(What’s Left of) Our Economy: America’s Now Struggling to Sustain Even Unhealthy Growth

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consumption, economic growth, Financial Crisis, personal savings, recession, recovery, savings rate, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Don’t blink! As revealed by government data released yesterday, the U.S. personal savings rate has been vanishing so quickly lately that, before too long, you might miss it entirely. And here’s the kicker to this latest evidence: Although, as I reported on Monday, the American economy is just about as consumption-heavy as during the run-up to the financial crisis, all the resulting spending is now generating growth that’s not only subpar by historical standards, but shockingly weak.

According to the Commerce Department, the savings rate for the last three quarters of national economic activity (through the second quarter of this year) has sunk below four percent of disposable personal income for the first time since the first quarter of 2008. The latest nadir of 3.6 percent was hit in the fourth quarter of last year, and represents the lowest such level since the fourth quarter of 2007 (2.8 percent). If those dates sound familiar, they should. That’s when the last recession officially broke out. As of the second quarter of this year, the rate bounced back a bit to 3.8 percent.

These are a pretty far cry from the worst savings rates in U.S. history. During the previous (bubble) decade, this figure bottomed out at 2.2 percent (in the third quarter of 2005). But the latest numbers are a much further cry from the double-digit levels that were common from the early 1950s through the early 1980s.

After the last recession began, there was some evidence that Americans were learning the lessons of over-spending and socking away more of their incomes. By the second quarter of 2008, the savings rate jumped from 3.7 percent in the first quarter of that year to 5.7 percent. It rose steadily even after the recovery began in the middle of 2009, and actually hit 9.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012. Savings didn’t stay nearly that high, but still generally remained well above five percent through the early part of last year. Since then, however, they’ve slid pretty rapidly downhill.

Throughout the recovery, shortsighted economists and other observers actually have bemoaned these signs of consumer caution as unnecessary restraints on economic growth that were preventing the expansion from achieving a satisfactory pace. I disagree, because as I wrote on Monday, the nation needs a sustainable basis for growth, to improve its long-term economic health, even more urgently than it needs faster growth. But what’s especially troubling about the recent drop in the savings rate is that it’s shown no ability to generate what’s seen as respectable growth at all.

In fact, over these last three quarters of weak personal savings rates, the economy grew in real terms by just 1.8 percent, 1.2 percent, and 2.6 percent (the preliminary figure for the second quarter of this year). Those results aren’t even impressive by the low bar set by the current expansion. And they’re positively abysmal when compared with the performance registered between the early 1950s and 1980s, when double-digit savings rates were no obstacle at all to real growth rates of between five and ten percent!

Of course, America’s growth rises and falls for many reasons part from savings and consumption rates. Moreover, the economy of that 1950s-1980s period was very different structurally from today. One example: Military spending played a much bigger economic role during those Cold War decades, and generated abundant production, as well as employment. At the same time, for most of that era, women had not entered the labor market in great numbers, meaning that households generally speaking were living off a single paycheck and benefits package. And still both growth and family incomes were by and large stellar.

The current situation, though, is unmistakably sobering. In recent decades, America has substituted borrowing and spending for saving and producing as its main engines of growth. Now even the unhealthy growth recipe has not only helped trigger a terrifying financial crisis and deep recession. But seven or eight year after those crises were overcome, the spendthrift approach seems close to exhaustion. In sports, those playing a losing game are usually encouraged to change it. How much longer before Americans and their leaders take the hint?

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(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Has the Fed Gotten Savings Incentives Completely Wrong?

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Baby Boomers, banks, consumers, debt, deposit rates, federal funds rate, Federal Reserve, finance, Financial Crisis, housing, incomes, interest rates, recession, retirees, savings, savings rate, seniors, spending, The Economist, zero interest rate policy, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As many of you may know, the Federal Reserve yesterday raised the interest rate it directly controls above an effective zero level for the first time in seven years. So it’s especially interesting and important that a post from The Economist just before the rate hike made a strong case that one of the main rationales for keeping interest rates so low has backfired big-time on ordinary Americans and on the consumer spending still driving most U.S. economic activity.

Just after the height of the financial crisis, the Fed lowered its so-called funds rate to zero (actually, it was a range of zero to 0.25 percent) in part to make sure that the carnage that was spreading from housing to Wall Street and increasingly to the rest of the economy wouldn’t scare households into closing their wallets,and therefore choke off even more growth. The federal funds rate doesn’t directly set consumer borrowing rates – it’s the rate offered by the central bank to the country’s biggest banks. But the Fed was hoping that super-easy money would have twin stimulative effects.

First, when these banks’ borrowing costs fall, they can offer cheaper loans to both consumer and business borrowers and stay just as profitable. And the more affordable credit becomes, the more borrowers were expected to use. Second, the Fed was hoping that super-low rates would penalize saving. A rock-bottom federal funds rate would drive way down the returns on such popular consumer savings vehicles as money market funds and certificates of deposit and savings bonds, and convince Americans that they were better off spending existing savings and incoming income rather than receive literally no reward for thriftiness.

The Economist, though, has argued that the Fed’s penalize-savings strategy was misbegotten. And it looks like it should have been obvious even then. As the magazine points out, the biggest reason Americans save is to ensure a comfortable retirement. For any retirees or those nearing that age who already have substantial savings, even very low-yielding assets can together spin off enough income to ensure the golden years living standards they want.

But then ask yourselves how many Americans were in this situation when the financial crisis and recession struck. Inflation-adjusted incomes for the typical household had been stagnating. Thrift became a forgotten virtue; in part because of those stagnant incomes and in part because perpetually rising home values were hyped as an acceptable substitute, the nation’s personal savings rate hit historic lows and in fact briefly fell below zero. Then, of course, home values began cratering and the stock market went into free fall. So safe but low-yielding assets looked like the only viable savings game in town.

Unfortunately, the lower the return, the bigger the pot needed to guarantee that comfortable retirement. As a result, more and more of the aging American population has felt greater and greater pressure to salt away any new income not needed to cover ongoing living expenses.

Nor do you need to take The Economist‘s analysis on faith. For nothing has been clearer during this weak economic recovery than the continued consumer caution so responsible for holding it back. Many analysts attribute this behavior to a simple – possibly excessive – “once burned-twice shy” fear. But The Economist‘s treatment at least points to another important factor: For Americans with stagnant incomes and meager liquid savings – along with continuing debt – returning to pre-crisis and recession-level spending simply hasn’t been an option. In fact, evidence is accumulating that growing numbers of seniors, including recently retired baby boomers, are feeling these pressures, too – especially on the debt front.

Not that the Fed’s quarter-point rate hike will change matters much. In fact, signs haven’t even appeared yet that it’s a step in the right direction, as those banks that have raised the rates they’re charging for borrowers haven’t raised those that they’re paying to depositors. Until rates rise high enough to reward savings significantly again, most Americans will have ample reason to view recent Fed policies as lose-lose propositions.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why Increasingly Disposable Workers Become Increasingly Wary Consumers

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benefits, bubbles, consumers, debt, Employment, Federal Reserve, growth, incomes, Jobs, JPMorgan Chase, Robert Samuelson, salaries, savings, savings rate, spending, temporary jobs, volatility, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

After his last clunker attempting to debunk claims of a U.S. employment recovery led by lousy jobs, Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson owed us a good piece. I’m pleased to say he’s delivered with this morning’s effort examining the roots of the consumer caution witnessed since the Great Recession ended.

First, however, let’s specify that “caution” is a relative concept here. Yes, Americans are spending much less of their income these days than they did during the bubble decade – when it hit all-time lows. In fact, in July, 2005, the personal savings rate, which measures that relationship, sank to 1.9 percent, and some news reports back in those days said that it actually went negative that whole year (though it seems that figure has been revised). All the same, even the 1.9 percent figure showing up in the government’s tables now is much lower than the 5.6 percent for last month reported this morning by the Commerce Department.

Yet although it’s clear that savings have been growing on a monthly basis since late 2013, they’re still not close to their highs earlier in the recovery, when the rate regularly hit high single digits. And for decades until the last massive spending and housing bubble, high single-digit savings rates were the American norm.  In other words, the nation knew how to expand the economy in ways other than launching shopping sprees.

Nonetheless, since U.S. growth is still so spending-heavy, any sign of slackening is at least a short-term cause for concern. And Samuelson’s column today presented a great explanation. On top of still being burdened by accumulated debts and understandably gun-shy after the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Americans are facing a labor market in which employers increasingly treat them as more disposable than ever before. Principally, more and more businesses are looking at their employees as variable costs, which they can and should reduce whenever possible even in normal times to boost profits, rather than as fixed costs, which they’re stuck with except when economic conditions worsen significantly.

The resulting move toward using temporary workers has lowered employers’ costs both by giving them more flexibility and by enabling them to use more workers who can’t command significant benefits. But as Samuelson observes, these trends also creates much more economic insecurity for those workers, and logically a greater reluctance to spend.

In addition, Samuelson points out, this insecurity is being reinforced by ever more flexible compensation practices. Fewer and fewer workers are earning wages and salaries that are regularly and predictably increased (when possible via some combination of their bargaining power and their employers’ finances). Compensation increases that are handed out increasingly consist of various one-time payments that don’t need to be added to base wage and salary structures, and therefore can be withdrawn at the drop of a hat.

I’d just add two points. First, it looks very much like increasingly flexible employment and pay practices by business are showing up in statistics on how much Americans are earning. According to a recent major study from JPMorgan Chase, between October, 2012 and December of last year, 84 percent of Americans saw their incomes change by more than five percent month-to-month. Even year-to-year, when smaller fluctuations would be the norm, 70 percent of Americans still experienced such large income swings.

Even more noteworthy, 26 percent of the 2.5 million Americans examined by JPMorgan Chase saw their incomes rise or fall (mainly rise, fortunately) by more than 30 percent between 2013 and 2014. Forty-four percent experienced swings of between five and 30 percent. And this volatility was somewhat greater among higher income Americans than among lower.

Second, although U.S. businesses may see their workers are increasingly disposable, the American economy can’t afford nowadays to see consumers – most of whom are workers – in this dismissive light. Indeed, as I’ve just written, personal consumption is just about as great a share of the economy these days as it was during the bubble decade.

Combine an economy that remains consumption-heavy with income sources that are becoming less and less reliable, and it’s no mystery why what meager growth the nation can still generate remains so greatly fueled by ever greater indebtedness – and why the Federal Reserve is so reluctant to end America’s addiction to easy money.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Signs of Economic Shrinkage – & Reflating Bubbles

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bubbles, Financial Crisis, GDP, Great Recession, housing, Jason Furman, Obama, personal consumption, savings rate, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Interested in seeing in one convenient article nearly everything that’s been wrong with economic commentary in America for at least the last decade? Check out Chico Harlan and Sarah Halzack’s coverage for the Washington Post of the new government economic growth report – that is if you don’t mind ruining what’s left of your Saturday. You will get a special bonus, however. I’ll use the new figures – which provided our second look at first quarter economic growth – to spotlight how the fundamental problems that led to the last financial crisis and painful recession look as serious as ever.

The article’s problems began almost immediately, with Harlan and Halzack focusing on slower-than-recently-normal household growth, and then describing “the newfound prudence of American consumers” as”the country’s core economic dilemma.” But what kind of definition of “prudence” includes spending that grows even as the economy’s production shrinks after adjusting for inflation, as was the case in the first three months of this year? It’s sure not one with any awareness that Americans’ prolonged living beyond their means and financing their lifestyles largely through excessive borrowing was one big reason the economy fell apart so badly seven years ago that it still hasn’t fully recovered. Nor is it one that takes into account how robust U.S. growth was for so long in the 1950s and 1960s with much more modest consumption and consequently much higher personal savings rates.

Indeed, in that vein, let’s give a special Bronx Cheer to chief White House economic advisor Jason Furman (who, unlike Harlan and Halzack, at least has the excuse of working for a politician). Seeking to spin yesterday’s dismal economic numbers, Furman suggested that economic health would return “If the savings rate snaps back to its previous level for the rest of 2015″ because then “consumption will grow at a brisk 4 percent rate.” So apparently the president who once recognized America’s need to scrap the borrowing- and spending-heavy ways that helped trigger disaster and create “an economy built to last” now wants his countrymen to go on a shopping binge again.

Moreover, Harlan, Furman, and other spendaholics need to acknowledge that whatever consumer caution is being displayed seems to be limited to goods and services Made in the USA. Specifically, on a quarterly basis, first quarter personal consumption is now reported to have grown at a 1.8 percent annualized real rate – much lower to be sure than the 4.4 percent figure for the fourth quarter of last year. But imports grew by 5.6 percent annualized in the first quarter.

Nor was this import domination limited to consumers. Business spending in the first quarter is now judged to have fallen by a 2.8 percent annualized rate. But since businesses buy from abroad, too, that healthy import growth number is telling us that whatever caution they displayed was concentrated on the Buy America side as well.

More reasons to doubt that the American consumer overall is becoming more financially responsible come from examining the new GDP figures from another perspective. If you look at the statistics the new revision provides that illustrate the economy’s make-up, you find that it’s just about as dominated by personal consumption and housing – the toxic combination that helped trigger the financial crisis – as it was during the previous bubble decade.

At the onset of the Great Recession created by that bubble’s collapse, personal consumption and housing combined made up 71.16 percent of the economy in real terms. That’s a figure for the fourth quarter of that year. The full-year figure – which covers months before the housing collapse was completed – was 71.91 percent. By the fourth quarter of last year, that share had actually risen slightly from the fourth quarter 2007 level (to 71.23 percent) but at least it was still slightly below the percentage for all of 2007.

The new data reveal that the gap has closed a little more. Personal consumption and housing accounted for 71.83 percent of the entire after-inflation economy – barely below the pre-crisis full-year 2007 figure, and actually above the 71.63 percent level reported in the initial first quarter GDP estimate released last month. Even worse, remember that that initial GDP reading had the economy growing slightly (by an annual rate of 0.2 percent), not shrinking at a 0.7 percent annual rate, as per yesterday’s release. So the economy’s most potentially dangerous segments are the ones growing fastest.

Still more revealing – at least on the eve of the bubble decade, the economy was growing at a rate greater than a rounding error (1.4 percent for that fourth quarter of 2007 in inflation-adjusted terms). The latest GDP figures show that although the economy is now contracting, it’s nearly just as consumption- and housing-heavy. And as it’s slowed since the snap-back of last spring, this toxic combination has grown in importance.

I understand the need for more economic growth. It could indeed cure a variety of employment and living standards ills, not to mention strengthening the nation’s still dicey public finances. But those benefits only come from high quality growth, at least over any significant stretch of time. Until Americans, their chattering class, and their leaders start paying more attention to how the economy grows, it’s hard to imagine genuine economic health – or any of its benefits – returning any time soon.