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Last year China reported the slowest economic growth in 24 years, about 7.4 percent. But the true figure may actually be much lower, and the evidence is buried in electricity figures which show just 3.8 percent growth in electricity consumption.

David Fridley, a staff scientist in the China Energy Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has been a longtime collaborator with the Chinese on energy management, efficiency and policy. Fridley, who has held Chinese energy-related jobs for 35 years, believes that electricity consumption in China is a better indicator of its economic growth.

Historically, electricity consumption and economic growth in China have been very closely linked. “From 2005 to 2013, the average elasticity of electricity demand was 1.09, meaning electricity demand was up about 1.09 percent for every percent rise in GDP,” Fridley wrote in an email. “In 2014, that number fell to 0.51, the lowest in this 10-year period. During the economic crisis of 2008, it did fall below the average, to 0.60, but quickly rebounded to above 1.”

That tells Fridley that something is up. He’s not the only one who thinks the government growth numbers aren’t reliable. China’s premier, Li Keqiang, has said China’s GDP figures are “for reference only.” Bloomberg reported that in a declassified U.S. diplomatic cable from 2007 then-U.S. ambassador Clark Randt related a dinner conversation with Li, secretary general of Liaoning Province at the time, in which Li revealed his preferred indicators of Chinese economic activity: rail cargo volume, loan disbursements and–wait for it–electricity consumption. China’s leaders don’t believe their own government growth numbers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

China Could Face “Sharp” Rise In Capital Outflows If Stocks, Economy Lose Momentum

April 25, 2015

China Could Face “Sharp” Rise In Capital Outflows If Stocks, Economy Lose Momentum

We’ve written quite a bit over the past two months about capital outflows from China. Last week for instance, we documented how the country saw its fourth consecutive quarter of outflows in Q1, bringing the 12 month running total to some $300 billion. Why, beyond the obvious, is this a problem for China? Because pressure is mounting to devalue the yuan as the currency’s peg to the recently strong dollar is becoming costly for the country’s export-driven economy.

Here’s Soc Gen’s Albert Edwards on the subject:

In the current deflationary environment the Chinese authorities simply can no longer tolerate the continued appreciation of their real exchange rate caused by the dollar link.

And from Barclays:

Amid slowing inflation and rising outflows, the costs of limiting CNY weakness are growing – including the unintended effect of placing more stress on CNY market liquidity and interest rates, rendering liquidity easing efforts less effective.

And here is how we summed up the situation last month:

China is suddenly finding itself in an unprecedented position: it is losing the global currency war, and in a “zero-sum trade” world, in which global commerce and trade is slowly (at first) declining, and in which everyone is desperate to preserve or grow their piece of the pie through currency devaluation, China has almost no options.

At issue is the fact that expectations about the direction of the yuan may be contributing to capital outflows and any indication on the part of Beijing that devaluation is in the cards could exacerbate the problem. Now, data from SAFE suggests nearly $24 billion left China in March alone. Here’s more, via Bloomberg:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Potemkin on the Pacific—–Abenomics Is Still Failing

April 23, 2015

Potemkin on the Pacific—–Abenomics Is Still Failing

For the first time since June 2012 Japan has attained a trade surplus. It is, however, premature to interpret that as an end to the impoverishment the island has undertaken these past three years, the last two under QQE. There are various reasons for the end of the negative trade imbalance, but the most significant surround the Chinese New Year.

China’s annual holiday plays havoc with any number of economic accounts of its own, but it should not be surprising to see its closest trade partners under the same difficulties in measurement. Unfortunately for Japan, as QQE was intended to foster trade in the other direction, China remains the most visible and deepest supplier for Japanese industry. As such, the level of activity from China is the largest single source in variability – with crude oil imports now a distant second, contrary to expectations.

The overall March surplus for Japan was just under ¥230 billion, but imports from China fell 19.4% in March. That was undoubtedly an adjustment for activity in February, as imports from China surged almost 40% that month. This exchange in monthly trade balance with China more than accounts for the Japanese surplus: February’s deficit with China was ¥769 billion on that surge in imports, while March’s deficit came in at only ¥174 billion. Thus without the China’s variability there would still be a serious trade deficit in March for Japan overall.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hopium: How Far Can Irrational Optimism Take The U.S. Economy?

April 23, 2015

Hopium: How Far Can Irrational Optimism Take The U.S. Economy?

If enough people truly believe that things will get better, will that actually cause them to get better? There is certainly something to be said for being positive and thinking that anything is possible. And as Americans, optimism seems to come naturally for us. However, no amount of positive thinking is ever going to turn the sun into a block of wood or turn the moon into a block of cheese. Any good counselor will tell you that one of the first steps toward recovery is to stop being delusional and to come to grips with how bad things really are. When we deny reality and engage in irrational wishful thinking, we are engaging in something called “hopium”. This is a difficult term to define, but the favorite definition of hopium that I have come across so far goes like this: “The irrational belief that, despite all evidence to the contrary, things will turn out for the best.” In hundreds of articles, I have documented how the U.S. economy is mired in a long-term decline which is about to get a lot worse. But most Americans see things very differently. In fact, according to a brand new CNN/ORC poll, 52 percent of Americans describe the U.S. economy as “very” or “somewhat good”, and more than two-thirds of all Americans believe that the U.S. economy will be in “good shape” a year from right now. But if you asked most of those people why they are so optimistic, they would probably mumble something about “Obama” or about how “we’re Americans and we always bounce back” or some other such gibberish. Well, it’s wonderful that so many people are feeling good and looking forward to the future, but are those beliefs rational?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Field Guide to Negative Progress

April 23, 2015

A Field Guide to Negative Progress

I’ve commented before in these posts that writing is always partly a social activity. What Mortimer Adler used to call the Great Conversation, the dance of ideas down the corridors of the centuries, shapes every word in a writer’s toolkit; you can hardly write a page in English without drawing on a shade of meaning that Geoffrey Chaucer, say, or William Shakespeare, or Jane Austen first put into the language. That said, there’s also a more immediate sense in which any writer who interacts with his or her readers is part of a social activity, and one of the benefits came my way just after last week’s post.

That post began with a discussion of the increasingly surreal quality of America’s collective life these days, and one of my readers—tip of the archdruidical hat to Anton Mett—had a fine example to offer. He’d listened to an economic report on the media, and the talking heads were going on and on about the US economy’s current condition of, ahem, “negative growth.” Negative growth? Why yes, that’s the opposite of growth, and it’s apparently quite a common bit of jargon in economics just now.

Of course the English language, as used by the authors named earlier among many others, has no shortage of perfectly clear words for the opposite of growth. “Decline” comes to mind; so does “decrease,” and so does “contraction.” Would it have been so very hard for the talking heads in that program, or their many equivalents in our economic life generally, to draw in a deep breath and actually come right out and say “The US economy has contracted,” or “GDP has decreased,” or even “we’re currently in a state of economic decline”? Come on, economists, you can do it!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Chinese Economic Outlook “Skewed Heavily To The Downside,” BNP Says

April 21, 2015

Chinese Economic Outlook “Skewed Heavily To The Downside,” BNP Says

Over the past several months we’ve built on several narratives out of China certainly not the least of which is the idea that economic growth in the country is decelerating quickly at a time when accelerating capital outflows make devaluation an unpalatable (if inevitable) proposition. Signs of a dramatic slowdown were on full display earlier this month when GDP growth slipped to 7%, the slowest pace in six years, while key indicators such as rail freight volume have fallen completely off a cliff:

With the country’s tough transition to a service-based economy being made all the more difficult by the hit industrial production will likely take as Beijing ramps up efforts to fight a pollution problem that was thrust back into the spotlight early last month thanks to a viral documentary, it’s reasonable to suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more of the idle cranes, empty construction sites, and half-finished abandoned buildings that greeted Bloomberg metals analyst Kenneth Hoffman who returned from a tour of the country earlier this month. Ultimately, Hoffman’s assessment was that metals demand in China is collapsing and isn’t likely to pick back up for the foreseeable future.

This is bad news for the Chinese economic machine and it’s also bad news for any iron ore miner out there whose marginal costs aren’t low enough to stay profitable in the face of a protracted downturn in prices because if you can’t convince the big guys that your price collusion idea will pass regulatory muster, well, they’ll likely take the opportunity to keep right on producing despite the slump and run you out of business.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Money for Nothin’ and your Chicks for Free – and your Houses too!

April 21, 2015

Money for Nothin’ and your Chicks for Free – and your Houses too!

Nothing Against the Old

We would like to preface today’s Diary with a clarification: We don’t have anything against old people. We don’t have anything against high GDP growth rates either. But the two don’t go together.

Some of this opinion comes from looking in the mirror: New products? New technology? New businesses? The older we get the less interest we have. When we learn a “new” song on the guitar, for example, it is likely to be one written half a century ago.

When we sit down to watch a movie, we’re as likely to pick out something from Leslie Nielsen’s Naked Gun series as a new Hollywood release. There are different stages in life… with different interests. One dear reader explains it:

In India there is a concept of Vrana ashram. In it, a person’s life is divided in four parts. From birth until 25, it is Brahmacharya – a person should gain knowledge by reading scriptures. From 25 to 50, it is Grihastha ashram – to live married life. From 50 to 75, it Vanaprastha – away from society in the forest seeking god. From 75 to 100, it is Sannays – complete renouncing of the world.”

We guess we are in the Vanaprastha stage. Maybe that’s what we’re really doing out on this remote ranch high in the Argentine Andes: seeking god.

Keeping the Money Spinning

Is there anything wrong with that? Not that we know of. But it is not the way to boost GDP.´One reader pointed out that the problem is not too many old people. It’s too few young people.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Forget The Snow, It’s The Drought That Is Crushing The US Economy

April 20, 2015

Forget The Snow, It’s The Drought That Is Crushing The US Economy

With all eyes and talking heads focused on the ‘weather’, it seems cold, wet, snowy, and frigid are the most GDP-destructive adjectives. However, as Bloomberg reports, the drought out West is starting to infiltrate U.S. housing data, according to the chief economist of a homebuilders’ group, and weakening a major part of the nation’s economy.

As Bloomeberg reports,

Housing starts in the West fell for a third straight month, dropping by 19 percent in March to an annualized rate of 201,000 for the weakest since May. Construction rebounded from harsh winter weather in other parts of the country, such as the Northeast, where they jumped a record 115 percent, and the Midwest.

The weakness in the West might reflect the record-setting drought, which may be discouraging companies from building or taking out permits for new construction, said David Crowe, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders in Washington. Uncertainty surrounding local water policy and the ability to obtain water connections for new homes or apartment buildings could be holding some builders back, he said.

“Until it’s clear what restrictions mean for new building, it’s wise for builders to be hesitant,” Crowe said. “This is more serious than just a temporary dry period. This is a new regime that says it’s going to be harder to obtain additional water usage.”

And it’s not just California…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Has The Fed Already Lost?

April 18, 2015

Has The Fed Already Lost?

Growth is dying & the Fed has few options left

Increasingly we live in a world of Now. Instantaneous access to digital real time data and news has simply become a given in our lives of the moment.

You may be surprised to know that the Federal Reserve has taken notice.

GDPNow

To the point, GDP data that routinely comes to us from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) arrives after the fact. From the perspective of the financial markets and investors — who are always looking ahead and trying to discount the future — GDP data is “yesterday’s news.” Moreover, revisions to quarterly GDP can come to us three months after the original data release (with final revisions sometimes years later), essentially becoming an afterthought in terms of relevance to decision making.

Recently the Atlanta Federal Reserve has developed what they term a GDPNow model. This model essentially mimics the methodology used by the BEA to estimate real GDP growth. The GDPNow forecast is constructed by aggregating statistical model forecasts of the 13 subcomponents that comprise the BEA’s GDP calculation.

Private forecasters of GDP, such as the Blue Chip Consensus, use similar approaches to “forecast” GDP growth. These forecasts are usually updated monthly or quarterly, but many are not publicly available, and many do not specifically forecast the subcomponents of GDP that speak to the character of the top-line number.

The Atlanta Fed GDPNow model acts to circumvent these shortcomings. By replicating the key elements of the data used by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the new Atlanta Fed GDPNow model forms a relatively precise estimate of what the BEA will announce for the previous quarter’s GDP prior to its official announcement. For now, the model is still young, but it’s beginning to be discovered more widely among the analytical community.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“There Are Big, Big Problems” – The Shocker Crushing The Economy Revealed

April 14, 2015

“There Are Big, Big Problems” – The Shocker Crushing The Economy Revealed

We are grateful to Alexander Giryavets at Dynamika Capital for pointing us to something which is far more troubling than even the Atlanta Fed’s collapse in Q1 GDP tracking: namely the latest Credit Managers Index for the month of March which “deteriorated significantly over the last two months and current readings stand at the recessionary levels not seen since 2008.”

To be sure, we have previously shown the collapse in consumer debt as reported by the Fed, which as we noted, just suffered its worst month for revolving credit since December 2010 and explains “why the consumer has literally gone into hibernation – it has nothing to do with the weather, and everything to do with the unwillingness to “charge” purchases, which in turn is a clear glimpse into how the US consumer sees their financial and economic future.”

It turns out it may not have been just a matter of demand: apparently something very dramatic has been happening in February and especially in March. Instead of spoiling the punchline, we will leave it to the National Association of Credit Managers to explain what happened:

From the latest NACM Credit Managers Index:

We now know that the readings of last month were not a fluke or some temporary aberration that could be marked off as something related to the weather. There is quite obviously some serious financial stress manifesting in the data and this does not bode well for the growth of the economy going forward. These readings are as low as they have been since the recession started and to see everything start to get back on track would take a substantial reversal at this stage. The data from the CMI is not the only place where this distress is showing up, but thus far, it may be the most profound.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

No Major Country Is More Exposed to Banks than Australia

April 14, 2015

No Major Country Is More Exposed to Banks than Australia

There are six large (with a market cap of over AUD50 billion) listed companies in Australia. The biggest four are banks, the fifth is BHP, one of the world’s largest mining companies. The sixth is the world’s most over-priced Telco, Telstra. The table below puts these companies into international perspective. They are small on a world scale, but behemoths in their domestic market.

The financial sector amounts to 44% of Australian stock market capitalization. The vast majority of the sector is comprised of banks and “diversified” banks. The remainder is insurance and real estate.

Before going further we need to understand just how small Australia is. In terms of population, Australia is the same size as Shanghai and slightly larger than Beijing; about the same as NY State; and three times larger than London. In terms of GDP Australia comes in at number twelve (IMF 2013). Australia’s GDP was USD1.5T, compared with the US at 16.7T and China at 9.5T.

Moving on.

The dominance of the financial sector is astounding. I doubt it is replicated in any other developed economy. The Australian stock market is capitalized at around AUD1.5 trillion (about twice AAPL). Almost half is represented by the financial sector. Worse, within the financial sector, the big four banks represent around 30% of total stock market capitalization.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

TRUTH – THE CURE FOR COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

April 13, 2015

TRUTH – THE CURE FOR COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” ― George Orwell

Every time the BLS puts out their monthly propaganda report on the wonderful state of the U.S. jobs market and states with a straight face the unemployment rate is a measly 5.5%, their corporate mouthpieces in the mainstream cheerleader media regurgitate the fake numbers and urge you to buy stocks. The millionaire talking heads on CNBC and the corrupt bought off politicians in D.C. make broad sweeping declarations about economic recovery, strong job growth, GDP advancement, record highs in the stock market, and soaring consumer confidence.

The people living in the real world know otherwise, but they want to believe the “experts” and “leaders”. This dichotomy between reality and what they are being told is causing a tremendous amount of mental stress. This cognitive dissonance of attempting to reconcile what they are experiencing in their every day existence and the propaganda being peddled at them on a daily basis from big media, big bankers, corporate titans, and captured politicians pulling the strings and running the show, is causing psychological discomfort. Most people want their lives to get better, so to reduce their cognitive dissonance they choose to believe the government and media reports about economic improvement.

It is only a small minority who want to know the unvarnished truth. They are drawn to alternative media websites, which the the captured corporate media refers to as doom sites. These critical thinking individuals understand the facts. The Deep State propaganda has no impact on these people because they have no cognitive dissonance. They know things are far worse than what is reported by the government and their media whores. Knowing the truth and seeing how the majority remain willfully ignorant results in rising anger among truth seekers. Huxley was right.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

There’s Trouble Brewing In Middle Earth

April 5, 2015

There’s Trouble Brewing In Middle Earth

For the second time in three years, I’m fortunate enough to spend some time in New Zealand (or Aotearoa). In 2012, it was all mostly a pretty crazy touring schedule, but this time is a bit quieter. Still get to meet tons of people though, in between the relentless Automatic Earth publishing schedule. And of course people want to ask, once they know what I do, how I think their country is doing.

My answer is I think New Zealand is much better off than most other countries, but not because they’re presently richer (disappointing for many). They’re better off because of the potential here. Which isn’t being used much at all right now. In fact, New Zealand does about everything wrong on a political and macro-economic scale. More about that below.

I’ve been going through some numbers today, and lots of articles, and I think I have an idea what’s going on. Thank you to my new best friend Grant here in Northland (is it Kerikeri or Kaikohe?) for providing much of the reading material and the initial spark.

To begin with, official government data. We love those, don’t we, wherever we turn our inquisitive heads. Because no government would ever not be fully open and truthful. This is from Stuff.co.nz, March 19 2015:

New Zealand GDP grew 3.3% last year

New Zealand’s economy grew 3.3% last year, the fastest since 2007 before the global financial crisis, Statistics NZ said. Most forecasts expect the economy to keep growing this year and next, although slightly more slowly than in the past year. For the three months ended December 31, GDP grew 0.8%, in line with Reserve Bank and other forecasts. That was led by shop sales and accommodation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Meet The New Recession Cycle——Its Triggered By Bursting Bubbles, Not Surging Inflation

April 5, 2015

Meet The New Recession Cycle——Its Triggered By Bursting Bubbles, Not Surging Inflation

We are now in the month of April—–so the Wall Street Keynesians are back on their spring “escape velocity” offensive. Normally they accept the government’s seasonal adjustments in stride, but since Q1 is again hugging the flat line or worse, it seems that “bad seasonals” owing to an incrementally winterish winter explain it all away once again. Even today’s punk jobs number purportedly reflects god’s snow job, not theirs.

What’s really happening, they aver, is that jobs are booming, wages are lifting, housing prices are rising, consumer confidence is buoyant, car sales are strong and business is starting to borrow for growth. In fact, everything is so awesome that one Wall Street economist quoted yesterday could hardly contain his euphoria:

“Consumers have emerged from the winter blues. If they spend anywhere as great as they feel right now, then this economy is going to roar over the next few months,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank in New York.

Since Rupkey has been expecting a roaring economy for several years now it is tempting to dismiss his latest fantasy as just the institutional cluelessness which emanates from the pitiful behemoths which pass for Japanese banks. But with only slightly more enthusiastic bombast, Rupkey is simply braying from the generic Wall Street script.

Since these people get paid a lot, have PhDs and might even be smart, how is it that they are so wrong, and have been now for five years running? There is a simple answer: They are operating on a business cycle model that is utterly erroneous and obsolete; and which therefore distorts and obfuscates the ‘in-coming’ data and the inferences and forward expectations that they derive from it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Our Current Illusion of Prosperity

April 2, 2015

Our Current Illusion of Prosperity

President Obama and Fed Chair Janet Yellen have been crowing about improving economic conditions in the US. Unemployment is down to 5.5 percent and growth in 2014 hit 2.2 percent.

Journalists and economists point to this improvement as proof that quantitative easing was effective.

Pile on More Debt

Unfortunately, this latest boom is artificial and has been built by adding debt on top of debt. Total household debt increased 2.5 percent in 2014 — the highest level since 2010. Mortgage loans increased 1.5 percent, student loans 6.6 percent while auto loans increased a hefty 9.6 percent. The improving auto sales are built mostly on a bubble of sub-prime borrowers. Auto sales have been brisk because of a surge in loans to individuals with credit scores below 620. Since 2010, such loans have increased over 100 percent and havegone from 20 percent of originations in 2009 to 27 percent in 2013. Yet, auto loans to individuals with strong credit scores, above 760, have barely budged over the last year.

Subprime consumer borrowing climbed $189 billion in the first eleven months of 2014. Excluding home mortgages, this accounted for 41 percent of total consumer lending. This is exactly the kind of lending that got us into trouble less than a decade ago, and for many consumers, this will only end in tears.

But we need to ask ourselves: is the current boom built on sound foundations? In other words, do we have sharp increases in productivity or real wage growth?

Productivity increased less than 1 percent on average in the last three years and real wages have flat lined or declined for decades. From mid-2007 to mid-2014, real wages declined 4.9 percent for workers with a high school degree, dropped 2.5 percent for workers with a college degree and rose just 0.2 percent for workers with an advanced degree.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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