Month: October 2015

By Thomas Cooley and Peter Rupert

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released the advance estimate for GDP the day after the October meeting of the FOMC. Kind of bad timing…would the FOMC statement have been the same after knowing GDP in the 3rd quarter increased by just 1.5%? Most prognosticators expected a large drop in GDP growth compared to Q2, so the weakness was not entirely unexpected. In fact the fundamentals of the GDP report were not disappointing at all if you look at the composition and were not so far off Q2 results. But, markets will take some time to digest what it all means and what it means for liftoff. The way we read the numbers, there is very little reason for the “data driven” Fed to wait.

While the headline GDP growth number was lower than in Q2, the components of final demand were strong. Personal consumption expenditures grew at a 3.2% clip after climbing 3.6% in Q2. The contribution of gross private domestic investment to GDP growth fell by .9%, caused by a small decline in nonresidential structures and a big decline in inventories. Weaker exports were also a factor.

What next?

It is clear that the U.S. economy is continuing to grow. That consumption and basic investment are strong is a sign that the domestic fundamentals are pretty strong. Real disposable personal income increased by 3.5%. Declines in the energy sector have held back investment in non-residential structures and equipment and that doesn’t promise to improve in the near future.  Most of the uncertainty and worry are  external. The biggest worry is about the much discussed slow-down in China and the knock-on effects that has for other commodity exporting nations like Brazil and Australia, as well as continued slow growth in Europe and Japan.  The world economy is not booming and that raises the legitimate question of what our expectations should be and what considerations should guide Fed policy. At the moment they seem to be operating on the basis of a “first do no harm” principle. There is a growing chorus of people who believe that they are doing unseen harm by not normalizing monetary policy. There will be a couple more employment reports and the second estimate of Q3 GDP before the next FOMC meeting in mid-December, so time and data will tell!

By Thomas Cooley and Peter Rupert

Today’s release of the employment situation shows a modest increase in employment of 142,000. Moreover, employment over the past two months was revised down by a total of 59,000 (22,000 for July and 37,000 for August). While the mining and logging sector (oil) continued to shed jobs, manufacturing employment was down for the second month in a row; falling 9,000 in September after falling by 18,000 in August. Although the housing sector has shown some growth, construction employment is still lagging. Average weekly hours also fell back to 34.5.

The household survey also had a weak flavor to it. The unemployment rate stayed at 5.1%, but the labor force fell by 350,000. The employment to population ratio also fell to 59.2.

Last week, the third “estimate” of real GDP for the 2nd quarter of 2015 shows  that output of final goods and services grew by 3.9% at an annual rate compared to 3.7% from the 2nd estimate. There was no change in the final estimate of 1st quarter GDP, remaining at 0.6%.  Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) was the largest contributor, providing 2.42 percentage points of the 3.9% gain.

Chairperson Yellen’s remarks on September 24 mentions again that they could (expect to?) raise rates by the end of the year:

Most FOMC participants, including myself, currently anticipate that achieving these conditions will likely entail an initial increase in the federal funds rate later this year, followed by a gradual pace of tightening thereafter. But if the economy surprises us, our judgments about appropriate monetary policy will change.

The last sentence in the Yellen quote once again provides an out for the Fed not to do anything. It is the nature of the beast that quarterly or monthly outcomes can be much different from the trend without signaling a change in direction. That is, if in the next employment report there is a slight uptick in the unemployment rate, or an employment change of say only 100k workers, will that dissuade members of the committee? There is (almost) always something in a given report, GDP or employment, that can be read as surprising. Perhaps non-residential investment is particularly low, for example. Here are the numbers for the annualized percentage change in non-residential structures over the past six quarters, i.e., starting in 2014Q1: 19.1%, -0.2%, -1.9%, 4.3%, -7.4%, 6.2%. And this for equipment over the same time period: 3.5%, 6.5%, 16.4%, -4.9%, 2.3%, 0.3%.

The bigger question is whether the economy is in a sustained recovery or have we hit a rocky spot giving the Fed further pause? That said, a return to normal monetary policy that begins to eliminate some of the distortions caused by several years of zero interest rates would seem to be beneficial and it is surprising that the FOMC did not see it that way.