Quarterly Phily FED survey
Hey, gang! It’s been a while! I’ve been having a darned good winter, how about you? It’s been busy, I’ll say that, hence the gap since my last post.
Anyway, as you may know by now, I’m a regular follower of the Phily Fed’s quarterly survey of economic forecasters. It’s a delightfully simple model — just ask a not-so-random group of economist where they think the economy is headed, then look at both the central tendency (you know, mean, median, mode, that stuff) as well as the dispersion of forecasts (standard deviation, median absolute deviation, stuff like that). The results are not only interesting in and of themselves, but also it’s fascinating to track what the forecasters were saying a quarter ago compared to what they’re saying now (which the FED does).
For example, the forecasters, PREVIOUSLY (end of the year last year) projected that GDP growth for 2018 would be 2.5% (real, annualized), the unemployment rate would be 4.1% on average (and 4.0% at year-end) and that we would add 163,400 folks to the nation’s payrolls on average each month during the year. Today, however, these same forecasters have up’d the ante a bit, forecasting real GDP growth at 2.8% for the year, average unemployment at 4.0% (and ending the year at 3.8%) and adding 175,100 workers to payrolls per month.
Now, don’t get too excited, folks, because as with everything the “devil’s in the details.” A big chunk of the change comes from shifting the shape of the new employment curve. Previously, the forecasters projected a fairly flat payrolls change over the year — not bad, just flat. However, new forecasts project this to be skewed to the early part of the year, and then declining after the summer. Indeed, 2019 is currently projected to be anemic. Early employment numbers has the effect of driving up GDP (people earn and spend money for more months in the year). Note that when we look at the dispersion of GDP growth, there is some great news (very little sentiment for a recession this year) but also some not-so-great news (very little sentiment for growth above 4%).
The Phily FED also surveys for inflation projections, but that’s been flat-lined for years now. Current CPI projections for the year are 2.1%, which is the same as previous projections. Of more specific interest to us at Greenfield, the Phily FED is now reporting forecasts of house price growth for the coming two years, although rather than use their regular panel they are synopsizing several publicly available indices (Case-Shiller, FHFA, CoreLogic, and NAR). In general these indices point to price growth from 4% to 5.2% this year, and slightly lower growth (3.3% to 5.1%) next year.
There’s a bit more to the survey, and if you’d like you’re own copy, just click here.
Share this:
The WalMart Effect
It’s a sleepy Saturday morning in the Pacific Northwest. December 23. Like so many Americans, I have some last minute shopping to do. Like so many Americans, I’m dreading that, and looking around feverishly for an excuse to not do it. Fortunately, I have a blog and a functioning computer.
Reading Reddit recently (and always looking for an excuse at alliteration) I happened upon an interesting map of the US showing the largest employer in each state. I couldn’t help but notice that in a large number of states, WalMart was the largest single employer. As someone who regularly travels the length and breadth of our great nation, I also couldn’t help but observe that many of the states where WalMart dominates employment are also at the lower end of the economic totem pole. Aha! I exclaimed, for I had suddenly stumbled on a distraction worthy of my Saturday morning.
Before I go any further, please let me stress that I have nothing against WalMart. I’ve actually done a bit of work for them, in the long distant past (OK, maybe 15 years or so ago) on property disposal issues. They have very tough standards for consultants, but they pay their bills (although, you earn the money!). Indeed, I have very few bones to pick at all in this study, other than the obvious which is that political and civic leaders owe it to their states and communities to seek out exportive “basic employment” businesses. Communities do not benefit by sending their money elsewhere (which is what they do when people shop at any retail establishment, as I will do later today). They benefit when they send goods and services elsewhere in trade for money. Note that “exportive” is a general term. In Nevada, for example, the largest employer is MGM Resorts. The customers are kind enough to haul large sums of money to Nevada from out-of-state and dump it in the middle of the street for the locals to scoop up by the bucketful.
My little study also does not account for states which have lots of exportive businesses, but no single entity which is dominant. For example, Florida is a bit of an outlier, in that tourism is a big exportive business, yet WalMart is still the biggest single employer. Go figure. I would have guessed Disney. In many states, the University system is the biggest employer, but recognize that Universities are huge exportive enterprises. Money flows in from research grants, technology transfer, patent licenses, tuition from out-of-state and foreign students (the U.S. is still the preferred place in the world for an education), and alumni gifts, and all we send out are journal articles and educated individuals. From a local perspective, higher education is the gift that keeps on giving.
Anyway, I downloaded the data. There are 22 states in which WalMart (“WM”) is dominant, and 28 in which it is not. I also went to the Census Bureau and grabbed the state-by-state median household income (“HHI”) stats. I then ran three quick studies (and yes, it’s still morning). First, a simple correlation shows that having WM as the state’s largest employer has a negative 51% correlation with HHI. In other words, if your state has WM as its largest employer, your state is 51% likely to have lower-than-average HHI (yes, this is a simplistic way of looking at it, but bear with me).
I then ran a simple log-linear regression. (Since HHI is bounded at zero, the conditions for OLS don’t stand, so a log transform of HHI is needed. It actually makes it a bit easier to interpret the data. Plus, there are a few other reason, but I won’t bore you.) The WalMart Effect, as I call it, is about 15.75%, with a very high (>99%) level of confidence. In other words, if your state has WalMart as its largest employer, your state’s median household income is likely to be 15.75% below average.
Finally, I measured the actual numbers. Of the 28 states which do NOT have Walmart as the largest employer, the average median household income was $62,116 in 2016. If WalMart is the largest employer, that number was $52,290, for a difference of $9,818. Thus, the Walmart effect….
Now, I’m going to go shopping. I’ll eventually write this up in a little paper. E-mail me and I’ll send it to you when and if I get around to it.
Share this:
Livingston Survey strengthens
One of my economic “touchstones” is the semi-annual Livingston Survey, begun in 1946 by the famed economist and journalist Joseph A. Livingston. The survey continues today under the auspices of the Philadelphia FED. Twice a year they survey a panel of economic forecasters on the key metrics of unemployment, GDP growth, inflation, T-Bill and Bond rates, and the S&P 500. Not only are their opinions of interest, but also the change in the central tendency of those opinions over time.
For example, six months ago, the panel forecasted that year-end unemployment would be 4.3%, with a slight decline to 4.2% by mid-year, 2018. Now, this forecast has shifted slightly downward, with an expected year-end unemployment rate of 4.1%, mid-year 2018 projected at 4.0%, and year-end 2018 at 3.9%. These are decidedly low numbers, and suggest an econonomy at nearly full steam. (“Frictional” unemployment, which is the lowest level we would normally see, is generally thought to be close to 3%.)
Previously, year-end GDP growth was projected to come in at about 2.5%. That’s now up to 2.9%, settling back to about 2.5% by mid-year 2018. Projections of inflation are also solid, with CPI ending the year at about 2.1% and PPI (producer price index) at about 3.0%. Both of these estimates are slightly lower than previously forecasted. Intriguingly, CPI is forecasted to stay about the same in the coming year, while PPI should decline to about 2.0% by the end of the year next year.
The cost of debt is projected to increase in 2018, albeit at modest rates (and lower than previously projected). Previously, the 10-year bond rate was forecasted to end the year at about 2.75%, but now should end the year at about 2.45%, according to the panel. Rates should rise in 2018, but more slowly than previously projected, ending 2018 around 3.0%
Finally, the June survey projected that the S&P 500 would end the year at 2470, but now the panelists think the market will end the year at 2644. (I note that the S&P sits at 2691 as I write this.) The S&P is projected to end 2018 at 2805, or about 6% higher for the year.
The full survey also contains data on a variety of other topics (auto sales, corporate profits, average weekly earnings, etc.). You can subscribe by visiting the Phily Fed at www.philadelphiafed.org/notifications.
Share this:
So, folks, where are we going to live?
Much has been said recently about housing starts being back up to where they were before the recession. If this is the case, then why does Seattle, for example, have a 0.9 month supply of homes for sale? As usual, the details are much more complicated than the headlines.
Prior to the “meltdown” (let’s say, 2004 – 2007), housing starts in the U.S. averaged about 1.865 million units per year. Now, few analysts disagree that this was too many, but figuring out the right number is harder than one might think. In 2008, the number dipped down to about 905,000, and hit a low of 583,000 in 2009. Since then, the annual starts have trended up. However, in 2016, we still were only at 1.207 million. Of that, only 751,000 were single family units, compared to an average of 1.4 million single family homes per year in the 2004-2007 period. Hence, nationally, we’re building about half as many homes as we were 10 years ago.
From 2004-2007, we started 7.462 million dwelling units in America, but in the past four years we’ve only started a total of about 4.432 million (all varieties). That’s a shrinkage of about 3 million new homes, and most of that shrinkage is in the single family category.
One might posit that the decline in home ownership rates should have freed up some demand, and some of that’s true. The home ownership rate in America peaked at 69% during the run-up to the recession, and dropped steadily after the melt-down, to a low of 62.9% in the 2nd quarter 2016. As of the end of the 3rd quarter this year, it sits at 63.9%, or about 5 points below the peak of a decade ago.
There are about 76.146 million owner-occupied housing units in the U.S. today. A five-percent swing in this number is a little over 3.5 million houses. In short, we’ve now “absorbed” the decline in starts, and structurally we’re more-or-less “over” the recession, and we’re simply not building enough new homes to meet the demand.
Several consequences came out of the melt-down. First, developing land takes quite a few years — five or more in the “hot” areas like Seattle, where land has to go thru a permitting and entitlement phase long before a house can be built. All of this requires land planners, both in the private sector and downtown at the county or city hall. Many of these folks lost their jobs during the 2008-09 period, and indeed some county and city planning offices were eviscerated. New home development frequently requires a significant outlay in public infrastructure, including schools, roads, and utilities. Worse than that, many construction trades were gutted, with no replacements available. Financing for acquisition, development, and construction is now problematic (although, arguably, it was too liberal pre-recession).
As such, it’s a sellers market for homes, and in hot markets, buyers compete by bidding up prices beyond reasonable levels. Some pundits are nervous, and with good reason.
(Thanks to the U.S. Census Bureau for the October 31 data.)
Share this:
Tax Reform and Senior Housing
We follow some REITs at Greenfield, and in general REITs are having a lackluster year. REITs in general have outpaced the S&P 500 this year (though some have done very well), the goal is for a REIT to outperform its underlying net asset value, or NAV for short. NAV is the theoretical amount of cash the REIT would have if it liquidated its holdings at current market value. If the REIT management is doing well, or if the sector is expected to grow, then the REIT price should be higher, and should grow faster than NAV in anticipation of those future earnings.
Unfortunately, this has not been the case, particularly in some sectors. For that reason, health care REITs have backed off acquisitions a bit, since new acquisitions would be dilute current values. In their stead, non-REIT players (private equity, for example) are snatching up senior housing under the SWAG analysis that “hey, people are getting older, so senior housing is good.” Yeah…. Andrew Carle, a senior housing analyst quoted in a November 13 National Real Estate Online article by John Egan, notes that these new players may not be giving “proper consideration to market-specific dynamics.” That’s a nice way of saying they’re not doing their homework. This is not to say that senior REITs aren’t a good idea, but like every good idea, picking thru the produce rack for the best fruit is a must, particularly when you’re investing other people’s money. By the way, private equity accounted for 47% of senior housing deals in the first half of 2017, compared with about 10% done by public entities.
One of the “known unknowns” (to borrow from Donald Rumsfeld) is what will happen in Congress to taxes. One might think that lowering taxes is generally good for real estate, but that’s not always the case. Consider the Reagan tax cuts in the mid-1980’s. Market anticipated one thing, and the final bill had something else. In the end, much of the mistaken anticipation (for example, failure to grandfather certain deductible items) was one of the straws on the camel’s back that led to the S&L melt-down, FIRREA, the need for Fannie/Freddie oversight, etc. That said, just like the early 1980s, there’s a lot of private money chasing real estate deals. Let’s hope it all gets invested properly. Nothing beats good due diligence, analysis, and careful selection.
Share this:
The FED — “Everything Old is New Again”
Even though we’re both South Carolinians, I didn’t meet former FED Chair Ben Bernanke until 2004, when we were introduced at the American Economic Association’s annual FED luncheon in San Diego. He was, at the time, a member of the FED Board of Governors, a seat he would soon resign to become the Chair of President W’s Council of Economic Advisors, and shortly thereafter the FED Chair, succeeding the long-serving Alan Greenspan.
So now, somewhat in contrast, we have Jerome Powell nominated to be the new FED Chair. Like Bernanke, Powell will come to the job having served as a FED Governor. He also served in government, as Treasury Undersecretary, but spent most of his career in the private sector, most recently, intriguingly, at the Global Environment Fund, focused on specialty finance and opportunistic investments. After several years of Yellen and Bernanke, we tend to forget that many prior FED chairs came with significant private sector experience. Greenspan spent nearly his entire career on Wall Street, interrupted by a stint as President Ford’s Council of Economic Advisors Chair. Paul Volker before him had two long stints at Chase Bank, interrupted by a brief period in the Kennedy Administration as an Undersecretary of the Treasury. William Martin worked as a stockbroker at A.G. Edwards, Thomas McCabe was the CEO of Scott Paper, and William Miller was CEO of Textron.
Powell will be the 9th FED Chair since WW II, and most intriguingly, one without a degree in economics or finance. Yellen, Bernanke, Greenspan, and Burns all had doctorates, so we tend to think that’s de rigueur. Actually, it would appear that holding a Ph.D. in economics isn’t a prerequisite at all, and in fact of all of the FED Chairs in history, only those 4 held doctorates. McCabe, the first FED Chair after WW II, held an BA in economics. Martin, who succeeded him, studied Latin, originally considering a career as a Presbyterian minister. (Originally appointed by Truman in 1951, Martin served as FED Chair under 5 presidents, leaving office in 1970.) Miller, who served under Carter, was also a lawyer (and before that a Coast Guard officer) before joining Textron. The great Marriner Eccles, who served as Chair for 14 years under Roosevelt and Truman, had an undergrad degree and came out of his family’s business in Utah. (Intriguingly, this FED Chair who helped define Roosevelt’s New Deal was a registered republican. Go figure…)
So, why the history lesson? In part, to reflect on the fact that Powell may be one of the most mainstream appointments this White House has made. While FED chairs tend to have an agenda, the job tends to be somewhat more reactive than proactive. Consider the storm that Bernanke waded into, or the aftermath which Yellen has had to manage. Powell’s job will be to stay the course, which has been quite good the past few years. One tends to feel a bit sorry for him, recognizing that his will probably be an unenviably tough term of office.
(Footnote — Many will disagree with my comment about doctorates, and argue that Paul Volker had one. He did not. Volker held an MA in political economy from Harvard, and went on to do advanced graduate work in the subject at the London School but without the award of a degree, not that it appears to have held him back…)
Share this:
Housing…. overheated again?
“Home price increases appear to be unstoppable,” — a quote from David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Down Jones Indices, as quoted in a Tuesday article by Christopher Rugaber of the Associated Press, and featured on usatoday.com. Am I the only one who felt cold chills reading that?
C’mon, David, exactly how did that turn out last time? Prices, by the way, are headed up because money is still relatively cheap, demand is incessant, and supply is constrained. S&P, which is in business, among other things, of promoting their Case Shiller index, notes that buyers are in bidding wars. That index, released Tuesday, showed that house prices are up 6.1% from a year ago — well above inflation — and in 45% of the cities tracked, the house price increase has surged from a month earlier. In short, not only is the car speeding, it’s accelerating.
However, sales volume has fallen 1.5% from a year ago. That may not sound like much, but in a market that was already not at equilibrium, that’s economically significant. Plus, the number of homes for sale was down 6.4% from a year ago, to the lowest level since the NAR started tracking these statistics. Ever. In history.
Sigh….
Share this:
Retail?
The massive, annual orgy of shopping is just around the corner, and I’ll admit I’m worried. Let me share a bit of a story. I live in a pretty tony suburb of Seattle. I dare say I’m surrounded by conspicuous consumption. The Range Rover density in my corner of the world is embarassing. That said, the glass bowl on the Kilpatrick family’s upright mixer broke (first world problems, right?), so we ordered another one. Turns out, the quickest quickest way to get a replacement was to have it delivered directly to a nearby big-box (which shall remain nameless) so I wandered in to pick it up yesterday.
It wasn’t just the dearth of customers that disturbed me, but the dearth of sales staff. the shelves were reasonably well stocked (albeit, nothing holiday-esque yet) but the cashier stands were empty — all checkouts were directed to the customer service desk (I’m not kidding). I’ve frequented this store regularly, and while I don’t have a grasp of the seasonality of their business, my guess is that the shopping count was about half of what I had seen in there before.
Let me repeat that. About half.
Most economists have been looking for a pull-back (that’s a kind word for “recession”) sometime next year or the year after. The current leadership in Washington fails to note that increasing stock prices do not bely the onset of a recession. Indeed, Mike Patton had a great study of recessions and the stock market (measured by the DJIA) published in Forbes back in 2012 (click here for a copy). He studied 14 economic pull-backs dating from 1928 thru the most recent one. Intriguingly, in most cases, the market hit record highs immediately prior to the onset of each recession. In fact, in a couple of the recessions (particularly the one in 1945), the market continued to rise even during the economic trough. During the most recent kerfluffle, the market was behaving quite nicely, albeit with a bear trend, until the full onset of the recession.
I think there’s more to be learned about recessions down on Main Street than there is up on Wall Street. Right now, Main Street in my admittedly prosperous corner of the world is not as healthy as it was a year ago.
Share this:
Large, circular storms
The first time I sailed in the Caribbean (on a 42′ Morgan Sloop), I asked the Captain about “hurricanes”. He said that was a verboten word in that part of the world, and I should simply refer to “large circular storms”. So, as many of you know, Key West and the waters of the Carib and the Gulf are my adopted second home (although, truth be known, my father was born in Florida and commanded a ship out of Key West back in the 1940’s… but I digress…). Like everyone, my eyes have been glued to the Weather Channel of late, and our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone harmed by the storms that have ravaged the southeast and our neighbors with whom we share those magical waters. I also want to thank everyone who has expressed concern over our potential property damages, but let me say that it’s only property, and it’s well insured… but more about this later.
By the way, we’ve been in touch with several folks who weathered the storm in KW. According to one report, at least one bar on Duval Street was re-opened and packed with locals by Monday morning. Of course, economically, the locals need to restore the never-ending flood of tourist dollars, otherwise they’re just swapping dollars among themselves.
A few factoids about the Keys to help color in the lines. The Florida Keys are an archipelago of about 1700 (!) islands starting about 15 miles south of Miami and running generally southwestward. Key West (which is actually an aberration of the Spanish “Caya Hueso”, which means Island of Bones) is the westernmost point which is accessible by car, thanks to Henry Flagler and his railroad/tourist empire. In actuality, the Keys officially include the Dry Tortugas, about 60 miles to the west of KW. KW is just barely in the Eastern time zone, and the Dry Tortugas observe Central time. KW is closer to Havana than it is to Miami.
By the way, the since KW is in the Western edge of the Eastern time zone, it means that the sunsets are slightly later there than back in Miami. This provides for an extended happy hour out on Mallory Square, on the west side of the island, every day at sunset. It also means that sunrise is slightly delayed, allowing for a few extra minutes of sleep before the obligatory morning dog-walk down to the pier to watch the sunrise in the east.
Oh, and about those 1500 islands — only about 30 are actually inhabited. The remainder are wonderful nature preserves. Geologically, the Keys are actually three different expanses. The upper keys (Elliott Key, Key Largo) are remnants of ancient coral reefs. The middle keys (down to Big Pine Key) are parts of the ancient Florida Plateau that stretched from Miami to the Dry Tortugas some 130,000 years ago. At that time, the water levels rose about 25 feet, submerging all of this plateau except for the islands which remain. Finally, the lower keys (Key West, for example) are sandy-type accumulations of limestone grains produced by plants and native marine organisms.
The climate is sub-tropical, and the foliage is more Caribbean than the rest of Florida. Monroe County is the only frost-free zone in America. There are three ways to get to Key West — by plane (short hops from Atlanta, Miami, and other nearby airports), by boat, or by car. US Highway 1 stretches from Florida City (just south of Miami) to KW. With the exception of a slight detour available between Florida City and Key Largo (Card Sound Road), every bit of vehicular traffic has to pass down this corridor. Additionally, all the water for the keys comes from the mainland via the Aqueduct Authority, which has built on an original infrastructure installed by the Navy back in the 1930’s. To put this in perspective, Mile Marker 0 on US-1 is at the corner of Truman and Simonton in downtown KW. Key Largo is at mile marker 102, and Florida City is at MM-122. Hence, everything that comes and goes thru the keys travels down this narrow path. While much of the original KW was built via shipping and rail, neither of these options currently exists. You truck it in, or it doesn’t come.
I had the opportunity to view aerial photos of KW taken by NOAA yesterday afternoon. There appears to be little structural damage to our house or, for that matter, most of the island. Indeed, even one nearby trailer park I viewed looked mostly intact. Apparently, the eye of the storm passed thru the gap south of Marathon where the famous 7-Mile Bridge is located (featured in countless films, such as the Bond film License to Kill and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s True Lies). According to reports, the 7-Mile Bridge and all of the bridges to the west are intact. Since the worst of the wind is on the east-north-east of the eye of the storm, it comes as no surprise that the worst damage occurred to the east of the bridge, including the cities of Marathon, Islamorado, and Key Largo. As you can guess, the damage to the east will have to be repaired before the western islands can be reached, or before tourism can return.
More as we hear it….
Share this:
Not a good sign….
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) tracks gross domestic product (GDP) both globally and by nation. Their metrics are generally quite good. They’ve downgraded the 2017 expectation to 2.1% from a prior forecast of 2.3%, in no small part to the abysmal 1.4% the U.S. turned in during the 1st quarter. They’re currently projecting 2.1% for next year as well. This is a far cry from the 4% annual rate the Prez promised on the campaign trail, and the 3% he promised after taking office.
Admittedly, a president can’t be judged on the economics of his first year. That said, a principal driver of the lousy 2018 forecast is the amazing lack of understanding this administration (and Congress, for that matter) has about the power of fiscal policy to drive the economy. This lack of understanding can trace its roots to the early Reagan days and the GOP’s enamor with Milton Friedman. The Chicago economists (and this is a wild oversimplification) preached monetary theory, holding that the entire economy was driven by the money supply, which could be improved with tax cuts. This was in contrast to the Keynesians (and again, a wild oversimplification) who held that targeted fiscal policy was the order of the day. Since the Kennedys were Keynesians (or at least Harvard graduates), then they had to be the enemy of all that was good.
Of course, many of us have been forecasting a recession for 2018 or so. Why? From a simple cyclical perspective, we’re long overdue. My own thinking was that the Congress would enact a tighter budget which would be felt in the short-term, but that tax cuts wouldn’t be felt (if at all) until father out. As it turns out, I was an optimist. The budget cuts are draconian, and the tax cuts proposed will do nothing to add to consumption or investment. (The former is patently obvious. Give Bill Gates an extra million a year in tax cuts, and he’s not going to eat better or buy nicer clothes. As for the investment side, money is already essentially free — overnight LIBOR is actually negative — and yet cash lays around on the sidelines looking for a new merger to fund.)
I’m presently not an optimist. Neither are the economists at the IMF. For a great synopsis of their report, read Rishi Iyengar’s report on CNN Money.
From a small northwestern observatory... 