The Expected Widening in the U.S. Federal Budget Deficit Has Trade Protectionist Implications

March 5, 2018

The Expected Widening in the U.S. Federal Budget Deficit Has Trade Protectionist Implications

With the recent U.S. congressional passing and presidential signing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, the federal budget deficit is projected to increase in the next few years. According to projections by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the U.S. federal budget will rise from $665 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2017 to $753 billion in FY 2018 and $1.1 trillion in FY 2019. Unless these increased federal budget deficits are financed out of increased U.S domestic saving, they imply increased financing from the rest of the world. Increased lending to the U.S. from the rest of the world implies a widening U.S. trade deficit. President Trump appears to have viewed the persistent U.S. trade deficit a result of “unfair” trade practices on the part of some U.S. trading partners. (I presented a counter argument to this view in my November 17, 2017 commentary entitled

“At Least We Can Be Thankful to the ‘11’ Fair Traders”.) The Trump administration has imposed import tariffs on solar panels and washing machines recently and has announced its intention to impose import tariffs on steel and aluminum because of perceived unfair trade practices on the part of trading partners. If past is prologue, a widening in U.S. trade deficits resulting from widening U.S. federal budget deficits in the next couple of years could trigger more protectionist actions by the Trump administration.

Let’s look at some data to build a case that U.S. federal budget deficits are related to U.S. trade deficits. Plotted in Chart 1 are annual observations of U.S. net exports of goods and services from 1970 through 2017. Net exports are exports minus imports. So, if net exports are negative, it means that the value of goods and services imported by a country are is greater than the value of its exports. If net exports are negative, it means that a country is running a trade deficit. The data in Chart 1 show that the U.S. has consistently been running trade deficits from 1976 through 2017.

Chart 1

When a country runs a trade deficit, it means that the residents of that country are spending more on goods and services than they are producing. To see this, let’s look at the identity for GDP:

(1)   GDP = Goods & Services Spending + (Exports – Imports)

GDP is the value of goods and services produced in an economy. Goods and Services Spending is the aggregate spending by households, businesses and government entities.   Imports enter the GDP identity with a negative sign in order to avoid double counting. That is, imports account for some of the Goods & Services Spending.  Because GDP represents the value of goods and services produced in an economy, imports need to be subtracted from Goods & Services Spending. Because exports are not part of domestic Goods & Services Spending but are produced in the economy, exports are added to Goods & Services Spending.

By rearranging the terms in identity (1), we get:

(2)   GDP – Goods & Services Spending = (Exports – Imports)

If the term (Exports – Imports) is negative, that is, a country is running a trade deficit (net exports are negative), then GDP minus Goods & Services Spending also must be negative.  So, a country that is running a trade deficit, by definition, is spending more on goods and services than it is producing. The only way a country can spend more on goods and services than it produces is to receive goods and services from other countries. Unless the residents of those countries providing goods and services to the country running a trade deficit are gifting those goods and services, the residents of the trade-deficit- running country are either incurring debt or are selling off assets to the residents of the country providing the goods and services. In sum, a country running a trade deficit is, in effect, a net borrower from the rest of the world.

Plotted in Chart 2 are annual observations of U.S. net exports, the same as in Chart 1. But also plotted are the annual observations of net financial lending or borrowing by the combined U.S. nonfinancial sectors – households, nonfinancial business and government entities. The positive correlation between these two series for the period 1970 through 2016 is 0.81 (looks like 0.61 in Chart 2, but is 0.81). Recall, if the correlation were “perfect”, its value would be 1.00. So, the data in Chart 2 are supportive of the notion that as a country runs a wider trade deficit, its net financial borrowing increases, too.

Chart 2

Chart 3 shows from whom most of the borrowing comes when the U.S. runs a trade deficit – the rest of the world, obviously. The negative correlation between U.S. nonfinancial sector net borrowing and the rest of the world’s net lending to the U.S. is minus 0.78 for the years 1970 through 2016.

Chart 3

Okay, what does all this have to do with widening U.S. federal government budget deficits resulting in wider U.S. trade deficits? The data in Chart 4 have a bearing on this question. Plotted in Chart 4 are annual observations of net lending/net borrowing of the entire U.S. nonfinancial sector, including the federal government sector, and the net lending/net borrowing of the federal government sector by itself. The correlation between these two series is a positive 0.64. This suggests that the federal government budget deficit plays an important role as to whether the entire nonfinancial sector is in a net lending or net borrowing position. And again, if the entire nonfinancial sector is in a net borrowing position, there is a high probability that the U.S will be running a trade deficit, with the magnitude of the trade deficit positively correlated with the magnitude of the net borrowing position of the nonfinancial sector, as shown in Chart 2.

Chart 4

So, we have established that the magnitude of the U.S. trade deficit is highly correlated with the magnitude of the U.S. nonfinancial sector net borrowing position. The magnitude of the U.S. nonfinancial sector borrowing position is correlated with the magnitude of the U.S. federal government budget deficit. Nonpartisan analysts are projecting higher federal government budget deficits in the next two years. Thus, there is a high probability that the magnitude of the U.S. nonfinancial sector net borrowing position will increase in the next two years and with it, an increased magnitude in the U.S. trade deficit.

There is a possibility that the likely widening in the federal budget deficit would not result in a widening U.S. trade deficit. That possibility rests on whether the nonfinancial sector, excluding the federal government, increases its net lending to the federal government to prevent the total nonfinancial sector, including the federal government, from slipping further into a net borrowing position. This is unlikely to happen if the federal budget deficit reaches $1 trillion+ in FY 2019. That would be a $335+ increase in budget deficit vs. FY 2017. In the three quarters ended Q3:2017, net lending by the nonfinancial sector excluding the federal government amounted to $415 billion. So, net lending by the nonfinancial sector excluding the federal government would have to increase by about 80% to prevent total nonfinancial sector net borrowing from widening and, thus, the U.S. trade deficit from widening. Possible, but not probable.

At the outset of this commentary, I noted that President Trump interprets the persistence of U.S. trade deficits as evidence of “unfair” trade practices on the part of some of our trading partners. If the federal government budget deficit widens as credible analysts project, there is a high probability that the U.S. trade deficit also will widen. This could prompt the Trump administration to adopt even more protectionist trade measures given its view of the cause of trade deficits.

Paul L. Kasriel

Founder, Econtrarian, LLC

The Econtrarian

Senior Economic and Investment Advisor

Legacy Private Trust Co., Neenah, WI

econtrarian@gmail.com

1-920-818-0236

“For most of human history, it made good adaptive sense to be fearful and emphasize the negative; any mistake could be fatal”, Joost Swarte

∆ + 6 = A Good Life

No Sugar High from Tax Cut Unless the Fed and Banking System Provide the Sugar

January 22, 2018

No Sugar High from Tax Cut Unless the Fed and Banking System Provide the Sugar

There has been chatter about whether the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) will result in a temporary stimulus, or sugar high, to U.S. economic activity because of the increase in corporate after-tax profits and the increase in household disposable income that will flow from the tax-rate cuts. How can putting this extra after-tax income in the hands of businesses and households not stimulate private sector spending? In order to answer this question, you have to follow the money. And when I follow the money completely, I come to the conclusion that the tax cuts will not stimulate private sector spending unless the Fed and the banking system finance the tax cut. In other words, TCJA will not produce an economic sugar high unless the Fed provides the sugar.

If the federal government cuts our taxes, all else the same, its budget deficit will increase. The tax cut in the short run, at least, will result in lower federal government tax revenues. That’s what increasing corporate after-tax profits and household disposable income is all about. But unless the federal government simultaneously cuts its expenditures to match the drop in its revenues, its budget deficit will increase. A wider budget deficit means an increase in federal government borrowing. Now we are getting to the nub of the issue – the implications of the funding of the tax cut. I argue that unless the Fed and the banking system create the – here it comes – thin-air credit to finance the tax cut, there will be no temporary stimulus from said tax cut.

Let’s assume that there is no additional thin-air credit (sum of bank credit, Fed reserves and currency) created in reaction to the tax cut. In this case, the extra funds needed to fund the wider deficit will have to be raised from the nonbank nonfederal government sectors – households, businesses, nonfederal government entities and the rest of the world. Because the U.S. Treasury cannot require these sectors to fund the federal government’s widened deficit, market forces must induce these sectors to voluntarily offer up these funds. The yield on Treasury securities would be expected to rise sufficiently to induce these sectors in the aggregate to reduce their current spending on goods and services by the amount of the increased federal budget deficit and transfer this purchasing power to the Treasury through the purchase of its additional securities offerings.

Let’s net all of this out. Some households and businesses that experience an increase in disposable income from TCJA might increase their current spending on goods and services. But because the wider federal budget deficit must be financed and we have stipulated no increase in thin-air credit, some entities in the household, business, nonfederal government and foreign sectors must cut their current spending on goods and services by the amount that other entities increased their current spending on goods and services. TCJA results in the federal government dissaving more and the other sectors saving more. The net result of this is that TCJA would not result in a net increase in current spending on goods and services. Rather, the increased current spending by some is offset the increased saving by others. TCJA, under these conditions, would not produce an economic sugar high.

Let’s look at some data. The blue bars in the chart below are the annual observations of the net lending (+) or net borrowing (-) of the U.S. federal government borrowing from 1965 through 2016. It should come as no surprise that the blue bars are in negative territory during most of the period. With the exceptions of 1999 and 2000, the federal government has run budget deficits. The red bars in the chart represent the aggregated net lending (+) or net borrowing (-) of households, nonfinancial businesses, state and local governments and the rest of the world. With two exceptions, 1979 and 2006, these combined sectors have been net lenders. Notice that the blue bars and red bars behave in a manner as though they are mirror images of each other. That is, as the federal government’s net borrowing increases in magnitude, i.e., the blue bars sink farther into negative territory, the combined nonfinancial sectors’ (excluding the federal government) net lending increases in magnitude, i.e., the red bars rise higher into positive territory. The two series are negatively correlated with absolute-value coefficient of 0.85. Recall that an absolute-value coefficient of 1.00 represents perfect correlation. The data in the chart support my argument that as the federal government dissaves (borrows) more, other sectors save (lend) more.

If the Fed and the banking system, combined, fund the wider federal government budget resulting from TCJA, then the tax cuts can stimulate private sector spending on goods and services. The Fed and the banking system have the ability to create credit figuratively out of thin air. If households and businesses increase their current spending on goods and services because of their increased after-tax income and the Fed and the banking system create the credit out of thin air to fund the wider federal budget deficit, then no other entity needs to cut its current spending. Under these circumstances, TCJA could produce an economic sugar high because the Fed and the banking system are providing the sugar.

What would motivate the Fed and the banking system to create the thin-air credit to fund the wider federal government budget deficit resulting from TCJA? All else the same, the wider federal budget deficit would represent a net increase in the aggregate demand for credit. When the demand for something increases, upward pressure on the price of that something is exerted. In this case, there would be upward pressure on the level of the structure of interest rates. If the Fed does not let the overnight federal funds rate drift upward with other interest rates, then banks will have an incentive to lend more (create more thin-air credit) because the spread between their loan rates and their marginal cost of funds will have widened. But the banking system will need more Fed-created reserves if bank loans and deposits in the aggregate increase. In order for the Fed to keep the federal funds rate from rising, it will have to create more cash reserves out of thin air.

Will the Fed and the banking system fund the wider federal government budget deficit? In the words of President Trump, “We’ll have to see about that.”  The Fed currently is in a rate-raising mode. Consumer inflation is picking up. Consumer spending growth has been strong. Labor markets are tighter than a snare drum. And thin-air credit growth picked up in Q4:2017, ironically, due to an acceleration in monetary base growth. I say “ironically” because monetary base growth, all else the same, would have been expected to slow as the Fed began to pare its securities holding in late 2017. Obviously, all else was not the same. The upshot is that the Fed in 2018 will be moving the level of the federal funds rate in the same direction that the TCJA-induced wider federal government budget deficit will be moving it. By sheer chance, then, the Fed is likely to limit the amount of thin-air credit funding of the wider budget deficit.

Paul L. Kasriel

Founder, Econtrarian LLC

Senior Economic and Investment Advisor

Legacy Private Trust Co. of Neenah, WI

econtrarian@gmail.com

The Econtrarian

1-920-818-0236

“For most of human history, it made good adaptive sense to be fearful and emphasize the negative; any mistake could be fatal”, Joost Swarte 

∆ + 6 = A Good Life

Send any comments to me at econtrarian@gmail.com.

An Alternative Explanation for Walmart’s Announced Employee Bonuses and Wage-Rate Increase

January 16, 2018

An Alternative Explanation for Walmart’s Announced Employee Bonuses and Wage-Rate Increase

On January 11, Walmart announced that it was raising its starting wage rate to $11 an hour, giving a one-time bonus up to $1,000 to employees, expanding its parental/maternal leave policy and providing employees adopting a child up to $5,000 per child in fees associated with the adoption. In making these announcements, Doug McMillon, Walmart president and CEO said: “We are early in the stages of assessing the opportunities tax reform creates for us to invest in our customers and associates … Tax reform gives us the opportunity to be more competitive globally and to accelerate plans for the U.S.” Mr. McMillon is suggesting that Walmart’s employee compensation increases were motivated by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA). I have an alternative explanation for Walmart’s recent beneficence – a growing shortage of qualified employees.

Walmart, along with all other corporations, has a fiduciary responsibility to maximize the return on equity for its stockholders. All else the same, TCJA increases Walmart’s after-tax profits. By increasing employee compensation by some portion of its reduced tax liability emanating from TCJA, Walmart would be reducing its after-tax profits (revenues minus expenses) from what they otherwise would have been. This would be breaking with its fiduciary responsibility to Walmart stockholders.

My alternative explanation for Walmart’s January 11 announcement of employee compensation increases is that it was compelled to raise compensation in order to retain and attract new qualified employees. And the reason Walmart needs to raise compensation to retain and attract new qualified employees is because there is now a shortage of qualified employees in the retail sector at the existing level of compensation. This can be seen in the chart below. Plotted in the chart are observations of the number of job openings in a given month as a percent of the number of employees hired in that month in the retail sector. The data are from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The series begins in December 2000 and runs through November 2017. In November 2017, job openings in the retail sector were 105.0% of the number of hires. That is, there were 5 percentage points more job openings in the retail sector than there were new hires. This is the highest percentage of openings-to-hires in the history of the series.

The demand for retail employees exceeds the supply of employees at current compensation levels. When the demand for something exceeds its supply, the price of that something goes up. I believe that Walmart’s January 11 announcement of an increase in employment compensation was motivated by a need to retain and attract new qualified employees, not by the recently-passed cut in corporate tax rates.

Paul L. Kasriel

Founder, Econtrarian LLC

Senior Economic and Investment Advisor

Legacy Private Trust Co. of Neenah, WI

econtrarian@gmail.com

The Econtrarian

1-920-818-0236

“For most of human history, it made good adaptive sense to be fearful and emphasize the negative; any mistake could be fatal”, Joost Swarte

∆ + 6 = A Good Life

Send any comments to me at econtrarian@gmail.com.

Festivus 2017 Airing of Grievances -- I Gotta a Lot of Problems with You, Taylor Rule

December 19, 2017

Festivus 2017 Airing of Grievances: I Gotta a Lot of Problems with You, Taylor Rule

December 23^rd is almost upon us. You know what that means. It’s time for me to work up my annual airing of grievances for Festivus 2017. Although I have myriad political-economic grievances for 2017, I am going to concentrate on only one in this annual Festivus epistle – the Taylor Rule. For decades, there has been a debate as to whether central bank monetary policies should be guided by some clearly-defined rule or should central banks be free to operate with discretion, i.e., by the seat of their collective pants. I come down on the side of a rule vs. discretion. But not on the side of the rule most often mentioned, the Taylor Rule.

In 1993, John Taylor, a Stanford University economics professor, published a research paper in which he purported to describe how the Federal Reserve had conducted monetary policy in terms of its movement of the federal funds interest rate from 1987 through 1992. Essentially what Taylor did was estimate a Fed reaction function to consumer goods/service price inflation above or below a perceived Fed inflation target and to real GDP growth above or below a perceived Fed real GDP target. In his 1993 research paper, Taylor suggested that his description of past Fed monetary policy decisions in terms of movement of the federal funds rate could be useful as a guideline as to how the Fed should operate in the future. Although Taylor did not suggest in his 1993 research paper that the Fed should adhere rigidly to his estimated reaction function, subsequently he has implicitly criticized Fed policy for not hueing to his rule (see “A Monetary Policy for the Future”, April 16, 2015)

In its basic form, the Taylor reaction function is:

i = r*+ p + 0.5 (p-p*) + 0.5 (y as a % of y*)

where:

i = nominal fed funds rate

r = real equilibrium federal funds rate (usually 2%)

p = actual inflation rate (yr/yr % chg)

p*= target inflation rate (usually 2%)

y = actual real output

y* = potential real output

So, this formula states that for every 1% rise in inflation above its target, the Fed would raise the federal funds rate by 0.5% and similarly for every 1% increase in the output gap (actual real GDP as a percent of potential real GDP, the Fed would raise the federal funds rate by 0.5%. If actual inflation rate were equal to the Fed’s target inflation rate and if actual real GDP were equal to potential real GDP (i.e., the output gap were zero) then the nominal, or observed, federal funds rate would equal the unobservable real equilibrium federal funds rate, assumed by Taylor to be 2%, plus the inflation rate.

My grievances with the Taylor Rule arise out of the old saw, it’s not what you don’t know that will hurt you, but what you think you know but don’t. There are two elements in the Taylor Rule that are assumed to be known but are not, in fact known. The first of these elements is “r”, the equilibrium real federal funds rate. Just as the price of wheat varies over time because of changes in the supply and demand for wheat, so does the real equilibrium federal funds rate vary over time. Changes in fiscal policy, changes in business “animal spirits”, changes in the age distribution of the population, to name just a few factors, can change the equilibrium level of the real federal funds rate. If the actual equilibrium real federal funds rate has risen to 3% from the assumed level of 2% in the Taylor Rule, then the Fed would persistently be keeping the nominal federal funds rate too low for an extended period of time, which would result in persistently accelerating inflation rate. This was why Milton Friedman, may he rest in peace, argued against the Fed using an interest rate as its policy instrument. No one knows what is the equilibrium level of the nominal interest rate, much less the real interest rate, which would also require knowledge of what inflation expectations are.  In some instances, a 3% federal funds rate might represent an accommodative monetary policy. In other instances it might represent a restrictive monetary policy. If the Fed persistently keeps the level of the federal funds rate low compared to its equilibrium level, an inflationary spiral will result. If the Fed persistently keeps the federal funds rate high compared to its equilibrium, a deflationary spiral will result.

The second unknown element in the Taylor Rule is the level of potential real GDP. Potential real GDP is a function of the size of the potential labor force, the productivity of that potential labor as well as the productivity of other production factors and the rate of technological advances. The easiest of these variables to estimate with a high degree of accuracy is the potential labor force. Demography actually is a science.

Alright, even if we did know with a high degree of certainty what was the equilibrium level of the real federal funds rate and the level of potential real GDP, how do we know that 0.5 is the correct value of the reaction coefficients to the inflation and output “gaps”? Why should the coefficients be of the same value for each gap? Is the lag between a change in the nominal federal funds rate and the inflation rate the same as it is for real GDP?

Lastly, even if we did know with a high degree of certainty what was the equilibrium level of the real federal funds rate, the level of potential real GDP and the correct reaction coefficients of the “gaps”, there are time lags with respect to the availability of inflation and real GDP data. Currently, the Commerce Department releases the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) chain price index monthly with about a one-month lag. For example, the November 2017 PCE price index will be released on December 22, 2017. And of course, it is subject to revisions.  Perhaps the Fed could use the consumer price index that is updated daily from MIT’s The Billion Prices Project. The Commerce Department’s first estimate of Q3:2017 GDP was released on October 27, 2017, the second estimate on November 29, and its third estimate on December 21. Then in 2018, 2017 GDP data will be revised still more. Talk about navigating in the fog without a GPS!

Now, let’s look at how the Taylor Rule would have guided the level of the federal funds rate vs. the actual level of the funds rate and comparing that with reported nominal GDP growth with implicit Taylor Rule “targeted” nominal GDP growth. The blue line plotted in Chart 1 is the four-quarter moving average of percentage-point differences between the prescribed Taylor Rule level of the federal funds rate (calculated by Haver Analytics using the PCE price index and the Congressional Budget Office estimate of the real GDP output gap) and the actual level of the federal funds rate. Implicit in the Taylor Rule is that nominal GDP growth is equal to the growth in potential real GDP plus 2% inflation. The red bars in Chart 1 are percentage point differences between year-over-year percent changes in reported nominal GDP and the implicit Taylor Rule “targeted” nominal GDP. The GDP data and the inflation data incorporate the latest revisions, which, of course would not have been available to the Fed in real time. The data start in Q1:1987, when Taylor started estimating his reaction function, and end in Q3:2017.

Chart 1

From Q1:1987 through Q3:1992, the Taylor Rule fed funds rate was below the actual fed funds rate (i.e., the blue line in Chart 1 is below zero). Yet, over most of this period nominal GDP growth was above the implicit Taylor Rule targeted nominal GDP growth (i.e., the red bars are predominantly above zero).  This means that the Taylor Rule would have performed worse than the actual discretionary Fed policy in terms of achieving the Taylor Rule targeted nominal GDP growth. The Taylor Rule’s finest hour, so to speak, was from Q4:2002 through Q4:2006 when the Taylor Rule fed funds rate was above the actual fed funds rate and nominal GDP growth was above Taylor Rule targeted nominal GDP growth. Yes, the Taylor Rule was superior to Greenspan’s discretion – a pretty low bar in my opinion. All of the economic masochists out there would have loved it if Taylor had “ruled” during the Great Recession. During most of the last recession, the Taylor Rule fed funds rate was above the actual fed funds rate. Had the Fed followed the Taylor Rule then, the Great Recession might have turned into the second Great Depression. From Q3:2010 through Q3:2017, the Taylor Rule fed funds rate has been above the actual fed funds rate. All else the same, then, this current economic recovery/expansion would have been even more anemic than it has been if the Taylor Rule had been followed. Call me mean-spirited and self-centered, but I was disappointed when John Taylor was not nominated for Fed chairman by President Trump. I wanted to see how much damage the Taylor Rule would inflict on the U.S. economy.

At the outset of the commentary, I said that I was in favor of the Fed monetary policy being guided by a rule rather than by discretion – just not the Taylor Rule. The rule I would prefer is what I’ll call the modified Milton Friedman monetary quantity rule. Friedman advocated that the Fed target a steady rate of growth in some definition of the money supply. Friedman was against discretion when it came to conducting monetary policy because he recognized that there is a lot we really don’t know but think we know when it comes to the macro behavior of the economy. You can conceive of a Friedmanesque monetary quantity rule as kind of Hippocratic Oath for central bankers – first, do no harm. Friedman did not expect his rule to enable monetary policy to prevent the occurrence of business cycles. Rather, he believed that his rule could reduce the amplitudes of business cycles. As important, Friedman realized that if his monetary-quantity growth target were too high or too low, it would not result in inflationary or deflationary spirals. In other words, inflation might rise if the target were set too high, but it would stabilize at some higher level. In contrast, if an interest rate target were set too low, there was no mechanism to keep the rate of inflation from continuing to rise except an increase in the interest rate target to some unknown higher level.

Okay, let’s get to the modified Friedman monetary quantity rule. I know that by now you have guessed it involves the Fed targeting a steady rate of growth in thin-air credit, thin-air credit being the sum of the credit created by depository institutions (commercial banks, S&Ls and credit unions) plus Fed-created cash reserves of these depository institutions and currency in circulation, or the monetary base. Plotted in Chart 2 are the quarterly observations of the year-over-year percent changes in nominal GDP along with the quarterly observations of the year-over-year percent changes in the sum of depository institution credit plus the monetary base (i.e., thin-air credit).

Chart 2

The two series appear to move in close tandem. When thin-air credit growth rises, so does nominal GDP growth and vice versa. One glaring exception to this “rule” occurs in 2008, when thin-air credit growth went up but nominal GDP contracted. During this period of financial crisis, households, nonfinancial institutions as well as financial institutions dramatically increased their demands for liquidity. The Fed extended massive amounts of credit to financial institutions to satisfy their increased demand for liquidity. Businesses tapped their lines of credit at financial institutions to enhance their liquidity positions, not to purchase new equipment or build inventories of goods. Cross -correlation tests demonstrate that growth in thin-air credit tends to affect growth in nominal GDP, not the other way around. When the subperiod from Q1:2008 through Q4:2009 is omitted, the contemporaneous correlation coefficient between the two series from Q1:1953 through Q3:2017 is 0.61. When thin-air credit growth is lagged by one quarter to test whether thin-air credit growth last quarter affects nominal GDP growth this current quarter, the correlation coefficient rises to 0.63.

However, when nominal GDP growth is lagged by one quarter to test whether nominal GDP growth last quarter affects thin-air credit growth this current quarter, the correlation coefficient falls to 0.56. Oh, and by the way, the Fed publishes weekly the level of “narrow” thin-air credit – commercial bank credit, the bulk of depository institution credit, and the monetary base.

What might a modified Friedman monetary quantity growth rule look like? Both the median and average year-over-year percent change in quarterly observations of real GDP was 3.1% from Q1:1953 through Q3:2017. Let’s round it off to 3%. I don’t quite know why 2% is a magic number for an annualized inflation target. Why not zero or even minus 2%? Whatever the argument, let’s accept a 2% inflation target. That gives us a 5% annualized nominal GDP growth target to shoot for. I ran an ordinary least-squares regression with the year-over-year percent change in nominal GDP as the dependent variable, year-over-year growth in thin-air credit lagged one quarter as the explanatory variable along with a constant term. Based on the results of this regression, in order to achieve 5% annualized growth in nominal GDP, thin-air credit would have to grow at an annualized rate of 4.6%. (There is evidence of a lot of serial correlation in nominal GDP growth. That is, this quarter’s growth in nominal GDP is highly correlated with the previous quarter’s growth. The estimate of target thin-air growth was made without correcting for the serial correlation. When I did correct for it, the coefficient on thin-air credit growth decreased, but remained statistically significant with a 99% probability.) As an aside, in Q3:2017, thin-air credit was up 4.0% vs. Q3:2016.

So, the Fed has a read on the growth in narrow thin-air credit on a weekly basis. If narrow thin-air credit is growing above its target growth rate, the Fed would drain a sufficient amount of reserves from the financial system so as to get thin-air credit growth back to target. If narrow thin-air credit were growing below target, the Fed would add a sufficient amount of reserves to get thin-air credit growth back to target. The guys and gals in the Chicago interest rate futures pits would love this because short-maturity interest rates would be much more variable, similar to the price of wheat.

Now that I have aired my 2017 grievances, it is time to gather around the aluminum Festivus pole (aluminum is best, according to Frank Costanza, because of its high strength-to-weight ratio) and join me in singing the only Festivus carol I know:

A Festivus Carol

(Lyrics by Katy Kasriel to the melody of O’ Tannenbaum)

O’ Festivus, O’ Festivus,

This one’s for all the rest of us.

The worst of us, the best of us,

The shabby and well-dressed of us.

We gather ‘round the ‘luminum pole,

Air grievances that bare the soul.

No slights too small to be expressed,

It’s good to get things off our chests.

It’s time now for the wrestling tests,

Feel free to pin both kin and guests,

Festivus, O’ Festivus,

The holiday for the rest of us.

Paul L. Kasriel

Founder, Econtrarian LLC

Senior Economic and Investment Advisor

Legacy Private Trust Co. of Neenah, WI

econtrarian@gmail.com

The Econtrarian

1-920-818-0236

“For most of human history, it made good adaptive sense to be fearful and emphasize the negative; any mistake could be fatal”, Joost Swarte

∆ + 6 = A Good Life

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