the Fed’s dilemma


From almost my first day in the stock market, domestic macroeconomic policy has been implemented by and large by the Federal Reserve.  Two reasons:  a theoretical argument that fiscal policy is subject to long lead times–that by the time Congress acts to stimulate the economy through increased spending, circumstances will have changed enough to warrant the opposite; and ( my view), until very recently neither Democrats nor Republicans have had coherent or relevant macroeconomic platforms.

If pressed, Wall Streeters would likely say that Washington has historically represented a net drag on the country’s economic performance of, say, 1% yearly, but that it was ok with financial markets if politicians didn’t do anything crazily negative–the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930, for example.

During the Volcker years (1979-87), money policy was severely restrictive because the country was struggling to control runaway inflation spawned by misguided policy decisions of the 1970s (Mr. Nixon pressuring the Fed to keep policy too loose).  Since then, the stock market has operated under the belief that the Fed’s mandate also includes mitigating stock market losses by loosening policy, the so-called Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen “puts.”

recent past

We’ve learned that monetary policy is not the miracle cure-all that we once thought.  We could have figured this out from Japan’s experience in the 1980s.  But the message came home in spectacular fashion domestically during the financial crisis last decade.  As rates go lower and policy loosens, lots of “extra” money starts sloshing around.   Fixed income managers gravitate toward increasingly arcane and illiquid markets.  In their eagerness to not be left out of the latest fad product, they begin to take on risks they really don’t understand as  well as to forego standard protective covenants.

We could almost hear the sigh of relief from the Fed as the tax bill of 2017, which reduced payments for the ultra-rich and brought the corporate tax rate down to about the world average, passed.  Because the bill was so stimulative, it gave the Fed the chance to raise rates as an offset, meaning it could tamp down the speculative fires.


Enter the Trump tariffs.

Two preliminaries:

–tariffs are taxes.  Strictly speaking, importers, not foreign suppliers (as the president maintains (could it be he actually believes this?)) pay them to customs officials.  But the importer tries to ease his pain by asking for price reductions from suppliers and for selling price increases from customers.  How this all settles out depends on who has market power.  In this case,it looks like virtually all the cost will be borne by domestic parties.  Domestic economic growth will slow.  The relevant stock market question is how much of the pain consumers will bear and how much will be concentrated in a reduction of import business profits.

–I think Mr. Trump is correct that the US subsidy of NATO is excessive.  It represents the situation at the end of WWII, when the US left standing–or at best the time when the USSR began to disintegrate into today’s Russia (whose GDP = Pennsylvania + Ohio, or California/2).  I also think that China, with a population five times ours and an economy 1.25x as big as the US (using PPP), is a more serious economic rival than we have seen in decades.  It doesn’t have the post-WWII sense of obligation to us that we have seen elsewhere.  So we have to rethink our relationship.

Having written that, I don’t see that Mr. Trump has even the vaguest clue about how the country should proceed, given these insights.

To my mind, tariffs + retaliation mean both domestic and foreign companies will be reluctant to locate new operations in the US.  Tariffs on Chinese handicrafts may bring industries of the past back to the US, at the same time they force China to increase emphasis on industries of the future.  I don’t get how either of these moves should be a US strategic goal….

the dilemma

The question for the Fed:  should it enable the president’s spate of shoot-yourself-in-the-foot tariff policies by lowering rates?  …or should it let the economy slide into recession, hoping this will jar Congress into action?


Trump on trade: unintended consequences?














slowdown in China

In the late 1970s Deng Xiaoping was forced to tackle the gigantic mess that central planning had made of the Chinese economy during Mao’s rule.  The problem:  highly inefficient, loss-making, corruption-infested, Soviet-style (feel free to add more negative, hyphenated adjectives) state-owned enterprises dominated the industrial base.  The products were poor;  the books more fiction than not.  Deng’s solution was to adopt Western-style capitalism under the banner of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.”  This meant pulling the plug on bank credit and political favor for state-owned enterprises and redirecting support toward the private sector.

The result has been 30+ years of economic growth so strong that it has vaulted China from nowhere into first place among world economies.  In fact, the PRC is now 10%+ larger than #2, the US, using Purchasing Power Parity as the yardstick.

According to an astute observer of China, Nicholas Lardy, writing in the Financial Times, however, current Chinese leader Xi Jinping has not simply been cracking down on the cumulative excesses of the private sector over the past couple of years.  He has also reversed Deng’s policy in favor of building up the state-owned sector again.  Lardy thinks this decision is reducing China’s annual GDP growth rate by a whopping two percentage points.

I’m not sure why this is happening.  But for China, the highest economic principle has never been about achieving maximum sustainable GDP growth.  Rather, it’s whatever is necessary to maintain the Communist Party in power.  Reduction in GDP growth is a secondary concern.


I don’t know how this affects China’s stance in tariff negotiations with the US, especially since White House economists seem to be suggesting that the US economy is already beginning to contract under the weigh of current tariffs plus the government shutdown   (increased tariffs slated for March will only deepen any decline).  From a longer-term point of view, though–and assuming Chinese policy doesn’t change–for a company to simply have exposure to China will no longer be any guarantee of success.


internet companies vs. state-owned enterprises in China

Recently Beijing announced it wants to take equity positions in the major internet companies in China and place Communist Party officials on their boards of directors.

What’s going on?

I see two general possibilities.

Some background first.

Deng’s economic reform

In the late 1970s, Deng Xiaoping realized that the Chinese economy was too big to be controlled through central planning.   To grow it had to adopt Western economic (but not political) methods.  So he began to allow the market, not doctrinally-correct political cadres, to dictate the direction of expansion.

A major issue he faced in doing so was that, say, three-quarters of Chinese industry was owned by the state.  These companies were rudderless, and hopelessly inefficient–but they employed tons of people.  If large numbers lost their jobs all at once, the ensuing social instability might threaten the rule of the Party.  Therefore, economic progress had to be tempered by the need to avoid this outcome.  And this in a nation without sophisticated macroeconomic tools to control the pace of growth.

The result over three+ decades has been a Chinese economy that lurches between boom and bust, depending on the temperature in the state-owned enterprises.  The strategy has generally been successful, I think, with the state-owned sector now representing less than a third of China’s overall output.


–China’s internet companies have become large enough that their actions, intentional or not, can accelerate the speed at which state-owned companies shrink.  So they need to be monitored much more carefully than in the past.  This is the benign interpretation, and the one which share prices suggest the market has adopted

–China’s internet companies have become large enough to generate “creative destruction” in large enough amounts to threaten the economic control over China exercised by the Communist Party itself.  If this is the case, then the oversight over domestic internet conglomerates will be much more draconian than the consensus expects.  That would presumably result in considerable PE contraction for the firms being controlled.

My guess is that the first possibility is much more likely to be the case.  But I think we should watch the situation closely for new hints about Beijing’s intentions.

the amazing shrinking dollar












Jeep as a Chinese brand



Several things strike me as odd about this:





Chinese economic growth

China, the largest economy in the world (by Purchasing Power Parity measurement), reported 1Q17 economic growth of 6.9% earlier today.  The best analysis of what’s going on that I’ve read appears in the New York Times.

The bottom line, though, is that this is a slight uptick from previous quarters–and good news for the rest of the world, since one of the big factors that is driving growth is exports.

Traditionally, the first question with Chinese statistics has been whether they attempt to represent what is happening in the economy or whether they’re the rose-colored view that central planning bosses insist must be shown, whatever the underlying reality may be.

I think this is a much less worrisome issue now than, say, ten years ago.  But in addition to greater faith in statisticians, we also have other useful indicators about the state of China’s health.  They’re all positive:

–As I wrote about a short while ago, demand for oil in China is rising.

–Last week, port operators reported an activity pickup, led by exports.

–And Macau casino patronage, which bottomed last summer, is showing surprising increases–with middle class customers, not wealthy VIPs, in the vanguard.

While I think that consumer spending in the US is probably better than recent flattish indicators would suggest (on the view that statistics are catching all of the pain of establishment losers but much less of the joy of new retail entrants), my guess is that increasing export demand for Chinese goods is coming from Continental Europe.

More tomorrow.