San Francisco Fed

Very busy day today with personal lack of savings, an ISM number which will likely beat consensus so much it will be above the highest Wall Street estimate, construction lack of outlays, Ben Bernanke speech day two, GM channel stuffing, and many Fed speakers.

Bunch of irrelevant and reflexive (stock market is up so confidence - in what? manipulated markets? - is higher, so stock market is up so confidence is higher etc) stuff today, as the world central banks prepare to pump another $600-$1000 billion into the consolidated balance sheet and send input costs into the stratosphere. Somehow this is bullish for stocks. Luckily, it will finally break the EURUSD - ES linkage.

The long-term link between demographic supply-demand shifts and the dynamics of asset price changes is hard to quantitatively dismiss and while it is just as difficult to trade these long-term shifts, as Credit Suisse notes, it is a useful context for considering tactical and strategic asset allocation. Based on projections of two interesting ratios (Middle-/Old-age ratio for equity multiples and Yuppie/Nerd ratio for bond yields), they find that US and European equity P/E multiples are set to structurally fall for the next decade (while Japan may see expansion) and similarly Japan is expected to see bond yields continue to structurally fall while US and European yields will rise (with US yields rising only modestly - though still painfully for governments - and UK quite significantly). While, of course, significant differences exist in the equity and debt market participation level and demand and supply mechanics of foreign investors, the relationships have stood the test of time and should warrant concern for the medium-term in both US and European markets as perhaps monetary policy's extreme experimentation is fundamentally fighting these trends that are exaggerated in the short-term by the cyclical-to-secular end of the leverage super-cycle.

That the fine economists at the San Fran Fed are known to spend good taxpayer money in order to solve such challenging white paper conundrums as whether water is wet, or whether a pound of air is heavier than a pound of lead (see here and here) has long been known. Furthermore, since the fine economists at said central planning establishment happen to, well, be economists, they without fail frame each problem in such a goal-seeked way that only allows for one explanation: typically the one that economics textbooks would prescribe as having been the explanation to begin with. Today, is in some ways a departure from the default assumptions. In a paper titled "Why is Unemployment Duration so Long", a question which simply requires a brief jog outside of one's ivory tower to obtain the answer, Rob Valleta and Katherin Kuang, manage to actually surprise us. And while we will suggest readers read the full paper attached below at their leisure, we cut straight to the conclusions, which has some troubling observations. Namely, they find that "the labor market has changed in ways that prevent the cyclical bounceback in the labor market that followed past recessions...  In addition, anecdotal evidence suggests that recent employer reluctance to hire reflects an unusual degree of uncertainty about future growth in product demand and labor costs."Oddly enough, this is actually a correct assessment: the mean reversion "model" no longer works as the entire system has now broken, and since the administration changes rules from one day to the next, companies are not only not investing in their future and spending capital for expansion, and hoarding cash, but have no interest in hiring: an observation that previously led to a surge in profit margins, yet one which as we pointed out over the weekend, has now peaked, and margins have begun rolling over, even as the rate of layoffs continues to be at abnormally high levels, meaning all the fat has now been cut out of the system. Yet it is the following conclusive statement that is most troubling: "These special factors are not readily addressed through conventional monetary or fiscal policies." And that is the proverbial "changeover" as the Fed has just acknowledged that both it, and Congress, are completely powerless at fixing the unemployment situation. In which case is it fair to finally demand that the Fed merely focus on just one mandate - that of controlling inflation, and leave the jobs question to the market, instead of making it worse with constant central planning tinkering which only makes it worse by the day?

All you need to read.

From the San Francisco Fed: "An unstable economic environment has rekindled talk of a double-dip recession. The Conference Board's Leading Economic Index provides data for predicting the probability of a recession but is limited by the weight assigned to its indicators and the varying efficacy of those indicators over different time horizons. Statistical experiments with LEI data can mitigate these limitations and suggest that a recessionary relapse is a significant possibility sometime in the next two years...the likelihood of a recession is essentially zero over the next 10 months but that the odds deteriorate considerably over the following year." And the market rips.

Well, not really 4EVA, but the uberdovish FRBSF has just released a paper by Glenn Rudebusch, in which the author claims "that to deliver future monetary stimulus consistent with the past—and ignoring the zero lower bound—the funds rate would be negative until late 2012." In other words, a realistic outcome over the next two years will involve not only ZIRP, but additional QE to satisfy the differential to the zero limit. Furthermore, once the economy fully relapses into a double dip, which should be confirmed at the latest by September, Bernanke will have to flush even more money into a monetary stimulus rescue, as the president's fiscal hands will be tied in advance of a landslide mid-term election loss. One possibility is the passage of legislation which allows negative fed fund rates: when all else fails, US citizens will be directly penalized to save money. The recession will further push back the expiration of the "exceptional" and "extraordinary" language well past 2020, by which time all the primary dealers will have bought every single bond repoable back to the fed, gunned up stocks, paid up trillions in bonuses, and reinvested the proceeds in hard (gold) and liquid (Bordeaux) assets. And there you have your roadmap for the next decade. And just in case a prudent voice of opposition to this insane policy were to arise, the author stops it dead in its tracks with the following illogical and non-sequitur statement: "the linkage between the level of short-term interest rates and the extent of financial imbalances is quite erratic and poorly understood." And now you know.

In keeping up with relevant current topics, the San Francisco Fed has issued a new paper analyzing how proposed new changes to health insurance planning may impact the broad economy by comparing to the example of the Prepaid Health Care Act (PHCA) adopted by Hawaii in the 1970's. Presumably, the administration has done its empirical homework as it pushes for various expensive adjustments to insurance plans, however it bears to read this piece for the conclusions, which essentially notes that not only are business likely to suffer higher incremental costs, the marginal employment of full time workers will likely suffer as more and more shift to find loopholes in proposed legislation, putting further stress on the already broken (un)employment landscape.

The San Fran Fed continues to voice a dissenting tone from the Ben Bernanke Inflation Party Line. Authors Weidner and Williams try to reconcile the lack of major deflationary pressure borne by significant unemployment. Their conclusion: the output gap is the likely variable, and could potentially be less then estimated by the CBO.

Another refreshingly objective piece from the San Fran Fed, this time dealing with the question of whether to expect a recovery in employment; the Fed comes out with what sounds like a resounding no.

Another refreshingly objective piece from the San Fran Fed, this time dealing with the question of whether to expect a recovery in employment; the Fed comes out with what sounds like a resounding no.

Another refreshingly objective piece from the San Fran Fed, this time dealing with the question of whether to expect a recovery in employment; the Fed comes out with what sounds like a resounding no.

One of the core macroeconomic themes that Zero Hedge has been expounding on since inception, which mirrors some of the major concerns of David Rosenberg, has been the evaporation of consumer wealth, income and equity as a function of both declining stock and real asset values and persistently high consumer debt. In an economic paper, the San Francisco Federal Reserve confirms that these concerns are not unfounded, and could be the very core of the processes that undermine the administration's attempts to restore economic growth.

One of the core macroeconomic themes that Zero Hedge has been expounding on since inception, which mirrors some of the major concerns of David Rosenberg, has been the evaporation of consumer wealth, income and equity as a function of both declining stock and real asset values and persistently high consumer debt. In an economic paper, the San Francisco Federal Reserve confirms that these concerns are not unfounded, and could be the very core of the processes that undermine the administration's attempts to restore economic growth.