A Shot of Confidence

There has been a surge in consumer confidence since the election:

-         The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index jumped 6 points from October to November.

-         The University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment gained 5.6 points from October to November. Note: There was another 4.4 gain in December, taking the index to its highest reading since 2004.

-         The Gallup U.S. Economic Confidence Index is skyrocketing – reaching a nine-year high of +8, versus a reading of -11 before the election. According to Gallup, the index has “been below zero nearly continuously since 2008.”

Likewise, there is heightened optimism in the business community:

-         The stock market (DJI) is up more than 8% since the election.

-         Some economists are predicting consecutive quarters of 4% GDP growth before too long.

-         The OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) says the growth rate of the economy will double by 2018. 

Non-Economic Factors in Play

So what is going on here?  There are several psychological and cultural factors that are impacting these occurrences: 

-         The Halo Effect

This says that people project their positive feelings about one aspect of a person onto many other traits regarding that person.  In this case, if the winner of the election is perceived as intelligent, competent, and/or capable, then there is a belief that his policies will be likewise.  (There is a reverse-halo effect too, as you may have read.)

-         The Winner Effect

General George Patton once said, “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.”  Our culture puts a high value on winning.  That’s why we are so sports-crazed, and why losing candidates have problems running again and winning.  This time we have a very vocal winner espousing a “winning” message, creating increased optimism.

-         The Sticker Effect

(This one I made up, and it is related to the Halo Effect and the Winner Effect.)  A person will project onto a winning candidate all the positive things the person believes in and wants accomplished.  “This elected official believes in the same things I do and will be able to change things the way I want them changed.”  There can also be negative stickers. “This elected official is against everything I believe in and will make everything much worse.”   

Other Factors

-         We have just completed the longest, roughest, and wildest campaign of our lifetimes.  Some people are feeling better about things because the election is over and there is less uncertainty.  This would have happened to some degree regardless of the outcome. 

-         President-elect Trump has more business experience than any POTUS in history.  Many (including some economists) are expecting that experience to translate into a much stronger economy.  It must be remembered, this result is not guaranteed.  We are in new territory here, and the economy is never that easily controlled.  Regardless, the new administration can be categorized as “pro-business”

A Pseudo-Economic Factor

-         Animal Spirits

This is a John Maynard Keyes term for when economic decisions are made instinctively or emotionally.  It is often used when economists lack a rational or standard explanation of what’s happening in the economy or stock market.  Apparently some positive animal spirits have been stirred by this election.

What About Business Confidence?

I expect the new surveys on business confidence to show significant increases also, for the same reasons listed above.  However, due to the sticker effect, when the president-elect talks about reducing regulations, many business people hear this: “All the regulations I don’t like will be repealed, and all pending regulations will be cancelled.”

Existing business regulations that inhibit business competiveness and efficiency are vulnerable for elimination.  Those dealing with safety factors are more likely to survive.  Environmental regulations will be subject to review.  I would expect all pending regulations to be put on hold and then reexamined.

The Impact on the Trucking Industry Regulations

Expect all pending regulations to be put on hold pending further review.  However, regulations involving safety factors will probably be enacted in some form after review.  Regulations that limit the ability to compete, or be efficient, may get dropped or changed.  The Electronic-Log-Device probably moves ahead since implementation has already started, it is a safety rule, and it does not implement a new standard, it merely uses technology to insure better compliance with a current standard.

What Happens to The Economy in 2017?

President-elect Trump’s economic plan was regarded as average at best, and disastrous at worst, during the campaign.  Now, some economists believe it is brilliant. Of course, it is not as bad as described in the past, and probably not as good as the confidence factors indicate now. In addition, it will take some time for the plan, if it works, to have a real positive impact.

Will consumers and businesses translate the current euphoria into greater economic growth? Are we entering into another “Era of Good Feeling”? A positive shot of confidence can influence consumer and business behavior, but we have not been in this situation since Hoover was elected in 1928 and the economy can be a very fickle thing.

Currently, the economy is sending very mixed messages.  The big-picture, macro, numbers have been looking good.  However, the on-the-ground view in Ohio is flashing warning signs.  There have been announcements of plant closings and layoffs. Tax revenue for Ohio in November (a real, not estimated, figure) was 5% under estimates. Numbers like that usually happen during recessions.  Present conditions are starting to remind me a little of December 2008.  Hold on econo-fans, this could be a wild 2017.

 This post first appeared on the FTR website.  FTR is the leader in analyzing and forecasting the commercial transportation industry.  For more information on FTR reports and services, please click here.)

Time to Make More Than Just Donuts

I have good economic news! A national chain has built a brand new facility just north of my local “economic warzone” (an area near me devastated by the Great Recession and now regressing after making a modest recovery).

Yes, a state-of-the-art donut store will soon open on a corner lot, near a relatively new exit off the interstate.  It does seem like an odd location for a donut shop.  The interchange is between two nearby exits.  It was constructed to alleviate future congestion at the airport exit to the north, provided the airport experiences significant growth.  The new exit has created some retail activity, but traffic along the corridor is still modest. Other than the expressway, there just isn’t much there.  I will assume the company completed a valid traffic study and the business is viable.

While some of the sales will come from existing local donut and coffee vendors, to be successful it will have to sell more donuts.  But do we really need more donuts?  Look at the obesity and health data; heck, just look around at people.  We do not need any more donuts.  And there also is the issue with selling scalding hot coffee to people just before they enter a jammed expressway on their morning commute.

Now this donut shop will create jobs, there is a huge sign out in front advertising the big recruitment/interview dates.  It may be difficult to recruit workers during the Christmas shopping season since retail sales are still strong in the region, and with statistical unemployment near the national average.

These, however, are low-wage jobs.  The types of jobs that politicians rail against because they do not pay a living wage.  But no one is forcing people to take the jobs, and the people working them will be happy to get them.  You could pay a minimum wage of $15/hour for these jobs; however, it should be noted that the skills necessary to bake small cakes and sell them are possessed by numerous merchants in Central Africa.  Fortunately, fresh donuts cannot be imported and neither can the workers, since our eastern border is much less porous than the southern one.

Even then, it appears this could just be another job tradeoff.  A local metal working factory is closing, reportedly due to increased competition from Mexico.  This is emblematic of the economic recovery after the Great Recession, high-end manufacturing and professional jobs, being replaced by retail and service jobs.  On paper, it looks like an even swap.  To a guy who just lost his 30-year factory job, however, it looks like it’s time to make the donuts.  

The donut shop also highlights the issues with income distribution.  Our society is having problems responding to cultural changes regarding the wage gap.  The recovery has been good for people who have jobs, but stubbornly terrible for those who don’t. Well-to-do suburbanites will now be spending some of their disposable income on pleasure food and expensive coffee, prepared by people making minimum wage, some of whom need better, full-time jobs if they could find one. And then there are people just ten miles away who don’t have basic food to eat.  I’m not making a judgement, I do like donuts, but the big picture isn’t that pretty.

Such is life in the Donut Recovery. This economic recovery has been soft and doughy, with a large hole right in the middle.  Yes, at times it is sweet, but it is loaded with many empty calories.  Too many donuts in this “Donut Recovery” have resulted in us becoming fat, dumb, and happy…or bloated, disinterested, and content with the status quo.

Alas, things remain distressed in that “economic war zone.” “For Lease” signs still line the roads, and no one is moving in.  That brand-new office building, about which I previously wrote, still does not have even one tenant. Unless something happens soon, the owner will have gone “zero-for-2016.”  Too bad, office workers there could have bought some coffee and donuts at the new shop.

In this mega game of “Dollars to Donuts,” the donuts keep winning.

 This post first appeared on the FTR website.  FTR is the leader in analyzing and forecasting the commercial transportation industry.  For more information on FTR reports and services, please click here.)

Did You Just Miss That Recession?

Back in March I wrote that the U.S. commercial vehicle market was signaling that a recession would begin sometime between July and November of this year.  The commercial vehicle market is usually a superb leading economic indicator because changes in freight growth first show up in how much new equipment is needed to haul these goods.

But here it is November, and the current economic data indicates an upturn, not a downturn, in the economy.  Why isn’t the commercial vehicle market a reliable indicator this time? I’m not sure, but it’s certainly not alone.

I realized this as I studied a chart on year-over-year change in employment growth (total employment by month) published by calculatedriskblog.com.  It makes sense than when increases in employment start to slow, then the economy will stop growing at some point.  The concept is similar to commercial vehicles, less total trucks needed to haul diminishing freight, less total employees needed to do diminishing work.  It has been a fairly reliable predictor of past recessions, but not this time.

More enlightening is to review (Google) the headlines predicting recession this year:

February – Recession – It’s Already Started

March – Economy Already In Recession

May – It’s Undeniable – The Recession Is Already Here

June – The Next Recession Is Already Here

August – This Graph Says It All – The Recession Is Here

August – Historical Data Will Show That U.S. Was In Recession

September – U.S. May Now Be In A Recession

September – The U.S. Economy Is In A Recession

September – The U.S. Economy Is Coming Out Of Recession.

November – We Are Currently In Recession (This one was an analyst on a cable business program)

All of these analyses were based on current graphs, indices, models, and whatever, and certainly based on past trends.  And according to current GDP data, these predictions are:

Wrong

Wrong

Wrong – deniable

Wrong

Wrong – probably

Wrong – bad graph

Wrong - probably

Interesting, since we officially weren’t in recession

And probably wrong, but it’s too early to tell.

So, predicting a recession is difficult, even more difficult than picking the winner of a big election.  Forecasting a recession under the current economic conditions is nearly impossible, and any analyst who correctly predicts the next one is probably more lucky than good.  Some traditional economic indicators remain broken, inconsistent, and in many cases, unusable.  These remain abnormal economic times. 

But still, it is odd for all these economist and analysts (and the commercial vehicle markets) to all be wrong.  Could something else be happening here?  Perhaps under these highly stimulated, highly controlled, not yet fully recovered from the Great Recession conditions, this is what an economic downturn looks like.  You can’t call it a recession, because GDP is not negative for two quarters, but it is an “extended low growth dip.”  That doesn’t roll off the tongue, maybe try ELGD.  It’s not difficult to spot it on the graph:

Did regulation and controls prevent the economy from going into recession?  Well, communist economies don’t go into recession very often because of the strict government controls, so yes comrades, this may be the answer.  That would indicate the largest free-market economy is struggling to achieve 2% growth while the largest communist economy is running up consecutive growth scores of 7.6%, 7.6%, and, yes, 7.6%.  (Note to the Chinese government: It looks very suspicious to repeat the same GDP % three times in a row.  It looks like your economist took a long vacation or that you are just making the numbers up.  If one of my analyses came up the same number three times in a row, I would employ the technique made famous by the noted economist Reginald Fudgit and round one of the numbers up and another one down.)

Therefore, maybe we had a recession and everyone missed it!  If so, we are out of it now, because Q3 GDP is currently estimated to be 2.9%.  Suddenly the guy who said the recession, or maybe now the ELGD, ended in September doesn’t sound so wacky now, does he?

Whoo Hooo! We just had a recession so mild that no one even noticed it! There were no mass layoffs, employment even increased, and the stock market didn’t tank! On the other hand, there will be no great snapback to high growth, because there is nothing to snap back to. The economy is expected to float back to around the 2% growth level. Oh boy!

The bottom line is, this economy is so docile that we can’t even have a decent recession.  There is not enough air in the economy to produce a bubble worthy of being burst.  However, about half of Americans just indicated they were not satisfied with the status quo.  Soon there will be a new economic sheriff in town. I heard he has some business experience, so we will see what happens next.

 This post first appeared on the FTR website.  FTR is the leader in analyzing and forecasting the commercial transportation industry.  For more information on FTR reports and services, please click here.)

The Economy Is Quiet – Much Too Quiet

Usually I have many more topics for economic blog posts than I have time to write, but not this time.  As I scan the economic and industry news, it is difficult to find any new trends or significant changes that I have not already covered. 

Back in May I warned that the “air was leaving the balloon.”  This prediction turned out to be true, but I never thought about what it might look like now.  It’s like the end of the birthday party when the balloons have deflated, all the cake is gone, and the pony’s been hauled away.  The kids are all standing around wondering what happens next.

It’s quiet, too quiet, eerily quiet.  It’s never supposed to be this quiet.  Is this like a horror movie? You know when it gets this quiet, something incredibly awful is just about to happen, but you have no idea what that might be.  Sure, Janet Yellen could jump out of a closet screaming “Interest Rate Hike,” but beyond that, what could be lurking?

The economy has been subdued for at least nine months now.  Some economists are claiming this is due to a “classic inventory buildup” and that things should get much better soon.  Inventory buildups are caused by businesses over-producing and over-ordering, because they anticipated sales to be better than they actually were.  They expected the demand trend to continue, but it fell short.

There are two issues to be concerned with here.  First, the economy wasn’t growing that great to begin with. So why did it slowdown, and why was this inventory buildup so pronounced? Is there a bigger problem with demand than we know?  Second, when you have a healthy economy, the inventory buildup is less of a problem because a typical return to a stronger sales environment eliminates it quickly, and a noticeable improvement in GDP soon follows.  I sense that our current inventory bloat is going to take longer than anticipated to burn off, because sales still are not at higher levels.

It appears the economy went into a gigantic holding pattern around March.  Some indicators flattened out at that time, and there was also a drop off in the Class 8 and commercial trailer orders and production beginning in April.  There were anecdotal reports of trucking fleets becoming much more cautious about future business conditions, due to declining freight demand and lower operating profits.

Analysts were encouraged when the Manufacturing PMI (purchasing manager’s index) finally got above 50 (the growth line) in March, after six months being under or equal to that value. Unfortunately, there has been only sluggish growth since then, with a “highpoint” of 53.2 in June.  The Non-Manufacturing PMI has been better, but inconsistent. The non-manufacturing sectors have been credited with keeping our heads above the recession waters.  Retail sales have been shaky except for solid months in April and June.  The chart below shows the three factors, I subtracted 50 from the PMI values to make it easy to see the “negative” values.  The retail sales values are the reported percentage changes.  The August numbers do not indicate a “bounce back” from the inventory correction. 

Of course the uncertainty of the presidential election is largely responsible for the economic quietness.  The candidates are polarizing and their economic programs vastly different.  Let’s assume the economy is a difficult jig-saw puzzle, the current player found the puzzle too perplexing and, at some point, gave up trying to finish it, but told us the picture on the table was pretty.  One of the potential new players will look at the current unfinished puzzle from new angles and try to fit new pieces to complete the task, but the strategy, and maybe the results, won’t change too much.  The other player would throw the current puzzle out the window, and then introduce a brand new puzzle.

But then in this stillness, comes a ray of hope.  Consumer confidence in September jumped to its highest level in nine years! Nine years!  And then it is casually mentioned that it is the “strongest reading since August 2007, four months before the start of the Great Recession.”  Oh no, the consumer never sees it coming. Do not open that door, please do not open that door!

 This post first appeared on the FTR website.  FTR is the leader in analyzing and forecasting the commercial transportation industry.  For more information on FTR reports and services, please click here.)

A One-Legged Economy Hops Along

The industrial sectors of the economy recovered stronger and faster than the consumer sectors coming out of the Great Recession.  This was unusual, but it does make sense in retrospect.  Think of the industrial sector as being more rational, and the consumer sector as being more emotional.

The industrial sector expected the economy to recover in some fashion and set about replacing and updating stocks, equipment, and structures, albeit at a cautious, reserved rate.  Consumers, though, had to deal with foreclosures, job loses, depleted savings, a stock market crash, etc.  It was a scary time and, it took years for the fear to subside.

So economic growth was led by industrial, with the consumer limping behind.  This resulted in slow, steady, but choppy, GDP growth.  The good news is that the consumer sector regained some strength last year.  Employment improved, gas prices fell, the stock market began to climb, and confidence sprouted. The bad news is, as the consumer sector rebounded, the industrial sector began to sputter.  So the economy resembled a tag team wrestling match with a new competitor in the ring.

The manufacturing sector regressed for six months starting a year ago, followed by five months of slow growth, which added together, results in very slight improvement over the last year.  The consumer sector has been good, but not great, resulting in the continued slow growth economy.

Now there is concern that the consumer sector is starting to weaken, so let’s look at the numbers:

Consumer Confidence:

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Survey = Flat in July.

The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index = Basically Flat in August (preliminary).

Gallup U.S. Economic Confidence Index = Improving some, after hitting a low for the year in mid-July.

Therefore, confidence is not improving, but it isn’t declining either. It is steady at a modest level.

Retail Sales:

The advanced monthly report shows July sales even with June and up 2.3% over July 2015.  This is very consistent with the consumer confidence measures above.  Flat Sentiment = Flat Sales.

The Breakdown of the Retail Sales Categories (vs. June):

The Good

-         Motor Vehicles

-         Non-store Retailers

-         Furniture Stores

The Bad

-         Electronic Stores

-         Health and Personal Care Stores

-         Food and Drinking Places

The Ugly

-         Gasoline Stations

-         Sporting Goods and Hobby Stores

-         Food and Beverage Stores

-         Building Material Stores

-         Clothing Stores

The “Ugly” category is concerning.  Most of the stores listed here are highly dependent on disposable income, i.e. discretionary spending.  Of course part of the gasoline decline is due to lower prices, but the total drop was 2.7%, so maybe people are driving less – time to watch the Total Miles Driven data which has been running very positive.

Auto sales are still strong, despite the warning that demand has peaked and will soon start to drop.  Since this has been the most robust consumer category, it makes you nervous.  Recent news reports have also detailed a decline in restaurant sales.  While the July data was up 5% y/y, it declined 0.2% from June.  The Restaurant Performance Index has been choppily declining since peaking in 2015 and is now bouncing around the “100” mark, meaning little or no growth.  So, one of the other bright spots in the consumer economy is dimming.

It is confusing why consumer spending is moderating as the employment numbers grow.  Maybe consumers are nervous about the presidential elections.  Maybe healthcare costs are biting into disposable income.  Are living costs increasing as wages stagnate?

The reason for economic malaise after The Great Recession is that the

economy wasn’t running so much as it was hopping on one foot.  First the industrial foot, then the consumer foot.  Now it looks like the consumer foot is tiring, but the other foot may not be ready to take over.

The economy has been out of sync for a long time.  At some point the consumer and industrial sectors will come back together.  Let’s hope that point is not in the Flatlands. 

People Stuck in the Employment Shadows

Economists quote labor statistics all the time.  The unemployment rate, number of people underemployed, the labor participation rate, etc.  It is important to remember that these are not just numbers on a page, they represent people – real people with real needs and real fears.

I was reminded of this when “Dave” commented on my blog post “Is the Air Leaving the Balloon”. Dave believes more analysis and concern should be directed at the underemployment situation.  He was downsized in 2013, and it took him over two years to find a position comparable to the one he had.  In the meantime, he was earning 30% less than previously.  He knows of many people, also downsized during that period, who are still struggling to get back to where they were.  From my personal experience after The Great Recession, I know he is correct in his assessment.

Some analysts and politicians may claim the job market is strong, but there are many people in the “employment shadows”; they are hidden in the statistics, and they feel forgotten.  And … there is something wrong about this economic recovery that the numbers aren’t reflecting.  Dave was downsized in 2013, over four years after the job market bottomed out in 2009, and it still took him two years to find a comparable position.  This is far, far, from a healthy economy, and it is not getting much better with time.

The major labor issues are occurring at opposite ends of the demographics.  Older workers got hit hard in The Great Recession.  Many of them retired early or took marginal disability claims because their skills were either too specialized, or no comparable jobs were available to move into.  Some above age 50, but too young to retire, are still faced with being severely underemployed or very long-term unemployment.  Can you see why the labor participation rate has dropped?

At the other end, the youth flocked to college in record numbers to pursue degrees, but unfortunately, a sluggish economy has yet to create jobs for these degrees.  The government and banks provided the cheap, easy cash, the universities jacked tuition, and the naïve kids took the bait.  Now you have college grads working two part-time, low-skill jobs just to pay living expenses, with nothing left to pay-off their huge student loans.

This economy is not serving either of these demographics well, and not providing much advancement for the nation as a whole.  This has resulted in the angriest and most volatile presidential election in our lifetime.

Also, the employment numbers do not make sense when taken as a whole.  The U.S. unemployment rate decreased to 4.9% in June.  Economists consider around 5% as full employment, because traditionally a percentage of the work force is constantly “between jobs.”  Wages have been fairly stagnant since The Great Recession.  If everyone who wanted jobs was working traditionally good jobs, wages would have risen substantially, and the economy would be growing in excess of 3%.

However, the employment numbers lie.  We are nowhere near traditional full employment, and there is massive underemployment.  The jobs being created are increasingly low skill, low wage, positions.  I sense the job numbers are even masking the fact that we are trading high-wage jobs for low-wage jobs. Mere numbers may camouflage the problem, but it is a cold reality for thousands of people.

If you had a job, and were able to hang on to that job through the recession, you are doing well.  If you have a skill or acquired a skill that is in demand, you are good.  However, if you got swept away by the recession and your skills are outdated or not in demand, you are struggling to regain your income.  If you are starting out and unable to latch on to an entry-level position in your field, you are a “have not.”  The result is wider income inequity.  Yes, this is a real problem which needs to be addressed.  No, it is not the result of some sinister plan.  It has occurred naturally due to many complicated factors and is difficult to rectify.

Income inequity is a huge issue and a major cause is the lack of higher wage, higher quality, job creation.  As stated above, we may even still be losing these jobs.  To address the shortage of good-paying jobs, politicians have presented two vastly different solutions.

The first idea is to turn “free trade” into “fair trade” and bring back higher-wage production jobs to the U.S.  This could be effective in industries where there are clear indications of unfair trade, but it carries risks if done haphazardly.  So it might improve things some, but the impact has limitations.

The other strategy is to raise the minimum wage.  This is basically creating more “good jobs” by artificially paying workers more than market wages.  You pretend these are higher-skilled jobs by assigning an arbitrary higher wage to them.  This could produce benefits if the minimum wage was adjusted to the “optimum” level, where increased wages produce increased spending, and the number of jobs do not decline substantially. This is fine, except no one knows what this level is, and some economists would argue that the minimum wage is already higher than optimal.  This is a band-aid approach.  There are also pitfalls with this strategy, the main one being the incentive to eliminate jobs with automation. 

The solution is to get the economy growing at a strong rate of over 3%. This is where the debate needs to focus.  This will begin to create the jobs needed to get people employed, reduce the number of people underemployed, and reduce income inequity.  A job training/retraining program/strategy would also help. We need people going back to work, valuable work, and to get them out of the shadows and into the sun.

This post first appeared on the FTR website.  FTR is the leader in analyzing and forecasting the commercial transportation industry.  For more information on FTR reports and services, please click here.)

Late To The Economic Party?

I have written about this business district twice previously in my personal economic blog.  It is an older business district located between two fairly affluent suburbs near my house.  It is very close to the local mall and big “strip” stores. It is also very accessible to the expressway.   The district is home to many older offices and small businesses which either do not need the street exposure or prestige of being located near the mall or cannot afford the higher rents.

I find this district interesting because I believe it serves as a reliable (tangible and ground level) economic indicator. These are the smaller, more marginal, more fragile, businesses which tend to feel an economic draw back the earliest.  I first noticed the connection before the Great Recession.  Prior to the downturn, businesses in the district started to close even though the mall area was still thriving.  There were empty storefronts and numerous “For Lease” signs.  Male oriented entertainment venues, highly dependent on disposable income, closed.  The self-carwash even promoted “bucket washing”, something that is usually strictly prohibited at these operations.

When the recession did hit, I labeled this area an “economic war zone”.  There were more places closed than open. Long time businesses, such as the pizza parlor, went under.  It looked as if a depression had hit and it was surely depressing to drive down the streets.

However, the second time I wrote about this district was to describe its economic recovery.  New businesses such as an Arabian market and a pet grooming service had moved into vacated buildings.  Two men’s-oriented entertainment venues opened or returned.  No more bucket washing was permitted at the car wash.  A field where an older building was demolished, found use as a display area for a storage barn builder.

Subsequent to that blog post, there was even more development.  A micro-brewery opened in a nicely remodeled building.  The biggest multi-business strip center was given a much needed make-over.  The “For Lease” signs mostly disappeared.

Unfortunately, if you haven’t already surmised, there is a reason that I am writing about this area again now.  About 9 months ago, things started to erode once again.  The Arabian market is gone, so is the pet grooming place.  The men’s entertainment venues are no more.  The car wash has closed.  The “For Lease” signs are increasing at a steady rate.  The district today looks eerily similar to what it did right before the Great Recession.

(And a few days after this post appeared on the FTR website, the largest bar/entertainment place in this area announced they were closing down after many years in business)

This worries me with an economy growing at the GDP rate of 0.8% (Q2 is expected to be 2.4% - FTR). However, what concerns me most is what first appeared to be a very positive development in the area.  A developer tore down an aging office building

(which had a weird 1970’s oriented design) and constructed a beautiful new office building designed to house five companies.  The building was completed promptly and the “For Lease” signs appeared around the beginning of the year.

And --- it sits empty. Considering you would begin to market the property when you were constructing it, that’s over seven months with no takers.  Of course, the property could be over-priced.  Let’s hope so, because there is always some builder or investor that takes a risk and the end of the economic cycle that later really wishes he hadn’t. 

Let’s hope this developer wasn’t extremely late to this party, even to a party that was never that spectacular.

This post first appeared on the FTR website.  FTR is the leader in analyzing and forecasting the commercial transportation industry.  For more information on FTR reports and services, please click here.)

Is the Air Leaving the Balloon?

It is interesting to watch economists try to describe and predict the current economy based on previous trends and once reliable economic indicators.  It is similar to watching the political experts and pundits try to analyze and predict this year’s presidential race based on history.

This is new territory; we haven’t been here before.  So how can we ever know what awaits us around the bend?  Yet, as we slowly make our way to that bend, one can feel a collective economic nervousness.

Most economists expect the economy to revert back to the slow growth mode of the previous seven years.  Some are calling for a mild recession, with a few calling for a deeper one.  Almost no one expects the economy to jump back into a strong growth mode very soon.  In the Wall Street Journal economist survey (over 70 economists), no participant is predicting anything close to a recession and only two are forecasting future growth at over 3.5%.

The best argument against a recession is that downturns are usually the result of excesses, or overheating, in some area of the economy.  A negative offset to some positive overreach.  Because you have no apparent excess in the economy right now, there is nothing to react to, no bubble to burst.  In other words:  no cycle up; no cycle down.

Yet, the economy has been slipping downward for months now and many signs I watch are currently turning, but not flashing yellow.

-         Manufacturing went into recession (six months of no growth beginning in August).  This recession stopped in March when the ISM Manufacturing Index hit 51.8 (over 50 equals growth).  April’s number went down to 50.8, barely growing.  So manufacturing did not “snap back” from its downturn, more like it crawled out from the pit, and it remains weak. 

-         Business inventories are bloated, because businesses continued to stock based on expectations that consumer spending would continue to increase at a healthy rate.  When spending slowed, stocks swelled, and manufacturing skidded (the weak world economy also hurt exports).

-         But what’s wrong with consumer spending?  Higher employment and the low-price gasoline dividend were supposed to boost disposable income and lead to greater economic growth. Retail sales did rise 1.3% in April, after a 0.3% drop in March.

-         Something is happening with disposable income.  My disposable spending index has been down the past two months.  I am hearing reports that charitable giving is weaker in 2016.  Could this be the result of higher healthcare costs?  Is this acting as an invisible tax?  Could the savings rate be increasing because people are reacting to higher deductibles on their policies?

-         Business investment continues to be tepid.  There is a lack of confidence in the future, and businesses are not spending much money right now.  Factory orders have been weak for several months now.  Normally a decrease in business investment precedes a recession; however, businesses were not spending much before (no excess bubble here), so it is consistent with a slow/no growth economy.

The latest Q1 GDP revision has the economy at 0.8%.  This is the third straight quarterly drop, but this particular pattern has been repeated several times in this recovery, with the economy then returning to moderate growth.  Could it be different this time?

This economy feels like the air is slowly being let out of the balloon, that it is sluggishly running out of gas and coming to a stop.  When I expressed this theory to a colleague recently, he challenged me by asking when this had ever happened to the economy before.  And, of course, I had no good answer.  The best I could muster is that it happened last when we had a Great Recession,

Our smiles are fading .....

due to a major bubble, which the government injected billions into the economy to save it and then held interest rates extremely low for eight years, in which GDP never exceeded 3% in any year.  What a strange mess of things, no?

Maybe this is what a downward adjustment looks like under these conditions.  A couple quarters of “resting” and then a continuation of growth, albeit slow growth.  The forecast?  Things are getting worse, but not real bad.  Then things will get better, but not that good.  Second verse, same as the first…or maybe the last seven, for that matter. 

This post first appeared on the FTR website.  FTR is the leader in analyzing and forecasting the commercial transportation industry.  For more information on FTR reports and services, please click here.)