Where is the US Consumer?

“Rising Income is Saved, Not Spent,” reads the Wall Street Journal Tuesday morning. (http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577192702993936344.html?mod=ITP_pageone_1&mg=reno-secaucus-wsj)

“Personal income increased 0.5% in December from November adjusted for seasonality, the largest monthly increase since March…but spending was flat over the month—actually fell when inflation is factored in.”

“The savings rate, around 5.0% for the first half of 2011, was near 4.0% for much of the second half of the year…. Economists warned that consumers would soon resume socking away cash at the expense of spending, and that appears to be playing out now.”

With unemployment still high and the housing market in the doldrums, consumers are reluctant—and in many cases unable—to increase their spending in a big way.”

The Federal Reserve’s recently released forecast projected unemployment rates remaining at high levels through 2014, declining only slightly throughout the next three years.  And, even worse, underemployment is also expected to remain high with the rate of underemployment staying near to one out of every five people of working age.  No help coming here.(

Furthermore, a large proportion of homeowners still find themselves “under water” with mortgages that exceed the market value of their houses.  This situation is not expected to improve in the near future.

Robert Shiller, the Yale economist, was just interviewed at Davos and responded to questions about home prices by saying that prices will probably continue to decline, although not at the rate they declined in recent years.  He added that even if housing prices did stop declining, there is no reason to expect that they would start to rise anytime soon.  In addition, he added, that even though housing prices were returning to something more like a “fair value” that historically, the tendency was for the market to “overshoot” the “fair value” until all the previous exuberance is wrung out of the market. (http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577192702993936344.html?mod=ITP_pageone_1&mg=reno-secaucus-wsj)

A White House effort to lessen the impact of these homes that are “under water” seems to have failed in that the program developed by the administration has not reached enough borrowers to have much impact on the market. (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cf9fed00-4a89-11e1-8110-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1l2qSCMaM)

Even more chilling is the report released today by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) titled “The 2012 Assets & Opportunity Scorecard: How Financially Secure are Families?” (Go to http://cfed.org/.)   This study presents what it calls the households that are in “liquid asset poverty”.  A household is considered in liquid asset poverty if it owns a home, yet has no savings to speak of.  These people are just one significant emergency away from a real financial crisis. 

The emergency could take the form of a major car breakdown or a health problem.  Most of these people are earning a regular paycheck, CFED says, but they don’t really realize how close to the edge they are living.  Many have some other form of debt, but in an emergency would have to rely on very expensive sources of debt to try and carry them through the emergency. 

The study reports that 43 percent of the households in the United States are liquid asset poor.  This amounts to roughly 128 million households. 

Again, we seem to see the country bifurcating.  There are those households that are doing OK and are continuing to spend through these tough times.  Yet, there are a large number of people that have to watch out where every penny of their income is going.  This means that the economic recovery will not only remain week, but it will be fragile and susceptible to unexpected shocks.

Saving and deleveraging are still needed and being sought by many families, but this will just mean that the recovery will be missing any strong support from consumer spending in the near term.

And, it means that banks and other financial institutions cannot be sure of value of many of the assets on their balance sheets, both mortgages and consumer loans, but also face the fact that loan demand will also not be strong in the future.

We are still looking for where the surge in economic activity will come from.    

Banking and Real Estate: The Problems Are Still There

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke just informed Congress that people were not anxious to buy homes. He commented that “there’s no demand for construction to build homes and so the construction industry is quite reduced.”

As a consequence, the Fed will continue to purchase Treasury securities up to some $900 billion, $300 billion to replace maturing mortgage-backed securities that have rested in the Fed’s portfolio and an additional $600 billion to expand reserves in the banking system.

My feeling has been that this injection of reserves into the banking system has been to protect the banking system, especially the smaller banks, and keep failing institutions open for as long as possible so that the FDIC can close these insolvent banks in an orderly fashion.

This, of course, is different from what the Fed has been telling us. The Fed has argued that their reason for the injection of liquidity into the banking system has been to help spur on bank lending and help accelerate economic growth.

The data that continues to come in from the real estate sector does nothing to convince me that the Fed’s statement is the correct one.

Data coming in from the real estate sector, I believe, continues to support my contention that the loan portfolios of many smaller financial institutions remain seriously underwater.

The median sales price of a house sold in February, the Commerce Department has just reported, was $202,100, down from $221,900 a year earlier. This is a drop of almost 9%.

Just one added piece of information: last month’s price was at it lowest level since December 2003 when the median sales price stood at $196,000.

This just exacerbated the problem of “underwater” mortgages. CoreLogic, Inc., reported in early March that about 23%, or roughly one out of every four, mortgages in the United States had outstanding balances that were higher than the reported value of the secured properties.

In addition, a record 2.2 million homes were in foreclosure in January of this year. The number of homes in foreclosure had slowed down in the last half of 2010 because of all the fuss being made about how banks had not used proper methods to foreclose on many properties. This slowdown seems to have ended.

Furthermore, the purchases of new homes declined to the slowest pace on record.

Housing starts dropped in February to an annual rate of 479,000, the lowest level since April 2009.

And, construction permits slumped to a record low.

The commercial real estate sector is now getting hit with a new phenomenon…state governments and municipalities that are under tremendous budget pressures are downsizing and cutting back on office space. As a consequence, a lot of commercial office buildings are standing empty and their owners, who are not the states or municipalities, are faced with the task of trying to fill up the empty space.

The banking system holds the paper on a lot of this real estate.

The question is, how big a write-down is the commercial banking system going to have to take…and how fast is it going to have to take it.

The credit inflation the Federal Reserve is trying to create, I don’t believe, will cause housing prices to turn around any time soon in the magnitude needed to save their asset values.

Sooner or later these asset values are going to have to be written down.

Therefore, the efforts of the Fed are just allowing banks to stay liquid enough so that the assets do not have to be written down precipitously. In that way the regulators can control the situation and close the banks that must be closed in an orderly fashion.

But, this raises another question. This question pertains to the length of time the Fed will need to continue to provide liquidity to the financial markets? That is, how long will QE2 be maintained?

The original plans of the Federal Reserve were to call an end to QE2 in June. But, will we need to add on QE3?

My guess is that the Fed will need to continue some kind of program to maintain the “peace and quiet” on the banking front for an “extended period.”

This is a “good news” and “bad news” situation. The “good news” is that events in the banking sector are relatively quiet. The FDIC continues to close banks in an orderly fashion.

The “bad news” is that events in the banking sector are relatively quiet. The Fed must continue some kind of financial support to the banking industry because there are so many real estate related assets in the banking system that are troubled and are in need of a “write down.”

It would seem that as long as there are problems like the ones described above in the real estate sector, there will continue to be problems in the banking sector.

And, as long as there are problems in the real estate sector and the banking sector of this magnitude, the desired pickup in the economy will not be forthcoming.

Does Getting Out of Debt Mean that People Should Start Spending More?

From the Wall Street Journal this morning:

“U.S. families—by defaulting on their loans and scrimping on expenses—shouldered a smaller debt burden in 2010 than at any point in the previous six years, putting them in position to start spending more.

Total U.S. household debt, including mortgages and credit cards, fell for the second straight year in 2010 to $13.4 trillion, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday. That came to 116% of disposable income, down from a peak debt burden of 130% in 2007, and the lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2004.” (See “Families Slice Debt to Lowest in 6 Years,” http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704823004576192602754071800.html?mod=WSJPRO_hps_LEFTWhatsNews.)

The logic in this is that people reduce debt so that they can spend more. I think that is called a “non sequitur”.

If people (and businesses) get more and more in debt over a fifty year period (as they have since 1960) and this contributes to the worst recession since the Great Depression the objective of these people (and businesses) getting out of debt is so that they can get more in debt once again?

I thought that if people (and businesses) got themselves so leveraged up and so “over-extended” that they found themselves in serious financial trouble and were faced with foreclosure on their real estate and personal (or business) bankruptcy that what they would try and do is bring their debt more in line with their incomes so that they could manage their debt.

I thought that maybe people (and businesses) would become more prudent and try and manage their debt in a way that would allow them more “peace of mind” not having to scramble to make principal or interest payments every month.

And we read that there are 11 million people who find themselves owing more on their mortgages than their home is worth on the market.

And we read that about one out of every four individuals of working age is under-employed.

And, we read that the income distribution is skewed toward the high income end worse than it has ever been in the history of the United States.

And, we read that America is bifurcating more and more based on education and race.

And, we read that many state and local governments can’t meet their pension commitments and can’t balance their budgets so that they are cutting jobs, cutting pensions, and cutting education.

Some people are spending. Some people are using credit again. Some people are buying very nice homes. Some people are paying for very expensive educations.

But, this spending and credit extension is not across the board.

The inflation over the past fifty years created the ideal environment for debt creation. The inflation was not large enough to create a panic. From time-to-time, the inflation was not enough to really see.

Yet, from 1960 to the present time, the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen by 85%. The dollar that could buy a dollar’s worth of goods in 1960 can only buy about fifteen cents worth of goods now.

This was the perfect scenario for the creation of credit, for financial innovation, and for the growth of the finance industry.

This could not have been a better environment for the consumer culture to thrive where people could feed their insatiable appetites for goods and think that things were great.

And, now a substantial part of our economy is mired in this debt and struggling hard to get their heads above water. They don’t need to pile on more debt…they need some stability and consistency to their lives.

Yet, many are pushing to get the “credit machine” going again. The federal government is setting the standard (as it has over the past fifty years) by living way beyond its means and threatening to increase its debt by $15 trillion or more over the next ten years.

The Federal Reserve has pumped almost $1.4 trillion in excess reserves into the banking system in order to get the banks’ lending again.

We want families to be “in position to start spending more” as the Wall Street Journal article stated.

A credit inflation is just what is needed.

Each time we restart the “credit inflation” button again, more and more people seem to be in a position in which they are excluded from its benefits. They are under-employed, substantially in debt, and excluded from benefitting from further increases in prices.

This means each time the “credit inflation” button is pushed again, only a smaller proportion of the population can participate in subsequent expansion.

Maybe this is why it is taking us so long to get the economy “moving again.”

History has shown that this “show” cannot go on forever. The difficulty is in knowing just when the “show” is over.

The government is trying to start the music playing again. And, those that can are supposed to begin dancing. But, maybe this time only the financial industry will be dancing (http://seekingalpha.com/article/255748-will-the-financial-industry-dance-alone).

The Mortgage Market and More Plans to Aid Homeowners

There is still no better place to observe the consequences of the credit inflation of the last fifty years than the housing market.

Politically, this is democracy at work. Every wave of political change in the post-World War II period has focused on the housing market and putting “Americans” in their own homes in order that the new majority in Congress can get re-elected.

I was in Washington, D. C. during the time period that the mortgage-backed securities were being designed. The rationale for this innovation? Almost all mortgages were made in local depository institutions at that time. But, insurance companies and pension funds had lots of money to invest in longer term securities. If an instrument could be constructed that would allow local depository institutions to sell their mortgages to these companies that wanted long term investment vehicles then the local depository institutions would still have funds available to make more mortgages and put more “Americans” into their own home. And, the incumbent politicians could show their constituents the role they played in not only helping people acquire a home, but also how this effort helped to stimulate the local economy through additional home building. This surely would help the incumbents to get re-elected.

Economically this effort seemed to be sound because it would provide for an almost continued stimulus to the economy, spurring on economic growth and raising employment. A little “inflationary bias” along with this was not bad because almost all the economic models used at this time period showed a positive relationship between inflation and higher levels of employment. Inflation was good for the country!

And, these basic efforts were supplemented by the activities at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) along with the creation of Freddie Mac and Ginny Mae and the work of the Federal Housing Authority, the Federal Home Loan Bank System, and other initiatives forthcoming from both presidential administrations and the Congress. Who could be opposed to such a worthwhile idea?

What we see is that maybe inflation was not all it was said to be. Maybe inflation, in the longer run, can actually be harmful to many of the people it was supposed to help. Maybe one of the “lessons learned” from application of the economic philosophy that dominated Washington in the last fifty years is that you can’t artificially “force” people into situations that are not fundamentally sound on an economic basis.

The efforts of the federal government over the last fifty years or so culminated in the Greenspan/Bernanke credit inflation of the 2000s. The United States experienced a housing bubble during this time period that really capped off the government’s effort to promote homeownership. Asset prices were artificially “forced” to rise further and further. And, as we saw, in the longer run the run-up in housing prices was unsustainable. So the bubble popped!

The consequence? The New York Times reports that “About 11 million households, or a fifth of those with mortgages” are underwater (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/business/26housing.html?hp). One in five homeowners with a mortgage faces a mortgage that is larger in value than the market price of their home! In addition, many of these homeowners have lots and lots of other debts which they assumed in the Greenspan/Bernanke period of credit inflation. Thus, the default or bankruptcy problem does not exist just in the mortgage area.

Inflation, in the longer run, does not help the lower income brackets and it does not help the middle class. Most people cannot protect themselves against inflation, as can the wealthier classes in society, and the tendency is for those that are not of the wealthy classes to “stretch” their budgets, especially during periods of inflation, to acquire more than they can comfortably carry, financially. Furthermore, as we have seen, inflation tends to increase those that are underemployed in the economy as well as those that are unemployed. When the music stops, the family budget problems extend beyond just paying a mortgage.

This is the dilemma faced by the government in attempting to create a program that will prevent or slowdown defaults and foreclosures. It is not just the fact that the homeowner is underwater. The problem is that the mortgagee is over-extended in other areas and has a real cash flow problem.

The initial effort to provide relief to these troubled borrowers was to reduce interest payments that would reduce monthly mortgage payments. Over the past 12 months over 50% of all mortgages modified in this way defaulted, according to a report just released by the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision. Mortgages that are at least 30 days late climbed to about 58% over the last twelve months. This seems to be evidence that the problem is more than just one of meeting mortgage payments. (See http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601010&sid=aVYxPZ56vjys.)

The next effort, promised to be released by the White House today, will focus more on writing down the value of mortgages. It is expected that this will prove to be more beneficial to homeowners because it will result in a greater reduction in monthly payments and will reduce the psychological effect of having to pay off something that is larger than the underlying value of the asset it is financing. Another portion of the effort will be to have the F. H. A. insure mortgages that are re-written with lower loan balances, a risky effort for a tax-payer supported institution that is already facing financial difficulties.

There are several problems associated with such a program. First, if financial institutions re-write or re-finance underwater mortgages, the issue becomes one of the solvency of the underwriter. Almost one in eight banks in the United States is either on the problem list of the FDIC or near to being on this list. Can these banks afford to be forced to write off these losses in the near term?

Analysts argue that one of the things the initial effort did (the effort to reduce interest rates) is that it just “spread out” the banks having to deal with foreclosures and capital write-downs over several years. This, at least, allowed the banks to slow down the write-off process allowing them to continue to “stay alive” while they worked out their loan problems. This new program threatens these banks: the losses on these loans would have to be written-off sooner rather than later. Could this accelerate the closing of banks?

Another issue relates to whether or not these problems of “underwater” mortgages are connected to bigger issues than just the foreclosure on houses. It is the case that many of the people that purchased these houses were “stepping up” to a higher living standard and doing so created other payment obligations connected with the higher living standards. Many of the people that are underwater now re-financed in the years before the financial “collapse” and took out a lot of the equity built up in their homes to finance other purchases, perhaps a second home or an addition on the home or some other expenditure that allowed them to “step up.” Without the credit built up through the inflation in their home price they would not have been able to afford the purchases out of their cash flow, even if they continued to remain employed. In these cases the cash flow problem is more than just the difficulty in covering the monthly mortgage payment.

The point is that when a person, a business, or a society attempts to live beyond their means, events will, sooner or later, catch up with them. Inflation incents people to live beyond their means. We are observing the consequences of such behavior in the problems being experienced in the housing market.

Households Continue to Suffer

I’m trying to make sense out of the economic recovery. According to a growing number of people the Great Recession ended in July 2009 or, at least, somewhere in the third quarter. There continue to be “green shoots” that are popping up here and there.

Still, I am uncomfortable. I’m usually a pretty optimistic guy and I don’t like being considered as a “gloomy Gus”. But, some things in the economy continue to nag at me.

Households, at least how we used to know them, are having a difficult time. The major issue remains employment…or unemployment. However, another issue that can’t be ignored and that will impact employment patterns over the next five to ten years is the restructuring of industry and commerce. Restructuring often requires changes in skill sets and changes in geographic location.

In terms of employment we have just learned that companies in the United States cut an estimated 22,000 jobs in January, according to ADP Employer Services, the smallest decline in two years, and much lower than the recorded 61,000 decrease in December. The January result showed that 60,000 jobs were lost in the goods-producing area but in service industries 38,000 jobs were added to payrolls, the second consecutive increase. This was not a bad result, but employment is still declining. (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a01taizONkz8&pos=3.)

Most estimates for the unemployment rate in January remain in the 10% range. Very little improvement is expected in this measure in the first six months of this year. Furthermore, the projections of the unemployment rate used by the Obama administration in the budget proposals released this week are anything but encouraging.

These figures do not include numbers on discouraged workers who have left the labor force or those individuals that are working part-time but would like full-time employment. The rate of underemployment in the United States is in the neighborhood of 17% and is expected to remain around this level for the foreseeable future.

One of the reasons for underemployment to remain this high is the restructuring of industry and commerce that is going on in this country. As I have reported, capacity utilization in the manufacturing industries remains quite low and has not even come close to returning to 1960s levels in the past 40 years. (http://seekingalpha.com/article/185801-hearts-minds-and-recovery.)

The trend in United States manufacturing has been downward for a long time as industry has shifted from the heavy sectors to areas that produce higher-tech products. Some industries, like the auto makers, have had to decline due to diminished demand in the United States. Other industries, like chemicals, are relocating labor-intensive operations to other countries.

From December 2008 to December 2009 there have been large declines in capacity in the United States in areas such as textiles, printing, furniture, and plastics and rubber products. Industries where substantial increases in capacity have taken place are the producers of semiconductors, of communication equipment, and of computers. Shifts like these have major impacts on labor skills and the location of employees. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703338504575041510998445620.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTWhatsNews.)

It is important that these shifts take place. One of the problems with job stimulus packages sponsored by the federal government is that they tend to ‘force’ people back into the jobs that these unemployed have lost. This is not good because it reduces the incentives for industries to change even though it generates revenues for producers, like car manufacturers, and income for workers, like autoworkers. However, industries that need to change must change some time and postponing the change only exacerbates the magnitude and pain of adjustment. Need I mention the United States auto industry again?

This change is being reflected elsewhere and it has an influence on how political power is distributed in a country. The number of American workers that are in labor unions has been experiencing a downward trend that mirrors the decline in United States manufacturing. What is additionally interesting is the shift that has taken place within the overall union workforce: in 2009, public employees that are members of a union rose to more than 50% of total of all union workers. The decline in union membership connected to the manufacturing sector has been hidden because of the rapid growth in those connected with government employment. This is just another indication of the restructuring of the labor force. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703837004575013424060649464.html.)

Added to this is the large shift that has taken place in home ownership in the United States. Home ownership peaked in the United States in 2004 when 69% of all Americans owned their own home. This peak was reached through the emphasis placed on home ownership in the United States, government programs to get people into their own homes, and low interest rates.
However, this rate has fallen to 67% at the end of 2009 and is expected to continue to decline as people lose their homes through foreclosure or bankruptcy. The rate of home ownership could fall into a range of 62% to 64% that was the case in the early 1990s. This represents a massive shift in the asset holdings of United States households for homes are still, by far, the largest asset held by households in America. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704022804575041083721893188.html#mod=todays_us_page_one.)

This continued decline does not seem unreasonable given the hard facts facing many homeowners in the United States. In the third quarter of 2009, 4.5 million homeowners had seen the value of their homes drop below 75% of their mortgage balance. This figure is projected to hit 5.1 million, or 10% of all homeowners, by June. Research has indicated that this 75% figure is the level at which people really consider walking away from their home. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/business/03walk.html?hp.)

These numbers make me feel uneasy…and that is an understatement. The basic reason for feeling uneasy is that I don’t see a “normal” economic recovery reversing these trends. The United States is restructuring from the excesses of the past, of “forcing” industry to not modernize, of “forcing” people to become homeowners, and so forth and so on. It is always the case that restructuring takes place: sooner or later. Now, seems to be OUR time!

The problem is that this restructuring has ramifications for other areas of the economy. Small- and medium-sized banks have lent money to these home owners and they are the ones that these households will walk away from if they leave. Commercial real estate developers will also walk away from the banks, maybe more easily, as we have seen, than the households themselves. Many businesses that are restructuring or downsizing will not be borrowing from the banks so business loan demand will stay low. And, one can think of many other areas in which repercussions may be felt.

I like to be optimistic about things, but I can’t get these “less-than-happy” conditions out of my mind.

Something is Wrong!

A headline in the New York Times, “Walk Away From Your Mortgage!”

Why not?

The best remedy for the current economic malaise?

Since there is too much debt, let’s all just walk away from our debt.

And, if the New York Times is printing such material, then it must be OK! Right?

As we “recover” from the Great Recession we see pockets of problems all over the place. Things just don’t fit together the way they used to. And, what we are doing to combat these problems doesn’t seem to be relieving the suffering. The whole world seems to be dislocated.

There is too much debt outstanding. No one disagrees with that, but how do you get people and businesses and governments to start spending again when they are desperate to reduce their outstanding debt?

Other headlines this morning point to the problems in commercial real estate. In “Delinquency Rate Rises for Mortgages” we read that “More than 6% of commercial-mortgage borrowers in the U. S. have fallen behind in their payments, a sign of potential troubles ahead as nearly $40 billion of commercial-mortgage-backed bonds come due this year.” (See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704130904574644042950937878.html#mod=todays_us_money_and_investing.) Also, “Further Slide Seen in N. Y. Commercial Real Estate” points to the fact that 180 buildings totaling $12.5 billion in value, are in trouble in Manhattan. (See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/nyregion/08commercial.html?hp.)

But, the problems don’t seem to be just in commercial real estate. The New York Times article cited above states that at least one quarter of all residential mortgages in the United States are underwater and that 10% of the mortgages outstanding are delinquent. Another round of foreclosures and bankruptcies seem to be on the way.

Which brings us to the banking system: here the difficulties bifurcate depending upon size. If you are really big you seem to be doing very, very well these days. In fact, it seems as if the “good ole daze” have returned for these bankers. Risk-taking and speculation in the carry trade abound. Simon Johnson, an economist at MIT issued a warning on CNBC yesterday morning that the next phase of the financial crisis could be just beginning and this gets back to the risk-taking of the six major banks in the US whose combined balance sheets exceed 60% of United States GDP.

If you are smaller, however, your problems are immense. The smaller banks are carrying the burden of the commercial real estate problems and consumer debt and mortgages still present these banks with problems because these loans represented “Main Street” and were not all packaged and sold to investors in Finland. Remember there are 552 banks, all small- and medium-sized banks that are on the FDICs list of problem banks and this is expected to grow this year before declining, generally do to actual failures.

There are more dislocations throughout the economy that point to persisting problems. For example, in manufacturing, since the 1960s the unused capacity of United States industry has continually declined from peak usage to peak usage of that capacity The latest peak utilization of capacity still saw that about 20% of the industrial capacity of the United States remained unused. Unused capacity for the past thirty years seems to average around 23% to 24%.

We see unused capacity in the labor force as well. Since the 1970s under-employment of labor has grown quite consistently. Attention is focused upon the unemployment rate, but this measure does not include those individuals that have left the labor force because they are discouraged and those that are only working part time but would like to work more. We have seen estimates that 17% to 20% of the employable people in the United States are under-employed. Another dislocation that is not comforting.

Then we hear about the problems in state and local governments. Reports indicate that there are more than 30 states that are currently experiencing fiscal difficulties. We hear most about California and New York, but there are many other states particularly in the west and southwest that are having real problems. One estimate is that the states will have a combined budget shortfall of at least $350 billion in the fiscal years of 2010 and 2011. And, this doesn’t even get to the difficulties that are being faced by local governmental bodies.

And, there are the dislocations being created by the federal government. Budget deficits for the next ten years have been placed in the range of $15 trillion. The United States is fighting in three wars throughout the world. The government is passing health care legislation that has been justified fiscally by postponing start dates of programs from three to five years. There is climate control efforts being considered along with regulations, like anti-pollution controls, that will just exacerbate the economic and fiscal problems of the country. Then there are other changes in the rules and regulations that apply to industry that will further change the playing field and create greater uncertainty about what management’s should do.

There is the problem of unemployment, the number one issue among the American voter. (And, you thought the number one issue was health care or pollution or terrorism or the war in Afghanistan.) But, there is a dislocation problem relating to federal government stimulus programs.

For fifty years or so, the federal government has attempted to stimulate the economy to put people back to work in the same jobs that they were released from. The government has sought to put unemployed people back to work in the steel industry, in the auto industry, and in other jobs that are the backbone of American industry (according to the labor unions and others). As a consequence, the steel industry lost competitiveness, the auto industry lost competitiveness, and so do many other industries.

This effort to stimulate the economy and put people back into the jobs that they had lost has contributed greatly to the increase in the unused industrial capacity and to the increase in the under-employed in this country. The effort to constantly maintain a low unemployment rate by putting people back into the jobs they have lost has resulted in a massive slide in the competitive position of the United States.

The point of this discussion is my concern with the huge dislocations that now exist within the country. Things are out-of-whack and it is going to take us quite a while for us to get things back together again. Yes, we can try and “force” the economy back into a position of higher employment and greater capacity utilization, of lower debt burdens and greater solvency. But, this would just postpone, once again, the need to realign the country to deal with the pressures of the 21st century.

Something has changed, however. The United States is now facing a more competitive and hostile world economy. The government may not be able to “force” the economy back into its old mold.

Housing and Banking

One of the most disturbing statistics around these days is the status of home owners. The New York Times reported yesterday that it is estimated that one-third of homeowners with a mortgage, or 16 million people, owe more than their homes are worth. Any further drop in home prices, of course, would just enlarge that figure and exacerbate the problem.

This, to me, raises additional concern about the banking industry. My guess is that banks, and other financial institutions, haven’t taken this potential write down onto their balance sheets. For one, they don’t know which individuals in the 16 million are going to default on their mortgage and they don’t know when that is going to happen.

This is, of course, a very important reason for banks not to lend at this time. They are uncertain as to the real condition of their own balance sheets.

The forecast is for a new flood of foreclosed homes to hit the market later this winter and spring.
It has been argued that the best way to assist troubled borrowers is not through reducing the interest rate that has to be paid on the mortgage but by reducing the balance of the mortgage. But, this would mean that in reducing the balance on the mortgages of troubled borrowers, the banks would have to take the loss immediately, something they may not have reserved for, given the fact that they don’t know exactly who is going to need assistance. Many of the plans require the borrower to come in for assistance.

This, however, would reduce the capital that the bank has and threaten the existence of the bank.

And, how many banks are already on the problem bank list of the FDIC? At the end of the third quarter of 2009 the number was 552.

What might be the strategy of the banks?

Well, if banks amend the mortgage agreement to include a lower interest rate they do not have to recognize any loss on the loan at the present time.

But, analysts have said, this just postpones the problem and, in all likelihood, the borrowers will still not be able to pay back their mortgage and so this just slows down the recognition of the failure of the loan.

Right! That is the point!

Banks gain something by adjusting loan rates. They lose by granting principal reductions. By adjusting loan rates, they don’t have to take a charge-off right now. If they grant principal reductions they do have to take the charge-off right now.

Bankers are always more willing to postpone taking charge-offs in the hopes of the environment improving. At least that was my experience in doing bank turnarounds.

Furthermore, the location of the problem we are discussing is in the small- and medium-sized banks in this country.

The big banks, they are running away with huge profits gained from the excessively low interest rates (thank you Fed!) and the large trading profits made in bond and foreign exchange markets. This is not their problem, now.

Also, these small- and medium-sized banks face additional problems down the road in commercial real estate, car loans, and other extensions of credit made during the credit inflation of the 2000s.

It seems to me that Main Street is still not “out-of-the-woods” and that 2010 may be the time when the Main Street “shake-out” really occurs. I hope not, but we need to be aware of this possibility.

The total of 552 troubled banks is really disconcerting. It only seems to me that this number will rise in 2010 before it begins to fall. Best guess is, however, that there will be a lot of bank failures this year.

BERNANKE BUBBLE

I would like to recommend the article in the New York Times this morning by David Leonhardt with the title “If Fed Missed This Bubble, Will It See a New One?” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/business/economy/06leonhardt.html?hp)

I would also suggest reading this article along with reading my post from Monday, January 4, “The Bernanke Fed in 2010.” (http://seekingalpha.com/article/180764-the-bernanke-fed-in-2010)

Leonhardt quotes the recent Bernanke speech with regards to “lax regulation”: “The solution, he (Bernanke) said, was ‘better and smarter’ regulation. He never acknowledge that the Fed simply missed the bubble.”

Going further Mr. Leonhardt argues that “This lack of self-criticism is feeding Congressional hostility toward the Fed.” It is also fueling the criticism of other interested parties.

“He (Bernanke) and his colleagues fell victim to the same weakness that bedeviled the engineers of the Challenger space shuttle, the planners of the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, and the airline pilots who have made tragic cockpit errors. They didn’t adequately question their own assumptions.
It’s an entirely human mistake.”

From which Leonhardt concludes: “Which is why it is likely to happen again.”

Need I say more?