I suppose when I use the term anchor, of the 11 definitions offered by Merriam-Webster, "something that serves to hold an object firmly" is the closest to my meaning. And not in a good way.
In this Jeff For Banks video blog, listen to my thoughts on anchors at your institution. And what to do about them. Because we need to move forward. Which is difficult to do if you have anchors.
~ Jeff
The Federal Reserve waited too long before beginning its fight against
inflation. We are all paying higher
prices for food, clothing, gas, oil, cars, services like travel and eating out
at restaurants, and goods of all kinds. Until
early this year, the Fed’s focus seemed to be the unemployment rate and
recovery from the pandemic. Now
inflation is here and we hate it!
The Fed let inflation ride from last summer until March, 2022, when they took a baby step of tightening by .25%. In hindsight, it appears that this move was already too late to make a meaningful impact on 2022 inflation pressure. Even more egregiously, the Fed continued to purchase $100 billion of Treasury and Agency bonds in the market each month through March, 2022! This money was added even when it was known inflation was accelerating, and along with the fiscal stimulus handouts of cash, added fuel to the inflation fire. As pandemic spending began to recover, the Fed slowed money supply growth in 2021 from 25.8% to 12%-13% for the second half of 2021, and to single digits by June of 2022. The Fed has also announced they will allow their bond portfolio to begin running off at a pace of $47.5 billion per month until September, then at $95 billion per month after September.
Hindsight is 20/20 and they realize that they need to get interest rates
higher- thus the .50% and .75% hikes in short-term rates in May, June, and July
and get money supply down quickly.
Cumulatively, the Fed Funds rate has been raised by 2.25% to 2.50%. They’ll meet again in September and will be
deciding how much to raise rates. I
would expect them to raise rates to at least 3.50% at year-end 2022.
The effects of Fed actions are realized with a lag of six to nine
months, so I’m guessing there will not be much question about recession by
then. We experienced two negative
quarters of GDP, which is the textbook definition of recession, in the first
and second quarters of 2022, by -1.6% and -.9%.
Inventory changes were the predominant factor in the negative
growth. If companies grow inventories
too much, they may have to reduce prices to liquidate them. Walmart, Target, and Amazon can tell you this
is true. But NBER is the organization
that gets to call the recession; it will peg the beginning and end, based
generally on four factors: falling
production (GDP already is falling), falling real income (real disposable
income is down 18 months in a row), falling real sales (slow declining trend),
and falling employment/rising unemployment (not yet here- still seeing strong
payroll growth).
We are seeing three of the four conditions for a NBER recession call already met. The sole hold-out is unemployment, still low at 3.5%, and payroll growth of +528,000 in July, 2022. The household report was weaker at +179,000 in July, following a decline in June of over -300,000. Employment is a lagging indicator, with household reporting leading the payroll numbers, and eventually job cuts, layoffs, and hiring freezes will hurt employment growth, along with the inability to find talent. One negative factor in our economy and affecting productivity is the level of those Not in the Labor Force, which topped 100 million in July. NBER and our textbooks both predict that unemployment will rise at least .50% during recession, which is a cost of almost a million jobs.
We do need to understand that recession or the risk of recession will not stop the Fed from raising interest rates, liquidating their bond portfolio, and reducing the money supply. M2 year-over-year growth has slowed to +5.9% in June, 2022, compared to +12.4% in December, 2021, and 21% to 25% during the pandemic months in 2020. Prior to the pandemic, M2 growth ranged from 3% to 5%, which seemed to be a steady non-inflationary pace. The Fed will keep raising rates to show their resolve to the markets that they will fight inflation or else inflationary expectations can soar pretty quickly. So far, they are relatively steady, with the 10 year Treasury and TIPs measure showing inflation at 2.48%. Meanwhile the 5 year Treasury- TIPs is 2.76%.
It is not just the US that is under threat of recession. China’s economy is declining as housing/real estate and manufacturing are under pressure. Europe is also under the gun as high prices for energy have sapped spending power. Big heat waves struck the US and Europe during July, with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees for a time. I can attest to the heat in Metz and Paris, as one day it was 100, the next was 102. Then it would cool to 98 or 99. Many areas of Europe are suffering from lack of rainfall. The Rhine River, a mainstay of all the economies along the river as well as the favorite of river cruises, is so dry in areas that ships can no longer navigate. Lack of rain is also hurting agriculture and hydroelectric plant production. Pray for rain! And pray for the grapes that will soon become wine!
What are leading indicators telling us?
The biggest leading indicator of all is the stock market, with its
negative performance year-to-date. The
S&P 500 is down -10% and the Russell 3000 is down -11%, but have recovered
from the lows in June. The stock market
is certainly pointing to down times in the economy and corporate profits. Another leading indicator is the Treasury
yield curve, which is currently inverted between the 2 year and the 10 year
yields by -.45%. The 3 month to 10 year
yield spread is still positive, by .24%, but with one more Fed rate hike will
turn it negative. My preference has
always been to follow the 2-10 year spread as a recession indicator, which is
market determined. The Fed prefers the
3month-10 year spread, but they control the 3 month.
The index of leading economic indicators, published by the Conference Board, was down -.8% in June and was down five of six months in 2022. This bodes ill for the economy six to nine months from now, and coincides with the six to nine month lag in Fed policy. The leading inflation index, published by FIBER, gives a glimmer of hope about inflation. In May, the index turned down on a year-over-year basis for the first time in several years, and has been down three months in a row. Commodity prices have also fallen recently, contributing to the small drops in inflation. As I said, a small glimmer of hope...
Many surveys, such as ISM, S&P, and Philly Fed manufacturing and services, are showing declines in July for the Prices Paid component. University of Michigan also shows that consumers think inflation will fall after the coming years; one year inflationary expectations are at 5.0% and 5 to 10 year expectations are at 3.0%.
One silver lining of rapidly rising interest rates is the relative
strength of the US Dollar versus other major currencies; the dollar has continued
to be very strong and the dollar index is up +11.6% year-to-date. A strong dollar serves to keep import prices
lower than they otherwise would be, and kept inflation from becoming
worse. But the strong dollar has raised
prices more rapidly in the rest of the world and the emerging markets are
facing a crisis with high interest rates and potential defaults on debt. Foreign investors not only suffered from
market declines, but their US holdings also were down from exchange rates
versus the dollar. On our trip to
France, the exchange rate was close to 1 to 1 between the US dollar and the
Euro so we were pretty happy. As
mentioned, China’s and Europe’s economies are struggling- China with a real
estate crisis and declining production and Europe with an energy crisis.
And speaking of debt, the US Treasury total now exceeds $30.4 trillion, or 122.6% of GDP at the end of the second quarter of 2022. Ratios above 90% of GDP have been shown to seriously detract from GDP, which was evidence with average GDP of +2.2% to +2.3% between 2010 and 2019. Debt levels keep rising so I believe our longer-term potential will now be below 2.0%.
And a word about the housing market- it has been, in a word- devastated. Housing starts, building permits, new and existing home sales, pending home sales, and builder sentiment indices are all down sharply so far in 2022. Price changes are still near the highs of +20% year-over-year as inventories on existing homes remain very low at 3.0 months’ worth of sales. New home inventory is too high at about 9.0 months. There is no happy medium. Higher rates and recession will pull down the large price increases.
If we are not in recession already, we soon will be. The data is pointing that way and the Fed
will continue to raise rates. Just
think, before they had even tightened a tiny bit in March, GDP was already
down. They will keep raising rates until
inflation is falling substantially. They
must show the markets they will fight hard.
They will keep raising short-term rates, while longer-term rates keep
declining in response to recession and recession risk. Even recession won’t stop the Fed, at
first. But recession will stop
inflation. It does every time. Thanks for reading!
Everyone’s favorite machine is back up and running! Since 2018, the Large Hadron Collider, or
“LHC,” was down for maintenance and upgrades so that particles could smash at
6.8 trillion electron volts, or “TeVs,” for a total of 13.6 trillion TeVs when
the protons collide. The LHC restarted
on July 5, 2022 and will run for four years until being shut down for
maintenance in 2026.
The LHC fires protons at each other at almost the speed of light along the 17 mile tunnel under the Swiss and French Alps, where magnetic fields move the protons around. The debris cloud when the protons collide reveals subatomic particles for study. Linear accelerators were added to strip the electrons from the protons. Also, upgrades were added to the software to sort the data that is felt to be useful for study; this is accomplished by artificial intelligence. To date, only about 10% of the data has been analyzed; this can now be raised by 3 times.
There has not been much excitement since the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle in 2012. New discoveries include new particles and scientists are attempting to explain dark matter, which makes up 95% of the universe. So hopefully, someone will tell us what this all means and what it will do for us or teach us.
D. Jaworski 08/17/22
In 2012 the Obama administration launched "Operation Choke Point" ("OCP") which was designed to ensure banks considered the risk of banking payday lenders that were engaged in abusive practices. It sounded laudable enough, with the goal of OCP, according to federal officials, to combat fraud by preventing criminals from accessing financial services.
But what it turned out to be is nothing more than old fashioned thuggery where the government would use the safety and soundness mandate so their regulatory bodies could pressure financial institutions from doing business with disfavored industries.
This was an obvious attempt to bully banks into making it so risky to do business with disfavored industries that many banks, under fear of enhanced regulatory scrutiny, stopped doing business with them. OPC formally ended in 2017. But the bad taste lingered.
So much so that the acting Comptroller of the Currency of the prior administration, Brian Brooks, proposed a rule in November 2020 that would forbid banks to blacklist legal industries. But in January 2021, the new OCC announced it would pause the "Fair Access" rule that was intended to prevent another Operation Choke Point. Because we are going after "climate related businesses." Again, legal businesses that are politically out of favor.
Imagine the community bank that is experienced in lending to fuel oil businesses in or near its markets because it's comfortable using trucks, tanks, and oil inventory as collateral. Now, under the guise of "transparency", mandatory disclosures, and risk mitigation regulators begin asking more and more intrusive questions about the banking relationship with these local fuel oil businesses.
They find your underwriting or risk mitigation techniques deficient. Issue matters requiring attention in your exams. And although your loss experience has been very good with these businesses, you are finding it troublesome to continue to bank them. Or, minimally, you will have to increase their credit costs to make up for the added scrutiny you are required to give. So you back out. And other local lenders aren't anxious to take up the mantle and relive your experiences. This could put significant pressure on the local fuel oil companies so many residents rely upon. No matter. Climate risk.
Now, imagine there is a change in presidency. And the current president has his/her own industries he/she disfavors. And evolves from "climate risk" to [insert risk de jour]. I encourage you to read Jenna Burke of the Independent Community Bankers Association's piece on this issue in their latest Independent Banker magazine (link: Jenna Burke: Leading the climate risk charge – Independent Banker). Interesting was the section "Lack of Empirical Data." As if that matters. :)
Even if you want banks to stop lending to the local fuel oil company, you must be able to see the predictable consequences of picking and choosing disfavored industries and then bullying banks through regulation to stop doing business with them.
Because the "climate risk" ruse is exactly that. Let bankers determine if lending to this industry or that is risky. Not politicians or bureaucrats. Because that, my readers, is the slippery slope to tyranny.
~ Jeff
