from France had been rather more encouraging lately, and thus the fact that French consumer spending on manufactured goods declined for a second successive month in October – down by 0.6 percent from September, when it fell a revised 0.3 percent – does come as something of a surprise, and is probably like a bucket of icy water over in Brussels and Paris, and, possibly more importantly, over at the ECB in Frankfurt.

It was only last Monday that Morgan Stanley economist Eric Chaney was taking IMF chief Rodigo Rato to taskfor the latter’s argument that “it would be good to see more internally driven recovery” before starting to normalise interest rates. Chaney took the opportunity to make a full-frontal-assault on what he calls “the legend that only exports explain euro area growth”.

“Since 2003, the contribution to growth of external trade has been constantly negative or null for the euro area, while almost constantly positive for Germany. The French GDP data out on November 18 are confirming this once again: French final domestic demand was up 0.9% in Q3 (3.5% SAAR), driven by strong consumption (0.7%Q despite a sharp drop in food consumption) and even stronger corporate capital spending (1.1%Q). ”

Now normally I would be agreeing with him, since as he says the ‘legend’ is derived from the fact that many analysts take Germany as a proxy for the euro area, and this can be deeply misleading. But this latest round of data counsel caution (and maybe some of that caution could have been reflected in Jean-Claude Trichet’s performance last Friday, at least if the Central banker’s job is to stay ahead of the curve it could have been). Lesson: don’t make yourself a hostage to fortune if you don’t want to end up being hoisted on your own pettard. (And Btw: Touché Señor Rato).

UK Growth and Inflation News

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The UK economy is still very much hanging in the balance between going up and going down IMHO. The latest BoE growth estimates, coupled with not especially good employment numbers, and indications that inflation may be coming down (and hence interest rates may follow) has caused a noteable pressure on the pound sterling. BoE governor Mervyn King has put it like this: there are “substantial risks” both to the outlook for inflation and growth. The risks are “broadly balanced” so that the eventual outturn is ” just as likely to be stronger or weaker than the forecast”.

Inflation in the UK has fallen for the first time in more than a year, increasing the chance that the next move in interest rates will be down. The annual consumer price index, which is the Bank of England’s target measure, fell from 2.5 per cent in September to a weaker-than-expected 2.3 per cent in October, according to official figures.
Source: Financial Times

Unemployment in the UK continued to rise in October, but there was little evidence of inflationary pressure on pay as the growth in average earnings and bonuses fell slightly, according to official figures published on Wednesday. The claimant count, which measures unemployment as those out of work and claiming benefit, increased by 12,100 to 890,100 in October, the ninth consecutive month it has nudged higher.
Source: Financial Times

More Growth In The Eurozone

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I think I’d better rephrase that: more overall growth, but a very mixed bag. In deriving aggregate numbers for the zone, four big economies really matter: Spain, France, Germany and Italy. Now each of these economies actually has different characteristics, so it is not clear what ‘the general picture’ means here.

Spain is the European economy whose current growth characteristic seem to resemble most those of the USA: above average growth (around 3.5% per annum), high dependency on housing and construction for the ‘extra growth’, high and rapidly growing private indebtedness (around 20% y-o-y) and a large current account deficit. Where Spain doesn’t resemble the US is in productivity, which has been more or less negative in recent years.

France is , as I’ve been suggesting, relatively ebullient despite the lack of all those labour reforms, and seems to be ‘on a roll’ at the moment. Driven by internal consumer demand and exports France managed an annualised 2.8% in the third quarter. Ironically, possibly France represents the big-four Eurozone economy with the most sustainable and balanced growth trajectory right now.

The German economy is growing at an unexpectedly high rate, but this extra-spurt is virtually all explained by the rapid increase in exports (helped of course by the fall in the euro).Investment, fuelled by the demand for all those exports, was also up. Meanhwile internal consumer demand is possibly even falling. (Growth in the third quarter was at an annual rate of 2.4% up from an annualised 0.8% in the second quarter).

And Italy, which as I keep mentioning is definitely now the ‘poor sister’ of the eurozone, with an identity crisis about what kind of economy it actually is, and a rapidly ageing population producing huge fiscal pressure. (On this see Morgan Stanley’s Vicenzo Guzzo yesterday). Italian growth actually bucked the trend in the third quarter and was lower than in the second quarter (dropping from a 2.8% annual rate to a 1.2% one).

All of this leaves me with the feeling: ‘Eurozone’ which eurozone?

The French Consumer Is Alive And Well

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Some good news on the economic front to counter all that bad news on the social one. The French economy grew at an annualised rate of 2.8% in the third quarter of 2005 (or by 0.7% over the prebious quarter). Driving this growth: strong spending by French consumers. At this rate the French economy will be growing at a faster rate than the UK one in 2005.

France’s economy expanded at the fastest pace in more than a year in the third quarter, suggesting European growth is accelerating and providing central bankers leeway to raise interest rates. Gross domestic product increased 0.7 percent from the second quarter, when it rose 0.1 percent, the government said today in Paris.

In the euro region, where France accounts for about one- fifth of the economy, growth probably accelerated to about 0.4 percent in the third quarter from 0.3 percent the previous three months, the European Commission said Oct. 13. This quarter, the economy may expand 0.6 percent, it said. French consumers stepped up spending as oil prices retreated from a record and government-subsidized hiring pushed down unemployment from a 5 1/2 year high.

Growth and Inflation in the UK

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Following-up on my post earlier this week on interest rate policy I see Graham Searjeant has a piece in the Times today arguing that Mervyn King has the balance wrong between fighting inflation and stimulating growth.

In a sense I think that Searjeant is not entirely fair when he says:

Growth has become even more vital to support an ageing population. The Governor may deny responsibility. The rest of us cannot.

Evidently this is the case, but equally I am sure that Mervyn King is well aware of the fact. However since it is long term *sustainable* growth we are talking about here, and since I don’t doubt this is what he (King) is aiming at, even if his efforts, and the reasoning behind them remain obscure (and here I do think we can blame King) I really don’t think Searjeant’s point sticks in the way he wants. The issue is whether short-term growth is being needlessly sacrificed, and if so, to what?

Short-term growth is being sacrificed IMHO to the god of global imbalances, and the campaign to correct them, and it is these, and not inflation, which are King’s real target. (continued).
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UK Jobless Upward Trend Continues

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U.K. jobless claims rose for an eighth consecutive month in September, extending the longest period of increases in almost 13 years, “as growth in Europe’s second- biggest economy slows”. This adds just a little more evidence to the fact that all is not necessarily currently all for the best in the land of John Stuart Mill. However as NTC research point out, not all is totally bad either:

Meanwhile, annual average earnings growth held steady at 4.2 percent in the three months to August, signalling that higher inflation is still not feeding through to wages.

So earnings continue upwards at a healthy clip, but not above trend. No evidence of ‘secondary effects’ here then. Which makes you wonder why the normally reasonable Mervyn King is currently being so evidently unreasonable. You can find my explanation for this here (and in the comments).

Mervyn King on Tuesday night signalled he was not convinced of the case for lower interest rates and could see many reasons why the rise in oil prices might increase inflationary pressure.
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ECB Interest Rate Policy

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Brad Setser has a post today on Kate Moss, not provoked by her evidently economically intriguing modelling properties, but due to the Kate-Moss-thin credit-spreads which Bloomberg’s William Pesek refers to in this article. What really turns Pesek on it turns out isn’t Kate Moss at all but the possible existence of links between China’s economic boom and the recent surge in popularity for credit derivatives.

And it is in the context of this evolutionary chain that Brad Setser’s work on China and Systematic Risk offers itself as some kind of missing link.
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