MBS Blog

The “dismal scientists” are at it again.  The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) recently released a statement saying that the United States is in the midst of a recession that begun one year ago.

Now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist or even an economist reading tea leaves to tell us what is obvious to most people-the World, not just the USA, is in deep economic trouble. The question remains: how do we…the collective we…define economic conditions?

For most of us, recessions and depressions are measured from a personal perspective. Recession is when someone you know loses their job or your business has slowed down. Depression is when YOU lose YOUR job or your business has gone bankrupt. This is a very simple, transparent and easily definable standard for economic cycles.

Of course, anecdotal  forms for measuring national or global economic cycles would never be considered “scientific,” accurate or informative beyond the personal. They do however point to something the article from www.americanthinker.com illustrates:

·         What are the standards for measuring economic cycles?

·         What specific data and formulas are used?

·         Are there personal or political factors that affect the determination?

·         Are the standards applied equally?

 

As economist Randall Hoven indicates, the NBER may not have adhered to a strict scientific analysis. So…whom do we trust? Perhaps the personal definition of economic cycles is the one we should utilize after all…….

 

December 03, 2008

NBER’s Anomalous Recession Calls

By Randall Hoven

The National Bureau of Economic Research, the official caller of recessions, recently said we are now in a recession that started one year ago, in December 2007 .

The committee determined that a peak in economic activity occurred in the U.S. economy in December 2007. The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in November 2001 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion lasted 73 months; the previous expansion of the 1990s lasted 120 months.

 

This struck me as odd.  Not that I don’t believe we are in a recession now, but the starting date of December 2007 just seemed too early to me.  To see if this made sense, I looked at some underlying economic data and the NBER’s explanation, such as it is.  Why this might be important, I’ll explain later.

 

The rule of thumb for defining a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative real growth in GDP.  This is now the second recession called by the NBER in the two terms of President George W. Bush, yet in neither case were there two such consecutive quarters.  In fact, at no time in Bush’s Presidency were there two such quarters.

 

Of all 11 NBER-called recessions since 1947, only one other involved no two consecutive quarters of negative real growth.  That was the recession of April 1960 to February 1961.  However, that recession involved one quarter with significant negative growth, -5.1% annualized, and a cumulative -1.0% growth for a whole year

 

Compare that to Bush’s two “recessions.”  In 2001

 

• No two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
• Worst single quarter: -1.4% annualized.
• Year-to-year: +0.2% (positive real growth, 4Q2000 to 4Q2001).

 

In 2007

 

• No two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
• Last four quarters: -0.2%, +0.9%, +2.8%, -0.5%.
• Year-to-year: +0.7% (positive real growth, 3Q2007 to 3Q2008).

 

In all the other nine recessions since 1947, the NBER-called recession involved at least one quarter of year-over-year negative real growth.

 

President Bush deserves some sort of prize for getting two recessions assigned to him, yet never presiding over either (1) two consecutive quarters of negative real growth, or (2) year-over-year negative real growth.  I think that’s a first.  It certainly is in the last 60 years.

 

But the NBER does not use the “rule of thumb.”  Here is how the NBER explains its method.

 

The committee’s procedure for identifying turning points differs from the two-quarter rule in a number of ways. First, we do not identify economic activity solely with real GDP, but use a range of indicators. Second, we place considerable emphasis on monthly indicators in arriving at a monthly chronology. Third, we consider the depth of the decline in economic activity. Recall that our definition includes the phrase, “a significant decline in activity.”  Fourth, in examining the behavior of domestic production, we consider not only the conventional product-side GDP estimates, but also the conceptually equivalent income-side GDI estimates.  The differences between these two sets of estimates were particularly evident in 2007 and 2008.

 

Get it?  I don’t.  I mean I sort of understand it, but I could never duplicate the NBER’s results with that explanation.  No one could.  It lacks transparency.  If the NBER explains its method elsewhere, I could not find it and no such link was provided in its FAQ on the matter.

 

For example, in the 2001 “recession”, why does the NBER say it started in March, under Bush, and not in 2000, under Clinton?  The first quarter of negative real growth was actually the third quarter of 2000, under President Clinton.  It showed -0.5% growth contraction, annualized.  But the NBER said no recession.  When it again showed -0.5% growth six months later, under Bush, the NBER said recession.

 

In 2007, the final revision of the estimate of fourth quarter growth was slightly negative: -0.2%.  The NBER now says that was a recession.  One quarter of -0.5% under Clinton, not a recession.  One quarter of -0.2% under Bush, a recession.

 

Maybe unemployment was more of a factor in the NBER’s analysis.

 

When the NBER said the recession of 2001 started, the unemployment rate was 4.3%.  That’s pretty low.  In fact, the unemployment rate was 4.3% or higher in every single month of President Clinton’s first term, and every single month of his second term until March of 1999.  No recession that whole time.

 

What about in December 2007, the beginning of our current “recession”?  The unemployment rate was 5.0%.  Then it dropped below that for the next two months and still stood at 5.0% in April of 2008.  Again, the unemployment rate was at or above 5.0% in every single month of Clinton’s recession-free first term.  It did not go below 5.0% until May of 1997.

 

Well, neither real GDP nor the unemployment rate quite explains the NBER’s method.  The NBER said it looks at the “income side.”  So let’s try Disposable Personal Income in real dollars.

 

In three of the last four months of 2000, all under President Clinton, real DPI declined.  NBER said no recession.  In the next three months, or the first three months of 2001 and mostly under President Bush, real DPI increased in each month.  NBER said recession.  Decline in three of four months, no recession.  Increase in three of three months, recession.

 

Just for fun, I looked at quarterly GDP numbers since 1947 and all 11 NBER recessions called since that year.  Here are a couple of interesting observations.

 

(1) Every time there was at least one quarter of year-to-year negative real GDP growth, there was a recession associated with it.  There were no recessions without such negative year-to-year growth, with two exceptions.

 

(2) With simple rules based on real GDP numbers alone, a recession as well as its beginning and ending quarters could be called.  Every recession called by these rules was also called by the NBER.  Every recession called by the NBER was also called by these rules, with two exceptions.  For every recession these rules called that matched the NBER recessions (9 of the 11), the starting and ending quarters matched within one quarter, at worst.  What were these simple rules?

 

• A recession starts in a given quarter when that quarter-to-next-quarter’s growth is negative and the total growth over the two quarters combined is also negative.  (A somewhat weaker version of the “two quarters” rule.)
• A recession ends as many quarters after that beginning quarter as there remains cumulative negative growth.

 

That is, without trying really hard, using real GDP data easily available from the St. Louis Fed only, and programming simple rules in a spreadsheet, I was able to match 9 of the 11 NBER-called recessions, with no false alarms and with, at most, one quarter mis-match in timing.  The only two exceptions in any of this?  The two recessions under George W. Bush.

 

My simple rules said no recession in either case (yet called all other recessions, with no false alarms).

 

The year-to-year negative growth rule said no recession in either case (yet called all other recessions, with no false alarms).

 

The “two quarters” in a row rule said no recession in either case (yet called all but one other recession, with no false alarms).

 

(It’s still possible, by any of these rules, that we are in a recession now, but one that started in the third quarter of 2008, meaning July at the earliest.  But for any of these rules to kick into effect, we need the fourth quarter’s data.)

 

I’m sure the NBER has good reasons for calling and timing the two Bush recessions. But even it would have to admit that those two recessions are anomalous — oddballs among the 11 recessions in the last 60 years.

 

Why would this matter?  Why would it matter whether the US recession started in December of 2007 or July of 2008, for example?  After all, President Bush presided in either case.

 

Here is why.  Europe is now in recession, and it started in the second quarter measured the old-fashioned way: two consecutive quarters of negative real growth in 2008.  The US did not have its first quarter of negative growth until the third quarter of 2008.  The question is whether the recession spread from Europe to the US or vice versa.

 

If the US recession started in 2007, as the NBER states, Europe caught our cold.  If we go by the simple rule of two negative quarters in a row, we are catching Europe’s cold.  It’s all about who gets the blame, at least plausibly so.

 

In 2001, President Bush got the blame instead of President Clinton, per the NBER.

 

In both cases, blame Bush.  In this second case, blame Bush not only for a US recession, but a global recession.  If Iceland is bankrupt, it must be Bush’s fault.

 

Yet in both cases, we don’t know exactly how the NBER did it.

 

Here is what the NBER says about itself:

 

Committee members are: Robert Hall, Stanford University (chair); Martin Feldstein, Harvard University and NBER President Emeritus; Jeffrey Frankel, Harvard University; Robert Gordon, Northwestern University; James Poterba, MIT and NBER President; David Romer, University of California, Berkeley; and Victor Zarnowitz, the Conference Board. Christina Romer of the University of California, Berkeley, resigned from the committee on November 25, 2008, and did not participate in its deliberations of November 28.

 

Christina Romer (formerly on the committee) was just designated as the chair of Barack Obama’s economic advisors.  She is married to David Romer (on the committee).

 

Here’s how the NBER might help: tell us exactly the formula for calling and timing a recession and give us the input data so that we can reproduce its results.  If it can’t, or won’t, it should not be considered the “official” caller of recessions in my opinion.

 

In my opinion, there should be both transparency and clear objectivity in calling and timing recessions.  The method should be repeatable and based on publicly available data.  It should be more than simply the considered, consensus opinion of a panel of seven experts.  Otherwise we invite public doubt — public doubt in the area of cause and effect of economic downturns.  This is important stuff — or should be, in a democracy.

 

Data sources:

 

• St. Louis Federal Reserve Economic Data (http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/) for real GDP (GDPC96), real Disposable Personal Income (DSPIC96) and Civilian Unemployment Rate (UNRATE).
• NBER (http://wwwdev.nber.org/cycles/dec2008.html) for latest recession announcement, FAQs on recession definition, and official recession dates (http://www.nber.org/cycles.html).

Anton Olff

Technorati Tags: dismal scientists, Europe, GDP, Federal Reserve, Disposable Personal Income, unemployment, economic activity, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Civilian Unemployment Rate, Randall Hoven, americanthinker.com, Depression, business cycle, National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER, recession, rocket scientist, economist, the World, United States,

As goes China…so goes the World?  Looks like a bumpier ride than expected, for emerging markets. The United Nations is also riding the wave of pessimism, going even lower than the International Monetary Fund in its forecast of global growth.

Ukrainian steel exports could increase as prices in local currency are now very competitive. Profit margins will remain constrained however. 

From www.bloomberg.com:

China’s November Manufacturing Contracts by Record

By Nipa Piboontanasawat

Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) — China’s manufacturing shrank by the most on record and export orders plunged, adding to evidence that recessions in the U.S., Europe and Japan are dragging down the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

The Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to a seasonally adjusted 38.8 in November from 44.6 in October, the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing said today in an e- mailed statement. A second PMI, released by CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, also showed a record contraction.

Export orders, output and new orders all shrank by the most since the surveys began as the global financial crisis sapped demand for the nation’s toys, textiles and computers. The CSI 300 Index of stocks has fallen 69 percent from a record in October last year and President Hu Jintao describes the economic situation as a test of the Communist Party’s ability to govern.

“Another grim month for China manufacturing,” said Eric Fishwick, head of economic research at CLSA in Singapore. “Export orders will weaken further and we expect further cuts in production and employment.”

The yuan fell 0.3 percent to 6.8549 against the dollar as of 11:15 a.m. in Shanghai, the biggest decline since Oct. 10, as the government sought to help exporters.

The government-backed PMI started in 2005, the CLSA study in 2004.

Deepening Slowdown

China’s economy, the world’s fourth largest, expanded 9 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, the slowest pace since 2003. This quarter, growth may cool to 4 percent, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

China is very exposed to the global crisis, President Hu said Nov. 29.

An export order index dropped to 29 in November from 41.4 in October, the government-backed survey showed. A reading above 50 reflects an expansion, below 50 a contraction.

The output index fell to 35.5 from 44.3, while the index of new orders dropped to 32.3 from 41.7.

The government last month announced a $586 billion stimulus package and the biggest interest-rate cut in 11 years to revive the economy and counter the risk of spiraling unemployment and social unrest.

Toy Company Riot

Fired workers seeking more compensation from a toy factory in Guangdong province clashed violently with police on Nov. 25.

“It’s a very challenging time for policy makers — they definitely need to do more in terms of fiscal and monetary stimulus,” said Wang Qian, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Hong Kong. “There will be more aggressive interest-rate cuts.”

A slump in property sales and building work is also undermining growth. Construction of homes, offices and factories contracted at least 16.6 percent in October after a 32.5 percent expansion a year earlier, according to Macquarie Securities Ltd.

Baosteel Group Corp., China’s biggest steelmaker, is facing its “most difficult” period since the company was founded 30 years ago as output, sales and profit plunge, an executive said last month.

“The slowdown of the Chinese economy is getting worse,” Zhang Liqun, a senior research fellow at the State Council’s Development Research Center, said in a statement today. Government efforts to revive growth “still need some time to show their full effect, which will be after spring 2009,” Zhang said.

The World Bank slashed last week its growth forecast for China to 7.5 percent in 2009 from a 9.2 percent estimate in June. That would be the weakest pace since 1990.

The government-backed Purchasing Managers’ Index is based on a survey of more than 700 companies in 20 industries, including energy, metallurgy, textile, automobile and electronics.

The survey tracks changes in output, new orders, employment, inventories and prices.

 

Anton Olff

If you want to peer into the future of marketing and advertising, then this article in the U.S. edition of the Wall Street Journal (www.wsj.com) is the vehicle. Although it could be construed that it only reflects a snapshot from an American perspective, the odds are that these modes will be replicated…or perhaps even improved…in emerging markets.

As internet access-particularly broadband-becomes more widespread in Russia, Ukraine for example, then additional avenues for reaching and informing consumers will increase.

Marketing in the World of the Web

Bemes, clouds and MySpace: Welcome to the brave new world of retail.

By TOM HAYES and MICHAEL S. MALONE

Retailers will eventually recover from the consumption tailspin that threatens this holiday season. But quite apart from the recession, there are other, profound changes underway in the retail sector. As the evidence mounts about the power of social networks to reconfigure individual behavior, the crucial question facing industry is: How to leverage this phenomenon into actual profits?

The second generation of Internet (”Web 2.0″) companies such as MySpace, Facebook, Linked/In and YouTube exploded upon the scene three years ago. Today, MySpace and Facebook together have more users than the entire U.S. population; and the online community concept is already becoming a powerful tool for everything from creating customer loyalty, to assistance in product design, to a sounding board for company strategy.

Corporations from IBM to Toyota and Johnson & Johnson have been rushing to establish their own affiliated social networks and bind their customers ever more closely. There isn’t a smart company today that isn’t implementing some kind of online community, wiki or blog strategy.

But companies with millions of members of online communities are now asking: What next? How do we sell them products and services, or mobilize them into massive de facto R&D, manufacturing and sales departments? We have been studying the challenge and have concluded that very few of the traditional techniques of classical marketing (call them Marketing 1.0), or even of eCommerce (Marketing 2.0) will work in the world of social networks. A very different set of tools, concepts and practices is needed. Call it Marketing 3.0. Here are five:

- From loyalty to attention. Before you can win consumer loyalty, you have to capture and reward consumer attention. Old propositions — network television’s tired offer of 22 minutes of canned sitcoms in exchange for eight minutes of untargeted commercials — won’t cut it. Consumers are demanding a better deal.

Some brands are starting to flirt with better exchange rates: Virgin Mobile gives a minute of free phone time for every minute of advertising a customer accepts. Ryan Air recently announced it would offer $15 coach tickets from the U.S. to Europe, subsidized by passenger attention to advertising and in-flight sales pitches.

Smart marketers will of necessity become obsessed with customer attention in the way they once obsessed over customer loyalty. The shrewd brands will create elaborate attention-rewards programs, and incentives to break through the noise and make that critical initial connection.

- From crowds to clouds. Once you get that attention — once you generate heavy traffic to your site, gather a large league of “friends” on MySpace, or spawn a dedicated following on Twitter — how do you monetize the crowd?

Smart brands are turning their crowds into “clouds”: organic, self-forming and often self-governing communities of interest. Companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Frito-Lay and Harley-Davidson use their clouds as feedback loops to get better faster by obtaining good, timely, often brutally honest customer insights. And the members of clouds can become true believers; they don’t just watch your commercials, they make them.

Right now, few companies are emotionally equipped to wring the best benefits of a cloud, because the most valuable voices out there usually belong to the malcontents. In the old model, customer-service departments aimed to placate or jettison disgruntled customers. In the cloud model, the idea is to cultivate and reward them. That’s not an easy transition.

- From places to spaces. Consumers are increasingly organizing themselves into new communities — not just the big generic social communities, but myriad idiosyncratic slices of narrow, passionate interest (i.e., BlackPlanet, Inpowr and MomsCafe).

These new market spaces, or “meganiches,” may seem small, even strange at first. But when they’re efficiently targeted, they can be highly responsive, lucrative and loyal. Well-established meganiche Web sites include Gamefaq.com for video gamers, Dpreview.com for digital photography aficionados, and Howardchui.com dedicated to mobile phone zealots.

With this shift toward self-organization by consumers, national advertising campaigns as we know them will increasingly become a waste of time and money for many companies. The trick for brands is to cohabit social spaces with these consumers. Social media, and its verb form, “friending,” requires entirely new forms of advertising: bottom up instead of top down, personal rather than public, and subtle rather than full frontal.

- From memes to bemes. In the Age of Broadcast, good advertising could occasionally manufacture memes of tremendous social impact. Think of “Where’s the Beef?” or “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” If you can’t recall an irresistible or effective turn of phrase of late, it’s because it is exceedingly difficult to spread a meme in today’s fragmented media environment. Marketing 3.0 is now the science of devising and managing directed business memes: call them bemes. Bemes are sent by members of social communities to each other and typically contain a reward or exclusive offer, which, when redeemed, also results in a reward coupon for the sender. This encourages members of social communities to propagate a “viral” ad. One well-documented beme was “The Subservient Chicken” from Burger King.

Brute force marketing won’t work inside social networks. The best online marketing now takes place among people who know and trust each other. Consider how rumors work. Like a rumor, a beme is a bit of useful information that rewards each person who passes it along. Want to be a sensation? Create a beme that consumers willingly accept and share with others.

- From silos to simultaneity. Too many retailers today persist in believing that online shopping is merely a virtual extension of real world shopping. That is a big mistake.

Rather, online and offline need to coexist, and we need to rethink how they relate. For example, to their surprise, companies like BestBuy (which even encourages customers to shop the aisles but buy online from in-store kiosks) and Macy’s are discovering that physical retailing is a perfect way to move units online. That is, the physical world has become the showroom for the virtual realm.

Retailers now must reimagine a world where consumers experience products in stores but ultimately buy them on the Web: Stores are for experiences, the network is for inventories. And what in turn prepares potential customers for what to look for in stores? Online communities.

All of this suggests that Marketing 3.0 is not only different from its predecessors, but actively undermines them. If your marketing program fails to adapt to this new world, it won’t just become irrelevant — it will actually work against you.

Anton Olff

Technorati Tags: marketing, advertising, Wall Street Journal, American perspective, internet, broadband, Russia, Ukraine, MySpace, retail, consumption, social networks, Facebook, Linked/In, Youtube, IBM, Toyota, Johnson & Johnson, R&D, eCommerce, Virgin Mobile, Ryan Aur, Europe, customer loyalty, rewards programs, Hewlett-Packard, Frito-Lay, Harley-Davidson, commercials, social communities, BlackPlanet, Inpowr, MomsCafe, Gamefaq.com, Dpreview.com, Howardchui.com, friending, Burger King, BestBuy, Macys,

Feeling the effects of the current Global Economic Crisis, there is little doubt that Russian and Ukrainian Governments are preparing to let their currencies slide even further. The question remains as to how low they will go and what effect they will have on these emerging market economies.

In Ukraine, the hryvna is now hovering around 6 to $1USD, having lost more than 20% over the last 60 days.  The Russian ruble is also getting battered and could see levels against the U.S. dollar that it has not experienced since the financial crisis of the late 1990s.

Devaluations in either economy could exascerbate already high levels of inflation. Russia is particularly vulnerable as it relies on imports of basic food products, plus it derives a significant portion of its revenues for oil and natural gas exports. As oil revenue has declined, and subsequent market interventions have depleted Russia’s foreign currency reserves, Russia could be hit with a higher degree of stagnation than Ukraine. In fact, Ukraine may be able to weather a devaluation better than Russia.

The industrial sector located in Eastern Ukraine could benefit from the lower prices of their steel and chemical products, making their products competitive with China and South Korea. The Ukrainian agricultural sector could also benefit from devaluation.  The fomer “bread basket” of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, could regain this title, but with exports to Europe and Asia. This vastly under utilized sector could see a surge in foreign investment next year, or whenever the global credit markets become unfrozen.

In the meantime, businesses and individuals are going to have to adjust to the new reality.

Anton Olff

Technorati Tags: Global Economic Crisis, Ukraine, devaluation, currency reserves, hryvna, Russia, ruble, dollar, Eastern Ukraine, China, South Korea, Soviet Union, exports, Europe, Asia,

We have all heard the “war stories.”  Sit at any pub, club, bar or cafe in Ukraine where ex-pats congregate, and the topic of conversation will eventually turn to the difficulty in getting things done here.  The inevitable comparsions between how easy things are accomplished in the United States, the U.K. compared with Ukraine begets the question: “why are you here then?”

Of course, we know the reasons.  We are here to make  money, and lots of it.

Here is the attraction: excellent geographic location between Europe and Russia, a developing market with a population the size of France,  rising incomes, burgeoning consumer demand, and a seemingly less anti-business regulatory and tax environment than the mature economies of the United States and Western Europe.

That all sounds great. So why is so difficult? Why do businessmen, particularly foreign businessmen feel like they are pioneers or as one American real estate developer said to me, “like one of those characters in the HBO TV series Deadwood.”  Yes indeed!! Here are the top reasons, in no particular order.

1. Corruption- you always pay…and then pay some more…and everyone has their hand out.
2. The Government- or should we say, lack thereof. The rules change on a daily basis.
3. Business Culture- not exactly Western, not exactly Soviet. The customer is wrong!!!
4. Work Ethic- more for less…work that is. I get my salary whether I do a good job or bad job.
5. Bureaucracy- you always need one more paper or permit…but the office is closed today.
6. Transparency- you always find out afterwards. Information is seldom volunteered.
7. Punctuality- are you kidding? Ukrainians rarely show up on time for meetings.
8. Contract Negotiation- signed, sealed, delivered…and then undone. Just when you think you are ready to move forward, the contract needs to be renegotiated. Of course, you are the one who must “negotiate.”
9. Visibility- you want to be noticed. You want your product and services to be recognized …but you have to be discreet too.
10. Bias- not xenophobia on the part of Ukrainians which can certainly be a factor, but more importantly the bias of foreigners. Ukraine is not, and may never be an easy place to conduct business. Hard to accept. Even harder to deal with, but a fact unlikely to change.

Anton Olff

Technorati Tags: Asia, Bias, Bureaucracy, Business Culture, Contract Negotiation, corruption, Europe, France, mature economies, Punctuality, Russia, Soviet, tax environment, The Government, Transparency, U.K., ukraine, United States, Visibility, Western Europe, Work Ethic